Madara stepped out first as the warp closed behind them, Rinnegan already rotating with cold precision.
They had arrived directly in Konoha's center.
He took in the shaking streets, crumbling rooftops, and the distant roar of battles ripping the land apart first.
His expression tightened.
"…Still standing. Barely."
Obito emerged next, both eyes exposed for once, eyes widening at the devastation.
"This… isn't the village I grew up in."
Kakuzu rolled his shoulders, unimpressed.
"Hmph. Chaos already. Suits me fine."
Sasori's human puppet frame clicked quietly as he observed the chakra signatures across the village.
"So many targets. Efficient."
White Zetsu leaned forward between them, smiling far too brightly.
"Konoha's finished. Totally finished."
Madara didn't respond.
His gaze rose toward the sky, toward the colossal chakra storm clashing above, filtered through the most unnatural and powerful barrier he had ever seen.
However, he didn't let it bother him too much.
Instead, he just exhaled once, calm and certain. "…Good. Let's begin."
Neither Obito nor Madara felt anything beyond that brief acknowledgment.
No nostalgia, no hesitation, for example.
Their focus locked instantly onto the only thing that mattered, shared by both of them.
Get the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki. The final step toward the Eye of the Moon plan awaited here.
Just when their White Zetsu network detected the first major disturbance in Konoha, the chain reaction had already begun.
Madara didn't wait. He launched the premature collection of the Seven and Eight Tails the moment the signal reached him.
Both were taken with almost insulting ease.
Takigakure fell instantly.
Kumo followed soon after.
Madara's current power crushed their forces completely, even Kumo's, and so thoroughly that even the jinchūriki's brother and the Third Raikage fell under his hand.
They annoyed him with their attitude, so he simply killed them in passing.
Obito warped him out with Kamui a moment later.
From there, their target was clear.
They moved straight to Konoha, from Obito's memory, to claim the Nine Tails…
And afterward, slowly seal all three remaining beasts, from those sleeping Jinchuriki, into the Gedo Mazo—
With the Nine Tails as the final, crowning piece.
And the only reason they hadn't taken those two beasts earlier was simple:
Madara hadn't wanted to alert Konoha too soon.
He knew the Nine-Tails was the most crucial piece on the board, and the hardest one to claim, from the start, so he simply played the long game.
He preferred to let his enemies make mistakes uninterrupted.
And Konoha, at its so-called strongest point in history, had made its greatest mistake; they had seemingly completely ignored the tailed beasts he was gathering across the world, barely even hiding it, and poured all their strength into trying to erase Ryusei Senju instead.
Madara watched that unfold with amusement. It was as if fate itself was smiling for him.
Because, as long as they poured everything into that internal war, he had no intention of completely disturbing them by snatching the remaining jinchūriki from their vassal state and the second strongest beast from Kumo earlier than the time was ripe.
In fact, he wanted this exact kind of scenario first and predicted it could easily happen.
He had been waiting for it, ready to claim his destiny and realise his ultimate goal in one thundering blow like today, the entire time.
He knew perfectly well how fractured Konoha was, how deep the divide ran between Ryusei's faction and the ghost-ruled leadership trying to cling to control. He investigated it.
All he needed was for their attention to be fully somewhere else. And today… It finally was.
Most of the work was already finished. The only obstacle truly left was becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchuriki himself. And with his current power and the refinements he had made to the sealing process during his recent expeditions, it wouldn't take long at all, even with three beasts remaining.
Kiri's isolation after the war had worked perfectly in his favor.
He had placed the entire leadership under a mixture of subtle genjutsu and direct blackmail through cursed marks, allowing him to already extract two of their tailed beasts and seal them quietly into the Gedo Mazo before today. Only three remained.
White Zetsu himself had recently always been stationed around Konoha to monitor every possible shift in their activity.
Sometimes Madara, or one of his own temporary clones, teleported in briefly through Obito's Kamui, checked the situation with his own sensory mode, then vanished again. That was why he caught today's opening so quickly.
Meanwhile, Madara's vast senses expanded from the moment he stepped fully into the village. A silent sweep of chakra perception rolled outward, mapping every life-sign, every distortion in the entire village almost instantly.
Within seconds, he found it.
The Nine-Tails' jinchūriki.
In one of the buildings, not far from where they stood, right in the village center as well.
Madara's eyes narrowed slightly.
"So close. Convenient."
Obito exhaled once, tension settling into cold focus.
"Then we finish this."
Madara didn't answer. He simply blurred forward, faster than the others could react.
Obito followed a beat later, Kamui flickering.
The rest moved after them, Kakuzu and Sasori barely keeping pace as White Zetsu skipped along behind with a grin.
They advanced straight toward the jinchūriki.
However, a split second before Madara tore through the building, straight to Kushina Uzumaki's chamber, he felt it.
Two faint spatial distortions.
Flying Raijin.
Minato appeared in front of the doorway.
Tobirama materialized beside him, silver hair settling, expression already cold.
Both stood rigid and grave, but for different reasons.
Behind Madara, another distortion twisted open as Obito warped the rest of them into position quickly as well.
Kakuzu, Sasori, and White Zetsu materialized a heartbeat later.
Tobirama raised a hand instantly.
A flare of chakra erupted skyward, signaling the pre-arranged emergency response unit.
More shinobi would arrive any second.
Madara stopped walking.
Minato and Tobirama blocked the entire entrance to the door, with Kushina only a step behind them.
The two sides faced each other in the narrow corridor, the air tightening with killing intent.
Madara's eyes slid toward Tobirama first, the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth.
"So… even in death, you still throw yourself in my way. You never change, Tobirama."
It wasn't mocking.
More like a tired observation — the same irritation he carried in life.
Tobirama's reply came instantly, voice flat as steel.
"And you still chase power at the cost of everything around you. I also see nothing has changed."
Madara's gaze sharpened, amused and disdainful at once.
"You should have stayed dead."
Tobirama didn't blink.
"You first."
The space between them tightened.
Minato stepped forward half a pace, jaw clenched, breath sharp.
"You're not taking one more step toward my wife."
His chakra flared violently for a moment, cloak rippling, eyes blazing with a rare anger.
He had almost been too late.
Another second and Madara would've been inside the room.
He forced himself to stay level-headed — barely.
"We knew someone was targeting the Nine-Tails," Minato said, voice trembling at the edges, "but we didn't expect you."
Madara looked at him with cold indifference. "That was your mistake."
His eyes stayed on Minato, from Tobirama, for a while longer, with the lazy contempt of someone observing a dull performance.
"So this is the hero of the current era," he said, voice dry. "The Yellow Flash. The man everyone praises as the savior of Konoha."
He tilted his head a fraction.
"And yet here you are… dragged around by Tobirama like a well-trained hound. Acting on signals. Reacting instead of thinking. How fitting."
Minato's jaw tightened.
Madara's expression sharpened with faint mockery.
"You don't even recognize your own student when he stands beside me. A disappointment on multiple fronts."
Minato blinked.
Once.
Then his gaze followed Madara's eyes—and stopped.
Obito stood there.
Fourteen.
Half-scarred face exposed.
Twin Sharingan glowing.
No mask.
No hesitation.
Minato froze.
"Obito…?"
The boy's expression twisted instantly, rage boiling up like something long suppressed.
"Don't say my name."
Minato took a step forward, disbelief and guilt hitting him like a physical blow.
"You're alive. You're— Obito, what happened to—"
"Save it."
Obito's voice cracked like glass, hatred spilling out unfiltered.
"You never looked for me. You never questioned anything. You just moved on and played Hokage-dog for the village that let Rin die."
Minato's breath hitched.
"That's not— I didn't know—"
"You didn't care," Obito spat, stepping closer, Sharingan burning at full intensity. "You were right there. And you weren't enough."
Minato swallowed, face paling.
He could block space-time ninjutsu.
He could outrun armies.
He could split bijuu bombs.
But nothing in his life had prepared him for hearing that from Obito's mouth.
Kakuzu snorted impatiently.
"Hmph. Emotional weakness. Humans never change."
Sasori barely looked up, tone bored.
"Tsk. So much noise. Can we finish the job?"
White Zetsu leaned in with a grin.
"This is getting good…"
Madara raised one hand, silencing all of them instantly.
His gaze returned to Minato and Tobirama, cold and regal.
"We are not here to talk," he said softly. "We are here to take what is ours."
And the tension in the room sharpened into a single, lethal line.