Chapter 232 - Uchiha Madara, Reanimated
"You want to trade Uchiha Madara's cells for the Reanimation Jutsu?"
Something shifted in Orochimaru's expression. His tongue slipped out and traced his lips almost involuntarily.
"That's right."
Tatsuhata nodded.
Behind the mask, the corner of his mouth tugged upward. Orochimaru's reaction confirmed it - the man did possess the Reanimation Jutsu. That was a rare piece of good news in what had been a long stretch of bad ones.
He would have the Reanimation Jutsu. That was decided.
The only reason he wasn't simply taking it by force was that he still wanted to recruit Orochimaru, and he still thought it was worth trying. In the current situation, every capable ally was genuinely valuable. Orochimaru's strength was the real article - a genuine top-tier fighter in the shinobi world. Having him would be better than not having him.
Even if Orochimaru had no interest in the Moon's Eye Plan, a temporary working arrangement was acceptable.
And if Orochimaru refused to cooperate entirely - well. He still had the option of using his Mangekyō's Toyoakitsushihime to take the Reanimation Jutsu by force. Cooperation was simply the preferable path.
The forest was deep and still. An autumn wind moved through the trees.
Orochimaru studied Tatsuhata for a long moment. He genuinely had no interest in the Moon's Eye Plan. A perfect world existing only inside a genjutsu, however beautiful it might be imagined to be, was still a fiction, and fiction was not what he was after. He had always wanted something real. Something permanent. Immortality.
But Uchiha Madara's cells were a different matter. And the Rinnegan was a different matter entirely.
He deliberated, and finally spoke. "I'll accept the trade. As for joining your so-called Akatsuki - we can discuss that after the transaction is complete."
"Fine. I'm ready to proceed right now."
Tatsuhata agreed immediately.
He reached into his pocket and produced a sealed vial. Inside it was a small, desiccated piece of skin - harvested from Madara's corpse. He had been thinking about how to approach Orochimaru throughout the entire search, and he had settled on this: Madara's cells as the opening offer.
"Uchiha Madara's cells are right here. Give me the Reanimation Jutsu and they're yours."
"Are those truly Madara's cells?"
"They are. I'm hoping for us to work together against Konoha - deceiving you would gain me nothing."
Tatsuhata said it with sincerity.
But once the words were out he fell silent, because he knew sincerity alone wasn't enough. They had no history of trust between them. His reasoning was sound on its face, but that wasn't sufficient grounds for Orochimaru to produce a forbidden jutsu.
The problem was: how could he prove it without pulling Madara's entire corpse out of a storage scroll right here in the middle of a forest?
Well. That was also not entirely out of the question.
Tatsuhata was still turning the options over when Orochimaru spoke.
"I have a method that would verify whether the cells you're offering are genuine and simultaneously demonstrate whether I actually possess the Reanimation Jutsu."
"Oh? How?"
Tatsuhata asked the question, though his mind had already started to guess the answer.
In the next moment, Orochimaru smiled. "I can use the cells in your hand to perform the Reanimation Jutsu right now."
Tatsuhata's eyes sharpened.
That approach was actually rather elegant. If Orochimaru performed the technique in front of him, his Mangekyō would give him a strong chance of grasping the jutsu directly from observation. He turned it over for a few seconds and nodded.
"Agreed."
He tossed the vial to Orochimaru without hesitation.
The directness of it gave Orochimaru a brief pause. He caught the vial on reflex, turned it over in his hands to examine it, then looked at Tatsuhata and smiled.
"You're not afraid I'll just take it and run?"
"No."
Tatsuhata met his gaze with a quiet laugh. "We're both Konoha missing-nin. The shinobi world is large, but there's nowhere to lean on if you have no backing. I found you here in the Land of Vegetables this time. The next time, even if you made it to the Land of Birds or the Land of Snow or any other corner of the world, I would find you again."
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. Cold light flashed in those crimson irises.
Then his lip curved upward. "That sounds frightening. Good thing I wasn't planning to run." He held the vial up and tilted it slightly. "Though this alone isn't enough to perform the Reanimation Jutsu."
"What else do you need?"
"A living body to serve as the sacrificial vessel. Madara's cells are the medium - they allow his soul to be drawn up from the afterlife. But a summoned soul cannot persist in the living world on its own. It needs a container to inhabit, or it cannot remain here for any length of time."
He paused.
"And the quality of the container determines how much of the subject's original power can be expressed. For someone like Uchiha Madara, I doubt there's a container in existence that would allow his full strength from life to manifest completely."
He said more than he strictly needed to, but Tatsuhata had handed over the cells quickly and cleanly, and that earned a degree of patience. The explanation covered both the mechanics and a practical limitation.
"A living body."
Tatsuhata raised an eyebrow, then snapped his fingers.
The pitcher-plant shape of Black Zetsu rose silently from the ground.
Orochimaru's pupils contracted sharply. He had not detected any presence beside Tatsuhata until this exact moment. Not even a trace.
That level of concealment was genuinely alarming.
And perhaps, he thought privately, this was whatever had managed to locate his secret base here in the Land of Vegetables.
Tatsuhata didn't know the direction Orochimaru's thoughts had taken, or if he did, he didn't care. He simply said: "Black Zetsu. Give me a White Zetsu to use as the vessel."
"Understood."
Black Zetsu agreed immediately and vanished back into the earth.
Beneath the surface, it had watched and listened to the entire exchange between Tatsuhata and Orochimaru. The idea of reanimating Uchiha Madara had its full support.
Honestly, its mood had been poor for some time now.
It couldn't understand how a situation that had looked so promising had decayed into something this damaged. If it was being truthful, it had started to lose confidence in Uchiha Tatsuhata. Moments like this made it genuinely miss Uchiha Madara - his precision, his control, his ability to read the board and move pieces correctly. If Madara had been handling things, the situation would never have reached this state.
Less than ten seconds later, Black Zetsu resurfaced, bringing with it a White Zetsu specimen that was notably large and vigorous.
Tatsuhata closed his hand around the White Zetsu's neck, lifting it off the ground. "Orochimaru. Will this work as the vessel?"
Orochimaru opened his eyes wide. His three-tomoe Sharingan examined the White Zetsu carefully before he spoke.
"This thing doesn't quite feel like a living human. But the chakra inside it is substantial. I believe it's worth attempting."
"Then attempt it."
Tatsuhata tossed the White Zetsu over without ceremony.
Orochimaru watched the creature land at his feet with resigned amusement, then shook his head slightly and began his preparations. He positioned the White Zetsu properly and laid it flat - under the influence of Black Zetsu's control, the White Zetsu offered no resistance whatsoever, allowing itself to be arranged like a doll.
Then Orochimaru produced a scroll, unrolled it, and spread it flat on the ground.
He opened the vial.
He removed the remnant of Madara's tissue and placed it on the scroll.
Crouching beside it, he glanced sideways at Tatsuhata, who had drawn closer to watch, and smiled. "The preparation is roughly this. In truth the technique itself isn't complicated. At its core it's a variation of the summoning jutsu - using the deceased's cellular material to forcibly forge a contract that pulls the soul from the afterlife."
Tatsuhata said nothing. He watched in silence.
Orochimaru began forming seals. As he had described, the sequence was not long - Tiger, Snake, Dog, Dragon - ending with both palms pressed together.
From the scroll, an incomprehensibly dense web of formulae and binding marks erupted outward across the ground, spreading in elaborate patterns that somehow resolved into legible shapes. Among them, two characters could clearly be read: the characters that meant impure and earth.
All of those marks converged beneath the White Zetsu's body.
Then something rose from the ground.
Not dust from the earth above - something that looked more like ash drifting up from some realm below, defying gravity, swarming upward in dense clouds to wrap around the White Zetsu inch by inch.
In the space of a blink, the White Zetsu was completely covered.
And then - slowly, unmistakably - the shape that emerged from beneath the ash was that of a powerfully built man in his middle years. Black hair fell long around his shoulders. He wore layered red battle armor. His bearing was that of someone who had never once questioned his own superiority over everything around him. And bleeding from him in every direction was a killing intent so sharp and absolute that the forest itself seemed to flinch.
"It worked."
Orochimaru let out a quiet breath.
The man's eyes opened.
"This is... the Reanimation Jutsu."
Uchiha Madara registered the wrongness of his situation in the first instant of consciousness. His brow drew together. He raised his hands and examined them. The surface of his skin was cracked through with fine fracture lines.
He knew exactly what that meant.
This was the technique developed by Hashirama's younger brother - the one called the Reanimation Jutsu.
His gaze swept the clearing and locked onto Uchiha Tatsuhata and Black Zetsu. His voice came out flat and demanding.
"Tatsuhata. Black Zetsu. Explain this. Why have you used the Reanimation Jutsu to summon me? What stage is the plan at?"
He didn't look at Orochimaru, the caster standing right beside him. Even though he could feel the presence of both Sharingan and Wood Release on this person, they didn't register as worth his attention.
Orochimaru said nothing. He watched.
Tatsuhata spoke. "Madara. Things have gone off course. It's been less than a year since your death - but Nagato is dead. The Rinnegan has been taken by Konoha."
Two sentences.
Uchiha Madara very nearly lost his composure.
The black comma-shapes in his crimson eyes spun at rapid speed. "What happened? How did things reach this point in under a year?"
Fury rose in him like a tide. His killing intent expanded outward in a wave, flooding every direction at once. Every bird and animal in the surrounding forest reacted as one - scattering into the sky, bolting through the undergrowth - every living creature using everything it had to put distance between itself and this figure who had just climbed out of the afterlife.
Even Orochimaru's expression went rigid.
He had already made a considerable effort to account for how dangerous the legendary Uchiha Madara would be. He was now discovering, with a quiet sinking feeling, that his accounting had still fallen short. The possibility that he might not be able to maintain control of this particular summon was genuinely on the table.
"Konoha's strength caught us off guard. The specifics are complicated, so I've written a summary. You can read it."
Tatsuhata had prepared for this. He produced a scroll and held it out.
Madara suppressed his anger, took the scroll, and unrolled it. Less than five minutes later he had a rough understanding of the string of setbacks Tatsuhata had encountered.
He couldn't blame Tatsuhata entirely. Konoha had simply been extraordinary.
"The Yellow Flash and the White Yaksha."
Madara said the two names quietly to himself.
He hadn't died long enough ago to be unfamiliar with them. The Yellow Flash's reputation had been established for years. One of Madara's own pieces - Uchiha Obito - had been that man's student.
The White Yaksha was likewise not unknown to him. Obito had ultimately become unusable as a piece precisely because of the White Yaksha's interference. That had been the reason for switching to Tatsuhata.
"I understand the situation well enough. Tatsuhata. What is your plan?"
Madara asked it directly.
"My plan is straightforward. I intend to use the Reanimation Jutsu to complete my Mangekyō's abilities, and then correct the course this plan has drifted onto."
That was the reason Tatsuhata had hunted down Orochimaru and spent Madara's cells to acquire the Reanimation Jutsu.
Hearing the answer, Madara paused - and then a thoughtful expression crossed his face.
The combination was actually sound. Tatsuhata's Mangekyō technique, the Toyoakitsushihime, copied the chakra of the dead and produced replicas. The Reanimation Jutsu called the dead back in animated form. The two techniques had excellent compatibility - Tatsuhata could use the Toyoakitsushihime to copy the chakra of the Reanimation Jutsu's subjects and create replicas of them as well.
That meant Tatsuhata could operate a reanimated Uchiha Madara and a replica Uchiha Madara on the same battlefield simultaneously. And unlike ordinary shadow clones, which were unreliable against strong opponents, neither a reanimated fighter nor a replica constructed from the Toyoakitsushihime was easy to put down - their capacity to absorb damage far exceeded that of a clone. It even exceeded what a living person could absorb.
"Not a bad idea."
Some of the fury in Madara's bearing pulled back slightly. The concept genuinely had merit. "This would substantially expand your Mangekyō's capabilities. But - without Nagato, how do you intend to advance the plan?"
Tatsuhata answered steadily. "I've been thinking through that problem. I have the beginning of an answer, but I want to fully work it out before I say anything. The immediate priority is getting the Rinnegan back."