A/N: I'm not keeping to my original update schedule at all! But you're not complaining about the early updates, right? More characters show up! Once again, the pairings for this story are:
KakuHida, PeinKonan, ?Konan, GaaSaku, ShikaTema, NejiTen, onesided NaruSaku
I absolutely LOVE this chapter, by the way. I couldn't decide on a good title for it, so until I think of a better one, it's just "The Cell." That is also the title of a really cool movie, by the way. Jennifer Lopez is a terrible actress, but all the artsy eye candy was awesome. Kay I'll shut up now!
To Hell and Back
-xXx-
Chapter 4: The Cell
Kakuzu kept watch on Hidan until light filtered into the pit Hidan had called home for eight years. The older nin's back was stiff, his legs full of pins and needles from the body (albeit rather light) resting on them for so long. Kakuzu slid out from under Hidan and straightened up, stretching. Hidan, looking much healthier already, mumbled incoherently in his sleep. Kakuzu thought about waking him, and shook him a few times.
"F-fuck off," Hidan groaned, throwing his arm over his face. Kakuzu pulled hard on Hidan's arm, and the priest yelped as some of the stitches holding it together came undone.
"Five more minutes," Hidan mumbled and turned over, holding his arm close to his chest. Kakuzu growled in frustration.
"You were always so damned hard to get up," Kakuzu grumbled, but he left Hidan alone.
Kakuzu climbed out of the pit and once on proper ground, he walked off into the bushes to relieve himself. The old missing Falls nin was just tucking his shirt back into his pants when he heard movement behind him. He turned around, and saw a man standing there, hands forming a familiar seal. Chouji, the little boy who'd led him to Hidan, was hiding behind his father's legs, shooting nervous glances at Kakuzu.
"Shikamaru," Kakuzu said as the shadow bind took hold of him.
"You're supposed to be dead," Shikamaru answered.
"Everyone tells me that," Kakuzu sighed. Shikamaru turned to the boy hiding behind him.
"Chouji, go back home."
The boy looked furious.
"Awwww, dad, I wanna see you fight him!"
"Go home now, Chouji. This man is dangerous."
"But dad!"
"NOW!"
Chouji jumped and scurried away. Kakuzu watched him go.
"You didn't hurt them."
Kakuzu turned back to Shikamaru, who was frowning.
"Why?"
"Don't really know," Kakuzu admitted. He would have shrugged, but Shikamaru's shadow bind was too strong.
"I thought our worries with the Akatsuki were over. Seems I was wrong."
"I'm not Akatsuki anymore. I just wanted to…pay my respects to Hidan," Kakuzu said slowly. He knew Shikamaru wouldn't buy it.
"Right. Well, now you'll have to answer to the Hokage," Shikamaru drawled with a knowing smile.
As if on cue, three ninja appeared in a poof of smoke. Kakuzu recognized two of them. The Kyuubi kid was now a man, wearing a white robe with the number six emblazed in kanji on his chest. Beside him was the pink haired girl who'd killed Sasori. The third nin, Kakuzu didn't know. Though the large, wolfish dog at his side suggested he was from the Inuzuka clan.
"Kakuzu!" the pink haired woman cried, eyes wide. Kakuzu snorted.
"I'm surprised any of you remembered my name."
"But you're dead! I helped Tsunade-sama perform your autopsy!"
"What happened to my body afterwards? Cremation? Or do Konoha nins still have some shred of respect for the dead, and it was buried?"
"We…"
"We burned your bodies, and melted down your rings!" Naruto snarled. The dog barked.
"Sh, Akamaru, quiet," Kiba murmured, scratching the dog behind the ears.
'What am I going to do?' Kakuzu asked himself, heart beating rapidly in his chest.
He'd let himself get caught by the shadow bind. And now he was surrounded by powerful shinobi, two of whom had taken down strong Akatsuki. When they were only children. As adult nins, they must be much stronger. Especially the Jinchuuriki.
Jinchuuriki…Kyuubi…
The locket began to hum under Kakuzu's shirt. He could feel it grow warm against his skin, pulsing in time with his heart beat. Something whispered in his ear, a dark, guttural voice.
"…Hell water…Stygian life force…bring it…to me…"
Kakuzu's breath hitched. He looked to Naruto, searching his face. Naruto's eyes were wide, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Sakura noticed and placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
"…let him taste…let me be freeee…"
"Naruto!"
Kakuzu swallowed hard. The Kyuubi…he was hearing the voice of the demon fox. And judging by his reaction, Naruto could too. Kakuzu had never heard a bijuu's voice before. Until today, he'd never known they could actually speak.
"Naruto, snap out of it!"
A red, bubbling aura grew around Naruto and he fell on all fours. Ephemeral tails grew out of his back, Kakuzu counted three before, with a roar of rage, Naruto pulled himself together. The aura faded and the sixth Hokage returned to normal, panting, sweat trickling down his brow.
"Naruto, what happened?" Sakura cried, helping Naruto to his feet. Shikamaru narrowed his eyes at Kakuzu.
"I've only got a few minutes left until I have to release this guy. Naruto, I'm going to take him to a holding cell. Is that alright?"
"Yeah…just…be careful," Naruto panted, "and make sure…to have…Anbu guards…"
"Well, let's go, dead man. You can say hello to your leader."
"I'll go with you," Kiba said, "Akamaru, you stay with Naruto and Sakura."
Leaving the dog to guard the Jinchuuriki and the kunoichi, Kiba and Shikamaru took Kakuzu, who mimicked the shadow manipulating nin's movements, into the heart of Konoha.
-X-
Kakuzu felt the locket sort of cling to the Kyuubi, there was a pull that wrenched at his gut, as if he were connected to the demon fox by a chain and every step he took increased the strain on it. Threatened to snap the links.
Konoha…Kakuzu hadn't stepped foot in the village since its early days, when he'd first met Madara and fought the Shodaime Hokage. It had changed a great deal since then. The old wooden houses were replaced with tall, brick apartments. Telephone lines snaked through the rooftops like hastily spun spider webs. It was early morning, and the streets were still fairly empty. Kakuzu wondered what day of the week it was. He thought about asking when he felt the shadow bind loosen.
Kakuzu flexed his muscles and his tendrils snaked out of his arms. The bind intensified and his hands moved on their own, fingers lacing together and arms held over his head.
"That was close, Shikamaru," the Inuzuka man said.
"Sorry, slipped for a moment," came the reply. Shikamaru yawned and Kakuzu's mouth mimicked the movement. Kakuzu remembered the last time he'd seen the brat. He'd bound Hidan and ran off, Hidan helplessly running with him, separating the notorious 'zombie brothers.'
The kid had been smart. Too smart. Kakuzu felt a pang of regret. If only he'd swallowed his pride and took the Konoha nins seriously. Hidan wouldn't have ended in such a miserable state. Kakuzu, himself, wouldn't have died. They should have fled.
If, if, if. No changing the past. Even the dead could not do that.
"Here we are…" Shikamaru said, pushing open an iron door. They'd entered the prison building without Kakuzu being aware of it. How his mind had wandered…
Kakuzu stepped into the small cell. The door clanged shut, and Kakuzu felt the constricting shadow bind loosen, then leave him completely. His hands were in shackles behind his back. When had those gotten there?
'Hidan…now what?'
Kakuzu was at a loss. He stared around the small eight by eight cell. A dingy toilet in one corner, a cot in the other. No window. It was dark, the only light was the thin white glow under the door, and the faint gold gleam of his locket. It glowed beneath his clothes. He yearned to pull it out and hold it in his palm, but of course that was impossible. Kakuzu attempted to release some of his threads, but nothing happened. The shackles constricted his chakra flow. No jutsu. Great.
The missing Falls nin sat on the cot and stared at his toes, the warm glow of the locket illuminating his face, making his eyes appear yellow. He sat there and ran over the words of Beza, the demon, in his mind. Get to Earth, kill Hidan, and come back to Hell with his soul. Join the army or whatever the hell it is ninja do these days.
But then…the Kyuubi had reacted to the locket, more specifically, to the water contained within. Stygian life force, he'd called it.
And why didn't Kakuzu kill Hidan right away? Did it matter if Hidan was whole, or in pieces, when he drank the water? Kakuzu really had no answers to explain his behavior. He'd been nice to Konan, he spared the lives of the children of the man who had blown his partner to pieces and left him to rot in a wretched hole in the ground.
The old Kakuzu, the living Kakuzu, would have handled things much more differently.
Kakuzu sighed and lay on his side on the cot. He closed his eyes. His mind was whirling, working to try to come up with a plan. Sitting in a cell until he faded was not an option. But there was no definite answer. Kakuzu slipped into an uneasy sleep. His dreams melded together, half shaped memories or images that blurred seamlessly into each other…
Kakuzu ran up the steps to the Fire Temple, Hidan keeping stride with him, laughing breathlessly. Kakuzu turned his head and he and Hidan exchanged a smile.
The scene shifted, and now Kakuzu was sitting at a table across from his partner, the two sharing a small lunch. Hidan's face contorted into anger as he spit out a mouthful of food, complaining about cold fish and bland vegetables.
Hidan's face began to melt, his eyes bulged. The tiny one room apartment crumbled away to reveal a gray, featureless wasteland. The table suddenly caught fire and Hidan and Kakuzu jumped to their feet. But it was no longer Hidan. The old man, the demon, stood before Kakuzu, cackling, leaning heavily on his walking stick.
"I want that tasty Jashinist's soul, Stitches! And the Kyuubi's too!"
The demon held out his hand, and within it there was a fresh heart, a beaded necklace wrapped around the pumping organ. A charm bearing the seal of Jashin hung on the end of the necklace.
Kakuzu reached out to grab the heart and it burst into flame. He snatched his hand back as the fire engulfed the demon, whose body turned to a pillar of dust and blew away. The fire grew, a dark cloud of smoke billowing in the air. The smoke gathered into a dense cloud and it began to rain. The cold shower put out the fire, and drenched Kakuzu to the bone. He watched as out of the ashes, the Kyuubi emerged. It was the size of a cat at first, but it swelled and morphed rapidly until it towered over the ninja like a vast, breathing hill of flesh and fur.
"…the world…is ours…"
The demon fox brought its nine tails down hard on the ground, and it shook, cracked open. Hundreds of pale, slimy insects scuttled out of the opening in the earth. One lunged at Kakuzu, wrapping its many jointed legs tightly around him, binding his arms to his sides. The giant insect's head was concealed by an Anbu mask.
It reared back its head and then smashed into Kakuzu's skull. The mask cracked, and as the pieces fell away, it revealed a face. Young and fair, with large, heavy lidded eyes, blood red hair.
"Sasori…"
"Don't let him take the locket."
"Wh-what?"
The strange, segmented legs tightened their hold on Kakuzu's body as Sasori leaned in until his lips brushed against the shell of Kakuzu's ear.
"Don't let him take it…" Sasori whispered, and sunk his teeth into the soft cartilage. The missing Falls nin screamed.
Kakuzu startled awake, sitting up. He was only vaguely surprised to see that Sasori was really there, standing in the shadows in the opposite corner.
"Enjoying your time on Earth?" Sasori asked.
Kakuzu smirked.
"Well, I was, until…" Kakuzu trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. The shift in movement made the chains linking his cuffs jingle.
"You don't have much time left."
"I know that," Kakuzu growled.
"Whatever you do, don't let that Jinchuuriki take the locket."
Kakuzu narrowed his eyes. He'd thought there was something suspicious about the Jinchuuriki.
"Trust me, something very bad will happen if you let the Kyuubi kid get a hold of the locket," Sasori explained, taking a few steps forward. Kakuzu saw that he wore simple black robes, his feet bare. Kakuzu stared at the toes. They were made of flesh and bone, no artificial joints. Sasori followed Kakuzu's gaze and smiled.
"New body," he said, wriggling his toes, "much better make than my old one, I'll admit."
Kakuzu smirked.
"Who made it?"
Sasori cocked his head.
"If you listen to me instead of that demon, you may just find out who. Anyway…I came here to warn you."
Sasori's face grew darker.
"About what?"
"That demon. You can't trust any demon…but to get involved with him…"
"The old man?" Kakuzu said, searching his memory for his name, "Beza?"
Sasori nodded.
"He's plotting something much bigger than you realize. And you're helping him."
"Well at the time…I thought…"
"It doesn't matter now," Sasori said, waving his hand, "just keep the locket away from the Jinchuuriki until you get out of here."
Kakuzu's eyebrows flew up into his hair.
"And how am I supposed to escape?"
Sasori smiled again.
"You have Heaven on your side now."
"Heaven?"
"Looks like my time is up," Sasori murmured. He held up his hands. They were fading, Kakuzu could see the toilet through them.
"Maybe I'll see you sometime soon," Sasori said as he disappeared, his voice echoing in Kakuzu's head long after his body vanished.
-X-
Kakuzu had no proper sense of time anymore. It could have been hours, weeks, hell, even years when the cell door opened and two Anbu marched in, flanking the pink haired girl. She looked nervous, but when she ordered the Anbu to check Kakuzu's cuffs, her voice was steady. The Anbu pulled Kakuzu to his feet. He towered over Sakura, glaring down at her.
If he could convince her somehow that he was trustworthy, perhaps just maybe she would take the shackles off…Hidan could manipulate women with his attitude, his handsome face. But Kakuzu had never been able to sway someone without a handful of money, or his fists. Kakuzu remembered something Sasori had said…
'You have Heaven on your side now…'
He needed a miracle. Now.
"I'm going to examine your body, in hopes of finding out exactly how you are even here," Sakura explained. She turned to the Anbu.
"Hold him down," she commanded. The Anbu wordlessly obeyed, pushing Kakuzu down onto the cot, his arms crushed under his body.
Sakura gathered chakra into her hand. It glowed a faint blue and Kakuzu thought of Konan. If he and Hidan made it out of Konoha, he planned on returning to Hidden Rain. He felt that he owed at least that much to Konan, for helping him. His leg was feeling much better now. Or that's what he thought, until the Konoha girl's hand reached it and there was a sharp pain that made Kakuzu tense.
The pink haired girl gasped and pulled her hand away when she got to his abdomen.
"You're…you're…" Sakura stuttered, and then placed her hand back on Kakuzu's side, brows furrowed in concentration.
"You're missing organs. I feel a heart, lungs…kidneys, liver. But the spleen, pancreas…most other organs are just…they're missing. It feels like…"
"A shell?" Kakuzu prompted. He wasn't sure how the word popped into his head, but now that he said it, it seemed to fit.
Sakura nodded slowly.
"What are you?"
"A dead man," Kakuzu answered simply, "and I don't have much time. Let me go. I haven't harmed anyone, this time around."
"And why should I? You and your partner are murderers, criminals! Just like that puppet!"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Kakuzu growled, thinking of Sasori as he'd appeared to him earlier. Sasori had gone to Heaven. What did this bitch know about him? About any of them?
The locket under Kakuzu's shirt began to vibrate and hum, and Kakuzu inhaled sharply. The Kyuubi was close. He could feel it.
"Let me go before the Jinchuuriki gets here. He's going to take it, don't let him."
"Take what?" Sakura asked. She straightened up as the cell door banged open and Naruto stepped in, looking angry.
"Gaara's outside. He wants to talk to you," Naruto growled. Sakura shifted nervously on her feet.
Kakuzu locked eyes with the Jinchuuriki, and felt as if time had stopped. The locket alone vibrated and heated up, the only living thing in the tiny room. Naruto finally moved, stepping slowly over to Kakuzu. Sakura tugged on Naruto's arms, trying to pull him away. The locket almost moaned, pleading to be touched. Naruto's fingers were inches away from the locket, tucked underneath Kakuzu's shirt, when the ground shook violently.
The four standing shinobi staggered on their feet as the floor shifted beneath them. Time sped back up, the locket grew cold as Sakura finally wrenched Naruto away from Kakuzu, and the Hokage ran out of the cell, panting. Sakura hesitated at Kakuzu's side.
"Go see what that was!" Sakura yelled at the Anbu, and they bowed and ran out of the cell, leaving Sakura alone with Kakuzu.
"I don't know why…but I believe you," Sakura whispered, eyeing the lump in Kakuzu's shirt, where the locket was pressed against him.
Kakuzu looked up to the ceiling and smiled. He didn't know what was going on outside, but those loud bangs and earth quakes reminded him forcibly of a certain missing Rock nin.
"Here, sit up," Sakura instructed, and Kakuzu did as she said. She fumbled with some keys and the shackles fell off.
Kakuzu brought his arms forward, rubbing his raw wrists. Sakura backed away from Kakuzu, watching him warily. The older shinobi stood up and stretched, rotating his sore shoulder. He smiled slightly at Sakura, giving a wordless thank you, and ran out of the cell.
He wasn't sure where to go, but the ground seemed to angle upwards slightly, and up meant an exit. Kakuzu reached a door at the end of the corridor. And heard laughter. Kakuzu was about to turn the knob when he heard a low, throaty voice say "There's no point…they'll get you in the end…"
"Madara." It was a statement, not a question.
"Oooh, is that Kakuzu-kun?" Madara asked.
Kakuzu followed the direction of the voice to a thick metal door to his left, a tiny window set in it. A face, old and gnarled, the left side badly scarred, peered out of the glass.
"You've aged," Kakuzu said into the door. Madara laughed again, his breath fogging up the glass, distorting his haggard face.
"So good to see you! Let me out, will you?" Madara pleaded, bringing a claw-like hand to the glass, wiping the fog away.
"Why should I? Stay here, rot for another hundred years," Kakuzu growled, walking away.
"NO! Kakuzu! We…I was going to make you filthy rich, we'd rule the world, you and I!"
Kakuzu stopped and glared at his feet. The pendant kept a steady, warming hum. He exhaled slowly.
"There was only one person in your plans. Only one. The rest of us were pawns. Expendable. Look at what you've done to all of us. Most of us died for you. Konan…Konan's alone. Hidan…in pieces. Me…well, I half hoped you would have found my body and given it a proper burial. We were friends once, Madara. Friends. Or so I thought."
"I am your friend, Kakuzu-kun! We both let greed get the best of us….but I am still your friend! Please, please help your friend; let me out of this hole!"
Kakuzu shook his head, face almost sad.
"A hundred years ago, I may have helped you. I would have given my life for you. But not now. I want you to sit there and think about what you've done to us. To the world. And where it's gotten you."
Kakuzu took those last steps towards the door and Madara began to scream.
"NOOOOOO! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OOOOUT!"
Rage built up inside Kakuzu. He wanted to run back there, wrench the door from its hinges and silence that fucking mouth forever. But just as he turned on his heel, there was another bang and a voice Kakuzu hadn't heard in years echoed in the corridor.
"Long time no see, un!"