A cool, calm night. Moonlight slicing through the canopy of Konoha's robust forests.
It'd been two days of the same.
Kakuzu of Takigakure had been traveling alone for two days. The only sound he'd made over these two days came from the deep breaths he would draw in as he slid by the rotating patrol groups. They became more frequent the closer he crawled to the village proper.
He'd come close enough to see the red glint in their eyes, the dark hair that hung low on many of their backs. Crests displayed proudly. Senju and Uchiha working together. It was still a foreign sight to the shinobi world. A terrible omen for whoever stood against them.
He felt the patrol group's chakra fade from the edge of his senses and waited a moment. Just a moment. On cue, another figure stalked behind the main group, a safety net to deter those unlike Kakuzu- the overeager assassins.
Long, violent spikes of hair flowed from the man's scalp. His dark figure looked like an amalgamation of nightmares, inhuman, but Kakuzu's eyes focused enough to distinguish the man from the weapon on his back. It scared him more when he realized whose armor he was staring at. The gunbai, the hair, the imposing figure… The red eyes of Uchiha Madara rolled across the earth and it wilted under his gaze.
"Whoever you are," Madara's deep voice cut through the woods, "you're a dead man. I'd tell you to turn around and go home, but you're already in his forest."
A pause. Kakuzu swore his heart didn't beat, his blood didn't flow, his muscles didn't twitch a fiber.
"If you run, the trees will bind and crush you. If you head to the village, the flowers will poison you and you'll die. Do what you came to do, nameless shinobi. And take with you to hell the knowledge that you saw God before you died. His name is Senju Hashirama. And he is waiting for you." A twitch of the foot and Madara was gone.
For the first time in his life, Kakuzu felt great fear. Like a thick vine or a python, it wrapped around his throat and squeezed. His breath hitched. He hadn't been nearly as careful as he should have been.
Or was he just that out of his depth?
Probably, Kakuzu's own mind brutally answered. His one edge was surprise; It'd
been taken away from him rather bluntly. What was left? To go toe-to-toe with the man who couldn't die? The man who captured the nine beasts and controlled them to the point of mastery? The man whose very name caused entire nations to form against him, to have even a semblance of a chance of survival?
There was no hope here. Not alone. Not against the monster who could control the tailed beasts like pets. The mission was over. He'd lost. Madara might as well come back and finish him.
But he stood at the precipice of greatness, at the peak of Taki's young history. Nothing would dare pull him from the great dive he was about to take. Even if the water was frozen solid, he'd still go headfirst. For Taki.
Never trust an enemy.
Kakuzu, after an eternity of waiting, began to move again. But the words of the Uchiha held true; The trees were guiding him along, slowly warping to bar his path if he tried to divert his predestined course.
A small house, perhaps a gardener's home, came into view under the slices of moonlight.
"The God of Shinobi does not appreciate irreverence in his own garden," a darkened, broad figure spoke down from the red-plated rooftop. The voice carried a playful tone with it, like a cat who'd found a beetle wandering aimlessly about its domain.
The fauna in the area seemed to actively curve up at the figure… like it was smiling.
"You are perceptive, Senju Hashirama."
The figure stepped further into the middle of the roof and disappeared from Kakuzu's line of sight. "You came alone?" The voice called. It was… lighter, fresher than what Kakuzu imagined the God of Shinobi to sound like. Very unlike the demonic aura of his counterpart Madara.
Kakuzu leapt up to follow him. As he landed, he made careful note of the quiet that surrounded them- no guards. No distractions. No natural trees or earth atop the roof. If it were possible to kill the most powerful man on the planet, here would be the place.
"I've felt you since you touched my trees. I can feel everything the trees feel. What's your name?"
"… Kakuzu."
"And where do you hail from, Kakuzu?"
"Takigakure."
"Oh yes, the waterfall village. With the tree and the special water! I was planning on sending the Rokubi to you lot… but that's not why you're here, is it, Kakuzu?"
Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. How did he know their secrets? "… No, Senju Hashirama."
"And why are you here?" Hashirama slipped his headband off and let his hair fall loosely around his shoulders and face. Complete serenity. No danger present.
Kakuzu, in his angry youth, just couldn't help himself. The warning bells in his mind became a dull cacophony to his hot blood. Was this man lecturing him? "To kill you, to vault Takigakure to its rightful place atop the Shinobi world, of course! Is it not obvious?"
The four corners of the roof became ablaze, and for a moment, just a single moment that would be forever etched into Kakuzu's heart, he saw Hashirama Senju in full.
The fiery red armor gleaming in the light. Long, dark hair with the texture of silk threads. The flat lips that didn't reach focused eyes, the veins in his hands that ran through them the most amazing life force in the Shinobi world with each heartbeat, with each flex of muscle and ligament. He took a step forward and the tiles below his feet cracked.
And Kakuzu was terrified. Madara was right. This was God.
From the fiery corners came four massive wooden pillars that snuffed the flames and towered tall above the two shinobi. "I do not take you for a fool, Kakuzu. Only a boy. A young man sent to do the impossible. I feel pity for you, above all." He continued forward. The spiderweb cracks of the roof advanced and reached Kakuzu's feet.
"I am the strongest in my village, Hashirama. I will not bow to you," Kakuzu spoke. His voice wavered, but he gave no ground. His chakra began to dance- this was it, the beginning of the violence.
"No one bows to me, Kakuzu," Hashirama's gentle voice patronized him. "The world confuses my niceties for weaknesses; their problem, not mine. I do all I can to remain a pacifist." The forest below them, the one Kakuzu thought he'd escaped, rose all around them. Trees magnified, vines came and wrapped around the massive pillars- it seemed the entire world was coming to bear on Kakuzu.
It was like they'd never left the garden floor. Even the moon above vanished as the flora and fauna surrounded the roof of the outer Senju Compound building and swallowed them whole. All was dark, but Kakuzu still heard Hashirama stalking forward. His voice was soft, but his feet were not.
"But sometimes," Hashirama continued, "even I tire of the lies and the deception and the cheating."
"Are you going to strike me down, Shodai Hokage of Konoha?"
As the words left his mouth, Kakuzu's throat went dry. Because behind him another Hashirama stood, a mountainous force in his armor, having just warped out of a tree softly, imperceptibly.
Whether he was a clone or not, the Hashirama behind him spoke, like he was whispering in Kakuzu's ear: "That depends, Kakuzu of Takigakure. Do you lie? Do you cheat? Do you steal?"
"No... I have honor. I will die here on this roof if I must. Anything for Takigakure."
The world around Kakuzu shrunk back down. The moon returned, and a sly grin worked its way onto Hashirama's face. "Then I have only one more question to ask before I let you leave."
Kakuzu's baffled expression made Hashirama laugh. "Before you let me leave?"
The Shodai, now only a handful of feet away, shimmered out of existence. 'Genjutsu! When did he-?'
"We aren't fighting, Kakuzu. Tell your village you wounded me, but not gravely enough before my guards came. Tell them what you must. But we aren't fighting today. I'm tired. I came to my garden to relax. And I plan on continuing to do so! So, I need to ask you one more question!" Hashirama's voice rose and rose. Like the flames of a stoked fire, the man was roaring!
Kakuzu just blinked. The Shodai was… strange. So strange, in fact, that he walked right up to Kakuzu, a man that admitted he wanted to kill him only a moment before and took his hands in his own.
Kakuzu, purely instinctively, pulled away… except he didn't move so much as a millimeter. Hashirama's hands didn't even look to be flexed and they still paralyzed the strongest ninja in Takigakure history purely from pressure.
A mad glint appeared in the dark-haired shinobi's eyes, and Kakuzu thought they looked like burning embers of coal in the cool Konoha night. This was another side of the calm, stoic leader of Konoha. The demonic side.
"Kakuzu, do you… like to gamble?"
After several hours of back and forth, Kakuzu fled from that rooftop. He fled at the behest of the Shodai Hokage, who filled Kakuzu's pockets with the heaviest golden coins he'd ever seen.
My god, the Shodai was terrible at gambling. And Kakuzu was too frugal to lose his pot to a goofball like that.
Hashirama told him to report to his leaders that the Hokage meant them no ill will for their attempt on his life- he'd come visit them within the following days. How, Kakuzu had no idea; he couldn't possibly know where their village was, could he?
Who was he kidding? Of course, he did. He knew everything. Even while they were playing cards, the man was laughable but razor sharp. After some (a lot) of sake, Hashirama had given him scouting reports for each of the major villages that had cropped up, smoothly slipping the tips and notes between frenetic stories of love and war before the times of the major villages. The man could laugh and be laughed at, but everytime Kakuzu's hand had been drawn back to move a chip or replace a card from his hand, the Shodai had the good sense to eye him warily.
Shinobi never let their guards down.
Except when he lost all his money.
The man became depressed; he was almost despondent, in fact. Kakuzu had no idea what to do. He tried to apologize but Hashirama waved him off, pointed in a direction, and said he'd 'see him in a few days anyway.' Was it a threat or a promise? Kakuzu had no idea. But between the small fortune he'd taken off the man and the apparent imminent arrival of the Shodai in a village whose greatest asset was its hidden location… he needed to get home. But that led to the next problem.
His mission had been a failure- but was it ever even supposed to succeed? Was there ever really a chance? What if he'd tried to attack Hashirama despite being found out anyway? He'd never failed a mission before… it made him angry, to stain his reputation so ridiculously.
But Kakuzu did like the feeling of these coins in his pockets… a bit too much. Maybe his leaders wouldn't think it too much of a loss that he'd all but robbed the Senju (and Konoha) of a small nation's war chest in the span of a few hours.
Sure, he didn't take their leader's heart as directed, but he did just secure Taki's expenses for the next 30 years. And this mission was for Takigakure, after all.
For his home. Something that would never betray him.
The jingle in his pockets made such beautiful sounds. He slipped a free hand down to grasp the coins and felt their cool metal slip against his fingers.
He'd never get tired of this feeling, so long as he lived.