"Hold on, hold on, hold on!"
Hidan slammed the butt of his scythe against the stone floor, the metallic clack echoing through the cavern.
"You just said 'Collect the Tailed Beasts,' didn't you? That is literally the same plan we had five minutes ago! You just slapped a new label on it and called it 'Plan A'! Are you trying to scam us, you four-eyed bastard?!"
While Hidan was being his usual loudmouthed self, the smarter members of the room were exchanging heavy glances.
Pain remained stoic, but inside the tower, Nagato's mind was racing.
Konan's eyes narrowed.
Collect the Tailed Beasts to revive Kaguya?
It was too coincidental. The masked man, "Madara," had given them the exact same objective.
He claimed it was to create a weapon of peace. But if Makoto was right, was "Madara" actually trying to revive this alien goddess all along?
Was the Akatsuki just a pawn in a game they didn't understand?
"Hidan, if you interrupt me one more time, I'm going to let Kakuzu sew your mouth shut," Makoto said, lighting a new cigarette. "I said that was Plan A. The bad plan. Now, shut up and listen to Plan B."
Makoto walked to the center of the room, smoke trailing from his lips.
"To understand Plan B, you need a history lesson."
He looked at Black Zetsu.
"Kaguya Otsutsuki didn't come to this planet alone. She had a partner."
Black Zetsu's visible eye widened.
"The Otsutsuki Clan are cosmic farmers," Makoto explained, his voice echoing in the silence. "They travel the universe planting Ten-Tails seedlings to harvest Chakra Fruits. But there is a rule to their gardening. A twisted rule."
Makoto held up two fingers.
"The Ten-Tails is a beast that requires a sacrifice to bloom. One of the most crucial steps is for a member of the Otsutsuki Clan to sacrifice themselves and be devoured by the Ten-Tails, allowing it to evolve into the God Tree and bear fruit."
Hidan just looked disgusted. "That's metal."
"It's efficient," Makoto corrected. "But Kaguya? She went off-script. She betrayed her partner Otsutsuki Isshiki. She caught him off guard and fed his lower half to the Ten-Tails. She left him for dead."
The Akatsuki listened, entranced.
"But Isshiki didn't die," Makoto whispered. "He shrank himself down to the size of a microscopic flea and hid. He's been hiding in the Shinobi World for a thousand years, possessing the brain of a monk, waiting. Biding his time."
Makoto swept his arm across the room.
"He is out there right now. A weakened, half-dead alien god. He is waiting for a vessel strong enough to hold his full power. And if he revives? He won't just enslave us. He will drain every drop of life from this planet. The Shinobi World will be a husk floating in space."
"However," Makoto smiled, a predatory glint in his eyes.
"If we find Isshiki first... if we drag that parasite out of his hole and feed his body to the statue... the tree will bloom."
He looked at Pain.
"We don't need to hunt the Tailed Beasts. We don't need to make enemies of the Five Nations. We just need to hunt one dying alien. We feed him to the statue, Kaguya gets her chakra back, and she returns. No World War needed."
The silence that followed was absolute.
But inside the mind of Black Zetsu, there was a sound like a nuclear siren.
'What?'
Black Zetsu felt like the ground had vanished beneath him.
'Isshiki? He survived? Mother didn't kill him?'
For a thousand years, Zetsu had been playing 4D chess. He had started wars, manipulated bloodlines, corrupted Indra, and whispered lies to Madara Uchiha. He had worked tirelessly to set up the Infinite Tsukuyomi because he thought it was the only way.
'I didn't know,' Zetsu realized, stunned.
'I was born the moment Mother was sealed. I didn't know Isshiki was alive.'
If Makoto was telling the truth... then Zetsu's entire existence had been a waste of time.
He didn't need to make the world hate the Akatsuki. He didn't need to trick Obito. He could have just rallied the entire ninja world under the banner of "Alien Hunt," found this Isshiki guy, fed him to the Gedo Statue, and boom—Mother returns.
He could have been the hero of the story and saved his mom.
'I am an idiot,' Black Zetsu thought, staring blankly at the floor.
"So that is the origin of the Ten-Tails..." Pain murmured, his god-complex taking a hit.
"Hold on, un," Deidara spoke up, scratching his head. "Is this really necessary? Are these Otsutsuki guys really that strong? We have to go through all this trouble to revive a grandma just to fight them? Can't we just, you know, blow them up ourselves?"
"Yeah!" Hidan agreed, swinging his scythe. "I'll curse the bastard! One drop of blood and he's done!"
Makoto looked at them with pity.
"Almost every member of the Otsutsuki Clan has a standard ability," Makoto said flatly. "They can absorb chakra. All of it."
"Deidara, your C4? Absorbed. Sasori, your puppet strings? Severed. Konan, your paper? Eaten."
Makoto leaned back against the stone wall. "In the future, Otsutsuki Isshiki revives. And the two strongest ninja in history fought him. He tossed them around like ragdolls. He broke them. The only reason they won was because one of them burned his own life force away just to stall for some time and wear him down"
Deidara's mouth hung open. "They absorb... everything?"
"Everything based on chakra," Makoto confirmed. "So unless you plan to punch him to death with zero ninjutsu, you're useless."
"The strongest Ninja in history?"
A deep, gravelly voice interrupted.
Kakuzu stepped forward. His green eyes were skeptical.
"How do these Ninja compare to the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju?"
The room went quiet.
Of course Kakuzu would ask that. The man's entire identity was that he had "fought" the God of Shinobi and lived.
To Kakuzu, Hashirama was the ceiling of power.
Makoto paused.
This was a minefield.
He knew the truth. The internet joked that Kakuzu "threw a shuriken from 800 miles away" and ran.
The reality was probably that Hashirama pitied him, or Kakuzu fought a wood clone and barely escaped.
If Makoto told the truth—"Kakuzu, Hashirama would treat you like a toddler, and Isshiki would treat Hashirama like an ant"—Kakuzu's ego would shatter.
Or worse, he wouldn't believe it.
He needed a metric they could understand.
"Hashirama Senju was strong," Makoto said carefully. "His True Several Thousand Hands statue deals physical damage, so it would actually be effective against an Otsutsuki."
Kakuzu puffed his chest out slightly.
'See? I survived that.'
"However," Makoto continued, crushing the moment. "The people Isshiki defeated... one of them could control all nine Tailed Beasts instantly with a single glance. Without a summoning contract. Without breaking a sweat."
Kakuzu froze.
He was from the Hidden Waterfall. He knew the Seven-Tails. He knew the horror of a Tailed Beast bomb. Controlling all nine instantly?
That was beyond Hashirama!
"Then... we really do need to change the plan," Pain said, his voice heavy.
Nagato felt the weight of reality crushing his ambitions.
His plan to use the Tailed Beasts as a deterrent was a joke.
The Ten-Tails wasn't a weapon; it was just a seedling. Against an Otsutsuki invasion, his "Pain" would be nothing more than an annoyance.
"How boring," Sasori's rasping voice echoed from his puppet. "Your new plan is to pin all our hopes on a woman from the sky? We revive her, and then what? We hide behind her skirt while she fights? That is pathetic."
The morale in the cave plummeted. They were S-rank criminals, the most feared organization in the world. Being told they were essentially ants in a war of gods was a hard pill to swallow.
"No, I never thought that," Makoto said softly.
He walked to the edge of the light, looking at the downtrodden faces of these monsters.
"I know what you're thinking. 'Why bother?' 'We are doomed.' Some of you probably wish I never told you the truth."
Makoto took a drag of his cigarette, the smoke curling up into the darkness.
"There is an old story," Makoto began, his voice taking on a philosophical rhythm. "Imagine an iron house. It has no windows, and it is indestructible. Inside, there are many people sound asleep. They are going to suffocate to death, passing from sleep to oblivion without feeling a thing."
He looked at Pain.
"If I shout now, and I wake up a few of the lighter sleepers... they will wake up only to realize they are trapped. They will suffer the agony of knowing their impending doom. Is that a kindness? Or is it cruelty?"
The cave was silent. Even Hidan had stopped fidgeting.
"I asked myself that before I came back," Makoto admitted. "But then I figured it out. If I wake a few of you up... if even a few of us are awake and banging on the walls... you can never say there is zero hope of breaking the iron house."
Konan looked at Makoto, her eyes softening.
It was a grim metaphor.
But for people like them—people who had lived in the rain, in war, in the darkness—it resonated
. It wasn't about guaranteed victory. It was about the refusal to die in your sleep.
"Whoa," Deidara broke the silence, giving a thumbs up. "That was... weirdly deep, un. Are you a part-time poet? That was way better than Sasori's lectures on 'eternal beauty.'"
"Shut up, brat," Sasori grunted, but there was no venom in it.
Even the puppet master seemed thoughtful.
If Kisame Hoshigaki had been there, he likely would have defected from Tobi right then and there.
Kisame hated lies.
He hated the "false world." Makoto offered the harsh, brutal, naked truth.
That was all Kisame ever wanted.
"Besides," Makoto grinned, shaking off the heavy atmosphere. "The Otsutsuki aren't invincible. They bleed. They die."
He looked at the group, his confidence returning.
"Do you know how Isshiki dies in the future? It wasn't some god-tier jutsu."
Makoto held up a single finger.
"It was a Shadow Clone. A simple, academy-level Shadow Clone trick. He was outsmarted by a ninja who refused to give up."
"And their resurrection?" Makoto scoffed. "Compared to Orochimaru's curse marks or Sasori's puppet transfer, it's crude. It takes too long. It has too many conditions."