Naruto: The Unwoven Threads of Fate

Otogakure, Main Base in Land of Rice

"This is it." I stare into a full sized mirror that I acquired from one of my assassination target's house. Staring back at me is someone different that what I've grown accustomed to seeing. Gone is my long green trench coat. Gone is my brilliant red scarf. Gone are my sunglasses.

In their place is a completely new outfit, one that I've wrestled with for a while but in the end the Weavers did an excellent job. Everything is gray. There's not a splash of color on me from my combat pants, up to my hooded ANBU grade mask. My undershirt is the same dark gray as the snugly fitting shinobi robe. Even all the bandages I've wrapped myself with are dark gray. Yet it isn't a uniform gray, it's blotchy. Parts are darker or lighter than others like they've been exposed to different levels of dye. I chose this to help me remain hidden, these blotchy gray spots assist in breaking up the outline of a human. I look nothing at all like I used to. No one would ever think that beneath all this is Alvarcus Mar the Heart Thief. It's exactly what I want because this is the pivotal moment.

This is the end of the beginning.

"I'm about to leave for Taki." I whisper out as I squeeze my hands into fists.

Right now the genin that started their Chunin Exam in Konoha are making a mad dash for Suna. In only a few too short days the Akatsuki will make their move. They'll send Kakuzu and Hidan after the Seven Tails, Chomei, and by extension Fu.

I'm going to stop them. This is the first major move the Akatsuki has made that I can impact. Before I was too unskilled, too weak. But now I have the necessary tools. I have the strength. I have the information to make a difference.

The Akatsuki has made their opening move on a world wide chessboard. But what the Akatsuki didn't realize is that there's another player sitting across from them. One that will not roll over and tip their king in surrender. I will play their game and I will beat them.

Or I will take my last breath trying to.

"So it begins." I turn away from the long mirror and move towards the door. Standing around staring at myself won't save anyone, least of all the world. "Time to see just how big of a cluster fuck I can make their intricate laid plans into."

The Way Back to Taki, the End of the Joint Chunin Exams of Konoha and Suna

"Yoro. Fuu." One of the three shinobi traveling through the trees calls out to his teammates. He has short brown hair and tiny black eyes. He's wearing Taki's standard shinobi gear with just a touch of personal flare in the form of two holsters near his elbows. "We're being followed."

"How many?" Yoro asks Kegon. He's the only sensor in the trio. Kegon has spiky black hair and the same standard Taki shinobi gear as Yoro. But his personal flare comes in the form of two scrolls strapped to his vest.

"Do you think they'll want to be my friends too?" The green haired an orange eyed kunoichi asks as she buzzes around in the air. The other two shinobi have to resort to tree leaping like peasants. "I had so much fun the last few days! I met so many new people, made new friends! Shibuki will be so proud of me!"

"I doubt it." Kegon crushes her hopes with three words. "Friendlies don't try to mask their chakra signatures."

"Who the hell is tailing us?" Yoro mutters to himself but not quite softly enough. It's given Fuu an idea, one that she knows both of her bodyguards would disapprove of. But she's a jinchuuriki, a force in this world that scarcely a few can hope to match. With her confidence comes a slight amount of idiocy. Fuu has a brilliant - in her mind at least - idea.

She stops flying and lands on the ground.

"What are you doing!" Kegon shouts at Fuu as he skids to a stop next to his charge. "Keep moving!"

"I want to meet them." Fuu crosses her arms and sticks out her bottom lip in a pout. "If they've gone to all this work to meet us the least we can do is stop for them."

"Great. She's insane." Yoro sighs out as he stops on Fuu's other side.

"No, she's polite." Two figures land in the tree riddled clearing that the trio stopped in. They both have black cloaks with red clouds on them. The taller one is the speaker and the one with the unhinged looks is standing next to him. "Common decency is such a rare thing. You should learn from her, Hidan."

"HA!" The one with a visible face, Hidan, barks out one quick laugh. "Good one Kakuzu! You talking about common decency is funny as hell!"

Two of the three Taki shinobi freeze as all the blood drains from their faces. They know that name. It's the villain in the stories they were told as kids. It's the thing that goes bump in the night. It's their village's very own boogeyman.

"Hey!" Fuu doesn't react like the other two. She's too energetic for that. "You've got a Taki headband! I've got one too!" She taps the band on her arm to draw attention to it. "Though mine doesn't have a slash on it."

She eagerly skips up to Kakuzu, much to his amusement, and extends out a hand.

"Hey, can we be friends?" Fuu smiles brightly up at the much older shinobi. "That's okay right? If we're friends?"

"BWAHAHAHA!" Hidan doubles over in laughter. "It's your very own Muffins! Though you can't call her that. Oh I know! Nuggets! Call her Nuggets!"

"You have muffins?" Fuu eagerly asks Hidan as he attempts to stop laughing. Which he can't. "You brought friendship muffins! YAY!"

"Enough of this asinine conversation." Kakuzu's patience has reached its limit. "We are not here to be your friends. We are here to take you with us."

"Oh?" Fuu's demeanor has changed. Before it was warm and inviting, now it's daring Kakuzu to finish his thought. She's confident that she can put them both down. And why wouldn't she be? She just demolished her first Chunin Exam and she's a jinchuuriki. She's brimming with confidence. "What if I don't want to go with you?"

"Your wants are irrelevant." Kakuzu blandly responds to her as he subtly - so subtly that only his teammate sees it - twitches a single finger on his left hand.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees three glints of red metal. Hidan is swinging his deadly three pronged scythe at her knee level and she has no hope of avoiding the attack. It came too suddenly and at such a high speed and in such close range that dodging is impossible for her. That was done with one hand.

Fuu's eyes widen as her first inklings of fear take root in her stomach. She channels chakra to her legs in an attempt to soften the blow but deep down she knows that it won't change anything. She's never seen anyone move this fast before and the look in the scythe wielder's eyes only makes her feel worse. He's barely even trying, this is a game to him.

"I will only say this once." A meaty thud surpasses all other noise to everyone's surprise as a new voice enters the fray. "Kakuzu and Hidan of the Akatsuki, let the Taki shinobi leave."

Standing between Fuu and certain dismemberment is a lone individual. He's holding back the scythe between the third and second blade. In a great feat of timing and coordination he managed to slip his hand between the two blades and wrap his fist around the rod. The newcomer turns his attention from Hidan, to Kakuzu, to the Taki shinobi and finally back to the most immediate threat: Hidan.

Though the business end of a gigantic deadly weapon is a fraction of an arm length away from his face the newest addition to the group doesn't flinch. His voice doesn't have a waver, in fact there's an edge to it. He sounds gruff and harsh yet there's not a speck of fear in him. He's boldly staring down two very deadly people - while holding one at bay - and sounds relatively at ease.

"Another heathen comes out to be sacrificed! Maybe Jashin-sama will forgive me for not sending the girl to him if I send you instead!" Hidan's eyes turn almost feral like as he engages in an one armed strength contest against the newcomer. His muscles bulge as he pushes down on his trusty scythe, slowly pouring on more and more strength. "Must be my lucky day!"

"Taki shinobi." As impossible as it seems the newcomer is pushing the scythe back towards its owner. Millimeter by millimeter the crimson instrument of death is being forced back. "That's your cue to leave."

"Yeah you got it!" Kogen says as he and Yoro grab Fuu by the arms and start to drag her away. "Good luck whoever you are!"

"Wait no let me go!" Fuu flails in their grasp to try and help her savior. "We can't just leave!"

"So glad we agree." Kakuzu, with a hint of boredom, addresses the trio of fleeing shinobi. Mirroring the lackadaisical tone in his voice, he lethargically takes three steps to the left to get a clear line of sight to the fleeing shinobi and lifts one arm up in the air towards Fuu. "Come here."

To the Taki shinobi's surprise Kakuzu's fist rockets off of his arm with a trail of inky black threads behind it. The fist soars through the air with its fingers spread wide, it is eager to clamp around the jinchuuriki's throat and drag her to Kakuzu's feet.

But, for lack of a better term, the rocket fist is stopped before it can reach its target. The newcomer snatched the limb out of the air with his free hand. He's effectively holding back Kakuzu and Hidan at the same time.

The three Taki shinobi's jaws collectively drop at the incredible display of timing, aim and sheer skill. They're so impressed and caught off guard by the three people fighting before them that they've stopped fleeing.

"What the hell are you gawking at!" The newcomer shouts over his shoulder at the trio. "They've barely scratched the surface of what they can do! Get those asses moving!"

"Er right!" Yoro tugs on Fuu's arm yet again. "Come on let's go!" The two shinobi resume their escape as the third struggles to come to her savior's aid.

"Hidan." Kakuzu says as his extended hand clamps down on the newcomer's wrist. There's the beginnings of a mild interest in his voice now. His curiosity is peaked by the skill this nameless shinobi has shown. He's never had someone react so fluidly to his unique skillset so easily before. "Do not let them escape."

"Oh shit!" With a mighty yank Kakuzu lifts the newcomer into the air - ripping his hand off the scythe in the process - and towards himself. This has the byproduct of giving Hidan a clear path to the jinchuuriki.

"Leaving so soon?" Hidan coos out as he rapidly closes the distance to the fleeing shinobi. His brilliant crimson scythe trails behind him just begging to slice anyone to tiny bits. "But I haven't even sacrificed you to Jashin-sama yet!"

Hidan's sprint is interrupted by a kunai coated in an incredible amount of wind chakra that zips through the air. The ridiculously sharp wind buzzsaw cleaved the sprinting lunatic and an innocent nearby tree in two.

Yet that's not the only thing to happen. A sickening squelch is heard a heartbeat after both of Hidan's halfs hit the dirt.

"You better have a bounty for all the trouble you've caused." Kakuzu sighs out as he's holding the corpse of the newcomer. Kakuzu drew a kunai of his own and buried it straight through his neck as he reeled him in. The lifeless shinobi had his trachea and spine severed in one go. The body is hanging limply, its feet swaying as it's held above the ground. "You chose to save them instead of yourself and let me land a killing blow as I pulled you in. How pathetic. One should always serve themselves first."

"How can you be so cold!" Fuu shouts as she struggles to break her teammate's grip. She wants nothing more than to go avenge her savior, even if she only knew him for a few minutes. He risked and lost his life to save her and she doesn't even know why. She doesn't even know his name. "Your own teammate just died and you ignore him!"

"How naive." Kakuzu looks past the corpse towards the two pieces of Hidan in disinterest like he's been through this countless times before. "Do I need to fix you? You know my prices."

"Nah we're good." Hidan's top half says as he pulls his bottom half back to him. He awkwardly tries to line up the two halves - he put his legs on backwards and had to flip them over and try again - while having a seemingly normal conversation with his teammate. "That was a fucking clean cut, I got this. Gotta say I'm mildly impressed and really fucking disappointed he wasn't sacrificed to Jashin-sama."

"H-how?" Yoro sputters out in fear for the umpteenth time. Witnessing this gruesome display has caused him to completely forget about running for his life. He simply can't devote enough brainpower to think about fleeing and how the hell that guy isn't dead right now. "How are you alive?"

Another sickening squelch echoes throughout the battleground and all eyes dart to the source.

"This is a battle between immortals." As impossible as it seems it's the newcomer that spoke those words. In a display of the utmost brutality the presumed dead shinobi is fist deep into Kakuzu's chest. He didn't bother with grabbing a kunai to help him, he simply shoved his whole hand into Kakuzu's torso. The nameless shinobi squeezes his hand and a gout of rich red blood spills out around his wrist, staining both his sleeve and Kakuzu's chest. "You three have no place here."

As the newcomer finishes his words he rips himself out of Kakuzu's firm grasp, no doubt hurting his neck in the process, and retreats to stand between the Taki shinobi and the Akatsuki once again.

"Immortals?" Kegon whispers out. His entire body is shaking in fear from these three shinobi. But even more than that he's shaking in fear because he knows that he and his team would be dead if this mystery person didn't show up and save them. No, not them. This person isn't here for him or Yoro, the mystery person is only here to save Fuu. That is what scares him most of all. In everyone else's eyes, he and Yoro are expendable. They simply don't matter.

"You're all immortal?" Yoro murmurs. He's faring no better than Kegon, they've drawn the same conclusion. It is as the mystery person said; they have no place here. It wouldn't matter if they're immortal or not simply because the skill level difference is too great.

"The evidence is before you." The nameless shinobi gestures to Kakuzu and the still in two pieces Hidan. "I've dealt death blows to them both yet here they… uh… stand?"

Hidan pauses his awkward adjusting to flip off the nameless shinobi.

"Not to mention that I've been dealt a lethal blow and here I am talking to you. By the way why are you even here still?" A slim amount of irritation has worked its way into the newcomer's voice. "Why does no one ever listen to me in these situations?"

"You fancy yourself an immortal?" Kakuzu condescendingly interrupts before either Taki shinobi can reply. The oldest shinobi hunches over as something throbs on his back. Once, twice, three times it throbs. Each time it pushes further and further out of his back and on the fourth throb it tears through. Bursting out of Kakuzu's back comes a mass of inky black threads wildly thrashing about in agony. It has a visage of a demonic beaked animal, reminiscent of a turtle. It tosses and turns as it starts to crumble into black flakes, ripping rents into the ground and cracking trees as it thrashes. In barely five seconds the beaked bipedal completely loses any sense of form or cohesiveness and totally turns to dust. Kakuzu rises up from his hunched over position and turns his ancient eyes onto the nameless shinobi. "Let's put that to the test."

"You all need to run." For the first time there's a tone of desperation in the newcomer's voice. He's scared of what Kakuzu is about to do. No, this isn't fear of what's to come. This is fear of the man before him, he is simply scared of Kakuzu. "Run as fast and as long as possible. I'm good but he's better. I can only hope to slow him down enough for you to escape."

"Hey what about me you fucking heathen!" Hidan roars from his spot on the ground as he starts to crawl towards the newcomer. His bottom half isn't quite fully connected to his upper half. It's being limply dragged along the ground behind him only three quarters of the way back on. "I'm here too!"

"Yeah but you're an idiot." The newcomer condescendingly says to the shinobi in two pieces while barely sparing him a glance. "Much less threatening than Kakuzu of the Jiongu."

"In another time and place I think I could have tolerated you." Kakuzu says as he slightly bends over at the waist. "Unfortunately, nameless shinobi, that is not this day. I seem to be down a heart. One that you will replace."

"Cut that shit out old bastard!" Hidan shouts at Kakuzu as he finally becomes whole once more.