A/N: If you want clarification on any of this, you'll have to Google it. Look for 'Zimbabwe – "The Function of Roora"'

It could be said plain and simply that everyone was considering calling the whole thing off, even Kisame and Sakura. But Kisame was in too deep, and Sakura would never let the guys back out now. A congregation had assembled in the living room of the nearest Benefactor to The Cause in event of The Emergency, and so far, Kisame, Tobi, Deidara and Hidan had showed up. Zetsu apparently didn't mind letting his house become a temporary meeting spot, provided he had no affiliation with the plans. The first inklings he had of the rumors he heard told him in big, bold letters to go far, far away, besides.

Itachi had disappeared on some strange mission the night before the conference gathered, but, wisely, no one felt like asking any questions, and Kakuzu just seemed to morph in and out of the meeting area at regular intervals. Sakura adamantly refused to show up for the meeting, and mentioned flippantly over her shoulder that she just might follow Itachi after "if this thing gets any more nuts than it is right now, for crying out loud, Kisame." She then announced that Kisame would have to deal with this all by his manly lonesome.

It was tradition, after all, on her mother's side of the family, and they wouldn't have it any other way. It was also natural for Kisame to employ the help of close friends, however, she said, so Kisame had drafted as many as possible to aid him in his struggle. Well, if you wanted to call them friends.

Zetsu's living room was a nice one as far as living rooms of the hunted and criminal went. There was a couch, a loveseat, a table, a bookcase, and a beanbag chair, of which he claimed ignorance of its origins. The consensus, with much snickering, left Kisame with the loveseat and the rest of the furniture up for grabs. From his unceremonious place on the carpet, Hidan decided to start things off, as usual.

"So what the hell are we doing again? All I got was some stupid note saying I had to get here as fast as I can, and so I come here and no one tells me anything for three days. Three days. If someone doesn't cough up some information, me and the stitch boy are so out of here, seriously."

Kisame raised a hand for silence, pleasantly surprised when he actually received it in response. He sighed.

"Well, I don't know how many of you know this, but Sakura and I were going to get married."

"What, you got her before I did? She must've been drunk, yeah. Indecently drunk."

Kisame glared. "Well, sucks to be you. I guess I'm just a better person." Deidara scoffed but turned away, playing with a chunk of clay as he scooted to a different position on the couch.

"Can I come to the wedding, Kisame?"

Blinking at Tobi, Kisame looked sheepish as he scratched behind his ear. "Well, see, that's just it. There is no wedding."

"No fucking wedding? That is the most heathenish sh—"

"No, Hidan, just let me—"

"Don't fucking interrupt me! That is so disrespectful to think you can just waltz off with her body without properly joining to her. I knew I should've—"

"Hidan."

"Tobi doesn't think this is a good idea, Kisame. Sakura's a nice girl, I mean, she kind of deserves a wedding…"

"Tobi, I—"

"Jeez, Kisame. You really need to learn some manners, yeah. See, if she'd have gotten to know me better, we would've had a real wedding, with real—"

"No. If you'll just let me—"

"Sweet Jashin in heaven. Did you fucking impregnate the damn woman? Look, if this is some sort of shotgun wedding fucking affair, I'm out the door right now. That is a sin, and you are the most—"

"Everyone stop it, just for a second while I explain!" Kisame thundered.

"This better be good, fish boy."

Kisame glared again. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

"…Okay. I asked Sakura if she wanted to marry me, and she said yes. There was no violence involved. There wasn't even any sex. Well…not on that particular day."

"You little—behind our backs the whole—?"

Sakura cried out, clenching her teeth and gripping the edge of the rug as she vainly struggled to hold in a scream. Kisame braced his right hand against some wonderfully embroidered flowers above Sakura's left shoulder and gripped her hip with his other hand, breaths coming out ragged and fast as he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, trying to find any leverage at all to help him keep up a steady rhythm. He gasped and bit lightly into her shoulder as Sakura reached a hand down between them to—

"Kisame!"

"Uh…yes! Actually, yes. And shut up while I finish. It gets better, I promise."

Tobi glared. No one noticed, and, frankly, no one gave a damn. Kisame took a deep breath, and sat up straighter in his chair.

"Okay, so we were going to get married, and everything's great. We go over to her parents' house in Konoha and her dad's there, and he is absolutely thrilled. I mean, she was living over there for far too long anyway, plus it's common knowledge what a beefcake I am."

Deidara snorted.

"I said shut up. Anyway, we were having tea, then the mom comes in waving this hoe around and flinging dirt all over the kitchen, screaming about how the tradition was broken, and she was going to chase me out or hack me to pieces and beat her ungrateful bitch of a daughter or something. It was hard to tell since I was trying to get a worm out of my tea. That was some good tea. So after Sakura dragged me out of the kitchen and her dad got the mom in a headlock, she took the liberty of explaining to me what was going on as she tried to get the grass out of her hair."

"She was waving what around?"

"Deidara, be quiet. Tobi can't hear."

"Fucking seriously. You're giving everyone a headache."

"…Apparently her mother comes from a rural area in an African country. And it looks like I forgot to pay the roora. I didn't even send one of you guys to yell at the family or anything."

The others exchanged worrisome glances as Kisame narrowed his eyes and glanced up at the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought. Deidara leaned forward on his knees.

"What are you talking about, Kisame?"

"The roora! The tradition! There will be no wedding, only the roora. Only if we do it right, though. The mother refuses to let Sakura out of the house. Has for the last hour or so, whenever it was Sakura left. The roora is a Shona tradition of giving a payment to the bride's family to complete the marriage in binding ceremony."

"So it's a bride price, then." Kisame glanced toward the source of the voice, surprised to see Kakuzu leaning against the wall in front of the loveseat.

"No, no. Sakura said it wasn't like that at all, it's—when did you get here, anyway?"

Kakuzu turned away and walked to face the living room door behind him, hands in his pockets.

"I was just stepping in," he murmured quietly, "I'm not involved here."

"Well, it'd be great if you could—"

"No."

Kisame closed his eyes and leaned back, allowing the chair to engulf him in a sea of leather and stuffing. "Fine. I'll just have to work with what I have. So to continue, the roora is simply a completion of the marriage, and symbolizes the man's commitment to his wife. That's why I almost got chased out with a gardening tool. Her mother thought I was making a bad impression. And the yelling ordeal is the most important part of the courtship. It signifies that we're getting serious. The proper way is to send a close friend or relative to announce it specifically, and that's why I wanted your help. It's kind of annoying, but there's no other way."

"I agree, yeah. I could be doing other things right now, but…I just feel like being nice today."

"Other things? What the fuck do you mean, 'other things?' Like going out for a leisurely stroll, blowing up a few towns, raping a few ten-year-old girls? 'Other things' like that, Mr. Blond Bombshell?"

"I was talking about art, you nutcase. Something you wouldn't understand."

"That's because I know art isn't going out and blowing shit up."

"See? That proves my point."

Kisame and Tobi fell silent, favoring observing the two men argue than think about what troubles lay ahead. Tobi slowly turned to Kisame and folded his hands in his lap, tilting his head to the side, giving Kisame the impression that if he took of the mask he would be looking into the face of a lawyer with a loophole.

"Kisame? What can Tobi do to help?"

Kisame grinned horribly and leaned towards Tobi. "Oh, I think I'll be needing Hidan for this first thing. He'll like it. It involves yelling, and pain. Lots of pain. Thank God, the son-in-law doesn't have to go through it, or I would've just run off with her."

Tobi pressed his hands on his thighs and leaned forward as well to peer curiously at the delighted shark man. "What are we going to do?"

"Listen closely. We can plan this all out and then send him out there with an offer he can't refuse. He'll forgive us eventually."

"I—Tobi's not sure if he likes the sound of that."

"Trust me. There's no way even he can screw this up."

As Hidan lifted the hem of his Akatsuki robe out of mud range, he was seriously rethinking this whole damn thing. Seriously.

"Fucking asses," he snarled as he trudged towards Konoha. "I knew they all hated me. Why do I get this job?" Then he blinked, and his face brightened momentarily. "Well, at least I'll be getting free food. Kisame said Sakura's dad gives out free food to anyone who can prove that they're a Jashinist. Good thing I got this rosary before I left the convention."

Feeling somewhat better, Hidan stopped and peered ahead at an approaching fork in the road.

"Okay, this is the damn fork…left." He hoped it was the left side, anyway. It was getting dark, and small children wandering around tended to raise hell if they saw him coming their way. A small cottage in his field of vision dissipated all disregards, however, as he recognized the house from Kisame's descriptions. Just outside the village walls with an iron gate connecting it, sweet pea vines running up the trellises, over and through the white picket fence, and an herb garden surrounding a whitewashed main cottage. Well, here goes nothing.

Hidan found a place to stand where he could see the front door, but not too close, and repeated the phrase Kisame taught him.

"Matsvakirai kuno!"

Putting his hands on his waist impatiently, Hidan waited for the food to start flying his way. He was fucking hungry. The sound of a screen door opening and slamming shut alerted his attention to somewhere from behind the house, and he frantically patted down his hair and tried to make himself look as holy as possible.

A small woman meandered around the sidewall, as if on tiptoe, and halted at the garden gate, staring Hidan straight in the eye, a contemplative look in her gaze. She was small, he noticed, with an infuriatingly neat bun taut at the back of her head and a proud tilt to her chin. She looked like business.

Hidan cleared his throat and tried again.

"Uh…matsvakirai kuno! …Or something."

The woman's gaze suddenly filled with a furious intent, leaving Hidan feeling bewildered and slightly amused all at once. Where the hell was his food, anyway? He stiffened as the woman reached behind her and brandished, seemingly from nowhere, a long cat-o-nine-tails, which she reared back and cracked over her head. Apparently satisfied, she glanced at Hidan almost lazily, and then abruptly vaulted over the fence with her bare hands, charging at him, waving the whip around like a maniac.

Hidan started, not sure how to deal with this pixie of a woman who was running at him as if she didn't know who he was, or something. Hidan decided to stay just to see what happened, though. Kisame said the people here might do some weird stuff. Come to think of it, he'd looked a little guilty when he said it. Tobi was even quiet, staring at him like some little pumpkin-bred freak of nature with—

"Shit!"

Hidan never knew whips stung so badly. Now, the holy rituals he went through in the name of Jashin were filled with righteous pain and suffering. Jashin expected his followers to inflict massive damage upon both oneself and the offering, but this was an insult to the very dogma of the religion. This just stung. Itched, almost. The whip bit at tiny parts of his skin, and when the demon-pixie reeled it back in, she snapped it back, taking with it little chunks of—

"Hey! Hey!" Hidan was running back through the path at this point, trying to gain a vantage point to ask that bitch what the fuck she was doing, but she didn't look like she planned to relent anytime soon. He sorely wished he'd have ignored Kisame and brought his scythe with him. That hooker back there would make a wonderful sacrifice. Jashin may even give her some bonuses for attempting to gloriously remove his skin from his muscle structure, however insulting it was. Jashin did approve of hardworking beginners, and this woman looked like a prime candidate.

Oh! Maybe she was a saint, and this was all a test, and—everything suddenly made sense to Hidan now. He looked to his left as he ran, admiring the clandestine shadows of the elm trees painting lines of bright stripes on his skin and clothes, saturating them with natural paint, washing off in an instant and coming back different every time. Huh. Maybe that Deidara guy wasn't so crazy after all, and some things were better off temporary. He'd have to ask him when he got back.

Hey, where was that whip?

Tapering his run off to a trot, Hidan looked about him with a dubious expression. The woman was just…gone. Okay, this was officially weird. Maybe he was supposed to go back or something…yeah, that sounded pretty damn good. Hidan began running back down the path. He was going to get that food if it killed him.

"What's he doing, guys? What's he doing?"

"Come up and look yourself, dumbass."

"Tobi's not a dumbass! I—Tobi can't see! Get off my branch! You're hurting Tobi's foot!"

"That's what she said, yeah."

"Stop it, you two. He might hear us. And then he'll probably kill us both."

"Three, yeah."

"Us three, excuse me."

"Hmmph."

"He's going back!"

"What? No way."

"Kisame, you still didn't tell me what's going on!"

"Hush. He's going back? Really? That's—all right, phase two. Everyone get off the branch and down to the path. We need to station ourselves far enough so that he can see us but we can yell out an explanation before he kills us. Deidara, don't step there. No! Don't—!"

No one else was around to hear the tree branch fall, bringing with it five hundred pounds of ninja, weapons, assorted leaves and twigs, a wayward ant, and a penny dating back to the nineteenth century, which is most unfortunate, as the penny was in mint condition.

A bit more wary this time, Hidan managed to get inside the gate and all the way up to the house unscathed, with no sign or sigh of the little woman.

Glancing at his reflection in the nearest window and re-situating his appearance, he knocked three times and stepped back when the door opened to reveal the demon lady from before, minus the whip this time.

To Hidan's surprise, she broke out into a brilliant smile and grabbed his waist (she was so short it was the only thing she could reach, really), pulled him into the house and slammed the door behind.

The inside of the house was sufficiently more disturbing.

The lights were off, lit candles decorated every table and cabinet, casting a voodoo-like glow about the room and leaving ghostly shadows of furniture everywhere one looked.

The woman rushed off into some unknown corner of the house, leaving Hidan perturbed and hungry in the foyer. He didn't care to bother himself with observations of his surroundings, usually, which wasn't the best habit a shinobi could have—on the other hand, he was immortal—but it looked like his arrival had been long-prepared for. Well, that was odd. Why would Kisame and them go through all the trouble just so he could get some pie or something from some random crazy lady?

Several minutes later, said person emerged from a door to the side and beckoned him to her side. Then, she spoke.

"Honored munyai she murmured. "We are grateful that your friend has taken such an interest in our daughter, Sakura Haruno."

…The fuck?

"Please come this way. The elders are waiting to discuss the roora with you. Would you like me to serve you some tea?"

Hidan hesitated, but only for a second. Okay, he could go with this. "Nah, but some sake if you have any. And…some pie. I'd like some pie."

She smiled a smile that made a shiver go up and down his spine. "Very well. I'll take your coat there, and you go on in. Your place has been prepared."

Hidan gave his cloak to the woman—What was she, anyway?—and slipped into the side door, not sure what to expect.

He really wanted that pie, though.