The forest blurred around them—a smear of dark trunks, pale moonlight, and the frantic rhythm of escape. White Zetsu moved through the shadows with the fluid grace of something that had never been entirely human, its pale form flickering between trees, its half of the strange fusion that carried the broken, silent weight of Obito Uchiha.
It was retreating. Not casually. Not strategically.
Fleeing.
'That bastard,' Zetsu thought, its internal voice a snarl of frustration and something it rarely felt: fear. Renjiro.
'His Mangekyō—what the hell is that ability?'
It replayed the encounter in its mind, dissecting every moment, searching for the pattern it had missed. Zetsu had been observing shinobi for decades—had watched the rise and fall of legends, had studied the Sharingan, the Byakugan, the Rinnegan, and had thought itself immune to surprise.
'I was wrong.'
The memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome.
[A Few Moments Earlier]
The forest had been quiet—too quiet. Zetsu had sensed the approach before it saw him, a chakra signature that was calm, controlled, inevitable. Renjiro emerged from the shadows like a figure from a nightmare, his Mangekyō Sharingan spinning slowly, its tri-wheel pattern catching the moonlight.
He was not behaving like a normal shinobi. There was no hesitation, no reconnaissance, no cautious testing of defences. He walked toward them as if he already knew where they were, what they were, what they were capable of.
"Found you."
Renjiro's voice was calm, almost conversational. His Mangekyō spun faster.
Then he split.
One moment, there was one Renjiro. The next, there were two—identical in every way, their chakra signatures indistinguishable, their presence equally real. Zetsu's initial thought was reflexive: 'Shadow clones.'
But the word died before it could fully form.
'Shadow clones don't have equal chakra density. Both are real.'
The two Renjiros moved in eerie synchrony, their steps perfectly matched, their eyes—both sets of Mangekyō—fixed on Zetsu with predatory focus.
'This is bad,' Zetsu thought.
It attempted its standard disengage—phasing into the earth, becoming one with the soil, moving through the underground darkness where no shinobi could follow.
One Renjiro tracked the disturbance, his gaze following the subtle shift of earth, the faint ripple of chakra beneath the surface. The other Renjiro moved ahead, flickering to a position that intercepted Zetsu's escape vector.
'He's already where I'm going.'
Zetsu paused mid-phase, caught between emergence and retreat. The Renjiro above—the one who had moved ahead—stood directly over its position, his foot positioned as if he knew exactly where Zetsu would surface.
'If I emerge now, he attacks. If I stay underground, the other one tracks my movement. If I change direction, he adjusts.'
There was no safe option.
'First real fear spike,' Zetsu admitted. 'In decades.'
It surfaced at the edge of the clearing, far from both Renjiros—or so it thought. But the two had split again during Zetsu's subsurface hesitation. Now there were four. Four Renjiros, each with the same chakra weight, the same Mangekyō, the same cold, predatory focus.
One attacked.
The engagement was brief, brutal, and deeply unsettling. The attacking Renjiro moved with precision, his strikes aimed not to kill but to corral, to pressure, to force Zetsu into a position where it could not protect Obito.
'He's not trying to kill me,' Zetsu realised. 'He's trying to separate me from Obito. Now Konoha will most probably know about him.'
The other Renjiros did not attack. They stood at the edges of the clearing, watching, waiting, their Mangekyō spinning in perfect synchronisation. They were not reinforcements. They were observers. Studying. Learning. Mapping Zetsu's responses, its tells, its weaknesses.
'Psychological warfare,' Zetsu thought.
It tried to split itself—a countermeasure it had used successfully against other shinobi, dividing its consciousness into multiple bodies to confuse and overwhelm.
Renjiro mirrored the action. Where Zetsu split into two, Renjiro split into four. Where Zetsu tried to flank, Renjiro was already there. Where Zetsu attempted to phase through an attack, Renjiro's strike adjusted mid-swing, as if he had anticipated the phasing before it happened.
'His copies are more real than mine.'
The realisation was bitter. Zetsu's split bodies were constructs—useful, but expendable. Renjiro's were equally real, each one a potential threat, each one capable of ending the engagement if Zetsu made a single mistake.
The pressure built. Zetsu attempted continuous retreat—phasing, direction changes, terrain shifts, everything in its considerable arsenal.
Renjiro responded with bursts of splitting, cutting off angles progressively, herding Zetsu away from Obito, away from the clearing, away from any path that led to safety.
'I cannot outmanoeuvre him. I cannot predict him. I cannot safely disengage.'
For the first time in its long existence, White Zetsu felt genuinely trapped.
But Zetsu was not built for direct combat. Its purpose was observation, infiltration, and manipulation—not prolonged engagement with a Mangekyō user who seemed to have no limits. Every moment it spent fighting Renjiro was a moment it was not protecting Obito, not maintaining secrecy, not advancing Madara's plan.
'Mission first,' it reminded itself. 'Exposure risk is too high. Renjiro's Konoha status means his death would be investigated. And if the village learns of us—'
The consequences were too terrible to contemplate.
'Retreat is not optional. It is necessary.'
But the pressure was still building. The Renjiros were still closing in, still cutting off angles, still herding Zetsu toward a position where escape would be impossible.
'I need an opening. Any opening.'
And then, impossibly, Renjiro stopped.
The attacks ceased. The pressure eased. An escape window opened—subtle, almost imperceptible, but there.
'Why?' Zetsu's mind raced, searching for the trap, the hidden angle, the deception it was missing. 'He had me. He could have—'
But there was no time to analyse. Obito was still broken, still unstable, still a liability that could not be risked. Zetsu grabbed the boy and fled, its form dissolving into the earth, its consciousness spreading across multiple vectors, ensuring that even if Renjiro followed, he could not track them both.
The last thing Zetsu saw before the darkness swallowed them was Renjiro's face—calm, composed, watching them go with an expression that was not frustration, not disappointment, but something else entirely.
Satisfaction.
[Present]
The forest streamed past, but Zetsu's mind was still trapped in the memory of those spinning Mangekyō, those impossible copies, that cold, knowing gaze.
'He let us go,' Zetsu thought. 'He could have pressed the attack. Could have separated me from Obito. Could have—'
But Renjiro hadn't. And Zetsu did not understand why.
'He's a critical unknown variable,' Zetsu concluded. 'Dangerous. Unpredictable. And now he knows about me—about us.'
The thought was deeply unsettling. Zetsu had operated in the shadows for decades, had manipulated events across the shinobi world, and had never been truly seen by anyone who mattered. Renjiro had changed that.
'I need to report this.'
But even as Zetsu fled, even as it put distance between itself and the clearing, a small, persistent voice whispered in the back of its consciousness.
'What if that was his goal? What if he wanted me to run? What if he's using me to send a message?'
Zetsu shook off the thought and focused on escape. There would be time for analysis later. For now, survival was the only priority.
=====
The forest clearing was quiet again, the chaos of the encounter fading into memory. Renjiro stood at its edge, his Mangekyō deactivated, his expression calm and composed. The clones that had hounded Zetsu had dispersed, their chakra returning to him, their experiences integrated.
He walked toward Kakashi and Rin, his steps unhurried, his posture relaxed.
Kakashi looked up, his visible eye red-rimmed, his face streaked with tears and dirt. His Mangekyō was still active, still spinning, still burning with a power he did not understand.
"What happened?" Kakashi asked, his voice hoarse. "Who was it?"
Renjiro's answer was minimal, controlled.
"They got away."
No elaboration. No explanation. He kept the knowledge of Zetsu and Obito to himself, locked behind the walls of his own mind.
Kakashi stared at him for a long moment, his expression a mixture of exhaustion and confusion. But he was too overwhelmed to question deeply, too shattered to push for answers he was not sure he wanted.
He simply nodded and turned back to Rin.
Renjiro assessed her condition. The stabilisation seal was holding, but barely. The modified purification seal glowed softly on her abdomen, its work invisible to anyone who did not know what to look for. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse weak, but she was alive.
Temporarily, he thought. The seals won't hold forever. We need to move.
He looked at Kakashi.
"We're returning to Konoha. Now."
Kakashi did not argue. He gathered Rin's body in his arms, cradling her as if she were made of glass, and rose to his feet.
"Can you—" he began.
"I can." Renjiro placed a hand on Kakashi's shoulder. "Hold her steady. Don't let go."
He focused his chakra, gathering the energy for a long-range shunshin. The forest blurred around them, the moonlight streaking into lines of silver, and then—
They were gone.