The workshop was silent, the kind of silence that settled into corners and clung to shadows, thick as cobwebs. Renjiro's gaze fixed on the four items before him.
Every item on the table represented power. Forbidden power. The kind of power that ordinary shinobi would never touch, never seek, never even dream of. The kind of power that had corrupted men like Madara, like Danzo, like Orochimaru.
'And yet here I am,' Renjiro thought. 'Standing in front of them. Considering them. Planning to use them.'
He was not naive. He knew the risks. He had seen what happened to shinobi who reached too far, who grasped at power without understanding its cost. But he had also seen what happened to those who refused to reach at all—who stayed within the boundaries set by others, who accepted the limits imposed by tradition and fear.
'The village reforms. The Jonin Commander election. The barrier project. The seal business.'
All of those were important. All of them were steps toward the future he was trying to build. But they were secondary. They were the framework, the structure, the visible manifestation of his influence.
'My true priority remains power.'
He had learned this lesson in war, in the moments when strength was the only thing that mattered. He had learned it in politics, when influence had saved him from threats that brute force could not defeat. And he was learning it now, standing in this workshop, surrounded by the components of transformations that could elevate him beyond anything he had ever been.
He reached out and picked up the storage scroll containing the purified Six-Tails chakra. It was small, unassuming—a simple scroll, sealed with his personal markers, its surface warm to the touch. Inside, held in suspension by layers of fuinjutsu, was the chakra he had extracted from Rin's body during those desperate moments in the forest.
The chakra was not raw.
It was not floating freely, waiting to be absorbed like ambient energy. Renjiro had spent years studying bijū chakra, had learned its properties, its dangers, its possibilities. Most people misunderstood the tailed beast chakra entirely. They thought of it as fuel, as a resource, as something that could be simply absorbed and used like any other form of energy.
'That's not how it works.'
He thought of the analogies he had developed over years of experimentation. Bijū chakra was closer to a blood transfusion than drinking water. It had weight. It had identity. It carried the will of the beast, even when purified, even when stripped of consciousness.
'It's like introducing foreign marrow into the body. Like grafting a second circulatory system onto an existing one.'
The chakra resisted integration. It fought against the host's own chakra network, trying to override it, to corrupt it, to replace it with something else.
If introduced incorrectly, bijū chakra could destroy the body from within—burning out chakra coils, damaging organs, overriding the host's own chakra signature until there was nothing left of the original person.
'And yet it can be done. Jinchūriki exist. The villages have proven that it's possible.'
The question was how. And the answer—the uncomfortable, inescapable answer—was that the process required expertise he did not yet possess.
He thought back to the extraction, to the moment he had activated the purification seal on Rin's body. The chakra had flowed through the seal, had been scrubbed of malice and will, had been converted into something almost neutral. And some of it had been drawn into him—not all, not even most, but some.
'I don't know what percentage I absorbed, he admitted to himself. Maybe ten percent. Maybe twenty. Maybe less.'
What he did know was that it had not been the whole of Saiken. Even after Rin's death, even after the extraction, he had sensed traces of the Six-Tails' chakra lingering in her corpse—faint echoes, residual signatures, the remnants of a beast that had been sealed and released and sealed again.
'Meaning Saiken's chakra had not fully transferred into me. I got enough to matter. Enough to study. Enough to use. But not enough to fully replicate a jinchūriki state. Not that I wanted to.'
That was a problem. The chakra he had was valuable—incredibly valuable—but it was also incomplete. To truly integrate bijū chakra into his system, to gain the benefits without the risks, he would need more than a sample. He would need expertise. Biological expertise. Genetic expertise.
'The kind of expertise that Orochimaru possesses.'
The name surfaced from the depths of his consciousness, cold and unwelcome. Orochimaru was a monster—everyone knew that. He had experimented on countless subjects, had violated every ethical boundary, and had pursued immortality through methods that would make even Danzo hesitate.
'But he is also the greatest living expert on genetic manipulation, transplant compatibility, kekkei genkai integration, and chakra adaptation.'
Renjiro had avoided the Snake Sannin for years. Had kept his distance, had refused to engage, had watched from afar as Orochimaru's crimes accumulated. But he had also studied his work—had read the reports, analysed the techniques, understood the scale of his knowledge.
'If I want to stabilize bijū chakra integration, I need his expertise. If I want to pursue the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, I need his knowledge of transplant compatibility. If I want to experiment with higher dojutsu evolution, I need his understanding of how chakra adapts to foreign tissue.'
The logic was inescapable. Uncomfortable. But inescapable.
'Am I making things worse by working with him?'
The question surfaced, and Renjiro forced himself to confront it honestly. Orochimaru was dangerous. Morally monstrous. Ambitious beyond reason. Every interaction with him carried risks—knowledge shared could create future disasters, techniques revealed could be weaponised, trust extended could be betrayed.
'But the future threats are too large. The Nine-Tails. The Akatsuki. Madara. Kaguya. Conventional morality alone will not stop them.'
He looked down at the items on the table—the cells, the remains, the eyes. Each one represented a compromise. Each one was a step away from the ordinary path.
'This needs to be done.'
The thought was cold, but certain.
His gaze drifted between the items, his mind connecting dots that had been scattered for years. Uchiha power. Senju power. The legends surrounding the Sage of Six Paths. Madara had pursued the Rinnegan—had sought to combine the powers of the two great lineages, had spent decades trying to awaken the eyes that would elevate him beyond mortal limits.
'Mangekyō. Eternal Mangekyō. Then...'
He stopped himself.
'No one has awakened the Rinnegan naturally since the Sage himself.'
But the thought refused to leave. It lingered at the edge of his consciousness, tempting, seductive.
'If I am already pursuing the Eternal Mangekyō... If I already possess Hashirama cells... If I already have Sharingan... Then why stop halfway?'
He thought of Madara's achievement—the old ghost who had stolen Hashirama's flesh and waited decades for the Rinnegan to bloom. It was possible. It had been done.
'Madara achieved it. Meaning it is possible.'
He looked down at the table, at the lantern light reflecting against the preserved Sharingan floating in their jars, at the faint glow of the Hashirama cells, at the pale remains of the White Zetsu that had once served the man who had sought godhood.
'Why aim for the Eternal Mangekyō... when I could aim for the Rinnegan instead?'
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