In the Naruto-verse, during the founding of the shinobi villages across the nations.
Inside Takigakure, hidden behind a massive waterfall, a dimly lit room housed an elder.
“From today onward, your codename is ‘Kakuzu’.
Your mission is to assassinate the Hokage.”
The First Hokage.
The God of Shinobi who could crush the entire world effortlessly, Hashirama Senju.
Assassinate the Hokage?
Even Madara Uchiha, the second strongest shinobi in the world, would need a death wish to attempt it.
Anyone else sent would simply be digging their own grave.
Of course, they might just get turned into a tree and planted in the great forest near Konoha.
“Any questions?” the elder asked.
The now codenamed Kakuzu spoke up.
“Yes.
Can I refuse?”
“No.
Upon completion of the mission, you will be rewarded with the village’s secret technique, Earth Grudge Fear.”
Not long after, a masked man stood at the gates of Takigakure.
He wore the village forehead protector.
His long black hair shining as if washed with the finest shampoo, and his eyes held a green hue.
He belonged to the Takigakure Assassination Unit.
His current codename was ‘Kakuzu’.
He had crossed into the Naruto world over twenty years ago.
Possessing no prestigious background or bloodline, he was an unwanted orphan.
Later, a small family took him in.
Seeing his talent, they trained him as a shinobi.
After nearly two decades of struggle, he finally grew into an elite jonin, adapting to the cruelty of this reality.
A few years ago, the five great nations each established their own shinobi villages, and smaller countries rushed to follow suit.
The family that took him in gathered a group of shinobi and founded Takigakure in the Land of Waterfalls.
Although ridiculously small compared to the five great shinobi villages, it was at least a functional village.
After that, he became a jonin of Takigakure.
Last year, the family that took Kakuzu in was wiped out in a power struggle.
Only a few shinobi from that family, Kakuzu included, remained to serve the village.
The higher-ups clearly wanted to finish the job, intending to eradicate the surviving loyalists.
For the strongest among them, Kakuzu himself, the higher-ups issued an almost impossible mission: assassinate Hashirama Senju.
If Kakuzu died on the mission, the problem was solved, perfectly matching the higher-ups wishes.
If by some miracle he survived, the village had a hundred ways to kill him anyway.
Kakuzu understood his fate the moment he received his codename.
He would live to ninety-one, only to be beaten to death by a few brats from Konoha due to ‘power of friendship’.
The village youth would bully him in his old age, taking turns killing him.
And Konan would spend all his savings and effort in fireworks that Deidara would be proud of.
‘Twenty years since crossing over, my grand ambitions are long gone.
Now, I just want to survive.’
Kakuzu knew full well he couldn’t assassinate Hashirama.
One misstep and he would lose his life.
He had also seen through the Takigakure administration’s intentions and knew there was no place for him here.
So he cleanly killed the higher-ups and took the secret technique: Earth Grudge Fear.
He walked out of the village gates openly.
No one had noticed the higher-ups’ deaths yet.
He was still the strongest shinobi in Takigakure, a hero admired by the villagers.
‘In an era where the weak are prey to the strong, where the strong control the weak’s fate, and the stronger control the strong’s…
only the mightiest survive.’
Kakuzu bid farewell to the village he had inhabited for twenty years and embarked on a new journey.
A wave of his sleeve was all it took, he carried only two things.
One was the secret technique: Earth Grudge Fear.
The other was a vial of Hero Water.
The former needed no explanation.
It was Kakuzu’s signature skill, the key to his immortality.
The latter was a miraculous fluid capable of multiplying a person’s chakra dozens of times over.
Kakuzu had used few drops of Hero Water before.
He speculated it shared a deep connection with natural energy.
As an ordinary shinobi with no bloodline limit, learning senjutsu offered the safest shortcut to survival in this world.
He brought the Hero Water to assist his future training.
He found a cave and spent three days enduring the agony of implanting Earth Grudge Fear into his body.
Kakuzu figured Takigakure had already discovered his actions.
Disguised, he strolled through the black market.
Sure enough, he found he had already been declared a rogue ninja.
‘They didn’t list the reason for my defection.
Looks like those guys want to save some prestige, too.’ Glancing at his wanted poster, Kakuzu left the market.
On the way out, a group of wandering shinobi saw through his disguise and attacked.
He was an elite jonin, after all.
How could a few wanderers pierce his cover so easily?
The truth was, he did it on purpose to lure out assassins.
He turned the tables, hunting down the wanderers and ripping out their hearts to install within his own body.
Experiencing five hearts beating inside his chest for the first time felt entirely foreign.
His body brimmed with power, as if he possessed boundless stamina.
Fused with Earth Grudge Fear, he was no longer human.
Most of his internal organs and muscles had transformed into tough fibers.
These tendrils were incredibly resilient, difficult to sever, and could plunder the hearts of others for his use.
‘But the quality of these hearts is mediocre.
They can’t even be considered average.’
They belonged to shinobi without notable bloodlines, their strength nothing special.
Some hadn’t even practiced chakra nature transformation.
Even though Kakuzu had gathered five hearts, he hadn’t gathered five chakra natures.
Kakuzu suddenly realized the wandering shinobi he killed were also wanted by the black market.
He took their corpses and exchanged them for bounties.
Kakuzu wasn’t about to live like a savage in the mountains, he needed money to survive.
‘What should I do next?’
Lingering in the black market and scraping by with five mediocre hearts would make him no different from his canon counterpart.
Decades later, Pain would drag him into the Akatsuki, where he would earn money to support the organization only to get killed.
This was definitely not the future he wanted.
He decided to take a risk and go to Konohagakure.
As the place where the story began, the village was rich in resources.
Moreover, it held inheritors of Otsutsuki bloodlines like the Uchiha, Hyuga, and Senju.
Their hearts were surely top-tier.
Take a gamble, and a bicycle becomes a motorcycle.
Konohagakure, offer up your hearts!
Konoha Village, the shinobi village of the Land of Fire among the Five Great Nations.
This was the era when shinobi villages were first established.
There were no major conflicts, but minor clashes were constant.
Even the most powerful village, Konoha, was underdeveloped.
The barrier had yet to be set up.
The famous Konoha Military Police Force had not been established.
The guards at the village gates were weak, and the entire village area was less than half of what it would be when the main story began.
The famous Hiruzen Sarutobi, Danzo Shimura, and others were still just a bunch of brats.
Disguised as a perfectly ordinary war refugee, Kakuzu slipped into Konoha.
His goal was clear: obtain the hearts of the Uchiha, Hyuga, and Senju.
The highest quality hearts, like those of Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju, were unlikely targets, but settling for second best was acceptable.
Konoha was currently in the era of the First Hokage, so the great clans were all located in the central area.
As a civilian, Kakuzu logically could not get too close.
He could only wait for Konoha’s administration to assign him a house.
But he was an elite jonin.
In any village, he would be a rare master.
With the help of Earth Grudge Fear, Kakuzu stood at the top of the second tier of experts in this era, provided the secret of his five lives remained hidden.
Even Madara and Hashirama could be caught off guard.
So, as long as he used his head, navigating this era would pose no problem whatsoever.
Even so, he felt no rush to act.
With Earth Grudge Fear, he was practically immortal.
With over sixty years before the canonical timeline began, haste was unnecessary.
Conversely, exposing himself and getting caught by Hashirama would be a catastrophic loss.