The art duo had survived. Asuma had long since been cut down by Kenya, so there would be no sudden vendetta rising from the tenth group. Still, Akatsuki could not be left to fester; loose ends had to be tied.
Kakuzu and Hidan were the easiest of those ends. Kakuzu swaggered after high-bounty prey and left traces on the black market that even a casual informant could follow. Hidan, on the other hand, was an ugly curiosity — a creature with a ritual stitched into his flesh that made death refuse him. Neither posed the kind of ideological problem that demanded Kenya's blade in person. There were others who delighted in hunting such things; the task was simple to delegate.
So Kenya entrusted it to the Ghost Lantern brothers. Less than ten days later they returned, carrying two grisly trophies: Kakuzu's head and Hidan's. The heads were more than trophies — they were specimens, and Hidan's was a puzzle.
In the Shinobi Bureau the clang of voices fell silent the moment the corpses were displayed. Hidan's head had been tugged back by the hair and it screamed with the same shameless cruelty his body had always displayed.
"It hurts! You bastard! Don't pull my hair! It hurts—" the detached voice yelped, and the room turned toward the source with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. A disembodied head that still complained was a spectacle to make even hardened jōnin blanch.
Shuiyue grinned, fangs flashing. "Isn't this interesting, Master Kenya?"
"Disgusting," Temari said, nose wrinkled. "Bury the thing. Get it out of my sight."
Kenya descended from the chair without hurry. The Sharingan in his eyes watched Hidan as one studies a curious specimen. After a long moment he chuckled softly.
"So this is his secret," he said. "A ritual that forces the soul to cling to the flesh. Not death so much as prolonged decay."
He explained what everyone already suspected, but with the cool precision of a scholar: death, in most systems, meant the soul detaching from the body and moving on. Hidan's ritual arrested that migration. It did not make him stronger; it merely turned death into an extended irritation. Cut his limbs to ribbons and he persisted. Decapitate him and the head still spoke. The "immortality" was a perverse stubbornness of the soul, nothing more.
Kenya's interest thinned. For him, Hidan was a curiosity worth a look — perhaps useful in experiments — but not a prize.
"What a waste," Shuiyue muttered, disappointed. "We risked the hunt for this?"
Hidan's head, ever eager to bargain, shouted, "Let me go! Send me back to my body and I'll tell you everything — Akatsuki plans, contacts — I can help!"
"Use him as a test, then," Kenya decided, turning away from the pleading head as if the voice were nothing more than wind.
Kinnaruo—silent until now—appeared without fanfare at Kenya's side. He moved with the soft confidence of those who have been entrusted with grim tasks. Hidan craned his neck, searching for allies, and the thing he saw made bile rise in his throat. He gagged and screamed, half-fury and half-terrified sobs.
Hanabi — small, wide-eyed, hand glued to her mouth — peered through her fingers. Nu beside her whispered, awed: "Ugh… no matter how many times I watch it, it's terrifying. That's Luo's—or rather, Uchiha Kenya's—ability."
When the mockery of it was over and the experimentation finished, Jinnaruo knelt before Kenya like a soldier reporting trouble. "Master Aizen," he said, breathless, "news from the south. Uchiha Sasuke has defeated Deidara and extracted Itachi's position by force of his Sharingan."
Kenya's face remained an even mask, but Jinnaruo rushed on. "He's rallied a unit and is rushing toward the Uchiha ruins on the southern border. They'll decide something there — perhaps final. After this fight, there'll be only two Uchiha left."
Shuiyue's smile was sharper than the words. "Finally. The net is almost closed."
Kenya allowed himself a look that had waited a long time for a reason to appear. "The others stay here. Jinnaruo, come with me. We'll go meet them."
"Should we report to the Hokage?" Manmoon Biya asked, careful.
Kenya shook his head once and smiled with pleasant contempt. "There's no need to hide this. Announce it. Let the world know that Akatsuki is being hunted."
"It would be a good show," one of the Ghost Lanterns said, eager for the spectacle.
"And let them tremble," Kenya finished. He looked each of his subordinates in the eye. "I expect you all to perform."
"Yes!" The chorus replied, immediate and eager.
----
The southern border of the Fire Country was a broken place where earth and sky met in low, bitter winds. It was there that Itachi's orders had assembled a small, taut party: the [Snake] squad in its strange, quiet formation. Samehada rested against a broad shoulder while Kisame, ever a living blade, kept watch at the edge of his temper.
"Only Sasuke goes through," Itachi had said. "The rest of you stay here and wait."
Sasuke's dark eyes narrowed. "Karin, Jūgo—you stay."
Jūgo hesitated a breath, then bowed. "Understood."
Karin replied with a thin, forced calm. Inwardly she cursed the monsters who would not leave her in peace; she had survived Orochimaru's experiments once and did not want a repeat.
Sasuke walked past them with all the cold purpose of a man who had a single thing on his mind. He vanished among the rocks and scrub, small and solitary against the horizon—a shadow that moved with dangerous intent.
Less than five minutes later the air around them tightened, and a voice slipped down the slope like silk pulled over a sword.
"Kisame, step back."
It was flat, easy—the kind of voice that carried authority without effort. The three who remained stiffened. Samehada hummed in a low, wary tone, sensing the presence that had just entered the theater of their little war.
Every waiting breath held itself like a lung before a plunge. The net was folding shut.