White Zetsu, by their fundantal nature, have no emotions.
They can seem, at tis, as though they have personalities of their own -- so are cheerful, so brooding, so never stop talking, so say nothing at all -- but these are surface impressions only.
Like puppets moved by strings, they do not possess genuine selves.
No desires. No obsessions. No concept of "I want this" or "I don't want that."
For Kaguya Otsutsuki, these creatures were the ideal soldiers. Absolutely obedient, unburdened by any interior life, incapable of betrayal, manufacturable in unlimited quantities.
This did not an they would follow anyone.
The authority required to command them resided in only two things.
The Gedo Statue, and the Rinnegan.
And even then, the eyes had to genuinely belong to their wielder. Simply transplanting Rinnegan did not grant the ability to command White Zetsu -- if it had, Nagato would have commanded armies of them. In fact, Nagato never directed a single White Zetsu in his life.
Because those eyes belonged to Uchiha Madara.
So after Kaguya was sealed, what the White Zetsu obeyed was not an eye, and not a force -- it was Madara's will itself.
But now, Uchiha Madara was dead. And Uchiha Obito, who had inherited Madara's will, was dead too.
Every figure who could have commanded the White Zetsu was gone.
And so the surviving White Zetsu drifted.
No orders. No targets. No reason to exist.
They wandered without knowing where they were going or what they were supposed to be doing.
Among these wandering creatures, however, there was one that was different from the rest.
White Zetsu Tobi.
When Madara had made him, he had injected sothing extra into Tobi's body -- cells from Hashirama Senju. Those cells, overflowing with life force, had given Tobi sothing no other White Zetsu possessed: an independent character, sothing approaching the selfhood of a human being.
So Tobi had his own temperant. His own thoughts. His own, admittedly absurd, but genuinely personal way of moving through the world.
He would slack off in the middle of assignnts. He would mutter to himself when bored. When no one paid attention to him, he would find ways to entertain himself.
He had even made a friend.
Uchiha Obito.
The boy Madara had pulled from the rubble. The boy who had struggled for years in the dark. The boy who had eventually put on a spiral mask and called himself "Uchiha Madara."
Tobi had been with him through all of it.
He had walked with him out of the cave and into the world. Had accompanied him through the dark years. Had watched him do all those terrible things.
Then Obito died.
His master was dead. His friend was dead.
Tobi returned to the cave where he had once lived with Madara and then with the gravely injured Obito.
Alone.
As for carrying on the mission -- catching the Tailed Beasts, completing the Moon's Eye Plan -- well. Tobi had a reasonably clear-eyed view of his own abilities.
For one thing, he had been made with Hashirama's cells, which made him closer to human than other White Zetsu. And precisely because of that closeness, he understood exactly how much he was and wasn't capable of.
Catching a Tailed Beast? He couldn't fight even the One-Tail. Let alone the others.
And beyond the practical problem, Tobi lacked Black Zetsu's thousand years of fixation. He lacked Madara's grand designs. To Tobi, the idea of chasing Tailed Beasts across the world was simply -- too much trouble. Lying in the sun was better. Digging tunnels was more interesting. Finding small animals to pester was more fun.
So he settled in. The empty cave beca his ho. And sohow, despite the silence and the emptiness, Tobi found ways to keep himself occupied.
He considered his days genuinely enjoyable. They were not eventful. They were, admittedly, slightly lonely. But enjoyable nonetheless.
Morning.
The sun had just risen. Thin shafts of light ca in through the cracks in the cave's ceiling, laying a long narrow column of brightness across the floor.
Tobi climbed out of the ground.
His preferred thod of sleeping was to bury himself directly in the earth -- pushing down into the soil and sealing himself in, like a seed waiting to sprout.
"Ahh -- another new day --"
He reached up and rubbed at the location where his eyes would have been, if he had any.
"Sun on the backside -- wait --"
He looked down at the formless, pale mass of his lower body.
"Where is my backside?"
He considered this for three seconds.
"Oh right. I'm a White Zetsu. No backside."
He tilted his swirling head, then turned and waved cheerfully at the empty coffin in the corner of the cave.
"Lord Madara --! Good morning --!"
He called out in his most buoyant tone.
"Another day without you --!"
No response, naturally.
Tobi didn't mind. He bounced over to the opposite side of the cave, where a rough shelf made of stacked stones held a calendar he had picked up from so abandoned village.
"What day is it today..."
He opened the calendar and stared seriously at the numbers and characters he couldn't quite read, studying them with great concentration.
"...Never mind."
He closed the calendar.
"It's not like anyone throws a birthday party anyway."
He stood there and was silent for three seconds.
Then he exploded upward with sudden enthusiasm.
"Then I'll throw myself one --! Happy birthday, Tobi --!"
He shouted it at full volu, and the cave threw his words back at him in overlapping echoes.
"Happy birthday, Tobi --!"
"Happy birthday, Tobi --!"
"Happy birthday, Tobi --!"
The echoes faded.
The cave went quiet again.
Tobi stood in place and looked at the emptiness around him.
"...Very anticlimactic."
-- -- --
He had no need to eat, which saved him the trouble of cooking. But because he had no need to eat, there were also far fewer things to fill his ti with.
So Tobi decided to go out and see the world. Make so friends.
He left the cave, passed through the stretch of forest he had crossed more tis than he could count, and ca out onto a wide open adow.
A wild boar was there, rooting in the dirt, looking for sothing to eat.
"Hello there --!"
Tobi bounded over with the energy of soone who had been waiting all morning for this opportunity.
"My na's Tobi --! Would you like to be friends?"
The boar raised its head and looked at him.
Then went back to rooting in the dirt.
"I can turn into a female boar!"
Tobi announced this offer helpfully, and his body shifted, reforming in the blink of an eye into a shape identical to the boar in front of him.
The boar raised its head again. Looked at him again.
Went back to rooting in the dirt.
"All right -- then I'll turn into a mushroom! Boars love mushrooms!"
Tobi transford once more, becoming a large, brightly colored mushroom that looked extrely appetizing, and began rolling himself back and forth across the ground.
The boar finally stopped moving.
It stared at the rolling mushroom for a long ti.
Then it turned around and walked away.
Tobi returned to his original form and watched the boar's retreating back.
"...Was I talking too much?"
Since animals were uninterested in him, Tobi resolved to be his own entertainnt.
He split into several copies and gave each one a different shape.
"Hello everyone -- I'm Rabbit Tobi --!" A White Zetsu with long ears bounced around in small hops.
"I'm Squirrel Tobi --!" A White Zetsu with a bushy tail leaped between the branches of a tree.
"I'm Raccoon Tobi --!" A round, plump White Zetsu rolled in circles on the ground.
"I'm just Tobi Tobi --!" One copy, unchanged, stood in the center and watched the others.
For a few monts, all the Tobis played together -- chasing each other, jumping, making noise.
Ten seconds later, they stopped.
"...A bunch of playing with myself."
The one in the middle let out a sigh.
"This is exhausting."
He tried a village next.
He transford into the shape of a small child, walked up to the village entrance, and waved both hands.
"Hello everyone --!"
He called out in the cutest voice he could manage.
"I'm Tobi, I'm new here --! Nice to et you! Today I'm treating everyone to ran --!"
Several village children gathered around, eyes lighting up.
"Really?!"
"Really really!"
Tobi nodded with great enthusiasm.
Then loudly added:
"...But I don't have any money."
The children stared.
Then scattered in every direction.
Tobi stood alone in the empty space they had left behind, watching them disappear. He stood there for quite a while.
Then he went around the back of a large tree, crouched down, hugged his knees, and muttered to himself very quietly.
"I just wanted soone to talk to..."
He crouched there for approximately three seconds.
Then he stood up, brushed nonexistent dust off himself, and was imdiately his usual unbothered self again.
"Oh well -- ti to go ho --!"
Night.
Tobi lay in the cave, looking up at the strip of sky visible through the cracks in the ceiling.
The stars were flickering. They were beautiful.
He was content, because he had one genuinely excellent companion.
Obito's mask.
It was a tiger-striped mask, one that Obito had stopped wearing a very long ti ago. But Tobi had kept it. He had placed it in the most visible spot in the cave.
In Tobi's mind, the mask was Obito.
"Obito."
He spoke to it quietly.
"Where are you right now?"
No answer.
"Heaven? Or soplace like hell? Or sowhere no one knows about, like ?"
He rolled over onto his side and pulled the mask into his arms.
"Maybe I should die too. Go and keep you company."
He was quiet for a mont.
"No."
He shook his head.
"If I die, there'd be no one left to think about you."
He held the mask a little tighter.
"Good night, Obito."
"See you tomorrow."
A five-second pause.
"...Actually, I won't see you tomorrow."
He shifted around restlessly.
"Or the day after... or the day after that..."
Suddenly he sat bolt upright.
He addressed the strip of night sky overhead -- the full moon hanging there in it -- at full volu.
"Moon -- Moon --! Can you see Obito from up there --?!"
The moon said nothing.
Of course it did not.
"You're useless!"
Tobi pointed at the moon and shouted with genuine indignation.
"You can't even talk!"
The moon continued to say nothing.
Tobi glared at it for a long ti.
Then his voice went very quiet.
"...I'm sorry. I was wrong."
He lowered his head and bowed carefully toward the moon.
"You're even lonelier than I am."
The moon hung in the sky without response, casting its cold pale light across everything below.
Tobi lay back down. He pulled the mask against his chest and looked up at the stars.
"Let's be lonely together."
He said it very softly.
"Moon friend."
This was Tobi's life.
Day after day, year after year.
He had read in a book he found in a human village that creatures who lived the way he did were considered pitiable -- no friends, no family, no place to belong, reduced to talking to themselves and playing with themselves alone.
But Tobi didn't see it that way. He thought his days were, on balance, quite satisfying.
Sleep when he wanted. Play when he wanted. Beco whatever he wanted.
No one to manage him. No one to scold him. No one to order him around.
Wonderful.
And so the days went on -- quiet, Tobi's alone, peaceful in their own directionless way.
Until that one particular day.
From the direction of Konoha, a force arrived that made every part of him shudder.
Every surviving White Zetsu felt it at once. A newly awakened power. The unmistakable signature of Rinnegan eyes.
Rising. From that direction.
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