Chapter 258: The Lost One-Tail and Two-Tails
"Clan head. No fatalities."
"One broken bone. Three minor injuries."
"Clan head — this is bad. The vessel on the altar is gone."
They had turned the rubble over three times and dug down to bare earth, and the Shukaku pot that had been enshrined before the goddess statue was nowhere to be found. The clan member delivering the news had sweat standing out on his forehead as though spring had skipped ahead directly to midsummer.
"Leave it."
Hyuga Ritsu waved his hand.
"But — but that's the vessel with the One-Tail sealed inside —"
"Yes, it is. And it's gone, and that's that. Someone's had their eye on it for years. It was always going to end up leaving eventually. Even if I kept it on my person every hour of every day, if it was meant to go, it would go."
"How could that be possible? Who could take something from you, clan head —"
One cold look from Ritsu dropped the man from midsummer straight into the depths of winter. The clansman's loose tongue froze instantly. His head seemed to want to retract into his collar.
No sense at all, Ritsu thought.
If he didn't give Uchiha Madara and Black Zetsu the opportunity to steal the Shukaku pot, how was the Moon's Eye Plan ever supposed to begin? He certainly wasn't going to dirty his own hands with it — not as the head of the strongest village in the ninja world.
So the shadow clone he had left standing watch in the Tamae Shrine had noticed the intruder approaching. It had simply chosen not to react. Once he confirmed the target was the vessel on the offering table and that the intruder had no interest in harming anyone present, the clone had remained completely still and let them take it.
"Clear the wreckage and speak to the elders about rebuilding the shrine. There are matters at the Hokage Building that still need handling — I have to get back."
He gave the instruction and a shaft of white light surged upward from where he stood.
A moment later he came through the open window and was standing in his office.
Using the Police Force headquarters had been a temporary arrangement, and a short one at that — less than four months before the rebuilt Hokage Building was ready and he had moved back in. That was six years ago now.
"Ritsu. What happened?"
He had barely found his footing before the question met him.
The office was full. Hiruko, the Hokage Advisor. Advisory elders Akimichi Torikaze and Inuzuka Jaw. Nara Shikaku, the jonin corps commander. Uchiha Fugaku, clan head and Police Force captain.
The village leadership assembled together in one room was not a sign that anything was going well.
They had come with urgent business to discuss, and before any of it could be addressed, the Tamae Shrine had exploded.
"The Tamae Shrine was attacked. Roughly a third of the structure is destroyed." Ritsu let his expression settle into something heavy and troubled. "The worst of it is that the Shukaku pot enshrined before the goddess statue has been stolen."
Hiruko stared at him. "How is that possible? Ritsu, you had a shadow clone stationed there — "
"The attacker was extremely powerful." Ritsu kept his face grave and his tone even. "My clone managed to hold them off long enough to keep every clan member inside safe from harm, but the clone was destroyed in the process, and it took a third of the shrine with it."
Akimichi Torikaze's white eyebrows drew together. "Lord Hokage. Did you get a clear look at who took the pot?"
Ritsu let a pause hang in the air. "The attacker was fully invisible. Even my Byakugan could only catch blurred traces of chakra movement. There's only one person I can think of who fits that description — the former Second Tsuchikage, known as 'The Non-Entity.' Mū."
That much was true, and that much was false in equal measure.
Mū had indeed stolen the Shukaku pot. But Ritsu's Byakugan had seen it perfectly clearly — the technique called Dustless Bewildering Cover was no match for eyes that matched the purity of Otsutsuki Kaguya's own. He simply hadn't felt obliged to share that particular detail.
"The Second Tsuchikage..." Inuzuka Jaw's face soured. He muttered under his breath: "The Reanimation Jutsu again. That technique the Second Hokage developed was really something else..."
He stopped himself there, visibly restraining the urge to say the rest of it.
He wasn't alone in that feeling. Nearly everyone in the room shared the same quiet resentment toward that particular forbidden art. A handful of rogue ninja who should have been dead, revived and wielding the strength of their primes — enough to put an entire great ninja village on a war footing.
Tatsuhata had once controlled reanimated versions of the First Hokage, Second Hokage, Third Raikage, Third Kazekage, Fourth Kazekage, and Uchiha Madara simultaneously.
The Fourth Hokage had died under that combined assault.
It was only because the Fifth Hokage was what he was — because he had cut through to the heart of the problem, captured Uchiha Tatsuhata alive, and personally dismantled the crisis that had seemed at its worst like it might swallow the village whole — that Konoha had the six years of peace it had just lived through.
But several days ago, news had come from the Hidden Cloud Village: they had been attacked. Their Two-Tails jinchuriki was missing.
That was the news Ritsu had received first thing this morning, the reason he had handed Naruto's school sendoff to Aika and come here instead.
And then, before anyone had gotten past the opening remarks, the Tamae Shrine had exploded and the One-Tail's vessel had been taken.
It was difficult to look at what had happened to Cloud and what had just happened here and not see them as connected. Hard evidence or not, everyone in the room was already certain: this was Uchiha Madara and Orochimaru's work.
They had long since gone through Senju Tobirama's notes thoroughly enough to know that a reanimated ninja, with the caster's permission, could sever the binding contract that linked them and continue to exist even after the caster's death. That existence was still finite — the sacrificial vessel would eventually rot away — but with Orochimaru's help, Madara could simply transfer to a new vessel and keep going indefinitely.
In short: even after six years of total silence, no one in this room had ever truly believed that Madara and Orochimaru had quietly disappeared into some forgotten corner of the world.
"Lord Hokage." Nara Shikaku's eyes were sharp. "The Shukaku pot sealing the One-Tail has been stolen. The Two-Tails jinchuriki from Cloud has gone missing. Following the Moon's Eye Plan's logic, the Three-Tails is next." He held Ritsu's gaze. "We need to put protective measures around the Three-Tails jinchuriki. And while the Nine-Tails jinchuriki is likely the last target, now is the time to start preparing for that too."
"Agreed. We need to move on Nohara Rin right away."
Inuzuka Jaw was nodding before Shikaku finished speaking.
Hiruko and Akimichi Torikaze both wore the same expression.
Uchiha Fugaku was the one who asked the harder question. "Protecting the Three-Tails jinchuriki — yes. But how?"
That stopped everyone.
Even Nara Shikaku went quiet.
How, exactly, did you protect a jinchuriki from Uchiha Madara?
If the Shukaku pot were still intact you might consider having the Hokage carry it on him at all times, but you couldn't do the same thing with a person — not without her consent, not without Ritsu's, and certainly not without his wife's, despite the fact that his wife and the Three-Tails jinchuriki were close friends.
But if Nohara Rin wasn't kept in close proximity to the Fifth Hokage himself, it was hard to see how any location could be called genuinely safe. The one hunting the Tailed Beasts was Uchiha Madara. And working alongside him was Orochimaru, who held the Reanimation Jutsu and could muster an army of the ninja world's greatest deceased fighters at will. Today it had been the reanimated Second Tsuchikage walking off with the Shukaku pot.
Next time, would it be the reanimated Second Hokage coming into the village to take someone by force?
The room turned, more or less as one, to look at Hyuga Ritsu.
"Why is everyone looking at me?"
Ritsu gave them a flat look.
"Ritsu." Hiruko's voice was patient. "Do you have something in mind?"
"Something in mind?"
Ritsu lifted one shoulder. "Not anything I'd call a clean solution. Even if I stayed within arm's reach of Nohara Rin and Naruto every hour of every day, that wouldn't guarantee their safety. Don't forget — with the Reanimation Jutsu at their disposal, Madara and Orochimaru could assemble an army made entirely of elite fighters and simply come at us with overwhelming force. I can't abandon everyone else in the village to stand guard over two people indefinitely."
"So... there's no answer?" Inuzuka Jaw's eyes went wide. "We just wait for Madara to come and take them?"
"More or less."
Ritsu didn't deny it. "We're the visible side of this. They're hidden. Even if I'm confident I can defeat Madara in a direct confrontation, the problem is we have no idea where they're hiding. We can't bring the fight to them."
Hiruko stirred. "The Shukaku pot — did you leave any kind of mark on it?"
"I did, actually. But Tatsuhata made exactly that mistake before, and Madara has had decades to grow cautious. I wouldn't count on a tracking seal leading us anywhere useful."
"Ah." The brief flicker of hope in Hiruko's expression went out. He exhaled. "Of course."
It was a genuinely difficult problem. If Madara and Orochimaru could be found that easily, six years of searching wouldn't have turned up nothing.
"That said — there is one approach worth considering."
Every head in the room came up.
"Ritsu, if you have something, say it now," Hiruko said. "Stop building suspense."
Ritsu smiled slightly. "It's simple enough. Since Madara wants to collect all nine Tailed Beasts to execute the Moon's Eye Plan, we help him. We give them to him."
"We — what?"
Akimichi Torikaze looked as though the words hadn't parsed correctly.
"Let me finish. Based on what we extracted from Tatsuhata's memories, executing the final stage of the Moon's Eye Plan isn't something Madara can do from hiding. At some point he has to come out into the open. That's our window. We use it to finish him completely — not just defeat him, but destroy his soul and seal it so he can never return."
He said it without any hesitation.
This wasn't a plan constructed to serve Madara's purposes. It was Ritsu's genuine read of the situation, the only path through it he could see that actually led somewhere.
The silence that followed was uneasy.
Taken at face value, the plan had an obvious problem: what if, at the critical moment, they failed to kill him? They would have handed Madara everything he needed.
"Ritsu." Hiruko was direct. "This is too risky. If something goes wrong, it's total disaster."
Only a teacher could say that so plainly. Only a teacher would dare.
"I know. But there's no version of this that doesn't carry risk. Getting rid of Madara permanently isn't possible without accepting some. And there's no method available to us for stopping him from collecting the Tailed Beasts in the first place."
"Then what about Nohara Rin and Naruto? A jinchuriki dies when a Tailed Beast is extracted. Are you prepared to sacrifice them?"
"Absolutely not."
Ritsu shook his head with complete conviction. "I'm not planning to sacrifice anyone. If I'm putting this forward, it's because I have a way to keep them alive."
"What way?"
Hiruko asked before he could stop himself.
Ritsu's expression settled into a mild smile. "Do you remember the forbidden art we pulled from Tatsuhata's memories? One's Own Life Reincarnation?"
Hiruko blinked. Then his eyes went wide. "That technique is a one-for-one exchange — one life given, one life returned. And it's extraordinarily difficult to learn. Don't tell me someone in the village has actually mastered it?"
"No one in the village has studied it. Except me."
"Ritsu — you're not saying you'd use your own life to —"
"Of course not." Ritsu cut him off with a quick gesture. "That's not what I'm saying. I said I studied it. Not that I learned it as written. Over the past two years I've developed a method based on the original technique — a way to perform the revival using someone else's life instead of the caster's."
A beat of silence.
"What do you mean, someone else's life?"
"The caster doesn't pay the price. A third party does. Someone like a convicted murderer or a rapist, for example."
The room went very still.
Nobody spoke.
Could that actually work?
And it sounded... deeply unsettling.
Ritsu looked around at the silent faces. "I need everyone to weigh in. What do we actually do from here? Do we put everything we have into protecting Nohara Rin and Naruto and try to hold the line? Or do we take the Three-Tails and Nine-Tails out of them ourselves, and hand Madara the source of all this trouble on our own terms?"
He waited for someone to answer.