Itachi led them to a sleek black SUV parked at the edge of campus. For the past hour, Sasuke had been watching the minutes tick by on the dashboard clock, each one stretching impossibly long. Every mile marker they passed was another moment Naruto remained in captivity, another moment his scent might be fading from Sasuke's memory.
Squeezed into the back seat, Kiba and Gaara maintained their silence. Before leaving, Kiba had updated the group chat, triggering a flurry of angry texts from Temari about being left behind. Even through her digital fury, she'd conceded they couldn't afford to wait—every minute counted now.
"Are we sure we aren't being kidnapped?" Kiba muttered, shifting so his knees didn't knock the plastic divider Itachi had jammed between the front and back seats. He shot a sidelong glance at Gaara, hoping for at least a smirk, but the guy was doing his serial killer impersonation—eyes half-lidded, hands clasped between his knees, motionless. "At least the last guy who tried to abduct me bought me a Red Bull first."
"You could have stayed behind," Itachi said, not bothering to look in the rearview mirror.
"Fat chance," Kiba grumbled.
Gaara broke his silence, leaning forward between the seats. "Is that it?" he asked, nodding toward a shadow in the mountainside. Itachi's only response was to accelerate toward what revealed itself as a narrow opening in the rock face.
The tunnel widened into a concrete corridor flanked by smooth walls on both sides. Itachi slowed the SUV at a security gate, rolled down his window, and extended his thumb. A red beam swept over his hand, then his face. After a moment's pause, the gate groaned open with a metallic screech that set Sasuke's teeth on edge. They drove through, and the heavy barrier crashed shut behind them with all the grim finality of a prison door.
The compound itself was less fortress and more bunker complex, built into the bones of the mountain and painted the sickly off-white of a surgical theater. Someone, presumably with a sense of humor, had spray-painted a massive red cloud onto the main door: Akatsuki, spelled out in graffiti block letters below, the paint still fresh enough to glisten. The parking lot was empty except for a battered minivan with its windows smashed out and a motorcycle with bloodstains on the handlebars.
Sasuke stared at the red cloud painted on the door, the word "Akatsuki" dripping beneath it. Back at the dorm, when Itachi had mentioned the name, Sasuke had dismissed it as a misunderstanding. Now reality crashed down on him. Every news channel in the country had run footage of the Omega Registry headquarters in flames, blamed squarely on this organization. The government had labeled them terrorists, extremists, bombers—and his brother was one of them.
The revelation of his brother's ties to a terrorist organization should have horrified Sasuke. Instead, a cold calculation took root: if these were people who could burn government buildings to the ground and disappear without a trace, they might be exactly what he needed to find Naruto. He caught Kiba and Gaara exchanging glances, their expressions mirroring his own grim determination. They'd crossed a line now—there would be no going back.
They climbed out. Sasuke was out of the car first, slamming the door so hard Kiba heard the frame whine. The air up here was so thin it stung the lungs.
Itachi led them across the gravel lot, past the van and through the door. Inside, a short corridor lined with more cameras and what looked like rifle ports led to an atrium with a ceiling two stories high, crisscrossed with catwalks and more security. Two men in red windbreakers and black face masks waited just inside, standing at parade rest, their presence more threatening than any gun.
The two guards snapped to attention as Itachi approached with the group. "Sir!" One of them offered a crisp salute. "Pain awaits you in the briefing room."
Kiba stumbled backward, his eyes widening. "Pain? Like, actual pain?" His voice cracked as he looked between Sasuke and Gaara for support. One of the guards let out a muffled laugh behind his mask.
Itachi's expression remained neutral as he glanced at Kiba. "The leader's name is Pain." He shifted his attention to the guards, his voice cooling several degrees. "And these two find themselves amusing. Don't encourage them."
At the end of the corridor, Itachi stopped in front of a reinforced door and keyed in a code. The lock disengaged with a heavy click. He motioned them inside.
Sasuke stepped through the doorway first. A long conference table dominated the room, ending at a wall-mounted screen. At the head sat a man with flowing red hair and piercing amber eyes. Beside him stood a blue-haired woman with a delicate paper rose tucked behind her ear, tablet in hand. Four others lined the sides of the table. One, a blonde whose face Sasuke recognized from wanted posters—Deidara, the bomber. The others were strangers: a man with unnaturally pale skin and blue spiky hair grinning like a predator, another with short red hair who could have been Gaara's older brother, and a silver-haired man who, despite his prematurely gray appearance, couldn't have been much older than Itachi.
Itachi guided them into the room, the doors sealing behind them with a pneumatic hiss that made Kiba jump. Sasuke, Gaara, and Kiba found themselves standing shoulder to shoulder before the assembled Akatsuki members, while Itachi crossed the room to take an empty chair beside the blue-haired man, his defection from their side to the other unmistakable.
The man with spiky blue hair broke the silence first. "Well, well," he said, his voice like gravel being crushed underfoot. "The gang's all here." His shark-like grin revealed teeth filed to unnatural points.
The woman with blue hair drummed lightly on a slim black tablet. "Have a seat," she said. "It's not a request."
They sat, all three squeezing together on one side of the table. Sasuke took the seat at the end, nearest Itachi, and willed himself not to look at his brother. The silence stretched, heavy and deliberate, broken only by the faint whir of cooling fans and the slow, thoughtful tap of Konan's nails on plastic.
Sasuke's knuckles whitened against the table edge. His jaw worked silently for a moment before he broke the silence, voice tight as a wire. "Every minute we sit here is another minute he—" He swallowed hard, throat clicking. "Can you help us or not? My roommate was taken, and we need him back. Now." The last word came out raw, betraying the helplessness churning beneath his carefully constructed composure.
Gaara cleared his throat and leaned forward, his posture deliberately relaxed in contrast to Sasuke's tension. "What my friend means," he said, voice measured where Sasuke's had been raw, "is that we understand the delicacy of the situation." His pale green eyes moved from face to face around the table, making deliberate contact. "We've seen your work on the news. An organization that can operate beneath government radar for years clearly has resources we need." He uncurled his fingers and placed his palm flat on the table—a gesture of openness. "Naruto doesn't have much time. We're asking for your help, not demanding it."
Deidara was the first to speak, his lips stretching into a wild, crazed smile that didn't reach his ice-blue eyes. He flipped a serrated combat knife between his fingers, the blade catching the harsh fluorescent light with each rotation.
"Organization? Not terrorists?" He dragged out each syllable, savoring them. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to butter us up." The knife stilled suddenly between his thumb and forefinger, its point aimed directly at the red-haired man across the table. "What do you think, Sasori?"
Sasori's half-lidded eyes conveyed profound boredom. "Shut up, Deidara," he murmured, his voice soft as velvet yet somehow carrying perfect clarity. He turned to face the group, his gaze calculating and cold. "Here's the thing—we aren't sure we should help you. Especially not after the library fiasco."
Sasuke's shoulders went rigid, tendons standing out along his neck. Kiba leaned forward, confusion etching lines between his brows. "What do you mean?"
The man with blue spiky hair leaned forward, teeth gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights. "That little stunt you pulled at the library lab? Yeah, we've been watching." His gaze fixed on Kiba. "Name's Kisame. And I'm trying to figure out if there's anything behind those pretty eyes of yours besides confusion." Kiba's face flushed crimson as he pressed his lips into a thin line and stared at the table.
Sasuke mentally ticked off the names he'd gathered so far: Pain, Kisame, Deidara, Sasori. His gaze shifted between the two who remained mysteries—the silver-haired man whose face betrayed nothing and the blue-haired woman who had yet to contribute more than a command to sit.
The woman's fingers danced across her tablet, and suddenly the wall screen blazed to life. Six student ID photos appeared in neat rows—not just him, Gaara, and Kiba, but Temari, Shikamaru, and finally Naruto. Each profile displayed age, name, and both primary and secondary gender classifications. Sasuke's eyes locked on Naruto's image, a vise tightening around his ribs. A small detail caught his attention: beside Naruto's name, his secondary gender read "Beta." A grim satisfaction flickered through him. For all their intelligence gathering, the Akatsuki's information wasn't perfect.
The blue-haired woman's fingernail tapped once on her tablet before she looked up. "Your movements have been on our radar for months now. Sasuke caught our attention through Itachi. Gaara became relevant when Shukaku disappeared. And Kiba—" her eyes flicked to him briefly, "—guilt by association." She swiped across her screen, bringing up satellite imagery of the school lab. "We monitored your break-in. Impressive teamwork with Temari and Shikamaru. Unfortunately—" her voice cooled several degrees, "—Orochimaru had already relocated his operation by then."
Sasuke's fist slammed onto the table. "Where?"
Pain's chest heaved visibly before he spoke, each word measured as if rationed. "We don't know." A wet, rattling cough interrupted him, and he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. When he lowered it, Sasuke caught a glimpse of crimson before Pain folded it away. "We had been monitoring that lab for months." Another labored breath whistled through his teeth. "One week before your raid—" His shoulders hunched forward as a spasm wracked his body, the blue-haired woman's hand moving instinctively to his back. When he recovered, his voice came thinner, more strained. "They disappeared completely. Secondary exit we never identified."
The silver-haired man leaned forward, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "Two weeks before your amateur operation, our systems flagged unauthorized access to the school's network." His voice carried a clinical detachment. "We weren't the only ones with monitoring protocols in place. Orochimaru's security would have received the same alert." Sasuke's mind flashed to Shikamaru hunched over his laptop, face bathed in blue light, fingers flying across keys. His nails bit into his palms. The implication hung in the air like poison gas: they had triggered Orochimaru's escape.
Gaara's fingers tightened around the edge of the table, knuckles blanching against his already pale skin. "So you don't have any idea where Orochimaru's new lab is?" The question hung in the stale, recycled air of the windowless room, his usual monotone voice betraying the faintest tremor.
Itachi's dark eyes, so similar to Sasuke's yet somehow colder, shifted toward Gaara. The fluorescent lights caught the deep stress lines etched beneath his eyes as he leaned forward. "No," he said, each word precise as a scalpel, "but we found this one, we can find the next. Orochimaru will need supplies and money." His long fingers spread across the polished table surface. "Where there is money involved, there is a trail. We just can't have amateurs—" his gaze flicked momentarily to Sasuke, "—messing up our operations."
Kiba's chair scraped against the floor as he half-rose, slamming his hands down on the table, "Let me get this straight. You dragged us down here just to tell us to stay out of your way?" His upper lip curled back, revealing the edge of a canine. "Every minute we spend in this room, Naruto's still in that bastard's hands. If you're not helping, we're leaving." The last words vibrated in his throat, and Sasuke wasn't sure if it was emotion or something more primal.
A silver blur sliced through the air, embedding itself between Kiba's splayed fingers with a dull thunk. The three young men froze, eyes locked on the knife's serrated edge quivering in the table's surface. The gray-haired man—lazily flipped a second blade between his knuckles.
"Heel," he commanded, lips curling into a cruel smile. "Good boys know when to sit."
Kisame's gravelly chuckle filled the silence. "Easy, Hidan. No need to traumatize our guests just yet."
Kiba sank back into his seat, the legs of his chair scraping against concrete as he inched away from the quivering blade and toward Gaara's steady presence. The reality of their powerlessness crystallized in his mind like ice forming on a window.
The blue-haired woman's origami ring caught the light as she folded her hands. "We brought you here to see if you're worth our time." Her eyes narrowed slightly, assessing each of them in turn. "That library raid was reckless, even foolish—but you located a facility we'd spent months tracking, breached security with household tools, and extracted data." The corner of her mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly. "Not completely without merit."
Sasuke's voice cut through the tension. "What exactly are you proposing?" His gaze locked with his brother's, searching for something familiar in those obsidian depths. Years of absence stretched between them like a chasm—the boy who had once followed Itachi everywhere now faced a stranger wearing his brother's face.
Pain leaned forward, each breath a labored wheeze. "What have you heard about the Akatsuki?"
Sasuke met his gaze unflinchingly. "Nothing flattering. The news paints you as terrorists—government bombings, civilian harassment, public disturbances." His voice remained level despite the tension coiling in his shoulders. "The kind of organization my father warned me about."
Deidara's face contorted with indignation. "Art," he corrected, flicking his wrist dismissively. "The media calls it terrorism. The government calls it bombing. I call it expression through impermanence."
The blue-haired woman didn't even glance at Deidara, her expression suggesting she'd weathered his artistic justifications countless times before. "Our actual mission," she stated with clinical precision, "is identifying and eradicating operations involving human trafficking and illegal experimentation." Her fingertip swiped across the tablet, replacing their student profiles with footage of the government facility bombing that had first brought Akatsuki into public consciousness.
She gestured toward the screen displaying a sterile white building. "The Root Government Medical Facility. Three years ago, every news channel covered our so-called 'terrorist attack.'" Her voice remained clinical as the images shifted to reveal examination tables with leather restraints, IV stands, and bodies contorted in pain. Another slide: children with bloody knuckles squaring off in concrete rooms. Sasuke's throat burned with bile. "What the public saw as veterans' healthcare was actually Danzo Shimura's laboratory—the same man who now serves as your college dean. His real work? Creating weaponized Alphas through forced genetic modification."
The screen flickered to an image of a modest storefront. "This operation received less media coverage," she continued, voice tightening as the display changed to reveal emaciated figures with vacant stares, their wrists raw from restraints. "A trafficking network operating in plain sight." Her finger swiped across the tablet with practiced efficiency, cycling through locations—a warehouse, a private clinic, a chain of motels. Sasuke recognized several establishments he'd read about in passing: businesses shuttered for mundane violations, their true crimes buried beneath bureaucratic paperwork. "The authorities deliberately obscure our involvement," she said, her composure slipping just enough to reveal the steel beneath. "If the public knew what actually happened behind these facades, they might question who's truly protecting them."
The images blurred before Sasuke's eyes as his mind superimposed Naruto's face onto each victim—Naruto's wrists raw from restraints, Naruto's skin mottled with bruises, Naruto's arm punctured with needle marks. Relief that the Akatsuki weren't mere terrorists quickly gave way to the crushing weight of what they were truly facing. Itachi's voice cut through his spiraling thoughts.
"Before you commit," his brother said, eyes scanning each of their faces, "understand exactly what you're agreeing to. Back at the dorm, you made bold claims about what you'd do for your friend. Now that you've seen the reality we face—do those promises still hold?"
Sasuke's hands rose to shield his face, fingertips pressing hard enough against his temples to leave marks. The pressure behind his eyes built as he fought to maintain control. Every image on that screen was a possibility for Naruto now—and he had been the one to lead him straight to that lab, practically gift-wrapping him for Orochimaru's attention. The weight of it crushed down on his chest like a physical thing.
Sasuke's throat constricted as the words formed. "There's something you need to know." He met his brother's gaze, knowing the full truth was their only chance at help. "Naruto isn't a Beta." The confession hung in the air for a moment before he forced himself to finish. "He's an Omega."
The room was quite. The news settling onto everyone, "What do you mean?" Kiba asked finally breaking the silence, "I have known Naruto since day one of College, there wasn't anything."
Sasuke dragged his hands down his face, shoulders slumping forward. "Naruto's been hiding it his whole life. The suppressants he takes—they're medical-grade, not the standard prescription. I only found out because I walked in on him when his dose failed." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "He's an Omega."
"That fills in the missing pieces," Konan said, setting the tablet on the table with a soft click. "An unregistered Omega would fetch an astronomical price on certain markets." Her amber eyes shifted to Sasuke. "And considering what Itachi has told us about Orochimaru's fixation on you specifically..." She extended one slender finger toward him. "It explains why he'd risk exposure for this particular capture." Sasuke's chest constricted as the realization crystallized—Naruto had been taken because of him, because of he got close to Naruto and Orochimaru knew it.
Gaara's voice cut through the silence. "Nothing has changed for us," he said, his eyes steady beneath his shock of red hair. "We rescue Naruto and dismantle an operation that preys on the vulnerable. I see no downside."
Kiba pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. "Count me in. All the way."
All eyes shifted to Sasuke, who hadn't moved. His jaw worked silently before he finally spoke, each word measured and heavy. "Whatever it takes," he whispered, gaze fixed on some distant point only he could see. "Just tell me where to start."
Konan's lips curved upward as she surveyed the three of them. "Then consider yourselves recruited," she said, satisfaction evident in her tone.