"You brats are my bounty!"
Five or six children were tied together with coarse hemp rope. Wearing a black conical hat, Kakuzu dragged them along as if they were livestock. At the end of the line, Yahiko was still dazed, thinking about how decisively Kakuzu had slaughtered the Rain ninja when capturing them alive. Wasn't that kind of overwhelming power exactly what he lacked and wanted to obtain?
The thoughts in his heart continued to spread, and the seed called ambition began to take root within him.
"This world needs to change!"
"Yahiko, what did you say?"
Nagato, standing in front of him, was somewhat stunned. The sound of the rain had obscured Yahiko's low mutterings, and Nagato had not heard them clearly. He turned to ask, but Yahiko looked at him with a solemn, earnest expression.
"Maybe this is where our hope lies!"
"What do you mean?!"
Yahiko did not answer Nagato's question. He silently watched Kakuzu's movements and began planning the first step of his revolution in his heart!
Inside a cavern, Yahiko called the four or five children over to his side. Since their hands and feet were tied with rope, it did not draw much attention when they gathered together. In the cold weather and torrential rain, dressed in nothing but short-sleeved thin clothing, it was only natural for the children to huddle together for warmth.
Kakuzu lay atop a large boulder a hundred meters away, seemingly asleep. Yahiko calmly looked at the children gathered around him and said, "We are all abandoned people. Rather than being sold like livestock, don't you want to resist?"
One child, his eyes utterly devoid of any hope for life, looked blankly at Yahiko and replied.
"He's a ninja! And we're nothing!"
His voice was calm, yet filled with