Chapter 191 - 189: The Weapon Against The Ōtsutsuki

"If I understand correctly... that woman isn't from our world?" Tobirama said the last word like he was trying it out for the first time. Azula could hear the confusion in it, not doubt, just a man grappling with a concept he'd never needed before.

Azula nodded. "If you could fly straight up, keep going, don't stop, eventually you'd reach a point where the whole world looks like a small ball beneath you."

"Keep going, and you'll see other balls appear. Smaller ones or bigger ones, some close, some..." She paused, this sounded ridiculous. She kept going anyway. "The nearest one, even at your top speed, would take months to reach. The far ones? You could run for a hundred thousand years and still never get there."

Azula had wondered if this world's rules were different. But there were records of people who'd yearned for the stars and actually gone up to see them. Some had even come back and left records about the world being round, which earned them the title of crazy.

Tobirama absorbed this. Then his eyes lit with the particular intensity of a scholar who'd just found a missing piece. "So Tojirō's records were true."

Azula nodded. Tojirō had been a Senju, one of the odd ones, by all accounts.

He'd spent his life studying the sky, developing techniques to reach it, and his existence was well-documented. His claim that he'd actually succeeded, seen the world from above, shaped like a ball, had never been proven until now.

"So the Ōtsutsuki are the reason no one from other worlds has ever visited us?" Tobirama was already putting pieces together faster than she could hand them to him.

Azula shook her head.

"Not really. Planets, those balls I mentioned, are everywhere, but planets with anything living on them?" She shrugged. "About as common as someone who can beat me in a fair fight."

'Still vague,' Tobirama thought. But this was Azula, he was learning to translate.

"Even so, that means they've been harvesting planets. For how long?" Tobirama's mind was clearly still racing.

Azula noted the curiosity in his voice. 'Good, he was invested now.'

"Yes." Azula nodded before pausing, considering how to phrase what came next. "I don't have complete information, but from what I know, one of the weakest of them, a scout, is roughly at your level."

In a straight fight, she had no doubt Tobirama would win. Tactics, speed, experience, he had the edge. But in terms of raw power? Urashiki had chakra absorption, time manipulation, Rinnegan abilities, dimensional movement.

On paper, he was even the superior one.

'As I expected.' Tobirama wasn't shocked. If the Sage of Six Paths was merely the son of a low-ranked woman who'd eaten a single Chakra Fruit, then the strongest of her clan had likely consumed many more.

The ones with rank, the ones who weren't expendable, would definitely be strong and special.

Now he understood why she'd summoned him, why she pushed so hard, despite already standing at the peak of the shinobi world. She was preparing for an extinction war.

Seeing Tobirama's shoulder settle, visibly accepting his fate, Azula pressed the final point home.

"I don't fear the Ōtsutsuki. I'll face them directly." Her voice was calm but factual. "Still, I won't refuse help because they've had thousands of years to develop. Every mind we add, especially one like yours, shrinks that gap."

'She's right.' Tobirama had no false modesty about his mind. He'd never match Hashirama's strength, no ninja could, but his jutsu, his research, his innovations? Those had earned him a place in history just below his brother's.

'And I told myself I wouldn't change my mind, no matter what she said.' The thought was almost funny now, especially since he'd folded in under an hour. "Fine, I suppose staying isn't the worst idea."

Azula's smile spread across her face before she could stop it. 'I knew it.'

The expression was insufferably smug, and Tobirama couldn't even argue. She'd earned it.

She didn't linger on the victory. "Now, the reason I called you here today, and the reason I summoned you in the first place. I need your help with something."

She didn't mention that the original reason had been mostly to annoy him. That part could wait.

Tobirama eyed her with the wariness of a man who'd just been talked into one impossible task and suspected another was coming. "What is it?"

"I want you to develop Natural Energy." Tobirama understood instantly. "Edo Tensei body with infinite chakra and regeneration, it's the perfect combination for natural energy experiments."

'Why didn't I think of this when I was alive?' The answer came immediately: because he'd never needed to. Peace had never seemed so fragile.

"Not just that." Azula shook her head. "Chakra-based attacks are useless against them, they absorb it. But they can't do the same with Natural Energy. It's their one weakness."

"They have a weakness that obvious?" Tobirama's eyebrows rose, before his expression flattened. "You should have summoned me earlier. I could have had something ready by now."

The Ōtsutsuki could arrive at any time. Every day they hadn't spent preparing was a day wasted. Tobirama felt like he missed something big.

Azula rolled her eyes. "Were you easy to talk to before? And do you think improving your Edo Tensei was simple? I had to fix your seal work first. That alone took time."

Tobirama opened his mouth, but closed it. 'She wasn't wrong.'

"Alright." Tobirama lowered his voice. "How long do we have before they arrive?"

She was too calm. He'd just learned the world was marked for harvest by alien gods, and Azula was discussing it like a construction timeline.

"I don't know." Azula shook her head. "My best estimate is three or four decades. Maybe longer." She paused. "Or they could show up tomorrow."

Then, as if she'd just remembered a minor detail, she added, "Currently, there is an Ōtsutsuki already living in this world."

"What?" Tobirama's voice came out sharper than he intended. He'd just spent the past hour learning about these creatures, and she'd waited until now to mention one was already present?

"Don't panic. He's in an incomplete state and can't use his full power normally." Azula's tone was sour. This one genuinely bothered her. "But if he's forced, he can access his true strength for a short time. And at full power... Think of Madara's Perfect Susanoo. He could shatter it with his bare hands."

At full strength, Isshiki had overpowered a Six Paths Sage Mode Naruto and shattered Sasuke's Perfect Susanoo with physical strikes alone. Azula had seen it, she wasn't exaggerating.

So Azula knew he was out there, and she did nothing because there was nothing she could do yet.

Tobirama despised Madara, that was a fact. But he couldn't deny the power of the Perfect Susano. Only Hashirama had ever faced it head-on and survived.

And Azula was telling him that Ōtsutsuki could shatter it without a technique or a counter, just raw physical force.

Tobirama processed the threat and moved straight to logistics. "Natural Energy, is it? I'll need a workspace, equipment, everything you know about it, and everything anyone else has ever recorded."

"Okay." She'd expected this. The basement was already prepared.

(END OF THE CHAPTER)

End of this exposition, so boring to write