Kakuzu snaps into reality with a start. His head pounds, jolting his body with waves of pain, and thick shadows cast by large, lush trees cloak his crumpled form. How had he been brought to such a sorry state he wonders as he lays motionless and stares vacantly at the radiant woodland before him. He had been in a battle, that much was clear. But when had he fought? Who had he fought? A breeze passes and shakes the leaves. When it washes over his body, Kakuzu remembers and the vivid memories play before his eyes like a reel of film. He had just finished extracting the two and three tailed jinchuurikis from their hosts after sitting and performing the tedious ritual in his astral form while his body sat in a comatose state for three days. Afterwords, he had trekked from where he sat to the barren land of dead trees located in the outskirts of Konohagakure. He had wanted to fetch the bounty on that one mans head, but he had probably been sent back home and buried by now.

Then he remembered the ambush. They sprang from nowhere. The shadows captured him, held him in place like metal holding a magnet, and then the shadow brat launched a bomb laced kunai at him. Kakuzu easily evaded, but then he saw the boy wasn't alone. With him was some tart, a boy with much girth, and the famed Kakashi Hatake. A battle ensued and Kakuzu fared well. He managed to draw the copycat nin to a stalemate even while he had the three children nipping at his heels. The smart one left halfway through the battle and the remaining chunin and jonin were overwhelmed by the akatsuki's power. Kakuzu had them in his grasp, he recalls, ready to burn them alive till nothing but ash remained. But just as he launched the condensed flames fueled by wind, a cyclone seemed to throw itself at him.

The fire dissipated and turned to steam. The former Taki-nin had no choice but to release his prey and jump back. When he could see across the field again, four more people stood alongside the others. Two fled into the forest as soon as they had arrived, but the other two stayed. Of those two, Kakuzu mostly remembers the face of the boy in the dirty orange jumpsuit. The kyuubi. He remembered the thrill that overwhelmed him. Catching three biju in one day would be a remarkable feat. The akatsuki only needed five more tailed beasts to give the altar all nine irides. Unfortunately, Kakuzu found that he was once again faced with a style of jutsu that made old scars burn. The wood style ninjutsu of Hashirama. The weapon of the man he failed to kill all those years ago, before he was a wanted criminal, before he was a bitter shell of a man once proud and beloved.

Seeing the man who wielded such an ability intensified Kakuzu's blood lust. He became to wrapped up in the heat of battle. The sadistic shinobi changed his form using his tendrils and hurled himself at his terrified opponents. He was caught off guard when the kyuubi appeared behind him. Concentrated chakra that resembled a shuriken with a blue orb in the center sat in the jinchuurikis palm. It was a wind style jutsu, that much was obvious. The high pitched keening that raped his ears and the harsh breeze that followed it told Kakuzu so.

He could feel the incredible aura emanating from it. If he were hit, it would devastate his stitched up body. Amidst the writhing mass of jet black tentacles, none of his opponents saw Kakuzu switch himself out for a clone. Using the body swap jutsu developed by Pein, first used by Kisame and Itachi, Kakuzu put his own twist on the technique and had to sacrifice a heart to put into the clone so it wouldn't disappear when struck since he needed time to put a bit of distance between the enemy and himself. He pulled the jutsu off successfully and slipped through the jungle of tendrils, but though his clone was the one hit with the brunt of the kyuubis wrath, the chakra expanded and Kakuzu was caught in the windy maw. It pushed everyone and everything back as it tore up the land as easy as the claws of a hawk tearing the supple flesh of a sheep.

The strong current drew blood as tiny daggers slowly ripped his skin. The drums of his ears popped while he tried to swim through the air in an awkward, jerky dance. From a distance, Kakuzu figured that he must have looked like a rag-doll caught up in a whirlwind. Somehow he managed to wrench his body away from the spinning sphere and fell to the earth, his body feeling as heavy as a boulder. All the breath left his lungs as they were crushed between his weight and the ground. He gasped for air and struggled to his feet. His body felt...wrong. Like someone had meticulously picked him apart, threw the pieces into a blender and tried to reconstruct the mess. With his insides now feeling like a viscous soupy mess inside him, his skin feeling like it had been encased in sandpaper and his vision doubling, Kakuzu knew trying to fight would be foolish.

So, as much as he didn't want to, he ran on shaky legs toward the lush forest that bordered the wastelands. As he ran, Kakuzu heard his clones agonized screams echo over the noise of the wailing wind. Hearing his own strangled cries chilled the elder akatsuki.

He isn't sure how far he ran, but he must have traversed a considerable amount of ground seeing as to how the only thing visible through the trees were more lively trees. Groaning, he brings a hand, dusty and aching, to his forehead. He was forgetting something. Something important. The reason the shadow wielder left...Hidan.

Kakuzu sprang to his feet but regretted the hasty movement. The world whirled around him. He stumbles and latches onto a tall oak, the rough bark pricking his fingers as he draws in shallow, raspy breaths. The metal tang in his mouth was making his sick. Water, he thinks. He saunters through a seemingly endless maze of trees and goes into a coughing fit. He feels ready to collapse. He hadn't been so exhausted in a long while. The sadist swears he can he the trickle of water nearby, but his injured ears could be lying to him. Still, he is lucky enough to find a small babbling brook winding through the land.

Falling to his knees, the weary shinobi falls to his knees and plunges his hands into the icy water. The cuts that laced the misers hands burned as the water seeped into his open flesh. He takes a hesitant sip. It seems clean, he decides, then dips his head down into the creek and begins gulping the crystalline liquid. It is painstakingly sweet to his parched throat. His thirst was slaked, but he was still dehydrated. It also didn't help that hunger pricked his empty belly. Spying ripe black orbs blooming on a line of shrubs, Kakuzu crawled over and popped several berries into his mouth. The tart taste exploded on his tongue. The intake of food only made him hungrier and seemed to worsen his nausea.

The banker rose and rubbed his face. Being in the fire country worried him and staying unnerved him further. He had to find Hidan, quickly. He continued on weak legs, body breaking and will deteriorating. Nonetheless, he carried on. Where would he be today had he allowed circumstance to trump him in the past?

The passing breeze made his body ache as it touched the lips of his lacerations and threatened to push him down, but Kakuzu managed to hold his ground. Shadows hung on his frame, making the weary nin look gaunt and dark. An icy aura hung around the killer in a cloud and the dimness of the forest only made the mood gloomier. With his mind muddled, he walks on in a fog until he reaches a sunlit patch of open land. A harsh glint of light assaults his eyes. The miser saunters over to the metallic object, half steeped in dirt, and crouches next to it. Anxiety accelerates the beating of Kakuzu's heart. He gingerly wipes away the dirt with a shaky hand and confirms his fears. The weight on his shoulders becomes spine crushing as he lifts Hidan's blood smeared headband out of the clotted dirt.

Kakuzu leaps to his feet. "Oh, shit," he growls, his knuckles growing white from the force of his grip on his partners accessory. "Hidan..!" Kakuzu breaks into a half-run, half-stumble despite the muscles in his legs searing in pain, all the while calling his allies name until his voice grows hoarse. The miser didn't understand why but something compelled him to find his comrade. Hidan is loud mouthed, arrogant, cocky...basically a bundle of things that Kakuzu hates in most people put into in one being. Consequently, Hidan really got under Kakuzu's skin. Still, the priest frequently occupied Kakuzu's thoughts. Why was that? Had Kakuzu developed some sort of feeling for his companion? Was it...friendship? It was a far fetched, ludicrous idea. Kakuzu hadn't had a friend in years. He detached himself from humanity the day he destroyed his hometown. All such bonds did was cause him agony, so he killed everyone around him. The closest thing he had to friends were the group of coldblooded murderers he was associated with.

Oddly enough, Kakuzu had grown fond of having the masochist at his side, and frankly, he enjoyed the company. Even though the dumbass pissed Kakuzu off to no end, he had a tendency to lighten Kakuzu's sour moods, but Kakuzu would never admit that to anybody. Now that he thought about it, protecting Hidan had become a priority to the sadist. It gave Kakuzu a sense of purpose. Was that the reason for Kakuzu's desire to help Hidan? Or was it something more idiotic? A word came to his mind in that moment. Love.

Kakuzu stops dead in his tracks and chuckles incredulously. What the hell? Love? That was the stupidest shit he'd thought up in years. Now he was just annoying himself, so he busied himself by jogging. But as he ran, a cold realization dawned on him. That body switch stunt takes a huge toll on ones body and drains a huge amount of chakra, especially when used at the spur of a moment. Kakuzu didn't even remember passing out. He could have been out of it for two minutes or two days. The sadist felt himself grow pale. A burst of adrenaline fills him and he breaks into a sprint despite how poor of a condition he was in. Arms of branches claw at him as he runs.

He collapses when he reaches a clearing. The earth in the center looks as though it had been churned recently. The elder akatsuki curses under his breath. There was nothing here. Energy spent, Kakuzu lays on the mound of uprooted earth. Its not until moments later that he hears a sort of whimpering. The hell..? he thinks and presses his ear harder against the soil, straining to hear with his busted ears.

He wasn't hallucinating. A voice, choked by debris, was pathetically ebbing out from below. The voice sounded off, but the miser knew it all too well. Oh, fuck! Hidan was buried alive under him. Only now did he notice the splashes of dried blood all over the terrain.

His mind raced as the banker yelled "Hidan!" Deafening silence consumes the land; no birds chirp and no leaves rustle. Even the voice stopped. After what felt like an eternity, the small cries sounded again. Kakuzu began tearing frantically at the dirt. The miser saw streaks of crimson dye the earth as his fingers raked over it. "Just hold on," he growls to the earth, a pointless sentiment since he knows the words will never reach the ears of those they were meant for. Kakuzu wasn't pious at all, but he prayed to what ever deity watched over him now. Please, he chanted in his mind. Please let it not be too late.

Well, this took longer to get out than I expected, but I learned a valuable lesson; never type with a wireless keyboard in your lap, because if someone bumps into you and you claw at the keyboard to catch it before it can fall, it will most likely delete all the things you spent two hours typing...yeah (lol). Anyways, thank you sooo much to everyone who read this story, old and new. I wish I could thank all of you personally, but I can't since I obviously don't know you guys. Instead, I will leave a list of names of all those who reviewed/favorited/followed the old story after this end-slate. Also, to all who really liked the old story, I am sorry for the long wait. Crap came up but things are getting better, and what better way to celebrate such things than doing what I love; writing my fantasies about two immortal killers to share with all the world! I hope you enjoyed this redux. I know some people have been waiting a long time for an update, and I will post chapter 2 ASAP, and I will work on some side stories in the meantime if I can. If you have any tips, requests, or questions, feel free to contact me! Love you all and have a pleasant day.

~Thanks to the reviewers/favoriters/followers~

Thank you- VampireDoll666, Guests #'s 1,2,3,4,5,6, and 7, makkoska, mzpearlz, Uchihacest Seduction Ninja, xXForever a SconeXx, KK1KK2, Fantasy is now Non-Fiction, Not so human anymore, MikoUchiha, derperuss, LaBlanc, Shadow of The Forgotten Ones, Leo, keeks, HouseFan92, kakuhidanekochan23, Yaoi Star 55, AkatsukiCloudRed, Alois0227, Blackeyed20, candrocks, GothicNinjaKitty, , Immortal-Immortal, Kimimaru, Ragmeister, SilentSable, The-Printer-Without-Ink, astier, itachifan incognito, jezboo, nanners40, not telling the unknown, sexyhidan, BarbieBat, Midnight-Shadow-Wolfling, Shadowsole, TheCrazyFanGirl23, hamiine5647, peneloo, Todesanbeterin, and YourDarkGuardian. [So many people omfg ;o;]