One street over, hidden in the shadow of a building.
Obito Uchiha was paralyzed, held in place by Black Zetsu's grip. His eyes were glued to the window of Rin's house, his Sharingan spinning so fast the three tomoe were a blurred ring.
Two hours had passed since Rin led Saiki inside. Two hours since Saiki had finally emerged alone.
Two hours. Enough time for a lifetime of memories to be incinerated. Enough time for a boy's world to turn to ash.
"Let me go... LET ME GO!!!" Obito rasped, his voice sounding like a wounded beast. "I'm going to... I'm going to kill that bastard!!!"
Black Zetsu clung to him like a parasite, his voice oily and amused. "Kill Saiki? You? He could crush you like a bug without moving a finger."
"I DON'T CARE!!!" Obito struggled, his chakra going berserk. "I won't... I won't just stand here while Rin is—"
"While Rin is what?" Zetsu interrupted, his voice dripping with malice. "While she is possessed? While she is defiled? Obito, don't you see? She did it willingly. She loves him. She gave herself to him with a smile."
The words were poisoned needles in Obito's heart.
"You lie... Rin... she wouldn't..." Obito's voice began to break.
"Lie? Then tell me, why did she invite him in? Why did she kiss him? Why did she take his hand to her bedroom? Stop lying to yourself—Rin never loved you. Her heart has always belonged to Saiki."
Obito began to shake violently. He stared at that window, his mind involuntarily projecting images—Rin beneath Saiki, her eyes glazed, her lips parted in moans he would never hear...
No. Stop. That's my Rin. The Rin I swore to protect. The Rin I would die for. How can she be...
"AAAAAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
Obito let out a silent, soul-shattering scream. The last thread of his logic snapped. Two trails of warm liquid slid from his eyes. They weren't tears. They were blood. Crimson tracks carved paths down his face, dripping into the shadows.
And his eyes—
The three tomoe spun, warped, and fused, transforming into a bizarre, swirling triangular pattern.
The Mangekyo Sharingan. The forbidden eye of the Uchiha, awakened through the ultimate catalyst of grief and despair.
Black Zetsu felt the sudden surge of Yin chakra and the terrifying power of the new eyes. He grinned. Stage one of the plan was a perfect success.
But then, across the street—
Saiki stopped walking. He turned slowly, his gaze like a frozen blade, locking onto the shadows where Obito and Zetsu were hiding.
He felt it. That familiar, disgusting chill. And the sudden, volcanic eruption of ocular power.
Saiki's lips curled into a cold, lethal arc.
Found you.
Saiki vanished.
BOOM—!!!
The outer wall where Obito and Zetsu were hiding was obliterated by an invisible force. Amidst the swirling dust, Saiki's silhouette manifested. His clothes were pristine, his hair fluttering in a non-existent wind. His eyes were voids of killing intent.
He looked at the possessed Obito, at the blood-tears, and the new Mangekyo. His voice was a flat, terrifying monotone.
"Black Zetsu. Obito Uchiha."
"Have you decided how you want to die?"
Faced with Saiki's sudden appearance, Black Zetsu nearly detached from Obito in shock. He had used a top-tier barrier to hide their presence. Even a god shouldn't have been able to pinpoint them so accurately!
But reality was standing right in front of him. Saiki was a god.
Obito moved first. He was beyond reason.
"I'LL KILL YOU—!!!"
A manic shriek erupted from Obito's throat. His Mangekyo spun with a frantic intensity. The sheer hatred in his heart had overwritten his brain. He lunged forward, condensing a high-density chakra blade in his right hand.
"DIE!!!"
The strike carried the full weight of his despair. He was fast, moving in a blur. Saiki watched the blade approaching with total indifference. He didn't even bother to dodge. He raised his left hand, forming a fist, and swung to meet the attack.
BAM!
The fist met the blade, shattering the chakra weapon. But something strange happened. Saiki's fist passed right through Obito's torso!
No impact. No resistance. Obito's body had become an intangible ghost, existing in a different space.
"Mm?" Saiki arched an eyebrow.
He withdrew his fist, looking at his unmarked hand, then at Obito's translucent form.
Kamui. The space-time ability of his Mangekyo.
Just like the original story, the weak-willed boy had chosen to hide—not to fight, not to resist, but to crawl into a world of his own creation to escape reality.
Saiki felt a flicker of pity, but it was instantly swallowed by his rage. Pity was not forgiveness. They had touched his people. They had to pay.
"HAHAHAHA!!!"
Obito laughed like a lunatic, his eyes wide with a manic glee. "See that?! This is the power of the Uchiha! You can't touch me! You can never beat me!!"
He lunged again, flickering between reality and the void, weaving jutsu into his strikes. To an outsider, he seemed to hold the absolute advantage.
But Saiki just watched him like he was a clown in a circus.
"Kamui?" Saiki finally spoke, his voice dripping with mockery. "Hiding in a hole of your own making... you think this is power?"
Obito's laughter stopped. "What do you know?!" he roared. "You took Rin! You know nothing! This is the ultimate power! IT IS INVINCIBLE!!"
"Invincible?" Saiki smiled. It was a cruel, terminal smile. "Let me show you what invincible actually looks like."
In that heartbeat—
The white Auspicious Cloud manifested over Saiki's head. It was small, but it radiated an aura that felt like it could suppress the heavens themselves. Threads of white light fell from the cloud like a waterfall, enveloping a ten-meter radius around Saiki.
This was his primordial essence—his "Dao."
The moment the cloud appeared, the space in that radius was pinned down. The air stopped flowing. The light froze. The dust hung static. Sound itself died.
Everything was fixed. Including Obito's "ghost" form.
Kamui worked by shunting parts of the body to a dimension overlapping reality. But Saiki had just stabilized the rules of space in this area.
The channel was forcibly closed.
Obito's face went from manic to terminal horror. He could feel his connection to the void being severed. His body was forced back into a single dimension.
"No... impossible..." Obito's voice shook.
Saiki didn't give him a second to talk. He vanished.
In the next microsecond, he was in Obito's face. He raised his right hand, fingers stiffened into a blade. White light condensed on his tips.
He swung. It was a casual, lazy motion. But it carried the weight of the universe.
Obito tried to move, but the solidified space held him like a fly in amber. He could only watch as the invisible edge reached his neck.
SQUELCH.
It was a quiet sound. Obito's head was severed from his shoulders. No blood sprayed—the white energy cauterized and annihilated the wound instantly.
Obito's face remained frozen in a mask of shock, resentment, and a deep, hollow confusion. He died without ever understanding why his "god-tier" power was so fragile, or why Rin had chosen Saiki over him. He died a pathetic coward who never faced the world.
The head hit the dirt. The body followed.
Saiki leaned down and picked up the head, using a wisp of energy to clean the face. Then he looked at the ground.
Black Zetsu had detached from the corpse and was attempting to melt into the earth to escape.
Saiki's left hand made a grasping motion at the air.
A massive hand of white energy "pried" Zetsu out of the dirt like a weed, clutching him in an inescapable grip. Zetsu writhed and twisted, but the energy hand was a cage of absolute power.
"Impossible..." Zetsu's voice finally registered true terror. "How can you lock space? This isn't Ninjutsu... what is this power?!"
He had watched the world for a thousand years. He knew every jutsu, every Bloodline Limit, and even the Sage of Six Paths' Yin-Yang Release. But this... this was a direct intervention of the world's rules. This was beyond "Technique."
"Tell me," Saiki looked at the struggling mass of black sludge. "Where is Madara Uchiha?"
Zetsu stopped moving. His half-face twisted into a hideous, suicidal grin. "Go... to hell."
"No?" Saiki's gaze turned freezing.
The energy hand began to contract, squeezing the essence of the creature. Zetsu let out a shriek—it wasn't physical pain, but a soul-level erosion. He realized Saiki could actually kill him. Not seal him, not imprison him—erase him.
Zetsu wasn't afraid of death—or so he thought. But facing absolute annihilation, the terror of a thousand years finally caught up to him.
"KILL ME THEN!" Zetsu roared. "You'll never find him! NEVER!!!"
Saiki's patience reached its end. He wasn't a master of mind-reading or Genjutsu—his power system was too different to be compatible with Zetsu's fragmented, ancient psyche. If he forced a memory-probe, Zetsu's consciousness would simply shatter, giving him nothing.
Furthermore, Zetsu was a construct of Yin-Yang Release. He was too dangerous to be left to standard interrogation.
Saiki released the pressure slightly, then pressed his right index finger against Zetsu's "forehead." A needle of hyper-purified Sage energy was driven into the creature's core.
"AAAAAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
Zetsu's scream tore through the night. The energy ravaged his structure, dismantling his very will to resist. It was the most primitive, brutal method of breaking a subject.
"Speak," Saiki whispered like the God of Death. "Where is he?"
Zetsu's cries grew faint. He held on with a final, stubborn tenacity.
Seeing that torture wouldn't yield a map, Saiki withdrew his finger. Zetsu went limp in his hand, a mass of broken sludge. Saiki kept him alive. The creature still had uses.
And even if Zetsu wouldn't talk, Saiki knew where the rats liked to hide.
BANG!
The door to the Hokage's office was kicked open.
Tsunade looked up from her desk. When she saw what was in Saiki's hands, her pupils shrank to pinpricks.
"Saiki... what...?"
Saiki strode in. The two Anbu in the corner took the hint and vanished, closing the door behind them.
"We had an intruder." Saiki tossed Obito's head onto the desk. He dropped the broken Black Zetsu beside it. "Obito Uchiha. He conspired with a foreign entity to harm the Leaf. I executed him on site."
Tsunade stared at the head. She recognized the boy—the one who was always late, the hot-headed dreamer who wanted to be Hokage. He had been a kind soul. And now, his vacant eyes were staring at her.
"How could he..." she whispered.
"He awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan," Saiki said, pointing to the eyes. "Space-time ability. Dangerous. But the eyes are dead now. Keep them secure; they might be useful later."
Tsunade took a heavy breath, pushing down her nausea. She sealed the head into a specialized scroll. Then she looked at the black sludge. "And this?"
"Black Zetsu. A creation of Madara Uchiha," Saiki said. "Or more accurately, a manifestation of Kaguya Otsutsuki's will."
Tsunade's expression turned grim. She had heard of Madara being alive from Saiki, but seeing the evidence in person was another matter entirely. The Ghost of the Uchiha was a nightmare come to life.
"What do you intend to do?" she asked.
Saiki looked out the window, his gaze piercing the distance toward the Land of Rain.
"I'm going to the Rain. Personally."
Tsunade's heart sank. She stood up, cupping his face in her hands. "Saiki, you..."
"I know what you're going to say." Saiki pulled her into his arms, his voice soft but immovable. "But Madara has already moved against my people. He targeted Rin today. Tomorrow it could be you, or Kushina, or Nono'u. I'm not waiting anymore."
He looked into her eyes with a frightening intensity. "I will not allow any of you to be threatened again."
Tsunade saw the man Saiki had become. She saw the protector and the god. She knew she couldn't stop him. Two years ago, he had gone to avenge a husband. Now, he was going to save a world.
"Promise me," she whispered, her voice cracking. "It won't be like the last time."
Saiki smiled tenderly. He kissed her forehead. "I promise. I am far stronger than I was two years ago. Madara is not my peer."
Tsunade nodded, pressing her lips to his in a deep, desperate kiss full of fear and love.
"Come home," she whispered against his lips.
"I will."
Saiki turned and leaped from the window. The Auspicious Cloud manifested beneath him, carrying him into the night toward the Land of Rain.
Tsunade watched him disappear, then sat back at her desk. She stared at the mountain of paperwork, but the words were gibberish to her. Her soul was already flying with him.
In the Land of Rain, where the storm never ends.
Deep underground, in a massive cavern.
The Gedo Mazo stood like a demonic pillar. Tubes extended from the statue to two "people."
One was the withered, ancient husk of Madara Uchiha, barely a person anymore.
The other was the red-haired, emaciated Nagato. He looked even more haggard than two years ago.
The cave was a tomb.
Suddenly, Madara Uchiha's eyes snapped open.