It was on a Sunday the world learned Nii Yugito was dead.

:: ::

"Are you stupid?"

"Say that to my fucking face, asshole!"

Not that he'd already been facing the idiot since the start of this conversation, but the leash around Kakuzu's anger felt looser today. Hidan still bitched and it was still building up to the point where he might tear his head from his body, his stitchwork from their last fight be damned, but his patience might last another few days. Maybe even a week if they run into Uzumaki anytime soon.

"Our target is the Jinchuuriki. Taking the direct path to Konoha will have us run into an ambush," he said. "We're taking a different route. It's been three days. Sarutobi Asuma's body would have been delivered to them by now."

Sarutobi's body would've cashed in a fair price had he been the one to turn it in—the burns along the right side of his face skimmed his cheek, first degree except for scattered centers of second, the cause of death a simple stake to the heart, and he still remained a completely recognizable corpse of the Shugonin Juunishi like that self-righteous monk.

Blasphemous, Hidan complained all the way to the Collection Office, as if there was anything holy about them to begin with.

Hidan huffed and slung his scythe across his back. "Fine, fine, I fucking guess."

They started down the opposite direction of the main path before Kakuzu felt a shift in his left cloak sleeve. His mask hid his sigh as he reached in and pulled out a ratty bloodied hitai-ate with its minute scratches on the metal and a solid chunk of a right-plate corner missing.

"Your scar is embarrassing." He tossed it over before he kept walking. "Cover it up."

"Wait, you actually picked up my headband? Kakuzu! How come you've been holdin' out on how nice you are?"

"Be quiet," he snapped from further into the thicket.

"Tell me the truth! You like me, huh? Huh? Oi, Kuzu-chan, don't be shy!"

Another quiet sigh slipped past his lips as he made no motion to slow his step. Things have been busy as of late where he hadn't been able to stay in Ame for more than half a week and the days he was there, it was nothing but paperwork and numbers and Sakura sitting at the other desk in his office working on documents he never asked her to work on, but never stopped her from turning in.

The stitches on his cheeks dragged against his mask with every step he took, scratch, scratch, scratch.

They were particularly religious back in Taki. Wooden rosaries wound around wrists like cheap bracelets and celebrations brought people to the streets every month to fill them with food and song and personal statuettes his neighbors brought out from the small shrines in their homes. He'd watch from the kitchen window strewn in wisps of tayabak blooms as his father hummed nearby, stewing kalderetang kambing in a huge pot before all the uncles, aunts, and cousins started coming over.

He remembered—

Kakuzu squashed those lines of thought at their roots.

He was the only attentive one here. There was no time to waste in some worthless past.

But it was only when they started walking over the cracked earth of the claypan desert he noticed... something.

Dark shadows stretched from the charred skeletons of trees breathing in air too dry for them to fully decompose. Raptors circled overhead, and one of them eased off course to land on a branch high behind them. It wasn't unusual when the only food pickings here were old bones and cloth scraps of shinobi who've long lost, yet its gaze sunk too heavy for a bird whose neck he could snap with just a pointer and a thumb.

The skin on the back of his neck curled and his threads shot out a hand towards it.

The desert won't mind one more dead thing.

Hidan stopped and half turned. "The hell was that?"

"Nothing." The pieces of Kakuzu's arm fit back together and he flicked away semiplume feathers. "I had an itch."

His partner eyed him for a moment, and he could almost see the competence that prompted their Leader to recruit him in the first place. It didn't quite push through his shell of religious nutcase and chronic stupidity, but if Gods were real they made idiots too, and this one might be his own personal punishment of turning his back on faith.

"Fucking hurry up then. We don't got all day."

The edges of their sandals dirty with light dust and his skin's grown tacky from where he pressed the tips of his fingers to the edges of his palms—it wasn't the heat so much that Kakuzu minded, but the dryness. Taki was always warm and damp with a stickiness in the air that never ebbed even in the colder months, then again those colder months only ever dropped a few degrees from the sweltering summers. Ame, maybe, pressed its humidity against the side of his face and could have reminded him of what used to be home, but its touch always chilled and the chakra in its droplets wisped about his face like smoke after a drag.

Not home. Never home.

The shadows in the yellowed grass shivered.

"Hidan."

"Yeah, I got it."

They leapt apart and over his shoulder a pitch black shade, like a snake the way it writhed and flickered, forked at the end to creep at them both. A pair of kunai sailed at their heads with red borders bright on the paper tags fixed to their loops—a Konohagakure hallmark—and Kakuzu caught the glint of the metal cable from Hidan's scythe whipping out to divert one path as his own hand darkened and he reached out to stop the other.

Twin explosions rattled in his ears as his vision smogged and he sent one of his hearts encased in a bundle of tendrils underground, his right forearm following after it.

A metallic clatter rang to his right as he slid out of the explosion, soot on his cloak and even grittier dust on his skin. That impractical scythe wedged in the ground somewhere Hidan wasn't and, speaking of, he was still in one piece.

Another glint.

"Above!" Kakuzu barked, and shinobi was in the air hurling another set of explosive kunai.

No, not kunai, he realized when the blades soared past their heads to embed themselves in the dirt under their shadows and failed to detonate.

The same Konoha-nin from their previous encounter, Nara Shikamaru, landed in the clearing between them. There wasn't much on this one from the Book, but there was a Nara Shikaku, Konoha's Jounin Commander valued at seventy-two million and a little over double of what Sarutobi Asuma's was. Genius level intellect, shadow manipulation, and if this Nara was anything of a direct relation, he supposed the game would be different this round.

Last time, Konoha had provided nothing special.

This time, Kakuzu and Hidan couldn't command their own limbs.

"Motherfucker," Hidan grit. His entire body trembled, but his resistance wasn't enough to break through. "How the fuck did you pull this shit off?"

"Chakra blades," Nara said, and he would've passed off as lazy if it weren't for the taut muscles in his neck. "Special metal utilizing certain chakra characteristics of the user... you probably don't want to listen to me ramble about that." His eyes darkened. "Those weapons are a memento of Asuma, the man you killed."

Kakuzu respected revenge. He'd done it himself all those years ago, the blood of his superiors staining his forearms and bathing the imprisonment tattoos he couldn't scrape away. As he forced his head as far up as he could manage to better his view of their current opponent, he observed.

Clever. Cautious. Nara maintained his distance because not everyone's cards were right side up, least of all his. But in the face of two Akatsuki, he knew there were two or three other bodies hidden somewhere within hearing distance. Sensing had never been his or Hidan's strong suit, but what they lacked in awareness they made up for in durability—not to mention just how many times he'd been in a situation just like this.

Living a long life had its advantages.

"Fucker! The hell're you so quiet for?" His partner spat. "And the fuck is your ass doing getting caught too?!"

Loud-mouth.

"Oi, oi, oi! We're kinda screwed and you're ignoring me?"

Nara cocked a brow. "Kinda? No, after getting everything to this point, you were finished the second I caught you."

His shadow darkened, stretching and clawing a narrow path toward Hidan before it engulfed his shadow in a transfer of control. A small part of that shadow lifted off the dirt and wrenched the chakra blade free.

"What bullshit are you pulling now?!"

"It's just like you said. Last time I made the mistake of going after you two in the wrong order, and I'm not going to let that happen twice."

Loud-mouthed imbecile.

Nara shifted his left leg backwards, prompting the same motion from Hidan but with his right—an interesting logistic. If facing one another resulted in a mirrored movement, would hooking one's shadow from the back result in identical movement? Would they be able to remove control if the entire field was darkened, or would the prior link be isolated until the connection broke? Maybe a trial for later on, and Kakuzu watched—could only watch—as Hidan backed up to his wayward scythe and made to grab the snath at a much higher point than his usual grip.

Then he charged the same time and direction as Nara, both towards him, and sliced the weapon at Kakuzu's head.

A forearm erupted from the parched dirt to rip the chakra blade off the shadow it pinned and Kakuzu ducked, three red blades slit his right sleeve instead of his skull. Ba-dump went his encased heart bulging from the cracks like a tumor as he leapt back and pulled the organ through his arm cavity and reattached the limb to the rest of his body.

"You're young. And intelligent, unlike my partner," he said, tendrils spiraling through the holes in his skin. Nara grit his teeth. "Confidence is good, but never get cocky until your opponent has his spine torn from his throat."

Hidan rolled his eyes. "You lose one fight against Kisame's fucking—wait, the fuck you mean 'unlike my partner'?"

"Did your hearing get damaged the same way your brain did?"

Thankfully there wasn't another grating, whiny retort before Hidan surged forward once more, the scythe a blur with the nonsensical cuts and slashes his arm was compelled to make to force Kakuzu back and back and back until he hit the back of one of the grayed trees.

A Konoha-nin-turned-spiked-ball crashed into him from above.

And just as the cloud of brown cleared and that second shinobi—Akimichi—skidded out into a retreat beside his teammate, Kakuzu's skin faded back to its usual color. Unharmed.

One more card flipped when Nara zeroed in on the use of his Domu. They'd lose the angle on physical attacks now, maybe turn to aim those at Hidan because they at least could take off his head while the other Konohans had yet to show their faces. Nara locked on Hidan, removing himself from a direct offensive, and the Akimichi had already proven useless against him. Around a similar price to his teammate, most likely, with the both of them somewhere lower than the Sarutobi, give or take a couple million to account for whatever weight their names held.

Hidan erupted in a flurry of laughter despite the shackles on his shadow. "Our turn now! Kuzu-chan, get me out this jutsu!"

"Fine. I—"

A thousand birds chirped in his ears and after a brief flash of white light, a hand shot through his chest. Electricity warped his veins and curdled his blood and behind him, Hatake Kakashi's sharingan cut a serrated glare down the side of his face. One hundred fifty-five million, one of the highest Konoha had to offer, just shut down one of the hearts in his chest.

Annoying.

"What the hell's with that?" Hidan scoffed. "Don't tell me that whole physical attack thing was bullshit after all."

Hatake rooted his hand deeper into his ribcage. "Lightning beats earth. We're not very compatible."

Nara twitched, Kakuzu's eyes tracking the way his shoulders hunched and how his hairline beaded with sweat. A limit on shadow possession, then.

He allowed his eyes to drift shut as he fell forward into the fractured crater the Akimichi had made, and stilled. Tendrils wrapped his remaining hearts in one, two, three, four more layers and he slowed their beats down to something near undetectable.

"You're getting so fucking old," he heard Hidan drawl off to the side. "Shot down like a bitch."

There were those shrieking birds again before Hatake took a single step forward, voice angled in Hidan's direction. "And you're next."

But before he could think of taking that second step, Kakuzu was up and throwing a dark gray foot into Hatake's chest, sending him careening through several trees with enough pressure to rattle the petrified forest around them. Hatake's body caught on a particularly solid stump that only fragmented when he landed.

"And you had such a cool, quippy one-liner too," Hidan grinned, and Kakuzu had half a mind to wring his neck here and now, consequences from their enemies be damned. He never understood the appeal of taunting on the battlefield—his partner did it nearly every fight and in the few times he'd been on assignment with Kisame, his tongue loosened the more the fight dragged and by the time he'd get to the point of ruthless thrill, it was always after blood pooled the fields.

His daughter was the same way.

Kakuzu shucked off his tattered cloak. No use for it now with the lightning-cracked pieces of one of his masks embedded in his back. They were far past the point of indulging in these games, and maybe it had been that pinch of nostalgia mingling that he lost his bearing for a moment, but they were on a schedule and they had no time to get sidetracked.

The thick sutures holding him together stretched and strained and broke, eventually, when the ripples underneath dark skin lashed like wild vines in a storm.

The horror on their opponents' faces was like any other he'd seen over his years, and so was the smug pull to Hidan's lips. Blasphemous, was what he should be accusing; not turning in bodies for money, not killing to check off names like a treasure hunt. It was proof the idiot's priorities never had a sensical order, thinking that stealing five hearts—four now—was less sinful than the jobs they were meant to do.

Kakuzu attributed that one to the cult that stewed Hidan's brain.

Nara's control severed just as four masks burst out of Kakuzu's back, pitch black, itching, waiting like they were their own possessed shadows.

"I pray for Jashin-sama to enjoy the sacrifices I intend to deliver," Hidan said. His eyes chilled and finally, he took something seriously.

Then the cracked mask's body wobbled into a puddle as its final heartbeats petered out.

"Are you—it dies right after I'm done talking shit? God, fuck, you're the goddamn worst! I've had it down to my fucking balls with your—"

The repercussions of speaking too soon.

"Shut up and stay back. I'm taking care of this."

"Uh, the fuck you are? If you think I'm letting some teenagers serve my ass after last week you've got another fucking thing coming. Come on, Kuzu-chan, let's do our usual."

Kakuzu grunted and folded his fingers into the ram seal. "Ang tigas ng ulo mo."

And Hidan licked his lips, grin growing wider. "You mahal me."

The scythe shifted, angled, slashed in a red smear that skimmed against Hatake's kunai and pushed him back. Clang, their bodies melded into kicked up dust and dry air, schick, fast, agile, twin blurs on the ground then in the sky then launching off branches, zring, orange sparks crackled from metal against metal, mettle against mettle, madness against moxie.

Hatake would be worth the hundred and fifty-five million tag.

Wind Mask shot just above Hidan's shoulder and drew in a billowing breath.

Fuuton: Atsugai.

And the blast shredded through the desert like a tornado.

Trees upended and the Konoha-nin displaced and somewhere through the destruction where the gale did nothing but whip his hood against his skin, Kakuzu picked out what was left of him to take care of, dark green eyes roving the grounds. One, Nara, who pulled a scroll from his bag. Two, Akimichi, who widened his stance and braced for the next move.

Lightning Mask charged its Gian in its porcelain mouth.

Kakuzu's gaze snapped up. There—Three, a blonde kunoichi in traditional Yamanaka styling who'd been quick enough to vacate a host raptor's consciousness before he could snap both their necks.

She wouldn't have been able to do much in the wake of a beam of electricity that could raze a settlement except, he supposed, Hatake and his lightning affinity when he dropped in front of the rest of his team and caught the discharge. Like a rubber stopped in a circuit he insulated the attack, drawing the stream to his outstretched hands and equalizing before it could reach anyone else.

At the end, his palms smoked and his skin barely burnt pink.

Hidan sidled back up beside his partner, scythe slung over one shoulder as he regarded the group with a new, appraising eye. "Color me surprised. You're the first one we weren't able to fuck up with that combo, Kakashi."

"It's that sharingan, but we'll see if it will help him here." Kakuzu curled his fingers rat-dog-tiger, and Fire Mask tipped to the side as if it were a dog. "Katon: Zukokku."

With a critical eye, he watched as a tsunami of flame surged the grounds.

Kakuzu jerked his chin upwards as another cloud of thick gray smoke heavied the air, and his partner spun his scythe once before launching himself through. But this time it was only until it cleared out did Hidan skid back close as Hatake retreated to guard dog that inept team.

Evenly matched, then. Or at least something close to it.

The scythe's blade tips dug into the overturned earth. "Oh, by the way, does Konoha bury their dead or what? Travel around enough and all they are is a pain in the fucking ass, especially when you've got a Kuzu-chan who'll say shit like 'We're gonna dig up the body and exchange him for money anyway.'" Hidan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "And here I thought I could have some fun with that bearded motherfucker, and he went down like it was nothing."

"You had your head chopped off," Kakuzu said.

"Shut up!"

When Hidan turned back to the Konoha-nin, his gaze was already half-manic. "You guys are probably out for revenge, huh? But from what I've seen, you've got fuck-all to show for it." He lifted his weapon to rest it back on his shoulder. "You look like rookie kids, so you've gotta be his students. Well if it's been that dumbass teaching you, looks like you won't amount to much."

"Don't you dare insult Asuma-sensei!" Akimichi spat, darkening as red as his outfit. He would've leapt forward if Nara hadn't grabbed his shoulder to hold him back.

"No, seriously, how the hell did you make it this far? Konoha always trains their shinobi so fucking worthless. Kuzu-chan might've called you smart, but that doesn't mean shit if you won't even come at me like you want to kill me. That red-eyed kunoichi trained up her brats at least half-decent, so what's so great about this Sarutobi fucker?"

(Shikamaru narrowed his eyes. Red-eyed kunoichi?)

Then the side of his mouth quirked as he taunted, "Fatty," and sometimes it surprised Kakuzu that a coherent ploy could run through that head. Another rag on that Konoha-brand softness, and it had him thinking.

Akimichi charged with a roar, and Kakuzu half-noted the action as his mind wandered. Sakura had been trained the moment she could stand on two feet and hold a kunai at the same time. She was smart, hardy, lucky to have lasted through escaping Konoha and winning a cold-blooded spar. Capability wasn't contagious, yet both Kiba and Shino had far proven they weren't just decoration.

Steel and seals and healing... Yuuhi did raise this team different to the Konohan standard, and it looked like she was the only one with the mind to do so.

Akimichi's shadow pulled him back before any of the red blades could draw blood from his skin and the jounin intervened once more, if that were a surprise to anyone, but Hidan and the Masks would keep Hatake busy.

Half a second and he was in front of Akimichi whose backside was stuck in the dirt. Behind him, Nara flinched, terror in his wide eyes that Akimichi took as a sign to enlarge an arm and throw it forward. An all around physical attacker? Unstrategic.

Kakuzu caught the fist with one hand and took on enough force to push him a meter or so back before there was a fist in the teen's face, another in his stomach, an elbow that hurtled him into the base of a tree. He didn't even need to harden his limbs to stone and wondered the sorts of shinobi Konoha churned out these days—if he was around Sakura's age and assigned on an Akatsuki mission, he should have been able to do something as elementary as blocking.

He threw a foot in Akimichi's chest before he could raise his head and shoved him through the bark and through this child's expectations of having any contribution.

"Chouji!" Nara shouted.

His right forearm detached and took hold of the teen's round face to drag him back into the sun. A pitiful effort cut down in mere seconds—

Three shuriken whistled and he leaned back to avoid the pinch he'd feel if he'd been hit. Yamanaka poised herself with a kunai brandished and a stance promising a fight, and he almost sighed.

"Little girl..." he started but didn't get to finish when those thin black vines slithered to snag his own from under his feet. They twisted and turned and leapt up like living ribbons, but shattered when Lightning Mask lashed tongues of electricity at their caster.

The next mistake Yamanaka made was turning towards her other teammate. Kakuzu propels his left forearm to lock around her neck and the other to re-latch around Akimichi's, and he dragged both their thrashing forms closer and off the ground. They kicked, clawed, made him narrow his eyes at such a pathetic display.

An image of a pink-haired child blurred at the forefront of his mind. Kisame doted on her too much, prompting Leader to send him on missions more often than not and leaving Konan and her barbed love to keep the girl's knuckles red, skin purple, but her heart beating. He himself had never cared to be kind because softness would only kill her sooner. But that moment she'd proven her wit under the gazebo and her brutality with bits of Hidan's flesh under her fingernails, she proved enough she couldn't have been raised any other way.

"I'll never understand how Sakura thrived growing alongside a generation like yours."

Their only answer was to choke. His grip tightened with a force just shy of shattering their spines.

Nara closed in from a distance with a furrow just shy of panic on his brow and a minute scroll pulled from his vest that he chucked open on the dirt and stomped on the circular, central seal. Water flowed from beneath his sole and rushed the clearing—its chakra inducement kept the ground from soaking it up and just as it lapped against his ankles did Nara shoot into the air armed with explosive kunai and he realized Lightning Mask was crackling at the mouth.

Kakuzu cast the two deadweights aside and erected a wall to bear the explosion as another bout of electricity rocketed through his bones.

When the haze cleared the Konoha team retreated to the far side of the field, half of them hacking for breath and the other half on a tiring, wary guard. This fight wasn't as trying as it was irritating with all the drawn out tactics and near-misses that grate on his nerves each second their corpses aren't at his feet. They were evading, but they were wearing thin, and it was only a matter of time before they met the exact end they were meant to from the start.

Hidan splashed into the spot beside him, scythe resting easy on his shoulder. "How the fuck are you this awful?"

"How did you not realize you were fighting Hatake's shadow clone?"

The idiot barked a laugh and rubbed the back of his head. "Aw, Kuzu-chan, you were watching?"

Kakuzu eyed the mismatched cluster across the battlefield. Hushed whispers poured out the corners of tight-lipped mouths and if they laid in another attack now, it could leave the Konohans scattered for easier pickings. Separating Hatake from the bunch removed the first line of protection and taking Nara out of the equation left Akimichi and Yamanaka floundering, but a quick glance to the side at his partner's lax stance told him this wouldn't be wrapped up in a neat symbol painted in blood on the floor.

Nara took a step forward just after Hatake slipped something into his hand.

Hidan pulled his pendant close to his lips and, between his chanting murmurs, leaned over to him and said, "You should learn to ask for blessings."

"I won't waste my time praying to gods who never talk back."

Nara's shadow zipped at Hidan as Hatake twirled a kunai and launched himself Kakuzu's way with a slash that arched towards his neck-head-brow-chin-waist and before another skimmed past his head, Kakuzu blocked wrist to wrist and gripped onto the offending forearm with his other hand.

"I'm your opponent," Hatake grit. Kakuzu narrowed his eyes before they pushed off each other. Two more swings at the neck and one at the torso and a spinning heel kick to the side and Kakuzu saw his first opening. He slammed his opponent's hand, grabbed the free kunai, and chucked it elsewhere.

Every blow they traded after never landed—two dancers in a barren wasteland who barely kicked up dust when they swung their feet. Somewhere along the way they ended up back on summoned waters, neither wasting chakra to balance and letting their pants dampen past the knee. A last second leg sweep splattered Hatake into the shallows where he quickly rolled and arced a roundhouse and leapt up to retreat, but Kakuzu stretched a hand meters up to lock around his ankle and slam him back into the earth.

And again. And again. And finally released him through the high trunk of a distant tree.

Kakuzu dashed up the side of it and through a second wind, Hatake managed to land a side kick square on his sternum and sent him airborne. There was little else he could do with no momentum to build which let Hatake pull him in from behind, hook both arms under his, lock his fingers behind a hood-covered neck, and completed a mid-air front lotus by spinning him down, down, down through the ground to snap his neck.

The clone dispersed in a rush of water a second after impact and Kakuzu raised his true body from beneath the man-made lake. Hidan's scythe lay abandoned to the side as he and the Nara's blurs grew smaller towards the forests where the foliage could still be called green. He supposed he could say the attempt at splitting them up had become Konoha's first success.

His three remaining Masks writhed as they closed in around Hatake.

Pity. He should've known better than to overestimate.

"You're letting him go on his own," Kakuzu said as he neared. "Legitimately pissing Hidan off is one way to mark yourself closer to the grave, though if Nara survives this, his bounty will be even more appealing." He raised an arm and let his tendrils explode out the stitches right below his imprisonment tattoos. "But it wasn't a wrong call. A team of you and one of me—it helps level out the difference in experience between us." They burst from his bicep, then his shoulder. "You're skilled, you're annoying, but you're nothing compared to Hashirama Senju."

Hatake twitched. "So you're really immortal."

"No such thing." It was either the adrenaline or the irritation that dug up a sudden bout of amusement that twinged the cover of his mouth beneath his mask. "Just recently someone said, 'everyone who believes in it gets cracked one way or another.' Indelicate, but the boy wasn't wrong."

Fire Mask and Wind Mask lumbered closer, their tendrils unnaturally sentient the way they grasped at one another and linked and pulled, melding together their masses until their two heads shared a single pair of arms and legs.

"I'm taking your heart to replace the one you destroyed," he said to Hatake. Green eyes raised over his shoulder to the teens in the back. "And yours will do fine as spares."

Kakuzu clasped his hands into the snake seal and Lightning Mask's jaw unhinged with a bolt of lightning to try and force Hatake into the open. The strike missed and passed through the gape FireWind broke apart at its center, and the two masks angled up and blew trails of fire funnels into the sky. But he was quick on his feet, had been this whole time, and Kakuzu never wavered in lighting up the assault pattern. The copycat-nin hid behind trees that end up with holes and sent batches of thrice-gods-damned clones to bear the onslaught of the damage.

The clan kids remained in the distance, fear in their idle bones and twitchy hands over their kunai pouches like they were prepared to defend against something they could defend against. Useless children, dead children if Hatake had not worn himself thin to keep them alive.

Children who get everything they ask for seldom succeed in life, Kakuzu heard long, long ago. And when you coddle them, they will never learn.

Lightning Mask was dragged into the ground with its not-shoulders barely poking out and Hatake surged out from the dirt a few paces to its side to take on FireWind himself armed with a kunai and what was left of his reserves.

It was more than Kakuzu expected, and enough to rear a sturdy water wall over his head. Fire and wind natures wound together were too volatile to be put out by a single chakra nature, however, and Hatake can draw up wall after wall after wall but wind propelled fire and the resulting blasts were hot gushes of an unrelenting orange swarm on the grounds.

Through the cover of its blistering display, Kakuzu planted himself above and behind as Hatake pushed one more leap away from the inferno, he wrapped tendrils around the Konoha-nin's limbs and set a tangle into the skin right above his heart. It dug and clawed and he dropped down and pulled, slamming his opponent onto his back with a faint crackling of bones.

He stalked forward and dropped a knee onto Hatake's ribcage, ignoring the garbled grunt he received in return. "Sharingan no Kakashi, the Copycat. Your heart is mine."

Black threads almost completely broke through skin.

Then, Kakuzu felt water in his mouth.

He was nine years old and he thought he was dying. At least, he thought this was what dying was. It was what Mom had been before she went on the mission she never came back from and why Dad wouldn't look him in the eye whenever they talked about her.

He was nine and on a mission and the hand on his neck forcing him into the river wouldn't let him breathe.

He was nine when the tips of his fingers darken when he ripped into a chest for the first time, dying and killing and not quite getting away with the first.

"My grandson has the devil in him," he hears Lola hiss at his father some time after. "You pray for him every day, you cleanse this house of the evil that kunoichi brought with her, and you repent for the sin you've allowed on this boy."

(He was ninety-one, and every time he and Hidan came across a church, all he could taste was bile at the back of his throat.)

Kakuzu crumpled on the ground, his chest twisted as his own heart shredded from whatever weapon Hidan was using on it.

"Nara planned this far ahead," he growled.

"You should've been more careful," Hatake noted quietly. His voice rasped and limp tendrils hung onto the edges of torn flesh. "Did you think he would watch Asuma die and gain nothing from it? Shinobi kill without hesitation, but people like you?" He wrapped a hand around the clump and snatched it out his body. "You could never understand what that's like."

If Hidan made it out of this, he was going to kill that idiot.

Lightning Mask ejected its heart into his body, pushing out the one that was on its last beating, and once he was back on his feet FireWind seeped through the stitching in his back, their pair of hearts following. The mass didn't compress into their usual neat coils, but flicked, curled, slipped his arms into sections and wore his chunks of limbs like sleeves. A spiked halo of writhing black swished there and back behind him, a handful trickling out of his mouth.

"Two of my hearts gone," he said. "It's been a long time since that happened."

Single tendrils from under the Konoha-nin's feet and bound them tight enough that he could already see angry welts forming on their skin.

"It's a shame I've changed my mind about your hearts." Wind Mask appeared over his left shoulder and Fire Mask followed on his right, each cracking open their mouths and charging with swirls of elemental chakra. "But it's overwhelming how much I want you dead."

And yet, the world was small.

"Suiton: Hanhonryuu!"

"Fuuton: Rasengan!"

Those two new voices combined, "Gufuu Suika no Jutsu!", when a vortex of wind and water tore into his fire and decimated the flames in clouds of steam and mist.

"Sorry we're late," the second voice apologized. When the steam cleared, four new shinobi lined up on the field in front of Hatake and his team; a Hyuuga, a pale boy in black, the Godaime Hokage's assistant, and the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki who'd been the one to speak up.

There was dirt on the cuffs of the boy's pants, blisters on his knuckles, scratches all over his tanned face. His shoulders sat taut and the skin around his clear blue eyes pulled as they stared straight ahead. This was a long way from 'the first one to start yelling and screaming,' but he must have grown in the space between Sasori's death and now.

But still this Jinchuuriki, this boy, this Uzumaki Naruto who Sakura spoke of with so much care—

Hatake nicked his thumb and slapped his hand in the dirt and a small brown pug appeared beneath his fingers.

The assistant—Kato Shizune, one hundred million ryo—glanced at her team. "Hinata, Sai, follow Pakkun's lead and support Shikamaru." A chorus of yes ma'ams rang before the summons led the Hyuuga and the pale boy off towards the denser forests and slowly out of Kakuzu's line of sight.

"Did he complete it?" Hatake quietly questioned.

Kato shook her head once. "No, but he's about fifty percent."

And so the support came with only half a plan. It said something about the Godaime's reign with these egregious risks and the questionable quality of her shinobi.

"But still..." she said, a light quirk to her lips. "He might surprise you."

Uzumaki's pupils thinned and stretched into vertical slits. Last he'd heard, the boy was incapable of controlling the Kyuubi's chakra, yet he crossed the middle and index fingers of his hands and a clone appeared on either side of him. Kakuzu wondered if this would be as annoying as Hatake's constant substitutions—

All three of them ran at him.

"Na-Naruto!" Akimichi shouted.

Yamanaka shrieked. "Naruto, what are you doing?!"

Kakuzu shot out an arm of threads and immediately caught one of the clones, crushing its neck until it evaporated into smoke. The second one dodged and launched a single kunai, easy enough to avoid with a leap to the side and another growth of threads surging to bind their target and force it motionless against a dead tree. The real Uzumaki stood for a moment, an angry blankness to his face as he narrowed his eyes even further.

The boy's hands rose again and three more clones appeared, two of them gathering around the original as they... Kakuzu steadied his stance. He didn't know what he was doing, but one focusing chakra in his palm, another contained its spherical shape, the last consistently altered the mass in some form until—until the winds whipped up and scream around the field all central to this jinchuuriki and he raised this ball of sharp light stretching blades of wind spiraling so fast there was a slow image akin to a shuriken visible in the glow.

"Your faith will save you," Lola promises.

The four of them charged, clones in a line at the front and the monster of a jinchuuriki wielding death in his hands.

But it fizzled out before it could make contact.

Kakuzu's brows rose slightly and he wasn't quite sure what was supposed to have happened, but he wasted no time trapping the boy in a rope-like grip. Young, like most people he's met. Foolish, optimistic, maybe too full of a brand of confidence that's carried him this far.

"She speaks highly of you." And he didn't understand it.

Uzumaki's confusion stilled his struggling, and in that moment a jet of water tangled in his threads and Hatake cut the boy free with a hand encased in lightning.

Various streaming, narrow jets of water branched off from the main vein and scuttled towards him at Kato's strict command, almost akin to his own threads. Not as numerous or as nimble, but they cut through petrified bark without her breaking a sweat. It pushed him back enough for them to haul Uzumaki back into the defensive half-circle the rest of them created.

The waters died down as they murmured amongst one another. Uzumaki's jutsu, whatever it had been, was something he couldn't recall from his extended life. Blinding, roiling, piercing absolution—

"Your faith will save you," his father tries.

—he'd be fine as long as he kept his distance. As lethal as the technique was, it was severely limited by its range and duration.

"Please let me do this alone, sensei." Uzumaki's voice raised on the other side of the field, fists clenched at his sides and his gaze unerringly pinned forward. "If I don't get past this, I'll never grow up." His jaw tightened. "I know you don't agree with what I'm fighting for—who I'm fighting for."

Hatake looked away.

"But please, don't take this path away from me."

Whatever their argument, Hatake relented with a weary sigh before meeting both Kato's and Uzumaki's gazes and nodding.

Either way, short to mid-range was no longer a viable option. Kakuzu willed a heavy wave of tendrils out his mouth and back, extending his pseudo-limbs into a swishing mane. It was one more muted moment before Uzumaki lifted his hands again, and three more clones appeared at his sides. The jutsu built up just as bright, just as loud, and the four of them charged with the clones holding a line at the front.

He waited for the clones to close in enough before he jetted himself high above their heads and cleared them completely. They were diversionary and in the same formation as Uzumaki's first and failed attempt, and he aligned every last tendril toward the original.

Even his age would have nothing to say about how well he could aim.

Except the punctured body didn't bleed. A hole in his stomach, his leg, not his chest because the host needed to be alive for extraction, but the body wasn't bleeding and suddenly the body wasn't a body just a clone—

"Your faith," his mother says before he never sees her again, "won't bring you to heaven."

There was a cold heat on the skin of his back.

Then there was pain. And light. Can't ignore the light.

And then there was little else of anything at all, after that.

But Kakuzu could still feel a roughness under his arms, jagged. Wet. Red. All around him was crushed, cratered earth with what was left of him in the center. The sun sat high and lazy in the sky and this light shadow—shadow? Weighted shadow, a hand on his chest, shaky breathing dulled to the left. Uzumaki could barely move from his half kneel. He swayed a bit. Side to side. And his eyes are no longer slitted, just... dark. And blue.

"What do I get if you lose?"

"What do you want?"

"She didn't win the bet."

Uzumaki's eyes blurred in and out of focus, but he turned and stared.

"She didn't. But." Kakuzu breathed in. Out. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba... dump. "She says she's sorry," he murmured, barely a whisper past the threads clogging his mouth. "She doesn't think she'll make it to Ichiraku's."

Kakuzu didn't know where he was going after this.

Uzumaki opened his mouth, but exhaustion overtook him and his eyes shut as he slumped to the sound of others calling his name.

Kakuzu didn't know where he was going after this.

But wherever it was, he knew that if there were gods, they weren't even watching.

:: ::

If he'd been asked what his biggest regret in life was, it would have to be Sakura.

Kisame tugged his hat lower. He should've never had a kid knowing the Akatsuki burrowed its fangs in his shoulders, he should've never left her to Konan whenever he was out of the village for his missions, he should've never loved her so much there wasn't a damn thing he wouldn't do for her.

He was selfish, and he couldn't even pay his own fucking price for it.

He rounded a corner and headed down the street embedded with dolphins glowing and twirling under the rain. Most buildings on his block lent to some sort of education like the shinobi schools, civilian trade schools, shinobi research divisions.

At the secondary school, he slowed and leapt onto a section of wide pipes that looped around the side of the building and peered in through the window. Konan said it'd be around now...

"—and with that said, your next exam will be in two week's time covering everything from after the last exam, so prepare for multiple choice questions, written response, and a kunai precision test with distances between five to fifteen meters."

The entire class inside groaned and the sensei up front waved her marker around. "Yes, my dramatic students, exams are still required to pass your classes." The clock hit three above them and, without looking back, the sensei raised a hand and motioned them all to stay seated.

"Hold on, there's one last announcement before you're off for the day—and yes, I can see you trying to sneak away, who do you think I am? This won't be another five minutes."

A handful of snickers circled the room as one of the students in the back row pouted and dropped back into his seat.

The sensei clapped her hands together. "As you all know, there's been a leap in difficulty from your transition to Shinobi Primary to Secondary, and the board has been looking for another instructor to oversee the extended study hall three times a week. We've finally finished processing yesterday, so I'm pleased to introduce Sakura-sensei!" The door cracked open. "She starts tomorrow and will be overseeing the optional class in the late afternoon Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Sakura-sensei—"

When she tread silently into the room, there was fishnet under her sleeveless maroon qipao top. Over her black pants hung a plain looking baton and a brown container, but other than that there weren't any other visible weapons on her. A head and a half taller than the other sensei and with scars she didn't care to hide, she greeted students with a face blank and stone.

"—is there anything else you'd like to add?"

Sakura surveyed the room before inclining her head and offering a short bow. "Thank you for accepting my assistance at your school, I look forward to working with you."

Heh. Kisame's shoulders wilted as his lips tugged up. She's so serious.

Some of the kids sank in their chairs and others straightened up with faces that looked like they were about to get scolded, but none of them met her eye. There was one kid somewhere in the middle, though, orange-haired and too-excitable as she practically bounced in her seat and gazed at Pup—Sakura like she hung the moon.

Kisame pried his gaze away and slipped back down onto the road back to his place. When Konan said their girl had a "prodigious efficiency" with an easy tone and the slightest of wrinkles on her brow, he thought the worst. Like somehow if she was throwing herself into her duties, or not getting enough sleep, or maybe literally working herself to death. He'd sat in the dining room for a full three hours after that before finding out what he could do to help. Her fight—victory—against Hidan was something he wished he'd seen.

Kakuzu said it'd been brutal. The bloodlust in his veins sang, but his heart had never felt so unbearably heavy.

He tried not to sigh with each step it took to get to the door to his apartment. Sakura had been here for months running errands under Konan, spending too much time in the Pillar, or disappearing off with her team for hours at a time at who knows where. But that was fine, the boys were nothing but good kids and he was glad there were people out there who loved her.

If he couldn't, someone had to.

His hand hovered over the door knob, and he paused.

There was a stranger in his apartment.

He pressed his lips together and quietly walked inside. His cloak came off first, then his sandals, and after re-fixing Samehada on his back he went to the room in the hall that wasn't his. The repaired door hung wide open and the closer he got was another ball of lead in his stomach.

Step.

She hates you.

Step.

She's got every right to.

Step.

She...

Step.

She stood by the end of her old bed, half turned towards the book shelf as she traced the titles with her finger. As he ducked fully into the room she stopped and crossed her arms over her chest and faced him.

Her face and stare were utterly expressionless. He tried not to flinch.

"You were at the School," she said. "And Sensei said you were at the house."

"Just checkin' in. Wanted to see how you were adjusting." Kisame tried for a smile that wasn't wistful. She pressed her lips together in a way that was way too familiar, so he guessed he didn't quite nail it. "I'll leave you alone."

She frowned. "... Did you want something?"

She hates you.

"Nah, don't worry 'bout it. I just... I just missed you, you know. I don't think I got around to telling you that since you got here." He swallowed when he felt the back of his eyes burn. "But Konan's keeping you busy, and she tells me you're doing well. Are you? I heard about Hidan and—" He winced and clamped his mouth shut.

But Sakura only stared. Her arms grew tighter around herself, but she didn't look away. "And?" She prompted. One of her fingers rubbed against the bandages on her left bicep.

"And I'm glad you won," he answered lamely.

"Mm." Her finger stilled and she looked down. "Sorry. I shouldn't have come."

His heart ached.

"No, don't say that. I've only ever wanted you back home, and I'm always happy to see you."

Her foot shifted. "Right."

"I mean it, I—"

"Did you really think that I died in that warehouse? When you put me there to hide me from the Konoha-nin?" Her nails bit into her arm as she raised her head, and her mask cracked. There were slivers of his little girl again, pink bangs framing her face, bright green eyes, a smile that didn't belong under Ame's gray clouds.

She's going to hate you so much more.

"No."

No one breathed.

"Oh." Sakura muttered, blinking a few times before she stepped forward. "You left me there? You let them take me?"

"I—"

"You let them take me?!"

He flinched this time.

"Was I not enough? Was I not good enough for you?" She demanded. The brown container flew into her grasp and she squeezed it until it exploded red. The scent of battlefield iron struck his nose as she grabbed the baton with her other hand—wait, closer it looked like—and lifted it into the spray.

Zabuza sticks the entire hilt into the Kumo-nin and when he pulls his arm back—

Kubikiribocho shone in her grip.

"Look at me!" Blood on her bandages, blood on her face, blood in her hair. "I became everything you wanted, didn't I? If you just gave me a chance as a kid, if you hadn't promised me and never come, I could've gotten better! I could've been stronger!" She bore her teeth. "I could've been stronger for you!"

Kisame stood there, gaze on his baby girl who burned with a fire he never remembered but hissed an ice he'd never forget. Then suddenly, she's three again, with a toothy smile and a shark plushie in her arms. His sunshine, his little girl, his pup.

All grown up with and bathed in the red liquid sharpening the edge of her blade.

"You were just a kid," he whispered.

She glared at him with the same eyes that used to crinkle with joy, stood tall on the same legs that used to get caught on curling pipes cropped up above ground.

He couldn't stop his welling tears. "You didn't need to train until you bled, you didn't need bruises, you didn't have to think about killing when you were three. You didn't need to be strong."

The three year old Sakura was gone. So was the five year old. And the seven year old.

"You needed to be safe."

She was sixteen now, and she looked like the world spit her out when it couldn't drown her.

"Safe," she repeated, squinting like she didn't believe him. But a second passed and he said nothing, and a few more seconds followed and her stone-face shattered, and one more second after that a laugh bubbled out of her mouth as she smiled. "You're Hoshigaki Kisame, ex-Kiri-nin, and a member of the Akatsuki. You're part of the Top Twenty with a two-hundred million dollar cap, you had me when you were already a rogue, and you left me with Konoha, a village you have no ties with, because you thought I was going to be safe?"

Sakura's smile wobbled and dropped, and a vicious anger broke out on her cheeks.

"I will be an exemplary shinobi or I will be nothing at all," she said. "You knew that! Konan-san knew that! I knew that! The only way I was going to be safe was by not ending up dead and now that I'm here, whatever the hell Akatsuki and Konoha made me, and you're just going to stand there and tell me you just wanted what was best for me?"

She sniffed and wiped her face, spreading the blood even further.

"I was happy with you and Konan-san. Despite everything," she whispered. "And if Shino, Kiba, Akamaru, Tenzo-san, and sensei never met me, they would've lived happy and ignorant in the village that was supposed to keep us safe."

Her hand flew to her mouth as she doubled forward and Kisame jerked forward, arms out and ready to break her fall. But she caught herself and pulled back, using the shelf to keep her steady and turning away from him all at once. Reluctantly, he drew back.

No one moved.

"I shouldn't have come," she echoed, a hand still pressed to her mouth. "And I... won't come for a while."

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Yeah. I know."

Sakura slowly nodded her head. When she pulled her hand back and curled it at her side. He thought he'd seen a fresh spot of blood on her palm but she was gone not a heartbeat after, leaving nothing but scattered drops of blood.

Kisame dropped onto the edge of the bed, the frame creaking slightly under his weight.

She hates you.

"Yeah," he said to the open air. "I know."

:: ::

Hello everyone! Thank you for being so patient with my slow update times!

And just a quick announcement - if you haven't already heard, I started a new short series with a crack pairing that takes the Hoshigaki-verse and twists it into a modern AU in the Resident Evil game-verse.

strawberry lemonade (part 1/4 of "the lemonade stand" series)

Leon Scott Kennedy had it embarrassingly bad for the back row kid with the pink hair.

Meanwhile, Sakura Hoshigaki could only squint at her phone and wonder why she was getting so many texts from the football team's pretty boy.

mint limeade (part 2/4 of "the lemonade stand" series)

"Oh, Sakura's boyfriend," Kisame repeated. A particularly heavy groove thrummed through the speakers. 

Then he spat a mouthful of coffee all over his fuzzy slippers.