The Dark Side of Akatsuki. Chapter 9

Title: A Series of Critical Failures

The years passed by in a blur of activity. Team 7, through unusual luck and misfortune, managed to get itself embroiled in some of the strangest conflicts imaginable. A quirk of fate, perhaps. After each ridiculous mission, Kakashi would tell his young, but growing, charges, "This really isn't normal for three Genin your ages," but eventually even he seemed to find it too silly to keep repeating it. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, however, kept it as a sort of mantra. It was proof that they had seen it all.

Three years passed, and the village knew peace of a sort that was unheard of in living memory. But peace was always a fragile thing. Unnoticed, the enemies of that peace prepared to make their moves.

Tobi was, by this point, frothing with impatience. He had planned and prepared for nearly a decade, and now it was time.

One day, with little fanfare, Tobi brought one of his allies, Sasori of the Desert, to a strange cavern hidden deep within a mountain inside the Land of Earth. Sasori possessed a skill that was crucial to his plans. No one else in the world had the control of magnetism that the old puppeteer had through the virtue of owning the puppeted corpse of the previous Kazekage, a man who had last owned that unique ability.

With a surge of power, ancient and venerable devices were coerced into performing their ancient and venerable functions. With no announcement at all, the game moved into its next phase.

-Present-

-Grand Line-

The red-haired navigator was sitting at her desk, buried in the bowels of the caravel known as the Going Merry, when she saw it. There was a twitch of movement from the device strapped to her wrist. That was frightening. The Log Pose was supposed to be their lifeline, the only way to reliably find an island in the Grand Line. It was under no circumstances that she was aware of supposed to change heading while out at sea.

With nothing but a tiny rustling noise from inside the glass orb, their course had changed one hundred and thirty-four degrees.

Her first thoughts were contemplations on incompetence. Obviously, the idiots she called crew-members had somehow managed to get wildly off-course. Zoro was probably following the clouds again. Really, this was her fault for expecting anything better of them when it came to having a sense of direction.

Except, hold on. That wasn't right, was it? The pose needle had jumped in an instant, but she hadn't felt the ship move at all.

Nami knew that their official first-mate, Zoro, had a catastrophically bad sense of direction, but surely it only seemed like it could warp space, right? Being unable to tell forward from backward wasn't contagious, was it?

She stood, cursing her luck, then made her way up the steep stairs into the gunnery room. Opening the lower door to the deck, she saw that everything was fairly normal. Zoro was sleeping in the corner, Usopp and Luffy were arguing about something above-deck, Chopper was probably up in the crow's nest, and Sanji was gone, presumably in his kitchen. Their newest 'passenger,' if she could be called that, was sitting on the foredeck, and was the only one who had turned to watch Nami as she came through the door.

Robin scared her, to be honest, and it had only been a day since they had left Alabasta behind them. Only a day since Robin had been a presumed enemy. Well, the rest of the crew might have no attention spans to speak of, but Nami, for one, would keep an eye on their mysterious black-haired observer.

For now, she had to get everyone's attention.

"Everyone, listen up! We've got a problem!"

There, now she just had to wait for the dust to settle. With a scream, Usopp abandoned his argument on the starboard side, threw up his hands and ran, shrieking, toward the port side. In the process he tripped their captain, Luffy, who went sprawling to the deck. Half a second later, their cook, Sanji, burst through the upper-deck door smashing into Usopp as he ran past, sending their gunner flying head over heels out over the railing to land on the lower deck directly in front of Nami. As he fell, Usopp let out an ear-piercing shriek. This startled Chopper up above who toppled over the side to tumble screaming from the crow's nest, landing in a heap directly on top of Usopp.

Sanji ignored all of this. With a shout of "Nami! What's wrong?!" he strode forward, stepping on Luffy's head in the process and grinding his shoes in a little more than he had to. Hearing Sanji's voice, Zoro stopped snoring and blearily opened his eyes, already scowling at his hated rival.

That just left their mystery crewmember, Robin. A glance showed that she was watching the debacle with her mouth slightly open, brow furrowed, as if she couldn't believe what she had just seen. Nami rolled her eyes in understanding, then continued.

"We're off-course, and I don't know why. It happened suddenly, just a second ago. Did anyone see anything odd?" she called out, "-and somebody please help Usopp get his nose out from between those floorboards."

"Hey, you jerk," shouted Sanji, pointing at Zoro, "You were supposed to keep an eye out!"

Zoro blearily scanned the featureless, blue horizon on both sides before offering his opinion, "Still looks fine to me."

Nami shook her head. Zoro wasn't any use, Sanji had been indoors, Usopp was stuck face-down gathering nose-splinters, Chopper was helping him, and she'd never get a usable answer out of Luffy, anyway.

That only left…

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