"Why are you looking at me like that?" Finn glanced back at Kakuzu and said, mildly amused. "Could you look slightly less aggrieved?"
Kakuzu shook his head slowly. "I find myself more convinced than before of something you said."
"Which thing I said?"
"That you're an alien." Kakuzu's voice was perfectly level.
Finn laughed — genuine and loud, the kind that didn't try to be dignified. "If you stay with me, you'll have considerably more opportunities to earn money. That's the trade."
"Why else would I be here?" Kakuzu said. The corners of his mouth moved fractionally.
It was a strange thing, Kakuzu noted. The gap between their capabilities had just been demonstrated in a way that left no room for alternate interpretation — Finn had cut a Tailed Beast Ball in half with a sword and then sent the Three-Tails into a cliff face with a single punch. If there was a moment for the dynamic between them to become uncomfortable, for a new kind of distance to appear, this had been it.
But nothing had changed in the way Finn stood, the way he talked, the ease with which the laugh had come. He was the same person he'd been yesterday, last month, a year ago when Kakuzu had first assessed him in the Gold Exchange vault. It didn't feel like performed humility. It felt like a man who had already been at the top of something and for whom returning there was simply the road he was walking, not an event that was going to alter who he was.
Kakuzu found the worry he hadn't quite admitted having had quietly resolved.
While this exchange was happening, Biwa Juzo was lying across the back of the water buffalo and twisting in his bandages with the determined energy of someone who had a great deal to say and no current mechanism for saying it. The buffalo was the only one paying attention to him, and only incidentally. Finn and Kakuzu had, apparently, forgotten he existed.
This continued until the water buffalo simply vanished.
Yagura Karatachi, somewhere in his retreat, had cancelled the summoning. The buffalo dispersed in white smoke. Biwa Juzo, who had been lying on it, dropped to the ground.
Kakuzu stepped over and began unwinding the bandages with practical efficiency.
The moment Juzo's mouth was clear, he drew enough breath for a full sentence and used it.
"Boss!!!"
The volume was such that Finn actually flinched slightly. His brain, working on instinct, had parsed the word one register lower before catching itself.
He did not have a white beard. He was not that kind of "boss." He needed to remember where he was.
"All right," Juzo said, pushing himself upright as the remaining bandages fell away. His voice had dropped to something still emphatic but more sustainable. "No more preliminaries. From today: you are my boss, and I am joining the Yorozuya. Even if I'm just running errands. That's final."
He was not being sentimental about it. He was being practical, which for Biwa Juzo turned out to produce the same result. He was now an S-rank defector from the Hidden Mist Village. That designation didn't come with the kind of freedom the word "defector" might imply. What it actually meant was that the Hidden Mist had organizational incentive to resolve his existence as a public problem — he'd come from their most prestigious fighting unit, he knew their internal structure, and every day he lived visibly in the outside world was evidence that the Hidden Mist couldn't close its own house. They would send people after him. They always did.
But Yagura Karatachi had just run from Rodriguez Finn.
Whatever Yagura was going to do when he got back to the Hidden Mist Village, "immediately launching a second operation against the Yorozuya" was not going to be high on the list. If anything, Juzo suspected Yagura was currently more worried about Finn arriving at the Water Country's doorstep than about one defector. The pressure on Juzo specifically had just dropped to approximately nothing.
There was a future here. An actual one.
Finn looked at Juzo for a moment with something like pleased surprise. Then he said, mostly to himself: "Finally. The protagonist gets the proper treatment."
He'd waited a long time for someone to be this impressed.
"Biwa Hanzo." Kakuzu started, then corrected himself. "Biwa Juzo. Have you thought this through?"
"Loyalty is not one of my shortcomings," Juzo said firmly. "You saved my life, boss. That's a debt. I'm giving it back." He paused, glanced at Kakuzu, and said with an expression that was three-quarters sincere and one-quarter trying his luck: "You could call yourself Biwa Hanzo, actually. It has a strong sound to it. Maybe even demigod potential."
Kakuzu stared at him for a long, flat moment.
"I'll remember your name correctly in the future," he said. "Biwa Juzo." And then, without transition: "The outstanding debt from the original contract. You understand that remains due."
Juzo's expression changed. "You told me the debt was forgiven. When you left me on that rooftop and dove into the water inside a salamander."
"That was before I came back to save you."
"The boss saved me. You stood in a field and watched." Juzo's voice picked up a particular quality, that of someone who had identified a solid argument and intended to use it. "You were eight hundred miles away and didn't throw a single shuriken the entire time."
Kakuzu's eyes narrowed to a specific degree.
Juzo was one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Hidden Mist Village. Past the significant reduction that title had undergone recently, it still meant something. He was one of the stronger shinobi operating freely in the current world. He was aware of this. He let the awareness inform his posture.
"Do you know where I might sell a sword nearby?" Kakuzu said pleasantly.
The Executioner's Blade was in a sealed scroll at Kakuzu's hip.
Juzo's posture changed with immediate completeness. "Brother," he said. "I was out of line. The money is owed and will be paid. Every ryo."
"Good." Kakuzu reached into his coat and produced the scroll. He held it out. "Consider it a lease arrangement. The blade is yours to use. The debt accrues interest until settled."
Juzo took the scroll with both hands and held it for a moment the way you hold something you've been without long enough to have worried about. Then he looked up. "Where exactly am I supposed to get that much money?"
"That's what I was going to explain," Kakuzu said. The particular quality of his expression was one Finn had learned to associate with the moment just before a financial arrangement was proposed. "There is an alternative to paying it back directly."
"Tell me."
"The Yorozuya currently has four members. You would be the fifth." Kakuzu began.
Juzo's eyebrows went up. "Four? The boss is this strong and there are only four people?"
He'd had a mental image, somewhere in the last ten minutes, of Rodriguez Finn operating with a full court of followers — half the serious criminals in the ninja world gathered around one man, the way raw power concentrated social mass in certain environments. In Juzo's experience, strength on this level attracted people. It was practically a force of nature.
Four members.
Finn nodded, confirming it.
"Quality over numbers," Kakuzu said, with a tone that suggested the distinction between "quality" and "Biwa Juzo specifically" was something worth examining. "To be direct with you — your joining already represents a slight adjustment to our admission standards. You are, if we're being honest, the weakest member we've accepted."
Juzo's expression tightened. "I am one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Hidden Mist Village. I have a reputation in this world."
"Are you stronger than me?" Kakuzu asked.
Juzo opened his mouth. He closed it. He was a sincere person, and sincerity prevented him from saying yes to that question with a straight face. The fight he'd just watched made the comparison between Kakuzu and himself reasonably clear, and Kakuzu had been at a disadvantage in that fight.
"I didn't think so," Kakuzu continued. "I won't explain Finn. Regarding the other two members — one is Orochimaru of the Sannin."
Juzo went quiet in a different way.
"The last is Sasori of the Red Sand. Who killed the Third Kazekage."
The name landed with the specific weight it carried. The Hidden Sand occupied roughly the lowest position in the five major villages in terms of reputation, and this was a perception Juzo had generally shared without examining it closely. But the Third Kazekage had been a Kage. And Sasori had killed him and made a puppet of him, and now traveled with the puppet as a personal weapon. No amount of Sand Village contempt changed what that meant in a direct comparison with Biwa Juzo's record.
Juzo stood with this knowledge for a moment.
"All right," he said. "I'm the youngest here."
"You understand your position," Kakuzu said, with something that was almost approval. "The resource sharing within the organization is genuine — your capabilities will develop faster inside than out. But regarding the debt: since I'm responsible for the organization's finances, I require that finance to function. Working solo is inefficient. So the second option is this: you operate with me, and your share of any earnings goes directly toward the outstanding debt with interest until it's cleared."
Juzo absorbed this. "You're describing a situation where I am, functionally, a financial instrument."
"A productive arrangement for both parties," Kakuzu said.
It was that, Juzo supposed, if you looked at it charitably. He was the newest member. He couldn't expect to walk in as an equal. And working with Kakuzu at least kept him employed and inside the organization's protection. He gritted his teeth and thought about it for three more seconds.
"Fine," he said. "But the membership is too small." He let this settle, then said, with the specific quality of someone who has just identified an opportunity to improve their own position while appearing to be altruistic: "If I recruit good candidates into the Yorozuya, that improves the organization and builds my standing as a senior member. It's a natural incentive."
Finn raised an eyebrow with mild interest. "Do you have someone in mind?"
"The Hidden Mist," Juzo said. "The Blood Mist atmosphere has been getting worse. It was already bad, but recently—" He stopped and recalibrated. "More and more people in the village can't stand it. Even within the Seven Swordsmen, I'm not the only one who's been thinking about leaving. I just moved first."
Finn nodded slowly. He'd expected something like this. The Hidden Mist's attrition rate through defection was a known problem, and the environment Juzo was describing — the one that had produced Zabuza Momochi, that would produce a generation of scattered and alienated shinobi — was going to get worse before it got better.
Talented, disaffected ninjas looking for somewhere to land were a resource. The Yorozuya was, among other things, a landing place.
"Keep an eye on it," Finn said. "If anything specific comes up, let me know." He stretched his shoulders back, glancing at the road ahead. The burning sections of forest were still smoldering in the distance, and the Wave Country's capital behind them had a new geography from the flooding. "Let's move. We're not staying here."
He started walking. Kakuzu fell in beside him. Juzo, still holding the scroll with the Executioner's Blade, looked at the two of them moving away and then looked at the destroyed landscape around him and then looked back at them.
Then he followed, at a slightly faster pace to catch up.