Inside a colossal cave, a monstrous statue was nine eyes could be seen. Its arms were slightly lifted with its fingers pointing upwards, and five transparent figures were standing distributed on those fingers. These five were the five still living members of Akatsuki except for Kisame: Pain, Konan, Zetsu, Kakuzu, and Hidan.
Frankly, Pain was somewhat surprised that no outsiders had appeared yet; after all, Naruto had already demonstrated that he was capable of doing so.
However, even if someone appeared, it didn’t matter since they weren’t gathering to share information but to extract the Hachibi from its Jinchuuriki, Killer Bee, who Kisame claimed to have caught.
While they were waiting, Pain’s gaze wandered over the other people waiting with him, which caused a frown to appear on his face. Frankly, things weren’t looking that great for Akatsuki despite almost reaching their goal.
The first problem was, Kakuzu, who never showed much loyalty to Akatsuki from the start and was only here for the money and because he feared Pain’s power. Recently, that fear started slowly shifting towards another person, and it was only a matter of time before he left Akatsuki.
Pain had considered killing him preemptively, but Kakuzu was not someone easy to deal with, and Akatsuki currently didn’t have the resources to spare to plot his death.
The next problem was Madara, Obito…Tobi? Anyway, by now, Pain didn’t even know what he called himself, and it didn’t matter. At first, Pain cooperated with him not because he claimed to be Madara, but because of the future, he wanted to create. This, and the power he displayed, was enough to sway Pain’s opinion towards helping him, but by now, that image had somewhat crumbled.
The confident Madara Uchiha he met years ago, proudly standing in front of the Rinnegan and claiming that he would bring peace to the world, was no more and was instead replaced with a twitchy mess who saw ambushes and pranks around every corner.
Then there was Hidan…
“WHERE IS THAT DAMN KISAME BASTARD!? IF HE MAKES ME WAIT ANY LONGER, I’M GONNA SACRIFICE HIM TO JASHIN-SAMA!!!”
Anyway, Zetsu didn’t appear to be looking so well either. Just like Obito, he grew significantly twitchier, and Pain could easily tell that he was ready to flee at any moment. Considering his hiding ability, even Pain wasn’t confident in capturing him if he tried.
Last but not least, Konan. Well, nothing much changed about her, but Pain could easily see that she was getting more and more worried about the success of their plan and, even more so, about his survival.
A few minutes later, a tall man with blue skin and shark-like facial features entered the cave while carrying a dark-skinned man with well-defined muscles and white hair over his shoulder.
“Yo, sorry for the wait. Let’s get the extraction started already; fighting this guy was no joke, and I’m tired as hell.”
Honestly, Pain had reached a point where he half-expected the unconscious body Kisame was carrying to burst into a cloud of smoke, transform into Yuna and stab Kisame in the head, but for now, nothing of that sort had happened, and Kisame laid Bee’s body on the Gedo Mazo’s hands without any issue.
Moments later, the extraction ritual started, causing Pain to nod in approval. Since the ritual started properly and the Hachibi’s chakra was getting extracted, Pain concluded that there would be no issues this time.
He couldn’t help but sigh in relief that at least one of his subordinates was still capable of performing their tasks correctly.
Unfortunately, that notion changed a little about three hours later, when Bee’s body burst into a smoke cloud and revealed a single octopus tentacle, causing Pain’s eyebrow to twitch in irritation.
“It seems like you were tricked, Kisame.”
“DAMNIT, THAT SHITTY OCTOPUS BASTARD MANAGED TO GET AWAY FROM ME!!!”
“KISAME, YOU BASTARD!!! YOU MADE ME WAIT FOR NOTHING!!! THE NEXT TIME I SEE YOU, I WILL SACRIFICE YOU TO JASHIN-SAMA!!!”
“Tobi is a good boy!”
“Hahaha, this is so hilarious, you know!”
While Pain was sinking into the depth of despair due to his organization getting constantly tricked by the still living Jinchuurikis and the other Akatsuki members, causing an uproar, a foreign voice with a somewhat familiar verbal tock echoed through the room, instantly silencing everyone else.
Everyone’s eyes concentrated on newly arrived transparent form, causing it to scratch its head awkwardly.
“Hehe, oops. I was supposed to stay hidden, but this whole mess was so funny that I accidentally started laughing, you know. Sorry, ’bout that.”
Pain almost started coughing out blood when he saw the crimson red hair, the trademark of the Uzumaki clan. However, except for the hair color, Pain did not recognize the new arrival.
“Who are you?”
Pain tried to sound regal, projecting the image of a god he believed himself to be, but the Uzumaki clan member only looked at him weirdly when he did so.
“Err, I didn’t expect there to be another person like Yuna-sama who enjoys acting all mighty and aloof on occasion, but I guess everyone has their own weird hobbies.”
A few of Pain’s blood vessels almost burst in anger when the way he spoke was interpreted as a ‘weird hobby’, but before he could say anything, the man who appeared to be in his early twenties resumed speaking.
“Anyway, my name is Orio Uzumaki, and Yuna-sama ordered me to spy on all of the Akatsuki meetings being held…”
Orio stopped speaking for a moment and lowered his head in shame.
“Which I obviously messed up…”
He squatted down as a dark aura covered his whole body.
“Yuna-sama will definitely scold me…”
The aura grew even darker as despair started oozing out of Orio’s body.
“Damnit, I will definitely not be allowed to eat ramen for a while, you know!”
However, just as quickly as he grew depressed, he recovered and stood back up and looked at Pain with an eager expression.
“You won’t tell anybody, right? Please don’t tell anybody! Tomorrow there will be this special deal at Ramen Ichiraku where you can…”
“Dismissed.”
Before Orio could tell Pain about the special offer at Ramen Ichiraku, Pain dismissed all the Akatsuki members, resulting in all of them leaving instantly, causing Orio to scream in despair.
“NO, MY SPECIAL OFFER!!! I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO IT FOR DAYS, YOU KNOW!!!”
Meanwhile, the Jonin that Tsunade dispatched to do the same job as Orio could only look at him in a weird mixture of awe and annoyance.
Awe, because Orio could act so casually in front of a group of monsters that made the Jonin tremble in fear every time he so much as thought about the possibility of getting discovered. In fact, when Pain asked Orio who he was, the Jonin could almost feel his soul leave his body from the pressure alone.
And annoyance because he completely messed up their mission. He didn’t really understand the process, but Yuna apparently made it possible to spy on the Akatsuki meetings without being discovered. That hidden feature was now no longer hidden.
‘*Sigh* A expected of the Uzumaki clan. They are extremely reliable and, at the same time, extremely unreliable..’
