Madara Uchiha's Twilight Years Were Lonely

Mountain Graveyard, underground cavern. Madara Uchiha stood before the cultivation apparatus connected to the Gedo Statue. Within the glass chamber, an embryo lay curled up asleep in murky liquid.

He had just talked that naive Uchiha brat into a stupor, and his throat still felt dry from the long-winded speech.

A particularly twisted White Zetsu, its skin the color of expired tofu, poked half its body out from the rock wall.

Madara did not turn around. His gaze rested on the embryo's not-yet-formed fingers, their faint veins drifting slowly through the nutrient fluid.

Originally, this had been a new body cultivated for himself, but it seemed he would not live to see it mature.

"After I die," Madara said, his voice flat and hoarse in the underground hollow, like a weathered stone, "when this embryo grows to... an age where it can cry, make a fuss, and not immediately die."

He paused, as though calculating an infant's odds of survival.

"Send it to Konoha."

White Zetsu tilted its head. "Send it there? Toss it at the gate? Or find a basket and line it with leaves?"

"Whatever." Madara rubbed his lower back. Maintaining a dignified stance for too long had made every joint in his aging body protest. "Just make sure it gets there alive. His name is Cangshu Qianyu."

"Cangshu... Qian... Fish?" White Zetsu counted on its fingers, clearly trying hard to memorize it.

"Yu," Madara corrected. He suddenly felt that entrusting the last fragment of his plan to this thing was even less reliable than he had expected.

But all the reliable options had died long ago. He pressed his hand against the cultivation chamber's glass cover, its icy touch seeping through his skin. "Do not let anyone know where he came from. Especially Obito and Black Zetsu."

White Zetsu's bean-like eyes rolled around before it slowly withdrew into the rock wall, leaving only its mouth exposed. "Got it, got it. When he grows up, I'll pack him up, stick on a label, whoosh—throw him over there. Then what?"

"There is no then." Madara withdrew his hand. The apparatus's dim blue light fell across his deeply lined face, shadows deeper than the cavern itself hidden within those wrinkles. "Leave the rest to fate, or... accidents."

He gave the embryo one last glance, then turned and left, his black robe sweeping over the clammy moss on the ground.

After taking several steps, he suddenly stopped without turning back.

"If his talent is decent," Madara's voice drifted back, so faint it was nearly swallowed by the statue's breathing, "let him live... an interesting life."

White Zetsu fully retreated into the rock wall, its muttering seeping out from the stone. "'Interesting'... does that mean more pooping, or more peeing?"

There was no answer. Only the slow, weary footsteps fading into the distance.

The twisted White Zetsu emerged again and sprawled over the cultivation apparatus, its flat nose pressed against the glass as it carefully examined the embryo inside.

"Cangshu Qianyu," it solemnly recited the new name, using a crooked finger to draw a simple little fish on the glass. "Grow up quickly."

The embryo twitched gently in the liquid, as though stretching in its sleep. On the apparatus's data screen, a value representing life activity gave an almost imperceptible jump upward.

The twisted White Zetsu's face was nearly pressed to the cultivation apparatus's glass. The grin stretching across half its face distorted its features even further, making it look like a lump of white clay that had been kneaded carelessly and left out to dry.

It stared at the faintly pulsing life indicator while its slender fingers unconsciously tapped out soft clicks against the glass.

"Grow up quickly, little dried fish," it muttered to the oblivious embryo. "The hometown Old Man Madara picked for you is pretty lively."

Time passed in the sunless underground cavern, and only the changing numbers on the cultivation apparatus's data screen marked the growth of life.

Finally, one day, the twisted White Zetsu fished the little thing—no longer curled up and now showing the outlines of arms and legs—out of the liquid, wrapping it in a ragged blanket stolen from some unfortunate vagabond.

It looked at the wrinkled little face in the blanket, its eyes shut tight. Really ugly.

Then White Zetsu sensed a terrifying chakra fluctuation—violent, crazed, and filled with the distinctive stench of a Tailed Beast.

"The Nine-Tails..." Pure excitement at the prospect of a show flashed through the twisted White Zetsu's bean-like eyes. "Now that's a welcome ceremony with some weight."

Year 51 of Konoha, midnight during the Nine-Tails' attack. Chaos and screams formed the night's main melody, while the giant demon fox's shadow blanketed the shattered streets. The twisted White Zetsu silently oozed out from the shadow of a broken wall like a puddle of flowing white sludge.

It looked around, picked the middle of a broad road temporarily cleared by rubble and panicked crowds, and set the baby wrapped in the ragged blanket on the ground with the casual motion of tossing down a bundle. On one corner of the blanket, four ugly characters had been scrawled crookedly in charcoal: Cangshu Qianyu.

Having done all that, it melted into the ground with a soft "plop," leaving only a pair of eyes rolling about in the dirt, ready to watch how the seed of amusement it had planted would sprout.

Blue Star, Hua Nation, on a rainy night.

The computer screen's glow lit Qianyu's dead-eyed face. A-Yu's college entrance exam results had been far from ideal. He mechanically controlled his game character.

His teammate screamed over voice chat, "All random 3S! I want to check the cards!"

Qianyu irritably raked a hand through his hair and raised his voice into the microphone. "Would I lie to you? If I'm fucking lying, then the second I walk outside, I'll get struck by light—"

Outside, the sky abruptly lit up like day. A bolt of lightning seemed to lock onto his window and shot straight through it! In the final instant before searing heat and numbness consumed his consciousness, Qianyu had only one thought: ...That oath came true way too fast, didn't it?

There was no pain, no darkness. Almost instantly, Qianyu felt piercing cold and a suffocating sense of restraint. He tried to open his eyes, but his vision was a blur. His body would not obey him at all, weak and limp as a bundle of cotton. Icy rain struck his face, and he tasted a mixture of mud and blood in his mouth.

A horrifying, deafening roar came from afar, nearly tearing apart his eardrums. Using every ounce of strength he had, he barely turned his stiff neck and looked toward the source of the sound—

Then Qianyu saw a "mountain."

A mountain draped in a crimson chakra cloak, orange-red in color. Nine enormous tails lashed wildly through the night sky and firelight, every swing bringing storms and destruction. Konoha's iconic stone-carved faces looked as tiny before it as pebbles that could be kicked away with one foot.

N-Nine-Tails?! Holy shit?!

The shock shattered his thoughts in an instant. Before he could figure out whether this was a nightmare or some absurd reality show, a sharp-edged brick hurled up by the shockwave came screaming directly toward where he lay!

The shadow of death fell over him. Qianyu could not even close his eyes.

Just as the brick was about to smash him into pulp, the ground beside him suddenly bulged. A sticky mass of white paste-like substance sprang out and precisely wrapped around the brick. With a muffled splat, the brick shattered into several pieces and fell beside him.

The white substance swiftly shrank back underground. Before vanishing, it seemed to... wink at baby-form Qianyu? Qianyu swore he had seen a twisted outline wearing an amused, spectatorial grin.

The next second, a force scooped him up from the cold, soaking ground. A ninja wearing an animal mask, Konoha's symbol on his forehead protector smeared with blood, held him tightly against his chest. The ninja turned and leaped away, swiftly fleeing the center of that terrifying battlefield. Wind howled past Qianyu's ears, mingling with the ninja's heavy breathing and the Nine-Tails' unending distant roars.