Deep within the bowels of the earth, Uchiha Madara stood at the intersection of the four bridges in the centre of the ruins that had once been Root's headquarters. Sitting nearby on the railing was his comrade, Uchiha Obito, his feet nonchalantly dangling over the edge of the precipice. And below, tens of thousands of dim, yellow pinpricks dotted the darkness of the void rather ominously.
"With the Sixth Hokage incapacitated and with the Hidden Leaf Village's enemies at the gates, the bait is set," Madara said, his arms crossed before him. "For the sake of his ambitions, the One-Tail Jinchūriki will have no choice but to reveal himself at last."
The One-Tail was the last piece of the puzzle, the only Tailed Beast that still eluded the Akatsuki.
First, Pain and Konan captured Han, the Five-Tails' host.
Second, Itachi and Kisame captured Fū, the Seven-Tails' host… though she appeared to have survived the extraction of her Tailed Beast, somehow.
Third, Hidan and Kakuzu captured Nii Yugito, the Two-Tails' host.
Fourth, Deidara and Obito obtained the Three-Tails' chakra from the shattered remains of the Village of Artisan's ultimate weapon, which had drained enough of the Tailed Beast's chakra to satisfy the Gedo Mazō's requirements before the future Sixth Hokage killed it.
Fifth, Itachi and Kisame captured Rōshi when he moved to obtain the Box of Ultimate Bliss for Iwagakure, and thus the Four-Tails was obtained.
Sixth, Pain and Konan once again set out to personally capture Utakata, the Kirigakure missing-nin who hosted the Six-Tails.
Seventh, Obito obtained the Eight-Tails' chakra from the Box of Ultimate Bliss. Its puppet Satori had torn large chunks of flesh from the octopus and devoured them, and despite the box's earlier destruction, its meal had reappeared within the ruined box itself, allowing him to snatch them up without a fight.
Eighth and shortly afterwards, Obito chanced upon his old master, Namikaze Minato, catching him unawares as he was making his way back to the Hidden Leaf after the collapse of the north-eastern front. Despite the Fourth Hokage's newfound ability to enter Nine-Tails Chakra Mode, he was unable to bridge the lost time he had spent dead, and after a long and difficult battle, he was defeated by his former student, who had acquired one Rinnegan. Thus, the Nine-Tails was obtained...
And now, the weakest of the Tailed Beasts, the One-Tail, was now the only one who remained to be caught, ironically.
"What makes you so certain Shimura Danzō will return?" Obito asked lightly. "Even if Uchiha Sakura awakens from her coma, the Hidden Leaf Village is as good as finished. If the man has any sense, he'll be running as fast as he can in the opposite direction."
Madara chuckled.
"I watched Danzō play at spymaster for years before I died," he explained. "When he played his role as the Hokage's shadow, he was halfway decent, but he was never quite as good at concealing his ambitions…"
As an eminence in shadow, Danzō would never surpass Madara, who'd begun playing the great game of world domination when the former was still in diapers, just as Madara would never surpass Black Zetsu, who'd been acting behind the scenes for a thousand years.
In any case, there was nothing Danzō wanted more than to step out into the light and become Hokage, but while he understood very well how to manipulate people, he was no good at winning their hearts. Things like attempting to assassinate the beloved Lord Third and Lady Sixth, and arbitrarily starting deadly wars, would never earn him the village's recognition, which he so desperately craved.
"I see…" Obito said.
His impression of Danzō was that the man was a cowardly rat, but if Madara said so…
Obito fell silent, and for a few minutes, the only sound to disturb the ruins of Root Headquarters was the rustling of the hundreds of thousands of White Zetsu milling about in the chasm below the bridges on which the two Uchiha clan members stood. Though outwardly he looked relaxed as he sat on the ledge, allowing his feet to dangle over the precipice, every fibre of his being was on alert.
His alliance with Madara was an uneasy one, and they both knew it.
To avoid infighting at this critical juncture, Madara was pretending not to have realised that Obito had never had any intention of reviving him as they had originally planned, tacitly accepting his feeble excuses without question.
They were both extremely wary of each other's powers.
Obito still possessed Madara's original pair of Rinnegan, though he had implanted only one of them to preserve his infuriating ability to turn intangible, or so he claimed. Of course, Madara knew the real reason was that Obito didn't have the chakra capacity to handle both eyes at once, even with half his body being composed of White Zetsu biomass enhanced with Hashirama cells— but even so, Madara knew he would have a nightmarish task on his hands if he ever had to subdue his protégé.
On the other hand, Obito was positively terrified by the depth of the old man's secrets. Madara had told him that Orochimaru had revived him using the Edo Tensei, but he had not seen fit to tell him how he had got his hands on a second pair of Rinnegan, which he had used to restore himself to full life.
These Rinnegan were naturally Ōtsutsuki Urashiki's pair, which Orochimaru had been carrying on his person for research purposes. When Madara had effortlessly freed himself from the restrictions built into the Reanimation Jutsu, mere moments after being summoned back from the dead, Orochimaru had offered up the Byakugan to bargain for his pathetic life.
For daring to insinuate that the Hyūga clan's eyes could even begin to approach the Uchiha's, Madara had almost struck him down there and then, but to his complete and utter shock, he discovered that Orochimaru had actually been telling the truth: the Rinnegan could actually evolve from the lowly Byakugan.
While Madara was busy screwing in his brand-new pair of eyes, Orochimaru managed to slip away like the snake he was, but at that point, Madara no longer cared that his summoner had escaped his grasp, for these eyes were far superior to the ones he had awakened…
"I was wondering, why did you stop me from finishing off the girl?" Obito said, his gravelly voice breaking the silence that had fallen over them. "I did warn you that she had prodigious regenerative abilities, and, as I expected, she's survived her injuries."
Most people would die if they were sliced in half, but not Sakura. Her vitality was off the charts thanks to her Uzumaki physique, and she had enough blood stored in her ample breasts to keep her going even after losing litres of the stuff. The sheer size of her chest was actually starting to become a burden on her heart, which had to forcefully circulate far more blood than it had ever been designed to handle...
"Although I wouldn't exactly say that the Eye of the Moon Plan has gone smoothly thus far, the lack of enjoyable opponents has made the endgame dreadfully dreary," Madara said vaguely. "I felt the girl was on the cusp of something great, so, on a whim, I decided to grant her a second chance... especially since you were the one who intervened in our duel and struck her down with my own eye's visual prowess. It was hardly what I'd call a fair match."
Madara's voice trailed off as footsteps echoed through Root HQ's underground halls.
Someone was coming.