(if disclaimers and stuff don't matter to you, skip down to the part where it says "Chapter 8," okay?)

Ehm...yeah. Like always. I don't remember what happened in this chapter. It all mashes together when you have some forty other chapters. So, I can't say anything about it because I don't remember what happened here. But, uh, yeah. If you see random symbols like * or _ or [] {} whatever, it's a tag because I forgot something or someone's name or something similar. Please tell me so ASAP. It's kind of embarassing for it to stay there.

Naruto world and characters (c) Masashi Kishimoto

Haruka, Misaki (c) me, Zopponde. They're mine and I refuse to let anyone else use them without advance permission and a link to the finished product.

I've been trying to go back and put all the thought stuff 'like this,' instead of just like this to clarify a bit more. And because Microsoft Word is a pain more often than not.

Some characters might not be entirely in character. Tough cookies. This is fanFICTION. It doesn't have to make perfect sense with everything else in the show.

...that's all? Eh, thanks again to...my readers, who seem to prefer to remain annonymous... -_-

Oh, and a reminder: I have almost eighty thousand words of this story written. They're not being posted because it seems pointless to post something that nobody reads. Thus, comments will greatly increase the rate at which this story is posted.

I'm done.






Assumtion
Chapter 8

The next week proceeded similarly. Misaki finally realized that Haruka wanted to make breakfast, and so she did on the day a week later. Itachi never seemed to get any sleep, and he soon gave up on putting food on his plate before his face collapsed into it.

Every time he did this, Haruka raised her eyebrows at Misaki. Finally, she asked, “What have you been doing to him?”

Misaki grinned evilly. “Oh, come on, pregnancy tests wouldn’t freak him out much if he still thought I was a virgin.”

“…forget I asked,” Haruka denied before going on to change the subject. “So, um, I remember someone mentioning getting out of the house?”

Kisame nodded, not much better off than Itachi. “Yeah, but you two weren’t in our calculations when we organized everything, so it might take a little time for them to find you any work.”

“But I’d much rather to at least be out walking somewhere, whether it’s useful to the organization or not,” Haruka protested.

Kisame shrugged. “I guess I could go check.” He walked into the other room.

Itachi was already snoring on the table, now too smart to even put his plate in front of him.

Haruka looked at Misaki curiously, wondering why Kisame went out of the room instead of out of the house after talking like he was going to discuss something with people that weren’t there. “Um…why did he…?”

A look of comprehension dawned on Misaki’s face. “Ohhh, you don’t really know that much about Akatsuki, do you?”

“Um…remember that question I asked the first morning I was here? Yeah…”

Misaki nodded comprehendingly. “Yeah, I guess you don’t know about that bit. Okay. So,” she began, “I don’t really understand it so well, because that’s one of the things you need to actually learn, you can’t just immitate it from the perspective of an honorary spy. Anyway, they have this communication system, so that if they concentrate hard enough and they do the right hand signs and collect their chakra right or something,” she shrugged, indicating that she wasn’t quite sure, “then they can show up in Akatsuki Base—the other one, of course,” she added.

“I’ve never used it before,” she went on, “but I’ve been at the base when they had a gathering. It’s kind of funny, because they’re not really quite so solid—they’re kinda like sillhouettes.” She smiled and added, “Rainbow sillhouettes. I still laugh when I see them all and think about it—these evil S-ranked criminals all gathering about to accomplish their goal of taking over the world, and they’re outlined in rainbow.”

Haruka smiled faintly at this, but couldn’t help noticing something else that she’d said. “Taking over the world? Isn’t that a bit cliché?”

“Hey, I’m not here for world domination,” Misaki pointed out, shrugging slightly.

Haruka grinned. “You’re here for Itachi-niisama, aren’t you?”

Misaki grinned, shrugging again. “What can I say? I guess I’m a sucker for wrinkly old S-ranked criminals.”

Haruka laughed at her simple (and hardly flattering) description of Itachi.

Kisame walked back in, announcing, “Incedentally, we just figured out what to do with you two. It seems like the Sound Village has been acting up again. Nobody really thinks you’ll be able to do us so much good, but they figure that right now, you won’t be going so far before you run into some of them. If they find out that we have new members—even if,” he added, grinning a bit, “you aren’t really members, you still look enough like us to get them to come out of hiding to chase after you. So right now, all you two have to do is run around and look like real members,” he summed up, “until Orochimaru decides that you look enough like the real deal to send some minions after you. And don’t worry,” he added, “Itachi and I will be staying here for a while, so if you don’t go too far, you’ll be good no matter what. We’ll start following you more closely when you’ve gotten a bit more attention and we might be able to actually catch someone.”

Misaki frowned. “So we’re bait.”

Kisame shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t come up with this plan. I just said that you guys needed work. Everyone else brainstormed to that idea.”

Haruka frowned, too, but she sighed. “At least we can get out of the house. Don’t you ever feel just a bit like they’re only keeping you so you can cook and clean?”

Misaki snorted. “Yeah, and being used as bait is such an improvement.”

“Agreed,” Haruka concurred, nodding empathetically, “but I’m sick of sitting here and I’ve only been an honorary spy for a week.”

Misaki sighed. “I know, it’s just frustrating when the best thing anyone can do with you is risk your life.”

“There are worse things you could be risking your life for.”

“Remind me again, what am I risking my life for right now?”

Haruka thought about this for a moment before answering, “Higher chances for Itachi-niisama to survive an encounter with a potential threat to his life.”

Misaki nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, that’s worth it. Hmm, and I guess it might help him think better of me, and then…” She smiled.

“Yeah!” Haruka encouraged, nodding. “You could be risking your life to, I don’t know,” she thought about what in her life was a worse thing to risk her life for when she remembered, “You could be risking your life for the very slight benefit of the head of a family that you really don’t care about.”

Misaki smiled, seeming to remember something. “Yeah, that really sucks.”

Haruka was surprised. She didn’t really know much about the Hyuuga family, but she didn’t think that it was that bad. Actually, she immagined that it would, in some ways, be better than the Niroshi family. For one thing, the Hyuugas had more power in the Leaf Village, so she imagined that it wouldn’t be as likely to be such control freaks within the family. But, she supposed, there were more reasons to dislike a family than how much say they have in your life.

She shrugged it off. ‘I’ll have to ask her about that later,’ she decided.





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(Hmmm...yeah, okay, that's what happened...sorry it's a short chapter, I think I'll post the next one today anyway.

So, tonight's the party for the release of the final Harry Potter book. We'll be going pretty early, to beat the lines in, so that should leave me effectively with quite some time beforehand to type some stuff on the laptop. Maybe more of this, maybe some other random story or something, but I don't doubt that I'll be writing something. Or drawing. And trying to get everyone to stop BEING NOSY and LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER! For some reason, every time I start drawing, everybody's looking over my shoulder, "What are you drawing? What are you drawing?" Hmmm...so many wishes that I could make in relevance to that...

Okay. Nobody cares. Of course. Too bad, I'ma rant anyways.

Story will expand instantly--just add comments!)