Mist clung low to the shattered wetlands outside Kirigakure, thick enough to blur distance, thin enough to let silhouettes bleed through.
Yagura knelt at the center of it, body locked in place by Reika's adamantine chains.
Chakra pulsed around him in violent surges, the Three-Tails roaring inside, only to be caught, filtered, and bled away in measured intervals.
Kimimaro stood a step ahead of the others, calm as ever.
Reika remained focused, hands steady, eyes half-lidded as the siphon continued.
Akane watched the mist with predatory attention.
Emi's Byakugan was active, gaze cutting through distance and concealment.
Saya smiled faintly, red-black haze coiling lazily around her like breath.
Then space folded.
One moment the air was empty.
The next, they were there.
Familiar black cloaks marked with red clouds spread out in a loose arc, instinctively taking positions without orders.
Killing intent pressed outward, layered and uneven, some sharp, some wild, some coldly amused.
Obito stood at the front, masked, still wearing the name "Madara Uchiha" like a crown.
Beside him, the Animal Path of Nagato regarded the scene in silence.
Konan hovered just behind, paper shifting softly.
White Zetsu peeked from the ground nearby, eyes wide with curiosity.
The rest took them in.
Kisame's gaze locked onto Yagura first, then slid to the chains, teeth flashing in something like anticipation.
Deidara frowned. "Oi… that's our jinchūriki."
Sasori said nothing, eyes already measuring.
Kakuzu's stare lingered on Kimimaro, calculating value.
Hidan grinned openly. "Heh. Looks like someone's already bleeding."
Kimimaro let the silence stretch just long enough to be rude.
Then, "You're late."
Kisame laughed, a low, pleased sound. "I like him already."
Nagato's gaze shifted at last, settling fully on Yagura, bound, drained, yet stubbornly alive.
"The Akatsuki has business with Kirigakure," he said evenly. "You are interfering."
Akane stepped half a pace forward, the Sharingan blooming open without hurry, like a habit rather than a threat.
"Interfering?" she echoed, voice light, almost amused. "Kirigakure's been interfered with for years. We're just the first ones to call it liberation."
After saying that, Akane's attention shifted.
To Itachi.
Her gaze locked onto him with naked hostility, the Sharingan sharpening, pupils burning brighter, like they'd finally found what they were made for.
For a moment, everything else receded.
The operation. The beast. Even Akatsuki.
Just him.
Itachi noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
His eyes slid to her, calm, assessing, the way one examined a mistake they remembered making.
"…Interesting," he said quietly. "I was under the impression there were no survivors outside Konoha's records."
Akane's jaw tightened.
"So that's it?" she snapped. "You 'missed' one?"
Her chakra spiked, hot and violent, the air around her reacting like it wanted to peel away.
"You slaughtered our entire clan," she continued, voice rising, cracking not with grief but fury. "Children. Elders. Everyone. And you talk like I'm the "error"."
Itachi didn't flinch, his expression unchanged, the mask perfectly intact.
"If you were overlooked," he said calmly, "then you were insignificant at the time. The Uchiha who lived beyond Konoha were not worth my attention, nor worth testing my blade on, and certainly not worth being hunted down personally."
That did it.
Akane took another step forward, barely restrained, every instinct screaming to close the distance and finish what history hadn't.
"Don't you dare," she hissed. "Don't you dare reduce it to that. Drop the act. I know exactly what you are. You weren't some madman who snapped; you were Danzō's and Hiruzen's lapdog the entire time."
Her Sharingan burned brighter.
"Not crazy in the way cowards pretend while executing orders. Crazy in the way only such a traitor can be. And you're not a tragic hero. You're not a 'necessary evil', no matter how much you probably hide behind that lie. You're simply the most treacherous Uchiha that ever lived."
Her voice trembled, not from weakness, but from pressure, like something about to erupt.
For the first time, something like tension brushed Itachi's posture.
Before anything could escalate further—
"HEY." Hidan finally leaned forward, eyes wide, finger stabbing toward them.
"What the hell is that supposed to be?" he barked, staring at a few inverted triangle patterns stitched into their robes. "You mocking Lord Jashin now? You little freaks think that symbol's a fashion choice?"
Saya tilted her head, smiling sweetly.
White Zetsu beat her to it.
"Oh," he said brightly, voice splitting between tones, amused to the bone. "Those? They're the leaders of the Jashinist cult."
Silence.
Hidan blinked.
Once.
"…What?"
Zetsu continued cheerfully, "You know. The real one. The organization. The doctrine. The rituals. The hierarchy. The whole thing you've been yelling about for years."
Hidan's face went slack.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
"No," he said slowly. "That's bullshit. I'm the chosen one."
Saya giggled.
Kimimaro didn't even look at him.
Hidan's brain visibly short-circuited.
"So— wait— you're telling me—" He pointed at himself, then at them, then back at himself. "I worship this god. I do the sacrifices. I bleed for it. And you're saying I'm not even—"
White Zetsu leaned closer, grinning. "You're not even on the guest list."
Somewhere behind them, Obito watched the exchange with faint amusement.
When Zetsu had first traced their operations, the symbols, the rites, the infrastructure, his suspicion had been immediate.
A plant.
A double layer.
A fanatic embedded inside Akatsuki for reasons that would become annoying later.
But now, watching Hidan unravel in real time, Obito revised that assessment.
No.
Hidan wasn't a spy.
He was just a lunatic who had accidentally stumbled onto a real religion and imagined himself important within it.
The irony was exquisite.
The Akatsuki had always thought Hidan was insane.
A schizophrenic who invented a god, a cult, a pile of nonsense to justify his bloodlust.
Turns out he hadn't imagined Jashin at all.
He'd only imagined that Jashin cared about him.
And that realization hit harder than any blade.
Kakuzu watched the exchange in silence, stitched eyes narrowing slightly.
Internally, he tallied problems.
Hidan was already off the leash, shouting at gods again. That was expected.
Annoying, but expected. What bothered him more was how little anyone else reacted. No flinching.
No panic. No premature posturing.
These weren't amateurs.
The masked Uchiha had warned them before they came. Calmly. Clinically.
He had described what he'd seen a year ago in Konoha, five figures moving through the chaos around Orochimaru as if it were their natural habitat, coordinated, decisive, dangerous in ways that didn't rely on spectacle.
Not flukes. Not lucky survivors.
He had even outlined the techniques they had revealed back then, so this confrontation wouldn't begin blind.
The assessment had been accepted.
Understood, even.
Just not respected.
Kakuzu glanced sideways at his teammates.
Kisame was grinning, eager.
Deidara looked excited, already thinking of explosions.
Sasori was unreadable, which usually meant interested.
Even Itachi, outwardly calm, was strangely rattled.
They all knew these wouldn't be easy opponents.
They just all believed, quietly, that it wouldn't matter.
Pride was expensive.
Kakuzu had lived long enough to know that.
And judging by the way this meeting was unraveling before anyone even threw a punch, he had a bad feeling someone was about to pay for it.
Kimimaro, meanwhile, looked over them as well, the once-famous figures of his past life, and felt nothing resembling nostalgia.
No awe. No bitterness.
Just a recollection.
Sasori and Deidara, two opposing artists locked in an endless philosophical quarrel, one worshiping permanence and control, the other chasing a single flawless instant before everything vanished.
Kakuzu, reduced to simple greed and stitched pragmatism, surviving decades by slipping through black markets on borrowed lives.
Konan's absolute devotion, sharp enough to cut away everything else.
Information. Context.
Less than a decade had passed.
And he had already climbed to the point where he could stand here, facing them not as myths, not as inevitable forces of the world, but as opponents, with his own people at his side.
That realization didn't swell his chest.
It settled.
Like a step completed on a staircase, he had always intended to finish.