In the darkness of a cavern deep below Amegakure, Tendō Pain stood alone on the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path's right thumb. Channelling his chakra through the corpse puppet of his best friend, Nagato sent a psychic signal rippling through space-time using the ring on its right thumb as a medium.
The shadowy outlines of robed figures began to appear on the statue's remaining fingers, one by one. The aloe‑vera‑looking fellow, Black Zetsu, the paper angel Konan, the shark‑man Hoshigaki Kisame, and at last, the masked fool Tobi and the mad bomber Deidara…
"We're missing quite a few people," Deidara remarked flippantly. "From nine, we're down to five, eh?"
Sadly, Obito never did get Sasori's ring. Sakura had accidentally destroyed it with her Lightning Style Rasenshuriken, so Deidara was forced to share his spot on the Gedō Mazō's finger with him, and even hug up against the freak so he could get in on the conference call.
It was rather cramped on this finger.
"You forgot to count me again!" Obito said in his silly voice, punching Deidara playfully on the shoulder. "It's six— six! Have you played with your silly putty so much you've forgotten how to count?"
"Punch me again," Deidara growled, "and I'll turn your face into an art form!"
"Eep!" Obito gasped. "This guy's scaryyy!"
The Akatsuki was haemorrhaging members and rings.
Not counting those who had perished before the collection of the Tailed Beasts began, first blood had gone to Sakura, who had killed Sasori in single combat. Then, on the day of the Rinne Festival, she had gone on to defeat Hidan, whom the Leaf had subsequently sealed away, and Naruto and Jiraiya had managed to kill his partner Kakuzu. And finally, Itachi had died at his little brother Sasuke's hands. At the time, Sasuke hadn't let him near his brother's body, so Obito had never even had the chance to take Itachi's ring or his eyes.
Four rings seized by Konoha, but luckily, they had never seemed to figure out their true significance.
"Enough," said Tendō Pain curtly. "The One-Tails Jinchūriki has finally appeared. The Hidden Leaf was hiding Gaara after all; the Tailed Beast's new vessel is a man known as the darkness of the shinobi world… Shimura Danzō. Deidara, Tobi, I'm putting your team in charge of capturing him."
Obito laughed.
"How ironic!" he guffawed. "The man you hate most, the man who caused you so much pain and suffering… he ended up choosing the exact same path to peace you did! Isn't that hilarious!?"
Save for Konan and Nagato, none of the Akatsuki members present knew what Tobi meant.
Danzō was the man who had helped Hanzō of the Salamander set the trap that wiped out the Akatsuki's first incarnation, making him indirectly responsible for Yahiko's death. By cultivating monsters from Hashirama cells and the negative chakra harvested from the Land of Sky's Zero‑Tails, and then turning his abominations loose on the great villages, Danzō had almost perfectly replicated Nagato's grand plan for the nine Tailed Beasts! Without even realising it, he had done exactly what Nagato had set out to achieve from the start!
Tendō Pain glowered at him with his Rinnegan.
"Our aims couldn't be more different," he said coldly. "Danzō unleashed the Tailless Beasts to ready the other lands for conquest. I intend to use the Tailed Beasts to cast the shinobi world into such terror and disorder that merely recalling the pain will make any survivor lay down their weapons rather than ever wish for war again."
…
Pain's idea of peace was to carry the First Hokage's theory of strategic deterrence to its logical and brutal conclusion. If each great village had a Tailed Beast, then surely their overwhelming power would frighten one another into avoiding conflict— that was the gist of it.
Or at least, in theory.
As a means of avoiding all-out war, deterrence was not without its uses; but in the context of eliminating war altogether, the concept was flawed— for by definition, a weapon of last resort would only ever be used in a moment of absolute desperation.
Deterrence was nothing more than a paper tiger: for as long as the enemy never directly threatened the core interests of the one holding the deterrent, it would never be used. That effectively meant the Five Great Countries were free to wage conventional war amongst themselves, so long as the damage never went too far inside their borders. And so, it was always the little countries in between who ended up suffering most.
In Cold War terms, this was the so‑called salami tactic: cut off thin slices one by one, never taking enough territory at a time to justify the nuclear option. And before you knew it, the enemy was deep‑throating your sausage, redrawing the world map while you never even got to fire a single nuke at them.
That being said, despite the First Hokage's best efforts and despite the threat of the Jinchūriki, wars still erupted daily in the years following the first Kage Summit. Worse still, because using the power of the Tailed Beasts never seemed to produce any real consequences for themselves— since their incessant warring never actually damaged their own core territories— the Five Great Villages even began turning the Tailed Beasts loose on the battlefield, causing even greater ruin.
They weren't last resorts any more!
In Pain's opinion, for deterrence to work as the First Hokage had envisioned, the shinobi world would first have to learn the true extent of the pain the Tailed Beasts could bring—by striking them where it actually hurt: the Five Great Countries' capitals and the Five Great Villages themselves.
Just as Japan had abandoned its imperial ambitions after getting slapped in the face with two atomic bombs, so too would the hidden villages abandon their taste for war once they had been levelled by Bijū Bombs. The loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, Nagato believed, was a small price to pay for the countless others who would be spared in the peace that followed!
…
Obito scoffed at the very idea.
As if that foolish plan could ever succeed, he thought to himself! Only through the Eye of the Moon could a world free of pain and suffering be born. Reality was a cruel illusion, and real people existed only to disappoint. Ahh, how he yearned to see his waifu Rin-chan again in that perfect and eternal sweet dream!
"Kisame, Zetsu," Tendō Pain said, turning to the duo. "Any news from the Land of Water? Has the Three-Tails been reborn yet?"
"Not that I've seen," Kisame said, shaking his head.
"If it's Three‑Tails chakra you're after, I've already got what you need!" Obito said cheerily. Space and time twisted as his Dōjutsu flared, and the shattered remains of a puppet tumbled from a rift in reality in front of him. "Tadaa! I went tomb raiding for this myself," he added proudly. "It's the founder of Takumi Village, Seimei! He was resurrected with a heap of the Three‑Tails' chakra before the Hokage smashed it into scrap metal— ought to be enough to keep the statue happy, don't you think?"
Tendō Pain observed the wreckage with his Rinnegan.
"Well done, Tobi," he said at last. "Though we aren't as numerous as we used to be, it shouldn't take much more than a few minutes extracting the Three-Tails' chakra from this puppet."
It was far harder to wrench a Tailed Beast from a living host than from an inanimate vessel. Besides the seal that had bound it there in the first place, the monster's chakra would intertwine with the Jinchūriki's own chakra pathway network, making extraction rather like trying to suck out someone's guts through a plastic straw.
Within seconds, the task was complete, and one of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path's eyes cracked open halfway. With the recent capture of the Six‑Tails, the statue now contained the Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven‑Tails— which meant they were missing only the weakest, the One‑Tail, and the next‑strongest and strongest of them all, the Eight and Nine‑Tails…
"I think I might be able to convince Uchiha Sasuke to join us," Tobi said. "He bears a grudge against Danzō, and we have access to the Zetsu network… we can leverage that to our advantage to at least make him work for us. You're planning to let Kisame go after the Eight‑Tails on his own, aren't you? Send Deidara to back him up… and I'll handle the One‑Tails myself with Sasuke."
Nagato and Konan didn't trust Tobi as far as they could throw him— and given his knack for turning intangible, he was quite impossible to throw. If Tobi and Sasuke were the only ones on the Danzō capture team, there was no guarantee the shifty Uchiha duo wouldn't simply make off with him. And from what little Nagato knew of him, Sasuke was far more likely to cut Danzō down— and the One‑Tail with him— than hand him over quietly.
"Rejected," Tendō Pain said flatly. "Kisame will face the Eight-Tails Jinchūriki alone, and you will accompany Deidara to capture the One-Tail Jinchūriki… and if this Sasuke interferes, you will deal with him accordingly. Understood?"
"Boo," Obito said, obviously displeased. "Fine, whatever."
Tendō Pain gazed at his remaining comrades.
"As for Konan and me, we'll invade Konoha and seize the Nine‑Tails ourselves within the next few days," he said coldly. "Then, at last, this world shall know pain..."
"That's good to know."
Tendō Pain and the other Akatsuki members nearly did a double‑take as Orochimaru appeared upon the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path's left little finger, waggling his own little finger at them, upon which the missing tenth ring gleamed…
"That was foolish of you, Orochimaru," Tendō Pain said coldly. "I now know exactly where you are…"
His voice trailed off. Orochimaru was in Konoha…
"I've been dying to test my new jutsu on you," Orochimaru said with a sly chuckle. "But I assure you, things won't be so simple for you this time. I know your secret now, and I'm much stronger than before… so, come… you'll make for the perfect stepping stone to my ascension as the Sixth Hokage!"
Orochimaru pulled the ring off his finger, and his figure vanished.
"…change of plans," said Tendō Pain coldly.