Traitor in the Mist

Land of Water.

Kakuzu leaned against a massive boulder, gasping for breath.

His Red Cloud outfit was already in tatters, with several conspicuous holes in his chest. Black tendrils from Earth Grudge Fear reached out through them, swaying in the wind.

"Hey, hey, what are you doing?"

Hidan's impatient voice rang out nearby.

Kakuzu looked over. Hidan's scattered body parts littered the ground in the distance, while his shouting head hung all alone from the branch of a large tree.

Ignoring Hidan's complaints, Kakuzu rested a little longer before slowly getting up and walking over to him.

As he went, he gathered Hidan's scattered remains and pieced them together one by one. Only then did he take Hidan's head down from the tree.

With only his head left, Hidan continued to complain. "You left me hanging in that tree for so long!"

"Shut up!"

Kakuzu snapped coldly.

Hidan said, "If you want me to shut up, hurry up and sew me back together!"

With a scowl, Kakuzu began stitching Hidan's body back together.

A short while later, Kakuzu had sewn all of Hidan's scattered parts together and finally set his incessantly chattering head in place.

The moment his body, which had been scattered across the ground, was restored, Hidan sat up.

He inspected himself as he spoke. "Hey, hey, did you find all of my body parts? Why do I feel so weird?"

Kakuzu replied casually, "I sewed together everything I could find!"

Hidan pursed his lips. "Unbelievable. I didn't think this Six-Tails Jinchuriki from Kirigakure would be so strong. We almost got killed!"

Thinking back to the brutal battle, Kakuzu felt a chill of fear.

Unlike Hidan, Kakuzu's "immortality" depended on constantly replacing his heart with a fresh one. His secret technique, Earth Grudge Fear, allowed him to keep