"Go notify Obito. Tell him to get here now!"
Hearing Naruto shouting from downstairs, Black Zetsu's face darkened even further.
At this point, he was already regretting telling Hinata about Hiashi's true intentions. If he had just subdued her the moment he showed up, he never would've needed Obito to come help salvage the situation.
Hinata's strength had exceeded Black Zetsu's expectations, and Naruto's arrival was an unwelcome surprise on top of that.
If he couldn't capture Hinata and Naruto immediately, then the noise of the fight alone would be enough to draw the attention of Konoha's stronger ninja—or worse, Uchiha Chizumi himself.
"Don't you dare slander my father!"
Hinata, meanwhile, was still shocked by how powerful the first strike of her Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms had been, but she clearly wasn't thinking about that right now. All she wanted was to take down the thing in front of her that so obviously wasn't anything good.
As one palm after another of the Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms came down, Hinata's hands began to glow with a pale blue light.
Black Zetsu could tell that Hinata still lacked real combat experience, but unfortunately for him, his own actual combat strength was only around the level of an ordinary chūnin. Even an inexperienced Hinata was enough to force him back again and again.
Downstairs, Naruto had already realized something was wrong. In his memory, Hinata had always been soft and gentle, but now there was obvious anger in her voice.
Forgetting all about the ramen in his hands, Naruto bolted upstairs.
And then he saw it—he saw the Hinata he knew, the one with the soft personality, actually forcing back some creepy-looking enemy with blow after blow, and the power behind every move was terrifying.
"Is… is that really Hinata?"
Naruto couldn't help blurting out his shock.
But he also noticed Hanabi on the other side, frozen in confusion.
And Black Zetsu noticed Hanabi too. He didn't dare clash head-on with Hinata now that she had suddenly powered up, but he was looking for an opening—an opening to capture Hanabi and use her to threaten Hinata.
At Konoha's cemetery, when Obito heard from the White Zetsu messenger that Black Zetsu had already clashed with Hinata—and was apparently losing—he felt a surge of irritation.
How could Black Zetsu be this useless?
Wasting time with his own agenda was bad enough, but Obito had finally found a chance to spend some quiet time "alone" with Rin. And now Black Zetsu had gone off and acted on his own, only to fail against a girl who hadn't even graduated from the Academy.
Obito felt Black Zetsu was making both himself and Uchiha Madara look bad. Still, he understood priorities.
As the space around him twisted, Obito vanished from Konoha's cemetery.
Even if his brain didn't always work, he understood this much: if they didn't take the Tenseigan immediately, what would come next was Uchiha Chizumi's iron fist of justice.
Back at Hinata's house, as she realized no matter what she did, her Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms couldn't hit Black Zetsu, and Black Zetsu was getting closer and closer to Hanabi, panic inevitably began creeping into her eyes.
But the more panicked she became, the more her movements lost structure—and the messier her technique became, the more easily Black Zetsu handled her.
"That's enough."
Just as Hinata was about to move into the second sequence of the Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms, a hand suddenly reached out from thin air and clamped down hard on her wrist.
In the frightened eyes of Hinata, Naruto, and Hanabi, a living person stepped out of empty space.
"Useless. You can't even handle something this simple?"
Obito swept a glance over Black Zetsu's somewhat battered state, carrying himself exactly like the mastermind he wanted others to see.
"Madara-sama, the thing behind that girl is the Tenseigan!"
"That's all we need to take!"
"Our fight may already have drawn the attention of that Uchiha brat."
Black Zetsu no longer cared about Obito calling him useless. He could already feel it—somewhere farther away, a scorching chakra was closing in, so intense it felt like it could set people on fire.
"Move!"
Hearing that, Obito acted at once. He flung Hinata aside, then pressed one hand to the Great Tenseigan floating behind her and drew it straight into Kamui space.
As the air warped again, Obito and Black Zetsu disappeared into the Kamui dimension without the slightest hesitation. To Naruto and Hinata, the mysterious man who had just appeared seemed to vanish back into thin air just as suddenly.
Only then did Naruto finally make it to Hinata's side, using his own body to cushion her fall.
By the time Hinata, Naruto, and Hanabi were still trying to steady their breathing, Uchiha Chizumi had already appeared inside Hinata's house. The moment he saw the gaping hole smashed through the wall and the blood at the corner of Hinata's mouth, he immediately understood what had happened.
"Teacher, go after that mysterious guy! He stole something from Hinata!"
The moment Naruto saw Chizumi, the confusion in his heart immediately settled down.
But then the memory of that mysterious man snatching away the thing that had been floating behind Hinata—whatever it was—sent him right back into panic, and he instinctively turned to Chizumi for help.
"Did he appear out of nowhere, then disappear the same way?"
Uchiha Chizumi looked at the Tenseigan that Hinata had only just begun awakening, then shifted his gaze to Naruto.
"Yes, yes, exactly like that! Teacher, can you still catch him?"
Naruto looked up at him anxiously. He didn't know what exactly had been taken, but instinctively, he felt it had to be something incredibly important to Hinata.
"I haven't started learning space-time ninjutsu yet. Catching him would be very difficult."
Uchiha Chizumi made no move to pursue Obito. Without mastering space-time ninjutsu himself, even if he could force Obito to keep using intangibility, once Obito truly decided to leave, there was nothing he could do to stop him.
Kamui really was an absurdly broken technique—broken enough that it was practically forcing Chizumi to learn Flying Thunder God.
"I see…"
Hearing that, Naruto fell silent.
But only for a moment. Soon his attention shifted back to Hinata, who still looked lost.
In the instant Uchiha Chizumi appeared, Hinata had instinctively felt a trace of hostility toward him.
After all… after all, he was the one who had killed her father.
But then she remembered what that pitch-black creature had said—that her father had created the Tenseigan for her sake—and that small spark of hostility vanished just as quickly, replaced instead by a deep sense of guilt.
In Hinata's young mind, part of her father's sin… belonged to her too.