Interlude: Orochimaru's Dossiers on Akatsuki
Transcription note: Orochimaru-sensei dictated this to me during a training session. Afterwards, I transcribed it to longhand with minimal editorial corrections.
o-o-o
Now, let us begin with the information on Akatsuki. I preface everything with a disclaimer that Akatsuki's members have internalized the habits of power common in the Elemental Nations. They do not share their abilities and trump cards even with each other, so my knowledge represents only a subset of their general kits. Each likely has more abilities hidden from me or recently developed.
Perhaps I shall list them vaguely in order of their general capabilities. I shall start with Deidara then, as he is their weakest member by far. Formerly Hidden Rock of the Katsumi Clan. Apart from his bloodline, he also has Earth and Lightning Elements but no noteworthy techniques in either. Inexplicably, he also knows the Shadow Clone technique, though I cannot imagine how he acquired it. I have not observed him cast a non-elemental technique.
His combat skills would be mediocre for a jōnin. He has exactly two tricks. First, he is a ninjutsu creator of no small skill, and a combination of secret techniques and his own bloodline has made his offensive capacity, especially his wide-area offensive capacity, unparalleled in the Elemental Nations. To make that more precise: I have little doubt that he is well capable of dealing destruction comparable to the rune explosives you demonstrated to me. Perhaps he would be unable to match the full-strength explosive rune – we cannot say for certain until we have seen it.
Mere offensive prowess would be unimpressive – after all, many ninja possess powerful, lethal techniques. However, his other trick is flight, learned under Ōnoki. His flight is true flight, more akin to a bird than mere skywalking. He bestows this power to his clay creations, but in the time since Nagi Island, he may have mastered Ōnoki's unbounded personal flight. While skywalkers render him assailable, he is substantially faster and more maneuverable in the air than a ninja on skywalkers is capable of.
Regarding specific techniques, he has a standard set of enhancement ninjutsu in his core elements, which should go without saying. He uses clones, especially bloodline clay clones. Clay clones are quite useful in combat, unlike elemental clones, but are not as generally intelligent as shadow clones. He reshapes these clones into a variety of forms such as his signature dragons, though these forms do not impact the function of the clones – except the size of the final detonation as they explode. Hm… what else? Ah, he is exceptionally resistant to genjutsu.
It is a weakness that he is aware of, but his clay constructs can be prematurely detonated by powerful Lightning Element techniques. Really, his main weakness is that his offenses are one-dimensional. A sufficiently capable defense against explosives hamstrings him. His flight makes him overconfident, but the era of skywalkers will have tempered his expectations. He is prideful, not just of his combat capabilities, but of his "art". I do not know exactly how his obsession with explosions might be exploited, but it is likely exploitable. If only you had someone with the same neuroses to consult.
Perhaps Hidan next. Hidan has several unique capabilities which would make him threatening if he were remotely intelligent. Instead, he is an imbecile. Right, the boy did ask for favorite foods, did he not? This information serves no purpose as most of Akatsuki is nigh impossible to poison, but Hidan is an exception. Regardless, Deidara favors boiled eggs and Hidan prefers barbecue. He is not picky about the provenance.
Hidan is formerly from Hot Springs of the Blood Element Kotsuzui Clan. He also has Wind and Lightning Elements, though apart from basic enhancements, he uses such techniques rarely. Given his single-minded obsession with his scythe, he must have found truly exceptional techniques in those elements to muster the motivation to learn them. Movement and physical enhancement support his fighting style well, but I suspect that alone would be inadequate.
His scythe is noteworthy. It is several centuries old and crafted from an impressive quantity of chakra metal. He controls the scythe at range by channeling pulses of adhesion and repulsion through the scythe's cable, though he is naturally the most deadly in close quarters.
Regardless, his unique physiology is the primary interesting thing about him. At the surface, he appears biologically human, but no part of his physiology operates as one would expect. I suppose a detailed breakdown of his organs would be unhelpful. Regardless, Hidan is functionally impossible to kill through ordinary means. He has impressive combat-speed regeneration and can survive nearly any blow. Rare is the injury that slows him down. I recall an enemy jōnin once decapitated him. He dispatched the jōnin while his head trash-talked a few meters away, then strolled over and placed his head back on his shoulders. Had his head been destroyed, I do not know whether this would have killed him or whether he would simply have regenerated a new one in hours or days. It is not as if he has a particularly complex brain to reconstruct. Naturally, he is very cautious about damage to the arms or legs that would actually impede his fighting ability, and his unerring luck lets him avoid critical wounds.
Additionally, he possesses an exceptionally unusual esoteric technique. I am uncertain which components of this procedure are required and which are done for show because he is an imbecile, so I will simply describe it in full. Hidan draws his opponent's blood with a fighting style optimized for efficiently inflicting a scratch, even if said scratch would be inconsequential in an ordinary fight. Hidan consumes the blood. He draws a symbol in the ground out of blood – this does not need to be specifically the opponent's blood, as even his own blood works. This is the slowest step and takes around three seconds. He establishes an undefined sympathetic link between himself and his opponent. Thereafter, any injuries Hidan suffers are similarly suffered by his opponent. If he is feeling lazy, he will stab himself through the heart. The enemy's heart will then be destroyed.
He does not appear to be able to use this technique on multiple opponents simultaneously. However once the circle is drawn, he can select a new opponent by simply consuming a different drop of blood – the circle need not be redrawn. He need not inflict the injuries himself. The technique lasts for at least a minute. The maximum range I have seen him use it at is around half a kilometer. I do not know whether he can use stored blood for the technique – I have only seen him use fresh blood, but he makes many foolish decisions in the name of his religious restrictions. The technique fades a few seconds after he leaves the circle, but he typically would rather suffer injuries than be forced out of the circle prematurely. He appears to enjoy letting enemies strike him after he's used the technique and thereby cause their own demise.
Apart from his scythe, immortality, and esoteric techniques, is there anything more to him? No, he does lack depth. His greatest weakness is that he is an imbecile. He will eat food you present, he will walk into traps, trigger unknown seals, et cetera. Furthermore, he frequently lets his location become predictable when he travels the world to cultivate his various cults. As a particular weakness, I note that his immortality means little when measured against techniques that deny him the ability to use his body at all
without injuring him. Naturally, he is moderately wary of capture techniques and genjutsu users. In particular, he is passable at blind-fighting – I suspect a bloodline technique that lets him weakly sense nearby opponents' blood.
Who next? Kakuzu? [Orochimaru-sensei laughs for around five seconds] Fool.
Unlike his peers, Sasori is not strong in direct combat. While his general capabilities would likely still grant him a win in a direct match-up, his puppetmastery is inferior to Chiyo's. However, he is a sealmaster of no small skill – while not on the level of myself or Jiraiya, he is certainly your superior. Given a target, he frequently develops specific and effective countermeasures. Most noteworthy among his skills is his biosealing. He has delved extensively into human bloodline research and frequently preserves bloodline capabilities within puppets made from appropriate corpses. While I suspect he cannot receive information from his puppets, making bloodlines like the Hyūga's and the Kozu's useless to him, he takes advantage of the various bloodline elements available in the Elemental Nations, such as Magnet, Lava, Phantom, et cetera.
He has modified his own biology extensively. He has even dabbled in brain modification. Prior to Nagi Island, he had reduced his body to a set of chakra coils and the minimum infrastructure necessary to support them, and had thus been able to embed his "body" into any puppet he so pleased. It appears Pain's resurrection technique reset his biological body to its counterfactual unmodified state, so I do not know what bioseals he elected to create this time. I suspect he will find new optimizations he previously overlooked.
As for specific abilities, I do not know exactly what new puppets he has made – though he must be substantially weakened for the loss of his puppet of the Third Kazekage. His catalog of seals is vast and varied. He has all the standard sealmaster staples, at approximately the highest level that such seals can be made, and his biosealing expertise makes him a particularly dangerous opponent.
Ah, I did skip the basics, didn't I? Formerly of the Karappo Clan in Hidden Sand, and he makes good use of their techniques, though his Yodomi bloodline limits his ability to innovate beyond them – though less than other bloodline-holders. I have never known him to use a ninjutsu. He has few weaknesses as he is a sealmaster and among the more defensively-minded Akatsuki. He is well aware that effects that disable chakra threads or bioseals would leave him helpless or dead, and has prepared defenses accordingly. Still, unless he has constructed his biology differently, that is a weak-point of his – he cannot survive in the absence of chakra. Favorite food? He was incapable of eating while I knew him.
Insofar as this list is a vaguely ordered one, this marks a dividing line in Akatsuki's strength. The three I will name beyond this point are particularly dangerous. The reason is not intrinsic to any technique or combat ability they have. Rather, it's because they are actually intelligent. Naturally, this has made them more effective in the pursuit of effective techniques and combat abilities, but that is beside the point. Perhaps Deidara may mature to this latter category in time, but this list obviously only represents my recollection, and he was an idiot when I was in Akatsuki.
Regardless, the following three are approximately capable of overpowering a jinchūriki in single combat.
In direct combat, Kisame is highly threatening. Formerly of Hidden Mist from the Hoshigaki Clan, his bloodline grants him exceptional chakra reserves, and among Hoshigaki, he is supposedly an outlier still. He possesses Water, Wind, Fire, and Earth Element, and though I have not seen him use it, I would not be surprised to hear of him knowing Lightning as well. He is very likely the greatest user of Water Element alive. His ludicrous reserves lend well to his use of ninjutsu, as he is capable of using jinchūriki techniques that would be too costly for any ordinary ninja to cast.
As jinchūriki cannot be summoners, his natural reserves would make him the greatest summoner in history were he not crippled by an exceptionally poor choice of summon clan. Still, he can summon nearly-freely, and he does so at every reasonable opportunity. Like the majority of Akatsuki, he is capable of creating and adjusting ninjutsu, and he has adapted the Shark Clan's many ninjutsu. They hold little back from him, including techniques stolen from various coastal summon clans. This constitutes a weakness, as he is exceptionally close to the Shark Clan and prioritizes their wellbeing in some ways above his own. Still, he may have hardened his heart after triggering my deadman's switches.
Overall, he follows a similar path as Jiraiya. Exceptional basic combat skills, backed up by best-in-class ninjutsu for every situation. His direct combat skills are among the best in Akatsuki, so I won't linger long on his combat ninjutsu – you may assume he has a technique suited to any situation. His sensory techniques particularly impressed me. He exceeds even me in that regard – he has near-theoretically perfect vision, hearing, and smell. He can separately sense water and chakra around him to a massive range, making him an exceptionally powerful blindfighter and exceedingly difficult to evade. Frustratingly, he can also avoid chakra sensing.
Of course, his chakra sensing is not truly his own. In truth, Kisame represents not one member of Akatsuki, but two. His weapon, Samehada, is no mere weapon crafted from chakra metal. It is a genuine relic from the age of the old gods. Uniquely, it is sentient and likely sapient of its own right, though I am unsure how long its memory stretches into the past. It would not surprise me if Kisame had, over his decades by Samehada's side, learned ancient secrets and techniques from it. At the bare minimum, bonding with the weapon has expanded his chakra reserves further, granted him the ability to sense and drain chakra, and massively improved his physical resilience, even including minor regeneration. I suspect Samehada itself acts like a second mind for Kisame in combat, indicating threats and analyzing enemy techniques while he is preoccupied with fighting, though I have no evidence for such. The weapon has native chakra drain of its own that is far, far more powerful than any bloodline ability – to the point that ninjutsu are destroyed with a single swipe of the weapon, and even jinchūriki can be drained unconscious in less than ten seconds. While called a sword, the weapon is really more of a club. Specifically, a club made out of several dozen sharks fused together. Yes, this is absurd. It is also reality.
Being a ninja cut of a similar cloth to Jiraiya, he has no fatal weaknesses. He cannot lose an endurance fight with his natural reserves and drain, and his senses make him exceptionally challenging to lead into traps. His relative strength in Water Element and relative weakness that I assume exists in Lightning suggests that he is probably more susceptible to Earth techniques than others, though that provides little comfort. I suspect the simplest way to kill him may simply be to overpower him.
I believe he enjoys crab.
Konan is quite the mystery. She told me her history, of course, but she had a habit of sharing just enough to raise questions without granting answers. She is formerly of Hidden Downpour, the village succeeded by Hidden Rain, and born of a clan long dead – perhaps the provenance of her paper ninjutsu, perhaps not. If I recall Jiraiya's stories correctly, she's our junior by a decade in biological age. Her Elements are Water, Wind, and Earth, and she has a relatively mature suite of techniques in each. However, she has specialized in paper-style ninjutsu, and rare is the occasion where she is forced to use techniques of another element.
She is quite the genius of ninjutsu creation and perhaps even my equal in that regard. However, where I have spread my attention amongst the elements and beyond, she has focused single-mindedly on her paper-style ninjutsu. She has several particularly lethal tools as a result.
Firstly, she can activate seals remotely. This was a source of no small headache to me. In the conflict where Hiruzen died, I believe Jiraiya had approximately a tenth of a second to cast his seal-pouch away before it exploded on his hip, and she was the reason why, at Nagi Island, we three stayed on the ground where a moment of focus from Konan wouldn't cause us an untimely fall. As it was, a key objective was to keep her too occupied to let her drop our people to their deaths with a thought. Naturally, this is not solely a disrupting tool. She rapidly arranges and activates seal arrays mid-combat. She is a jōnin-level sealmaster and consequently has access to a variety of tools. If you recall my note on her intelligence, you will understand why she is exceptionally deadly as a result.
Secondly, she can duplicate seals. She is limited to seals of her own creation, thankfully, but her skills and general strength have won her a modest library of seals, and she has prioritized seals that are effective en-masse. In truth, Deidara may not even be the member of Akatsuki capable of causing the largest explosion – Konan is able to appreciate the simplicity of applying tens of thousands of explosive tags to solve a problem.
Those are perhaps her two most dangerous tools. The remainder simply make her lethal in ordinary combat. Her Dance of the Shikigami technique has let her leave behind her ordinary biology in exchange for bonding her chakra to a vast quantity of paper. This makes her immune to approximately any physical or single-target attack, and her secondary Elements are well-equipped to handle area-of-effect attacks in Fire, Lightning, or Water that could damage her paper swarms.
The extent to which she meaningfully has a body at this point is questionable – she is a chakra entity at least a hundred and fifty meters wide that is anchored to paper swarms within its area, and which can quickly take control of new paper. The swarm's range can be extended by her Paper Clones, which are jōnin-tier combatants approximately as unkillable as the original. She survives while a sufficient quantity of paper exists in range – and she is of course careful to ensure that several hundred sheets tunnel underground when a fight commences. Frankly, I have no clue how Jiraiya's suicide technique killed her. I suppose it is trivial to mention, but her transformation does grant her the best flight in the Elemental Nations that I know of.
In terms of psychological weaknesses, unlike the rest of Akatsuki, she deeply cares for the village of Hidden Rain. Like Sasori, she is highly dependent on active chakra effects for her existence, and were her technique to be countered, she would be forced into her vulnerable, biologically normal body. Unlike Kakuzu, who did so out of a stagnant uncreativity, she appears to return to her original form out of sentimentality. In those times when she was feeling sentimental, I recall her being partial to broiled fish.
That leaves Akatsuki's most dangerous member, Uchiha Itachi. Formerly of Hidden Leaf, of the Uchiha Clan, his specialty is Fire Element, though he also has Wind and Water. He may well have additional elements – I only saw him use Wind and Water Element when pressed, and he is wary enough about sharing secrets that he could well have Lightning or Earth or something beyond. He never trusted me. He never trusted anyone but Pain.
Devoid of context, the whelp would not be particularly threatening. His genjutsu would threaten even Kage, and he has a range of supplemental skills that would out-do the average jōnin – technique modification, Fire-style ninjutsu, weapons skills, hand-to-hand combat, et cetera. These are relatively ordinary capabilities, and would not be noteworthy on their own.
His specific abilities with genjutsu are unclear. I will list an incomplete list of non-mundane capabilities he has demonstrated, with the caveat that some may be due to his bloodline, some may be smoke and mirrors, and that he likely has other abilities that I am unaware of. Total mind control, allowing him to puppeteer ninja into fighting their allies with a glance. Placing genjutsu without eye contact, on an enemy whose eyes were closed. Illusion genjutsu that bypass esoteric senses, such as chakra sensing. Ignoring a jinchūriki's genjutsu-resistance. Casting genjutsu via his summons.
He is a summoner, and despite several periods of rocky relationships with his clan, has earned their trust and support in many ways. For any capability he does not have, he has an appropriate summon to provide that capability. Furthermore, the Crow Clan's ninjutsu is not particularly powerful as far as Seventh Path ninjutsu go, compared to clans such as Boar, Toad, or Condor. However, they have perhaps the broadest range of esoteric techniques, which, in the hands of an intelligent opponent, is particularly dangerous. Naturally, his close relationship with his summons also grants him effective flight.
He uses clone techniques extensively. Apart from his odd Crow Clones, he is exceptionally proficient with Shadow Clone and capable of effectively using the technique in combat. His reserves are unexceptional, so I infer that he has somehow modified the technique to consume less chakra, or to let him control the way that chakra is divided between himself and his clones. His clones may not benefit from his bloodline, but they do enjoy the remainder of his prodigious skills, particularly illusion genjutsu.
The Sharingan is not an ordinary bloodline. Setting aside its unique origins, its capabilities are broad and nearly impossible to counter. For instance, its precognitive ability is unprecedented in all that I have seen in my travels. Alone, combat-precognition would perhaps make the Sharingan the strongest bloodline on the continent. Instead, it permits him to perceive nearly anything, including chakra. It grants him access to dozens of combat-relevant ninjutsu. It improves his memory and combat-speed cognitive processing.
His physical bloodline has been augmented further by some esoteric procedure, visible as an odd change to the pattern within his eyes. Setting aside the ordinary Sharingan capabilities above, which are strengthened by his augmentations, he has gained a number of new capabilities as a result. He can produce a genjutsu called Tsukuyomi, which applies extreme time dilation to the cognition of himself and the target. He can produce a ninjutsu called Amaterasu, which is undodgeable, unblockable, and inevitably lethal. As an aside, I note that investigating these names would be profitable if you truly wish to learn this world's deepest secrets. Like Pain, he can control Tailed Beasts.
These abilities are chakra-hungry and self-damaging when overused, which is unusual for bloodlines. As a consequence, he was substantially crippled at the time of Nagi Island. He had substantially weakened his bloodline and ordinary vision by overuse of his augmented abilities, and had additionally somehow contracted a rare disease that weakened him further still. Seeing as Sasori was restored to full health despite his extensive self-maiming, I have to assume that Pain's final technique has similarly granted Itachi his health back. I expect him to act far more carefully with his new body.
Perhaps the final note on why he is exceptionally dangerous: Itachi is particularly attentive to the secrets of the world. I have to assume this relates to whatever revelation caused his particular exit from Leaf and the unusual modification he made to his own bloodline, but I suspect that he spent years single-mindedly pursuing long-forgotten ancient truths. I do not know what he learned, nor have I seen him use ninjutsu retrieved from such places. However, I am certain he attained great power from his adventures – at the very least, old relics of which I know of two. First is a sword, summoned from the liquid within a gourd, which seals away the souls of that which it touches. Second is a mirror which can absorb and reflect any ninjutsu.
His primary weakness is his shallow chakra reserves. He has many techniques which are highly valuable – summoning, high-grade Fire-style ninjutsu, mind-control genjutsu, bloodline abilities, shadow clones – and finite reserves. As a result, he is quickly exhausted as he fights. I suppose his fanatic loyalty to Pain is also a weakness. I would have thought him too intelligent to follow Pain's apocalyptic plans, but I suppose the Eye of Insight will not let him see through that particular blind-spot.
Apart from that, I know of no weakness in his fighting style or personality that could be exploited to kill him. I do not say this readily, so know that I mean it when I say it – Itachi Uchiha is stronger than me.
He did not eat in my presence, but he does eat.
That concludes the report on Akatsuki.
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R, Here's a genin-chuunin difficulty substitution mod to place seal elements
