The cave was cold in the particular way that places untouched by sunlight are cold — not the cold of weather, but the cold of absence. Madara's former residence at the Kannabi Bridge site had that quality throughout, stone walls that had absorbed decades of a dying man's presence and kept the temperature of something that had been waiting a long time.
Black Zetsu was waiting when Obito came through the entrance.
"Where have you been?"
"Konoha," Obito said.
A pause. Black Zetsu's expression did something that on another face would have been called alarm. "Konoha. You went to Konoha." He pressed into the words with more friction than he usually allowed himself. "The concentration of high-level shinobi there, the surveillance, the—"
"I came back fine," Obito said. "I'm here. You can see that."
Black Zetsu closed his mouth.
The truth was that he didn't speak to Obito like this at other times. Firmness and Black Zetsu had a complicated relationship — he had always preferred the indirect approach, the nudge rather than the push, the implication rather than the statement. It kept his hand concealed and his influence subtle, which was how he preferred to operate.
But the situation had changed. The meeting in the Hidden Rain Village had not gone the way he had planned. Finn had taken the scroll, declined to return the Rinnegan, expressed interest in the framework without committing to any of it, and sent him out the door. Correct plays, all of them, made by a man who understood negotiation. Which meant that for the moment, Black Zetsu's best assets remained exactly what they had been before he made the trip: Obito, and very little else. Which meant Obito needed to not get himself killed in Konoha on an unplanned excursion.
"How did the Rain Country meeting go?" Obito asked. "Finn's position?"
"He didn't refuse outright," Black Zetsu said, shifting his tone back toward measured. "And he's genuinely interested in the higher-level power angle — I could see it. He's tempted. But he's not going to move quickly, and he's not going to move in our direction."
"What direction is he moving?"
"His own." Black Zetsu considered how to frame it. "He doesn't want to be a participant in someone else's project. He wants to be in charge. He's looking at this entire situation and calculating how to position himself at the top of whatever structure emerges."
Obito was quiet for a moment. "That's a problem."
"Not necessarily." Black Zetsu let the pause do some work before continuing. "Our actual objective doesn't require Finn to be subordinate to us. It requires the nine tailed beasts to be collected and the Gedo Mazo to be activated. The question of who is nominally in charge during that process is irrelevant. When Madara-sama returns and the plan reaches its final stage, organizational hierarchy becomes a meaningless concept." He paused again. "Let him think he's running things. The actual plan and the actual outcome have always been ours."
Obito was quiet for longer this time.
Black Zetsu waited. He recognized this silence — it was the silence of a man working through something his pride was resisting. Obito had inherited the full scope of Madara's plan and had seen himself, when Madara died, as the one who would take the reins. He had imagined bending Nagato to his purpose, assembling the apparatus, running things from the shadows. Instead, Nagato was dead, the Rinnegan was in Finn's hands, the Gedo Mazo was sealed, and the only path forward involved approaching Finn with some version of a hat in hand.
This was not what Obito had envisioned.
"The Moon Eye Project is the core," Obito said, finally. "Everything else is secondary to that. If I have to work around Finn to get it done, then I work around Finn." A beat. "And he does have the strength for it. He's not exactly a lightweight."
"That's the right way to think about it," Black Zetsu said.
They talked through the mechanics for a while after that — how often Black Zetsu would return to the Hidden Rain Village to maintain contact, what pace the cultivation of Finn's interest should follow, what the next meaningful gesture toward cooperation might look like.
"We should deepen the connection," Obito said at one point. "Not just through conversations. Something operational."
"I was thinking the same thing," Black Zetsu said. "The Yorozuya is a mercenary organization at its core. The most natural entry point is employment. If we commission them for work a few times, the relationship becomes concrete rather than theoretical. It creates the kind of familiarity that's difficult to establish through negotiation alone."
"What kind of work?"
"The tailed beasts." Black Zetsu kept his tone practical. "At this stage, only the three of us know the full scope of what we're doing. We need the beasts collected, and we no longer have the Akatsuki apparatus to do it with. Capturing tailed beasts is exactly the scale of work that requires outsourcing. We hire the Yorozuya to help. The arrangement is real — they do real work, receive real payment — and it deepens our position with them."
Obito nodded slowly. "That works. Which beast do we start with?"
Black Zetsu considered. "That depends on what we can afford."
A pause.
He turned his attention inward, consulting the White Zetsu portion of himself for an accurate accounting. The numbers came back worse than he had been privately hoping.
"We can fund one operation," he said. His expression had the quality of someone delivering a medical diagnosis they had been putting off. "One."
Obito stared at him. "One."
"One."
The silence that followed was not comfortable.
"Then after that, we either find more funding or we find a way to be inside the Yorozuya's structure rather than commissioning from outside it," Obito said, with the resignation of a man who has accepted that the situation is what the situation is. "Which makes joining them the priority."
Black Zetsu nodded, and found himself, privately, in thorough agreement. The appeal of full membership in the Yorozuya had only grown since the Hidden Rain Village visit. The organization had resources, infrastructure, personnel, and a leader who was actively collecting the kinds of power that the Moon Eye Project ultimately required. Being adjacent to that was useful. Being inside it was considerably better.
"Good news, then," Obito said. "I have something."
Black Zetsu waited.
"Konoha's Nine-Tails Jinchūriki," Obito said. "Uzumaki Kushina. Minato's wife. She's pregnant."
Black Zetsu looked at him.
He looked at him for a moment with an expression he was not entirely sure how to characterize — something between assessment and a strange, involuntary respect for the specific quality of ruthlessness being demonstrated. Of all the possible targets, of all the tailed beast Jinchūriki across all the nations, the first one Obito had identified was his own teacher's wife. The woman who had fed him, fussed over him, told him to be careful before missions.
Perverse was the word, if Black Zetsu was being precise about it. It was genuinely perverse.
"Eight months," Obito continued, his voice unchanged. "I confirmed the timing while I was in Konoha. When a Jinchūriki gives birth, the seal weakens — Madara-sama's knowledge covered this in detail. The window is narrow, but it's real. If we move quickly and with preparation, the Nine-Tails could be the first beast we collect." He paused. "It would be the hardest under any other circumstances. Kushina is an Uzumaki, her chakra reserves are extraordinary, and she never leaves Konoha. Under normal conditions, getting to her before reinforcements arrive is nearly impossible. But during labor..." He didn't finish the sentence.
Black Zetsu processed this.
The analysis was correct. That was the frustrating part. Setting aside the specific identity of the target and looking at it purely as a strategic problem, Kushina's pregnancy was the cleanest opportunity that existed for the Nine-Tails — the one moment when the seal would be accessible and the host's ability to resist would be effectively zero. Every other approach involved either fighting through Konoha's entire defensive structure or waiting for Kushina to be somewhere she never was. Neither was viable.
Obito was right. He was ruthless and right.
Black Zetsu was also aware, in the part of himself that was permitted to think past the immediate frame, of exactly how this would unfold. He had seen enough of Obito to recognize the specific way Obito's control collapsed when emotion overwhelmed strategy. The Nine-Tails incident, if it proceeded as currently planned, was going to involve Obito making a decision in the moment that had nothing to do with the plan — some impulse toward making Konoha hurt that would take priority over extracting the beast cleanly. Black Zetsu had seen the pattern. He could already trace the outline of the disaster.
The Nine-Tails would not be secured. Minato would die. Kushina would die. The beast would be split and sealed into an infant. The Uchiha clan would take the blame for the visible Sharingan in the Nine-Tails' eye. Obito would escape with nothing except the satisfaction of having made Konoha suffer, which was not a tailed beast.
And Black Zetsu would be left in a cave somewhere, having watched his only significant operational asset detonate his own plan because he couldn't stay focused for a single critical hour.
He would cry about it afterward. Silently, privately, in the specific way of someone who has no recourse.
You chose your own teammates, he thought, with the weary philosophy of someone who had been choosing their own teammates for a very long time. What can you do when they fail you?
Endure it. Keep going. There was no other option.
"Your analysis is sound," Black Zetsu said. "I'll have White Zetsu begin monitoring the situation. We track the pregnancy, confirm the timeline, and when the moment is close, we coordinate with the Yorozuya." He nodded once. "The Nine-Tails first. If the operation goes as planned, it would be an extraordinary opening move."
He kept his private reservations exactly where they were — private.
"Good," Obito said.
After a pause, he asked nothing else. Black Zetsu asked nothing else. The cave settled back into its particular cold silence, and what had been decided stayed decided between them.