AU of Not Sick chapter 30. Crack.

Goddamn Cats

"Here kitty kitty," Konohamaru cooed. Behind him, his teammates looked on his dread as he slowly approached the bristling menace.

Tora hissed, the hair on her back rising, and backed towards the alley wall. Her eyes promised painful death to anyone that drew too close, but Konohamaru had no fear. He moved steadily closer, and as he did the cat's eyes widened.

"C'mon little guy," the Sandaime's grandson murmured. "Don't you want to go back to your mommy?"

He suddenly rushed forward, hands outstretched. Tora yowled and jumped backwards, making contact with the wall. As Konohamaru reached for her, the cat snarled, looking as if it were temporarily stuck to the wall.

"Konohamaru, no!" Moegi shouted. "Watch-!"

Tora bolted forward, leaping past Konohamaru's hands a scoring a shallow scratch across the genin's cheek. The cat sprinted out of the alley like a bolt of furious fur, blowing past Konohmaru's team as if they weren't there.

"Goddamn cat!" Konohamaru shouted, turning and running after it. His team fell in behind him, glancing at each other incredulously. This was no ordinary D-Rank mission.

"Where's it heading?" screamed Udon. They weaved through the streets, sprinting full out after the cat. A gust of powerful wind kicked up by their speed followed them, sending people stumbling and windows rattling, but Tora stayed one step ahead, darting in and out of pedestrian traffic. Konohamaru poured on the speed, his scarf stretching straight out behind him like a long blue spoiler.

"She's going right for the Hokage's tower!" he shouted back. Tora glanced back at the genin, before suddenly bolting left. Konohamaru blew past her, turning and trying to slow his momentum, and as he stumbled the cat sped into a bright blue tapestry that was hanging down from a nearby roof. Tora scrambled up the ornate piece of clothe, leaving garish holes torn in it. Udon winced.

"Ah, crap…" he muttered, wiping away a bit of mucus. "Ebisu-sensei is so taking that out of our pay."

"Don't worry about that!" Moegi shouted back. "We've got to grab it before it's too late!"

The genin sprinted up the side of the building after Tora, leaving a group of bewildered civilian below.

"It's just a cat," one of them muttered, bending to pick up the bouquet of flowers he'd dropped.

Tora set the same speed on the roof she had on the street; maybe even a bit faster. But little by little, Konohamaru was gaining. He could tell the cat knew it too; her direction was growing more and more erratic. She had to know she'd be caught eventually.

Finally, the cat seemed to decide on one last trajectory, pushing off as fast as it could. Konohamaru grinned, feeling the end of the pursuit coming. Then he looked up.

The Hokage's Tower was a lot closer than he thought it had been. He could see through the windows; the Hokage was there, along with some old guy with white hair, Naruto's teammate Sakura, and someone who kinda looked like Sasuke. They were all talking to each other with very serious looks.

And Tora was heading right for them.

"Hey!" Konohamaru yelled, dodging around an air conditioner. "You stupid cat! Don't mess with the Hokage!"

Tora ignored him. Probably because she was a cat. Instead, she reached the edge of the building and took a flying leap right at the Hokage's Tower. Konohamaru cursed, hearing his team right behind him, and jumped right after her.

"Hmm," Tsunade said. Her hands came down flat on the desk, and she pushed herself up.

"Sakura," she declared, and the younger woman snapped to attention. "You're still my apprentice."

The Haruno blinked and nodded, and Tsunade showed her teeth. She gestured to the Rinnegan with an open palm, her eyes both warm and challenging.

"Consider this your graduation test, then," the Hokage proclaimed. Sakura's mouth fell slightly open. "Unlock the secrets of this eye, and you will have truly surpassed me."

"Ah-!" The medic gaped, before bowing. "Of course, Hokage-sama." She looked up, and frowned. Tsunade raised an eyebrow.

"Is that a cat?" Sakura asked, and then the window behind Tsunade exploded.

"Oh no," Itachi said rather matter of factly. Both of the Sannin in the room spun in alarm as a fury bullet sped past them and crashed into Tsunade's desk. There was another sound of shattering glass, and Tora tumbled off the desk, thumping to the floor. The cat gave a wet, hacking cough, and then was silent.

"Oh shit!" Konohamaru tumbled through the window after the cat, barely keeping himself from falling on top of Jiraiya. The genin staggered a couple steps, and then looked up. His face paled at the severe look on Tsunade's face. "I'm so sorry, Grandma Hokage! That fricking cat-!"

"Huh," Jiraiya said, interrupting the babbling boy. "Where'd the Rinnegan go?"

Everyone in the room snapped their eyes to the desk. There was, indeed, no Rinnegan there: just a puddle of preservative fluids and a couple shards of glass.

"Oh shit," Tsunade said dully. "Where-?"

"Hmm." Itachi frowned, bending down to poke at the cat that was twitching on the office floor. He poked it with a kunai, before nodding sagely. The Hokage stared at him.

"The cat seems to have swallowed it," the Uchiha said confidently.

"What?!"

"That's no problem, shishou!" Sakura offered, rushing up. "We'll just have to open its stomach before it can digest it!" She spun to Konohamaru, who was looking around in confusion, not understanding what he'd just gotten into. "Don't worry, Konohamaru! You'll get her back good as new!" The Haruno grinned. "I've put a few cats back together in my time."

"What."

"Right!" Sakura said, desperate to get the eye back. "I'm ready when you are Itachi."

The Uchiha nodded in assent, flipping Tora over with his off hand and raising his kunai in the other. The cat lay on its back and stared straight up, as if receiving a divine revelation. Its eyes were wide, wider than they should have been, and it looked like its pupils were shaking.

Suddenly, they shattered. As Konohamaru watched, both of Tora's pupils broke apart, splitting into six concentric rings.

"Uh… granny?" he said to the Hokage as Itachi brought the knife down. "Did you see-?"

Tora jerked her head towards Itachi as his knife made contact with her belly. The Uchiha paused, transfixed.

"Hmm," he said. Sakura realized what had stopped him, and her mouth dropped open. "Well... damn."

Itachi went flying, soaring straight backwards at an incredible speed. His Susano'o rose around him in a blink, and he hit the wall of the Hokage's office. He went through that, and the wall behind it. It only took about a second for him to clear the building entirely and strike the mountain the Hokage Monument sat atop. He didn't stop there, of course. The roughly man-sized hole in the mountain ended up being about a mile or so deep.

To everyone else, Itachi had just vanished. Sakura blinked.

'Déjà vu.'

Tora rolled over, hacking and wheezing. She glared up at Konohamaru, seething with malice, and the genin staggered backwards, cold sweat forming on his forehead. The cat snarled, and the Sandaime's grandson let out a high-pitched scream and leapt out the nearest window. Tsunade glared at the new hole.

"Couldn't even use the same window," she growled, before snapping her head back to the cat on her floor.

"I think we have bigger problems, Tsunade," Jiraiya said, frowning severely.

Tsunade blinked.

"The cat has the Rinnegan?" she asked incredulously.

Jiraiya nodded sagely, silently cursing Itachi for having stolen his shtick earlier. "It would appear so."

"Huh," Sakura said, putting her hands on her hips and leaning down to look at the cat, which seemed to be recovering its breath. "Guess we should have just split it up and fed it to all the jōnin."

"Gross."

"You're the Hokage!" Sakura shouted, leveling a finger. "You're the one who's supposed to come up with the impractical and dubious plans!"

"Actually," a menacing voice cut in, shortly followed by its owner. "That's my job."

Danzo Shimura strode into the office through the hole Itachi had left, imperiously thumping his cane on the floor. Tsunade rolled her eyes.

"Tsunade, I implore you," the old man ground out, piercing the Hokage with his single cold eye. Sakura looked back and forth between the two of them, not understanding what was happening. "You must hand this cat over to me. With it in Root's possession, Konoha's enemies will-"

"How did you even find out about this?" Jiraiya asked. "It's been maybe a minute at most."

"I have my sources," Danzo said mysteriously.

Tsunade shook her head. "It doesn't matter how he found out," she said. "Danzo, you're not getting the Rinnegan. I'm handing it over to-"

She looked down, and then to Sakura. The Hokage blinked, and then looked to her teammate.

"Where'd the cat go?" she asked.

Both Sakura and Tora had left while the Hokage and Danzo had been glaring at each other. Jiraiya scratched the back of his head, looking innocent.

"Fools!" Danzo snapped. "We've got to get that cat back! It's a threat to Konoha itself!"

Tsunade flinched at the notion that Danzo was right, before swallowing the bitterness that accompanied it. She turned to Jiraiya. "Danzo is…" Her tongue locked, and she gagged. "Danzo might not be wrong. We've got to get going, Jiraiya!"

The other Sannin nodded, and the Hokage and her teammate leapt out the two broken windows left by Tora and Konohamaru. Danzo stayed behind for a moment. He bent down, his knees creaking.

"Danzo-sama," the shattered container that had held the Rinnegan whispered. The henge exploded, and the Root-ninja was revealed, his torso torn to ribbons by Tora's rending claws and strangely durable face. "Did I accomplish the mission?"

"You did well," Danzo nodded. "You'll die forgotten and alone, with no one ever having known of your sacrifice."

"Sweet," the masked man said, and died. Danzo gave him a second of solemn silence, and then kicked the body under Tsunade's desk, leaving a very inconspicuous trail of blood.

"Now," he said, menacingly. "To catch that cat."

"Dumb cat!" Sakura yelled, chasing after Tora as she staggered across the rooftop. "Just because you have the Rinnegan, doesn't mean you can just walk out on the Hokage!"

Tora turned and hissed. The roof next to Sakura exploded, sending a rack of drying clothes soaring into the sky. The Haruno stared at it, and then back at the cat.

"That jutsu…" she whispered very loudly. "You can use the Shinra Tensei?!"

Tora coughed up a hairball in response. Sakura's eyes narrowed.

"So that's how it is," the medic murmured. She slid into a combat stance. "If that's the case, don't expect me to go easy on you!"

The cat stared back, unimpressed. It pulled itself upright, sitting primly on the sun-warmed roof, and purred.

"You smug bitch," Sakura hissed, carefully stalking forward. "You don't know anything about my family."

Tora licked the back of her left paw, and meowed. Sakura froze for a moment. "That's impossible."

"Mrow."

"Take that back!" Sakura screamed, charging forward with her fist raised. All thoughts of retrieving the Rinnegan were gone; she just wanted to crush the little animal in front of her. Tora idly raised a paw.

Sakura swung downwards. Tora pushed.

The medic was flung away, screaming across the roof and out into the village. She smashed through a water tower on top of a distant building and vanished in a flood of chill water. Tora laughed. Well, she was a cat, so it wasn't really a laugh, but another cat would have instantly recognized it as a laugh. It was that kind of sound.

The former pet turned to look out over the village, her eyes narrowing as she imagined everything that could be accomplished with her newfound power. Slowly, the cat floated off the rooftop, purring pleasantly.

And menacingly.

"What a wretched creature," Tsunade said, pulling her student from the wreckage of the water tower. Sakura shook bits and pieces of steel and weapons that shinobi had stored in the thing out of her sodden hair. "To think it would do such a thing…"

"It's learning, sensei!" Sakura said, pushing herself up onto unsteady feet. "It's already figured out one of the Rinnegan's powers! If we don't stop it soon, we'll have another Pain, right here in the village!"

Tsunade nodded gravely. "And it's a cat," she said, for indeed, that made things at least ten times worse. The Hokage sighed. "Let's just hope Jiraiya finds it soon."

"Oh, that's bad." Jiraiya shook his head. "That's real bad."

The market was a warzone. Everything that could have been knocked over had been knocked over; everything that could have been peed on had been peed on, as well as some things Jiraiya was pretty sure couldn't be peed on. Everywhere, shuddering men and woman lay on the ground or shakily tried to make it to their feet, shivering in fear and disgust.

"That was no cat," one man muttered, staring at his hands as if they were new. "That was some sort of demon." He looked up at Jiraiya, his eyes bottomless wells containing only horror. "Nothing could eat that much! What have you shinobi done?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "You'll get compensated. Where did it go?"

The man shakily pointed north, where the carnage was thickest, and Jiraiya set off, his shoes clacking down the street. Everywhere he looked, there was some new atrocity. There was a pile of birds three meters tall, every single one of which was missing its head. Their blood mingled with what seemed like a lake of various sauces, and yet more urine.

"This is," Jiraiya mused, "the oddest day of my life."

He turned a corner, and stopped for a second.

"Yup," he nodded. "Definitely."

Tora looked up at him. The cat was floating in the air, its face smeared with an unbelievable amount of food. It was juggling two genin with its mind: a little girl with stupid hair, and a depressed looking boy. The girl was screaming and flailing, but her comrade seemed to have accepted his lot in life. He had just crossed his arms and resolved to stare straight ahead, waiting for the telekinetic humiliation to end.

"Hmm," Jiraiya said. "Aren't you guys sensei's grandson's teammates?"

The girl screamed some sort of affirmative. The cat grinned, and Jiraiya sighed. He stepped forward.

"All right, I don't want to hurt you," he said. "But-"

Tora opened her mouth, revealing a laser cannon. She fired, and the bright red beam seared away two feet of Jiraiya's hair as the man ducked the blast. Somewhere behind him, there was a tremendous explosion and confused screams. The Sannin reared back up, his eyes murderous, and his burning hair flowed dramatically in the sudden wind.

"Nevermind," Jiraiya said calmly. "I'm going to beat you so hard every cat in Konoha will keel over."

Tora's eyes widened, and she dropped Konohamaru's teammates.

"Mrow?"

"Too late." The Toad Sage started striding forward, and Tora shot up into the sky, floating away. The man bared his teeth.

"It's not that easy!" he growled, leaping after the cat. His burning hair writhed around him, sharpening itself. A volley of hair needles leapt forward, and Tora repelled them with a wall of force. The cat snarled, flinging its tail at Jiraiya. Metallic burs detached from the end of it, exploding with like small bombs and flinging a hail of metal spikes back at the Sannin. Jiraiya's hair extended, acting as a shield, and the man growled.

"That all you-!?" he roared.

The Shinra Tensei hit him like a freight train and pummeled the man into the ground, digging a three-foot crater and embedding him in the concrete. Everything for tens of meters around was blown away, clearing the street. Jiraiya struggled upwards.

"Okay," he groaned. "That was pretty good. But-!"

Tora hit him again, doubling the size and depth of the crater.

"Blurg," Jiraiya said intelligently.

Tora hmmphed, and raised one tiny paw. Moegi and Udon scrambled over to the fallen Sannin, prying him from the concrete. As they did, a small black sphere pushed itself from Tora's pads.

Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of tiny shining forms lifted up across the village, converging on the cat. Udon looked up, his eyes widening in awe behind his glasses.

"Flying fish!" he gasped. He was right. Every fish in Konoha was floating in the air, forming a sphere above Tora. The cat triumphantly mewed, and cast her hand down, throwing the fishy sphere directly at Jiraiya and the genin.

"Not flying," Jiraiya groaned, grabbing Udon's shoulder and pulling himself up. "It's her trump card," he said shakily, before flashing a grin. "Just as I planned."

The Sannin drew back his head, filling his gut with chakra and his mouth with air.

"Fuuton: Vacuum Bullets!"

The croak of an old man tore apart the gathering ball of fish in a vicious detonation, sending guts and scales raining down on everyone below. Danzo landed next to Jiraiya, his eye narrowed.

"Fool!" he declared. It was his fourth favorite word, right behind "Konoha" and before "tree." "You were almost defeated by a common housecat, Jiraiya! Have you really fallen so far?"

The Sannin stared at the bandaged man, blinking. "I…" he said, at a loss for words. "You seriously didn't see what I was doing there?"

"Failing to protect the village!" Danzo said confidently.

"Those fish were dripping with oil!" Jiraiya shouted, tearing more of his hair out. He'd probably lost three pounds or so over the last few minutes. "That fish-ball was going to become the bomb that would end this fight!"

"Ah," Danzo said. The rain of fish guts stopped.

"It never would have worked."

"You don't know that!"

"Mrow!" Tora meowed mightily.

"See?" Jiraiya gestured. "Even the cat agrees with me!"

"You agree with an enemy of Konoha, Jiraiya!?" Danzo asked, going pale with shock. "How-!"

Tora flattened both the men with her Shinra Tensei, burying them and the genin in the concrete. Then the cat turned, floating deeper into the village. Moegi started quietly crying. Jiraiya slowly turned his head towards Danzo, grinding concrete away as he did.

"This is why you were never Hokage," he said matter of factly.

Danzo's crying sounded a lot like Moegi's, with more gross sobbing intermixed

"Uh, Sasuke?" Naruto said, standing up from the top of the monument. Sasuke came up beside him, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Yeah?"

"I think gravity cat is pissed."

Sasuke blinked. "Topical," he said dryly.

"It's not even funny," Itachi agreed, suddenly bursting from the stone beneath their feet. Both Sasuke and Naruto jumped back with girlish yelps. Itachi clambered out of the hole, brushing bits of stone off his shoulder.

"… Did you burrow from the bottom of the mountain up through my dad's head?" Naruto asked, looking down the hole. Itachi shrugged. "Rude."

"I doubt your father would care," Sasuke said, studiously avoiding eye contact with his brother. "We've got bigger problems. For instance," he pointed, "I'm pretty sure that cat just sucked out that bird's soul."

The crow fell from the sky with empty eyes, and Itachi shivered. Naruto cupped his chin. "Hmm. That does seem like a problem."

Two clones popped into existence besides him, and he held his hand out along with them. A moment later, a keening shuriken of pure wind was held above Naruto's head, the destructive potential to level buildings and shred men at the cellular level.

Naruto tossed it without fanfare at the floating, soul-devouring cat, and then turned, dusting his hands off. "There," he said. "Done."

He waited, staring at Sasuke and Itachi, and after a second his shoulder slumped.

"It didn't explode," he said. The notion that something he'd thrown hadn't exploded was far more depressing than Naruto thought it would have been.

"The cat absorbed it," Sasuke deadpanned.

"It's truly a fierce opponent," Itachi said. "For…" he paused, staring ahead, clearly waiting for something.

Four seconds passed, and the older Uchiha frowned. "Damn," he muttered. "No wind up here." He dramatically swept his hair back, letting it fall back in front of his face. "For it possesses the Rinnegan."

Naruto blinked. "A cat? What'd it do, eat it?"

Itachi nodded. Naruto blinked again. "Oh." He shuffled his feet. "Hmm. Maybe we should have fed it to all the pets around here, then."

"You and Sakura think very differently, Naruto," Itachi said gravely, "but you're clearly meant to be on the same team."

"Are we just going to ignore the cat, then?" Sasuke asked. Tora was currently rapidly scratching meters of steel away from an apartment building with a massive metal claw she had manifested from her back. She purred contently as she did.

"It's immune to ninjutsu," Itachi said. "We'll need to come up with a plan. No doubt we will need to utilize all our skills as shinobi we have learned over the years. One of us may even be dramatically maimed. But… this is our duty. As Shinobi of the Leaf, we must-!"

"Hey, is that Tsunade?" Naruto asked, peering out towards one corner of the village. Sasuke ambled over next to him, activating his Sharingan. After a moment, Itachi sighed and joined them, activating his own doujutsu.

"It appears to be, yes," he said, focusing. "And… she has someone with her."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "And… is that-?"

Even from two miles away, they heard Tsunade's roar as she picked up each of the shinobi with her and hurled them with all her might at the floating cat. They also heard what the two shinobi yelled. Well, one of them barked.

Hey, not all ninja are human.

"Sōtōrō!"

There was suddenly a massive double-headed dog hurtling through the sky, barking as loud as it possibly could. Tora turned towards the massive animal, and every aspect of the cat's body curled up in terror. With a horrified whine, the cat turned tale and flung itself out of the village, screaming in cat-terror the whole way.

Kiba and Akamaru landed, and dozens of grateful villagers swarmed the enormous beast, joyous tears dripping down their face. They petted the not-quite-a-Cerberus, and the mighty fusion of dog and man panted happily, rolling over on its belly and whining.

Tora didn't stop fleeing through the sky till she was completely out of sight, a tiny black speck vanishing over the horizon.

"Huh," Naruto said. "Looks like Kiba saved the whole village."

"Neat," Sasuke said, and they jumped off the monument.

Itachi stayed, wistfully looking out over the village.

"One day," he said. Gravely. "One day I'll have an important part in this bullshit."

Tora didn't stop till she was a country or two away. Only then did she descend to the ground in a pleasant glen, panting as heavily as her little cat lungs could manage. She stretched out and shook her body, puffing her fur up. This was the first time she'd had this must space… and peace and quiet.

That dog had been very big. And had had a lot of teeth.

The cat looked around wistfully. Perhaps it could become used to this tranquility. Set up a little cat kingdom, out here in the wild. Teach the other animals about the power they didn't even understand. Go back to Konoha and get revenge on the shinobi who always brought her back to the Daimyo and his wretched wife.

A shadow emerged behind the cat, and Tora spun, her fur bristling. She hissed, and the shadow chuckled.

"There's so much hatred in you, little cat," Black Zetsu rattled. He stuck out a formless darkness that was nevertheless a hand, offering it to Tora. "With those eyes and my plans, we could upend the world. We could restore the natural order of things, and return this place to those it really belongs to." The shadow's unnatural yellow eyes wandered upwards.

"What do you say?" it cackled. "Could we have an alliance in our hatred?"

Tora stared at the shadow, cocking her head. A vicious cat-grin spread across the little animal's face, and she nodded. Zetsu threw back his head, wild laughter overtaking him. The menacing sound echoed across the clearing, and everything alive wilted under it.

"Perfect," he snarled. "Now-!"

Tora bit down on Black Zetsu's outstretched hand, and started chewing.

"What… what are you doing?" Zetsu asked, a gradual terror overtaking him. Tora made eye contact with it, and the Rinnegan gleamed. Her chewing intensified. "No. NO!" Zetsu started screaming, being drawn into Tora's mouth. "NOOO!" it wailed. "SAVE ME! MOTHER, SAVE ME!"

Soon, all that was left was the shadow's face. Tora's mouth opened wide, ready to swallow the last of the sentient darkness.

"MOMMY!"

Glomp.

And just like that, Black Zetsu was gone.

Tora sat there for a second, her tail swishing back and forth. Then, she burped loudly. It sounded more like a tiger than a cat.

Then, she gracefully stood up, and wandered into the forest to find something to pee on.

AN

*Points at AlmostElectric*

She made me do it!

Well, she supplied the idea, at least. After that, how could I NOT?