Chapter 2: Money and Religion

It's fairly rare for all nine members of the Akatsuki to gather at the same time. When Zetsu brought me back, he, Deidara, and Kisame were the only members residing at the headquarters. After a few days, Zetsu and Deidara left on a mission, and two of the other members returned: Orochimaru and his partner, Sasori.

I disliked Orochimaru from the moment I saw him. He exuded an aura that practically screamed, "Don't trust me!" He was the kind of person that you didn't want to turn your back on, even for an instant.

Orochimaru did do one thing that made me happy, though: he brought Kimimaro to the Akatsuki.

Kaguya Kimimaro was, at that time, only around seven years old—a couple of years older than me. My face lit up as soon as I saw him, because here was someone close to my own age, someone I could play with and be friends with. At first, I completely ignored Orochimaru and Sasori, instead running up to Kimimaro and holding out my hand. "I'm Sawada Tobi! What's your name?"

Kimimaro blinked, looking at me in a way that, when I look back on it now, breaks my heart. He looked as though this simple expression of greeting and friendship was completely alien to him. It was as though it had been so long since anyone wanted to be friends with him that he had no idea how to react to it. Hesitantly, he stretched out his own hand and said softly, "I'm Kaguya Kimimaro."

Kisame, who was sitting on the couch nearby, suddenly stiffened. "He's a Kaguya?" Quickly, he stood up and steered Orochimaru out of the room, presumably wanting to talk to him alone for some reason. Sasori wandered off soon after, leaving me and Kimimaro alone.

"So, um, are you related to that Orochimaru guy or something?"

Kimimaro smiled. His smile was like his handshake: halting and uncertain because he hadn't done it in so long. "No, I'm not related to Orochimaru-sama, but he saved me. My real family…is all dead."

I nodded. "Mine too."

From that day on, Kimimaro and I became close friends. With our real siblings dead, we adopted each other as brothers.


That night, I couldn't sleep. The Akatsuki headquarters was huge, with many passageways and rooms. It was extraordinarily hard to find one's way around, which I think was done intentionally, to confuse anyone who tried to infiltrate it. I had been given a small bedroom down the hall from the kitchen. The previous nights, I had no trouble falling asleep, but on that night I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

I had been in emotional shock from the deaths of everyone I loved. Meeting the Akatsuki members, settling into my new home in the Mountain Country, and trying to find my way around the maze-like compound had kept my mind occupied for the past few days. Now the intense sorrow aroused by my family's destruction was having a chance to assert itself. I remembered my father's smile, the way my mother used to sing me to sleep when I was a baby, my older sister's laughter. And I realized that I would never experience any of those things again. Tears began to pour down my cheeks, and I buried my face in my pillow.

I was startled out of my sad reverie by a knock on the door. Wiping my tears away, I opened it, and saw a boy who looked to be in his early teenage years standing there. Despite his young age, he was wearing the Akatsuki's uniform, and I remembered Kisame saying that his name was Sasori.

"May I come in?" he asked.

I nodded slowly, and Sasori sat down at the chair that went with the desk in my room. "Are you all right?"

I wasn't sure what to say to this. I was definitely not all right, but I didn't know if I wanted to confess that to this person whom I didn't know. "I…miss my parents," I finally responded.

For some reason, that seemed to strike a chord with Sasori, and he stared down at the desktop. "I understand," he said quietly. "My parents…are also dead."

"What happened to them?"

For a long time, he was silent, and I was afraid that I had offended him by asking such a personal question. After a few minutes, he said, "They were betrayed. The Kage of my former village sent them into an ambush in order to draw out the ones planning the ambush."

Although I had only met a few of the Akatsuki so far, I was beginning to see a pattern. All of them had lost everyone precious to them, and found refuge among this eclectic group of shinobi. "My parents were betrayed as well. The townspeople feared my clan's bloodline limit and tried to wipe us out. I would have died too, if Zetsu-san hadn't rescued me."

"Hmm…people often fear those with unusual abilities. The weak always fear the strong, and seek to subjugate them. But among us, you need have no fear: we will make you strong enough that no one can hurt you again." Sasori stood, and walked to the door. He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at me. "Tomorrow morning, meet me in the dojo at the end of this hallway. I will teach you a few simple jutsus, so you can begin to become stronger."


Sasori did indeed teach me the first shinobi jutsus I ever learned: Henge no Justu and Bunshin no Jutsu. It quickly became apparent that I didn't have a very large chakra reserve, but what I did have, I had extremely precise control over. Sasori said this made me well-suited to learning medical ninjutsu, but those were difficult and I would need to train for a few years before I could start learning them.

Kimimaro trained with me too, and I soon learned about his bloodline limit. We often sparred, and he invariably won at contests of taijutsu. I looked up to all the Akatsuki members, but Kimimaro was particularly devoted to Orochimaru. Orochimaru trained us sometimes too, but I much preferred working with Sasori.

It was a couple of months before I met any more of the Akatsuki members. One spring morning, another pair returned to base from an extended mission in the Wind Country. One of them was tall and broad, and reminded me, in appearance at least, of Kisame. The other was shorter and slimmer, with slicked-back blond hair and bright green eyes. He wore his robe open to the stomach, with no shirt underneath it.

"Hey, who are these kids?" the tall one, who was named Kakuzu, asked.

"Hmm? Oh, them. The dark-haired one is Tobi-kun. Zetsu-san brought him here. The other one is Kimimaro-kun. He's Orochimaru-san's. They both have bloodline limits," Sasori explained.

I soon learned that Kakuzu was the Akatsuki's treasurer. The Akatsuki organization is not motivated by money, but even S-ranked shinobi have to eat. And buy clothing. And have places to stay when they travel. Now, all of the various shinobi countries have a list of missing-nin or enemy ninja from other nations whom they would like to see dead. Generally, they offer a respectable sum of money to anyone who kills a person on that list. (Truth be told, all the Akatsuki members are on at least one of these lists themselves). The Akatsuki earn the money they need by taking down such wanted individuals and collecting the reward offered by the country that wanted that person killed. They also collect secret jutsus or powerful artifacts and sell them on the black market, to the highest bidder. Kakuzu is in charge of collecting this money and allocating it equitably to the Akatsuki members. He's a stoic man who doesn't speak often. He'll take any opportunity to earn more money for the organization, and is always on the lookout for new such opportunities.

"Huh," he said, looking at myself and Kimimaro speculatively. "Hey, Hidan-san and I have to go to the Rice Country to make an exchange. You kids want to come? If you're going to work for us, you might as well start seeing what our missions are like."

I broke into a wide grin immediately. "Seriously? You want to take us with you? That's awesome!"

"Hmph. We're leaving tomorrow at dawn. Be ready by then."

True to his word, Kakuzu and his partner met Kimimaro and I at the entrance to the stronghold as the sun rose above the horizon the next day. As we descended into the main part of the Mountain Country, he explained that he and Hidan had stolen a powerful object from the nomadic samurai of the Wind Country. It was an oil, extracted from a rare plant, that could cure most forms of poisoning. "If it's so useful, why not keep it for yourselves?" asked Kimimaro timidly. He still seemed to be getting used to the fact that he could ask questions or voice his opinion without being punished for doing so.

"Oh, we know what plant the stuff is extracted from, so we can make it ourselves. Of course, we don't plan on telling our client that."

The client was a feudal lord of the Rice Country. He was quite happy to receive the vial of oil, and paid Kakuzu a large amount of money. Hidan then insisted on taking a brief trip outside of the city, so that he could perform a ritual to thank the gods for the success of our mission. Kimimaro and I looked at each other quizzically. Both of our families had believed in the gods, and prayed to them on occasion, but there were really very few rituals involved. Birth, coming-of-age, marriage, and death were the only events that merited religious rituals among our people. For something as small as the success of a routine mission, a quick prayer would suffice.

Hidan led us to a small hill well outside of the city. Plains and rice paddies stretched around us in every direction. Kakuzu sat down and began counting the money from the feudal lord, making notes in a notebook and muttering to himself. To our great shock, Hidan took out a wooden stake and stabbed it into his chest.

"Hidan-san! What are you doing!" I ran forward, wishing that I knew at least one medical ninjutsu. "Kakuzu-san, help!"

Hidan arched an eyebrow and looked at me reproachfully. "This is the ritual. I must give a sacrifice to the gods, to thank them for allowing me to complete my mission successfully." Reaching a hand to his chest, he took some of the blood from his wound and smeared it onto the grass, making a symbol that I had never seen before. Laying on his back in the center of the symbol, he began to pray out loud.

Throughout the whole exchange, Kakuzu had not even looked up from his notebook. Kimimaro and I looked at each other, and shrugged. We had never heard of a religious ritual that required the practitioner to injure himself, but Kakuzu didn't seem particularly concerned—and we couldn't have stopped Hidan even if we wanted to.

On the trip back to the Mountain Country, Hidan told us a bit about his religion and how he had acquired his faith in it. In the Shinto religion, there are many gods, and the one Hidan worshipped is called Amatsu Mikaboshi. Mikaboshi is the god of chaos, evil, and the darkness that resides within every human soul. Hidan had been born into the Matsushita clan of the Rain Village, which carried a powerful bloodline. As a young child, Hidan had the potential to manifest that bloodline someday, but had not done so yet. The Cloud Village, jealous of that bloodline, had launched a raid intended to capture a Matsushita child. They thought that a child would be easier to capture—and easier to break. Hidan was the child they captured. In their attempts to make him reveal the secrets of his clan's ability, they did things to him that no human being should have to endure. Anger, hatred, and a desire for revenge—in short, the "darkness of the human soul" that I referred to earlier and over which Mikaboshi holds dominion—were the only things Hidan had to keep him alive. Finally, he was rescued. When his cell was broken open, he thought that his rescuers were from his village, perhaps even his own family. But they were not. They were from the Wind Country, and had not even known Hidan was there when they launched their attack. Still, they were allies of the Rain, and so they healed Hidan's many injuries and brought him back to his people. But what truly changed Hidan was still to come. You see, one might expect that, upon discovering that a child of their village had been kidnapped, the Rain might do something about it. Launch a rescue mission, or send out ANBU to gather intelligence telling them who had taken the kid, or something. But the Rain—and even Hidan's own clan—had given him up for dead. It wasn't that they had attempted to rescue him and failed, or that they had been unable to find out where he was being held. They hadn't even tried. They had simply assumed him lost, and abandoned him to his fate.

It is said that light and darkness, good and evil, wage an eternal battle inside the heart of every human being. In that moment, when Hidan learned that his own family and village had abandoned him to torture and eventual execution, the last tiny flame within his heart went out—and it was given over entirely to darkness.

Kakuzu and Hidan took us on a few more missions with them, and we began to learn something of the world outside the Mountain Country. I was given a mask to wear to hide my left eye, partly because having two overlapping fields of vision that show entirely different things is confusing as hell, and partly so that no one would recognize me as the last survivor of the Sawada Clan. I was thrilled to be helping the organization that had given me a home, and was eager to prove myself useful to them. Kimimaro was just as happy to be serving the organization that Orochimaru was part of. It took us a while to get used to Hidan stabbing himself in the chest after every successful mission (sometimes I wonder what he would do to himself if a mission ever failed), but we soon realized that the wounds he inflicted on himself healed at a superhuman rate. He never even lost enough blood to be in any danger. Of course, listening to him pray out loud for nearly an hour got tedious after the first few missions. By the fifth mission I completed with him and Kakuzu, I had started making silent prayers of my own: Dear gods, please give Hidan-san laryngitis.


A/N: So, in Chapter 317, which just came out yesterday, it turns out that Tobi and Deidara are partners. Since I've already posted the prologue with Tobi and Akisane as partners, I'm not sure whether I'll keep it that way and just have the story be slightly AU, or have some kind of explanation of Deidara being away so that Tobi and Akisane get partnered up temporarily. But I won't be getting back to the Tobi vs. Ibiki fight for a couple of chapters, so I have some time to think about that.

Oh, and for all the other Itachi fans out there, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about him. He just hasn't joined Akatsuki yet.

I hope you're all enjoying the story—please review!