Author's Note: This short one-shot was inspired by Onileo's Material Bonds, whose portrayal of Kakuzu proceeded to make little tailor-made bunnies spin off a mess of plot yarn in my head. Well, that and the fact that every single Akatsuki hideout always seems to be splendidly stocked. They must have staff for this! I cannot imagine Itachi going to the grocer's and using the Mangekyo to haggle himself a bargain. Can you?
Don't Kill The Messenger
Uki ran through an empty cave-like hallway in the underground hideout of the Akatsuki. He ran like the wind, as if all the tailed demons were after him.
But when he came to a crossing and saw Kakuzu walking toward him on the most direct route for him to take, he hastily stopped and turned tail. It only took him a few seconds to redirect himself to a safer route.
Sadly, it turned out a few seconds was all it took for the Akatsuki missing-nin to summon his black, seemingly sentient thread tendrils to life. They snapped after Uki and broke his flight abruptly by circling his chest, and in case that was not enough to get the message through, his throat. This was really not a good day for the poor errand runner.
"Where do you think you're going?" Kakuzu's voice was half query, half annoyed snarl. This was a man who was never seen on a good mood, possibly because his partner was a thoroughly crazy and unkillable Jashinist, possibly because he was just born that way. Uki's shoulders sagged; he could try to come up with a convincing lie and potentially get killed by the short-tempered shinobi, or tell the truth and get killed as the bearer of bad news.
There was just no way out, but maybe he could still divert his attention somewhere else. When the tentacle-like thread loosened around his throat, Uki rasped, "I have an urgent message to Leader, sir."
Kakuzu still kept him dangling from the chest, unconvinced. "The shortest route to him is through this hallway. This is something that concerns me, isn't it." The thread re-tightened slightly.
Uki winced at his stupid reflex to run away from the treasurer of the organization; maybe he could have gotten away with just running past. He hesitatingly nodded.
"Spit it out."
In afterthought, it would have been conductive to staying alive if he had not run into Kakuzu at all, but at this point getting quickly killed for being the messenger probably beat dying painfully for downright disobedience. "Th- the money stash, n-number 3-"
"Yes? I haven't got all day."
"Sir, it's b-been raided by Konoha. Th- they've set up a lookout."
Stash number 3 represented about a third of the criminal organization's funds. It was a serious hit for them as a whole, but even more so to the extremely stingy treasurer. Uki closed his eyes, awaiting the inevitable being torn to pieces in outrage.
A moment later, he was still there in one piece. "How did you find this out?"
Uki idly wondered if ghosts often continued to imagine they were still alive at the location of their demise. But it was probably best to play along with this imaginary Kakuzu as well, because his imagination would certainly know how to deal with him otherwise. Knowing that things could not get any worse in this strange afterlife, Uki's panic settled down a little bit.
"We sent out Jali to pick some cash out for the supplies of next week's mission, and he spotted Konoha shinobi crawling in the woods nearby. After confirming they were concentrated around the stash, he went into hiding and left the emergency message according to protocol." That much Uki was happy about; even at the face of disaster, the cleanup had been impeccable; it had been ensured that no Konoha tails would be led back to the secret hideout.
The history books were filled with uncovered and dismantled underground organizations that did not plan ahead for things to go wrong. For some reason, Kakuzu in particular always planned for everything to go wrong. He had also managed to drill this principle thoroughly onto the small team of underlings he had to run the daily operations, like supply a subset of the hideouts in the area with all the canned food and sharpened steel the crime syndicate would need to survive a nuclear fallout or two (all bought at discount due to impeccable forward planning, no less).
Uki was so busy watching his life whiz by before his eyes that he almost missed Kakuzu nodding slightly. Nodding? As if in approval, or at least resigned acceptance? "Anything else to report?"
Uki was too stunned for words for a moment, and stumbled for something to say. "Uhh, no, sir?"
"Do you have any idea why Konoha found the stash? Any leaks?"
The the intense stare of the senior shinobi's coal-black eyes were drilling holes through Uki's composure. He let out a most embarrassing squeak. "N-not that I know of, sir?" After finding his voice again, he hazarded, "Could there be a m-mole?" He was pretty confident that none of his team could have accidentally spilled the beans or lead anyone external to the hideout. Security was extremely strict when it came to Akatsuki money stashes.
Instead of instant death upon additional, if only implied, bad news, Uki felt the threads around him loosen up; so much so that he had to hold on to them in order to not collapse into a puddle of quivering jelly right there and then.
When he realized he was holding on to what amounted to a tentacle of one of the most wanted killers on every bingo book, he blanched and hastily regained his composure. Without external aids, this time.
Kakuzu seemed to look at his wriggling extremities strangely for a moment, then withdrew them. "Yeah. I knew they were on to it so I had it emptied quietly. But you would have known not to come back and tell me if you had anything to do with it. So I figure you're clean." He then proceeded on his way, leaving his stunned messenger double-checking the count on his retained limbs and central organs.