And I'm back! I know I missed a couple of weeks, but everyone be prepared because Spectral Eyes is going to get finished this April! Thanks everyone for your support of my story!
The first thing Sasuke noticed when he woke the next morning was that the sun was slanting through his window at a higher angle than it normally was when he woke, so it must be later than when he normally woke in the mornings. This was followed immediately by the realization that Naruto was no longer lying next to him. A sudden surge of panic went through him and he sat bolt upright, looking around the room frantically. Hadn't the last thing Naruto had said to Sasuke before he fell asleep been a promise to see him in the morning? Where was he?
A wash of relief went through Sasuke as he spotted Naruto a second later, sitting at the desk and completely engrossed in a book. He looked up at Sasuke's sudden leap into the realm of the upright, and laughed as Sasuke covered his eyes with a groan.
"You'll get vertigo if you sit up too fast," he warned with a good natured chuckle.
"Thanks for the warning," Sasuke snapped back sarcastically, squinting out from between his fingers.
"You're just jealous that your feeble human body can't handle too much movement." As if to prove his point, Naruto floated up several feet into the air and proceeded to perform a lazy barrel roll.
Hastily covering his eyes again, Sasuke moaned, "Cut it out! You're going to make me dizzy just looking at you!"
"Fine," Naruto sighed, floating back down to perch back in the chair. "So, where'd you get this book?"
"What book?" Sasuke groused as he climbed out of bed.
"This one. It was in your satchel."
"You went through my stuff?!" Sasuke yelled indignantly, jumping over to stand behind Naruto, who put his hands up in an expression of innocence.
"It fell over in the middle of the night and the book fell out of it! I didn't touch anything else, I swear!"
One look at Naruto's honest expression made Sasuke believe him, and he leaned over to look at the book. To his surprise, he saw that it was one of the the photo albums he had found the first time he had gone to the library, the ones about the owners of the Hokage. It was the first one, the one that started with Minato buying the Hokage and turning it into an inn, and it was open to the page with the photo of Naruto and his family on it.
"I didn't know there was still a photo of us left," Naruto said softly, gently reaching out a spectral finger to ghost over the faces of his parents. "It's been so long since I saw my parent's faces… I'd almost forgotten what they looked like."
Sasuke reached out and placed a comforting hand on Naruto's shoulder, and he shook himself out of whatever trance he was in. "Where'd you get this?" He asked Sasuke, turning those vibrant blue eyes toward him.
"I… I don't know," Sasuke said slowly, frowning at the book. "I mean, I've seen it before; I looked at it in the library, but that was weeks ago. I have no idea how it got in my bag."
"Maybe you just forgot it was in there," Naruto suggested, turning away from Sasuke and becoming engrossed by the picture again.
"I don't think so…" Sasuke frowned, trying to remember how the book might have gotten inside his bag. He was sure that it hadn't been there last night, because he had cleaned out several things, including a different book, to make room for his blazer, and he was sure that he would have noticed it then. That meant that it had either fallen in or someone had slipped it in sometime after that, most likely when he was watching everyone sing. But even if he had missed it, Naruto probably wouldn't have, so that again left him with no answers.
Suddenly, Naruto's head snapped up toward the door. "Neji's coming. He probably wants a plan, so be prepared."
"Damn," Sasuke muttered under his breath, then ran to pull up the covers on his bed and kick his dirty laundry in the closet. Hey, when a teenage boy lived in a certain area for an extended amount of time, it tended to get messy, but he didn't have to show that to Neji. Conceited brat had probably never had a messy room in his life.
The knock at the door came just as Sasuke was firmly closing the close door on the offending garments, and he quickly hurried to open it. Neji was standing on the other side of the door, looking just as bedraggled as Sasuke felt. Like Sasuke, he appeared to have slept in his clothes, to tired to change when they had arrived back at the Hokage, and his shirt was rumpled and untucked.
"Don't wish me a good morning because it's not morning anymore," Neji announced as he pushed past Sasuke without waiting to be invited in. "It's past noon now, so I figure it's about time that we start to plan our strategy, don't you think?"
"I'm going to see how Lee's doing," Naruto suddenly announced, backing towards the door. Sasuke mouthed a silent "traitor" at him, but he just smirked and disappeared through the open door. With a sigh, Sasuke closed it behind the ghost and turned to Neji, who had sat down in the chair Naruto had just vacated and was looking at Sasuke expectantly.
"Well, I think the first step is to look at the situation very closely and decide what we want to do before we plan anything," Sasuke said, moving over to sit on his hastily made bed.
"What do you mean?" Neji asked with a frown. "We're dealing with the Akatsuki. How does that require any additional decisions?"
"It's not a simple as just 'dealing with them'," Sasuke said, making air quotes around the words. "We need to decide what we think about their group as a whole and the offer they gave us last night, whether we want to try and kill them or just force them to leave… or whether or not we want to accept their offer."
Neji jumped from his chair and grabbed Sasuke by the shoulders, anger radiating from his features. "Accept their offer? Are you crazy? That goes against every code of our families! You could get disowned for even considering it if your father found out!"
"Exactly!" Sasuke shook Neji's hands off and stood up, starting to pace back and forth across the room. "They know who we were, so they had to also have known that we would never accept their offer as long as we are loyal to our families."
"I'm obviously missing something here, and I'd like you to explain it," Neji said with ice in his gaze, clipping each of his words and folding his arms across his chest.
Pacing wildly across the floor of the room, Sasuke started explaining the thoughts that had been brewing in his head as he had slept. "The Akatsuki had to have known that we would refuse them, so why give the offer in the first place? Well, they had to have known that we would have picked up on the unnatural spiritual aura of this place, and by dangling the carrot of the Kyubi in front of us, they may be counting on our curiosities to get the better of us to investigate it, regardless of whether we accept their offer or not."
"Why? What's the Kyubi really got to do with anything?"
"There are five phantoms living in one building and a ghost hasn't faded in this town for over a hundred years," Sasuke said pointedly.
"Fair enough," Neji said with a sigh. "It's enough to make anyone curious."
"And there's also the possibility that we might be able to get to the Kyubi before them and protect it in a way that they'll never be able to get it, but we'll only be able to do that if they trust us enough to leave us alone long enough to do the research."
Realization dawned in Neji's eyes. "So you're suggesting we pretend to accept their offer to get them to trust us, then sneak behind their backs and betray them."
Ah, Sasuke loved it when he didn't have to explain everything. Perhaps he and Neji should work together more in the future; their thinking styles seemed to compliment each other. "Yes, but it's not going to be that simple. If they know that we would never go against our families' wishes-"
"They would figure out that it would be a trap, of course," Neji finished. "We'll have to think of some way to trick them."
"Precisely."
A frown drew across Neji's face, creasing the skin between his eyebrows. "How do we do that?"
"I have an idea, but you're not going to like it," Sasuke said, stopping his pacing and facing Neji directly.
With a sigh, Neji stood up to face Sasuke. "Lay it on me."
As quickly as possible, Sasuke explained his prospective plan to Neji. When he was done, Neji was already shaking his head.
"That's insane! I can't let you do that!"
"Do you have a better idea?" Sasuke asked pointedly.
"But why does it have to be you?" Neji argued. "I could do it just as well as you could, and they might be more willing to believe me because I haven't been here as long."
"That's fair," Sasuke said, mulling it over in his mind, "but I'm pretty sure they believed me when I said that I was here on vacation, and your abrupt appearance might seem a little more suspicious to them. It could really go either way, so it would be safer for me to do it."
Folding his arms across his chest, Neji snapped out, "Why?"
"Because when push comes to shove, I can use my eyes more offensively than you."
Neji opened his mouth to retort, but the logic in Sasuke statement hit him and he snapped it shut again. "Fine. I'll concede- this time. But don't think you're going to do everything yourself."
"I won't," Sasuke promised, moving towards his satchel, which was hung over the back of the chair.
"Where do we start?" Neji inquired.
"First, I need some more holy water," Sasuke said, scratching his head ruefully as he grabbed the empty vial. "I used up the last of it in the fight with Gaara yesterday. God, was that only yesterday? It seemed like years have gone by since then."
"A lot has certainly happened. I don't think I've ever been in a situation like this before," Neji admitted.
"Which makes it all the more dangerous." Sasuke pulled a silver knife out of his satchel. "And that means we have to be very careful. Do you know how to use one of these?"
"A knife? Heavens, no." Neji looked offended by even the thought. "I fight with the powers my gift gives me when I'm forced into a situation that requires it, and that-"
"-is enough to get you killed in a situation like this," Sasuke finished for him. "Never go up against anything stronger than a figure without at least two silver knives, and it wouldn't hurt to a silver cross or two as well. And we're facing five Akatsuki by ourselves - Neji, we're in way over our heads."
"You're not by yourselves," a voice came from beside the door, startling both Neji and Sasuke and focusing their attention on the speaker. Naruto was leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. Behind him, all the other phantoms except Lee were arranged in a lax but tense formation, their casual stances belayed by the hardness in their eyes. "We're here too."
"Oh, sorry; I didn't see you there," Sasuke said a little too loudly, trying to draw the attention away from the matter previously being discussed. "How's Lee doing?"
"Resting, but recovering. Tsunade's with him now." Shikamaru was leaning against the doorframe opposite Naruto, his face tilted upwards but his eyes glancing sideways. "Don't try to change the subject. We're here too, and there's nothing you can do to stop us from getting involved."
There was a harsh glint in all of the phantoms' eyes that Sasuke was finding hard to ignore. It was a cold, glinting light, and yet, brought there by love of their home. This was one conversation he had hoped to avoid.
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to get involved," Sasuke said with a sigh. "Don't you remember the conversation I had with Tenten last night?"
"Yeah, but-" Naruto tried to protest, but Sasuke cut him off.
"You may be less ignorant of the situation than she was, but that doesn't give you an advantage! The fact remains that you aren't trained in how to fight dangerous ghosts, and some of the techniques I utilize could bounce back and hurt you!"
"I don't think that will be a problem. We're smarter than you give us credit for," Shikamaru said, his gaze fixing piercingly on Sasuke. "Don't you remember how we fought Gaara togetherness? Our strengths play off each other, and we'll be stronger together than apart."
"He's right, you know, Sasuke," Neji said quietly. "Even a man like your father wouldn't go this alone."
The five sets of eyes were baring into Sasuke from all around him: inscrutable behind glasses in Shino's case, wild and judgemental in Kiba's, slyly piercing in Shikamaru's, calm but hiding an internal panic in Neji's, and in Naruto's case - and this was the one that hit Sasuke the hardest - barely restrained hope. The gazes were a weight, but a surprisingly freeing one. They meant that there were people out in the world who were counting on Sasuke, who were trusting him to come through, and that meant he had friends. The knowledge was not entirely new to him - after all, he had had the same realization the previous evening after his performance - but there was a difference between knowing that people would accept you and knowing that there were people who were depending on you, because having people depending on you also meant that you had people to depend on.
"Alright," Sasuke said finally, and every gaze in the room lit up in a smile. "But if you're going to all help, you're going to have to exactly what we say."
"I trust your expertise, but you're going to have to realize that we also have the expertise of living in this town as ghosts for a century," Shikamaru warned.
Giving him an acknowledging nod, Sasuke said, "And we'll utilize your expertise, but if we want to do this as safely as possible, you need to trust our judgement."
"Fair enough," Naruto said with a shrug, then stuck his tongue out at Shikamaru when the other phantom glared at him. "Oh, come on, it makes sense; you're just being stubborn because you're not in charge."
"So, are we all in agreement?" Sasuke quickly interjected before the argument got more serious.
All the phantoms voiced their agreement except Shikamaru, who simply gave a terse nod.
"Alright, then," Sasuke said as he started pacing again. "Here's what we're going to do…"
Close to four hours later, Sasuke was walking towards the shack where he, Neji and Naruto had spied on the Akatsuki the day before, his throat dry and his heart pounding the steady 120 beats per minute of a Sousa March. Neji was on the complete opposite side of town, at a local church trying to get some more holy water. Shikamaru had elected to go with Neji to the church while the rest of the phantoms were on an information gathering mission to some of the oldest ghosts in Konoha, so Sasuke was completely on his own.
It had taken quite a bit of persuading to get everyone to agree to his plan, but in the end he had won them over. If he were to approach the Akatsuki alone, they would be more likely to receive him and trust him, which meant that everyone else had to be far enough away that they couldn't provide backup if things went badly. Sasuke never did things by halves once he made up his mind, even if it meant putting his life on the line.
About a hundred paces away from the shack, Sasuke stopped, waiting for a response from the Akatsuki. It didn't take long; within a minute, a thick miasma of dark spectral energy started to ooze from the shack. Very deliberately, Sasuke opened up his satchel and took out his two silver knives and the silver cross and placed them on the ground, then placed the satchel down next to them and held his hands in the air. A tendril of miasma that had been creeping suspiciously towards him stopped up short at that, then drew back slightly, swaying a tiny bit in either direction as if debating with itself before slowly oozing back into the shack. The door creaked open, a clear, if not reassuring, invitation.
After swallowing a few times in an attempt to wet his dry throat, Sasuke slowly walked toward the open door of the shack, every instinct and sense he possessed telling him to run away screaming. The sun seemed to be receding behind dark clouds with every step he took, and the gathering darkness was heavy and oppressive. When he reached the door, a sudden panic overtook him and his knees began to shake. For a few hysterical moments, he considered turning tail and running, but the darkness within the shed was like a black hole pulling at him, and he had already crossed the event horizon and was powerless to resist its malevolent might. Almost without meaning to, Sasuke took several steps forward, into the shack, and the door slammed shut behind him.
It took several seconds of blinking for Sasuke's eyes to adjust to the near total darkness inside the shack. Every window had been boarded up and the only illumination came from a small fire that the pyrokinetic blond Sasuke remembered from the previous night - Deidara - was nursing halfheartedly.
"Well, lookie who we have here!" A cruel voice drawled from the far side of the room hidden in shadow. The Akatsuki draugr who had spoken stood up and walked out where the light could illuminate his features. He was a tall, evil-looking man with a cruel smile, hard, glinting eyes, and platinum blond hair. "Now, boys, let me ask you a question: what do they call it when the scared little lamb walks right into the wolf's den?"
"Ooh! Ooh! Tobi knows! Tobi knows!" A different draugr seemed to materialize right behind Sasuke and the childlike voice shouted directly in his ear, jumping him almost enough to leave the floor. Spinning around to see the ghost behind him, Sasuke saw that Tobi was wearing a full face mask that covered all his features except one dark eye, which gave Sasuke a carefully calculated piercing glare.
"They call it dinner," he said, but not in the childlike voice he had spoken with earlier. His tone was deep and rich now, but cold, the hidden sneer made evident in the chilling words, and the sound of it sent shivers down Sasuke's spine.
"That's right, Tobi," the one who had first spoken said, taking a step forward so he was close enough to Sasuke that he could have reached out and touched him if he had wanted to. "Dinner for the hungry wolves… And an exquisite last supper for the little lamb."
Sadistic chuckles sounded from in front and behind of Sasuke, and the beating of his heart kicked up another notch in tempo, to a highland reel. Sasuke tried to hold his head high and fake confidence, but the only thing that did was bring attention to the tremor in his chin caused by his shaking body.
"I want to speak with your leader," he said with false bravado as the two Akatsuki draugrs closed in on him.
"He wants to see our leader? How cute is that?" The platinum blond draugr sneered, palming a silver blade and dragging it along the skin of backs of his hands, which Sasuke noticed was covered in scars that looked self-inflicted.
"Cute… More like adorable… They're so amusing when they think they have control over the situation."
The sharp tip of the knife traced a line down the platinum blond draugr's arms that reddened as a result of silver burn. It had to hurt, but the draugr only grinned wider, if that was even possible. Suddenly, the tip of the knife sunk into his flesh and he twisted it viciously, then held the knife out as if for Sasuke's inspection. A drop of spectral blood dripped off the tip of the silver blade and disappeared before it hit the floor. With a sadistic chuckle at the expression on Sasuke's face, the draugrs ran the blade over his tongue, catching the last few drops of blood in his mouth and staining his teeth red when he smiled again. The whole display made Sasuke shudder violently, which was only intensified when the other draugr, Tobi, blew gently on the nape of his neck and giggled like a small child.
"Hidan likes to play. And he calls me childish."
"Now, now, Tobi, Hidan," another, smoother voice cut in from the shadows - Sasuke recognized it as belonging to the one called Pain - and Tobi and Hidan immediately fell away from him. "You're dishonoring our guest. He gave us the honor of coming to us - unarmed, even - so the least we can do is respond to him in kind."
On some signal unnoticed by Sasuke, Deidara enlarged the fire until it was big enough to illuminate the whole room, and Sasuke found himself directly in the center of a circle of five Akatsuki draugrs. Deidara was sitting cross legged on the floor, tending a fire that Sasuke now saw was sitting in his lap, and next to him, unnoticed until now, Zetsu, the green-haired draugr from the night before, was leaning against the wall. Tobi and Hidan had moved to flank Sasuke, one on either side, and when Sasuke turned around to look at the door he had come through, he saw that Pain was standing directly in front of it, blocking all hope of escape from the hellhole.
With a smile that didn't melt the hardness in his eyes, Pain said, "Welcome to our humble abode, young Uchiha. Won't you sit?"
At a gesture from Pain, a chair slid across the floor and stopped next to Sasuke.
"I'd prefer to stand, but thank you," Sasuke said as politely as he could, then almost yelped when a pair of very strong, very solid hands settled on his shoulders.
"I insist," Pain said, the coldness in his eyes seeping into his voice as Zetsu pushed down on Sasuke's shoulders, causing his knees to buckle and forcing him into the chair.
At another gesture from Pain, a table and four more chairs slid across the floor and took their places in the middle of the room. Sasuke carefully placed his hands in his lap as each of the Akatsuki took a seat around the table except for Deidara, who perched on the table next to Sasuke since it was probably his chair that Sasuke was using. Pain sat directly opposite Sasuke, with Hidan sliding in next to Deidara and Tobi and Zetsu sitting opposite them.
When everyone was sitting down, Hidan started stabbing himself again, Deidara amused himself by placing his fire in the center of the table and pinching bits of flame off to braid them together, and Zetsu immediately closed his eyes when they all say down, leaving, ironically, Tobi as the only one paying visible attention to the interaction going on between Sasuke and Pain.
"Might I be frank with you, Sasuke?" Pain asked, steepling his fingers.
Sasuke gave a nervous swallow and wiped the sweat from his hands off on his pant legs. "I believe that would be in both our interests."
"Then I shall start quite bluntly." Pain spread his hands open in a gesture of openness that was belayed by the hardness in his eyes. "To what … pleasure … do we owe this visit?"
Gripping his hands together to stop them from trembling, Sasuke said, "I wish to discuss the offer you gave me last night."
"Offer?" Hidan stabbed the knife into the table to keep it upright as he leaned back in his chair, wheezing from the force of his maniacal laugh. "Don't try to fool us, kid. You wouldn't work for us if we could give you all the money in the world. You'll have to forgive me if I don't quite believe you."
"Hidan," Pain snapped, and Hidan immediately quieted, then turned and addressed Sasuke. "As my colleague so rudely pointed out, someone of your family stature would never stoop to work with the likes of us. It was rash of us to even consider offering a deal to you. So, the question remains: Why are you here?"
"I wish to discuss the prospect of a deal between the two of us," Sasuke repeated. "Not every member of the Uchiha clan follows their teachings with their whole heart."
At this, the head of every draugr in the room snapped up, and piercing gleams entered their eyes. Emboldened by the reaction he was getting, Sasuke forged ahead.
"Help us or you die," he mused, placing his hands on the table and gripping the edge to hide the fear that was still manifesting itself as a slight trembling. "That's a bit melodramatic, don't you think? And impossible; as my Hyuuga counterpart pointed out last night, you'd never get away with it, so you would never even try. But I might be persuaded to help you do your research- in exchange for something, of course."
"And what do you want in return for your… services?" Pain asked, the gleam in his eye becoming almost tangibly sharp.
"Information." Sasuke gripped one hand into a fist. "You answer my questions, and I'll do your research for you."
"Interesting," Pain mused, running a rough hand along his jaw. "What kind of information do you want? We can't give away the secrets of our existence, you know."
"I don't want the secrets of your existence," Sasuke announced brazenly. "If I'm going to find this Kyubi for you, I'm going to need to know everything you know about it, and I need to know what you're planning to do with it."
"That goes without saying," Pain said with narrowed eyes. "You could hardly be expecting just that. What is it you're really after?"
Here it was, the big reveal. Sasuke tightened his grip on the edge of the table almost imperceptibly. "You knew we spied on you yesterday, so you must know what we overheard. Particularly a name that I recognized." Sasuke took a deep breath before continuing. "I want to know about Orochimaru."
"Ah," Pain almost hissed, triumph in his gaze. "I never thought that mad deserter would be of use to us again. Well, Sasuke, that is one request I can honor. The bets have been placed; let us start the bargaining."