Huh?!
Kakuzu flinched.
There it was—that sound again.
Crack.
It echoed like a bone snapping, but sharper. Harsher. Like reality itself just stubbed its toe.
And it didn't stop.
CRACK–CRACK–CRACK!
Kakuzu's eyes widened as thin lines of light started etching across the air in front of Zeldris—spiderweb cracks splitting reality itself like soone had taken a hamr to the sky.
The firestorm Kakuzu had unleashed—his big, flashy, "this'll toast anything stupid enough to stand still" jutsu—was next.
The cracks reached it.
Then it stopped.
Not fizzled out. Not blown away. Just... paused. Like soone hit the cosmic remote and clicked freeze-fra on the inferno.
Kakuzu took a step back. "Oh, hell no."
This wasn't genjutsu. He knew genjutsu.
This was sothing else. Sothing that made his instincts scream louder than the ti Hidan tried to microwave a kunai.
"...What is this?" he muttered, genuinely baffled.
For the first ti in a long ti, he was second-guessing the job.
Was 100 million really worth this kind of trauma?
He squared his shoulders anyway. "Tch. Whatever. No one's ever survived that jutsu head-on."
Which, okay, wasn't technically true, but most of those cases didn't have witnesses.
But before he could fully convince himself this was fine—
BOOOOM!
The fire shattered like glass.
Literal shards of fla and chakra rained across the desert, like soone drop-kicked a volcano into a mirror.
And from the heart of the wreckage ca a blinding orb of white-hot light, screaming across the battlefield like it was late for a eting.
It hit hard.
Kakuzu's spirits—two of them—didn't even have ti to scream before they exploded into mask confetti.
The sand blew out beneath him. His cloak was now more suggestion than fabric.
And Kakuzu himself? He got air-mailed halfway across the desert, landed like a broken puppet, and just lay there.
The wind whispered through the battlefield.
Silence.
Two spirits gone.
In one hit.
Kakuzu wheezed and blinked up at the hazy silhouette walking toward him. Each step was casual. Unbothered. Like Zeldris had just dropped off the groceries and not, you know, ended half his soul collection.
His eyes still glowed faintly with that sa, eerie power.
"...You done?" Zeldris asked, stopping just short of him.
"I an, I get it. You're the scary undead guy with the monster threads and a grudge against retirent. But let's be real here—if I wanted you dead, Kakuzu..."
He leaned down slightly, smirking.
"You'd be ash."
Kakuzu swallowed. His pride wanted to scream, but his ribs said, let's not get spicy right now.
Zeldris stood back up, brushing off invisible dust. "Anyway. I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to hire you."
"...Excuse ?"
"You're ruthless. Focused. Great follow-through. Honestly, you're the kind of guy I'd want doing my taxes—if I believed in taxes."
Kakuzu coughed out a dry laugh that was mostly blood. "You beat half to death... to offer a job?"
"Well, technically I only took 40% of your life force. That's part-ti damage."
Kakuzu propped himself up slowly, still radiating murder but now with a side of curiosity. "You really think I'd join you? After that?"
Zeldris just smiled wider. "C'mon. You've worked with worse. You tead up with Hidan. Hidan."
"...Fair."
A long beat of silence.
"...Why?" Kakuzu rasped at last.
Zeldris tilted his head. "Why what?"
"Why are you so fixated on ?"
Zeldris's grin curved into sothing unreadable—half amusent, half nace.
He shrugged. "Let's just say... I'm building sothing big."
"And soone like you?" He pointed two fingers at Kakuzu. "You don't co around twice."
A beat.
"Also," he added lightly, "you still owe two masks. Consider this your signing bonus."
Kakuzu glared.
Zeldris winked.
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