"Damn it… why is it him?"
Obito let out a strangled, meaningless screech.
His body reacted faster than his brain—at the instant he saw Uchiha Kai, his Mangekyō spun like it was about to catch fire.
Kamui!!
And to avoid that yellowish mess he'd suffered earlier, he deliberately opened the vortex toward a different "spot" inside the Kamui space.
Whoosh—!
But the moment the portal opened, a red-black sphere of condensed destruction slammed toward his face—
More precisely…
A Tailed Beast Bomb.
It collided point-blank with an Obito who was far too eager to escape.
BOOOOM—!!
The blast hit dead-on.
Even though Obito's reaction was lightning fast—phasing instantly—
half his mask was still scraped away, exposing a jagged, ugly edge beneath.
He glanced at the hill behind him that had been flattened into nothing…
and finally lost it completely.
"*&%￥#—KAKASHI!!"
Who the hell stores a thing like that inside Kamui?!
But after the outburst, his instincts snapped back into place.
He opened the portal again.
Woom.
A small vortex twisted into shape in front of him.
This time—no surprises.
No "accidents."
Obito didn't hesitate. He dove straight in.
Fast. Clean. Decisive.
Like he'd rehearsed it.
But—
Wasn't he just seconds ago roaring about getting justice for his subordinate?
Kisame's face froze.
The fanatic excitement melted away into blank shock.
What… was he looking at?
"Madara-sama"… the godlike Madara-sama…
had screamed and run the moment he saw that brat's face?
The first attempt failed—he got blasted.
And now he was running again?
No.
That couldn't be real.
Kisame tilted his head into the rain, not daring to open his eyes.
In that moment, he could only pray it had been a hallucination.
"…So he's really that afraid?"
Beside him, Itachi's brow lifted slightly.
This level of panic—borderline collapse—was beyond what Itachi expected.
Because he'd been knocked out back then, he didn't fully know the details of the earlier beating.
So this was… new.
What exactly had their "second-in-command" done to this so-called ancestor?
Compared to their stunned silence, Zetsu's reaction was almost normal.
Both hands—black and white—covered its mouth as it put on an exaggerated gasp.
"Aiyaa~~ Madara-sama runs so fast, looks like—mmph—MMMPH!!"
THUD—!!
The words cut off mid-syllable.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
A Tailed Beast Bomb fell from above and smashed Zetsu straight into the mud.
Face-first.
Mouth full of filthy sludge.
And Jiraiya stared at that Tailed Beast Bomb, the feeling growing more familiar by the second…
…
But at the very moment Obito was about to fully slip into Kamui—
Kai moved.
He lifted his head, eyes locking onto that back as it disappeared into the vortex.
Then he casually raised his small, clean hands and curved his lips into a playful smile.
"Yo. Old friends meet up and you're running?"
"Since you're already here, how about we chat?"
"Chat your—!" Obito didn't even look back. He fired off a curse and kept going.
And this time, Kamui didn't spit out anything strange.
That alone made him relax.
For a heartbeat.
Then he felt something off—
a weird chill, like someone had just grabbed him by the fate.
But he forced the thought down.
He was already phasing.
He was already inside.
No matter how strong Kai was—
he couldn't chase into Kamui, right?
"Tsk. You chose this yourself."
Kai shook his head like he'd seen this movie too many times.
Then he clapped his hands together once.
PA—!
In the next instant, Kai's body erupted with layered power.
Crackle—! Lightning flared.
Hiss—! Chakra pressure spiked, steaming the rain into mist around him.
Even without extra time to stack more tricks, what he had was already plenty.
Kai reached out—
not for Obito himself, but for the only thing still "connected" to this side of space.
The hem of that gray robe.
And he grabbed it.
Hard.
"Come back out."
Kai's voice was light.
But the force behind it was terrifying.
"Come back out—now."
A violent pull exploded from Kai's arm.
It looked less like yanking someone from a portal…
and more like pulling a fish out of a whirlpool by pure strength.
In Kisame's stunned stare, Itachi's narrowing gaze, and Zetsu's half-excited half-panicked squirming—
the "Madara" who had just escaped into Kamui…
was forcibly ripped back out of the vortex.
Like a chicken being dragged out by the scruff.
WHAM—!
Kai tossed him into the mud like discarded trash.
Ten days had passed since the night of the massacre.
Cooldown was ready.
Kai had been waiting nearby for exactly this reason.
He didn't wait here to let Obito run.
As for killing him?
Kai had no intention of ending Obito too early.
A one-time laugh and an endless supply of laughs—he knew the difference.
Obito was like a fat leek.
You harvest a cut when it's ripe—
but you don't uproot the whole plant and ruin next season.
"Sustainable development," Kai thought with a lazy calm.
That was the goal.
Kill-and-loot came with a one-year cooldown.
Too long.
So when Kai looked at these "big shots" now, he only saw two categories:
leeks…
…and taller leeks.
"Pah—pah—pah!"
Obito spat mud, muscles locked tight as he forced himself upright.
His mask was crooked and broken.
The exposed Sharingan burned with humiliation, disbelief—
and something even uglier, buried deep.
This wasn't about regaining authority in front of subordinates anymore.
This was about dignity.
His dignity as a man.
It had been smashed into the mud right along with him.
Worse—
Kamui had been forcibly interrupted.
The vortex behind him wobbled.
Space trembled, unstable.
And then…
from the swirling edge of the distortion—
a blob of old toad oil drifted loose.
Perfectly.
Cruelly.
It slapped across the cracked remains of Obito's mask right as he lifted his head.
Schlop.
Obito froze.
His brain went blank.
"…!!!"
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