Weeks passed, and Kisame was no closer to figuring out Itachi's cryptic message than he was on the night that the weasel had said those fateful words to him. He could still see the look on Itachi's face, hear the quiet way that the weasel had told him, "I knew what you'd do." How?! How could Itachi possibly have predicted Kisame throwing over twenty years of ninja training out the window for his criminal partner, of all people?! It was driving him up the wall, and efforts to ignore Itachi's words or forget their deeper meaning had utterly failed.

To his credit, Kisame had initially tried to ignore his partner's assertion and move on with his life, recalling how little luck he'd had getting an answer the last time his partner had done something to annoy him like this. He'd thrown himself headlong into training around the clock, since the in the past training with Samehada had been a great release for him; but although his body was constantly moving, the exercise was unable to distract his mind from his frustrated musings. It just didn't make sense to the natural order of things as Kisame understood them. There was no way Itachi could have predicted how Kisame would react to seeing him injured (unless the Uchiha's Sharingan abilities actually made him psychic, which Kisame had considered as a possibility on more than one occasion). Kisame had made it perfectly clear during their first meeting that he would only tolerate Itachi as his partner for as long as the weasel was able to make himself useful. There was no room for compassion or loyalty to a weakened partner in their line of work; you didn't get to be Kisame's age without realizing that. Honestly, Itachi should have assumed that Kisame would sooner kill him than help out once Itachi became injured.

But he hadn't. Itachi had confidently asserted that he'd somehow known that Kisame would come to his aid, when even the swordsman himself hadn't been able to fathom such an action. And although there was a chance that Itachi was lying and just trying to come off as a know-it-all to his partner (and oh, how Kisame had desperately clung to that idea for a while), the shark felt deep down in his gut that Itachi was telling the truth. But if that was the case, then how? How could Itachi have predicted Kisame rescuing him?

More infuriating than not understanding Itachi's line of thinking was the fact that Itachi refused to explain himself. He kept telling Kisame that his partner needed to figure this out without Itachi's help, and had recently resorted to threatening Kisame in order to get him to stop pestering his partner about this (when he didn't simply slip away under the guise of a genjutsu of course). Why was the weasel being so difficult?! If Kisame hadn't figured it out after three weeks of pondering, the answer wasn't about to appear before him at any point in the near future. But despite requests, pleas, and even a few threats on Kisame's part, Itachi absolutely would not budge on this.

Training didn't help. Thinking didn't help. Asking Itachi for a goddamn straight answer especially didn't help. Kisame, therefore, was left in a very frustrated and slightly murderous mood for days on end.

Eventually he was saved by the mercy of Pein, who called him into his office one afternoon while Itachi was outside "training" (though in truth was likely hiding from Kisame and his increasingly annoying barrage of questions). The leader probably picked up on Kisame's anxiety as soon as the shark walked into his office, but chose not to say anything to Kisame about it. "Kisame," he began, "you and Itachi have both had plenty of time to recuperate from your last assignment, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yeah, why? You have something new planned for us?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Pein stated as he pushed a manila folder towards the swordsman. "One of our allies has recently had an issue with a rival merchant group. I need you to take out their main supply line. While you're doing that, Itachi will be 'negotiating' with the local nobles around that area to turn a blind eye when the merchant guild calls for aid. After that, I'll need you two to join back up at this location (here he pointed to the edge of a mountainous region on Kisame's map) and take out the main caravan, which by that point will be much more heavily fortified. The loss of supplies and manpower will no doubt cripple the group for a while, and keep our friend very happy."

Kisame nodded, flipping through the mission details. It wasn't the most glamourous assignment he'd ever been sent on, nor was it the most challenging, but at least it would be more interesting than traveling around and trying to collect information on the tailed beasts that the Akatsuki still hadn't managed to locate. He finally closed the file and looked up. "When do you want us to leave?"

"First thing tomorrow morning. The supply route is going to have heavy traffic about two weeks from now, and you'll have nearly a hundred miles to hike to get there aside from needing time there to prepare an attack. Itachi will leave with you, but you'll separate a bit south of your final destination. And let me just add, this mission is incredibly important if we are to retain the power we have in this particular region. Don't disappoint me."

Kisame nodded and took the file with him as he left the office. He got back to his room, intending to give the file straight to Itachi, and then cursed when he realized that the Uchiha was still outside the base for training. "Goddamn kid changing up his routine on me," Kisame growled as he stormed out of the base in search of his partner.

Fortunately for the shark's rapidly dwindling patience, Itachi wasn't hard to locate. The raven-haired ninja had taken a food break from whatever training he'd been doing and was sitting under an oak tree on the edge of a clearing that Kisame himself liked to use for sword practice on a regular basis. Itachi glanced up from his sandwich and set it down on the napkin in his lap when Kisame approached, no doubt noticing the manila folder in the swordsman's hand that could only signify a mission from Pein. "Kisame?"

"That lunch is pathetic," Kisame scoffed as he approached the weasel. "There's a reason you're all skin and bones, you know that, right? It's because you never eat anything, and I end up having to do all the heavy lifting for us."

"What's the mission?"

"Crushing a supply line," Kisame explained as he dropped the file onto Itachi's lap, nearly letting it land on the Uchiha's lunch as he did so. "Nothing too out of the ordinary; I bash a few skulls, you threaten a few nobles, we knock out their best men and then go home."

"Hn," Itachi grunted in acknowledgement, having opened the file while Kisame was speaking and now was flipping through it.

"We leave at dawn, split up halfway to the final location, do our work, and then join back up for the final push."

Itachi nodded as he continued reading through the mission details, no doubt wanting to investigate the elements of their assignment that Kisame had surely neglected to mention. "Sounds simple enough," he finally agreed. "We can handle this."

Something about the casual way that Itachi was treating him set off something in Kisame, and before he could stop himself, he was tearing into his partner. "You sure? Because I'm pretty certain that I can handle this, but apparently I don't know anything about myself or what I'll actually do in a given scenario. Oh, but lucky me, you do! Itachi Uchiha, murderer, S-rank ninja, and Kisame Hoshigaki's person psychic. How lucky can one ninja get?! So tell me, all-knowing seer of the future, are you absolutely certain that I'm going to go through with this mission and not fuck off halfway through our assignment? Or how about taking a detour to a lovely vacation spot, hm? Hell, maybe I'll even find nirvana!"

Itachi sighed in a manner that was slightly more exhausted than annoyed and shut the folder on his lap. "Kisame, is this really necessary?"

"Why the hell can't you just tell me how you supposedly knew that I'd cart your sorry ass back to base?! It's driving me insane, Itachi. Hell, if this goes on for much longer-"

"Is it going to interfere with your ability to complete our missions?" Itachi cut in before Kisame could really go off on a tirade.

"No idea. But since you apparently have such an amazing understanding of what will cause me to break from basic ninja protocol-"

At this point, Itachi had had enough and shot to his feet, getting close enough to Kisame that the shark could feel the heat being given off from Itachi's body. The Uchiha's eyes were blood red; one wrong word, and Kisame would find himself in a world of pain and misery before he could even consider striking the Uchiha. "Stop it. You're acting like a child that hasn't gotten his way."

Yet even in the face of impending doom, Kisame was never one to back down. "I'll stop as soon as you explain yourself. Just answer my question, and we can both move on with our lives."

There was a tense pause as each ninja stared into the other's eyes, unwilling to break from their staring contest before the other. Neither spoke; not even a muscle twitched between the pair. For a brief moment, Kisame wondered if maybe this argument between them would actually come to blows.

And then there was a soft sigh as Itachi's eyes returned to their normal black, before the weasel stepped away. "I'll explain if you haven't figured it out by the end of this mission," he stated quietly, turning his back to Kisame. "But don't become upset when you hear my answer."

"Fine, fine," Kisame agreed, feeling a small amount of relief wash over him at Itachi's promise. He'd be a lot happier if Itachi would just come out and tell him what the weasel was thinking, but at least now he had a hard and fast date for when he'd get an explanation. Presuming that he and Itachi survived until then, of course, but there wasn't any reason for Kisame to think that anything about this mission would be any different from what they normally dealt with.

Oh, how wrong he was.

-n-

The first few days of the mission went just as the two ninjas expected. They didn't speak much except while plotting out the finer details of their mission, usually while hitching a ride on the back of a cart when they needed a break from running. They quickly decided that Kisame would probably need two days to reach the target after they parted ways, and then another day to actually carry out the mission. Itachi's timing was a little harder to predict; nobles could be finicky creatures, even when the Akatsuki name was thrown around, and therefore they could drag out the mission for days, maybe even more than a week. As annoying and dangerous as it might be, Itachi and Kisame were forced to acknowledge the reality that they might have to regroup before Itachi could complete his part of the mission, and thus force the duo to contend with more enemies than they'd like to. For this reason they rushed through the first leg of their mission at top speed; Kisame's body could take the abuse, and Itachi would likely have at least a little time to rest while carrying out his assignment. Eventually the pair split up, and Kisame didn't hear from his partner for another week. It was just as well that Itachi took his time, because the shark's initial assumption of destroying his target in the span of a day proved to be a gross underestimate.

The major difficulty in this assignment was that Kisame was severely limited in the types of attacks he could use for the first hit on the supply route. The mission file made it very clear that their client wanted it to be obvious that the traveling merchants and their cargo had been attacked by a person, and not destroyed by any sort of natural disaster; thus, most of Kisame's large-scale water techniques were out. Instead, he's set up a few explosive tags along the route where the caravan would be passing. A fair number of the merchants would surely be killed in the initial blasts, and in the confusion Kisame would easily be able to pick off a few others. He didn't have to kill everyone; Pein's notes made it clear that it was the second part of the mission that needed to have an almost perfect kill rate, since that would be the supply run with the best armed (and most expensive) guards. In fact, letting a few men get away during the first stage might actually work to their benefit, since the survivors would no doubt scurry back to their boss like scared little rabbits and beg him to spend a bit more on tougher security next time. All in all, Kisame felt like he had the perfect plan given the restrictions on his assignment.

Kisame was able to take a very brief nap after setting the trap, and woke up about an hour before the targets were set to pass his hiding spot (a well-hidden depression behind a group of bushes on the cliff overlooking the caravan's path). It was getting late in the afternoon, and the sun was already starting to sink in the sky; worst case scenario, he'd be able to fall back to a safe distance and completely disappear under the cover of night.

He waited in silence, keeping an eye on the sun and hoping everything would go right. The caravan was right on time, and once the first wagon came into sight Kisame was able to see a row of a dozen armored wagons that were each guarded by two or three men, followed by a single armored truck. That immediately set off a few alarm bells in Kisame's head. Normal goods like food or fabric didn't need to be carried in armored vehicles like this, and they certainly didn't require an armed guard. It was also a bit worrisome that the majority of the men walking alongside the cargo appeared to be armed guards; in fact, upon closer inspections Kisame couldn't even find a person that looked like a normal merchant and wasn't carrying at least a knife of some kind. Besides all that, any motorized vehicle would have surely been incredibly expensive for even the richest of merchants, and adding all that armor definitely drove up the cost even more. Nothing about this looked like a normal merchant caravan. Kisame had the distinct feeling that either Pein's intel was outdated or incorrect, which was presuming that the Akatsuki leader hadn't just lied to him or left some details out of his mission assignment on purpose. Completely on edge now, Kisame nevertheless had to follow through with this part of the plan and quickly set off the explosives he'd planted earlier, wondering if perhaps he should have planted a few more given the presence of the armored truck.

The effects were immediate. Half of the wagons were quickly engulfed in the explosions, reduced to smithereens and ash (along with whatever unfortunate guards had been standing close by) while the rest were blown onto their sides or flipped completely over, rendered totally immobile by the force of the blasts. Thick plumes of black smoke billowed into the sky, and soon the sounds of terrified and angry screams filled the air. Only the truck was able to survive mostly unscathed; the driver had crashed into the side of the mountain after one of the wagons had flown backwards and slammed into its side, but from what Kisame could tell it was likely still functional. Not good enough. Kisame would have to get in closer and finish the job.

However, as soon as Kisame moved down from his position onto the road, ready to pick off the first dazed or horrified guard that came his way, he immediately realized why this cargo had been so well-guarded. A fine white powder was floating through the air, having been sent up in a cloud after several of the trucks exploded. Some of the powder was falling back down onto the flaming wreckage below, producing a sweet smell in the air that Kisame recognized from some rather seedy establishments he'd had to visit before. "Oh no."

Let it never be said that Kisame Hoshigaki was a man without at least a few scruples. The swordsman was fine with lying, stealing, even murdering an enemy in cold blood, but there were certain lines that he'd never cross under any circumstances. He'd turned down exactly two jobs in his career, and both with good reason. The first occurred when he refused to help a human trafficker move his "product" across Fire Country, because the risk was nowhere near the reward and Kisame personally found the man to be a prime example of the scum of the earth. The second refusal, and easily the worse of the two, was when he turned down a substantial offer from a cartel lord to move some rather valuable powder into a city and help distribute it to certain clubs in the area.

Drug deals, in Kisame's book, were always incredibly messy for a variety of reasons. In the first place, there was too much money at stake in any major drug deal for anyone to act sane, so reasoning your way out a tough situation as usually not an option. Second, the drugs were more often than not surrounded by junkies who were always looking for a fix (and would gladly attack you with a knife if they thought it would get that) alongside guards who were always heavily armed, which meant that when you inevitably had to fight your way out of a bad situation because of the afore-mentioned lack of reasoning, it was often a tough and frustrating battle. Above all, Kisame just found the whole process distasteful. At least most of the people he killed had put themselves in a position where they were willing to risk death; drug dealers were willing to suck the lives out of regular citizens for the sake of making easy money. Any ninja worth a damn, criminal or not, knew to give these cartels a wide berth, because any encounter you had with a drug cartel would invariably end poorly for you unless you had a small army willing to back you up.

Kisame did not have this luxury, and had definitely just blown up a cartel shipment that was probably worth more than the bounty for every Akatsuki member combined. This was not going to end well for him.

Kisame had initially been planning to pick off a few men at a time, falling back to the safety of the thick forest trees in the forest below the route between attacks. Now that he knew this was a drug cartel, however, his best chance of survival would be killing as many men as he could, as fast as he could. The guards were trained professionals, and if Kisame gave them a chance to regroup, he was a dead man. Swearing, the shark grabbed Samehada in his hand and rushed forward.

The first few targets went down without any resistance, mostly because they didn't realize the danger they were in until it was far too late to act. They were understandably shocked by the explosion, and were still trying to get their bearings and figure out exactly what the hell had happened when Kisame rushed up and separated their heads from their bodies with a single swing of his sword. That was the easiest part of Kisame's mission, and after that the difficulty shot up dramatically.

The other survivors, now realizing they were under attack, had regrouped and headed towards the armored truck. Now prepared for a fight, they were rapidly extracting weapons that had been packed into the back of the vehicle (likely in preparation for an attack like his, Kisame thought bitterly). The men were soon armed with swords, knives, explosives, and all manner of weapons that Kisame certainly didn't want to get too close to. What's more, given the look in their eyes and the jerky way that some of them were moving, Kisame was almost certain that most of these men were hyped up on something. That in and of itself was a huge problem, because depending on what they were on, they'd keep fighting through whatever pain or injuries Kisame could inflict that would drop an ordinary man to his knees; hell, some of them might not even notice the damage until they'd passed out from blood loss. Realizing for the first time that he might actually be at a huge disadvantage in this fight, Kisame fell back into the forest at top speed, intending to put enough distance between him and the guards to give himself time to come up with a better plan.

The next few days were like a horrible game of hide and seek for Kisame. Whatever the guards were on kept them from either wanting or needing sleep, and even in the dead of night the swordsman had to stay on the move. He had to move carefully, picking them off one at a time and then falling back into the shadows for a few hours until the tweakers would be comfortable or stupid enough to let their guard drop slightly. This method of attack wasn't without its drawbacks, though; one more than one occasion the guards were able to get a few hits in before Kisame could escape to safety, and as their numbers dwindled, it became harder and harder to get them to split up. Finally, realizing that he couldn't afford to waste any additional time on this part of the assignment, Kisame went in for one final attack.

There were eight left, and after Kisame's initial charge that number fell to six. Kisame had been hoping, praying really, that his initial attack and appearance would throw the others off-balance enough to give him a chance for a second attack before they could counter. Tragically, this didn't happen. The guards either didn't notice or care about Kisame's appearance, and were too far gone mentally to care about their physical safety. They charged in with reckless abandon, moving with form that Kisame would have laughed at, at any other time.

But Kisame was nearing complete exhaustion, and the greatest fighting form in the world wasn't much good when you were being charged at by drugged-up psychos with no regard for their own safety. No sooner had he slashed at one man with Samehada and spun around to attack another than the first man was charging again, blind to the pain from the gash on his arm. Kisame, on the other hand, had nothing in his system but the last little bit of his adrenaline to help mask the pain, and lack of food or rest had slowed his reaction times horrendously. Twice he was saved from decapitation through sheer dumb luck as he dodged about, and a guard losing his footing mid-attack was the only reason that Kisame had a gaping wound on his leg instead of his gut. But the shark was doing his fair share of damage as well, and even with the drugs in their system, none of the guards were strong enough to block or deflect a full swing from his sword.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Kisame only had two survivors to contend with, and both of these men had been horribly injured by him. He decided that was good enough and took off into the woods for the final time. The duo did their best to give chase, but they lacked Kisame's stamina at this point and were soon lost to the forest. Once the shark was certain he wasn't being pursued, he circled back around, backtracking through the woods and past his initial point of attack. He stopped long enough to set an explosive tag on the immobile armored truck, gave it a bit of distance, and set it off. The explosion would no doubt draw the survivors back here, meaning that Kisame's escape route would be left wide open. His job completed, he ran on to meet up with Itachi at their rendezvous point.

-n-

It was two days before Kisame was able to reunite with Itachi in a village out in the middle of nowhere. He picked up some food from a grocery store and then headed straight for the inn (this place was so tiny it only had the one), where he asked the front desk clerk if a man wearing a cloak like his had checked in recently. He must have been a terrifying sight, beaten and bruised, and he probably was a bit grumpy when he asked his question as well, because the girl quivered and stuttered her answer a moment later, confirming that Itachi was just down the hall as she handed him a spare room key with a shaky hand. Kisame grabbed the key and stomped off, leaving the poor girl whimpering in fear behind her counter. Hopefully that terror would keep her from mentioning their presence to anyone in town, at least; one could never be too careful of spies.

When he got to the door, Kisame jammed the key into the lock with more force than he probably needed to, opened the door, and slammed it shut a moment later. "I swear to god I'm gonna kill Pein when…we…shit, what happened to you?"

Kisame had been expecting Itachi to be relaxing in their room with a book, if he wasn't going over the mission details. At the moment, however, a slightly singed Itachi was currently stitching up a wound on his arm with a needle and thread, and he looked about as exhausted as Kisame felt. He'd set the needle down to reach for a knife (probably when he heard someone at the door), but put it back down upon seeing Kisame. "Our information was insufficient," he stated plainly, taking up the needle again.

"No kidding," Kisame growled as he dropped his sword on the ground and moved to sit by Itachi. "Who taught you how to do stitches? This is embarrassing."

"I can't use my dominant hand," Itachi explained calmly.

Kisame rolled his eyes. "Please tell me there's an extra needle and thread in there?" Itachi paused his handiwork again and opened the first aid kit, extracting and handing Kisame the items he wanted a moment later. "Thanks. God damn, this was supposed to be the easy part."

"What happened on your end?" Itachi asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Except it turns out that when Pein said, 'merchant guild' he really meant 'heavily fortified drug cartel,' and by a 'few merchants' along for the ride, he actually meant 'drugged out armed guards,' and by 'simple assignment,' he actually meant 'this is my attempt to kill you and Itachi as painfully as humanly possible.' But other than that, everything was great," Kisame explained with bitter sarcasm. "What about you? You were supposed to have the easier piece of this."

"Drug cartel makes sense now," Itachi commented, more to himself than Kisame. He finished his last stitch and set the needle down before snipping the thread with a small pair of scissors. "The second night of my stay with the second noble, there was an attack on his home. Someone must have prepped the whole place to burn, because by the time I woke up everything was already on fire. There must have been dozens of men attacking that night; I ran into a few in my haste to escape. They tried to follow me, and it took me a while to completely lose them. I only arrived here a bit before you."

Kisame sighed as he finished his own stitches, which were much more uniform and quickly done than Itachi's. "Did you get anything to eat before you got here?" Itachi shook his head, making Kisame roll his eyes. "Thought not. Here," he said, dropping a sandwich in his partner's lap. "Might as well eat."

Itachi quietly thanked his partner and unwrapped the food, nibbling cautiously at first to see if the food was still edible or not. Kisame, on the other hand, tore into his own food with fervent hunger, and was soon scarfing down his second sandwich while Itachi was finishing his first. It was only once both of them were done eating that the shark began to talk about their mission again. "I don't like this, Itachi. I don't care if Pein deliberately misled us or just didn't know better, two out of three parts of our assignment have already ended in near disasters, and those two parts were supposed to be easy. If we're dealing with a drug cartel, and their big drug run is in a few days, and they find out about what happened to their smaller shipment…"

"We'll be facing an army," Itachi concluded.

"Exactly! We need to contact Pein and get some extra manpower in here, or just-"

"No," Itachi stated firmly. "By the time reinforcements arrive, we'll have missed our chance to attack. And if we let them go, word will get back to their boss about Akatsuki involvement, and the entire organization will be at risk for months or years. You and I have to finish this ourselves."

"How?!"

"Simple," Itachi stated as he extracted a map from their mission file and spread it out on his lap to show Kisame. "I've been looking at a map of the area. Pein wants us to attack here (he pointed at the narrowest section of a mountain path) but if we wait until the caravan leaves the pass completely, we can attack here (he pointed to another map section)."

"Dare I ask why?"

"Look at the terrain," Itachi prompted. "And think about what your water techniques could do."

Kisame did as his partner asked, analyzing the map for a few moments. Suddenly, Itachi's plan clicked in his head; you could practically see the lightbulb go on in Kisame's mind. "Oh," he said with a wicked smile. "Now I see."

-n-

Just as the shark and weasel had feared, the next cartel transport was much more heavily fortified. There were now three armored trucks along with two dozen armored wagons, and every vehicle had six or eight men hanging around it, weapons draw as eyes darted around for any signs of the enemy. Most appeared to be professionals, given the way they carried themselves, but Kisame suspected that more than a few who were tweaking, even if he couldn't tell right now from this distance. He glanced to his right to look at Itachi, who was watching the entire caravan with Sharingan eyes. "Well?"

"Not yet," Itachi mumbled. "Wait until the last armored truck is a little closer."

Kisame sighed and hunkered down even further in the brush that was concealing him and his partner. The two had taken up a perch high above the enemy, which would be necessary for the next leg of their plan. Everything revolved on Kisame being able to use his techniques as soon as Itachi gave the command; otherwise their initial strike, their one chance of coming out of this assignment alive, would all be for naught-

"Now," Itachi snapped. Kisame's hands were forming the proper symbols almost before his mind could consciously register Itachi's command, and a moment later water was pouring down the side of the mountain.

What Itachi had noticed, and what the drug cartel had apparently been utterly ignorant of, was the fact that this side of the mountain was on the other side of the direction most weather fronts moved in from. The far side of the mountains and even parts of the mountain pass had lush vegetation thanks to plentiful rainfall, but this side was almost pure desert. As such, the ground was dried and packed down hard, covered with a fine layer of sand. Adding a little water would be enough to cause massive landslides or mudflows; adding the amount of water Kisame could summon up would surely bury the caravan.

The brilliance of Itachi's plan soon became apparent. The armored vehicles were built for protection from man, not nature, and were too slow and unwieldy to move out of the way before the mud came down and buried everything in a thick sludge. Most of the wagons were crushed under the weight of the earth, the wood and metal making terrible screeching and splintering sounds as it buckled. The guards, likewise, had been expecting another attack like what Kisame had carried out previously, and most were too shocked by the sudden mudslide to move out of the way until they were engulfed in the brown sludge.

Despite this excellent start, Kisame and Itachi couldn't celebrate just yet. Itachi's plan had disabled most of their enemies, but the caravan was simply too large for a single mudslide to destroy everything. Some wagons had gotten out of the way in time, and others had been too far back in the group to be damaged. Furthermore, not every wagon was completely buried, and if Kisame and Itachi left now, the guards would probably have everything dug out in a matter of hours. Now, they'd have to actually jump into the fray and fight.

To minimize the damage, Itachi would hang back and layer genjutsu after genjutsu onto their adversaries, and while the poor souls were confused Kisame would swoop in and finish them off. It was a good plan, provided that Itachi wasn't found while trying to put up his genjutsu. Oh, and there was the small matter that using genjutsu on this many adversaries at once could totally exhaust the Uchiha before the battle was over. Kisame would have to move fast in order for this plan to work. Itachi gave his partner a quick nod, and with that Kisame took off down the mountain, preparing to attack before the enemy could recover their bearings.

At first, it seemed to be working perfectly. By this point, Kisame could easily recognize the confused, glazed-over stares of anyone who'd become trapped in Itachi's genjutsus, and cut them down without mercy. Any time another guard moved too close to him, they'd suddenly stumble and freeze up, trapped by Itachi once they got too close to the shark. In a way, it was almost unfair.

But suddenly all the men around him seemed to snap back to their senses, and in an instant Kisame was fending off a good ten fighters at once. Damn, something must have happened to his partner. Kisame quickly summoned another pool of water (slightly smaller than the first) and clambered on top of it to buy some time for himself. From what he'd been able to see, most of these men weren't trained ninja, and so even if they could swim they wouldn't be able to walk on the water like him. He'd have the terrain advantage for a bit then, before the water drained away.

Kisame's plan worked wonderfully well, and whenever a guard popped up to the surface of the water for a breath of air, his head was quickly separated from the rest of him. Tragically the water began to recede almost as soon as it had been summoned; they were near a flat, open area, so there was nothing to hold the water in place, after all. At that point, Kisame once again found himself on muddy ground, looking around for any signs of the enemy or his partner. "Itachi?" he called out.

Screams from the other side of the battlefield alerted him that someone was still attacking the guards, and it was a safe bet that that someone was Itachi. He rushed off as quickly as he could over the slick terrain, wondering why Itachi was fighting directly and not hanging back like they'd planned.

He got his answer a moment later when a fireball nearly singed off his hair. Apparently there were a few ninjas in this group of guards, and while Kisame had been fighting the normal guards that were under Itachi's genjutsu, these ninjas had actively been looking for whoever was responsible for throwing up a genjutsu in the first place. Their attacks must have disrupted Itachi; normal fighters wouldn't be giving his partner so much trouble.

The weasel, to his credit, was holding his own even in the face of this many highly skilled opponents. He'd plucked a katana off of one of the deceased guards and was fighting hand to hand, Sharingan activated as his eyes darted around to track the dozen men that were still attacking him. Kisame took advantage of their distraction and cut one down almost immediately before injuring another. "Itachi, same thing as before!" he called out just as the other ninjas were becoming aware of his presence.

The Uchiha's reaction was immediate. Kisame couldn't see the genjutsu, but whatever Itachi threw up then was powerful enough that Kisame could practically feel it radiating out, freezing the ninjas and sending Itachi to his knees. Kisame had been worried that his partner's abilities, as amazing as they surely were, couldn't handle a challenge like this. Trapping a dozen trained ninjas in an imaginary world for any period of time would be incredibly draining, and there was a good chance that Itachi would break before the ninjas managed to free themselves.

Kisame did his part to alleviate this struggle by moving quickly, swinging Samehada with skilled ease and not even attempting to drag out the fight (if you could even call it such at this point). One swipe to remove the head, run to the next target, swipe, move, rinse and repeat until everything was dead.

By the time the last one had fallen to the ground, blood spurting out of the gaping hole where his head used to be attached to the rest of his body, Itachi was bent forward with hands on his knees for support. Kisame replaced Samehada on his back and came over to his partner, kneeling down to inspect the damage. "Can you move?"

Itachi shook his head, trembling from the exertion of using his abilities so extensively. "Give me a moment."

"Stay put, I'll take care of whatever's left of the cartel." Kisame looked around quickly to make sure that there was no one close enough to present an immediate threat to his partner, and then began searching up and down the caravan to make sure that there were no survivors.

It took him nearly an hour, mostly because he made a point to stab all the corpses he found just to be sure no one was playing dead. After that, whatever wagons he could access were partially dug out and set ablaze, successfully destroying the precious cargo within. Anything that he couldn't dig out was likely to be too costly to salvage, so he was willing to leave them behind. In addition, a few guards might have slipped away (he and Itachi had no idea of what their total headcount had been, and most of the dead were buried under several meters of mud now so their bodies couldn't be accounted for), but overall Kisame was willing to call this mission a success. Now he just had to check on his partner and see how the weasel was doing.

Itachi was able to get to his feet when Kisame approached; he probably wouldn't be running a marathon anytime soon, but at least he'd been able to move to wherever they decided to take shelter next. "Good, you're up. We need to get moving."

"Hn," Itachi agreed. He started to move towards the road, heading back the way they had come initially, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Curious, he looked up to Kisame's face. "What?"

"The mission's done," Kisame stated plainly. "Time to fess up."

One second passed in silence.

Two seconds.

Three.

And then:

"Are you kidding me."

Kisame was about to snap, to ask Itachi if the weasel thought he'd been joking when he'd asked for an explanation, but was stopped by Itachi grabbing his hair, pulling him down to eye-level, and then staring into Kisame's eyes with his Sharingan at point-blank range.

Kisame felt himself being pulled into the Tsukuyomi a second later; he'd never been the victim of this jutsu before, but he could just sense from how powerful the technique was that this could only be one of Itachi's most powerful attacks. He was frozen, either from fear or Itachi's power, as an illusionary version of the weasel stared up at him with fury. "How can one person be so dense," he snapped. "It's painfully obvious to everyone in this world except you, because you simply don't want to see it. You're either blind or completely incompetent, and at this point it doesn't matter which. You want an explanation? Fine. I'll give you one."

"Huh," Kisame thought to himself. "So this is how I die."

"You want me to answer your question," Itachi went on. "You want me to explain why I knew you'd save me. Because, Kisame, everything you'd done up until that point in our partnership indicated that you would act that way."

"What-"

"You are a blood-thirsty killer at heart. You see people in terms of strong and weak, of useful or useless, and only part of that is because of your training. But what exactly does useful or useless mean to you? What actually makes you want to keep a partner around?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

Itachi sighed angrily, seeing that his point wasn't getting through. "Kisame, when we eat at a restaurant, where do you sit? When we get a hotel room, which bed do you sleep in?"

"How the hell would I know?! And what does that have to do with anything?!"

"When we're eating at a restaurant, you always sit between me and the door. Any normal ninja would want to sit so that they could observe the door at all times, but on multiple occasions you've positioned yourself to face away from the door if it means you'll be sitting between me and it. In a hotel, you invariably pick the bed closest to the door as well, unless we're in a room with a window (in which case, you sleep between me and the window). Both of those actions go against ninja protocol, Kisame; I know because I received the same training as you. So tell me, why would you deliberately throw all that training to the side again and again? Why not alternate with me and split the danger?"

"I didn't even know I was doing it!" Kisame shot back.

"Part of you did," Itachi stated. "Given how much you go on about basic ninja protocol, there's no way you could have been completely oblivious to it."

"I-"

"You pester me all the time," Itachi went on, ignoring his partner's obvious distress. "You complain about how little I eat. How little I sleep. How I overwork my eyes. And before you can try to justify that by saying it's to ensure success on the mission, you do these things even when we have weeks off between assignments. Why is that, Kisame?"

"I don't-"

"You fret over me. You protect me. You rely on me being there with you. I knew you'd come back to save me because everything you'd done for me up until that point in time indicated that you were utterly incapable of leaving me to my fate."

"Itachi-"

"You care about me, Kisame," Itachi spat out. "It's plain in everything you do. You try to bury it with scathing remarks or roundabout insults, but you care. And here's the thing, Kisame; if I were an ordinary partner, you wouldn't do any of this. You would have left me face-down in a ditch a long time ago if that were the case. So why am I so special to you? What makes you want to come back for me? Why do you rush into a fight if it means saving me? When saving me is the only good thing that would come from you fighting in the first place? Well? Have you figured it out yet?"

"…Oh crap."

Suddenly the illusionary world shattered around them, and a severely weakened Itachi collapsed against Kisame's chest. "You love me," he concluded, voice barely more than a whisper. "idiot."

Kisame's arm automatically shot out to catch his partner as Itachi passed out and collapsed. He stared at the Uchiha's unconscious body, trying desperately to process everything that he'd been told. It was impossible. There was no way…no way in hell that he…

But the more he thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. He'd always been frustrated with Itachi's self-destructive behavior, for reasons he could never discern. He'd always needed to know where his partner was on the battlefield, even when it had no bearing on his own success in the mission. And aside from all that, there had always been something about Itachi that drew him in more than any other partner. Something that made him watch Itachi, occasionally worry, and ultimately go back for his injured partner rather than waiting for Pein to assign him someone new.

Shit, he didn't have time to think about this now. He and Itachi needed to get out of here and find somewhere to rest, before anything else could go horribly wrong on this utter fiasco of a mission. He sighed and hefted Itachi into his arms, unwilling to wake his partner back up (and rather unsure if he could even do it at this point). He needed to get the two of them far away from this area, and quickly. "Damn kid slowing me down again," he grumbled as he took off down the path from the direction the caravan had come.

-n-

Itachi was unconscious for almost six hours; plenty of time for Kisame to move them, find a dry cave to hide in, and catch some fish for dinner while Itachi dozed. By the time his partner awoke, the fish were cooking over the flames of a small fire, and were practically ready to serve.

Kisame gave his partner a moment to assess his surroundings and sit up before he said anything. "Hey."

Itachi looked over his shoulder at the sound of Kisame's voice and quickly located his partner. He turned around slowly, not quite meeting Kisame's eyes as he scooted over to sit closer to the fire. "Hn."

"Feeling better?"

Itachi nodded and took one of the fish that had finished cooking away from the fire, nibbling on it while rotating the stick the fish had been cooked on.

Several minutes passed in silence as the two of them ate, before Kisame finally took a deep breath and began to speak. "Ok, here's how this conversation is going to go. First off, you're going to apologize for dragging me into your private mental torture chamber just to make a point."

"Sorry," Itachi mumbled through a mouthful of fish.

"All right. Do that again and I'll break every bone in your body. Second…ok, I like you. Way more than I probably should. So, how do you feel?"

"I like you," Itachi immediately replied.

Kisame nodded, taking a minute to process the answer. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

Itachi looked a bit more uncomfortable now. "I couldn't risk causing unnecessary friction between the two of us, so I wanted to see if you felt anything towards me. I started paying attention to your actions to see if there were any signs of affection on your part. That was when I started noticing the fretting and your positioning whenever we were outside of the base."

"Ok. Wait, how do you know you weren't just noticing the times I did something nice and ignoring when I did something else?"

Itachi cleared his throat, cheeks turning slightly red. "I…kept a log of everything you did for me. For six months."

"…"

"…"

"Itachi, that's pretty-"

"Insane, I know. I had to be sure."

Kisame leaned back against the wall of the cave, thinking. "So there's no chance it was just coincidence."

"Who's sitting closer to the mouth of the cave right now?" Itachi asked. Kisame was suddenly aware that he'd once again placed himself between Itachi and any possible threats, and swore. "See? Honestly I was shocked that you didn't realize you were doing this, Kisame."

"Right, because I'm a complete moron as you've stated several times today." Kisame shook his head, incredulous at the frankly insane situation he'd found himself in. "So, what happens next?"

"I'm not expecting a relationship, if that's what you're asking," Itachi replied. "You wanted an answer, and I gave it to you. Take some time to process what you want to do, and we'll figure it out later."

"That's…surprisingly understanding, considering."

"Considering what?"

"Well you've apparently had a thing for me for ages, so I thought-"

"You being aware of your feelings is good enough for now," Itachi interjected.

Kisame chose not to press the issue, and instead grabbed another cooked fish from the fire. He and Itachi leaned back against the wall of the cave, eating. A minute later, he blurted out, "So do you want to have sex with me or is this gonna be one of those weird things where you're emotionally attached but not physically attracted?"

Itachi choked on his fish and began coughing, prompting Kisame to offer his canteen to the Uchiha to clear his throat. "I'd like to have sex," Itachi stated, cheeks very red now, either from embarrassment or choking. "Part of why I like you is based on physical attraction."

"All right, just wanted to be clear," Kisame clarified. For a time, there was silence in the cave except for the crackling of the fire as the two ninja let the weight of this new development between them sink in. There would be time to decide what to do next, whether to try a relationship or not; but at the moment, neither of the ninjas were in good enough shape to really consider such heavy prospects. And so instead, Kisame switched gears to another line of discussion. "So, how are we gonna kill Pein when we get back to the base?"

"Painfully," Itachi immediately replied.

"Well obviously, but how? I'm in favor of dropping him into a pit of spikes."

"Tie him to a log and float it downstream," Itachi suggested, reaching for another fish.

"Better idea. Stake him to the ground and then cover him in honey and fire ants."

Itachi actually chuckled at that one with a slight smile. "Where would we get fire ants?"

"Ok, maybe just regular ants…"

And thus, for a while at least, Kisame and Itachi were able to put their problems aside. They were exhausted, bruised, half-covered in mud, and emotionally confused on top of everything else. But right then, there was peace in their lives. For now, as they recovered from one hell of a mission in that tiny cave, the pair just focused on eating their dinner and coming up with increasingly complicated ways to vicious murder their incompetent leader.