A/N: Thank you guys for the reviews and readings! It really makes my day when I know you guys are enjoying this just as much as I am :P

Well now that Itachi and Deidara have 'settled' things, let's see what they get themselves into. As for Itachi's parents...maybe they're both just lightweights lol XD

Warning: Language, slight violence, OOC, etc...

^v^

"Lovely weather, isn't it?"

"Shut up Shisui."

"Well someone's in a bad mood un."

"I don't want to hear that from you!" Itachi snapped, pushing heavily off the tree he was on.

Deidara snickered under his breath.

Shisui led Itachi and Deidara through the tree tops with mild speed, the sun rising slowly behind them and casting a golden hue onto the leaves and tree branches.

The tree branches which Deidara was having great fun in slinging back into Itachi's face.

Itachi growled as the nth piece of wood came slamming into his nose. "Will you cut that out?" he ground out.

Deidara looked over his shoulder with a smirk. "I'm sorry un, did you say something? I couldn't hear you over the grinding of your teeth."

Itachi popped a vein. "You annoying little-"

"So Shisui-kun," Deidara cut him off, looking back towards the seventeen year old Uchiha leading them. "Where exactly are we headed hmm?"

Shisui glanced at him with a smile. "Glad you asked. Because I have no idea."

"…"

"…"

Deidara deadpanned as Itachi screeched to a halt beside him.

Shisui paused, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "Sorry- I had to take us off course for a while."

"Since when?" Itachi murmured.

"For the past thirty minutes un," Deidara replied, voice equally low. He stooped down and placed a hand on the bark of the tree , listening intently to his surroundings. "Okay. There's a decent amount of them."

"Don't worry," Shisui said with a large smile. He swung upside-down from the branch he was on, grinning secretly as he landed on the branch Itachi and Deidara were on. "I'll go find out where these guys came from. Do what you want with them- I'll be back soon," he said before pushing off the wood and into the trees.

Deidara stood just as a group of ten masked shinobi circled them. "Ah…we're surrounded on all sides!" he cried out, voice a slightly higher pitch than normal.

Itachi glanced at him.

One of the shinobi- presumably the leader if the large spectacles on his face had anything to say about it- stepped forward, grinning leeringly beneath his mask. "That's right kid. We've come to bring you to our friend. He says he knows you."

Deidara opened and closed his mouth, clearly flabbergasted. "Y-You know who I am un?"

"We don't have to," the leader chuckled. We only have to know that you're wanted and we get paid for doing our job. Now why don't you be a good boy and come over here?"

"No," Deidara stuck out his tongue.

A kunai whizzed by his cheek, causing the skin to break and a thin trail of blood trickle out.

Deidara clapped a hand to his face. "Ow un!"

The man barked out a laugh. "Ha! He's weak- no better than a mere Genin!"

The group tittered with chuckles.

Deidara dropped his hand, his face taking on one of horror. "Oh no! What do we do Itachi-sensei?" he asked, finally looking at the raven for an answer.

Itachi resisted the urge to punch him in the face, instead assuming the role forced on him. "Idiot. I knew it was too soon to bring you out- go back and call for help!" Why do I have to play the part as the weak teacher? It's so pathetic… he sourly thought as Deidara saluted.

"Hai!" The blonde turned around on his heel, shooting off into a different part of the forest.

"Hey! Don't let that little runt go!" The leader ordered.

A group of three nodded to one another before vanishing from sight.

Itachi inwardly rolled his eyes and then faced the leader and the six others with him. "Why send so few after my student?" he questioned in a bored voice.

"It won't take much to bring down a child," the leader sneered, pushing his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose.

Itachi scoffed under his breath. "That's what you think," he uttered. "Let's just get this over with," he said, reappearing behind the leader of the shinobi group with narrowed eyes. "Shall we?"

The leader stiffened.

And released a bloodcurdling scream.

-About One Minute Later-

"Whoa un. What did you do to them?"

Itachi looked up from where he was hog-tying the seven shinobi who dared attack him. Deidara was standing across from him with a brow raised, a body across his shoulder and two more under an arm. Itachi stepped back from the pile of shinobi, dusting his hands off while eyeing their unconscious leader. "I should be asking you that. Was there a point to running off?"

Deidara grinned and heaved his shoulder a little, kneeling down to deposit the three shinobi he defeated on the large branch. "It was fun. You should've seen how they fought un!"

"If it was anything like the fighting my opponents did, then I don't want to see," Itachi uttered in a low tone, looking a bit put out.

"Aww," Deidara cooed, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Did someone want to fight a big bad shinobi?"

"Don't make me punch you in the face," Itachi snapped.

Deidara laughed behind a hand and then raised both brows in an amused fashion. "So what are we supposed to do with these guys?"

The fifteen year old raven turned on his heel and started moving through the trees in the opposite direction.

Deidara appeared next to him, smirking. "Gee, what a great answer hmm. Was it that hard to say 'leave 'em'?"

"I didn't feel the need to answer you," Itachi said with an exasperated sigh. "You're so stupid for letting yourself get hit with a kunai. Even if it was for acting purposes. What kind of a baka toys with their opponents?"

"Me. I wanted to stretch my muscles and get warmed up for whoever else we run into un," the blonde bomber said, cracking his knuckles with a wide smile.

"Warmed up?" Itachi glanced at him. "If they were stronger, you wouldn't be saying that."

"Maybe. But it didn't take much to bring those losers down," Deidara snickered.

Itachi clicked his tongue and pushed the younger blonde's head down. "You're too cocky."

Deidara grinned, sticking his tongue out. "And you're not cocky enough."

"There's no need to be," Itachi muttered, eyeing him.

The Iwa nin shrugged. "If you say so un."

Shisui came out from the tree above them, jumping one branch ahead. "Did you have fun?" he asked, looking over his shoulder curiously.

"Where did you go?" Itachi questioned, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"Out on a stroll," Shisui grinned.

"…"

"…"

Itachi covered his face with a hand. "Why?"

"I figured you two could handle them and let out all that bad tension you had going on between you guys earlier," Shisui said with a serious expression, although his eyes said differently.

Itachi deadpanned. "You. Are. An. Idiot."

"It wasn't much of a challenge," Deidara said, blinking in the older Uchiha's direction.

"It's never a challenge when all you do is blow your opponents up," Itachi said with a roll of his eyes.

Deidara scowled. "I didn't even use my explosives un! You probably went off and used your little eye powers to win," he wiggled his fingers.

Itachi scowled right back. "I didn't need to use the Sharingan moron."

"You're the moron not me," the bomber snapped.

"At least I don't look like one," Itachi huffed. "You little blonde monster."

Deidara stuck a hand in his mouth before zooming up beside Itachi and shoving a finger in the other teen's ear. "Wet loogie! Watch who you're calling names, aniki."

"Disgusting!" Itachi pushed him away, trying to clean out his ear with a horrified expression. "Try that again and I'll chop your hands off, imouto."

Deidara bristled, his visible eye widened in rage. "Imouto? Why I oughta-"

"Now that no one's following us," Shisui began to say to prevent an argument, "I can tell you where we're really going." He changed course almost immediately, veering sharply off to the left.

Deidara and Itachi followed without hesitation.

"We're going for a village on the outskirts of Fire Country. It's a non-shinobi village so there shouldn't be any more attacks on us once we get there," Shisui explained. "Shouldn't be anyway. But our bounty hunter, Toshiaki, will no doubt have spies posted throughout. He has a hideout set up between a pair of mountains behind the village- so that's where we'll be keeping our aim for."

Itachi gave his cousin a short look. "And what do you want us to do with the spies in the village?" he asked, though he already knew.

Shisui gave him an equally short look. "We get rid of them."

"Shouldn't we at least keep a few around un?" Deidara spoke up from behind the pair. He shrugged when they both turned their gazes onto him. "I mean, Kaeru-sensei is bound to notice if a bunch of his followers go missing. And then it could turn into something even more troublesome."

Shisui grinned. "I intend on capturing a few and putting them under a genjutsu. They'll report back to Toshiaki regularly and he won't notice a thing. It doesn't look like he's very good at seeing through illusions- if his followers say anything about him," he said.

"He always was bad at genjutsu…" Deidara thoughtfully murmured. "Taking him down should be easy enough. If he's still as weak as he was seven years ago that is un…"

Shisui moved up beside the blonde and poked him in the head. "Don't ever underestimate your opponents."

"Fine, fine," Deidara muttered. "I'm just saying…"

"It's not really a problem is it?" Itachi moved up onto Deidara's other side, glancing across at his cousin. "All of us are capable of taking care of ourselves."

"We'll have to be more careful though. Toshiaki is beginning to send out others to capture Deidara," Shisui said, jumping ahead a bit. "Which means we'll be encountering a lot more shinobi like the ones we just ran into. They're weak- but if there gets to be too many of them, it can become an issue."

"Great," Itachi said with a heavy sigh. "Now we have to keep an eye out for Deidara-no-baka and make sure hedoesn't get kidnapped too. Could things get any more complicated?"

Deidara rolled his eyes. "Well excuse me for creating so many problems for Mr. Perfection over here."

Itachi glared at him. "I never said I was perfect."

"I'll say un."

"Stop being hypocritical Dei-da-ra," Itachi said with a tiny huff.

"I can be what I want Itachi," Deidara harrumphed right back at him.

"And what is that?" the older teen inquired. "An annoying little brat?"

"I'd rather be a brat than an old ugly troll!" Deidara snapped.

Itachi popped a vein. "Who the hell are you calling a troll? You fatass!"

Now it was Deidara's turn to pop a vein. "Who's the fatass? Weren't you the one who got stuck in the pantry a week ago?"

"Only because you locked me in there with Kakashi and the Hokage-sama!" Itachi exclaimed.

"Well you would've gotten stuck even if they weren't there," Deidara muttered.

"What was that?"

Shisui came to an abrupt halt, holding out his arms and effectively whacking both Itachi and Deidara in the face. "There's the village!" he cheerfully announced, pointing down to a fairly empty town a few miles away.

Itachi glared at him while holding his nose. "You stopped us for that?"

Shisui beamed at him. "Well I couldn't just let you run ahead now could I?"

Itachi drop-kicked him. "You could!"

Deidara smirked at them. "Take it easy boys. We've just made it one step closer to saving our parents."

Shisui squealed, pulling Deidara into a big hug. "You are my favorite cousin ever!" he exclaimed, tears pouring out his eyes.

"Itachi's such a bore isn't he?" Deidara laughed.

"Such a bore."

"A terrible bore."

"We should just ditch him and go," Shisui said with a bored expression.

"Totally agreed un," Deidara intoned back.

Itachi felt an eye twitch. "Do you two mind?"

Deidara and Shisui blinked. "Did you hear something?" Shisui asked.

"Nah-" Deidara picked his ear. "Must've been a bug."

They exchanged a glance before laughing obnoxiously, their laughs scaring away all the nearby birds and animals.

Itachi plugged his ears. "Will you pipe down!" he shouted.

"Hahahahahaha-"

"Hohohohohohohmmm-"

Itachi closed his eyes in annoyance. "You…guys…." he growled.

"AHAHAHAHAHA-!"

"AHAHAHAUNHAHAHAUN-!"

Itachi shoved them off the branch they were on, vein throbbing. "JUST SHUT UP AND GET GOING!" he roared.

A/N: The first step is halfway taken. But of course things won't go as smoothly as Itachi wants.

Until the next time...