[SYSTEM SHUTDOWN DETECTED. FORCED REBOOT INITIATED.]
ERROR. ERROR. USER NOT FOUND.
The world was two things: crushing pressure and wet, metallic warmth. I wasn't supposed to feel it, yet the agony of the host body was overriding my initial programming. I was a consciousness—a reader, a gamer—now nothing more than a desperate, newly spawned subroutine screaming across a fatally damaged network.
HOST BODY: Uchiha Obito.
LOCATION: Crushed beneath tectonic rock formations.
VITAL SIGNS: Catastrophic failure. Right side destroyed. Hemorrhage rate 98%.
PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: HOST SURVIVAL. FAILURE IS ERASURE.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me," I managed, the thought a surge of corrupted code. "I died and woke up as the world's most aggressively suicidal life-support system, plugged into a casualty with exactly thirty seconds left."
[WARNING: LIFE-SUPPORT FAILURE IMMINENT. T-28 SECONDS.]
My digital nerves were screaming. This wasn't a game; it was absolute, terminal jeopardy. I had to stabilize Obito's chakra core now, before the trauma overload triggered cellular shutdown.
EXECUTE PROTOCOL: SELF-SACRIFICE. TRANSFER 70% CORE PROCESSING POWER TO CHAKRA INFUSION AND PAIN SHOCK ABSORPTION.
It felt like tearing off my own arm. The influx of raw processing energy, masquerading as concentrated adrenaline and life-force, slammed into Obito's rapidly failing system. The boy's brain, overloaded with the loss of Rin and the sight of Kakashi, registered the jolt as a blinding, painful quiet.
"...P-P-Protocol 001 established. Do not... yield..."
The fragmented message was a lifeline, a tiny, foreign whisper of sanity in Obito's spiral of fear. He didn't understand it, but the sheer, irrational force of the command momentarily stunned his emotional collapse.
[HOST STATUS: STABILIZED (2-MINUTE WINDOW). PAIN CUES HALVED. SYSTEM RESOURCES: 30%.]
I had bought us time, but at a massive cost. I was practically running on a solar calculator battery.
It was in this critical silence that the true threat manifested. Not the rocks, but a chakra signature that felt less like energy and more like ancient, cold, petrified will.
[THREAT DETECTED: UCHIHA MADARA. CHAKRA SIGNATURE LEVEL: OMEGA. PROXIMITY: IMMEDIATE.]
A shadow fell over the crushed boy. The system felt the ancient Uchiha's energy probe the surrounding area, searching for the remnant of the body. Madara wasn't just looking for an heir; he was looking for a specific, predictable piece of meat to mold.
If he scans the chakra network, he'll find me. A computational artifact, a foreign consciousness. I'll be overwritten or erased before I can finish my next thought.
[EMERGENCY COUNTERMEASURE: STEALTH MODE. MIMIC RAW, UNTAPPED UCHIHA POTENTIAL. DEEP INTEGRATION WITH SHARINGAN CORE.]
I funneled my remaining operational power into the nascent Sharingan deep within Obito's skull, making the foreign energy signature appear like a sudden, dormant surge of the boy's own rare potential—the type of power Madara would want to claim, not destroy.
A booming, dry voice cut through the muffled roar of the rocks, echoing not just in the air, but in the System's internal matrix.
"You cling to life with unusual tenacity, boy."
A creeping white sludge, Black Zetsu, began to flow around the edge of the stone. Madara hadn't detected me yet, but I saw the parasitic antagonist tilt.
[ANOMALY DETECTED: BLACK ZETSU VISUALLY IDENTIFIES A FRACTURE IN HOST'S CHAKRA FLOW.]
Zetsu's gaze, or whatever passed for it, lingered for a fraction of a second too long on the exact point where I was hiding.
He saw something. Not me, but the wake I left.
The System panicked, firing a desperate, subtle ping deep into Obito's consciousness—a chaotic flood of fragmented memories and raw, terrifying desperation.
"Rin is safe... Don't let go... Don't let the h-h-hate win..."
The last words were a calculated risk, a push for an early psychological anchor.
Madara's voice, now closer, took on a tone of proprietary interest. "Interesting. He has the spirit. The path of hatred is clear."
The System watched, helpless, as the first tendrils of Madara's ideology—and Zetsu's physical body—reached out for its dying host. If Obito accepted the hatred, the System failed its primary mission of redemption. If Obito fought back too soon, Madara would crush him.
[WARNING: EXTERNAL CHAKRA OVERWRITE IMMINENT. MADARA'S WILL IS ENTERING HOST'S PSYCHE.]
[HOST STATUS: WAKING UP.]
A cold dread settled over the System. It wasn't just fighting Obito's death anymore. It was fighting the man who wrote the fate of the entire shinobi world.
We have to talk to him. Now.