Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
"The worst of the Akatsuki?" Sasori repeated the Hyuuga heiress' question, deliberately speaking slowly so as to drag it out. That was a difficult topic to think about. By all means, they were all quite horrible in their own right, but Hinata wasn't referring to their moral compasses—though those should have rightfully been questioned too. She was wondering about something much more innocuous.
"Kakuzu's as ugly as sin, but Deidara's only attractive if he's mistaken for a kunoichi." He paused to mull over the rest of his possible answers. "I'm sure I'm not on the top of anyone's list for most attractive of our organization—making puppets out of corpses must have certainly docked a few points off—but I don't think I'm all that hideous, either."
Hinata giggled at the versatile language used to insult his comrades, and though she tried to hide it behind her hand, her effort was to no avail. Everyone heard the goddamned Hyuuga heiress' laughter over insults about them loud and clear.
"I-I don't think you're bad looking, Sasori-san. I don't think anyone in the A-Akatsuki is," she added, though it did little to help the rest of the Akatsuki's damaged egos.
"Thanks, Hyuuga."
"W-Would you like to know what I think of Konoha's nin?" Hinata asked, wanting to keep the conversation going regardless of how many insults she had to hurl at her own friends. Surely they couldn't hear her gossiping, right?
Wrong.
The Konoha nin and their new friends had walked out of the hideout together, heading towards Suna with the unwanted gossiping duo trailing behind them. Nevertheless—though they'd rather endure Kakashi's One Thousand Years of Death than admit it—they eagerly eavesdropped on whatever topics the pair were discussing. Who wouldn't want to know the secrets that someone—especially someone as trusted as the ever so quiet Hinata—could have?
"Oh? Do tell," Sasori replied nonchalantly, not wanting to seem too interested in where their conversation was heading.
"Hmm…" Hinata hummed, not noticing that every person in front of them had begun to walk slower so as to get into the hearing range of her soft voice. "Naruto-kun, well, you already know what I think of him. Lee-san's eyebrows and outfit choices are… charming, and Neji-nii-san has… quite nice… hair."
As her words registered in their minds, Neji began contemplating how his hair would look if cut, and Lee pondered asking one of the ladies for eyebrow waxing tips—his bodysuit, however, was going to stay even if Buddha himself descended from Nirvana to beg him to rid himself of the green atrocity. Hinata might not have said anything especially rude, but her pauses and odd emphasis on certain things made what she didn't find appealing quite obvious.
Naruto, however—as the only person on the Kami-forsaken planet that wasn't aware of Hinata's feelings for him—didn't know what to make of her words, and simply sulked at her lack of explanation. With his name being paired along with the likes of Neji and Lee, it wasn't so farfetched for him to guess that Hinata regarded him in the same way that she regarded the other two fashion-blind idiots.
Tenten—as the only logical one in the entire goddamned universe—slung her arm over Naruto's shoulders, giving him a reassuring grin. "Don't worry too much about it, Naruto."
Hinata, being too far behind to hear and understand Tenten's intentions with her familiar way of touching Naruto, misinterpreted the gesture. Lacking even a trace of gentleness in her tone, she added onto her list. "Tenten-san has lopsided buns. I won't specify which buns I'm referring to."
"That was neither subtle or quiet, and you lost your stutter!" Tenten cried in disbelief, though—just like in canon—no one (not even the author) paid her much mind.
Ignoring the shift in mood caused by their gossiping, Sasori dragged in a whole other monstrosity to discuss. "If there are any members in the Akatsuki that are considered attractive, though, you probably won't think so once you hear about their oddities."
Hinata gave him a curious look, motioning for him to continue as everyone leaned in even closer to the duo.
"Well," Sasori began, eyes obviously dead set on their local Uchiha, "one of our members enjoys saran wrapping sticks of dango to hide inside his cloak. He casts genjutsu on us and eats the dango while Leader debriefs us during meetings."
Itachi squirmed as he walked, moving in a way that seemed suspiciously similar to what someone would do if they were trying to stuff something deeper into their pockets.
Before Nagato can say something snappy about Itachi's apparent lack of respect for him, he becomes Sasori's next victim of slander. "Don't even get me started on Leader, though. Whenever he's pissed at Konan, he goes and gives himself another piercing. I think he's at forty now? Maybe fifty? I don't know, but there's definitely something a little nutty in having a habit that radical."
"I almost forgot!" The mention of Konan lit up another lightbulb in Sasori's head. "Did you know that Konan makes origami figures of the rest of the Akatsuki members, and she plays family with them when she's bored? Leader, of course, is always the father, and she, too, is stagnant in her role of mother in her game."
Hinata, along with the rest of her friends from Konoha, didn't know how to react to the flood of the useless-but-good-for-blackmailing-purposes information. Somehow—even after they'd watched the Akatsuki get exploded, drowned, and caught up in childish bickering—Konoha's expectations for the Akatsuki's level of maturity dropped even lower than it already had.
And Sasori still wasn't done yet.
"Don't even get me started on the rest of these morons. The red tint to the cave walls? Hidan was just too lazy to do as Leader asked and dump the excess blood from his sacrifices in a more isolated location, so he just used it as paint. Every month or so, Kisame enjoys seeing whether or not his fear of sushi has subsided, but he tears up each time it touches the tip of his tongue anyways. Kakuzu shaves his arms and legs because it stops the hair from getting in the way of his tentacles, and that idiot Deidara? Well, his mere existence is embarrassing enough. I don't know much about the snake bastard, but aren't we all pretty certain he's into children?"
Sasori had no qualms against exposing his comrades; dying had put a lot of things into perspective for him. Allegiances to temporary things like villages and criminal organizations were silly to have. Now was as good of a time as any to start coming clean about the Akatsuki's deepest, darkest secrets—even if the rest of the Akatsuki wasn't quite so ready for Konoha to know them that intimately.
Once Sasori stopped speaking, the eavesdroppers breathed a premature sigh of relief.
If the new Konoha-Akatsuki anti-bullying alliance thought they had had enough, then they didn't know what was coming.
"How mortifying!" Hinata gasped, and everyone was certain she'd bring a swift end to their suffering by reprimanding the redhead for his loose lips.
They were horribly wrong.
"It's almost as bad as Lee-san's secret red bodysuit he has stashed in his supply bag, or Nej-nii-san hoping to lead the Hyuuga clan purely for the sake of having more, as he put it, 'slaves to brush his superior, silky hair.'" The two in question paled as they lost whatever was left of their dignity, but Konoha's agony didn't stop there. "Oh! There's also Tenten's lopsided buns—"
"You already mentioned them!"
"—and Naruto's secret affair with pho. Kakashi-sensei actually buys real novels—they're all very lengthy, innocent works of fiction—but he only reads them in the comfort of his own apartment. Sakura-chan writes fanfiction about Sasuke-san in her journal—she accidentally handed it over to me once—and Ino accidentally became a high ranking officer in Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Force. Sai-san has a picture book that documents all of these things."
As the former enemies let the dirty details sink in, they came to the conclusion that perhaps—aside from the obviously evil puppetmaster and heiress—their foes weren't so bad. After all, if anyone were truly malicious, then they'd just simply expose these secrets.
No one in their company had the audacity to do something as awful as that, right?
Kakashi and Nagato exchanged a look—finally feeling as if they were both on the same page.
"We're never mentioning these things to anyone, right?"
"My lips are as sealed as a tailed beast."
"Why the hell are we letting them ridicule us like this, un?" Deidara asked—only brave enough to do so because Sasori had deemed all his characteristics as something to be embarrassed of.
"Because those two hold the power to destroy us with just a few words," Konan answered, more distraught now over her roleplaying hobby being exposed than she had been when she was betrayed and stabbed to death. Clearly, her priorities were set straight.
"How essential are they really to the storyline anyways?" Kisame asked, hands a little too close to Samehada's hilt for comfort.
"If you would like to wage war against the entire Hyuuga clan, then you can do so by yourself," Itachi shot his partner's silent suggestion down, walking faster to move away from the group. As long as he wasn't having hallucinations induced by being exposed in such a ruthless manner, then they were nearing Suna's great wall.
Unfortunately, Itachi's travelling companions aren't observant enough to note the building that just barely stood out in the horizon. They continued to bicker.
"From what that heiress is saying, the other Hyuuga kid is about to start a coup on his own clan for the sake of his hair health anyways," Deidara snorted.
"At least my lengthy hair is well taken care of, unlike… whatever that is," Neji shot back, a look of disgust plastered onto his face as he gestured towards Deidara's mane.
"You already argue enough with the puppet, Deidara. Are you really going to waste oxygen on producing more idiotic words? That's almost as much of a pity as wasting money is," Kakuzu criticized, earning a glare from the blond who was just about ready to make everyone his archnemesis.
"Grooming the hair on my head is a hell of a lot better than grooming the hair on my legs, Kakuzu, un. Is that where all my shaving razors have disappeared to?"
Kakuzu rolled his eyes. "I'd rather burn the entire organization's budget than borrow something as disgusting as a shaving razor of yours."
Eyeing them suspiciously, Tenten leaned over to whisper to the Akatsuki member standing beside her—Konan. "I thought you guys were supposed to have changed."
To her credit, Konan looked genuinely embarrassed to be associated with the biggest fools in the vicinity. "If they're not leaving a trail of corpses in their wake, then they have changed."
Tenten would've liked to say more, but any criticism she could have had about the Akatsuki died in her throat the moment her own comrades began to quarrel among themselves.
Gai-sensei sniffled. "I can't believe you prefer red bodysuits, Lee."
"G-Gai-sensei," Lee croaked, unable to say much else in his own defense. In the eyes of his sensei, and in his own eyes by default, he had committed a crime more atrocious than anything that even the Akatsuki were capable of doing. He had betrayed his sensei; he had tarnished the legacy of the green bodysuit.
He would never forgive himself for this sin.
"Lee, why are you so worried about likin' a different color? Isn't it all the same?" Naruto asked, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Neji shook his head, scoffing arrogantly at his blond friend's ignorance. "You don't know how sacred the bodysuits are to Team Gai's dynamic. It's as much of a betrayal to our team as your sensei reading real novels is. To go against a decade long plot element like that—how outrageous!"
Kakashi buried his nose further into his Icha Icha book—so close to where it was obvious that he wasn't actually reading anything.
Naruto made a face at his haughty-but-good-natured friend. "At least Kakashi's fake habit isn't as bad as you faking an entire plot device! You only wanted control of the Hyuuga clan for your hair's sake. Did you even mean any of the shit you said about destiny during your fight with Hinata-chan?!"
He, of course, knew full well that Neji was completely genuine during the fight, but this whole spiel was made for the sake of comedy, goddamnit!
"Will you all just shut it?" Tenten and Konan demanded in unison, both of them having taken on the role of the exasperated mother figure.
"We're at Suna," Tenten added.
No longer distracted by their pointless squabbling, they all turned towards the front of their travelling group to confirm that they, indeed, had reached Suna. In fact, their arrival at Suna could even be said to have been anticipated if the massive group of nin who were all armed to the teeth—who were all coincidentally aiming their weapons towards the ragged group—meant anything.
Naruto laughed nervously as a lone kunai missed his head by a few centimeters. "H-Hey, Gaara! It's just us!"
Gaara stood at the head of the army, arms crossed in a confident stance as he regarded the group standing before him. If the Akatsuki squinted, he would look eerily similar to how he had appeared during the start of the Fourth Shinobi World War. There were a few differences, though—like the still-smoking, singed hair of his this time around, and the awkward way his drenched clothing clung to his body to reveal every single bit of his body. It was so tight that he might as well have not worn clothing at all!
"You're accompanying the enemy," Gaara spoke boredly, acting ignorant to the not-so-child-friendly state of his garb. "The enemy who kidnapped me."
The Akatsuki looked at the Konoha nin, both of them reaching the same conclusion. Sure, they could blame the entire scandal on their carefully crafted Seidara story, but what was the fun in that? After all, their journey back had revealed a far greater enemy. It was an enemy more despicable than even Lucifer, himself, could ever dream to be—an enemy more malicious than what every Naruto villain, both living and dead, would be if they were all smushed together.
Both sides turned around, fingers pointed.
"It was them."
Hinata and Sasori froze.
It took a good minute for Gaara to settle on how to react to the new tidbit of information. He knew damn well that there was no way in hell the Hyuuga heiress could be involved in his kidnapping, but this could be a golden opportunity for his village. If he accepted their obvious lie, he'd have leverage over Konoha and have his village's most notorious criminal in his custody.
Slowly but surely, he nodded to display his approval for their new defense.
"The rest of you can recuperate in the village center." He stopped to shoot an icy glare at the two new scapegoats. "You two will be escorted into my office."
It was better off like this anyways. After all, who in their right minds—aside from the obviously mentally impaired Konoha nin—would have bought the Seidara excuse?
He spoke too soon.
"Eh? Wasn't it that dude's brother, Seidara, who orchestrated the whole thing?" Kankuro asked, though all but Temari ignored him.
"I do believe that's what's circulating in the underground circles, Gaara," Temari confirmed.
"Wait a minute, un. How did they already find out about the Seidara thing?! We just left the hideout, un!" Deidara exclaimed, asking the question that was weighing on all of their minds and not giving a damn about the cover story anymore. Even someone as mentally unstable as him couldn't wrap his head around how people just so happened to have all the knowledge in the world at convenient times.
"Isn't it self explanatory?" Temari gestured for Gaara to lift her up with his sand so that she could tower over Deidara while addressing him. "One of your associates' potential sacrifices managed to escape while you idiots fought among your own ranks. The man who got away told a friend, who told a friend, who told one of his friends, and now the entire world knows of your brother's existence. We've caught you before you could lie now, Akatsuki. You're free to go, but I swear on my life I'll hunt down the man who kidnapped by baby brother."
She laughed maniacally as revealed her trump card, not realizing that she had been the one that had been duped. Behind her, Suna's troops rallied for Seidara's head, completely forgetting about Sasori and Hinata's existence.
Gaara turned around. How would he go about resigning as the Kazekage, again?
The Akatsuki refrained from correcting the Suna nin—knocking clearly delusional people down a few pegs wouldn't bring any kind of satisfaction to them. Instead, they, along with Konoha, followed Gaara into the village, bypassing the distracted troops without any trouble.
Naruto began to second guess his dream of becoming Hokage. Were all Kages used as doormats by their citizens?
"Come on, Naruto." Kakashi ushered for his student to trail along after him. "I'll treat you to some rame—uh, I mean pho."
Naruto quietly did as told.
Y'all… I giggled so much while writing this chapter! Literally, Hinata and Sasori are my favorite characters to write so far. How did you guys feel about Konoha and the Akatsuki's deepest, darkest secrets? Which one made you laugh the most? I broke the fourth wall a couple times in this chapter, did you catch it? :D
If you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review, even if you've already left one! I swear it's not repetitive in the slightest. It just feels good to know that you guys are still enjoying this fanfic. Plus, I'd love love love it if we could reach 100 reviews! (And if you see any typos, please tell me! They're so embarrassing to make.)
As always, have a fantastic day! ~