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Chapter 4 — Losing a Precious Orb
"No—!"
Seeing Konan's throat pierced by the black rod, Alex's heart plummeted; terror washed over him.
If she died, he would die too...
Obito Uchiha's stab was vicious and treacherous. Alex hadn't even seen how the ambush was carried out—one blink and Konan's throat had been impaled.
"Huh? Why isn't she bleeding?" Alex blinked, then realized.
Paper Dance of the Shikigami!
This was Konan's unique Paper Release technique—she could turn her body into paper, granting massive immunity to physical attacks.
"You didn't die?!" Obito's pupils shrank; shock rippled across him.
Just as Alex had guessed, the pierced Konan did not die. Her expression hadn't even changed.
She ignored the black rod that went through her throat and instead waved her hand; a torrent of paper flew from her body—no, they were already lit—explosive tags.
As Obito stood stunned within arm's reach, tag after tag plastered itself all over his body.
Then—BOOM.
Explosions roared. The chain of blasts swallowed Obito in a firestorm.
Konan used the blast's shockwave to wrench free from the rod and stagger backward.
She tapped the surface of the sea with her feet several times, using them to dissipate the force, and fell onto the water tens of meters away.
In midair, her gaze never left the blast's center for a single second.
"Will this one work?"
Everyone in Akatsuki had known she could paper-ify her body, but she never revealed this trump card—immunity to lethal injury—before. She saved it for exactly this kind of counterstrike: when the enemy thought victory was certain.
Bang—!
Amid the continuous explosions, an odd sound appeared. The fire-wrapped Obito dissolved into a puff of white smoke—another shadow clone.
"How devious..." Alex muttered inwardly.
Now, perhaps because of his interference, Konan and Obito's fight was already diverging from what Alex had seen in the anime. He had to keep full focus and constantly monitor the battlefield to prevent Konan's death.
Tens of meters away, Konan landed steadily on the sea.
"You're caught..."
At that instant, a whisper like a demon slid into her ear—so close it felt like someone was whispering beside her.
And indeed that was the case.
Behind Konan, a transparent swirl formed in an instant. A pale right hand shot out and lightning-fast clamped onto her right shoulder.
"It's over." Obito emerged fully from the vortex.
"You're caught. Only one person can escape me—too bad he's no longer in this world."
"Your momentary immunity was surprising, but it ends here."
Kamui had already activated.
Though Obito's hand pressed lightly on her shoulder with no obvious force, Konan felt as if all her strength drained away. Her body went limp; her right hand could no longer grip the paper blade—it fell from her grasp.
The white sheets circling her drifted down. Her chakra stilled.
Her body materialized back into flesh and blood. A strange spatial force surrounded her, leaving her utterly unable to resist.
A cascade of swirling afterimages appeared on her skin as she was being drawn into Kamui's dimension.
"Is this the end... I'm not ready—Yahiko, Nagato..."
Konan's heart sank into the abyss. Faces of Yahiko and Nagato flashed through her mind; the last image fixed on the day Nagato spoke with Naruto.
"Sorry, Naruto. The world you describe I will not see. I cannot end the greatest darkness of the shinobi world..."
She wasn't afraid of death—only regret haunted her for unfinished duty.
"No! You cannot die!!"
At the critical moment, Alex moved.
Boom! The paper blade that had been falling midair detonated.
All the white sheets scattered across the western surface, under Alex's control, transformed into countless three-inch daggers and sped toward every inch of Obito's body.
Since he originated from Konan's Paper Release, he could naturally manipulate part of the white paper.
"Impossible!" Obito's mind trembled as the dense barrage closed in from every direction.
"You've already lost all resistance. You cannot fight back or control those papers!" he snarled inwardly, confident in his Kamui. Over the years, once he'd captured someone, no one could resist him—escape was impossible. They were tools to be controlled, and disobedient tools must be destroyed.
How, then, could Konan still manage to control paper to attack? Obito could not fathom it.
But denial could wait—the attack was upon him.
At the moment the blades neared, Obito gave up on pulling Konan into Kamui. He instantly activated his intangibility.
The right hand that had rested on Konan's shoulder passed through her body like a phantom. Without Kamui's interference, Konan immediately felt her body regain life—chakra surged back.
She sprang away from Obito.
At the same time, the dense three-inch daggers Alex directed pierced Obito's body.
Yet it was futile.
When Obito phased, he became like a non-existent form; there was only an illusion where his body had been. Alex watched in helpless regret as Obito seemed unharmed.
But in the next moment, Obito's face contorted in pain; his right eye quivered violently as if suffering intense torment.
"What the—there shouldn't be any real damage—" Alex's thought cut off. A strange, absurd realization rose in his chest.
Obito was injured—but in a hidden, rather peculiar place.
A slit appeared in the fabric across his crotch. From that gap, a round white orb squeezed out.
As Obito bucked and writhed from the pain, the gap could no longer contain the orb; it slipped free and tumbled down.
Plop. The orb dropped into the water.
At that moment, a small black fish glided over, sniffed the white sphere, and swallowed it in one bite.
"No!!" Obito roared, a raw, tortured scream that startled the small fish into fleeing deeper into the sea, vanishing from sight.
"That was Obito's—lychee, wasn't it? The right-side lychee?"
What a tragic loss of a precious orb...
In that instant, even as a man, Alex couldn't help but feel a sliver of sympathy for Obito.
Perhaps one of the tiny daggers had struck at an awkward angle; perhaps after Obito's right half had once been shattered and rebuilt, a strand of meridian still lagged.
As a result, his right-side lychee had failed to phase along with the rest of his body—leading to this catastrophic loss.
The dramatic scene hit Konan, who had just landed. Even she, cold as ice, parted her lips slightly and widened her eyes.
It wasn't shock so much as being utterly stunned—fried to the core.
For a moment she forgot why her paper release had autonomously launched the attack after she'd briefly lost resistance.
Alex had already returned to his original position—at Konan's sternum.
Feeling again the familiar softness and the subtle scent, satisfaction settled in his chest.
"This is where I belong."
He looked toward Obito in the distance and could still sense the explosion of his wrath and murderous intent even from afar.
"Next up—probably the classic scene. Konan should sense the trap I set..."