- Chapter 24 -

The Comedown

Hidan inhaled the last bits of smoke from his badly-rolled cigarette and threw the bum on the ground, crashing it under his foot.  He took out his pack of smoke irritably and started rolling a new cigarette, only to roll it worse than the previous one. However, as long as he could smoke it, he did not care. 

He only rolled his cigarettes bad when he was angry; he had been waiting for one hour in the cold with no text messages or calls that indicated that the others would be late. 

Just as he was in the middle of smoking, an all-too-familiar van stopped quickly in front of him, tires screeching under the rough pavement. The man threw his cigarette on the road and hopped on. The van disappeared from the scene as quickly as it came.

"You're late."

Hidan did not look at the driver just so he could irritate him and make it known that he was frustrated. His eyes fell on the bag full of aromatic herbs that was hanging from the rear-view mirror. 

"We just made up this plan, you shouldn't have expected us to be early. We had to pick up the blondie first, anyways."

Hidan sighed and pulled out his smoke pack again, ready to roll another cigarette.

"No smoking in the car," the driver snapped when he got a whiff of what was going on.

Hidan scoffed and squeezed the man's thigh. "Relax, love. It will keep my mind off things."

Kakuzu kept his mouth sewn and looked at the rear-view mirror. The reassembled Akatsuki were sitting in the back of the van, each one lost in their own thoughts, ready to fight and end this once and for all. He just hoped everything would be over soon, in the name of profit and returning back to the original mischief. 

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She must have been out for a few hours in the dark before she was woken up.  She quickly figured out that the bag that was previously placed over her head was removed and that she was tied up on a pole, hands already hurting as the handcuffs had dug in her wrists. Not to mention that the usual sitting position with the hands tied behind the abdomen was the most uncomfortable position in the world.

Akira tried to shield her eyes from the sudden light that invaded her vision; she remembered that her hands were tied up. She blinked a few times and once her eyes adjusted to the light, she looked up.

The girl smiled. "Oh, well."

Orochimaru, the head of the mob, stood above her with that malicious smile of his. He seemed satisfied, darkly satisfied with his newest toy. 

"You just couldn't keep yourself out of trouble, could you? Surely, a smart girl like you could have fled the town but instead, you stayed in the nest of the snake," he pointed out.

His smile only seemed to be growing bigger, if possible, with each word he spewed out. Even though Akira was sure that the plan she had formed with the Akatsuki was going to be successful, she couldn't help but sweat anxiously. Not to mention that with each second passing, she grew more uneasy being in the same room as Orochimaru, that sniveling man.

"You would have still caught me in some way if I had attempted to leave town. Killed, even."

Orochimaru's mouth returned to its normal state. "Smart."

"So you must be wondering: why haven't I killed you yet? Good question. Even though it would give me personal pleasure to kill you right here on the spot, I won't." He chuckled. "It's a surprise. Because you underestimated me, Akira-chan. Both you and your little group of teenage gangsters."

Akira furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you-"

"I thought they had learnt their lesson when I killed their friend but no, they are still trying me to overthrow me!" he raged, swallow eyes widening in frustration. "Since they can't realize that they are not the ones in control, they have to go, don't you think?"

"What are you even talking about?" Akira seethed. 

Her whole head was ready to burst and she felt as if everything was crumbling down. Could it be possible that he knew of their plan? She couldn't pinpoint if there was another insider in the Akatsuki or if they were just predictable. The usual churning feeling in her stomach had returned and she hurt.

Orochimaru simply smiled and walked away from the girl, letting the void darkness of the rest of the space swallow him whole. 

Akira kicked her legs on the pavement before her, cursing loudly and unable to tame her rage. How could she be so foolish? The Akatsuki and her were just kids, mere high school students, they were not supposed to mess with whatever high power they were messing with at that moment. 

My stubbornness is killing me, literally, she thought, pressing her lips together in pure frustration. She hoped, deep inside of her, that the Akatsuki would not stick to the plan. That they would have half the mind to realize on their own that this whole plan was stupid from the start. Nothing could fix what Orochimaru had done to Nagato and nothing could fix her betrayal to their trust.

"This . . . is stupid," she laughed.

She shook her hands and banged the handcuffs against the pole but to no avail. She was stuck and this time, there was no escape route.

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Deidara cursed himself for not paying enough attention to last year's physics lessons about electric circuits. The wires connected and sparks flew out of them, yet no other result was produced. 

"I give up, un."

The Akatsuki were right outside the building they were led to by Akira's staged abduction. Konan sighed in exhaustion; Deidara had been trying to tweak the wires of the front entrance for half an hour, an effort which led them back to square one. She was tired of watching over the passed-out guards, too.

Kisame took off his backpack. "Guess we have to do it the old-fashioned way."

"This is fucking stupid," Hidan pointed out upon seeing Kisame pulling a heap of rope out of his bag.

"Got a better idea? Maybe if we pray to your God he'll open the door?" the blue man responded in an obvious, frustrated manner as he threw the  rope to Sasori.

Sasori snorted, clearly fed-up, and redirected his attention to the rope in his hands. He passed it through a loop of the harness he was wearing and secured it, pulling it a few times to check if it was safe. The tiny man swung the other end of the rope and threw it after a few turns, successfully managing to stabilize it on top of the window he had marked with his eye. Like a puppet controlled by some higher power he was able to climb the wall of the building and take a peek of the inside. 

Nothing lurked in. That was his signal to break in. 

The Akatsuki knew that they would attract the attention of everyone in the building after making so much noise; that was their plan, after all. 

Sasori opened the huge garage door from the inside and soon, they were already following up to their instructions. 

Five persons, seemingly guards, appeared before them and pointed their guns at them. The gang was quick to split up and take cover just as the guns went off. 

Pein pulled the first and last gun he would handle in his life and shot above the guards' heads. Kisame and Kakuzu did the same as Deidara was busy taking his infamous clay bombs out of his bag.

With a smirk and a whip of his hand, a deafening 'bang!' echoed in the garage and everything was engulfed in smoke. 

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While the Akatsuki were fighting off the yakuza's paws, the Zetsu brothers were tending to other plans. They had never been special in anything, always being the persons no one would notice. That was their trait, their black magic move to mingle in with the shadows and disappear. 

They spread out to the enormous garage and started searching for their bait. Orochimaru was where Akira was held for sure; the Zetsu brothers were smart enough to know that they were expected to come. Why else would they place guards in the entrance that had the strength of a fly? 

The brothers turned to look at each other simultaneously and Kuro motioned to Shiro to come near him. Shiro wiped out his hunting knife - his favorite accessory - while peeking at the opening they had found. 

There sat Akira, hands tied behind her back on a pole, nobody else in the room. Shiro hummed and stood in front of the doorway while Kuro sneaked in. 

Akira rose her head upon hearing someone come in and shook her head. "Leave, it's a trap!"

Kuro knelt behind the girl and started lock-picking her handcuffs.

"We know, dead meat. We're not stupid like you."

"Then what will we do next?"

Kuro handled carefully the metal and after a few seconds, a satisfying 'click' resounded.

"We kill them."

Akira opened her mouth to oppose but closed it just as quickly. This wasn't her fight, nor her place to voice her opinion. She was part of this mess but at least she was still alive. Everything that was happening at that moment was not for her, not for Gaara, but for Nagato. They were driven by bloodlust, need for revenge.

Shiro whistled warningly and the two got out of the room, only to walk on an all-too-familiar face with that annoying, mischievous smirk. 

"Did you think you could get away so easily?" Suigetsu mocked, hands holding a sword as sharp as his teeth.

Shiro shrugged. "No, not really. But you really should not have such a big mouth right before your death."

The boy charged with his hunting knife awfully fast and Suigetsu barely avoided the attack. He hadn't seen him coming at all.

"What the hell . . . "

The two attacked each other, swift movements swinging at their bodies which they both skillfully avoided. Shiro's excitement grew by the minute, especially when he was able to scratch the man's arm with his knife. He slashed gleefully and soon, Suigetsu was unknowingly pinned to the wall. 

Shiro twisted his arm and Suigetsu screamed, sword falling out of his hand. The high school boy slammed the same hand on the wall and drove his hunting knife through the throbbing flesh. The man screamed once again but this time, it was short-lived as he fell unconscious due to the shock. 

"Seems like my job here is done!" Shiro exclaimed, wiping the beads of sweat from his temples. 

Kuro scoffed. "Show-off."

Akira simply stood there, not being able to utter any words. This whole situation was just now coming down on her. Mere high school students fighting off mob members, a person having been shot dead right in front of her, running missions with a sociopath who ended up killing the target for no reason. She felt her stomach getting heavy, her throat clogging and her heart racing. She didn't want to puke. She wanted to go back to school and be an average student who wouldn't be forced to disguise as a male and infiltrate a criminal organization just so her selfish father would uncover her mother's murderer.

None of it mattered, though. Her mother was dead, she had died in a fire and there was nothing she could do about it. What if she had found the person responsible for the fire? What would she have done? She couldn't kill a person, nor turn them in. Her mother was dead and her father had killed her again with this whole operation. 

She retched and vomited what was left in her stomach. The Zetsus watched her unbothered, Shiro chuckling at the thought of how weak she was. 

"The worst hasn't come yet, kid," Shiro pointed out, smirk still etched on his face.

Akira wiped the side of her mouth and tried to ignore the chunks of her dinner decorating her hand. They all stared at each other for a moment and immediately started pacing towards the direction of the rest of the gang. Akira's heart hammered in her chest. She knew that this was too easy, too set up for Orochimaru. Not knowing what he was planning on doing next was terrifying, yet she tried to suppress her thoughts in the back of her head. 

Two rights and three lefts later with no encounters, the small group found themselves face to face with the rest of the gang. Unconscious men lied a few feet apart and the giant space was tinted with the black remnants of Deidara's explosions. With no other words, they all rushed towards the exit. 

Sasori went immediately for the security panel to the left of the garage door but was taken aback; the panel was out of its place, its wires hanging out like fresh entrails. "Fu-"

Blinding lights were suddenly turned on and the gang members stood on guard, trying not to flinch by the sudden lights. A banging sound echoed in the large garage and Pein fell back, screaming. The high schoolers stood frozen as Orochimaru and his imps marched forward, their  mocking eyes drilling through the skulls of the gang. 

The worst had come.