A bounty hunter with five hearts?
Kakuzu?
Haru immediately thought of the immortal duo from the Akatsuki. He had not expected Kakuzu to be captured alive by the Leaf at this point. His sudden rise really had changed the original course of the Naruto world and triggered a butterfly effect.
Haru had already prepared himself mentally for things like that, but when the butterfly effect actually showed up in front of him, it still gave him a strange, absurd feeling.
"That bounty hunter even claimed he once fought the First Hokage."
"He said he tried to assassinate the First Hokage and still walked out of the Leaf without a scratch."
"Hahahahaha!"
"That's hilarious!"
"He tried to assassinate the First Hokage?"
"He must've lost his mind. Hahaha!"
Tomiya's face was red from drinking as he repeated all the wild things Kakuzu had said when he was captured. The entire table instantly filled with cheerful laughter. Everyone was cracking up.
A mere bounty hunter dared to compare himself to the Leaf's First Hokage?
No one at the table believed Kakuzu.
Except Haru.
Because Kakuzu really had tried to assassinate the First Hokage. Later generations would joke that he threw a kunai from eight hundred miles away.
As for the details of that assassination attempt, Kakuzu had probably exaggerated a lot to make himself look better.
That was normal for someone in the bounty business. If, when he was just starting out, he advertised himself as an experienced assassin who had even taken a shot at one of the ninja world's major figures, it would make getting work much easier.
The process might have been exaggerated, but the result was true enough.
He really had walked out of the Leaf alive and unharmed.
Haru decided he would go see Kakuzu the next day.
He wanted to know what kind of insanity had driven Kakuzu to target a Hyuga main family member.
A wandering bounty hunter provoking one of the Leaf's top clans was practically suicide. Anyone with a functioning brain would not do something that stupid.
Unless he really had gone after the reward with no regard for his life.
Then again, with Kakuzu's personality, that kind of thing was not impossible either.
While Haru was still thinking about Kakuzu's motive, the people around him had already started toasting him again. On such a happy occasion, Haru naturally accepted every drink that came his way, got completely drunk, and was eventually carried home.
The next day, Haruwent to the prison where Kakuzu was being held.
Kakuzu was bound tightly from head to toe, with layer after layer of sealing techniques placed on him. Tomiya had been very cautious dealing with someone as dangerous as Kakuzu. Even the smallest mistake could have led to disaster.
"Are you here to kill me?"
"If you're going to do it, then hurry up..."
Kakuzu spoke weakly. He looked like he had been tormented badly over the past few days. They had only kept him alive with one soldier pill a day, just enough to stop him from starving to death. He barely even had the strength to open his eyes.
"I don't want to kill you. Even though you offended the Hyuga Clan, I admire your strength and your conviction. If I speak on your behalf, the Hyuga will show some mercy."
Haru removed the sealing techniques from Kakuzu's body and handed him a food box. Inside were three dishes, a soup, and several rice balls.
Like a starving ghost reborn, Kakuzu immediately opened the box and began stuffing food into his mouth. As he ate, he spoke in a muffled voice.
"What's your position in the Leaf? Are you trying to recruit me?"
"My target this time was a main family White Eye. That's the Hyuga Clan's lifeline."
Kakuzu had lived through enough battles that he immediately understood Haru's intention. But he did not hold much hope.
The Hyuga were at the height of their power in the Leaf right now. Their clan head, Takuya, had already become one of the Hokage's advisors.
If someone wanted to calm the Hyuga's anger and recruit him instead of killing him, then only the Hokage himself could do it.
"I'm the Leaf's Third Hokage, Uchiha Haru."
Only then did Kakuzu finally raise his head, his eyes full of disbelief.
It really was the Hokage of the Leaf.
And he had personally come to recruit a bounty hunter like him?
"What exactly do I have that makes the great Hokage of the Leaf value me this much?"
Kakuzu was no longer the naive young ninja from his old village, the kind who could be fooled by a few lofty words from the higher-ups into going off to assassinate Hashirama.
After so many years as a bounty hunter, he had seen far too much of the world. He had met too many scum who smiled and called you brother one moment, then stabbed you in the back for profit the next.
His heart had long since gone cold.
Other than money, he no longer believed in anything.
Haru saving him must mean Haru wanted something from him.
But Kakuzu genuinely could not figure out what.
At this point, he was just a prisoner waiting to be executed. What could he possibly have that the Hokage would want?
His combat strength?
The Leaf did not lack strong ninja willing to fight for it.
"What I value, of course, is your conviction. I know your past. Once, the higher-ups of Takigakure ordered you to assassinate the Leaf's First Hokage. Later, after the First Hokage spared your life and you barely escaped back home, you were made into a scapegoat instead."
Haru spoke of the part of Kakuzu's past that he most hated remembering.
Kakuzu let out a belch and wore a mocking smile.
"The Hokage's intelligence division is impressive. You dug up my whole background."
"I slaughtered the higher-ups of Takigakure back then. What kind of admirable conviction could a man like that possibly have?"
"Your conviction is something the Leaf's ninja don't have. No one understands better than I do just how obsessed you are with making money."
Kakuzu was caught off guard by the answer.
The moment money was brought up, Kakuzu was fully awake.
Now this was a conversation worth having.
Seeing the light of desire appear in Kakuzu's eyes, Haru smiled in satisfaction.
The Leaf's future business empire was going to be massive. Questions of costs, losses, returns, and profits would pile up endlessly. For that, he needed someone exactly like Kakuzu working under him.
Kakuzu's craving for money had been strong enough to make him work bounty jobs like a slave for decades without rest, only for all that money to later be squandered by the Akatsuki.
Haru could give him a far bigger stage than that. A stage where he could keep honing himself and fully display his talents across the ninja world.
"In the future, the Leaf is going to transform itself. If you work yourself half to death doing missions, how much can you really earn? Food, steel, energy, medicine, the Leaf is going to get involved in all of it. Do you know what industrialization is? Manufacturing? The military business that really makes money?"
Haru spoke with excitement, painting Kakuzu a giant vision of commerce worth trillions upon trillions.
As Haru described it in vivid detail, Kakuzu's heart gradually began to burn.
So this was the scale of a Hokage's ambition?
My own thinking was too small.
Far too small.
"And once manufacturing spreads throughout the ninja world, we can play even more interesting games. For example, finance. That's magic made of money. It earns faster than printing money!"
"I've already started laying out the financial game. Have you heard of pig iron futures?"
"The one controlling the market from behind the scenes was me. I teamed up with the daimyo and harvested over a hundred billion ryo from those suckers in one go!"
Kakuzu had been listening to Haru's big promises with growing excitement.
Then the moment he heard pig iron futures, his whole face changed.
That damned beast.
So you were the market manipulator behind it all!
All the money I spent half my life earning on nonstop bounty missions got cut away by you!
"You bastard, die!"
Kakuzu's body was weak, and his emotions surged too quickly. The punch he threw had no strength, no speed, and no killing intent. Haru dodged it easily.
What was that about?
The conversation had been going great. He had just started describing his greatest operation in the financial markets, and suddenly Kakuzu attacked.
Haru reactivated the sealing array in the room and pinned Kakuzu down again.
"You bastard!"
"If you hadn't tricked me out of all my money, why would I have risked everything and gone after the White Eyes!"
Kakuzu was tied up like a rice dumpling again, completely unable to move, but he still cursed endlessly.
Money was Kakuzu's lifeline.
And last time, Haru had come very close to cutting that lifeline off at the root.
"So you played futures too?"
Haru kept his face calm, though inwardly he was laughing.
Kakuzu, you really were riding the wave of the times.
A man like you was born to work for me.
"How much did you lose?"
"Ten billion ryo!"
"I threw in every bit of money I'd made in this life. Even now I still haven't sold those damned futures!"
"Oh, I know. If you don't sell, you don't lose."
"I... I... go to hell!"
The moment Haru said that line, Kakuzu's fury instantly surged again. Unable to break free from the seals, he could only shake his limbs wildly.
"Don't get so emotional. As the one controlling the market, I gave you all a chance to make money. As long as you restrained your greed and got out in time, you would've walked away with enormous profits. You were the ones who kept increasing positions and buying higher."
"Quite a lot of people really did get rich overnight through futures."
Haru's words were like a bucket of cold water dumped over Kakuzu's head.
They calmed him, at least a little.
At one point, he really had made ten billion ryo.
It was only because he got greedy one more time that he lost it all.
The financial game of abstract numbers was simply too intoxicating. It was too easy to lose yourself in it. Even now, Kakuzu still could not forget the feeling of making that much money.
"Kakuzu, since you were a futures player, then you should know I'm not just talking nonsense."
"Think about it. Do you want to become my subordinate? Opportunities like this aren't something everyone can get just by kneeling and begging."
Haru looked at Kakuzu and formally invited him to join.
If Kakuzu failed to appreciate the offer and rejected him, then Haru would have no choice but to hand him over to Tobirama as a present.
A body modified by Earth Grudge Fear would absolutely be a fascinating research subject.
Tobirama would probably be very pleased with a gift like that.
Kakuzu's dark green eyes flickered as he thought it over.
At this point, his options were limited.
Either die.
Or work for Haru.
Facing the market manipulator who had taken away half a lifetime of his savings, Kakuzu hated him.
Hated him for not finding him sooner.
If Haru had come to him earlier, Kakuzu would have knelt on the spot and sworn loyalty!
Now things had become so awkward.
What a pain.
Still, Kakuzu's moral bottom line had already fallen very low. Killing people for profit, robbing the dead, stabbing partners in the back, he had done it all many times.
Now this involved not only his life, but also a chance to earn back everything he had lost.
Kakuzu surrendered to reality with astonishing speed.
The dignity of the strong was not even part of his calculations.
Making money was not shameful.
Haru was the Hokage of the Leaf, the strongest ninja village in the world. Becoming his dog was not embarrassing at all. Plenty of people would love to have that chance and never get it.
In only a few seconds, Kakuzu finished all his inner calculations.
"I am willing to offer my loyalty to Hokage-sama!"
Kakuzu formally swore loyalty to Haru, which pleased him greatly. Haru removed the seals on Kakuzu again.
"You won't regret this decision."
Haru made him a promise.
"Hokage-sama, how exactly is the pay for this work calculated?"
Kakuzu still felt it was best to settle the money question first.
If Haru expected him to work for free, then he would rather die.
"First, go to the Leaf's finance department and learn how the workflow operates. Do you know the yearly volume of currency issuance in the Land of Fire? Do you understand bank deposit and lending rates? The exchange rates between the currencies of the Five Great Nations?"
"I'll give you a few books. First, properly study some advanced knowledge. Start by learning about surplus value theory. Then monopoly value, variable capital, constant capital..."
"You don't understand any of that and you already want a salary? Did you really think this was going to be like that low-level money-making method called being a ninja?"
Haru had high hopes for Kakuzu.
His hunger for money would drive him to learn how to become a proper capitalist.
Kakuzu was stunned by the barrage of questions.
After so many years as a ninja, his education was barely elementary school level. Were these really things a ninja was supposed to know?
"If I learn all that, can I make a lot of money?"
"Not a lot of money. A lot, a lot of money."
"I'll introduce you to Shikato as your guide. He was the one who handled the actual implementation of the futures operation. I hope you'll surpass the teacher and leave the student far behind."
Kakuzu felt his heart begin to race.
The moment futures were mentioned, he could already imagine his glorious future.
Making money would become as easy as breathing.
That was what Master White Fang had once written in his book.
White Fang?
Suddenly Kakuzu remembered White Fang.
If Haru was the one controlling the market from behind the scenes, then White Fang, the one who had blown the horn that sent the suckers marching into the abyss, had to be here in the Leaf too!
"Hokage-sama, do you know a man named White Fang?"
"White Fang? You mean Sakumo? He's in the Leaf."
"He also took part in the pig iron futures plan. He made quite a lot, around one hundred million ryo. He won't have to worry about food or drink for the rest of his life."
"Can I meet White Fang?"
"He really helped me a lot back there in the trading hall."
"Of course. Since you two are already so close, I'll arrange for you and White Fang to work together."
Haru answered casually, completely failing to notice that Kakuzu was already grinding his teeth.
Not long after, Haru personally led Kakuzu out of the prison and ordered Shikato to process his paperwork, clear up his past as a bounty hunter, and officially place him on the Leaf's ninja roster.
That same evening,
Kakuzu finally got to meet the White Fang he had been thinking about so much.
Even though Sakumo was now wearing a mask, Kakuzu recognized him instantly.
"Bastard, die!"
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[Thank You For Your Support!]