Standing in his current room Obito was livid, which was nothing new; he'd accepted the curse of hatred when he watched Kakashi kill Rin. It had been about five years since he'd released the Nine tailed Fox on Konoha and the Akatsuki's plans began to move forward. He'd used the name Madara to convince Nagato and Konan to join him and had them recruit other S-rank criminals. He'd also gone by Tobi to complete a few things behind the scenes. For the first five years after the attack on Konoha everything was going great until another group of missing-nins showed up, who had started calling themselves Nisshoku Kari.

Now to be honest he'd expected that there'd be some individuals who'd try to imitate the Akatsuki's success. The problem was that these guys were far more organized then he'd anticipated. They mainly started to make a name for themselves by harassing Earth Country. The Iwa-nins were incapable of dealing with the large scale Guerilla tactics. So they had been hired to deal with the problem. The Tsuchikage, Onoki had offered them the job and they could keep any bounty they collected; Kakuzu was practically drooling at the prospect of the money they would make. Obito had to agree that this would set them up nicely financially.

The problem was that they didn't understand the scope of the situation until it was too late. The bulk of their force consisted of bandits who'd taken a crash course in Ninjutsu, nothing too dangerous. However their numbers were near endless, and reminded the Uchiha of cockroaches, stamp out one infestation and another took its place. Only facing off against their C or B rank commanders when they'd finally hunt the fools down, this was incredibly difficult because of the terrain.

This game of cat and mouse lasted about a year before Nisshoku Kari threw all they had at Rain Country. Apparently they traced the Akatsuki all the way back to their base of operation and mounted a massive attack against them. While they had pushed them back the end result wasn't pretty. Kakuzu had lost all but one of his hearts and was in no shape to hunt them down, most of Sasori's puppets had been destroyed, Nagato had been poisoned and was now incredibly ill, and Orochimaru was now dead, which might not be such a bad thing. Only himself, Zetsu, and Konan had escaped serious injury or lose.

Now if Nisshoku Kari had been permanently dealt with then and there he'd probably look at it as a necessary sacrifice, but no, they had escaped to outside the Element Nations into the Bad Lands where their base was most likely located. They also continued doing raids against Earth Country with even greater vigor than before. Onoki was not pleased and had terminated their contract, not that the Akatsuki had a means to deal with them.

However their reputation was in shambles and fewer people were hiring them meaning little to no revenue, and the icing on this horrible cake was that somehow Nisshoku Kari had located their funds and stolen it. Which brought the whole concept of the plan into question, the original time frame had been in five to eight years before they started their major operations. Now however it looked like it could take over a decade for them to start. They needed to rebuild funds, recruit new members, and destroy Nisshoku Kari.

Obito let out a sigh, oh well no one said this would be easy. Nagato was recovering nicely, Kakuzu and Sasori were back to near full strength, and in hindsight Orochimaru's death was probably for the best. The man was a wild card that would turn on anyone to get what he wants. Besides it wasn't like this would make any real difference in the long run.