Chapter 254: The Power Gestating Between His Brows
After the meeting concluded, the work was divided up and everyone dispersed.
Inuzuka Jaw took on the task of organizing the special operations teams that would clear out Uchiha Madara's and Orochimaru's known hideouts. Akimichi Torikaze took charge of the reconstruction of the Hokage Building and the surrounding area. Nara Shikaku, as jonin corps commander, returned to the casualty assessment and compensation work that Tatsuhata's invasion had left unfinished.
Hiruko kept his role handling external affairs. The group had agreed it was necessary to inform the other four great villages about Uchiha Madara's scheme — this wasn't a crisis that threatened Konoha alone. The entire ninja world would be pulled into it, and the cleanup operation would need the other villages' cooperation. Madara's and Orochimaru's hideouts weren't confined to the Land of Fire and the smaller countries nearby. There were bases in the Land of Earth, the Land of Wind, the Land of Water, and the Land of Lightning as well.
The work had been handed out. There was no time to waste.
Before Hiruko left, he formed a hand seal and produced a shadow clone, which remained behind as the others filed out and the office door closed again.
The room now held Hyuga Ritsu, Hiruko's shadow clone, and Uchiha Tatsuhata lying motionless on the floor.
Hiruko's clone looked at the figure on the floor, then looked at Ritsu. "Is this the last step, Ritsu?"
"It is."
The clone was quiet for a moment. "We've both used the Chimera Technique, but the path you've walked is nothing like mine. I don't have any experience that applies here." A pause. "Just be careful. You're the foundation this village is standing on right now."
Hyuga Ritsu smiled slightly. "I don't like taking unnecessary risks. The only time I gamble is when I have no other choice. Right now I have every reason to be confident this will go smoothly. Nothing is going to go wrong."
He said it with the kind of certainty that left no room for doubt.
Hiruko looked at him for a long moment.
"I'll be waiting for good news."
The clone dispersed into white smoke and was gone.
The room settled into quiet. Thin bars of winter light came through the window. Dust drifted slowly through them, barely moving.
Hyuga Ritsu sat still in his chair for a while, as though he had fallen asleep. Then he spoke.
"Arima."
"Clan head."
Hyuga Arima appeared and dropped to one knee in front of the desk. He was dressed in the standard ANBU uniform. The porcelain mask did nothing to conceal those unmistakable white eyes, but there was no reason to hide them.
The reason Hyuga Ritsu had placed Arima in the ANBU wasn't to have him carry out ANBU missions. It was to have a hand inside an organization he had never previously been able to touch.
"I'm Hokage now."
"I know that, clan head."
Hyuga Ritsu was silent for two seconds. He let out a quiet breath and didn't bother trying again. "Arima. S-rank assignment. I'm about to use a forbidden technique. I can't be interrupted under any circumstances during the process, so take your people and seal this room off. No one comes near."
"Understood, clan head."
No hesitation.
"Go."
Arima's figure disappeared. Within moments the office was locked down — the doorway, the windows, the adjacent rooms, the rooftop above, the office below. A complete perimeter.
Then Hyuga Ritsu formed a hand seal.
Four wood clones grew from his body, separated, took positions at the four corners of the room, and formed their own seals. A barrier jutsu called the Four Violet Flame Formation took shape around them, sealing the entire office inside a deep purple rectangular shell.
This was the lesser version of the Four Red Yang Formation. The defensive strength was a step below its superior counterpart, and it consumed correspondingly less chakra, but what it offered was still more than sufficient to handle almost any threat. Even a Tailed Beast Ball fired directly at the Police Force headquarters would be stopped for at least a moment — long enough for Ritsu to evade or respond.
His chakra reserves were effectively bottomless at this point, vast as an ocean. But for the final step of the Chimera Technique to proceed cleanly, he wanted his condition as close to perfect as possible, which meant conserving every drop he could afford to spare.
Once the preparations were complete, he rose from behind the desk and picked Uchiha Tatsuhata up off the floor.
Tatsuhata opened his eyes. Those dark pupils, still as a mirror's surface, reflected Hyuga Ritsu's face back at him. With his chakra sealed, he couldn't even activate the Sharingan.
"Any last words?"
A silence. Then, quietly: "The Moon's Eye Plan will come to pass."
"That's your final message to the world?"
Tatsuhata closed his eyes and said nothing more. He waited.
Hyuga Ritsu drew a slow, deep breath and cleared his mind of everything. He turned his full attention inward and began to activate the Chimera Technique with complete concentration.
Within him lived the Hyuga bloodline he had been born with, and alongside it the bloodlines he had taken: Kaguya, Senju, the Ōtsutsuki branch that had passed through C, and Uzumaki. All four of those branches descended from Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, and all four had been absorbed and integrated into him entirely.
One remained. Uchiha.
Everything came down to this moment. Well — success was a given. Level 5 Physical Regeneration was more than enough assurance that a fifth activation of the Chimera Technique would proceed without incident.
What he couldn't predict was the exact shape of the outcome. The Senju bloodline he had obtained through Black Zetsu and the Ōtsutsuki branch from C had both carried some impurity. That subtle flaw meant he genuinely couldn't know what the final result would look like.
He found himself curious about it.
Hyuga Ritsu took the last step on the path back to his origins.
At the same moment, in a mountain valley in the northern Land of Fire.
Orochimaru had finally shaken Jiraiya's pursuit, and he had Reanimated Uchiha Madara to thank for it. A White Zetsu had emerged from the ground and wrapped around him like a sleeping bag, dragging him underground. Jiraiya circled the area eight times and found nothing. He left eventually, visibly dissatisfied.
"With your abilities, killing him wouldn't be difficult." Reanimated Uchiha Madara stood with his arms folded, watching Orochimaru. "Why hold back? The longer this drags out, the more dangerous it becomes. If that Hyuga boy shows up, you'll die."
Orochimaru smiled. "My affairs aren't your concern. Let's talk about why you actually came to find me. I doubt you came all this way for small talk."
"Speaking of which — where is Uchiha Tatsuhata?"
"Captured by the Hyuga boy. There's no rescuing him. I don't have confidence I could beat that child in my current state."
Reanimated Madara said it plainly.
His current power was far below what it had been in life. Tatsuhata had used a high-quality White Zetsu as the sacrificial vessel, which was enough to restore his body from the near-dead state of extreme old age to his prime years, but it had done nothing to restore his ocular power to its peak. His eyes remained at the three-tomoe Sharingan — and not even his own three-tomoe Sharingan. He had died with transplanted eyes, so the reanimated version carried that same foreign ocular power, which was why he couldn't produce a Susanoo at all.
Under those conditions, working with Orochimaru wasn't just useful. It was necessary.
"Tatsuhata can't be recovered, but the arrangement he had with you can still continue. You'll have access to the Rinnegan for research. In exchange, you produce an artificial vessel capable of bearing its power."
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes and studied the reanimated figure for a long moment without speaking.
His thoughts were genuinely somewhat scattered right now, if he was being honest with himself.
He had expected this to be a fairly straightforward operation. Setting Hyuga Ritsu aside, obtaining tissue samples from Hiruko should not have presented any serious difficulty. The result had been humiliating. Nothing to show for it, and Tatsuhata had gotten himself captured.
Did he still want to continue working with a dead man?
He thought it over for three full minutes.
Then he nodded, slowly. "Continuing the arrangement isn't a problem. But I'll say again what I said before — working with available materials, creating an artificial vessel capable of bearing the Rinnegan's power will take ten years at minimum."
He let that settle. Then: "Although, can you last ten years in that state?"
His smile didn't change.
In theory, a reanimated subject who had independently severed the contract binding them to the caster was free of outside control. But that freedom had limits. The core of this body was still the sacrificial vessel, and a dead vessel would decay over time. Chakra could slow that process considerably, but it couldn't stop it indefinitely.
The living needed food and water. A dead vessel would eventually rot.
"That's not your concern," Reanimated Madara said coldly. "When the time comes, I'll simply transfer to a new vessel. That presents no difficulty."
Orochimaru's smile remained. He nodded agreeably. "Fair enough. Although, I may be able to help improve the quality of your vessel when that time comes. It might restore more of your power."
Reanimated Madara didn't answer right away. He didn't agree. He didn't refuse. "We'll discuss that later. Right now the immediate problem is this: with Tatsuhata captured and the Yamanaka clan involved, they've almost certainly pulled a great deal from his mind. Your research base is likely already compromised. We need to find somewhere else to work from."
"That's easily handled. I have other facilities. We'll move to a different location."
Konoha. Police Force headquarters.
Hyuga Arima and the rest of the ANBU detail had sealed the office so thoroughly that nothing could have entered unnoticed — not even an insect, though the season was too cold for those anyway.
Inside, behind those layers of protection, Uchiha Tatsuhata's life was fading toward nothing. His glossy black hair had gone white and brittle. The clarity had drained from his eyes. He was one breath away from the end.
Hyuga Ritsu's presence, by contrast, was climbing — rising steadily, like bamboo shoots pushing through the earth after rain.
His appearance was changing.
His already-pale skin grew paler still, but it wasn't the dead white of something withered or emptied. It was cold and absolute, like ice that had been there for a long time and would remain. His hair shifted to white as well, but where Tatsuhata's had gone dry and brittle, Ritsu's silver-white strands were smooth and strong. Each individual hair seemed to carry its own quiet vitality within it.
He was moving toward what the Ōtsutsuki truly were.
He didn't need a mirror. His Byakugan watched every inch of the change as it happened.
And yet what drew his attention most was not his skin or his hair.
It was the space between his brows.
A fine, thin line had appeared there.
He could feel something gestating behind it — a power that wasn't entirely unfamiliar — but the problem was that it seemed to be running short. Uchiha Tatsuhata's life force was nearly exhausted, and what was building between his brows didn't seem to have enough left to complete itself. If it continued at this rate, it would fail just short of the threshold.
That won't do.
His brow furrowed.
He had no intention of losing this. If the process failed now, it might never have the chance to happen again.
He thought for two seconds, then acted. He seized control of the life force that was spread throughout his body and forced it to converge on that single point between his brows. His silver-white hair gradually darkened back to black. The cold ice-pale of his skin warmed back toward its usual color.
And then he went further. The immense life force stored within his pair of white horns — he forcibly drew that too, redirecting it toward the same focal point. Under ordinary circumstances this should have been impossible. But Hyuga Ritsu was not merely a native of the ninja world. He possessed something called Physical Regeneration, a power outside the normal rules of that world, developed now to Level 5, and through that power he could do what no ordinary ninja could: move the life force within his body with complete freedom, channeling it wherever he chose.
Slowly, his horns began to shrink. Smaller and smaller, until they had vanished entirely, leaving him looking for all the world like the most ordinary Hyuga clan member imaginable.
At the same time, the accumulated life force arrived between his brows and began feeding what had been struggling to grow there, strengthening it rapidly.
Time passed. Ritsu couldn't have said exactly how much.
Then he felt it — a feeling of fullness between his brows, like a stomach that had been filled past its capacity. A pressure at that single point, building.
And then the thin vertical line between his brows opened.
It split apart like an eye awakening, revealing what lay within: a pale violet pupil surrounded by concentric rings.
A Rinnegan.
That was the power that had been gestating between Hyuga Ritsu's brows.