#the reality of the Chiriku bounty incident would be such a nightmare

[navigatorsghost]

[Idle Naruto meta thoughts, under a cut for graphic discussion of decaying bodies.]

Thankfully, my life is not one where I encounter rotting corpses very often, and even more thankfully the only ones I have encountered have been animals and not humans (which by all accounts are far worse). But every time I do, and catch a whiff of that particular smell, I can't help but think: Hidan had such a valid grievance with Kakuzu over the whole Chiriku thing.

In case you've never experienced it, corpse-smell even in small amounts is, for want of a better description, sticky. Almost sweet, intensely organic, cloying - and viscerally discomfiting, because your instincts know exactly what that smell means and want you to get away from it before you get sick. It's similar to but worse than just plain old rotting meat, because you're getting the decay of everything else that was in the body, not just the muscle tissue. And the organic compounds that actually make the smell are so pervasive they can seep out of or into pretty much anywhere, and moreover, so persistent that they're almost impossible to scrub out of anything even slightly absorbent once they've worked their way into it.

So that days-old corpse, which seems to be pretty well embarked on the decay process judging by its unhealthy colour and general battered appearance, and the man who's had its oozing juices soaking into his coat for the last however-many miles of walking in the summer heat, have got to be generating the most unbelievable area-effect of pure olfactory horror. Every scavenger animal and bird for miles around has to be going "whoa, did lunch just walk by?" - not to mention that there should be enough flies tagging along with them to make an Aburame blink. And if Kakuzu pulls this type of stunt regularly, he'll have that smell so ingrained into his clothes, hair and skin that he's going to reek like a walking corpse himself all the time.

(My working theory here is that Kakuzu's sinuses are so full of Earth Grudge Fear that he genuinely hasn't been able to smell a thing in decades, which means he can be this gross with personal if not social impunity. Hidan, meanwhile, who has perfect physical regeneration, only wishes his sense of smell would finally stop working for good and fucking save him from this.)