Obito wakes from death with pain searing through his body so hot he cannot breathe. He is on fire, every cell alight with foreign chakra that crawls along his veins like a million microscopic spiders, tearing along the tissue in a frantic fight to move, move, MOVE.
He wrenches upright in a panic but only half of his body obeys, the other half dead and leadened and pulling him back down like it's still being crushed under the boulders of Kannabi bridge, still pressed on by ton upon ton of broken stone. Kakashi's face is seared into his mind's eye, that stunned broken look branded to the inside of his single working eyelid.
He feels like lightning is coursing through his every nerve, and he focuses on that because it's easier than the burning, more familiar, even though the pain of both are nearly equal, fighting back and forth for dominance over his body. His chest feels like there's an anaconda curled around it, so hard that despite his pain he cannot pull in enough breath to scream.
The two pains battle themselves out, the crawling angry red and the sharp crackling blue. Eventually the two begin to cancel each other out, smoothing together into an aching pulse that radiates over his bones and through what must be the mess of his muscles and skin. When he manages to open his eyes the world is tinted navy, not the bloody red that he's used to accompanying his sharingan. The world calms, the two pains still swirling together inside him, burning and piercing in turns, but Obito can gasp a breath around them now, bring air into his shattered chest enough to clear the darkness from the corners of his eye.
The world around him smells heavily of rich earth and moss, the air laden with the scent of recent rain. The sounds of his gasps echo strangely in his ears, bouncing around unseen obstacles as Obito gets his bearings. It's still dark, but it's a softer darkness than the pitch of unconsciousness, and out of the corner of his eye Obito can make out the glow of firelight.
"Do not move." An roughened old voice intones from outside Obito's line of sight. "I spent a great deal of time and chakra putting you back together. I would prefer you not undo my work so soon after I've finished."
"Where am I?" Obito manages, so rough and breathy that the words are hardly distinguishable at all. The stranger seems to hear him though, because he answers readily.
"We are in the Mountains' Graveyard, resting place of the Deva and the Elder Demons. Between the land of Waterfalls and the land of of Stone."
"Waterfall country?" he rasps. "Why–" he cuts off when he runs out of breath, and takes a moment to snatch it back into his mangled lungs. "Who are you?"
There's a rustle as the man moves, followed by a strange sound like something dragging over the stone. An elderly man comes into view, a ninja by the way he holds himself despite his age. His hair is long and thick and bleached silver by the years, his eyelids sunken and closed. Strange chakra seems to glow from the sockets, moving like spotlights along the inside of his eyelids– some kind of artificial sight, if Obito had to guess.
"I will answer all your questions in a moment. But first, how are you feeling?" The man asks as he moves towards some kind of console to Obito's right, an apparatus hooked up to several long IV lines attached to points all along Obito's body.
"Like I'm on fire." Obito replies truthfully, though he leaves out the second, stranger pain that is coursing through him, unsure of how to describe that feeling in words.
The man seems pleased with his response regardless, nodding as he observes the readouts from the console. "That is to be expected. Almost thirty percent of your body was beyond salvage, a great deal had to be replaced with cultivated tissue. Had your body rejected the transplants, you would have surely died."
Obito looks as far sideways as he's able without actually moving his head, noting the strange white patches of foreign tissue stitched along the length of his arm and over the right half of his torso. "Why did you save my life?" He asks, swallowing hard to try to banish some of the roughness in his voice so that it sounds less like a whisper. "And how did I end up in Waterfall country? I was in Grass…" The question is asked in no fewer than three parts, since every few words Obito is forced to stop for breath.
"The right place at the right time. My Zetsu we scouting in the area, and they saw fit to bring you to me when they found you."
"Zetsu?"
"Step into the light so that he may see you." the man commands, and from the edges of the dark room a pair of strange white beings come into Obito's line of sight. One looks mostly human in shape but for a mutated and warped right half, a dozen spikes curling out from its barklike skin. A single moss green eye fixes dully on him from dark grey scalera, dead and lifeless. Obito can't even really see the eye in the other one– its body seems largely to be a human-shaped spiral, centered around a single right eye socket.
"You saved me?" Obito asks them, and they look at him strangely, as if surprised he's addressing them directly.
"We pulled your broken body through the earth to here, yes," the spiky one answers.
"Thank you." Obito says genuinely.
The spiked Zetsu blinks, eye brightening a little in surprise. "What?"
"They are only pawns, imperfect clones of a fool I once knew. There is no need to thank them," the old man says, turning back to him.
That doesn't seem right. Obito thinks. Despite their strange appearances, they seem human enough to Obito, though he doesn't quite understand why he's so sure of that.
"They will be aiding you through your recovery," the old man continues, running a hand laced with a diagnostic jutsu over patchwork portions of Obito's body.
"You still haven't told me why you helped me," Obito reminds him with strained breaths. "Not that I'm not grateful."
The man pauses, mulling over his answer, the spotlight flickers behind his eyelids cast downwards. "I too know what it is like to be left for dead. Abandoned by those once close to you."
But they didn't abandon me. Obito thinks, wondering at the twisting of words. I died for them. I died for him.
He closes his eyes at the thought, swallowing hard against the emotion in his chest, pressing it down. It is a private thing, something he can indulge in within the safety of his own thoughts and nowhere else. He's never let it show before, and he won't now.
The old man misinterprets his moment of weakness, his expression softening into something almost sympathetic. "Apologies. The wound must still be raw, I did not mean to aggravate it so soon."
"It's fine," Obito murmurs.
"You should rest," the man tells him, almost tenderly. "Getting you back on your feet will be a long and arduous process, you will need all the strength you can muster. I have matters to attend, but should you need anything, the Zetsu will aid you."
"Thank you," Obito replies.
The man nods and turns away, and for the first time Obito sees the cause of the dragging sound– cables are attached in intervals down the length of the stranger's spine, winding chords that snake off into the darkness, humming with thick, unnerving chakra.
When he vanishes down the hall, Obito turns to the strange white beings standing at his side.
"Thank you for helping me," he tells them, watching as once again their eyes flicker with a bit of strange brightness.
"You said that before." The spiral Zetsu reminds him, voice a bit warped in a way that Obito can only guess comes from a lack of mouth.
"It seemed worth repeating," Obito says softly. "Without you two I'd still be flat as a rice cracker, the way I understand it."
"Madara-sama was the one who replaced your damaged tissue," the spiked one states.
"Is that his name?" Obito asks, wondering about why it sounds so familiar.
"It is," the Zetsu allows.
"Well what are your names?" Obito asks.
"Our names?" The spiked Zetsu asks, balking at the question, that strange light flashing in his eyes again.
Obito blinks. "Yes, your names. You're assigned by the creepy old man to look after me while I'm an invalid right? I should know what to call you."
"We are Zetsu," the spiral one states sharply, clearly just as unnerved by Obito's question as his companion. "What else would you call us?"
Obito narrows his eye in confusion. "You're kidding me, right? The way it sounds, Zetsu is what you are, not what you're called. You wouldn't just call me 'human' would you? My name is Obito, you'd call me Obito."
The Zetsu don't quite seem to know what to make of that but when they turn to one another, seemingly discussing something without words, but their body language eases, making them look less like mannequins or walking corpses.
"We don't have names then," the spiky one admits.
Obito wishes he could sit up to get a look at the two of them properly, but even the smallest movements of his torso sends pain rushing through his body in breathtaking waves, so he keeps still and beckons them forward with his uninjured arm instead.
"Well come here then. I'm not just going to call you Zetsu #1 and Zetsu #2." The spiky Zetsu approaches, looking more than a little bewildered, the spiral one following close behind. He stops at the edge of the cot and Obito looks him up and down, thinking.
He reaches up with his good arm and pokes the Zetsu in the head with one knuckle, the way he used to do to Kakashi to tick him off when they were having a moment. "Shiro." He decides, going off the pearlescent scales Obito can see like armor on the Zetsu's spines now that he's close, casting bright white reflections on the stone around him.
"Shiro?" The creature repeats softly, head tilted in befuddled curiosity.
"That's what I'll call you from now on," Obito states firmly. He draws the kanji for white on the creature's plaster-like skin. "When spelled like this it means 'White' or 'Pure'." He draws another kanji. "And when spelled like this it means 'Castle' or 'Fortress.' You can choose which one, I feel like either would fit."
That strange light floods back full force, the darkness clearing from the edge of the creature's earthy gaze, and something deep inside of Obito, some strange new sense or force, sits up and takes notice.
Unsure of exactly what he's done, the Zetsu blinks once, hard, the eyelashes of his single eye fluttering as if waking from a dream or a genjutsu. His pupil dilates to the point where it's nearly swallows the green of the iris, and then abruptly shrinks to the size of a pinprick. Another blink and it's back to normal, and the Zetsu looks at him with some bizarre kind of awe.
"I don't think you were supposed to do that," the creature says quietly, and Obito snorts, grinning with the half of his face that he can make work. It probably looks terribly creepy. He figures the Zetsu is probably right, that they were meant to be mindless servants of some kind and Obito just ruined it, but a person is a person as far as Obito is concerned, and that strange force he can feel in his chest very much agrees.
"Don't care," Obito declares. "If you don't want the old creep to know, don't tell him."
The spiked Zetsu, Shiro now, blinks at him like the thought never occurred, and then grunts as he's suddenly shouldered aside by his spiral shaped companion, who points a twisted finger at himself.
"My turn now, right?" he insists. "What's my name?"
Obito blinks, a little taken aback by the sudden enthusiasm, but then he manages a weak and breathy chuckle. "How about Guruguru?" He says, reaching forward to trace the lines of the swirl that makes up the Zetsu's face. "'To whirl or spiral outward'"
Again that flash of awareness, that strange light flickering. "It's so long though." The Zetsu complains, edging even closer and earning himself a glare from Shiro.
Obito hums, gives a cough when the vibration irritates his still damaged chest cavity. "What about Tobi, then? As in 'to leap forward.'"
The Zetsu shivers a little, as if suddenly cold, and brightens even further in Obito's senses. "I like that one better." The Zetsu decides.
Obito tries a smile again, and this time he manages to get most of his face to agree with the expression. "Glad you like it. Now would you two help me? I want to see if I can still stand on the leg that works."
And he says "I've got you written, in a back book, by the railroad track.
You see I know your fate."
And I said. "You've got to listen, I'm a songbird with brand new track
You underestimate."
Obito recovers slowly. It's not unexpected, he lost nearly half of his body to the compression jutsu on the night he nearly died– in fact, according to Shiro, he actually had died for a few minutes. But with Obito's recovery comes… something else.
The world feels different.
From the places where Madara stitched his patchwork body back together with cultivated cells and ancient chakra, a strange pulsing has been spreading– part sensory, part energy– throughout his body. He can sense more than chakra now, he can sense life, the tiniest flickers from the canyon mice that skitter through the passages beneath the Mountains' Graveyard, the great echoes of it still clinging to the bones of the colossal creatures above them.
It is because of this strange sense that he does not trust the black Zetsu. Not as far as he can throw him as the invalid he currently is.
He claims to be a manifestation of Madara's will brought into existence though the Statue of the Outer Path, but through this strange new energy flowing through his body Obito can sense that he is something else.
Something far older.
And it's not the only thing he can sense.
"Hey, Guruguru."
"Not my name, little brother," Tobi reminds him in a singsong tone. Shiro is off coordinating with the other Zetsu, a pack of which just returned from Kiri. Shiro tells him things about the outside world when he can get away with it, when Madara and the Black Zetsu are out doing whatever it is that they do. The old man normally can't travel far from the Demonic Statue, but combining his strength with that of the strange black formless creature tends to give him enough energy to travel outside the Graveyard for a few days at a time, provided the dark Zetsu himself stocks up on the statue's chakra before departure. Any longer than that though, and the absence of the Statue's strange chakra would kill him.
Obito tries not to worry when he goes off, but doesn't always succeed. The man saved his life, and even if Madara trusts the dark creature with his life and his chakra, Obito does not.
"Was there something wrong with my heart when the old man was patching me up?" He asks his friend.
Tobi blinks, looking up from Obito's daily health readouts. "Your heart? No, the damage only made it as far as your sternum. You right lung was pretty mangled, but your heart was out of the way by at least a few inches. Why?"
"There's something there that wasn't before. It's faint though, and I'm… not sure what to make of it."
Tobi stands up from where he'd been seated on the cavern floor next to Obito's cot and comes over to him. Obito's single sharingan eye tracks him easily in the dark, and even now having the complete eye is strange, odd in its fluctuations and fractals and blue tints. It's like dying had woken up something buried inside of it, something that had spent far too long asleep. "Let me do a chakra echo," the Zetsu insists, going over to the medical console's semi-permanent place beside his cot.
Obito leans back, already resigned to the plethora of tests that his paranoia will no doubt garner– Tobi would never admit it, but he can be nearly as big a mother hen as Shiro sometimes. It's better them than Madara though– if the old man even suspects Obito might have a cough, or, god forbid, a fever, he'll end up on bedrest for another week at least. Obito is massively sick of bedrest, and despite the old man's prideful and stern demeanor, he's a champion coddler.
...Not that Obito would ever say that to his face.
The cool touch of the resonance device on his sore chest starts a hiss from Obito, causing Tobi to snort.
"Don't be such a baby. If you hadn't insisted on ignoring Shiro's advice on pushing yourself too far, you wouldn't be in so much pain."
"Whatever Guruguru," Obito huffs back.
"Huh," Tobi grunts, moving the chakric reader back and forth over the left side of Obito's chest "It looks like there is something."
"What is it?"
"I'm not sure," Tobi hums. "Inorganic, chakra based, embedded in the top portion of the septum," he lists. "It seems benign though– I'm not reading any tissue damage or chakra leakage. Do you want me to alert Madara-sama?"
Obito grimaces and shakes his head. "Yeah, no thanks. If it starts hurting me or something sure, but no need to bug him if it's not causing me problems." Despite how he's making it sound, Obito isn't just keeping this secret because he fears Madara's oddly maternal wrath– the strange and faint pulse of chakra that Obito can sense in his chest is setting off all kinds of foreboding warning bells in that strange new sense of his, the one he has yet to tell even Tobi or Shiro about. For all that Obito respects Madara, for however much in debt he is to the old man, Obito isn't stupid.
The old man is hiding something, something big, and until Obito knows what it is, he's going to keep his cards close to his chest.
"If you're sure, Outoto." The Zetsu allows. "How are you feeling otherwise?"
"Boooooooored." Obito groans without hesitation, startling an echoing laugh out of Tobi.
"Of course you are. When are you anything else?"
"When the hell am I going to be able to do some training, at least?" Obito whines. "I feel like I'm wasting away here."
"You should be up for basic muscular training soon?" Tobi tries.
"Ugh."
"What are you two groaning about now?"
Obito looks up to see Shiro materialize out of the wall to his left, white form pulling out of the earth until he steps whole into the cavern, brushing clay dust off his arms and from between his spikes. Unlike Tobi's form Shiro's has altered somewhat in the time Obito has known him. The spikes are no longer disorganized shoots sprouting from every direction, they have a curling sort of organization to them now, each one stretching out from his left side and reaching upwards across his body like a curled cage. His right arm has been freed from the strange mangled growths on his right side, though the fingers of that hand are still too thick and clumped to be dexterous, and the limb still sprouts a half dozen long armored spines that curl up and back to cup the air over his shoulder blade.
"Little brother here still wants to be up running around," Tobi tattles.
Shiro hufs and shoots Obito a disapproving look. "Didn't you just finish doing exercises not long ago?"
"Yeah, this morning. Can I at least get up and walk around a bit?"
"I guess," Shiro allows. "But only if we go with you."
Obito groans again. "You jerks are as bad as the old man."
I'll give you something to believe in.
Burn out that basement full of demons.
Realize you're a slave to your mind, break free,
Now give me something to believe in.
Despite Obito's groaning and complaining, it takes him nearly another month to be able to stand for a decent length of time without feeling drained or pulling at any of his patchwork seams. His recovery is starting in earnest now. He's managed to coax friends out of a few more of the Zetsu, mostly the runners who come by to give information or orders to Shiro. The hive mind connection means that kind of thing doesn't happen often, but enough that he has started having to actually think up good names to keep them all straight.
Shiro and Tobi remain his closest friends though, and have become something of his right and left hands respectively. They seem to have grown inordinately fond of him lately, and Shiro will sometimes bring him news on the outside world before he even goes to see Madara, telling him tales of the growing conflicts across the nations, the battles waged over land belonging to both shinobi and civilians. He's the most in-tune Zetsu of all of them to the hive mind, and so he's become the central node through which almost all their information is passed. Tobi hardly has a connection to the hive mind at all though, and had trouble sending even the most basic of impressions through.
Sometimes, in whispered tones like he's imparting a secret, Shiro will even tell him of his sensei– of Minato's decimation of forces far and wide, and of Kushina, who is still apparently a terror both on and off the battlefield. Apparently his impromptu parents have managed legendary wanted status– the first ninja in decades to be marked in the 'Flee on Sight' category.
Obito misses them terribly, misses Minato's stupid parables and stupider jokes– he even misses the too-hard noogies Kushina would harass him with when he was being a brat, and the leering looks should would send at their sensei when she knew they were looking. He misses Rin's tender heart and kind hands, how even when he was acting his strangest or most naive, on purpose or not, she always had such unending faith in him.
He says as much to his caretakers during a night of weakness, knowing Shiro will have to share what he knows with Madara and his black Zetsu pet, but not really caring. He keeps his remembrance of Kakashi fondly antagonistic though, out of both habit and reflexive reservation.
Sure enough, Madara asks him about it a night later over a meal of lotus root and pork soup– a common food for them since both lotus ponds and boar are plentiful in the area, or so Shiro tells him.
Kakashi is an achilles heel he's been protecting for as long as he can remember, so when he asks Obito if there is anyone back in Konoha that he holds particularly dear, answering Rin's name is immediate.
It's not even really a lie– Obito loves Rin, loves her charm and wit and kindness and strength, just not in the way he'd lead her and Kakashi to believe. A subtle shift, but enough to hide the truth of his weakness. Because Obito is an Uchiha, and despite how much his mannerisms differ from those of the rest of his clan, it means that Obito's love is a powerful weakness, and like any weakness, Obito had sought to hide it from view.
The warm comforting thing he feels for Rin is potent and calming, a light that guides him through darkness and pain, hands that set him straight when he steps too far. But trying to compare that to what he always feels for Kakashi… it can't be done. They don't even fall into the same category of emotion.
What he feels for Rin is soft and intangible, what he feels for Kakashi is something knotted into his bones like a cancer. Their bond is something rough and unexplored, dangerous and heavy, powerful in a way that Obito wasn't ready for, still isn't ready for, something that if left unchecked could no doubt kill him. Even when they were still in the academy Kakashi saw him in a way no one else had, saw underneath the carefully crafted guise of the village idiot, not all the way, but enough to trip his sharp instincts and make the wolf wary.
Obito's only option had been to shut the feeling down completely, hide it, cover it in rivalry and foolish doting over a girl that would never love him back. Kakashi would never accept him, much less love him, and so at the first sign a bond was forming Obito had hedged his bets and cut his losses, kept Kakashi at arm's length whenever he could.
Not that that always worked.
Sometimes, despite his best efforts, when they were collapsing under the pressure of anger or abandonment or just feeling, their bond would slip out in the place Obito couldn't keep it from.
Fighting.
Obito had balled up and hid as many of the good parts of himself as he could, so as a result their fights drew out the absolute worst in both of them, and they would tear into each other, rip and mangle until Kakashi could rake clawed fingers over the bitterest of his anger and insecurities and Obito had Kakashi's suffering animalistic heart by the throat.
The weeks after Sakumo's death had been the worst.
He still has the faint veinlike lightning scar to prove it, a ghostly hand of jagged lines that curls over his shoulder and cuts up the side of his neck, barely visible even in the harshest of light. The number of times he's run his fingers over those invisible markings in the dark of night, as an anchor in the mind-rending storm of his pain, is beyond count.
"Do you feel up to doing the resonance testing tomorrow?" Madara asks him after a long silence, lifting another bite of stew to his mouth with a practiced efficiency of movement that makes Obito a little envious. His hands still shake a little as he eats, and Madara is technically into his two-hundreds and can still move like the fourty-something he was when Hashirama won their little spat. Obito hasn't asked about it at all, he likes his head attached to his shoulders, thank you, but he knows the history and is pretty adept at clocking emotional triggers after so long going out of his way to try and step on Kakashi's.
It seems to Obito that there was more going on between Hashirama and Madara that a clan spat, if the whole centuries-long grudge is anything to go by, and if the scowl Tobirama's name brings out of him is any indication, he had something to do with it too.
"I think so. I just have to sit really still and let the Zetsu poke me with probes like usual, right?"
Madara chews and swallows his mouthful before speaking, always so formal. "It will require you to channel and sustain chakra flow for an extended period of time. If you do not feel as if you can comfortably do so yet…"
"Old man, I'm practically crawling with chakra right now, after all the sitting around I've been doing. I'll be fine, I promise," Obito assures him, and the old Uchiha patriarch huffs, half aggravation, half strange fondness.
"I only say this because I will not be here for the testing. Your Zetsu will have to conduct it in my absence, and since I will be gone for a few days, it would be imprudent to wait to conduct it until I returned."
Madara has taken to calling Tobi 'Obito's Zetsu', since his spiral patterned friend tends not to leave his side for very long, for any reason. Given Tobi's poor connectivity with the Zetsu hive-mind, a connectivity that is getting poorer and poorer, Madara had even gone so far as assigning him to Obito permanently.
"He can do it," Obito replies, scrapping at the dredges of his soup with his spoon to get at the last bits of pork. "And if anything happens there are other Zetsu around. I'll be alright."
Madara inclines his head in agreement, and the conversation ends.
The next morning Tobi wakes him up and has him sit in the testing chamber while he sets things up for the resonance assessment, which should tell him how much of Hashirama's jutsu Obito has gained control of through the old Hokage's cells. According to Madara, it could be anything from 30%, the amount of his body replaced by Hashirama's cultivated tissue, to somewhere around 60%. The old man himself has about a 74% resonance according to Shiro, and the highest known is some kid in Konoha with 91%– though Obito isn't sure he wants to know how that happened.
Obito peers into the clear, slightly silvery liquid that fills the resonance basin set into the floor, framed on all sides by cables designed to measure chakra output, composition, and biological impedance. It starts to flicker with energy as Tobi charges it with natural chakra from the command station at the head of the pool.
"How's the hive-mind, Guruguru?" Obito asks to make conversation while the Zetsu double checks the specs for testing.
"Farther and farther away every day, weirdly enough," Tobi mutters.
"Does that bother you?
"A little," the Zetsu admits. "But less than I thought it would. Here." He hands Obito a breathing mask. "Hop in and start channeling."
"Bossy," Obito teases, but straps on the mask and slides into the basin. The liquid is cool against his skin and a little odd against the newly forming nerves on his right side, but other than that the feeling is almost pleasant. He begins to channel his chakra, letting it run laps through his system as the liquid around him starts to vibrate with energy.
He keeps it up until the energy dies down and takes that as the cue that the test is over, rising from the water and pulling the mask down. Tobi is staring frozen and unblinking at the chakra console, hand poised just above the readout.
"What's the matter Guruguru?" Obito prods. "You look like you just swallowed a snail."
Tobi shakes himself out of his stupor. "Uh, I think I screwed something up. You mind going under again?"
Obito blinks his singular eye and tilts his head. "Okay… if you say so." He shrugs and straps the mask back on, sinking once more beneath the cool liquid of the basin. He waits as the process repeats, keeping up a steady flow of chakra around his body the best he can while the energy of the sensors thrums around him. Again he rises when the humming of the energy tapers off, but this time he waits until all trace of the vibration is gone before he surfaces.
He slips the mask off, dark hair dripping into his eyes until he runs a hand through it to brush it back. He looks up at his companion, who still seems to be frozen over the readings.
"Can I get out now?" he grouses, but then pauses his complaining.
The solid mask-like nature of Tobi's face normally makes it difficult to distinguish any kind of expression, so the Zetsu mostly conveys moods and emotions through expressive body language or varying (and sometimes over-dramatic) alterations in the tone of his voice. Right now he's disturbingly still bent over a printed sheet that supposedly holds the result of his test.
"Tobi?" he asks, concerned.
"That can't be right…" The Zetsu mutters, practically to himself, but then he looks up again. "Just one more time, I promise. Then you can stop being cold and wet."
"Third time better be the charm, Guruguru," Obito warns. "I don't have enough chakra reserves right now for anything more."
They repeat the process and this time when surfaces he goes right into pulling himself out of the basin before his strength abandons him.
"Have you been keeping things from me little brother? Because this reading doesn't make much sense."
"What are you talking about Tobi?" Obito grumbles.
The Zetsu moves to sit beside him, crossing his legs over the stone and holding out the long strip of paper. Obito trains his eyes on it, reading through the scrawled words and symbols. Most of it is nonsense to him, jargon more familiar to the Zetsu than most living men, but a set of numbers at the bottom paint a very clear picture of what Tobi is talking about.
Obito takes hold of the bottom of the paper to bring it closer to his eye in case the lack of depth perception is screwing with his vision. "That can't be right."
"I got the same number on all three tests. I checked the equipment twice over. It's not a technical error, the machine is running perfectly," Tobi insists.
At the bottom of the page, tacked on before a percentage mark, is the number 300.
"That doesn't make any sense. The 100% mark is Hashirama himself, right?" Obito wonders, going up through the other readouts in case there's something there he missed that explains it.
"Yes. It was the original level of the Mokuton jutsu and the unique chakra within Hashirama when he died, as attuned by Madara-sama. It should be the highest threshold."
"You're sure the machine is working right?"
Tobi huffs indignantly. "Absolutely sure. I wouldn't have redone the tests otherwise."
Obito is quiet while he reads through what he knows of the symbolism and the technical terms on the page, searching for patterns that might indicate something is out of place. Obito has always been good at seeing patterns, manipulating them even, but he finds nothing off about the report.
"'Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.'" Obito mutters, running through idea after idea in his head, searching for pieces and analyzing what he knows, contrasting it with ideas about what Madara might be hiding from him, or what the Black Zetsu might be keeping even from the old man.
"Where is that from?" Tobi asks, stirring Obito out of his musings with a start. Rin had always called it 'daydreaming'. Obito doesn't blame her for making the assumption. In fact he'd intended it that way.
"It's something my sensei used to say to get us to think outside the box." Obito muses. He looks up into his friend's face, chewing his lip as he thinks. "That tree that holds up the Demonic Statue, what do you know about it?"
Tobi blinks. "It came from Madara-sama's clone of Hashirama."
"Other than that."
Tobi sets his chin in his hand and thinks. "I know it keeps the Statue… calm, in a sense."
"Calm? Calm how?"
"Their chakra signatures are similar, I believe. They resonate, and it keeps the Statue's chakra flow stabilized. Shiro would know more about it than me, though. I haven't been attached to the collective knowledge in some time now."
Obito tilts his head and puts the paper down. "Why do you think that is?"
"If I had to guess?" Tobi ponders. Obito nods. "A lack of interest in the bond, for one. I am more… independent than Shiro and many of the other Zetsu. I am unsure why. For another, prolonged exposure to you."
That brings both Obito's head and attention up. "Me? Why me?"
"You are… brighter in my senses than any other presence. Normally, for most Zetsu, the brightest presences are the Demonic Statue and Yami– the Black Zetsu. But to Shiro and I, you've always outshined them quite a bit. Did I never mention that?"
Obito lets out a bit of a nervous chuckle, suddenly uncomfortable– that had sounded dangerously close to a compliment and Obito is very much not used to those. "Uh, no. You left that out."
Tobi shrugs. "Either way, extended time in your presence seems to affirm my own presence, and thus that same sense of independence. I can only assume Shiro is not experiencing something similar because his duties as the central node take him away so often."
Obito swallows. "So, theoretically, if you wanted to keep a secret from the hive-mind, could you?"
Tobi sits up straighter, looks Obito in the eye directly. "If I am careful, and I would be, I could safely keep several."
"Can you tell me about the Demonic Statue? Not what it does, but what it is? I know the Black Zetsu– Yami, whatever, has told you not to."
"Ordered, more like," Tobi mutters, and swallows hard, his voice dropping to a whisper like the walls might have ears, even though both Madara and Yami are currently in Kiri for reasons unknown. "It's not like I know much anyway, just vague impressions."
"Impressions of what exactly?" Obito asks, lowing his tone to match his friend's.
"A woman? Or maybe it was a girl, with white hair and eyes. And then the tree."
"Tree? What tree?"
"Enormous. A massive thing as old as the earth, with bark so thick and dense it shone black, and leaves that glittered like gemstones. There were orbs too, fruit I think, but that's all I remember from the black before Yami brought Shiro and I into existence."
Obito turns the words over and over in his head. "Is it possible the chakra that fuels Mokuton and and the Demonic statue of the outer path came from the same place?"
Tobi shakes his head. "Maybe, but why would Yami not inform Madara of this?"
"Oh the blob monster has been keeping secrets from day one," Obito informs him, waving it off.
Tobi mutters 'blob monster' to himself in bewilderment before he responds. "How would you know that?"
Obito scratches a scarred cheek sheepishly. "Probably because I'm a pretty great liar myself. Once you know how to fool people, it's easy to see when other people are doing it to."
"That… explains a few things." Tobi mumbles. "You are very good at pretending not to be intelligent. It's very confusing sometimes."
"I like to hold my cards close, is all," Obito hedges.
"So in keeping with the metaphor, you've never tipped your hand?"
"Once," Obito admits. "A long time ago with a too-perceptive smug little bastard. And I didn't so much tip my hand as throw my cards across the room," he shoots his Zetsu a wry smile and changes the subject, tapping at the resonance report to bring attention back to it. "Anyway, if this says what I think it does, I'd rather not let Creepy Black know. Any way you could fudge the results a little?" he asks, handing the report sheet back to Tobi.
The Zetsu hums, looking over the paper. "I'm fairly sure I can make one of the zeros go away." he muses. "A subtle problem with the scribe portion of the machine, easy enough to rig. I will need you to take the test again though."
Obito huffs and grins. "You're the best."
"Obito." Obito stops his slide into the basin, looking up at Tobi. The simple atonement of his name is low and serious, and out of character for his normally bright personality.
"Yeah?"
Tobi doesn't answer immediately, but Obito waits patiently as the Zetsu gathers his thoughts. Eventually he speaks. "You know that I'm with you, right?"
Obito blinks. "Of course I know that."
"I don't think you do." The Zetsu counters. "I am on your side before all else. Shiro too. While Yami still holds a little sway over us, it is nothing we couldn't shake off if we wanted to. If you were to walk out of this place, turn your back on everything here, we would follow you."
Obito feels the unexpected hot prickle of tears suddenly threaten, and he turns his head away before Tobi can see. The Zestu don't lie. They don't see the point of it, it's not in their programing, so every word Tobi speaks is nothing but truth.
Obito needs a few seconds to compose himself, he's never been good at dealing with gushy emotions like faith or acceptance or loyalty, he just doesn't have a lot of experience with it.
"Thank you." He says eventually, and whether or not Tobi was ever human Obito can tell he understands.