Whispers in the Rain - Bleach X Naruto - Uchiha Itachi Love Story

Chapter 14 - Target

Pain pov:

"Good work, Deidara, Tobi. Now that the Red Eagles have been taken care of, we can go ahead with our missions without any hindrances." I spoke addressing two of the Akatsuki members standing on the fingertips of the Gedo Statue as holograms.

The Red Eagles, a band of rogue nin living in the forest in the Land of Fire, were causing us problems by interfering in our mercenary services. They weren't causing any trouble for us before and we would have let them be if they hadn't started taking up missions instead of us and cutting down our opportunities to earn money to support our organization.

"But Leader sama, shouldn't we be worrying about the Konoha shinobi? They caused us quite some trouble in the Bandit Forest!" Madara sama, temporarily acting as a weak member of the Akatsuki and calling himself Tobi, spoke.

I narrowed my eyes slightly at his words.

"Konoha shinobi? What do you mean, Tobi?" I pressed, wanting to know details.

"Ahh! Just after taking care of the Red Eagles, we ran into a team from Konoha! But it wasn't a four man cell like usual, it was a five man cell! I helped Deidara senpai with trying to defeat them because Tobi is a good boy! But....they escaped. And one girl even kicked Deidara senpai's butt!" Tobi held up his hand as he described what happened and chuckled.

"Oi Tobi! Are you making fun of me, hmm?! I'll blow you up to bits if you don't shut up, hmm!" Deidara held his fist up threateningly at his partner causing Tobi to flinch back and yelp.

"Ah senpai! I was just telling Leader sama what happened! You're always so mean to me, saying you'll blow me up when we're supposed to be getting along! We're partners, senpai! Partners!" Tobi hollered.

"Shut up, hmm! Just wait until this meeting is over!"

"That's enough, you two. I didn't call you for a meeting so you could fight. Tell us what happened." I interrupted, getting tired of hearing their bickering.

"Nothing happened, hmm! It was just some useless Konoha shinobi who caught us off guard! And Tobi didn't help one bit! He just went around waving a stick at one of them, hmm!" Deidara crossed his arms and closed his eyes as he spoke.

He didn't look like he wanted to detail out what actually happened. As a member of the Akatsuki, failure wasn't acceptable and seeing that Deidara and Tobi had returned after letting the Konoha shinobi escape, there had to be something more that had happened. It couldn't have been just a regular fight – the team they had fought against had to have been strong enough to counter their attacks.

"That's right, Leader sama! Nothing really happened! We were just careless and let them escape...." Tobi rubbed the back of his head and laughed sheepishly.

But as I watched him, I saw his visible eye glow red through the hole in his mask. He flashed his Sharingan to me indicating that he had something important to tell me. And I was sure it was about the team he and Deidara had fought earlier.

"Very well. But make sure that this does not happen again. Failure from any member will not be accepted." I narrowed my eyes as I looked at all the members of the Akatsuki, particularly at Deidara, making him tense slightly.

Pushing this matter aside for now, I went ahead with informing the members that we were to lay low for the time being. Some of them had been spotted several times by several shinobi from the different villages. The Kages and Daimyos had begun to get uneasy about our open movement and they were increasing their villages' defenses. If this continued, there was a possibility that we would face a lot of troublesome resistance that would delay the initiation of our plans to bring order to the world. For the time being, we had to work in the shadows.