"You're saying Black Zetsu made you give your eyes to soone else?"
In Otogakure, within the Land of Rice Fields, Yakushi Kabuto had originally been further refining the Impure World Reincarnation technique in his hands. But after Hōzuki Gengetsu brought Kimimaro back, Kabuto saw the state Kimimaro was now in.
"And not just any eyes—a pair of Byakugan."
Gengetsu added from the side. He had only just learned that Kimimaro apparently had other companions too.
"Byakugan?"
"So the reason he wanted Kimimaro from was because Kimimaro could awaken the Byakugan?"
"In that case, the Kaguya clan really does share blood ties with the Hyūga clan?"
Kabuto placed Kimimaro on the operating table and used dical ninjutsu to stimulate the slightly atrophied nerve cells in his eye sockets.
"They should be related."
"Black Zetsu and that Uchiha took to the Hyūga clan's Great Tenseigan and had receive its chakra. Under that chakra's stimulation, I awakened the Byakugan."
"I could even feel that if I continued receiving stimulation from the Tenseigan's chakra, the Byakugan could evolve even further."
"They didn't hide much from at first. From what they said, I learned that the Tenseigan is another kind of Sage Eye."
Kimimaro had only joined the Akatsuki recently, so naturally he had no deep loyalty to them. Even if the Tenseigan chakra had initially been able to heal his bloodline disease, he had already given the Byakugan back to them.
As far as Kimimaro was concerned, he no longer owed the Akatsuki, Black Zetsu, or Obito anything.
"Another Sage Eye…"
"No wonder your bloodline disease improved so much. If you stop overusing the Kaguya clan's Dead Bone Pulse, your current body should be able to last another twenty years without much issue."
Kabuto withdrew his hand from Kimimaro's eye sockets and fell into thought.
"Did they say what kind of power those Sage Eyes have?"
"Or rather, can those Sage Eyes revive the dead?"
Kabuto looked at Kimimaro and asked about sothing else.
He had never forgotten that his goal, from beginning to end, was to revive Nono Yakushi.
"They can't. The power inside that Tenseigan is an extrely powerful force of destruction."
"During the process of receiving the Tenseigan's chakra, I vaguely sensed that it contained a technique that seed capable of destroying the shinobi world."
Kimimaro was gradually growing used to the feeling of having lost his eyes. He didn't hide anything from Kabuto.
"What about the person who took your eyes?"
"Do you know his identity?"
Naturally, Kabuto had no intention of leaving Kimimaro blind forever. Orochimaru had left behind an astonishing amount of assets, and the largest portion of those was various human tissues. After all, Orochimaru had spent his whole life performing human experints.
As Kabuto worked, he implanted a new pair of eyes into Kimimaro's sockets.
"I don't know. Logically, the ones who need Byakugan should be Hyūga clan ninja, but that person didn't look much like a Hyūga."
"In fact, I sensed sothing similar to myself from him."
"His bloodline had also regressed toward its source—and to an even greater degree than mine."
In the shinobi world, eye-transplant surgery didn't seem particularly difficult. Never mind a dical jōnin like Kabuto—Obito had swapped an eye for Kakashi right on the battlefield.
As Kimimaro adapted to his new eyes, he relayed everything he knew about Black Zetsu's side.
"Interesting. The shinobi world is becoming more and more interesting."
After listening to Kimimaro, the eyes behind Kabuto's glasses flickered with shifting light.
As Uchiha Chizumi's reputation spread wider and wider across the shinobi world, Kabuto felt more and more that all kinds of hidden monsters and ghosts were starting to crawl out of the woodwork. Even the so-called Sage Eyes had now appeared in a second form.
"Are we still going to continue cooperating with Black Zetsu?"
Jūgo helped Kimimaro sit up, clearly angered by the treatnt his friend had received.
"Continue?"
"If they don't pay an appropriate price, why should the cooperation continue?"
"After all, they're the ones asking for help now—not the other way around."
Unlike Orochimaru, Kabuto really did treat Kimimaro and Jūgo as teammates. Or rather, he had not yet reached Orochimaru's deranged level of treating everyone else as experintal material.
"Kimimaro, do you need ti to recover?"
"Or are you coming with to settle accounts with Black Zetsu's side?"
Kabuto turned his gaze toward Kimimaro.
After obtaining Ōnoki's corpse, Kabuto's strength had received a very real boost. At the very least, Black Zetsu and that Uchiha weren't enough to make him feel especially wary anymore.
"I'll go with you, Kabuto."
Jūgo volunteered imdiately. Seeing his closest friend treated this way had angered him no less than anyone else.
Now that Kabuto was planning to trouble Black Zetsu, Jūgo naturally intended to help.
"No need. You should stay here at the base and take care of Kimimaro."
Kabuto shook his head.
He was indeed going to cause trouble for Black Zetsu, but at the sa ti, he intended to use the reanimated Ōnoki to test Black Zetsu and that Uchiha's strength.
Most importantly, though, Kabuto planned to demand more White Zetsu from Black Zetsu.
After dissecting several White Zetsu bodies in succession, Kabuto had beco increasingly fascinated by the species. He had even started trying to cultivate White Zetsu himself, but the samples he had were too few, and the process hadn't gone smoothly.
While Kabuto was preparing to go cause trouble for Black Zetsu and Obito, the two of them were also feeling rather irritated.
In their eyes, they had clearly already paid Ōtsutsuki Toneri the agreed-upon compensation up front, yet Toneri had left without saying much of anything.
"Black Zetsu, can that guy really be fooled by us?"
"Or did he see us as nothing more than tools for accomplishing his own goal from the start?"
Under the mask, Obito's expression was ugly.
For all these years in the shinobi world, it had always been him, Uchiha Obito, treating others as tools.
Since when had he beco soone else's tool?
Black Zetsu did not respond imdiately.
His mood wasn't any better than Obito's. He too felt that Ōtsutsuki Toneri had treated them as temporary tools from beginning to end.
"Perhaps… he was simply in a hurry to awaken his own Tenseigan?"
After a long silence, Black Zetsu offered a half-hearted excuse for the already-departed Toneri.
After all, while Toneri had left, hadn't he still left behind a puppet they could use to contact him?
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