Kimimaro slipped beneath the soil like a spearpoint.
He didn't waste a second.
Five Gates opened in sequence.
His body ignited with speed, but not recklessness.
He refused to touch the sixth; too much power distorted the genetic finesse he needed for his kekkei genkai.
Five was the limit he allowed himself to ever use.
Five was enough.
The White Bastion Frame unfolded over him, plating across his limbs like an ivory exoskeleton.
Earth and stone parted around him as if pushed aside by a living drill.
The armor didn't just shield him; it sharpened him, streamlined his movements, let him tear through packed soil without losing momentum.
He descended deeper, senses widening like a net.
That strange signature was still ahead of him, close, almost within reach, but now that he'd focused on it, he sensed more.
Many more.
Dozens scattered far below and ahead, their chakra signatures muted, fused with their surroundings, faintly plant-like, faintly human.
They formed a line, almost a formation, all oriented toward Konoha.
The one he felt first was simply the closest.
The others were buried deeper, arranged like roots spreading from a single tree.
White Zetsu.
He immediately noted something else—
The closest one had also seemingly sensed him and just flared its chakra for a moment and then began to sink even further into the ground.
Attempting to flee.
He recognized the movement at once.
Mayfly.
A technique that erased physical form, allowing the user to slip through earth and wood like they were water.
True invisibility, true intangibility, something no ordinary sensor should be able to track underground.
But Kimimaro wasn't an ordinary sensor.
He felt the distortion of space where the Zetsu tried to dissolve itself, the strange flicker between plant matter and chakra that made the Mayfly technique possible.
Kimimaro tore downward even faster, cutting through layers of soil like slicing through silk.
The Zetsu, in question, accelerated.
It was even panicking.
Kimimaro's lips curved faintly.
Good. Let it run.
Prey that ran only sharpened the hunt.
The tunnel behind him immediately collapsed under the pressure of re-forming earth, but he didn't slow.
Bones adjusted, armor plates interlocked, and his senses remained locked onto the flickering, phasing chakra signature trying to slip away.
He would catch it.
He would dissect it.
The White Zetsu dove deeper.
Kimimaro followed.
In fact, he and Emi had never stopped their Hashirama cell research.
It simply slipped to second priority.
The Byakugan project gave far greater returns for both of them at this stage, and unlike Hashirama cells, the Byakugan came with clear, more immediate applications.
Besides, Akane barely used her Mangekyō except in short, controlled training sessions. The urgency to counterbalance its eventual side effects wasn't immediate.
But the Hashirama work never died.
From the tiny sample Orochimaru had given them years ago, they learned to multiply the cells quietly and reliably, maintaining their vitality without letting them run wild.
What they didn't know, what they had never figured out, was how to transplant them safely into a living host for enhancement rather than destruction.
That was the missing piece.
And the White Zetsu tissue would complete it.
Kimimaro felt it in his bones.
That plant-flesh hybrid was the stabilizer they needed.
It was the final component he had hunted for years, from the beginning.
Which was why he moved now with such cold urgency.
Because in this battle, Akane would almost certainly lean on her Mangekyō again way more.
And she had no eventual path to an Eternal Mangekyō.
No compatible relative to steal eyes from that fit into her own sockets as well.
Her father existed, yes, but the talent wasn't on his side of the bloodline.
It came more so from her extinct mother's great elder lineage.
Her Mangekyō would decay.
And there were only two ways to stop that.
One:
Obtain another Mangekyō from a close relative, forcing both eyes into a Yin-linked 'eternal' cycle-loop that prevented corruption from spreading out to the rest of the living body.
Impossible for Akane.
Two:
Balance her excessive 'Yin' with a powerful, controlled source of 'Yang' inside her own body.
Hashirama cells.
The cure. The equalizer.
And Kimimaro would be a fool to deprive himself of that enhancement, too.
That White Zetsu was the key to all of it. And he would not let it escape.
The presence he hunted didn't move like a shinobi.
It flowed, slipping through stone as if bone and earth meant nothing.
A bizarre phasing motion, half-chakra, half-organism.
Then the signature flared.
Just for a moment.
A spike of panic.
Kimimaro smiled.
There you are.
He angled sharply downward, tearing through the subterranean layers, the Five Gates burning in his veins, White Bastion Frame carving a clean path behind him.
Soil compacted around him, but the armor redirected the pressure, turning resistance into velocity.
The creature tried to sink deeper, a white blur phasing through stone.
But Kimimaro rammed a bone spear ahead of it, letting the vibrating tip disturb the chakra flow of the Mayfly technique.
Spiral Zetsu jerked, momentum shattering like glass.
A hollow voice echoed from inside its body, half-playful, half-nervous.
"Huh? That's rude. I'm busy, you know. Humans shouldn't be able to—"
Kimimaro didn't reply.
He simply accelerated.
White Bastion's micro-jets fired, propelling him forward with unnatural speed.
His arm snapped outward, bone blade forming mid-motion.
The Zetsu twisted, spirals opening slightly like a suit trying to peel apart and flee in pieces.
"W-wait—! You're not supposed to grab me—!"
Kimimaro's hand closed around its upper torso.
White. Hardened. Spiraled like a living drill. And yet soft and pliant underneath, like wet wood and living tissue fused into one.
He drove it into the wall of packed earth, pinning it.
The creature writhed, spirals shifting desperately.
Kimimaro's expression didn't move.
He pressed a talisman to its chest, one of the suppression seals he'd made with Ashina. Zetsu's body jerked as the seal drank its chakra.
"No fair," it whined, voice cracking. "No one seals me. Only Boss or the other me can do that!"
The talisman tightened, chakra lattices snapping shut.
"I only need you half-alive," Kimimaro said calmly. "Your tissue holds what I require."
The Zetsu froze, spirals contracting defensively.
"Half-alive sounds worse than dead," it muttered. "You're scary. You're scarier than the masked guy."
Kimimaro didn't dignify the comment.
He wrapped more seals around it in practiced motions, binding the Mayfly technique, restraining its cellular activity just enough to keep it alive but immobile.
It twitched weakly as the final seal locked.
Kimimaro lifted the creature with one hand, effortless as breathing, then swept out a special containment scroll and sealed it inside with a single practiced motion.
Hashirama-adjacent cells. Perfect adaptive biomass. Natural chakra conduits.
The missing key for safe transplantation.
A god-given opportunity.
Kimimaro turned, pushing upward through the ground toward the forest again.
He would return to the invasion. But this? This was already a big prize.
Kimimaro sensed the weaker White Zetsu shapes scattering in every direction as soon as he seized their "leader," but he didn't bother giving chase.
Not now. Not with Konoha tearing itself apart above him.
"They'll probably alert that man," he thought, calm rather than concerned.
Depending on how wide their network reached and how fast the information travelled, Obito could be notified on time, while he was still there, and then even warp straight into the village.