Indebted (Naruto/Akatsuki Fanfic)

Chapter Sixteen - Downward Spiral

Hey. Sorry. Really, really sorry. I am awful.

--

'I've seen that look before.

Leave that shit at the door.'

--

   In retrospection, if viewed from the rear end, my first mission involving Taki was one of the best things that could have happened to me during my stay.

   At any point in time during said mission or before all was said and done, however, it appeared to be only the beginning of my descent into an ordeal of unimaginable measures, with only a few bright occasions that were few and far in between, but no less important than the last or the next.

   That's not to say I wish it didn't happen, though.

   Evidently, it was agreed upon that Kakuzu and I were the ones who dealt with Hidan the best, and therefore either of us were to be partnered with the psychopathic Jashinist. Those same geniuses who came to this decision, agreed that in order to help the civilians and ninjas alike accustomed to having the Akatsuki in this village, whether they wanted it or not, it was absolutely necessary for the "personable" members of Akatsuki to be integrated into virtually every mission ranking B or higher. And that is how Deidara, Kisame and yours truly got roped into being near constantly out on missions.

   Some were easy. Others... to be quite frank, I wish never happened. But this first mission - well, it certainly set the pace for the rest of my stay.

   Luckily it didn't involve Hidan. All of our skills had been assessed and the mission room, together with the council and Pein, worked to match us all up with the proper teams and missions to "increase efficiency and camaraderie, and promote trust among the newly integrated sect of the village structure" (yet, that only managed to raise more doubt in me). As a part of my self-issued goal of snooping around and figuring out what the ever-loving fuck was happening, I'd gotten a glance of all of our files. I was tagged with being particularly skilled at infiltration, information gathering, stealth, working with others, and being a good judge of character and with a peculiar ability to make sound and rational, logic-based decisions. In short, I was considered able to function in any essential role, an all-purpose sort of person. Nothing to truly distinguish myself; I was used to it. And they had things down that I didn't even consider for myself - flattering, to an extent.

   I was assigned to a simple mission, A class to be precise. It would be a four man squad, me and three others, people I've met before, worked together with, yet not worked up a relationship of any sort with them. The perfect team for me initially - they knew me, but not well enough to hold any true bias towards me, particularly necessary when my mission performance would later be thoroughly picked apart and analyzed. The mission was perfect as well, to a certain degree, if the files presented to me were not lacking information.

   It was your basic, stereotypical and indiscriminate slaughter-style mission with no special needs requred. The goal in mind - eliminate a minor cell of a large group of a messy, poorly organized group of rouge ninjas (don't make me laugh) that were trying to make a name for themselves but were only creating bloody and unnecessary massacres due to the lack of aforementioned proper organization and overall shitty, ill-equiped men.Even so, their "quality" and general skill aside, they were going to have to dealt with sometime, so why not now, when an ample  opportunity and a perfect occasion was presented?