Juzo knocked twice, waited for the response from inside, then pushed the door open and walked in with Black and White Zetsu at his back.
The room was simply arranged. A low tea table at the center. A window on the far wall with the rain-gray light of the village pressing through it. And Finn, seated comfortably in front of the table — silver-gray hakama with the tiger-descending-mountain embroidery, a ceramic cup in one hand, a sword resting on its rack beside the table.
Black Zetsu had compiled a file on that sword at some point. He had found the name Shindokutō, and nothing else beyond it. Like the man who owned it, the weapon had appeared in the world at a specific moment with no traceable point of origin, as if both of them had simply decided to exist and had begun existing.
"Boss, they're here," Juzo said.
"Thank you." Finn looked up with a mild smile. "You put in some work today."
"Not at all. Just a few steps." Juzo turned toward the door with the ease of a man who understood when a room no longer required him. "I'll be downstairs. Call if you need anything."
"Take another look at those scrolls before you do anything else," Finn said. "They'll be worth your time."
"Understood." A short nod, and Juzo was gone. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
The room went quiet.
Black Zetsu took stock. White Zetsu stood slightly behind him, processing at his own pace. Across the table, Finn picked up the ceramic cup, set it down again, and looked at them with the unhurried attention of a man who had nowhere else to be.
Black Zetsu was still working out his opening when Finn spoke.
"My old neighbor," Finn said pleasantly. "How have you been?"
White Zetsu blinked. Black Zetsu went very still.
Old neighbor.
It was a precise word choice for someone who had allegedly no contact with Uchiha Madara. The Bird Country base had not been far from Madara's cave. Close enough that the term was geographically accurate. And it was the kind of greeting — casual, knowing, slightly pointed — that didn't come from someone making an assumption. It came from someone who already had the answer and was giving you a chance to confirm it voluntarily.
Black Zetsu weighed his options in the space of a breath. "Does Lord Finn know our master?"
Finn's expression was pleasant and unrevealing. "I wouldn't say I know him. But I imagine someone with his level of awareness wasn't unaware of my existence either. A man like that, in a location like that — it would be stranger if he hadn't noticed."
He knows about Madara. The confirmation settled into Black Zetsu's thinking like a stone dropping into still water. Ripples moved outward from it. He knows Madara existed. He knows we were near each other. What else does he know? How much of the Moon Eye Project has he worked out?
The unease deepened.
"You're correct," Black Zetsu said, choosing straightforwardness over misdirection on this particular point. "Madara-sama was aware of you for some time. After the incident with the Third Raikage, his attention turned to you specifically."
Finn poured himself a cup of tea. One cup. He made no gesture toward additional cups and offered no seat. A small signal, delivered without emphasis.
"Is that so." Finn took a sip. "I'll admit I hadn't been paying much attention to my old neighbor for a while. How is he? Still keeping well?"
Black Zetsu paused.
His first instinct was to say fine — deflect, buy time, create a version of Madara that was still alive and available to be impersonated by Obito when the moment required it. But the word hadn't even fully formed before he stopped himself.
Finn doesn't read as ignorant. He reads as someone who chooses what to reveal and when. If I lie about something he can verify, and he can verify it, I've spent all my credibility on the opening move.
And credibility was the only asset he had walked into this room with.
"Madara-sama has passed away," Black Zetsu said, with a tone that carried appropriate weight.
Finn raised his eyebrows. A brief, genuine flicker of surprise, there and then contained. He set the cup down.
"That's unfortunate," he said. "I had been considering, once things settled down here, paying a visit. A man of that generation, that history — I would have liked to have met him properly." He shook his head slightly. "Time doesn't wait. A real shame."
"Madara-sama also expressed regret at never having the opportunity to meet you directly," Black Zetsu said.
Finn nodded, then leaned back with the manner of a man who had finished with a topic and was already somewhere else. "Right. Well. What exactly is the purpose of this visit? If the answer is nothing in particular, feel free to head back."
The dismissiveness was clean and complete. No hostility in it — just the flat indifference of a man who had already categorized this meeting as a potential waste of his time. Black Zetsu watched Finn's expression and noted with quiet satisfaction that the news of Madara's death hadn't produced any visible strategic calculation. No tension in the jaw, no reassessment behind the eyes. The reaction was that of someone who had known a powerful person existed nearby, had no particular investment in that person's plans, and was now simply updating his information.
He doesn't know about the Moon Eye Project. Or if he does, it's only in the vaguest terms.
Black Zetsu felt a little of his confidence return.
"We do have a purpose," he said. "It concerns instructions Madara-sama left before his passing. He had hoped to establish some form of cooperation with you."
Finn looked at him with the expression of someone who had just heard something faintly absurd. "The man is dead, and you want to cooperate on his behalf? Cooperate on what — safe passage to the Pure Land? A round of drinks with the King of Hell?"
"Nothing like that." Black Zetsu kept his tone steady. "Madara-sama's will endures. What he wished to discuss with you concerns the acquisition of power — power at a level beyond what most people in this world ever access."
The word landed.
Finn, who had been leaning back with the posture of a man prepared to end the conversation, shifted fractionally. His eyes sharpened, just at the edges. "Higher-level power," he repeated. "Go on."
There it is, Black Zetsu noted. Power is the key. This man is fundamentally a seeker — everything he's done confirms it. The Rinnegan, the Sharingan research, the Sage Mode, the Rain Country base. He's building toward something, and he doesn't yet know the ceiling.
"There is a power," Black Zetsu said, "that exists beyond the conventional limits of ninjutsu. The power of the Sage of Six Paths — a level that the old texts describe as transcending the mortal world entirely. Closer to the divine than anything a shinobi would encounter through standard means."
"If you came all the way here to tell me ghost stories," Finn said, his eyes going flat again, "I don't have time for it."
"It isn't mythology." Black Zetsu pressed forward before the window closed. "And you already hold the key to it in your possession."
A pause. Finn's expression shifted from dismissal toward something more careful. "Key."
"The eyes you acquired during the Rain Country civil war," Black Zetsu said. "You may not have known the full significance of what you were obtaining. Those eyes are called the Rinnegan. In the oldest texts, they are also referred to as the Sage's Eye — the proof of the Six Paths Sage's power made manifest."
Finn's brow creased, as if something had occurred to him that he was only now connecting. "Those eyes are what you mean? If the Sage's power is only equivalent to what Nagato was capable of, I'll be honest — that doesn't impress me particularly. I've already been past that point."
"Those eyes were never Nagato's to begin with," Black Zetsu said.
The tone of the room changed.
"Whose were they, then?"
"Madara-sama's. When Nagato was still a child, Madara secretly transplanted his own Rinnegan into the boy. He planted them for later use."
A beat of silence. Then Finn laughed — a short, sharp sound, not warm. "So. You've constructed this entire narrative to recover the eyes. The logic being that since they originally belonged to Madara, they should rightfully be returned." He shook his head. "I'll give you credit for the framing. 'Returning property to its original owner.' Quite elegant."
The pressure that followed was not theatrical. It had no announcement and no buildup. It simply arrived, settling over Black and White Zetsu like the first moment of a rockslide — the sudden, total sense of mass bearing down from a direction you hadn't been watching.
Black Zetsu's assessment ran automatically. This aura — this is not below Hashirama or Madara at their peak. This is not below them. Where did this come from? No Sharingan. No confirmed Sage Mode completion. What is the source of this?
"Misunderstanding." The word came out before Black Zetsu had consciously decided to say it. "Sir, I am telling you the truth. All of it."
The pressure did not lift immediately, but it plateaued — held at its current level rather than increasing, which was itself a kind of answer. Finn was listening.
Black Zetsu organized his thoughts quickly and began to speak.
He told Finn about the Uchiha clan's stone tablet. About the secret carried inside the Mangekyō Sharingan's deeper reading of that text — the knowledge of a power beyond conventional ninjutsu, recorded by ancestors who had glimpsed the Six Paths and left the map for those who came after. He told Finn that Madara had followed that map: that the combination of the Sharingan's yin force and the Sage Body's yang vitality, brought into equilibrium, could open the Rinnegan, and that the Rinnegan was not a destination but a door.
The details he chose were true. The frame he built around them was not.
He said nothing about the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Nothing about the Ten-Tails, the Gedo Mazo, the Moon Eye Project's actual structure. The story he told was simpler and more appealing: Madara had been a man pursuing the summit of power, who had reached the Rinnegan too late in life to climb the final steps, and who had therefore arranged for its safekeeping until the right person could carry the work forward.
The implication — not stated, only arranged — was that the right person might be Finn.
He wove the story about Nagato into it carefully. What had been planned. What would have happened if the civil war in the Rain Country had concluded differently, if Finn had not intervened. What the Rinnegan could theoretically enable for someone with the constitution to use it properly.
All of it pointed toward power. All of it used the Rinnegan as the central object of interest, the thing that connected everything, the reason this conversation was happening at all.
Black Zetsu understood that a man like Finn could not be fooled outright. But a man like Finn, who was genuinely interested in the ceiling of what was achievable, could be made curious. And curiosity, properly maintained, was a form of cooperation.
If he starts to investigate, I can guide the investigation. If he starts to believe there is something real at the end of this path, I can shape what he believes he's found. I don't need him to trust me. I need him to be interested.
He finished and waited.
Across the table, Finn was quiet, one hand resting lightly beside the tea cup, looking at nothing in particular.
Black Zetsu watched him and thought: Step one. Now let's see if the bait holds.