No, he couldn't.
Despite being a decently skilled shinobi, he wasn't all that special, and while stronger than Karin and more experienced, such things didn't always guarantee victory.
Luck and numbers were just as important.
Only the truly powerful, people like Nagato, Madara, and Hashirama Senju, could ignore numbers and crush all before them; to them, unless you reached a certain level, all were ants.
Karin was far from that, but she had one thing on her side, numbers.
For while she might only be one person, the Shadow Clone Jutsu allowed one person to become an army, as long as they had enough chakra.
Naruto would one day field entire armies, stretching to every corner of the world, and while Karin was far from this, a dozen clones of her still meant a dozen elite chūnin.
All of which being masters of dozens of ninjutsu, truly, it was a fight he had no means to win. For him, an escape was the only win condition, but even that was merely a dream.
Surrounded, outnumbered, and losing chakra fast, it didn't take long before Karin was able to kill him. Finally, he was unable to defend himself from an invisible blade of wind, and lost an arm by the shoulder.
After taking such an injury, things went from bad to worse. Unable to weave more hand signs, he fell quickly, and as soon as he was done, Kakuzu moved. This time, I didn't stop him.
Instead, I moved to Karin's side while Kakuzu went to secure the body, not wanting it to suffer too much unneeded damage, at least not to the point the bounty wouldn't cash.
"Are you alright?" I asked her as the clones vanished in puffs of smoke.
She was breathing heavily, her clothes were torn, and she had a few cuts and bruises, but overall, she was fine. She was clearly exhausted, but it was a good exhaustion, the kind that came from pushing oneself to the limit and coming out on top.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice a little shaky, but her eyes were shining with a fierce, triumphant light. "I... I did it. I killed him."
"You did," I said, a proud smile on my face. "You were magnificent."
She beamed at my praise, her earlier exhaustion forgotten. "Really? You think so?"
"I know so," I said, ruffling her hair. "You used your head, you used your skills, and you didn't give up. That's what a true shinobi does."
Her smile widened, her chest puffing out with pride. It was a small victory, but for her, it was everything. It was a validation of all the hard work she had put in, all the training, all the sacrifices.
"Nothing but a waste of time," Kakuzu scoffed as he finally secured the remains in a rope, allowing him to easily drag the body along with him.
I just rolled my eyes at his words. "Do not mind him, Karin, he is old, it's only a matter of time before you are stronger than him." I told her, even if I might have exaggerated a little bit.
"Hey, brat, don't think I won't..." he started to say, but I cut him off.
"You have your bounty, we have what we wanted. Now we go back, and we can all be happy. Unless you would rather fight? I don't mind, Karin needs more practice," I said, my tone light, but the threat was clear.
He didn't bother to say anything else, he just gave a final glare at me before he started to walk away, the body dragging behind him, leaving a trail of blood on the forest floor.
"Come on, let's go," I said, putting a hand on Karin's shoulder.
She nodded, her expression a mix of pride and exhaustion. "Okay," she said, doing her best not to show how tired she was after such a fast-paced fight.
Thankfully, Kakuzu seemed content with slowly walking back with the bounty, no longer worried about losing it.
I took the chance to give Karin a close look, to see how she was doing. This was the first time she had killed someone, and I knew that sometimes, though very rarely, kids struggled with that.
Karin didn't seem to see anything wrong with what she did, which was good. She had naturally grown up not seeing killing another person as wrong.
That was mostly civilians who did that; those living within Konoha suffered the most from that.
Still, it was good to see that even in a true fight, she didn't flinch, though maybe that was still due to me being there, to her knowing that she was never in danger.
It was, however, difficult to make her feel like she was in real danger, because she would never think that I wouldn't be able to protect her, at most, she feared messing up and disappointing me.
Still, as long as she was able to always do her best, if the fear of failure was enough to push her to grow even without the fear of death, then it was fine. I believed I could train her into a truly powerful kunoichi even without such crude means. And with her Uzumaki heritage, she had a natural advantage that many people would kill for, something that made me wonder how strong Naruto would become once he learned to properly use it.
Well, if he ever learned how to take full advantage of his heritage, Konoha was hardly the best place for him, a place that valued growing loyalty over strength, bonds over power.
It was honestly a miracle that he ever became as strong as he did, or would. He never truly learned anything. Despite having all the chakra in the world, he knew a grand total of what... three ninjutsu? And taijutsu? Another thing he should have been great at?
Only that stupid toad or frog style trash, made for mere animals.
Truly, a village that wastes talents, either killing them for political reasons or never giving them the training they needed.
I still hadn't forgotten how Danzo had wanted to kill me back then, even if he, in some ways, did help me, because it was Yuki's death that allowed me to move forward with my plans, even if so far, I had little true success.
"What are you thinking about?" Karin asked as she walked up ahead of me, before turning around and walking backwards.
"You know I can see you perfectly fine even if you stayed beside me, right?" I said as I looked at her, she seemed to have recovered quickly.
"I know, but it's more fun this way," she said with a grin.
I just chuckled at her antics. She was still a child, after all. And even if she had killed a man today, it didn't change that. She was still young, still full of life and energy. And that was a good thing. It meant she hadn't been broken by the harsh realities of the shinobi world.
"I was thinking about the past, and the future, in fact, I feel like we should find the time to deal with those damn toads at some point," I said, making my own plans, to get my revenge for what role they played in turning my sons against me, and if possible, investigate more about Sage Mode. If I could learn the secrets of that, I would be able to use my own body's connection to nature to perhaps awaken the Tenseigan.
Of course, that had a lot of ifs, but I saw little other way of easily increasing my strength any further. Kekkei Genkai were no longer truly useful; those that had offered much of a boost were already mastered.
So now, I needed a greater power, and only an upgrade to my dōjutsu would allow me to reach the levels needed to crush any threats to my grand design.
"The toads from your stories? The evil mean toads that killed the Rabbit Goddess?" Karin asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
"That would be them, yes," I said, though those stories were more of a way to get her interested than anything else, a more fairy tale-like telling of my fight with my sons.
"Are we going to kill them all?" Karin asked, a little too eagerly.
"Perhaps," I said with a small smile. "But we will need to be careful. The toads are not to be underestimated. They plan and plot, turning others into the tools to fight their battles for them, they hide behind others, a truly pathetic and underhanded tactic."
"Even worse, their leader has a contract with a certain man, so we might have to fight the toad sage," I added as a warning, because despite how much I looked down on Jiraiya, he was still one of the strongest shinobi alive, a Sannin, and I wouldn't underestimate him.
Even an incomplete Sage Mode was still a Sage Mode.
"Then we will kill him too," Karin said, her tone matter-of-fact, as if she were talking about swatting a fly.
I couldn't help but laugh at her bravado. It was a refreshing change from the fear and uncertainty that plagued so many in the shinobi world.
"Perhaps one day you will be strong enough to do that," I said, my tone gentle, but firm. "But for now, we have other things to worry about. The Akatsuki, the mission, and your training. There is a long road ahead of us, and we must take it one step at a time."
She nodded, her expression turning serious once more. "I understand," she said, her voice a little subdued. "I will work hard. I will become stronger."
"I know you will," I said, a small, proud smile on my face. "And I will be there to help you every step of the way."
"Stop talking and keep moving!" Kakuzu shouted from ahead, clearly annoyed by our slow pace. He had already put some distance between us, and he was not in the mood to wait.
"Don't complain about being slow to me," I shot back, "If you were willing to spend a storage scroll, we wouldn't have to drag the corpse the whole way." I said, pointing at the blood trail the bounty left behind us.
I had my own, but I was not about to store dead bodies in those, they would never be clean again after something like that.
"And waste money on something like that? Never! The money from this bounty will barely cover my expenses as it is." He complained, but he didn't stop. At least we were making progress.
Karin tilted her head in confusion. "But... what expenses are that? The bounty is 50 million, and so far... You haven't spent more than 50 ryō... you didn't even sleep at the inn with us, you slept outside to save the money, and I killed him... so that didn't cost anything either?" she said, her words innocent enough to cause a vein on Kakuzu's head to pop.
He turned around, a look of pure fury on his face. "Do you even know how the world works? This 50 million is before the Akatsuki cut! After that, there is the equipment I had to use, the cost of travel, the risk, and I also need to pay myself! That doesn't leave much!" he explained, not as a calm explanation but as a pure rant.
He was a man obsessed with money, and the thought of losing it, even for a good cause, was a personal offense.
"Better not forget about our cuts, we want two-thirds of what is left after the boss takes his cut." I quickly reminded him of the rules, and yes, while my actual goal was to train Karin, my secondary goal was to get paid as well.
The Akatsuki might take the lion's share, but I would still not let my time be a complete waste, so whatever was left over, I would still have my share of.
Now he looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "What! You get a cut for what? All you did was watch! That brat of yours did all the fighting!" he roared, the threads on his face tightening, making him look like a monster from a child's nightmare.
I just gave him a cold smile. "That is what being a team is, my dear Kakuzu, we all get a cut," I explained to him as if he was a child. "If you have a problem with it, take it up with Pain."
He clearly wasn't about to back down so easily. "Even if that is the case, you can at most get half! Not two-thirds!" he shot back.
"No, I get two-thirds, as I am the one with a student, so we are two members of the team, you are just one, so we get two-thirds of the cut." I answered him, a very simple and logical answer.
He stared at me, a look of disbelief on his face, but the logic was there, and he knew it. The rules were clear, the split was based on the number of members in a team, and since Karin was my student, she was considered a member of the team.
"I am so going to kill you one day," he grumbled before turning around and starting to stomp away, dragging the body behind him, leaving me and Karin behind.
I just chuckled, and so did Karin, though she didn't seem to understand everything that was said, only that I had won, and she was happy with that.
"So I get a cut too?" she asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
"Of course," I said, ruffling her hair. "You did all the hard work, after all. You deserve it."
She beamed at my praise, her earlier exhaustion forgotten. "What are we going to do with the money?"
"You can do whatever you want with your part of the cut, that is your money, you earned it," I said, and she seemed to be thinking about what she wanted. "As for my share, we will likely be spending that on room and board on the road, on clothes and equipment. The life of a shinobi isn't cheap after all."
(End of chapter)
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