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Fur glistens around his neck, trailing down a chiseled sternum and past the compartment containing its chakra core, underneath an arm and around his neck once more, brushing up softly against the loose spikes that fly out of a traditional bun. It is a style more typical of nobility, but nobility of an older sort. the sort of warlords who ran rampant in the feudal times, back when he was loyal to the Village Hidden in the Falls.
The sort that nod politely when he enters, and asks that he kill an upstart Senju.
The sort that make his blood curdle.
But rather than fill his head with dreams or purse with gold, the Third Kazekage reaches forward, placing a cast iron shogi piece into his palm as an offering. He lingers there, over five pulses and ink, smooth where one would expect splinters. The smooth linen of his sleeve dragging over Kakuzu’s fingers, tantalizingly rich and terribly near, and that same fur collar dips lower than what is comfortably modest.
Kakuzu snaps his eyes up, closing his fist around the shogi piece.
“It’s a bishop,” he bluntly says.
“It’s you,” the puppet replies, the line of his mouth suggesting a smile. The pieces click-clack as they are placed just so, thundering in the hollow of the room.
“Are you ready to lose?” the other player smoothly inquires.
The polished bishop creaks in his fist, then cracks as it is slammed onto the board. Kakuzu is far too used to playing the pawn than being the chess master, and it shows. “I’m going to win,” he declares. It is clear that this no longer a mere game.
The Third chuckles, and it sounds like the desert dancing through wind chimes. Storm bright eyes peek up at the treasurer—unblinking, searing—and Kakuzu knows lightning will be the death of him.
“We will see about that.”