It was raining, the rain came down without pause, falling on the city below. High above the many streets and buildings below, at the highest point of that great steel tower that dominated the city, was an unusual sculpture.
It was a sort of grotesque human head with its tongue extended out into the rain, as if tasting the heavens' tears.
A drop from up there would be deadly, no, it would be certain death.
Yet despite that, a figure stood on the tongue, standing there in the unforgiving, unrelenting rain. He was wearing a large black coat with red clouds on it. His hair, spiky and orange, was soaked, yet he stood still, like a corpse, just watching the city below.
Only the sound of the rain reached this place; it muted the sounds of the village, of Amegakure no Sato.
The village hidden in the rain.
Suddenly, another sound could be heard, a sound of paper sliding against paper, of wind getting whipped, and rain hitting paper.
The sound of wings.
Soon, the source of the sound came into view, a girl with short blue hair and paper-like wings. She came to a landing next to the figure, her wings folding behind her back and disappearing as if they had never been there.
"Konan," the figure spoke, his voice a deep, monotone rumble, it wasn't a question, but a statement.
"The mission was completed," she said evenly. "The bounty was secured. The funds have already been transferred." She paused for a moment. "Kakuzu eliminated his partner," she finally revealed.
For a moment, the only sound was that of the continuous rainfall.
"Again," Nagato finally said, as calm as ever.
Yet, Konan knew he wasn't calm, that he was merely holding back his annoyance, even then, the air around him grew heavy, not with anger, this was far from enough to anger someone like Nagato. It was just a formless pressure, from the chakra inside the body slightly escaping.
The rain stopped hitting him, the drops curved subtly away from him before touching cloth.
"Let me guess, he was too slow, and so Kakuzu decided to cash in his bounty as well," Nagato finally said with a sigh.
"Yes," Konan replied. "Same thing as the last, he got angry at their incompetence, and killed them out of a mix of anger and greed."
This wasn't the first time this had happened, far from it, but it still annoyed her greatly, because it wasn't easy to find someone to join the Akatsuki, the requirements for that were rather high, and few rogue shinobi met them.
So having them killed by their own partner time and time again, it was no good.
The organization required pairs. And for many reasons, both for safety, since there was strength in numbers, but also for mutual observation.
Many members didn't join because they believed in their mission; they joined because they were forced to. So having two members grouped up reduced the chance of them trying to escape.
Most teams had a very delicate balance, that allowed them to handle the missions assigned to them, while also ensuring that nothing would go wrong.
Kakuzu disrupted that balance.
"This instability cannot continue," Nagato said at last. "Akatsuki is not a marketplace for mercenaries to discard tools."
Konan's gaze sharpened slightly.
"You suspect Madara will object?" she asked.
Nagato tilted his head slightly toward the rain-choked skyline.
"He will say Kakuzu's strength outweighs the inconvenience."
"And does it not?" Konan asked.
Nagato did not answer.
Instead, he stepped off the grotesque tongue and drifted downward through the rain without wings.
Konan followed.
…
They landed moments later inside the upper chamber of the tower.
"You can come out," Pain said to the empty room as he turned his back to it and once more looked out into the rain.
Konan remained by his side, watching his back for him. She knew it wasn't needed, but still, she did it.
The empty room didn't offer a response to Pain's words, not right away, it took a few moments before two people appeared, one from a black vortex in the air. He, too, was wearing the same black coat with red clouds as Pain and Konan did. But with an orange swirly mask with only a single eye hole for one eye.
The second person seemed to phase through the ground itself, and his appearance was by far the strangest, because while he wore the same outfit, his head was all around, like a giant Venus flytrap was about to close around it.
"So," the masked man said lightly, "I hear Kakuzu has solved his partnership problem."
"It is not the solution to a problem, it is the problem," Nagato replied.
"He has always been… selective," the masked man said. "His efficiency is unmatched."
"Efficiency that costs us stability," Konan countered.
The masked man chuckled softly. "Then perhaps the problem is not Kakuzu."
Silence filled the room for a moment. "And if he isn't the problem? Then what is? The fact that his partners have a bounty on their heads? That they aren't strong enough?" Konan asked. It was their policy to pair a member with another if possible to offset their weaknesses, Kakuzu's weakness was clear. It was his greed.
And the only way to deal with that was to find someone with no bounty. Not just a small bounty, but none at all, someone with no price on their head, to deny Kakuzu any profit in killing them.
But that was not an easy thing to find, not many people without a bounty met their requirements for joining.
As for finding someone so strong that, even despite their bounty, he couldn't kill them? Konan would be more than happy to have someone like that, but it wasn't easy to find S-rank rogue shinobi, they already had most of them.
And as for teaming them up with Kakuzu? That was a terrible idea, because they also had the biggest bounties, so he would just put in the extra effort to kill them.
"We are getting nowhere," Nagato finally said, turning his head slightly, looking right at Zetsu. "Do you know anyone else who can join us? Someone strong enough, maybe with a lower bounty?" he asked.
Zetsu, or rather, the white half of Zetsu, was the one in charge of recruiting and scouting potential members, but so far he had very little luck. The black half was more involved in their long-term plans. "Finding those who meet our criteria is a challenge," White Zetsu said. "The strong have ambition. The ambitious have prices on their heads."
"I have some information," Black Zetsu said, his voice deeper, more resonant. "About someone on a small, neutral island in the south, run by merchants and nobles, an illegal fighting arena. A place where many retired or missing shinobi end up fighting for sport and money."
Nagato and Konan listened intently. They had heard of such places, dens of vice and depravity where the desperate and the damned sold their skills for coin. They were generally beneath the notice of an organization with goals as grand as theirs.
"And what information might that be? Those places are nothing but filth; you would be lucky to find even a jōnin there, much less someone who has what it takes to join us," Konan commented, sounding rather dismissive.
And she was right to be dismissive, anyone strong enough to matter would never allow themselves to fight in an arena for the entertainment of others, the strong had pride after all.
In fact, one of Kakuzu's former partners had been someone from a place like that, someone who killed his former owner and ran off to rule a few villages as a bandit; that act was why he had a bounty for Kakuzu to cash in in the first place.
"Normally, I would agree," Black Zetsu said, "And this one doesn't fully meet the entire requirement, they have a rather large bounty... the interest in their head is immense, worth enough for us to take the job... but if we would rather have a new member, their strength is beyond enough." He explained, sounding far too amused.
"Who is this person?" Konan asked, her interest piqued. If Black Zetsu was this confident, then it must be someone truly exceptional.
"She is no one," Madara cut in, shooting a seething glare at Zetsu. "Just a woman who doesn't know when to stay out of things that don't concern her." He dismissed it out of hand.
"A woman? The strongest person in that arena is a woman?" Konan couldn't help but ask, shocked by the claim. While she was a strong woman, and there were plenty of others she knew, it was still rare.
What really caught her interest was that Madara knew about her and clearly disliked her. Now that was something worthy of her attention; even Nagato seemed more interested after Madara's outburst. After all, Madara's knowledge and goals weren't always in line with theirs.
"She is a monster, a true monster," White Zetsu explained. "Her strength is beyond even what we have seen before. She isn't a shinobi, but a demon." He praised the woman, which only made Madara's anger more palpable.
This only made Konan even more curious, because for White Zetsu to praise her so much, she had to be strong. "What is her name?" Konan asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"Kaguya-hime," White Zetsu revealed. "The Last of the Kaguya clan." He added, and that got Nagato's attention.
"The Kaguya clan?" Nagato asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice. "The clan that tried to take over Kirigakure and was wiped out for it? There are none left." He said, as he looked toward Madara, as if he could see something beyond the mask.
They knew Madara had some level of control over Kirigakure; he seemed to often treat the place as if it didn't matter, which likely meant he had some manner of control over it.
He naturally hid this, but they didn't trust him, so they tried to learn more about him, including what secret assets he might have.
And one of the great shinobi villages wasn't something they could just ignore.
So when the Kaguya clan was wiped out, they both knew he likely had something to do with it, they didn't know why, but they also didn't care too much about his motives for harming one of the villages.
The weaker they were, the better it was for their plan, after all.
"The same," White Zetsu confirmed.
"Impossible," Madara snarled, "You cannot recruit her; you should not even be thinking about it. She is a meddlesome fool," he insisted, and Konan could feel a sliver of real emotion from him, not just his fake persona, something deeper.
She was familiar with that emotion, it was fear.
The great Uchiha Madara was afraid of this Kaguya-hime.
This made her more interested than before, because very little could make Madara act like this. He always had a plan, a goal, and everything was just a tool for it, but this woman? She was not a tool, she was a threat.
"Then she is exactly who we need," Nagato finally spoke, his tone decisive.
"Her name is Kaguya-hime, right?" Konan asked. "I think I have heard that name. A wandering noble who stays at the Fire Daimyō's palace, one with incredible beauty and strength. There was also something about her attacking Kusagakure to rescue two members of the Uzumaki clan," she explained, her memory jogged by the name.
Even if she had never met the woman, the whispers had reached even the gloomy streets of Amegakure. Tales of a blind noblewoman who traveled from country to country with the last living members of the Uzumaki clan.
Yes, now she remembered, she had looked into her when the news first spread, mostly because the two Uzumaki clan members, those were likely Nagato's family. "As far as I remember, she had a very small bounty, didn't she?"
"That's old news, though the bounty is mostly kept hidden, and only for her alive... but the price on her capture is beyond simply massive. Several villages have offered it. The Land of Fire, the Land of Water, and the Land of Lightning, even Sunagakure is interested," White Zetsu said, his tone filled with awe.
"In fact, the reason she has this large bounty is largely thanks to Kakuzu in the first place," the black side of Zetsu added. "He once fought against her, but the fight ended in a draw, and after that he started selling her secrets, which led to the increased bounty," he continued.
Both Konan and Nagato were interested in this kunoichi now, but they turned their heads towards Madara. "Why do you not want her to join? It sounds personal," Konan asked.