A hushed silence hung over the church, a force so thick that it was almost tangible. Even more present was the sense of foreboding in the air. A man of twenty-two in appearance kneeled at a stone altar. His hands were clenched tightly in silent prayer. After ten minutes, he stood, and the white silk robe wrapped around his body swept along in the movement. Muttered words exited his lips as his pale fingers grasped the handle of a dagger. With a thrust absent of hesitation and guided by rote repetition, he plunged the blade into his chest. A loud squelching sounded as the muscle was pierced, and the heart stopped only a few moments after. Hidan fell to his knees, and his head leaned back as far as it could without compromising his body's balance. One of his arms extended to the ceiling, its fingers reaching for an invisible object. Warm blood bubbled up from his wound and stained the robe crimson. The agonizing pain fogged his mind. With a trembling trajectory, his fingers traced circles in the gore, smearing it against the tile.
The incense was gone, and with it went all professionalism. Hidan only performed that more reverent ritual once a year, as was commanded by the texts; or at least, the readings of the texts he'd listened to long before. Such scarcity was a blessing. The Jashin religion was a gritty one, and he preferred his less eloquent duties to common prayer. Nevertheless, he still prayed before and after every battle. The latter required less pain, but it was demanded of him to share in his victims' suffering. It was this principle that he preached most passionately.
The laws of the villages, at least for the soldiers known as "shinobi", were brutal. In the most proper system, hosting an examination that featured twelve-year olds fighting until one was too injured to continue was considered mild. Hidan's own town had sent him into an educational system that taught toddlers where to slice their enemies in order to hit the most vital veins and organs rather than reading and writing. Though the practice was outdated due to one boy who'd taken it too far, another village had long hailed one particularly controversial test for its potential shinobi: the participants would kill the friends whom they'd learned and fought alongside, and the last few standing would be employed by the army.
And yet, despite this moral code, for Hidan's devotion to his god, he was condemned as a criminal even in the world he resided in. It was a stroke of good fortune for him that Yugakure had no missing-nin hunters to send out in pursuit. According to Hidan's logic, that was a divine consequence for their cowardice of signing the peace treaty. That had been the document that robbed him of all purpose. The young boys and girls the village brainwashed into killing machines were abandoned without any other notable skills. Hidan couldn't even read. It was the terrifying knowledge that he had no reason to exist without fighting that had driven him to giving himself fully to mindless worship.
Even the enemies that still came at Hidan couldn't pose any real threat to him. If he was stabbed, dismembered, poisoned, beheaded, burned at the stake, he'd remain trapped in his earthly body. He couldn't die even if he wanted to. Instead, he was forced to serve an immortal life of endless pain for the sole purpose of pleasing his deity. Every day would have been torture if his sanity hadn't broken. Masochism was a coping mechanism.
"Hey, where're we going this time?" Hidan whined and cracked his back comedically as he trailed behind his partner, Kakuzu. "Don't tell me it's one of your dumbass bounty hunts again. It's not like you need more money, seriously." His voice was deliberately grating. He was a fright to his enemies and an annoyance to the few allies he had.
"Shut up." Came Kakuzu's gruff response.
Hidan didn't shut up. His mouth continued to run incessantly until the two came across their target. They stood in front of a middle-aged man wearing a fishnet shirt and a forehead protector inscribed with the symbol of Kirigakure. As usual, Hidan scoffed at his assurance that he'd "kill them" if they attacked, and he returned it with a cocky ultimatum of his own: "I'll sacrifice the likes of you easily."
His optimism didn't come without results. The third and largest blade of his scythe had scratched the target's cheek, and Hidan had withdrawn the weapon and licked the blood off of it slowly, to savor the taste. After swallowing another's blood, he'd become a human voodoo doll, and whatever injuries he received would transfer to his victim as well.
The man fell to his knees and coughed up blood while Hidan remained standing. A spear was embedded in his liver. He smirked, his bloodshot eyes wide as saucers, and laughed victoriously at his sacrifice's reaction. "Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it!" His voice was high and panicked. Blood had sprayed from his own open wounds onto his black cloak. The lightheadedness he experienced in that state of suffering was delectable.