Chapter 398 - The Battle Outside Konoha
While Pain's bodies were busy getting their asses kicked, Kakuzu, Hidan, Kisame, and Konan were waiting in front of Konoha's detection barrier. It had been five minutes since Pain entered Konoha, so the group was about to enter the village when they all heard a weird whistling sound.
They simultaneously looked at the source of the sound, causing their eyes to widen in surprise when they saw a massive ball of spinning wind chakra flying towards them.
Kakuzu, Hidan, and Konan immediately jumped out of the way, while Kisame drew his sword and slashed it towards the incoming attack.
The moment his blade collided with the attack, the density of the chakra ball was reduced, but despite that, it still exploded and engulfed Kisame in a powerful chakra storm, dealing quite a bit of damage to him.
Simultaneously, a pair of paper wings appeared on Konan's back, allowing her to dodge a barrage of ice needles that was shot at her, separating her from the rest of the group. Moments later, her position in the air was surrounded by ice mirrors with a young woman with black hair standing in each of them.
Meanwhile, Hidan grabbed the giant scythe he had on his back and prepared himself for combat. However, before he could detect any enemies, a chain burst out of the ground, wrung itself around his ankle, and tossed him away, separating him from Kakuzu, who could only frown at how easily all four of them got separated.
'It seems like the information that we would attack today got leaked. Considering how easily we got separated, there is a high chance that our abilities were revealed to some degree as well. I wonder who the traitor is. Probably that Tobi weirdo. Didn't trust him from the start.'
Suddenly, an unprecedented sense of danger overcame Kakuzu as all his instincts started screaming at him to move aside.
He only managed to shift his body slightly before five water blades pierced through his body and another one barely missed his head, resulting in a bloody gash appearing on his cheek.
"*Tsk* I missed some."
Kakuzu shuddered in terror when he realized that two of his five hearts had just gotten destroyed and that the only reason why the other three were still intact was that he moved his body a little, resulting in his attacker slightly missing her targets.
Before his assailant could get another shot in, black threads burst out of his body and started lashing out, forcing the other person away from him. Simultaneously, two of the mask on his back started melting, signifying the loss of two of his hearts, while the other two, one with red lips and the other with green makings under its eyes, detached from his body and formed into independent creatures entirely made out of his threads.
Kakuzu warily turned around to get a look at the person who had just destroyed two of his hearts within an instant and couldn't help but be surprised when he saw that the responsible person was a young woman.
'Who is that? How can someone so young sneak up on me like that? Wait a moment, those eyes… She's a Hyuga? Why is she using water style then? Ah, I just remembered hearing about someone like that participating in a chunin exam three years ago. Well, the only thing I heard is that a person appeared that could hide herself from the Byakugan, so that must be her.'
Unlike Yuna, who tends to do things in a flashy manner, Hinata was the exact opposite. Her stealth was pretty much unmatched, so most of her missions were done without a single unnecessary soul ever seeing her, resulting in almost no one outside of Konoha knowing about her abilities. In fact, she didn't even have a bounty yet, despite already having done quite a few S-Rank missions.
Additionally, the last time she fought in public was during the chunin exams three years ago, which swiftly was overshadowed by the appearance of Shukaku, Hashirama and Tobirama.
If Kakuzu had any interest in gossip, he would have easily known that Yuna and Hinata were dating, which meant that Hinata undoubtedly would carry one of Yuna's special kunai, which in turn would make Kakuzu run away immediately.
However, he had no interest in love gossip, so he only considered Hinata to be someone with a heavy specialization in stealth, which would be useless, now that she didn't fully succeed in her surprise attack.
Kakuzu took a deep breath to calm down his agitation from losing two of his hearts and put all of his attention on the young woman in front of him. At first, he was afraid that he had met someone he couldn't deal with, but those worries immediately disappeared after properly analyzing the situation. As long as he paid attention to sneak attacks, he was confident that he could finish this quickly.
"It's impressive that you managed to take out two of my hearts at once. It has been a long time since that happened. Fortunately, you appear to have a good water affinity, so your heart will be a good replacement for one of the two you destroyed."
Naturally, the young woman, Hinata, didn't care about Kakuzu's words and pointed a thin sword at Kakuzu's head.
"Sorry, but I'm afraid my heart already belongs to someone else… Damn, that was cheesy. It's good that we have already split you apart, and no one else heard it."
"That useless comment aside, how did you manage to gather so much information about us? It appears like the group that attacked us already knew how we would react to the ambush and was aware of our abilities."
Hinata paused for a moment when she heard Kakuzu's question. Naturally, that knowledge came from Hisoka, who was aware of the other timeline. Although they never trusted the knowledge they got that way 100 percent, so far, it was rather accurate. Obviously, Hinata wouldn't tell Kakuzu about that, so she came up with a rather interesting alternative solution.
"Isn't that obvious? You have a traitor in your ranks."
"*Tsk* So it really was like that. Who is it?"
Hinata seemed to ponder on whether she should reveal the secret or not for a moment before she simply shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, since none of you will survive today, I might as well tell you. Honestly, it's pretty obvious. Hidan and Kisame are too stupid to pull a stunt like that. Konan is 100 percent loyal to Pain. Tobi joined you only recently, so he wouldn't have any information about your abilities, so only Zetsu remains. Zetsu always had his own agenda within Akatsuki, and now that he no longer needs you, he made sure to leak your information to increase the chances of you dying during this battle. As for what his real goal is, hehe, who knows?"
Kakuzu squinted his eyes at Hinata's words. Although he wouldn't believe her immediately, her words at least made sense. Kakuzu never trusted someone quickly, and he always found Zetsu to be a very suspicious character, so Hinata's words had at least some effect on him.
As for why Hinata decided to tell him this half-lie: She couldn't be entirely sure that she could kill Kakuzu today. He had lived for almost 100 years, so who knew just how many obscure escape techniques he had accumulated over the years?
However, now that Hinata planted some distrust for Zetsu in him, he would very likely not rejoin Akatsuki even if he survived today, taking him out of the equation no matter what happens.
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