What made Madara different from every other shinobi was this: everyone else either knelt and took what they were given, or refused to kneel and walked away with absolutely nothing.
Madara? Madara wanted to stand tall and still get paid.
That was exactly how he played it when he deceived Obito back in the day.
On one hand, he kept up his lofty, untouchable aura.
On the other, he played the wise old guide, deeply concerned for the sake of the next generation.
Back then, Madara had already handed the Rinnegan over to Nagato.
He was ancient and frail, relying entirely on the Outer Path Demonic Statue just to keep his lungs pumping.
You could easily say he was insanely weak.
His only insurance policy was a single Sharingan shoved into his eye socket—looted from some unlucky bastard—which gave him basic vision and a one-time Izanagi for emergencies.
Now, history was repeating itself.
Right at this moment, he was also incomparably weak.
However, his Edo Tensei body meant he was immortal. That was way more useful than a one-and-done Izanagi.
In that case, there was absolutely no reason he couldn't play Granny Chiyo the exact same way he played Obito.
The only issue was that he couldn't make it too obvious.
He had to cook up a solid excuse.
Otherwise, that damn Tobirama would definitely sniff out something suspicious.
Madara had already squeezed enough intel out of Hashirama.
He knew Tobirama and Orochimaru spent the vast majority of their time cooped up researching new jutsu.
Unless it was absolutely necessary, they wouldn't bother checking in on unrelated crap.
In other words, as long as he fabricated a solid excuse and dodged Tobirama's initial wave of scrutiny, he had a genuine shot at finishing his master plan while that Senju brat wasn't looking!
A complete and successful resurrection!
"Hashirama, we've seen enough of Amegakure. Take me to see the current Konoha. After that, I want to tour all Five Great Shinobi Villages and confirm exactly what this new world looks like."
After Hashirama trotted back with the snacks, Madara delivered his request in a distant calm tone.
This was the simplest, most direct smokescreen Madara could think up: openly demand a grand tour of all Five Great Shinobi Villages just to mask his true objective of hitting Sunagakure.
As for Hashirama, his trusty chaperone?
Without Tobirama hovering over them, a naive idiot like Hashirama could easily get duped by any random excuse when the time came.
"All right! But that formula—I still want to..."
Hashirama looked thrilled and deeply relieved that Madara actually took the initiative to learn about the Five Great Nations.
This meant Madara was finally willing to understand and accept the modern ninja world.
However, Hashirama's mind was still totally stuck on that sensory formula for Edo Tensei bodies.
After all, he just bought a mountain of delicious street food exactly so he could devour a massive feast once his taste buds came back online.
Besides, road-tripping across the Five Great Nations with Madara totally counted as a vacation, right?
What kind of trash vacation would it be if he had no bodily sensation and couldn't enjoy eating, drinking, and relaxing?
"Mm."
Madara agreed smoothly, throwing on a mask of total indifference.
Restoring his senses was his actual goal from the very beginning.
Especially since his current vessel was so pathetically feeble that he barely had a scrap of sensory ability left.
Only after booting his senses back up could he confirm a few crucial details.
For instance, when the time came, he had to verify whether Granny Chiyo's forbidden resurrection jutsu was actually reliable.
Without chakra-based sensory abilities, he had to rely on his physical body to feel things out.
"Awesome! Then let's go!"
Seeing Madara nod along, Hashirama practically beamed.
He grabbed the wheelchair handles and sprinted straight toward the laboratory.
As a VIP user—meaning top-tier guinea pig—of Amegakure's experimental institute, Senju Hashirama naturally had access to a dignified VIP fast-pass lane.
Moreover, the Second Hokage had just swung by earlier to give the staff a heads-up.
Because of that, Hashirama and Madara got to skip the lines and didn't even have to burn any contribution points.
The staff immediately prepped them for the procedure.
"Madara, look at this. Behold the dignity and prestige of the God of Shinobi." Hashirama proudly tilted his chin up, acting like a kid showing off a shiny new toy.
"Idiot," Madara shot back flatly.
Inwardly, though, a weird sense of unease crept in.
'Everything is going way too smoothly,' Madara thought. 'It feels like I just cut the line straight into a damn crematorium furnace.'
Fortunately, Tobirama never showed his face during the prep.
The guy who walked in to install the formula was the snake freak called Orochimaru.
Nothing seemed sketchy about the process either...
"Wait. What exactly are you putting inside my body?"
Halfway through the procedure, Madara snapped his hand up to stop Orochimaru, glaring at him with suspicion.
He sure as hell hadn't forgotten that just days ago, that evil, depraved bastard Tobirama had stuffed a chakra-targeting aphrodisiac inside this very vessel!
Now, Orochimaru's shady little movements set off all his alarm bells.
"You mean this?" Orochimaru gestured to the scroll pinched in his fingers.
"This is just an ordinary sealing scroll. Surely the great Lord Madara can recognize a basic tool? Ah, right. Madara-sama currently has no sensory perception. That was my oversight."
"…A sealing scroll?"
Orochimaru was speaking his genuine thoughts, but to Madara's paranoid ears, it sounded like pure, sarcastic mockery.
"This formula only restores physical sensation. It doesn't actually reboot your internal organs. If I had to describe it, it acts exactly like a localized genjutsu placed on an Edo Tensei body.
So, if you two plan on using this upgrade to enjoy a meal, you need a scroll seal inside your chest cavity. Otherwise, the food won't digest. Once you swallow it, it's just going to pile up inside your hollow bodies."
Orochimaru offered the smooth explanation.
The whole idea actually came straight from Sasori, the original creator of the formula.
When Sasori started using his tongue to sample random poisons, he quickly realized some of that toxic junk was highly corrosive.
To avoid melting himself from the inside out, he hooked a storage container right to his puppet throat to catch the chemicals.
That sparked Orochimaru's brilliant idea to just shove a sealing scroll into an Edo Tensei zombie.
After hearing the perfectly logical reason, Madara clamped his mouth shut and let Orochimaru install the thing.
However, what Madara didn't realize was that sealing scrolls actually had a hard cap on their storage capacity.
It wasn't that Madara didn't know this basic fact. He just totally overlooked the minor detail and paid it no mind.
For the clients like Pakura earlier, Orochimaru knew they were going to stuff their faces, so he tossed them a few extra backup scrolls.
After all, installing them into an Edo Tensei body was incredibly convenient.
You just needed someone else—or yourself—to punch a hole straight through your chest and slide the scroll right in.
But for Madara and Hashirama? Orochimaru completely "forgot" to mention that little detail.
Furthermore, Hashirama's scroll was completely empty.
Madara's scroll, however, already had a little surprise packed inside.
Because the formula on that specific scroll had been modified to remain in a constantly open state, the second it reached maximum capacity, the very first item placed inside it would get auto-ejected!
And the very first item stored inside that scroll was Tobirama's specially brewed, chakra-targeting aphrodisiac.
According to Tobirama's meticulous testing, when this aphrodisiac crashed into Sasori's sensory formula, the resulting effect would become way greater than the sum of its parts.
As for the specific side effects, Tobirama hadn't conducted any human trials yet.
He flat-out refused to test it on regular people.
He decided he would just wait for the inevitable and observe Madara's reaction to gather the data.
What?
Tobirama swore on his life that he wouldn't lay a finger on Madara after reviving him?
Exactly.
He hadn't lifted a single finger. Wasn't Orochimaru the one doing the surgery?
And just like that, a ticking time bomb was planted squarely inside Uchiha Madara's chest.
To make matters worse, this new formula held one more massive flaw specifically for Madara.
The senses could indeed be freely toggled on and off, but flipping that switch demanded a chunk of chakra and precise chakra control.
The threshold wasn't even high.
Hitting the basic chakra levels of a standard chūnin would be more than enough.
But given Madara's current crippled state, he absolutely couldn't pull it off.
In other words, Madara had absolutely no way to turn the formula off!