Chapter 282: Experiment 1
The Next Day, Main World, on a Certain Island
Things hadn't gone exactly as planned.
Link stood there, watching the Five-Tails—put under Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan and reduced to a mindless state—and frowned in thought.
Their experiment to extract a Tailed Beast had succeeded—spectacularly so. After drawing the beast out, his Delicate Illness Extraction practically reversed the brink of death. Even with full-body cellular failure, the Jinchūriki still survived—a feat no medical ninjutsu could match.
But the cost was high. Even with Utakata supporting him, both he and Utakata had nearly burned out their chakra while rescuing the Jinchūriki. They definitely couldn't release a second Tailed Beast any time soon.
And as for his plan to painlessly slice off pieces of the beast—well, that failed.
Originally, Link thought to control the Tailed Beast via Mangekyō Sharingan as a sort of "anesthetic," then cut off chunks with his chakra scalpel in one stroke.
Unfortunately, to a Tailed Beast, the scalpel's slash inflicted unavoidable, excruciating pain. The moment he cut into the beast, that massive jolt of agony woke it up—rendering even the Eternal Mangekyō useless.
And after suffering that burst of pain, the Five-Tails now refused all communication with humans. If Sasuke hadn't been there as a bodyguard, it probably would have gone berserk to drag Link down with it.
Next up, Link thought, we'll try working with the beast via Shadow Jutsu.
He decided to give up on forcibly carving the Tailed Beast. It might sound disingenuous—he had been quite ruthless in dissecting the Six-Tails before, but at the time, he'd badly needed battle power. Now that he had formidable allies around, there was no need to torment a living creature.
It wasn't about being kindhearted or benevolent; he just didn't want to stoop to complete ruthlessness. Although he often played at being "Aizen-like," he wasn't actually as composedly cold-hearted as that. He found it difficult to remain unmoved by someone else's suffering—it wasn't "cool" for him; it just felt bad.
In short, he simply couldn't be utterly heartless.
He did feel empathy: seeing someone in pain made him uncomfortable, while seeing happiness made him smile. His whole reason for seeking greater power, after all, was to live the kind of life he wanted—free from worry.
After resting a bit, Link formed some hand seals and pressed his palms to the ground. The earth began to churn, leveling and shredding the surrounding forest. Once the jutsu ended, a vast clearing spread out before them.
Sasuke, still controlling the Tailed Beast, guided the Five-Tails into that open area, letting it stand upright and stretch out.
After all, the bigger the shadow they could cast, the better for their upcoming trial.
The three of them spent half the day figuring out the best arrangement. The Five-Tails shifted around repeatedly—until, taking the direction of the sun into account, they ended up with a pose basically like a dog lifting one hind leg to pee. Its two left legs were raised high, the tail stuck straight out, so as to maximize the size of its shadow.
"So Tailed Beasts don't actually have a gender, huh?" Utakata mused, examining the Five-Tails' belly with curiosity.
"Haha…" Link couldn't help laughing at the bizarre pose. The three of them were obviously experimenting with a legitimate shadow-based technique, yet the result looked like some bizarre treat for "furry fans."
Then again, "furry" usually implies something partly human, with fur. The Five-Tails was just a plain beast.
Hearing his laugh, Sasuke and Utakata also broke into grins.
After a short burst of levity, Link formed the correct hand seals for Shadow Clone Jutsu and successfully split the Five-Tails' shadow from its body—while also separating his own shadow.
To this day, Link still hadn't figured out how these detached shadows remained permanent. Apart from "solidified chakra," his shadow couldn't actually "consume" the shadow of any living or non-living thing.
Shadows only overlapped each other. Even if his own shadow opened a "mouth" to swallow something else's shadow, he could still spit it back out. And only the shadows of solidified chakra—like Link's own—could devour or be devoured in this way.
Once Link's shadow ate another, it could create more permanent shadows, but where the energy came from remained a mystery.
In other words, it was a total black box.
Tailed Beasts are also physically manifested chakra, so it shouldn't be all that different from a chakra cube, Link thought.
He manipulated his shadow, making it step forward and grab the Five-Tails' shadow, then mimicked a biting and swallowing motion. The giant beast's shadow, massive as it was, simply poured into Link's shadow like flowing water.
Right before their eyes, the Five-Tails visibly shrank by a significant portion, and a permanent new shadow appeared—fully formed.
Looks like it works.
Link felt relieved. Even if he didn't have leftover cubes of "Susanoo chakra," as long as a Tailed Beast's shadow could create permanent shadows, that was enough. He waited a moment; soon the Five-Tails puffed back up to its normal size. "How's it doing?" Link asked.
"No real reaction," Sasuke replied. He was monitoring the Five-Tails' emotional state through the genjutsu.
Perfect.
Link relaxed completely. Apparently, normal chakra consumption—unlike the painful slicing from a chakra scalpel—didn't disturb the Tailed Beast's consciousness. It recovered quickly and didn't feel any pain.
The next step would be to test how these newly created Stand-like clones (the "shadows") would handle the chakra cubes.
…
Third Parallel World, Mountain Graveyard
"Who the hell are you?" Third-World Uchiha Obito, hidden behind his orange mask, asked gravely.
A mysterious stranger, someone he'd never met, had appeared with chakra very similar to Madara's—and had come to propose a partnership. Even presenting two Jinchūriki as a show of "good faith."
And they weren't just any Jinchūriki: it was Killer B of the Eight-Tails and Uzumaki Naruto of the Nine-Tails, precisely the two Tailed Beasts Akatsuki had yet to capture. That meant all nine Tailed Beasts were gathered—launching the Eye of the Moon Plan was now within reach.
Most importantly, the stranger's eyes—
"Does it matter who I am?" said one of Madara's Six Paths. It opened its Rinnegan and gazed at Obito, the "heir" to Madara in this world. "We both want the same thing: to complete the Eye of the Moon Plan."
Could he be Edo Tensei'd Madara? Obito thought, murderous intent flickering through his mind. He wasn't ready to form the Ten-Tails just yet. The cursed seal on his heart remained unsolved, and Zetsu was still a threat. There was no way he'd give up control, only to have some hidden scheme from Madara overshadow him.
Yes, they both wanted everlasting peace, but no way would Obito hand over the lead to someone else.
"So you'd like to fight me?" said the "Madara's Path," his voice going cold.
So this pawn still wouldn't listen.
[He's only one of Madara's Six Paths—if I kill him, no big deal. Feeling out his chakra, it's slightly different from the real Madara's, so maybe it's some other pawn Madara left behind?]
Obito steadied himself. He cast a glance at Killer B and Uzumaki Naruto, both lying unconscious on the ground. Spatial distortion rippled, sucking the two Jinchūriki into his Kamui dimension. "You've done well enough," he said flatly.
Regardless of any potential schemes by this stranger or by Madara, Obito couldn't pass up the immediate opportunity to realize the Eye of the Moon Plan. Now he had all nine Tailed Beasts.
[All right, let's see if that stone-tablet plan really can create peace.]
The elderly Madara silently watched Obito use Kamui to depart. It didn't matter if Obito or this world's version of himself carried out the Eye of the Moon Plan. He only wanted to see whether it was genuinely workable.
But why haven't we seen Link anywhere? That kid is quite special. I need to find a way back to my original world and track him down…
~~~
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