Konoha, underground.
This place had no name—only a codename. It existed for two things: interrogation and research.
Metal and obsidian shaped the chamber. Intricate golden formulae were engraved across the walls and floor, all lines converging on a metal dais at the center. There were no lamps; the sealwork itself gave off a chill, golden glow that washed the room clean of shadow—and warmth.
Kakuzu lay spread-eagle on the dais, pinned in a 大 shape.
Dozens of golden chakra chains ran through his body, nailing him in place. Additional talismanic seals covered his skin, severing every last trickle of chakra in his coils.
His prized Jiongu (Earth Grudge Fear) threads—those black, fibrous cords—hung lifeless at his flanks, unable to twitch.
He couldn't even roll an eye. All he could see was the ceiling's slow-circling lattice of golden sigils.
Footsteps approached.
Three figures entered.
At their head was a black-haired boy in a white uniform, face unreadable. Gloves on his hands; a tray of oddly-shaped metal instruments balanced easily between them.
Shinju.
Behind him walked Itachi and Shisui, both in black uniforms, solemn-eyed—his shadows and his blades.
Shinju set the tray down and, for a moment, simply looked at the immobilized Kakuzu like one would study an artifact.
Kakuzu's mind was horribly clear. He could see. He could hear. He could think.
And precisely because of that, fear was magnified to its limits. This excessively young boy was the architect behind all of this—and these two Uchiha prodigies answered to his word.
"Kakuzu," Shinju said, his calm voice echoing across the empty room, "a shinobi of Takigakure. You fought the First Hokage. You manage Akatsuki's coffers. Your career is… quite long."
He picked up a strangely contoured surgical knife from the tray. Chakra ran along the blade like a thin river. He raised it before Kakuzu's eyes.
"I am interested in your hiden. Jiongu—extending your life by stealing hearts and, in the process, acquiring their chakra natures. Good idea. The implementation is crude."
Kakuzu's eyelid twitched—the only motion he could manage.
Ignoring that tiny rebellion, Shinju continued, almost like a tutor addressing promising students. "Look closely, Itachi. In essence, Jiongu is a parasitic fibrosing of chakra pathways. These black 'threads' are aberrant chakra meridians. By forcibly stitching them, he splices stolen hearts into the host's circulatory network. If you cut their junctions to the host's neural hub, those hearts reduce to standalone chakra batteries."
Itachi and Shisui listened in silence, carrying out every order without question—yet the knowledge itself left them inwardly astir. This wasn't "shinobi craft" anymore; it was something far beyond.
Kakuzu's thoughts roiled.
This boy had dismantled—by sight alone—the hiden he'd spent a lifetime creating and perfecting.
Impossible. He had never explained Jiongu's principles to anyone. This was his greatest secret, his near-century of borrowed life.
"Begin," Shinju said, voice flattening into command. "Itachi, Genjutsu—strip the five senses and leave the mind awake. I want ten perfectly silent minutes with the specimen."
"Yes, Lord Shinju."
Three tomoe turned in Itachi's eyes.
Hearing, sight, smell, touch—cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.
And then there was nothing. No body, no chains, no metal, no room. The world ceased to exist. Only an island of awareness remained—alone with its fear.
Shinju's voice sounded in that void. "Shisui, Chakra Scalpel. Target: dorsal—T4 nerve junction to Jiongu meridian, coordinate 7-8. Sever."
"Yes."
Shisui stepped forward. Chakra condensed along his hand into a keen edge.
His hands did not hesitate.
The blade fell.
There was no pain—but Kakuzu "saw." He "watched" his back open; a hand reached in, found a single black thread—and cut it.
At the instant the thread parted, the fire-marked mask on his back dulled, peeled free, and clattered against the floor.
A force yanked a heart from his body.
It beat in the open air, small flames curling around its surface.
Shinju produced a cylindrical glass vessel etched inside with sealing script. The heart dropped within; the lid sealed; the formulae flared—isolating it completely from the outside world.
My fire-nature heart.
His mind screamed. No sound came. He had stolen that heart from a fire-style shinobi and incinerated uncounted enemies with its power.
"Good," Shinju said. "Next—the lightning heart. Junction under the left scapula, coordinate 5-4A."
Shisui obeyed.
Again, Kakuzu "watched" the body open; again a second thread was snipped.
Another mask fell away. A heart sheathed in crackling light was lifted free and sealed into a second container.
That heart came from a Cloud rogue. Three days and nights he'd hunted the man. Lightning had made him feel like a god.
Now the thrill—and the memories that clung to it—were pulled away with the organ.
The silent howl in his mind degraded into soundless pleading. He could only "watch" his life's scaffolding be stripped piece by piece, bottled and labeled—like dismantling a machine destined for the scrap heap.
"Wind-nature heart. Right seventh rib, coordinate 8-1C."
"Water-nature heart. Celiac plexus, coordinate 6-9F."
"Earth-nature heart. L1 vertebra, coordinate 2-5D."
Shinju's orders came one after another, devoid of emotion.
Shisui repeated the motions, efficient and exact.
Masks thumped to the floor, one by one.
Hearts left him, one by one, rising and falling in glass—wind swirled, water coursed, earth pulsed with weight.
He remembered each fight. Every brush with death. The faces of those he had killed. He had lived on these hearts for so long he'd forgotten his original face. He'd believed he would endure like this until the world's end.
When the fifth and final earth-nature heart clicked into its vessel, every mask on his back was gone.
Without sources to drink from, the Jiongu threads in his body withered, snapped, and finally sifted away as dust, drifting from the seams of his skin. Nearly a century's accumulation—erased in minutes.
"…Itachi. Release."
The tomoe stilled and bled away.
Kakuzu's senses returned like a crashing wave—light, sound, the bite of cold metal.
His eyes snapped down to his body—then to the stand beside the table, where five glass vessels sat in a neat row.
Inside, five hearts throbbed with stubborn life: one ringed in flame; one strobing with lightning; one girdled in wind; one lapping with water; one exuding the heaviness of earth.
Once, they were his strength—parts of his very life.
Now, they were exhibits.
His body began to change. Chakra bled away faster than ever before. His skin lost moisture and luster; liver spots flowered; deep wrinkles scored across it. Hair dulled and went white.
In mere tens of seconds, a sturdy shinobi became a chakra-drained, dying old man.
With no hearts and no Jiongu, he was immortal no more.
"N… no…" At last his voice creaked free, but age had already claimed his cords—only a thin, hopeless moan emerged.
Shinju peeled off his gloves and dropped them into a disposal slot. He didn't spare the specimen a second glance; its research value was exhausted.
"Dispose of him," he told Itachi and Shisui.
"Understood."
Shinju turned and left the chamber.
He entered the monitoring room next door. A wall of screens split into dozens of feeds, each showing a different sector of the base.
On one feed, a silver-haired man with a swept-back pompadour was bound in the same fashion at a room's center. He had not been gagged nor stripped of senses—his mouth hadn't stopped.
"Bastards! You'll pay for this! Lord Jashin will curse you all! Heretics! Aaaah!"
Hidan.
Shinju watched the tireless man on the screen; a trace of genuine interest touched his face.
"An undying body, is it? Perfect timing. Orochimaru's cellular regeneration needs a flawless test subject."
(End of Chapter)
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