Disclaimer: Naruto and all of its character belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I own nothing but the original characters I make.
Chapter 172: I Come To Bargain
IN A CAVE - MADARA HIDEOUT
"What is the latest status, Black Zetsu?" asked Madara. He grew tired and frustrated that the news he received disappointed him.
"Madara sama, Konoha has grown very large and more prosperous since the war ended, and the descendants of the Uzumaki and Uchiha bloodlines have begun to..." Black Zetsu stopped mid-sentence.
A voice had cut through the darkness of the cave from a direction neither of them could identify.
"Well, well.... The rats are having a meeting."
Both Madara and the Zetsus turned immediately toward the source of the sound but found nothing. The shadows were empty, and not a single presence or chakra fluctuation could be sensed, yet the voice had come from somewhere inside the cave.
Even the Sharingan, which Madara had activated earlier, found nothing to lock onto. Whatever technique was concealing the intruder had rendered his chakra completely invisible, leaving no signature for the dojutsu to read.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Madara felt something he had forgotten which is fear and panic.
A quiet laugh came from his mouth, and this time they could pinpoint where the voice was located.
Then Raiken appeared, his invisibility dissolving around him, revealing Him standing in the middle of the cave with his hands relaxed at his sides and an expression that was entirely too comfortable for someone who had just walked uninvited into Madara's hideout.
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[Message: HE IS ACTUALLY IN THE CAVE]
[DING! 1500 Stars Donated by Audience Z]
[Message: The audacity of this man. I cannot breathe]
"I come to bargain," he said.
"You..." Madara pointed toward him, his eyes fixed on the figure in front of him with a surprised expression. Just a moment ago, there had been nothing there. No presence stood there, no chakra fluctuation and no sound the ninja sometimes makes when moving.
"That is Uzumaki Raiken," said White Zetsu, trying to introduce Raiken's identity to Madara.
Madara said nothing; his Rinegan spun as he tried to read the chakra coming off the man before him, and what he read made it difficult to form words. He had spent decades measuring power against the standard of Hashirama, the only person he had ever genuinely considered his equal. That standard had always felt like the ceiling of what a human body could produce.
What he was feeling from Raiken was not near that ceiling. It was somewhere above it by a margin that made the ceiling itself feel like an arbitrary marking on a wall.
"Impossible," said Madara, the word coming out before he fully decided to say it. "How can a mere Uzumaki reach this level?"
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[Message: Did Madara say mere Uzumaki while standing in front of THAT chakra]
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[Message: Host, your chakra reading is giving the old man an existential crisis live on stream]
"Hahahaha," said Raiken, the laugh genuine rather than performed. "I know what you want, Madara. I know what you have been working toward from the beginning. And I came here today to make you a different kind of offer."
"What offer?" said Madara, the shock still present in his voice but something else beginning to surface beneath it, the particular attention of someone who had lived long enough to know that dismissing something before hearing it fully was a waste of intelligence.
Black Zetsu had gone very still beside him.
"No other human is being left in this world who can give me a satisfying fight," said Raiken, his tone carrying the particular honesty of someone who was not complaining but simply stating a fact that had been bothering them for some time. "I have looked, and I have waited, and I am tired of waiting. So I came to you because you are the only person I can think of who might actually make it worth showing up."
Silence followed, lasting several seconds.
Then Madara laughed.
Not a short laugh but the full evil psycho laugh of the Uchiha Clan, filling the cave with a sound that echoed off the stone walls. It had been a long time since Madara laughed like this; he hadn't laughed this happily in ages, so today he genuinely did.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
Raiken watched him and thought briefly of Obito and Sasuke, both of whom had laughed when facing the enemy. Raiken called it the evil laugh of the Uchiha Clan.
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[Message: THE VILLAIN LAUGH IS HAPPENING]
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[Message: Why does every powerful person in this world laugh like that]
Madara laughed, then fell silent, and this time he looked at Raiken with an expression of happiness.
"Fine," said Madara. "I also grew tired of this cave a long time ago, and today I want to dance as well." He paused, something like genuine regret crossing his face for just a moment. "Unfortunately, my body is no longer what it was. The bones have aged, and the peak I remember is not the peak I can currently produce. I would be fighting you at a fraction of what I should be."
"I know," said Raiken. "That is exactly why I brought something with me."
He reached into his coat and held up the small pill between two fingers, letting it catch what little light the cave had.
Another silence followed.
Madara's eyes moved from the pill to Raiken's face and back again, something shifting behind his expression that moved through surprise and suspicion before settling into something harder to name.
"What is that?" said Madara, his voice dropping slightly.
"Something that reverses the aging of every cell in your body and returns you to your absolute peak condition," replied Raiken. "No restrictions and no limitations; just by taking this pill, it can give you one more time the version of you that stood at the top of the other Shinobi, before time took what it took, which is age. "
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[Message: HE BROUGHT A YOUTH PILL TO MADARA HIDEOUT I AM LOSING MY MIND]
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[Message: This is the most unhinged thing I have ever watched on a livestream, and I have been watching for three years]
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[Message: Host is genuinely out here trying to create the strongest possible enemy to fight. This man has no self-preservation instinct whatsoever]
The cave was completely silent except for the distant sound of water.
Madara's face darkened, not with anger exactly but with something deeper and more complicated, the expression of a man being offered something he really wanted.
"What do you mean by this?" he said, his voice carrying an edge that had not been there before.
"Exactly what I said," replied Raiken, his tone entirely unbothered. "I want to fight you at your peak and not this old version of you. The real version at your prime, so I am offering you the chance to get it back, and then we settle this the only way either of us would actually find satisfying."
Black Zetsu, silent through most of this, looked between Raiken and Madara with the expression of something that had spent centuries carefully managing a plan and was now watching a stranger walk in and casually begin rearranging it without asking.
Madara looked at the pill for a long moment.
Then he looked at Raiken.
"You are either the most powerful person I have encountered since Hashirama," said Madara slowly, "or the most foolish."
"Why not both?" said Raiken pleasantly.
.....
There is 30 advanced chapter on my patreon.
Chapter 200: Itsuki The Curious
Chapter 201: Secret Kekkei Genkai
Chapter 202: Clan Reaction
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