As he lay dying in the dirt, Kakuzu swore he heard the roar of a mighty waterfall. The thundering waters seemed to rage through his very frame and reverberate in the chamber of his skull. The sound had to be a figment; such a work of nature was impossible in the dry, towering woods of the Land of Fire. Yet, the thrum was so similar to the great falls of his long-scorned homeland, he momentarily felt adrift in the ancient waters of his youth, head sinking under the rushing current.
He was a drowning. Lungs crushed by the Jinchuuriki boy's assault. The Rasengan's deadly vortex of energy had wreaked incredible damage, shredding through the thread, flesh and bone of his back. Kakuzu's fingers clawed uselessly at dust, throat clicking in vain to draw air.
'I can't breathe.'
Needle-thin threads wormed into the spongy pleura of flattened lungs, following in the path of capillaries, and hooked into the soft sheet of his diaphragm. Once anchored, the tendrils gently pulled and Kakuzu drew a choking gasp. With guidance, the lungs expanded and contracted; now forever reliant on the thread until he breathed his last.
The Jiongu, millions of tiny threads woven throughout his body, twisted beneath flesh in anguish. They oozed sluggishly out of the jagged hole the boy had carved and wriggled like long, black snakes over his mangled back, mapping the wound by touch. Through their shared link, Kakuzu learned of his missing hearts, cracked vertebra and sheered ribs. Tendrils twisted in his gut, floundering in the wake of the devastation. He could breathe, but no more.
A heart beat feebly against his ribs. Perhaps it was the source of the roaring in his ears and not the raging of water. The endless surge was the pounding of his last true heart in his ears.
Feet slapped against the dirt before him. Eyes flicked upward expecting to see the Kyuubi vessel. Obviously the boy would want to gloat and spew some moral prattle. Konoha shinobi were full of honorable nonsense. Yet, he was not met with silted gaze of the boy, but with the one-eyed stare of Kakashi Hatake.
Fury bubbled in the pit of his stomach. Kakuzu wished with all his might to lash out at the younger man. Long, thick coils skittered across his back at the shinobi's approach. The Jiongu slapped mindlessly in the dust, sensing danger but ultimately blind; too chakra starved and reeling from the last assault to attack. The threads were taxed enough with the rhythm of breathing. Seething, Kakuzu found he didn't have the strength to stitch his split face together now. Yet, the threads could still form garbled words.
"For me to be beaten by kids like you," Kakuzu muttered between wheezing breaths.
Hatake stopped an arm's length away as an inky, black tendril brushed his toe.
"However, from our viewpoint you're just a crazy old man." Hatake lectured and then shrugged. "Well, to someone who fought the First Hokage, I guess we do look like kids."
The words sounded so soft as if the man were speaking from a long, long distance away. He could clearly see Hatake's feet although they wavered like a mirage in the summer heat. Mustering the last of his strength, Kakuzu lifted his head. Even as the world blurred in brilliant halos of light, he gazed defiantly up at Hatake.
'I hope I haunt you,' he thought, imagining the black mass of insides slithering out of his seam-ripped back. 'Behold the price of ambition.'
Still, glancing at the scarred lid that concealed a blood-red eye, he figured the younger man already knew something about the cost of life.
"Thus, here you lay in the dirt," Hatake continued, as electricity crackled to life around his fist. "And now your time to die has come."
The Chidori sizzled, spitting blue sparks into the air. The deafening rumble of the waterfall resounded again. Blood thundered through his ears. Faintly in the distance, Kakuzu could hear the song of a thousand birds."The next generation will always surpass the previous one; it's one of the never-ending cycles in life," Hatake said above the roar.
In a flash, the Chidori sliced through Kakuzu's open back and struck his last heart. The acidic scent of burnt hair filled his nostrils, and then he heard no more. The churning waters stopped and the birds fell silent. In his last moment as the Jiongu spasmed in his chest, Kakuzu thought—I don't want to die. And despite the Jiongu's urging death-throes, the world fell away into darkness.