Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

"I-I can't believe you t-tried to pin G-Gaara-san's kidnapping on m-me," Hinata stuttered, finally coming to her senses now that food was in her belly. After just a few bites of pho, the hunger-driven vixen she had become was nowhere to be seen, and now she sat in near-tears while facing her lifelong crush.

"What she means to say is, you're really quite an insufferable, ignorant brat and—" Sasori's horrible translation for the Heiress' gently spoken words was thankfully cut short by a spoonful of noodles shoved into his mouth courtesy of his own blond, pain-in-the-ass.

The move was wholly unlike something Deidara would pull. He was the worst out of all the Akatsuki when it came to following along with social cues, but the usually-indifferent pyromaniac (in terms of silly things like romance) just felt bad for the girl. Here this meek princess was, suddenly falling under the influence of a man who Deidara considered to be the most sardonic bastard within the vicinity. It was a duo made in hell! An absolute atrocity. Letting Sasori goad her as he wished—though the redhead might not have meant any real harm by what he'd accidentally trigger—would be as cruel as leaving a helpless bunny to the mercy of starved wolves.

"Hey! Be careful, you'll stain me, moron. This is agarwood!" Sasori snapped, his attention now drawn away from the Hyuuga.

Deidara rolled his eyes—as if the rarity of the wood Sasori used would ever mean anything to him. "If you keep making the Hyuuga heiress suffer like that, Konoha's gonna end up doing more than just staining your wood, un."

"Suffer?" Sasori raised an eyebrow. "I'm just giving the brat some backbone."

"And how's that turning out?" Deidara asked, looking pointedly at the pair that had gotten dragged into Sasori's little experiment.

Hinata was staring up at Naruto with the purest of looks. Her doe eyes looked at him with a mixture of sadness and remorse, unsuccessfully guilting the dense blond. Naruto wasn't even looking her way, his head being held low as he attempted to slurp up pho without anyone noticing.

"I can't believe you let everyone know that I like pho! Pho! It's not even Japanese! How on earth will the franchise handle a change in a decade long running gag?!" Naruto exclaimed, clearly distraught at the rather minor reveal.

"F-Franchise?" Hinata echoed, not enough of a main character to break the fourth wall.

Naruto ignored her confusion, choosing instead to frantically mutter something about sales dropping and how his name—a popular ramen topping—had completely lost his purpose.

While Naruto questioned the purpose of his existence Kisame strolled over to sling an arm around Hinata's shoulders. He looked absolutely wasted, his blue skin now tinged purple near the gills on his cheeks. Slurring his words, he made a proposition to the clearly mortified girl. "Hyuuga, dontcha worry 'bout it. That brat's just gonna die a virgin anyways. Join the Akatsuki, and we'll teach ya' how ta' whoop that dick's ass!"

Hinata fainted, though to her credit, she had lasted through a helluva lot that day before she finally did her signature move.

Meanwhile the rest of the Akatsuki looked just about ready to abandon one of their own.

"Why is Kisame intoxicated?" Itachi asked. It was a damn real indicator that something was horribly, horribly wrong when the all-knowing Itachi Uchiha didn't understand what was going on.

"There's no sake in here, un. I already tried ordering some," Deidara helpfully informed.

Sasori smacked the blond's forehead with the palm of his hand—a rather painful move to subject Deidara to considering his entire body was constructed of very hard, very sturdy wood. "I knew you were an idiot, but I didn't think you were that much of an idiot. Do you not remember what happened the last time you consumed too much alcohol?"

Deidara, in fact, did not remember what happened the last time he consumed too much alcohol, but judging by the shivers that the rest of the Akatsuki were having, they evidently did. He figured it'd be safer not to ask. "A-Anyways, how's the shark drunk if there's nothing to drink here, un?"

"He's a shark," Konan answered without any elaboration.

Everyone—even Nagato, who usually went along with whatever his close friend said—looked at her, bemused.

"What?"

"He's a shark," she reiterated.

"But what does that have to do with—"

"Ah," Sasori interrupted as he finally got what Konan was insinuation. "People get intoxicated by liquids, so would someone with shark genes in them get the same effect from a certain kind of air?"

"I do recall Kisame vocalizing that our alcohol does little for him," Itachi added.

"He's getting shitfaced from the air?" Deidara asked, adorning an amused grin as he looked at his fumbling comrade.

"The air in Suna is rather dry. Perhaps the climate has fermented it in a sense?" Sasori mused.

"Either way, we need to leave immediately if we don't want a diplomatic disaster on our hands," Nagato commanded, recalling just how destructive the already-rowdy organization could be while under the influence. Not even a decade in purgatory could erase memories as traumatic as those ones from his mind.

He spoke too late.

Kisame still had his arm around the unconscious Hyuuga heiress, now using her as his impromptu therapist as he rambled on about his fellow Akatsuki members' faults from before they were revived—as in, all their atrocities that rightfully painted them as a murderous, malicious, terrorist organization.

Nagato—if it were possible—grew even paler.

Before the reformed Akatsuki could drag their local shark man away from the vulnerable girl to preserve the sanctity of their own lives, Neji took notice of his cousin's plight.

"How dare you say such vulgar things to Hinata-sama?" he yelled, storming over towards the drunken man.

"Hinata-sama, my ass," Kisame snorted, making Neji's vision go red. "What kinda heiress makes ya' all look like fools. She should be with us—other fools."

"Hinata-chan can't join the Akatsuki," Naruto protested, though not for the reasons that everyone else had assumed were the ones that had driven him to speak up. "She's too evil for them! Didn't you hear all those things she exposed about us? She told the world that I liked pho! Pho!"

In the corner, the members of Team Gai were experiencing their own mental breakdown.

"I'll never wear anything but green again! If I do, my youth will leave! If I do, I'll commit seppuku!" Lee swore to himself, rocking back and forth on the stool.

Tenten looked relatively stable compared to the rest of panicking Konoha nin if her reaching up to adjust the angle of her bun every five seconds was ignored.

Gai-sensei was the only one who had arrived at Suna mentally unscathed—though that was only due to Hinata being too wary of the exuberant man to get close enough to dig up any dirt about him. The lack of image-damaging material on him simply meant that his image was already so damaged that nothing worldly could bring him down any further.

Gai ate his pho in shame.

Kakashi scooted closer, comfortingly patting his friend's—though he hated to call the lively man that—back. He missed, though, and ended up patting his bowl-cut while he continued to flip through an upside down Icha Icha book.

"What are you going on about, Naruto? Even if no one knew that you really preferred pho over ramen, you eating here right now is exposing it anyways! Hinata-sama was just speeding up the reveal!" Neji defended, still trying to make up for that time that he had come a little too close for comfort to murdering his baby cousin.

"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked a little too quickly. "I'm not eating pho! I'm just here with you guys and happen to have a bowl in front of me!"

To prove his point, Naruto picked up the said-bowl—the very same one that he had definitely been eating out of—and tossed it over his shoulder, not caring that it was still half-full.

The remnants of the scalding hot soup poured over Kisame and Hinata, triggered a whole other chain of catastrophes. The heat from the boiling liquid jolted the unconscious heiress away, causing her to be startled enough to instinctively gentle fist the fuck out of Kisame. In return, the sharkman—still absolutely shitfaced—pulled out Samehada and swung it around wildly, eventually making contact with the blond jinchuuriki that had triggered everything in the first place.

The once-homely pho shop quickly fell into chaos as the rest of its inhabitants were dragged into the scuffle. Kurama himself, after being woken by the shock of Samehada suddenly drawing chakra from him, forced Naruto to sprout one of the chakra tails. The Akatsuki's timeline had been completely reset, resulting in Naruto's relationship devolving back into the rocky one he had once had with the snarky tailed beast.

The tail lashed out, heading straight for the still-disoriented Hyuuga. In horror, the Konoha shinobi watched helplessly as it dove towards the unsuspecting heiress, all of them being too far away to help her get out of the path of destruction.

Sasori clicked his tongue, raising his hand to connect chakra strings to the girl who he had decided would be a participant in his learning-how-to-live-again experiment. At the same time, Deidara, who still was pitying the girl, threw a simple chakra-charged, clay figurine towards the tail, attempting to stall it enough for the puppetmaster to pull the Hyuuga out of the way.

Both their knight-like moves would prove to be unnecessary.

Hinata wasn't, by any definition, weak. She just happened to be surrounded by a generation composed of absolute monsters. Against most nin, though, the girl was pretty damn strong, and definitely strong enough to avoid a measly, uncontrolled chakra tail. Without batting an eyelash, she made a long stride to meet the tail with a gentle fist.

Only to be jerked away last minute via the efforts of the worst artistic duo that she'd ever have the misfortune of meeting. The force in the sudden movement triggered another chain of disaster to fall upon the Akatsuki, with the trajectory of Hinata's movements being changed to head towards the one man who any semi-intelligent person would want to avoid the most.

Nagato.

A loud crack resounded through the restaurant, indicating, at the very least, a broken nose. His face injury knocked down the rest of the dominos.

Nagato might have spent a decade contemplating his atrocious deeds, but that time sure as hell hadn't done anything to change the rapid reaction times that were beaten into his war-hardened body. Out of muscle memory alone, Nagato activated one of his six paths, effectively blowing the entire pho place to smithereens.

The Konoha nin and Akatsuki members stood in silence as the walls around them collapsed to reveal one, lone man standing at where the entrance had once been.

Gaara.

"Get out."

"G-Gaara!" Naruto sheepishly greeted, having successfully halted his tailed-beast-driven rampage. He spared a laugh that was far too loud to be genuine as a peace offering. "How about we all just move our get-together to the ramen place down the street?"

"Get out."

"G-Gaara?"

Sand wrapped around the lower halves of the guilty party.

"Get. Out."

"B-But we saved you from your whole kidnapping situation!" Naruto rebutted.

"I found my own way out of the base and walked to Suna alone. In the past five minutes, you've done more damage to my village than even my kidnappers had. Not to mention, you're sitting next to those exact same kidnappers."

"We've already explained, it was Sei—" Nagato's poor excuse was cut short by an elbow to the rib, courtesy of Konan.

Naruto was in tears.

Gaara sighed. "You can come back without these idiots accompanying you."

The sad look was wiped off of his face as his attitude did a 180°. "Hell yeah! Let's go, guys!"

"When did he become our leader, un?"

Sasori silenced the too-talkative blond with a bored stare. "Just go with it. It's better not to question idiots.

And with that, the begrudging heroes, and the disgruntled former-heroes, began trekking towards Konoha.

"Whatever happens, I'm not the one explaining this to Tsunade-sama."

This chapter is a bit on the short side, but hey, I updated before the week was up! Lol the Akatsuki just can't catch a break! And Hinata is a strong, independent woman who don't need no man to save her! :D

Did y'all enjoy the chapter? Be sure to leave a review y'all! They let me know if you're still reading and enjoying the story.

Have a good day! :)