Chapter 176 - 174: Bijûu Conference (END)

"Hey, you lot are a bit too pessimistic. This isn't really a big problem. Azula would definitely be able to solve Madara's trouble." Kurama said it as if the Madara crisis wasn't worth mentioning, like it was a minor paperwork error rather than a legendary Uchiha with god-tier eyes.

But Isobu shook his head, not agreeing with Kurama at all. "I've seen that Uchiha. I admit that given enough time and luck, she may be able to reach Hashirama's level. But you should know about the Rinnegan. At that level, pure destructive strength doesn't matter much."

In truth, none of them truly knew the full abilities of the Rinnegan, but they remembered fragments of what the Sage of Six Paths had done with it.

Reading memories and extracting souls with a single touch. Absorbing incoming chakra attacks and nullifying ninjutsu entirely. Controlling the boundary between life and death, killing and resurrecting others without any apparent effort.

Against abilities like those, no matter how strong Hashirama had been, it wouldn't have mattered much.

Of course, it also didn't help that when Hashirama had captured them, he hadn't really used his true strength. The man hadn't even bothered to enter Sage Mode, which left the Bijuu with a somewhat skewed understanding of exactly how far above them he'd actually been.

To this, Kurama was completely speechless. From the very beginning, whether him, Azula, or Mito, they had never truly considered Madara as the real threat. Their target had always been those mysterious Ōtsutsuki.

Madara wasn't exactly absolute evil, and he really wasn't that big of a menace even at his peak with a Rinnegan, because Azula with a Mangekyō plus Kurama inside her were more than enough to handle him if it came to the worst scenario. But Kurama didn't know how to explain any of this to them without sounding completely unhinged.

"In fact, according to the information you have, it's not wrong for you to make such an assumption," Mito suddenly spoke, her calm voice cutting through the tension. "But you are underestimating Azula far too much. She already has the Mangekyō Sharingan, and she will fuse it with the one from her father. Like Madara, she will have the Eternal Mangekyō."

The Eternal Mangekyō was far from the limits she and Kurama had estimated for Azula, but there was no reason to reveal the girl's true trump cards here. That was a conversation for another day, if it ever needed to happen at all.

"Hmm, indeed, with the Eternal Mangekyō, it's not without a chance to fight back," Chōmei said, and as Mito had expected, just that alone was enough to give them a glimmer of hope. Sometimes all you needed was a crack in the door.

"But unfortunately, that isn't the biggest problem," Kurama suddenly said, sliding effortlessly into the role of bad cop.

Shukaku couldn't help but growl at him. "What do you mean? That there's something worse than that man getting a Rinnegan and summoning the Gedō Mazō to absorb us?"

Kurama nodded, his expression dead serious. "Yeah, there really is."

"Let me guess," Son Gokū interjected, his voice full of self-deprecating sarcasm. "Is there someone who wants to liberate that woman?"

For him, this was the only thing worse than Madara with a Rinnegan at his peak, but he said it with the tone of someone who didn't truly believe his own words, like a man joking about the apocalypse to keep from screaming.

"How did you know it?" Kurama readily agreed, as if Shukaku had just correctly guessed the weather. "There really is someone trying to unseal that woman. It was also that... um, thing that modified the Uchiha stone tablet, the one misleading Madara."

"But well, that's not really what I'm talking about." And finally, when he said this, Kurama completely dropped his relaxed and teasing tone, and the shift was so sudden it was like watching a mask fall off.

"We learned something very serious. That woman was not alone. She came from a clan, a whole species of beings like her, moving from world to world, planting those trees, absorbing the life chakra of entire worlds, and harvesting chakra fruits. Kaguya was originally designed to be sacrificed to the tree, but she managed to sneak attack the one paired with her, sacrificing him instead and eating the chakra fruit herself."

When he finished his lore dumping, the Tailed Beasts were completely dumbfounded. Shukaku, who had been about to complain to Kurama for glossing over the part about someone wanting to unseal Kaguya, completely forgot about it after learning about the existence of the Ōtsutsuki clan.

A whole clan made up of beings like Kaguya, the thought was enough to make his sand stand on end.

"You mean to say there's a whole clan of people like that woman, and in that clan, her level was so low that she was meant to be sacrificed?" Gyūki asked, and behind his steady voice, he was starting to genuinely doubt the meaning of his own existence.

Kurama nodded, keeping a perfectly straight face. "That's pretty much it, yes."

Akiko was still confused about who 'that woman' they kept mentioning was, but Mito, being the kindhearted soul she was, noticed the Mizukage's bewilderment and explained.

"That woman was the mother of the Sage of Six Paths. In fact, many of the legends about the Sage are true. The moon, for example, he and his brother created it, sealing their mother inside. She is still up there, alive." Mito smiled pleasantly, as if she hadn't just casually revealed that the moon was a prison. "And in that clan, technically, the Sage of Six Paths is only half-blood. Special, certainly, but only half."

Mito herself was still uncertain about the true strength levels of the Ōtsutsuki, because according to Azula, the Sage of Six Paths' Susanoo had been thousands of meters long during his battle against Kaguya, and they had fought for months before she was sealed.

After that, he absorbed the Ten-Tails, and by then even Azula couldn't estimate how strong he truly was. Which meant that even among the Ōtsutsuki, at his peak, his strength was definitely not low.

But here and now, Mito could only silently apologize to this ancestor of theirs while deliberately downgrading his strength because it was necessary.

The Tailed Beasts, Akiko, and eventually all of humanity needed to understand the stakes. They couldn't afford to slack off and had to cooperate to their absolute best.

Her words achieved exactly the effect she intended. Akiko instinctively looked toward the Bijuu for confirmation, and Isobu, her own Tailed Beast, nodded at her with what she judged to be a deeply helpless expression, which was not comforting. A giant ancient turtle was looking at her like they were all doomed, and she didn't even have the full picture yet.

"Now you see why I gathered you here?" Kurama said, smoothly taking over where Mito had left off. "Things cannot continue the way they have been. If nothing changes, without a doubt, whether it's us or the entire ninja world, everything will be completely over."

No matter how they appeared or what their personalities were, the Bijuu were proud by nature. They believed in their own strength. But what Kurama was saying was undeniably right, and that made it worse.

"It's just that things are no longer in our control," Kokuō said quietly, remembering the Third Tsuchikage whom he wasn't even sure he could beat in his current imprisoned state. "After being sealed away, how could we possibly intervene?"

This was exactly the moment Mito had been waiting for.

"You don't have to worry about that," she said, drawing the attention of every Bijuu in the mental plane. "Azula's Mangekyō granted her the ability to see the future and the past. It was thanks to her that we know all of this information."

She had just crafted a convenient and untraceable origin for their knowledge.

Even among the Bijuu, who were as old as the ninja world itself, techniques related to time were extraordinarily rare, and one that could provide such comprehensive intelligence was essentially unheard of.

"Through this, she learned that the very first thing these Ōtsutsuki will do upon arriving in this world is hunt for Tailed Beasts. They can absorb you directly without needing any medium, instantly becoming far stronger. The Bijuu alone are almost unable to hurt them, because they can absorb any pure chakra attack."

This was her real point, to make them understand that they were the primary targets and that, unfortunately, they had absolutely no chance of surviving on their own. Mito made sure every single one of them understood this with painful clarity.

And they didn't have to doubt her words, because both the chakra absorption ability and their status as primary targets were perfectly logical conclusions.

"Since that is the case, Azula wants the Bijuu to cooperate," Mito continued, but the moment she finished speaking, Son Gokū scoffed.

"Cooperate?" He looked at her as if she had just suggested the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "You captured us without any of us ever provoking humans, sealed us, took away our freedom, treated us like beasts. And now, the moment a real threat arrives, you come asking us to cooperate?"

He remembered, with perfect clarity, that all of his suffering had originated from the husband of this very woman, a man who had decided the Bijuu were too strong and too dangerous for the world, that they should be sealed and kept in cages like rabid animals.

Mito could understand his emotions, and her own feelings were complicated. "Sealing you was probably the stupidest decision Hashirama ever made, and I am deeply sorry for it. If a human had been treated the way you were, there is a very high chance he might even wish to destroy the world. All of this suffering stemmed from a lack of understanding and communication between our two sides."

"But," she continued, and her eyes hardened with unwavering resolve, "I want to resolve this misunderstanding. We do need your power, but not in the way you think."

"Azula has a Mangekyō, and soon it will be the Eternal Mangekyō. She could easily control every single one of you if she wished. She could seal you all together and pump out your chakra, and you could do nothing about it, whether you liked it or not. But due to her jutsu, she saw the future and understood your true nature. That is why she wants your willing cooperation. However, in the face of the Ōtsutsuki threat, if we truly have to make the hard choice, we will make it."

Her apologetic and weary temperament vanished entirely, and for a moment, she was radiating light like a sun, with a powerful will pressing against the mental plane.

Kurama, despite being a Bijuu himself, highly approved of Mito's performance. He knew his siblings didn't understand soft communication. They only responded to hard truths.

'None of them is as easy as me to communicate with, after all.' He thought.

Fortunately for him, no one was paying attention to his face at that moment, or they would have seen the deeply self-satisfied expression plastered across it.

Mito's words carried unhidden threats, and for Son Gokū, who was every bit as proud as Shukaku and Kurama, the feeling was deeply humiliating.

But the past few years had taught him a very simple truth: pride without strength was just stupidity dressed up in fancy robes.

From the looks of things, both Isobu and Kurama were extremely confident in Azula's strength, especially Kurama, who knew about Madara and the Ōtsutsuki and still believed she could handle the problems.

That truly meant she would have no difficulty capturing them if they refused to cooperate, and who knew what kind of fate they would suffer by then.

Son Gokū was not the only one who reached this conclusion. Several of the other Bijuu were even more intelligent than him when it came to deduction.

"If..." After a long silence, Gyūki took the lead and asked the question. "What kind of cooperation do you propose?"

Mito tried her best to hide the smile that wanted to break across her face, because Gyūki's question itself meant they had already agreed in principle.

"The plan is simple. Azula wants you to let your Jinchuriki adapt to your chakra and eventually lift the seal entirely." She glanced meaningfully at Akiko. "Once you reach that level, you can try to understand each other and achieve the state of a perfect Jinchuriki."

"Reciprocally, during that period, you can create another chakra body and let your consciousness transfer into it, enjoying your freedom for as long as you want. Additionally, Azula would regularly collect one percent of your chakra, with the timing depending on your recovery rate. Apart from that, nothing much restricts you."

She made it sound as if it was nothing important.

'So that's it!' Isobu, who had been the very first to experience exactly what Mito was describing, understood instantly.

The same realization dawned on Akiko, though she was obviously going to need to return home, drink something strong, and sleep for a very long time before she could fully digest everything that had happened today.

"Alright," Mito said, her voice light and pleasant. "I believe we have shown our sincerity, and we have shared so much information that you will need time to reflect. How about we stop here?"

She offered them a graceful exit, though she knew perfectly well that the choice had already been made from the very beginning.

From the moment this meeting started, she and Kurama had been playing them, guiding them step by step toward the only possible conclusion. And now, looking at their faces, she knew it had worked.

(END OF THE CHAPTER)

Finally ended this, starting to recover my passion for writing again but honestly, I'll be very busy in the next five days, I'm sorry