Testing

"Capturing the Nine Tails wasn't a failure!" Nagato glared at Zetsu. "I simply changed my mind at the last minute. The Nine Tails is already in my grasp."

"What do you mean?"

Obito lowered his head as he asked Nagato, while Tsunade looked at him curiously as well.

"Nagato doesn't need to explain himself to you. He's the leader of the Akatsuki," Konan couldn't help saying. "Nagato's meaning is clear enough. He'll handle the Nine Tails. Madara, if you're in a hurry, you can handle it instead."

Nagato smiled faintly, watching Obito's reaction.

That bastard. In front of Sasuke and Kisame, he kept going on about how he was the real mastermind and Pain was his subordinate, acting like he was so impressive. Let him try that in front of me, and I'll gouge out his Sharingan.

Obito's right eye narrowed slightly. "Of course, Nagato is the leader of the Akatsuki. I just wanted to understand what he was thinking."

Zetsu wore a smug, irritating smile at the side, making him look like he was begging to get punched.

"Nagato, be careful of that half-black, half-white fellow," Katsuyu warned him in his mind. "There's something very wrong about him."

"He came out of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path," Nagato replied in his mind. He hesitated over whether to tell Katsuyu Black Zetsu's true identity. After thinking it over, he decided against it. Though he trusted Katsuyu deeply, some information was better left unsaid.

"What are you people planning? What are you trying to achieve by disrupting the peace? And why are you going after the Tailed Beasts?" Tsunade suddenly shouted, her voice so loud it sounded as though she was picking a fight.

Nagato frowned at Tsunade's shouting. "Konan, gag her."

He thought Tsunade was far too noisy. Deva Path had wanted to blow up Konoha after she yelled at him, and now Nagato was sick of her habit of shouting at the drop of a hat, too.

Konan nodded and sealed Tsunade's mouth shut with several sheets of paper. The world instantly fell quiet.

"Nagato, what are you going to do with Lady Tsunade?" Katsuyu asked in his mind. It hadn't forgotten how Nagato had dealt with Konoha before.

"Don't worry, she won't die. Leave it to me. I can't let her go, but I won't kill her either." Nagato shook his head, then said to Obito, "You can handle capturing the Eight Tails. What's Sasuke's stance now?"

"He wants to leave the Akatsuki and take revenge on Konoha himself," Obito said flatly. "We can discuss the rest when we get back. Sasuke caused quite a stir while capturing the Eight Tails. Kumogakure is demanding a Five Kage Summit, apparently to target us."

The information matched the original storyline, and Nagato nodded to himself.

"A Five Kage Summit?" Konan and Tsunade both looked surprised. It seemed the outside world was already in turmoil.

"Is that the Hokage?" Obito looked at Tsunade, who was making muffled sounds but couldn't speak. "What are you going to do with her?"

"Keep her. She's a bargaining chip I can use against Konoha." Nagato thought it over before answering. "As long as she's here, Konoha won't be a problem for us. I'm sure of it."

"What about the little girl with one eye?" White Zetsu suddenly cut in. "She's no use to us, is she? Should we kill her?"

The one-eyed girl he meant—Hinata—was looking at Zetsu with a timid gaze. Her strange stare left Zetsu extremely annoyed. At his words, Tsunade glared viciously at him.

Zetsu and Obito were both the sort who looked down on everyone. They had information on Hinata, of course, but in their eyes she was just a girl with the Byakugan. Without that identifying feature, they wouldn't have recognized her.

But Zetsu's remark about a one-eyed girl made Obito look at him, too.

For a moment, all three one-eyed people present fixed their eyes on him.

Zetsu: ......

Cold sweat trickled down the white half of his face. The black half glared angrily, as if he were cursing White Zetsu for being an idiot in his mind.

For one reason or another, all three one-eyed people present were in a bad mood. White Zetsu had walked right into the line of fire, so he had it coming.

Nagato also reprimanded the half-black, half-white man. "If something isn't your responsibility, don't meddle in it. Zetsu, you're in charge of intelligence for the organization, so stop thinking about fighting and killing all the time. Your intel on the Nine Tails was seriously flawed. When I reached Konoha, the Nine Tails' Jinchuriki wasn't even there. I turned Konoha upside down, and Naruto Uzumaki only returned after I was done."

The Akatsuki's intelligence gathering on Konoha had clearly gone badly. What was more, Obito had deliberately insisted that the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path stay behind to seal the Eight Tails while Nagato went to Konoha to capture the Nine Tails. It was such a rotten move that it felt intentional, as if he wanted to use Konoha to weaken Nagato. But Nagato had no proof, so he couldn't be bothered to bring it up.

"Huh?......" White Zetsu's mouth fell open. Why did it feel like everyone here was picking on him? Even Konan was looking at him coldly.

"Never mind." A thoughtful look flashed through Obito's eye. "Let's go. The situation's already getting chaotic, and there's plenty of work ahead."

Putting the information he'd gathered together, Nagato realized that if he, the leader of Amegakure, was still alive, then as far as the outside world knew, Amegakure was still the Akatsuki's headquarters. The Five Kage might therefore set their sights on Amegakure. He needed to return and prepare as soon as possible. He nodded. "All right. Let's go back to Amegakure. We can't afford any more mistakes with the information on the Five Kage Summit."

Obito turned his back, blocking Nagato's view of his Sharingan. "I can move faster, so why don't I take you all back?"

His long-distance space-time travel ability required him to draw anyone he wanted to transport into Kamui's alternate dimension.

That move was also one of his most common ways of attacking. Once an enemy was pulled into the alternate dimension, it was practically the same as defeating them.

Even when fighting the Fourth Hokage, Obito had repeatedly tried to pull him into the alternate dimension. That showed that, in his eyes, even the Fourth Hokage's Flying Thunder God couldn't escape it.

If this had been the old Nagato, entering Obito's alternate dimension while the Paths of Pain weren't activated would have been little different from being Obito's captive. But things were different now. Obito's other eye was in Nagato's possession, so Obito's alternate dimension was no different from his own backyard.

Nagato understood that Obito was testing him, trying to find out whether he still trusted him. He pretended to think it over for a moment, then glanced at Konan, whose expression was impassive and gave nothing away. Finally, he nodded in agreement. "All right. That really is the fastest way."

Just as Obito was recruiting Sasuke to make up for their lack of strength at the moment, Nagato, as the leader of the Akatsuki, had no intention of killing him—as long as Obito behaved himself. The organization lacked manpower and faced the possibility of an attack by the Five Great Nations.

With the Five Kage Summit underway, and Nagato still alive, they had no idea what decision the Five Kage would make. This was no time for infighting.

Besides, in the eyes of Madara Uchiha and Black and White Zetsu, both he and Obito were merely pawns to be used. That meant Obito could also become a potential ally.

Of course, if Obito was such a fool that Nagato couldn't work with him, killing him and taking his other Sharingan was still an option. As far as Nagato was concerned, Obito wasn't that important anymore.