54 The Strange Encounter Between Nagato And Toneri

A few weeks after the events in Konoha, inside the rainy, metallic-like Amegakure, at the so-called Pain's Tower, the highest building in the whole village, Nagato was sitting on his large metallic chair full of black chakra transmitters. Konan was right beside him and both of them were silent and highly concentrated. They were working on Nagato's goal of gathering all of the Tailed Beasts in order to create a perfect weapon that could keep all the world's big villages in check and bring peace. For that, they needed to extract all of the Tailed-Beasts' chakra into Nagato's Gedo Mazo.

This tower was astronomically high and it allowed Nagato to project his own chakra to really large distances. He was now simultaneously channeling and regulating two jutsu of near-continental ranges. They were the "Funijutsu: Nine Phantom Dragons" and the "Magic Lantern Body Technique",

The first one was used by him and the other members of Akatsuki to forcibly seal a tailed beast or to extract a still-living jinchuriki's tailed beast chakra into the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path or simply called the Gedo Mazo statue. The technique took three full days to complete if nine of the Akatsuki members were present. If there are fewer people to perform the technique, it would take a while longer. They were currently doing it on the One-Tailed beast Deidara and Sasori caught and brought to a secret location Nagato previously prepared inside a secret location inside of the Land of Rivers a small and unimportant country in between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind. It was one of Akatsuki's secret hideouts made inside a cavern, near a river, protected by a Five Seal Barrier.

To prepare for the technique, he needed to summon the Demonic Statue, to the desired location of the process, after which each member would then stand on one of its fingertips, corresponding to their specific ring finger. When performed, this technique caused the bit to fall out of the mouth of the statue. Each of the Akatsuki members would then concentrate, causing the kanji of their rings to appear on the nail of the finger they were standing on. Akatsuki members can participate remotely through the second technique Nagato currently channeled at the same time thanks to his Rinnegan.

Nine dragon-like effigies then poured from the statue's mouth, surrounded the captured host, and painfully removed the tailed beast from them. In the case of an unsealed-tailed beast, the same thing happened to the beast itself and still took as much time as if it were sealed. After the process was complete, the beast was sealed within the statue, and one of the statue's nine eyes opened. The host would die due to the removal of their tailed beast. They already acquired two of them before. Gaara was their third Tailed Beast that they were all currently extracting in a lengthy process today.

The second technique was about so-called thought waves converted into chakra members of the Akatsuki send. These thought waves are then picked up by Nagao remotely, acting as a kind of control tower. This technique amplifies the thought waves and then broadcasts them to a specific location through illusionary bodies. The illusionary bodies differ from mere reflections. Also, while Nagato is relaying the members' thoughts, they can have conversations and use varying powers. These virtual images looked like the member they represented, the only difference being that they are standing up with their hands in a seal. The images were also transparent, except for the eyes.

All of a sudden, inside the uppermost chamber of the tower where he and Konan were situated, Nagato suddenly flinched. Konan immediately noticed this and then exclaimed, "Are you all right, Nagato? Let's go slower with the sealing. You don't have to rush so much...", She was concerned that Nagato shuddered because of his chakra output. However, Nagato just merely shook his head, while his expression was dead-serious,

"We have an intruder... Prepare to fight...", His voice was hoarse and his real form looked very weak. He immediately signaled for all of his Pain clones to immediately gather around them. And they promptly did just that. The residents of the Amagakure failed to notice the six different shadows, with orange-colored hairs swiftly darting all over the village and then quickly climbing up the tower.

"What!?", Konan was really caught off guard by this abrupt news, not expecting someone to learn of their location, much less move here with the intention to attack them too, "But, what about the One Tails?", She remembered, and asked in concern, "We'll temporarily stop the process, this opponent is not something that we can handle while we use our chakra elsewhere...", Nagato answered hoarsely.

The entirety of the Amegakure was loaded with Nagato's chakra transmitters, it was a large sensing barrier in which he could sense everything, and this intruder was something strongest that he have ever seen. Konan steeled herself to fight seriously too and both of them ceased channeling their chakra elsewhere. Nagato just left a short and simple message to other Akatsuki members that he would be back soon. It was obvious why he would not inform them of someone daring to attack him, "This enemy has a unique dojutsu, not weaker than my Rinnegan, but he is not Neji Hyuga... But there should be an overlap in abilities with him, keep that in mind...", Nagato informed Konan.

On the other side of this cyberpunk-like village, at the same time, Toneri soared into the sky as soon as he entered, going straight toward the main Nagato's control tower as he quickly sensed that he resided right there. He finally managed to calculate and locate that thief's central position after so many days of trying before, 'This thief is a master in concealing himself with that chakra signaling and communication technology and infrastructure... This Ninja World is much more advanced than I imagined before. This village is nothing like the other I've been in before...', Toneri mused as he flew.

He previously acknowledged that it would be much harder to safely transport his ancestor Hamura's Giant Tenseigan's energy inside of himself than he envisioned at first. And infusing all of that chakra inside of himself directly, while using his personal's Tenseigan ability, was out of the question as he would be simply eaten alive by all of that potent chakra energy and Toneri wasn't so naive as before.

Henceforth, after previously acquiring many different kinds of understandings from this vast Ninja World, Toneri realized that the best way to bring and use all of that energy with himself was to seal it inside of himself with the so-called fuinjutsu, of this world, and then access small bits of it when he needed it. He felt like, with the sheer amount of chakra, there was, through the constant years of refueling his clan did with their Byakugan eyes, it would be really hard for him to ever run out of that energy. For him, that was the perfect last step of his personal power journey before he started implementing his grand plan for this world's salvation. It was the fate's way of guiding him further.

That Giant Tenseigan was the perfect additional source of chakra for his own personal Tenseigan to operate on. It was said that Hamura Otsutsuki even gave all of his overflowing energy in order to construct it. It was later even enhanced with Hamura's real physical body upon his death, not to mention thousands and thousands of Byakugan eyes that were given to it over hundreds of years. Due to that fact, it even had the perfect ratio of spiritual and physical energy required for someone to manifest techniques from its powers. However, due to its potency, it was also hard to create an appropriate fuinjutsu seal capable of holding it together inside of his body as well as controlling it.

It was why recently he ventured all around again, stealing memories, meaning skills, and knowledge of the biggest fuinjutsu experts each village had to offer in the hope of creating a required seal for himself. And just while he was doing it, this thief summoned the Gedo Mazo statue again. However, this time, as he also had his personal Tenseigan, he finally caught onto him his trail and came here. He was months away from designing and constructing his wanted seal so he thought that it was time to finally reclaim his long-lost ancestral treasure back and wipe away all those years of shame.

'Let's see who you really are...', As Toneri soared toward the central tower of this village, he picked some random people from the civilian area below, even a few shinobi, and brought them with his gravity high in the air against their will. Most of them collapsed and died from the shock and the speed at which they got pulled above. He then picked their heads, one by one, ruthlessly, reading their memories and then throwing them below after he was finished, 'Interesting... An ant who dare let his followers call him a God..?', Toneri suddenly smirked. He really wanted to meet this person who behaved so impudently. He couldn't wait to bring him under his feet and put him in his place.

Toneri soon expeditiously arrived right in front of the distinctive Pain's Tower high in the sky. The six characteristic bodies of Pain already awaited him there, standing on top of it, alongside the stoic-faced Konan with paper wings behind her. Nagato was in the chamber inside, guarded by them all.

"So this is Sage of Six Path's fabled dojutsu, Kekkei Mora, the Rinnegan, technically on par with my own Tenseigan? However, you're too weak to control its full powers. It's just wasted on you. I will feed it to my energy vessel!", Toneri spoke first while looking at the six peculiar corpses, not caring for Konan, who was also there, then continuing, "Why do you hide in your chamber ant? Move these funny clones away, and face me in person, this is insulting to me!", Toneri spoke overlooking.

Konano furrowed her brows and started gathering some paper in her hand preparing to launch an attack, despite being quite taken aback by this person's massive chakra presence and celestial-like appearance, however, the Deva Path's body suddenly gestured for her to stop and Nagato directly spoke through it in his usual way, "Who are you? Why are you going against me?", Nagato rarely wanted to find some more information about this mysterious individual instead of directly attacking him just because he got insulted and threatened by just now. Nagato currently considered what was the best for his end goal.

Nagato was certain that this could turn into the hardest battle of his entire life and he wanted to try and solve it peacefully, in some way, first, if he could. His intuition regarding the other person's strange appearance, speaking manner, and the unheard-of terms 'Tenseigan' and the 'energy level' spelled only trouble for him. His Rinnegan also strangely resonated with the other person's similarly eternal-looking, but blue eyes from the moment they came into contact. His chakra-sensing equipment also already gave him imprints of the chakra level of multiple-tailed beasts combined in the scrawny-looking body of the intruder.

"You don't deserve to know who I am. And I'm not going against you, you're not qualified for that. I'm just returning back my belonging now that I'm on a stroll. The Gedo Mezo statue that you just summoned once again today is my clan's personal heirloom and the object of safeguarding. You and other ants, however, started brazenly stealing it a few decades ago. We decided to do nothing at first, but there was stopping your insolence. Then I will start killing all of you one by one as soon as you summon it once again from the Moon! There is no other solution but an immediate death!",

Toneri explained in a serious manner. He really decided to start killing everyone who attempted to summon the Gedo Mazo in the future. At least until he killed everyone else by colliding this world with the Moon. There was no difference whether his Giant Tenseigan was outside or inside of him for that. It was the same plan, nudging Moon from its orbit, and letting it slowly fall on the Earth. And in the meantime, he would look for any potential threats to that collision later and eliminate them early. He would then repopulate this entire rotten world from the ground up with his future wife, Hinata Hyuga. They would survive that collision because of his planetary-level future strength.

Inside his chamber, Nagato suddenly opened his eyes in astonishment after listening to his earth-shattering words. But then thinking of his strange white hair, skin, those odd black markings on his collarbones, and then even his strange clothes, then also considering his personality type, which didn't lead him to believe that he would lie, Nagato felt like those words were much likely truthful, 'From the Moon? I couldn't even imagine there was a backstory like this one in the Ninja World...', Nagato was at the top of the Ninja World for decades already, and just when he thought that he has reached the peak and seen it all, he suddenly got this kind of a barrage of huge information,

'Moreover, judging by his words, there were even more Rinnegan users, on this planet, before me, but how come nobody ever heard of them...? Everything that I knew was a lie it seems, I previously just scratched the surface. How could I delude myself like that? Why would I be special? There are probably even other masterminds, behind the scenes, for which my Akatsuki means truly nothing...', Nagato even started laughing a little in self-depreciation. But he also got an unknown motivation.

'Konan, we're leading this person to your six hundred billion of paper bombs, that is the only way to survive this. It's as we previously thought. That Madara Uchiha was probably hiding many things from us before. But, just keep calm, we're surviving this. We will realize Yahiko's dreams and create peace!', Nagato's sickly and pale face turned resolute. He decided to survive and learn the whole truth later. If the enemies of peace for so strong, then he was the only one who could accomplish it.

He also now understood that he was the only one who truly cared for common people here and the one who could actually accomplish something good for this world. Powerhouses like the one in front of him now, and 'Madara Uchiha', cared only about themselves, in the end. Why didn't this person or any of the previous Rinengan users stop all of those senseless wars, of the past, or made something good, despite having power? If he now perished here, then this world will forever be entrapped in despair Nagato realized. That was why he was so resolute to never surrender, 'Yahiko...'

'Listen to the plan, Konan!', Nagato started telepathically relaying his plans to Konan, in secret, as he decisively replied to Toneri, outside the tower, through the Deva Path, at the same time, "The Gedo Statue is now mine. It doesn't matter to me whose it was originally. I just know that I will use it to bring peace into this world and no one will stop me from achieving that!", He was ready for battle. His six avatars suddenly entered their usual battle stances together with Konoha, his chakra firing.

"Such shamelessness and stupidity! You mortal ants are truly the most disgusting!", Toneri got a little angry suddenly. He promptly moved to quickly decimate this frail, false savior in front of him.

When Nagato first summoned the Gedo Statue and wielded its power, it pierced his body with black receivers and drained his life force to turn him into a withered husk of a man. Combined with the injuries inflicted on his legs by Hanzo and the death of his best friend, he was more physically and mentally vulnerable than ever before. However, this tragedy acted as the catalyst for Nagato to start consciously wielding Rinnegan's Six Paths and realize how he could become the god he dreamed of.

He learned that the black receivers embedded in him could transmit and receive chakra and discovered that he could create those same receivers himself with the Rinnegan. By implanting another person with a black receiver, he could send his chakra to them and control their bodies.

However, this control degraded the further the individual was from Nagato as their own chakra worked to resist his until it was reduced to merely interfering with their movements and chakra rather than controlling them. Corpses were the more ideal subject of control. Their bodies lacked any resistance against his chakra and allowed him to manipulate them without restraint. And by embedding them with black receivers, he discovered that he could channel one of the Six Paths' powers into them which gave birth to the idea of using six bodies as a medium for his projection.

Each Path was implanted with black receivers throughout their entire body. Only a single one is needed but using several aids the even distribution of chakra to maximize the effect and makes them less vulnerable to having the rods removed in battle. The ones that pierce their face are used to add to their mystique with the different styles and intimidate their enemies, they weren't needed.

While Nagato was able to heal the injuries to his legs with the Naraka Path, the damage inflicted by the Gedo Statue could not be reversed until it no longer required his life force and he could restore it with huge quantities of chakra. Rather than relying on his weakened body, he chose to create six vessels that would take on the persona of Pain to lead Akatsuki in achieving world peace. The bodies that he initially chose were enemies he had encountered and killed with the Human Path.

His real body would remain hidden and in a location where he could easily provide the Six Paths of Pain. To this end, he would reside in the nearest and highest place possible when using them to achieve his transmission's maximum range and keep himself safe and secret. When out of the Amegakure, he would use his mechanical walker to place himself in those kinds of high positions.

The Six Paths of Pain was a personal technique invented by Nagato and made possible by the Outer Path, the Seventh Path, the life and death, and general control ability, of the Rinnegan. It allowed him to invest any one of the Six Paths into a human body, and animate them to act as he desired it.

All of these chosen vessels, a maximum of six in total, reflect the same eyes as the caster which, for Nagato, makes them look as if they all had the Rinnegan themselves. Each one captures separate images of what they see and each of them can see all of these images at once which allows them to share intelligence in real-time and be in perfect coordination because Nagato himself experiences everything the bodies experience so anything that he learns is instantly shared to each one of them.

The six bodies controlled by this jutsu can only possess the power of one Path: the Naraka Path, Preta Path, Human Path, Animal Path, Asura Path, or Deva Path. Once the chosen body has been invested with a Path, they are unable to use any other and it cannot be changed back to give them a different one. Only Nagato, who holds the real Rinnegan, is able to use all of the Six Paths powers.

However, it is possible for them to perform ninjutsu and genjutsu like any other ninja if necessary. But this is normally done only in the most exceptional circumstances as it is more complicated than controlling them for hand-to-hand combat and it is far easier to utilize the Paths which is superior to most other jutsu regardless. Where ordinary ninja kneads their chakra and molds it into a jutsu, Nagato must knead his chakra and then transfer it to the designated Path for them to make jutsus.

The Six Paths of Pain are not controlled like puppets but are instead possessed by his chakra. They can each think, feel, speak, and act as if they were Nagato himself with his real body serving as the overseer that links them all together. Each Path is embedded with black receivers which allows Nagato to transmit his chakra to them in high-frequency waves that can pass through any substance and over hundreds of meters. The less distance the chakra needs to travel then the more effective it becomes as they can receive more chakra at a faster rate with greater control of it, so they become more powerful and more effective the closer they are to Nagato's real physical body.

At the same time, the more Paths he has active at once then the weaker they are overall relatively speaking as he needs to divide his chakra between each of them. For instance, if he deactivated all but one of the Paths then he can devote all of his chakras to that one in particular so that it can use its abilities on the same level as himself at the cost of temporarily losing its ability. There are also abilities where the Path needs to be within a certain range of Nagato to be performed because of the extent of their power. Once reanimated, Pain's bodies are functionally alive with working organs. They are kept at peak physical condition without experiencing any of the biological changes caused by death. They breathe, sweat, and bleed but they aren't actually vital life functions as they are for an ordinary human being.

They do not feel pain, cannot be drugged or poisoned, do not suffocate, and can survive various fatal injuries. Genjutsu still affects them but only the Paths caught specifically within its effect despite the connection they share. It is only when they suffer enough physical damage that it prevents their chakra network from receiving and distributing Nagato's chakra through their body that they die. Once they are sufficiently damaged, they are beyond Nagato's control. He cannot make them move, use any of their abilities, see through their eyes or even summon them again.

Konan also prepared her technique at this time. She had a unique ninjutsu style that manipulates and weaponizes paper. Infusing scraps of paper with chakra to make an impromptu weapon was a common tactic but Konan spent her entire life honing this skill to create something more useful and deadly than most would expect.

She even held the hope that she would one day pass this ninjutsu down to her children as the beginning of a ninja clan. This dream would never come to fruition but the tragedy that stole it from her is what motivated her to create her signature ninjutsu, the Dance of the Shikigami.

With this, Konan can physically transform her body and clothing into thousands of pieces of paper with yang chakra. She possesses instinctual control over every single sheet as they are essentially an extension of herself, as much a part of her as her own hands and feet. The ninjutsu actually made her one of the few shinobi capable of levitation and flight as she could control her own movement through the air just like her paper, partly inspiring her moniker as Amegakure's Angel.

This paper is innately stronger than any other kind. It can be as hard as steel without losing any of its flexibility, water runs off of its surface without soaking it and particularly hot fire is needed to burn it. Konan's favored method of attack is to shape her paper into weapons such as spears or shuriken to assault her enemies, combining their toughness with speed and numbers. And it is well-suited for restraining her opponents as she can wrap them in enough sheets of paper that they are incapable of any movement she doesn't allow, levitating them along with the paper.

Her paper can even change its color to camouflage itself against its surrounding, based on how Konan looks human even when she's composed of paper as it perfectly replicates her true appearance. She can even create three-dimensional structures that look close enough to the real thing to fool most, potentially allowing her to surround an enemy with her weapons without them realizing it until it's too late.

And a related skill to this is Konan's ability to inscribe sealing formula directly onto her paper which she uses primarily to create her own explosive tags. Any sheet of paper can be made several times more deadly when she can turn it into an explosive as well. This in fact led to her deadliest ninjutsu which is capable of a level of destruction that few can match. And as long as she has enough chakra to sustain it, she is more paper than flesh. In this state, she doesn't feel pain and is practically invulnerable to real harm since she lacks internal organs and can replace her damaged parts by creating more paper. The way to truly her would be to destroy enough of her paper form that she can't recover or drive her to exhaustion to end the ninjutsu and leave her as vulnerable as others.