Finn and Kakuzu stood on the rim of a canyon in the Land of Earth.
Roughly a month had passed since they crossed into Iwagakure's territory.
During that month, they'd run harassment contracts for the Hidden Rock Village, picking apart Cloud supply lines and raiding parties whenever the intelligence pointed somewhere profitable. The work was consistent, if unglamorous.
This canyon was different. Finn had spent two days poring over field reports and route data, cross-referencing everything against what he already knew about the war's shape. His conclusion: if nothing went wrong, this was the place where the Third Raikage would meet his end — surrounded, outnumbered, and alone.
Kakuzu stood beside him, scanning the canyon's far wall. His gaze drifted over the terrain without settling anywhere. After a moment, he said, "Why stop the contract work? You could renegotiate payment based on the forehead protectors we collected."
Finn exhaled through his nose. The man's compass pointed to one direction and one direction only.
"If you love money that much," Finn said, "why not just rob people? With your abilities, you'd make more in a week than a month of contracts."
Kakuzu was quiet for a moment.
"A gentleman," he said, "earns his money properly."
Finn stared at him.
A gentleman. This man who stitched other people's organs into his own body and sold corpses by the headband. A gentleman who earns it properly.
"You're calling yourself a gentleman," Finn said flatly. "The man who collects corpses for a living."
Kakuzu didn't react. He turned back to the canyon and asked, "So what are we doing here?"
Finn let it go. He'd started this, so he'd finish it.
"There's something off about the Cloud's front line," he said. "We've been operating here for a month, and not once has the Cloud recalled any of their assault forces to reinforce the rear. If anything, they've pushed deeper into Earth Country. They've reached the heart of the Twelve Earth Kingdoms." He paused. "Doesn't that strike you as strange?"
"Not particularly," Kakuzu said. "Pay me and I'm fine."
The corner of Finn's mouth pulled tight.
He had pictured this going differently. A measured analysis. Kakuzu asking the right questions. The conclusion landing with appropriate weight, and Finn standing there looking like exactly the kind of man who'd seen it all coming. That had been the idea.
He kept going anyway.
"I think Iwagakure engineered this. The Cloud's assault force has been funneled here, day by day, without anyone at headquarters noticing the shape of it. And this canyon — I've looked at it. It's a natural kill box. The Cloud troops will be exhausted from a sustained push through hostile territory. Iwagakure forces will be rested, fighting on home ground, and significantly larger in number. If the Third Raikage and the Cloud's assault division are caught here, they lose everything. And if they lose everything here, Iwagakure wins this front of the war outright."
He hadn't been asked. He knew that. Kakuzu's expression hadn't changed once.
But he'd thought it through carefully enough that he was fairly sure he was right, and that still meant something.
Kakuzu tilted his head slightly. "So you want to wait until they finish killing each other, then go down and collect the forehead protectors."
"I came for the Third Raikage's body," Finn said.
He'd spent time on this, turning it over from multiple angles. Taking the Raikage alive was not realistic. Taking any sitting Kage alive wasn't realistic, not for reasons of power, but for reasons of principle. Men like that would sooner trigger whatever self-destruction measures had been installed in their own bodies than allow themselves to be paraded as prisoners. The humiliation alone would be sufficient motivation.
Dead was the only viable condition. And dead, the body still had value.
If Orochimaru could be brought on board, the Third Raikage's Lightning Release Armor and the techniques encoded in that physiology were worth considerably more than whatever Onoki was paying per headband.
"Has Orochimaru responded yet?" Finn asked.
Kakuzu shook his head. "Nothing. Maybe the blood meant nothing to him and he's moved on."
"If finding him were easy, I'd have already gone to his front door," Finn said.
This was the fundamental problem. Orochimaru was, by any reasonable measure, the most difficult person in the ninja world to locate. After his defection from Konoha, Jiraiya and Konoha's intelligence apparatus had chased him for years without pinning him down once. When he'd joined the Akatsuki, he'd managed to cause sufficient internal chaos that Sasori and the others had wanted him dead — and still couldn't find him when he decided to vanish. Later, through the full stretch of the fourth war's lead-up, any number of shinobi had the capability to kill him. None of them could ever find him first.
The man had eventually died at Sasuke's hands, which said less about Orochimaru's vulnerabilities and more about Sasuke's specific circumstances. And even that hadn't stuck. He'd come back, cleared his name, and lived to the end of everything without taking a single lasting injury.
That kind of survival record wasn't luck. It was method.
Finn's current intelligence network was limited. Kakuzu moved through the dark world and noticed anything that had a bounty attached to it. Sasori had extensive connections, but he'd withdrawn into his research after the Kagami operation and hadn't been much use lately.
Practically speaking, finding Orochimaru before Orochimaru chose to be found was not something Finn could force.
"What if the blood itself wasn't the problem?" Finn muttered, touching his jaw. He'd made the decision based on theory and general reasoning about Orochimaru's research interests, not hard evidence. If Orochimaru had received the sample and found nothing interesting, that meant either the theory was wrong, or Orochimaru hadn't looked carefully enough.
What about the Sharingan angle? Send him something related to that?
He turned it over for a moment, then discarded it. Orochimaru's interest in the Sharingan was a later development. From everything Finn could reconstruct, it had started after the war — when Orochimaru happened to observe a young Uchiha Itachi training and something in that encounter sparked an obsession. Right now, Itachi was at most five years old. The war wasn't over. Whatever would eventually consume Orochimaru's attention hadn't consumed it yet.
That approach wasn't viable.
"You think something's coming?" Kakuzu said.
He wasn't looking at Finn. He was looking down into the canyon.
Finn followed his gaze. Below, moving in a military formation tight enough that the individual figures blurred together, an enormous body of shinobi was advancing. Their heading put them on an intercept course with the Cloud assault column.
"That's close to ten thousand," Kakuzu said.
He studied them for a few more seconds.
"Your read was right," he said, without much inflection. "Iwagakure is going to bury the Cloud forces here." He glanced at Finn. "So what do we do?"
"We wait," Finn said. "Iwagakure will seal off this entire area — barriers, sensory suppression, the works. Ten thousand shinobi can't hide without it. We pull back, find cover, and let the battle run its course. Three days, probably. Then we go in."
Kakuzu nodded once and turned from the edge.
Finn took one last look at the canyon below, then followed.
In the Land of Fire, beneath Konohagakure, in the Root organization's underground compound, Orochimaru held a test tube up to the light.
The blood inside caught the glow and held it, dark and still.
The sample had arrived through the usual channels — purchased items forwarded through the network of couriers and receiving points that serviced the dark world's buyers. Root was aware of this arrangement. They'd long since decided that Orochimaru's procurement habits were an eccentricity they could tolerate, and occasionally they even handled collection on his behalf. A tube of blood looked like experimental material. Nobody had questioned it.
But Orochimaru hadn't ordered this.
No purchase record. No request. The only identifying detail on the shipment was the intermediary: Kakuzu, S-rank missing-nin from Takigakure, contract killer of established reputation and extraordinary longevity.
Not someone who sent joke packages.
So Orochimaru had put the sample through his full standard analysis.
That had been three or four days ago, and he had found absolutely nothing.
Human blood. Apparently normal human blood. No anomalous chakra signature, no detectable kekkei genkai markers, no foreign biological compounds. It had passed every test he ran looking exactly the way it should look.
He stood over the laboratory bench now, test tube in hand, turning it slowly.
"Kakuzu," he said aloud, to no one in particular, "I have no grudge against you. So why would you want to make a fool of me like this?"
He'd concluded, with some irritation, that the answer was simple: the man was wasting his time. Whether as a prank, a message, or some opaque form of professional mischief, the blood was meaningless, and Orochimaru had spent four days chasing nothing.
He crossed to the waste bin beside the bench and dropped the test tube in.
Then he turned toward the experiment that had been sitting untouched since the sample arrived, already thinking through the next steps.
He got two paces.
Something stopped him.
Not a sound. Not a word. Just a thread of thought that snagged on the edge of his concentration and refused to let go.
He turned back.
The test tube was sitting at the bottom of the waste bin, unremarkable, transparent, slightly smudged from handling.
Ordinary.
That was the word that had hooked him.
It was an ordinary test tube. Standard laboratory glass, nothing exotic about the seal or the construction. The kind of container that offered no special preservation properties whatsoever.
The blood had been in transit for over twenty days.
He walked back to the bin, reached in, and retrieved the test tube.
He held it up again, this time not looking at the blood. Looking at the blood's behavior.
It hadn't degraded.
Not in the usual way. Not at all. After more than three weeks in a standard container, moving through unknown conditions, at unknown temperatures, the blood inside retained the kind of cellular activity he would expect to see in a sample taken within the last hour.
That wasn't what blood did. That wasn't what any blood did.
The tests hadn't found anything wrong because he'd been looking for the wrong category of anomaly. He'd been looking for something added — an unusual compound, a genetic marker, a trace of foreign energy. He hadn't asked why there was nothing wrong at all.
The vitality in this sample was simply beyond anything he had a framework for.
"Interesting," Orochimaru breathed.
He was already moving back toward the bench, the test tube pressed between his fingers, his eyes bright with the particular alertness that only genuine novelty could produce.
He set the sample back in its holder.
This time, he was going to approach it properly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~