"Huh. So the Mangekyō wasn't that hard after all."
Sogetsu lifted his fringe, faintly disappointed. "You made it sound mythic. This… wasn't."
The silence from Madara and Black Zetsu roared.
Madara crushed the urge to throttle him. Deep breath. Another. "Since you've awakened it, you need to hear this. Power has a price."
"Price?"
"The Mangekyō's strength burns you out," Madara intoned, voice low. "Overuse burdens the body; each activation edges you toward blindness. In the end—darkness."
His gaze slid across Sogetsu's face—and found exactly what he wanted: alarm, confusion, the human flinch at losing light.
"Why?" Sogetsu's fists tightened, acting the part—and to his credit, selling it. "Two joys should bring greater joy—awakening power and using it. Why turn one into a curse?"
"Now you see why it's called the cursed eye." Madara's gravel smoothed. "But—there is a way around it."
Sogetsu's head snapped up. "You'd know one. Ancient fossil that you are, you're not blind. Name the cost."
Hook, line, sinker. Madara's smile sharpened. "Not a threat—a partnership. I'll remove the Mangekyō's flaw, teach you techniques, lift you past the Kage as a matter of routine."
"And your price?"
"First, answer this." Madara's voice dropped to a hush. "What do you think of the shinobi world—of Hashirama's village system?"
"The ideal was right," Sogetsu said after a beat, lenses flashing. "The path was wrong. Villages didn't end war. As long as shinobi exist, war breathes. Finite resources breed competition—competition breeds envy—envy curdles into hate—hate becomes war."
Madara's lids lifted, surprise warming into approval. He pushed up from the stone bench, old body sparking with a younger fire. "You see it. If Hashirama had half your clarity—peace would have arrived."
His words carried the ache of an old wound.
"You grew up an orphan, sneered at by the village. You've seen the cruelty," Madara pressed, the cadence of a sermon building. "Don't you want to end it? End a thousand years of blood? Build a world where there's no war, no hunger, no want—where every wish is fulfilled and no one cries?"
Sogetsu let the picture pull focus across his face. "Such a world… exists?"
"It can," Madara said, spreading his arms to a future only he could see. "We gather the Tailed Beasts, become the new Sage of Six Paths, and cast the ultimate genjutsu—Infinite Tsukuyomi. The entire world lives happy in the dream."
"Hold up—a dream?" Sogetsu cut in.
"Yes. The Stone Tablet records it: the ultimate genjutsu." Madara's eyes burned. "We create the perfect world."
"Why not solve it at the root?" Sogetsu's lenses flashed again, voice sharpening. "Dreams are fine, but if you want permanence—start where the chain begins. If chakra is what makes shinobi—and shinobi make war—then erase the source. Erase chakra. Eliminate all shinobi. End war at the root."
Black Zetsu shivered.
Even Madara's mouth twitched. "…I think you might be a bit extreme."
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