"Chisen." Guy's voice was quiet but clear, each word seemingly chiseled out of stone, hard and sharp-edged. "You're not someone without options. You never have been."
Chisen looked at Guy.
Beneath the mixture of white fluid and blood, Guy's eyes were still the same. Black pupils, unfathomably black, like two black holes that swallowed all light and reflected nothing. But deep within those black holes, something burned. Not flames, but something brighter, fiercer, hotter. Youth. That word Guy always used. Chisen had once thought it was a stupid word. Now he no longer did. Not because the word had become any smarter, but because he had seen its weight-the weight of something a man was willing to die for, and willing to keep living for.
Chisen raised the Black Blade, its edge facing up, his face reflected in its black surface. The eyes behind his glasses, the faint upward curve of his lips, the hairline scar on his right cheek, almost too fine to see.
Something suddenly flashed through his eyes.
Not White Zetsu. Not bamboo. Not Guy. Not Neji. Not Tenten. It was an image. Something he had seen long ago, somewhere else, as someone else. A laboratory. A vast, brightly lit laboratory filled with instruments and containers. At its center stood an enormous cylindrical glass tank filled with pale green liquid, with something floating inside. That thing had no shape, no outline, no boundaries. It was merely a blurry, writhing mass, something like an embryo. Bubbles rose through the liquid, pulse after pulse, like a heartbeat.
Kabuto stood in front of the tank, holding a notebook and recording something. His glasses reflected the pale green light inside the tank, and his lips moved as he muttered to himself.
Chisen did not remember where that image had come from.