October 10th, Early Morning — Konoha.
Long before the village stirred awake, beneath the dim glow of a pale moon, Uchiha Yun moved through his home like a shadow untethered from form.
He had vanished from his room around midnight, without a sound. Now, as the hour crawled past three, he returned—his figure emerging with a faint shimmer of distortion in the air. In his hands, he held several jet-black iron rods, cold and slightly humming with residual chakra.
These rods weren't ordinary weapons. They were chakra receivers—painfully familiar tools once used to channel Nagato's chakra and control his Six Paths of Pain. They were the biggest gain from the infiltration mission his clone Sora had carried out in Amegakure.
But Yun was far from satisfied.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, the rods resting on the wooden panels in front of him. His eyes studied their surfaces with clinical precision, searching for any remaining threads of connectivity. Could these still act as the medium?
Unlikely.
They were not organic tissue. Not something with a bloodline's unique trace. Merely extensions—antennae for a signal that no longer existed. Their function, limited. Their origin, synthetic. He couldn't latch onto them the way one could to flesh and blood.
And borrowing flesh and blood... that was an entirely different level of danger.
Besides, Yun mused dryly, for someone like Nagato—who seemed chronically afflicted with a god complex—this approach was probably doomed from the beginning. The man couldn't complete a sentence without invoking divine authority. "God will bring peace." "God's judgment." "God's justice."
What god?
There were no gods in this world. Only men who pretended to be.
[Information Exchange Launched Successfully][Rule Replication Function Started Successfully][Medium Failed to Trigger]
So that was it, then. No connection. No useful exchange. No point.
He sighed, a long breath filled with disappointment and fatigue. The clone's painstaking efforts had amounted to nothing more than some inert metal. At best, they could be reverse-engineered for information about the chakra frequencies Nagato used. At worst, they were just glorified scrap.
Still, Yun reminded himself, there had been some value. The mission hadn't been a total failure.
He now had several pages of new intel regarding Obito's movements. Patterns. Abnormalities. Reactions to stress triggers.
That in itself was a win.
Yun stood up and casually tossed the rods into a prepared sealing scroll. The black sticks vanished in an fwhoosh, stored away for later examination.
He would assign the analysis to another clone once this task was over.
Then, with deliberate care, he crouched beside his bed and slid open a hidden panel built into the floorboards. Inside was a tightly packed chamber containing a series of scrolls, marked with untraceable encryption seals. He picked one, unrolled it, and released the seal with a burst of chakra.
A grotesque object appeared in a puff of white smoke—a quartered human arm, still brimming with faint chakra traces.
It wasn't just any arm. It was Obito's.
[Information Exchange Launched Successfully]
[Rule Replication Function Started Successfully]
[Medium Triggered Successfully]
[Lockable Targets: Senju Hashirama (Pure Land), Uchiha Obito]
[Target: Uchiha Obito]
[S-Rank Ninja Lock Established]
[Exchange Space-Time Flow Rate Altered]
[Activate Shadow Mode?]
The prompt flashed across his consciousness like a mental command terminal.
He didn't hesitate.
'Activate.'
Shadow Mode enveloped him at once. His body dissolved into a flowing silhouette, intangible and amorphous, designed to obscure identity, chakra signature, and even physical voice. After all, Sora had already attacked Obito twice. Their enmity was not a secret.
Yun had no intention of revealing himself again so soon.
The space twisted and reformed.
...
When Obito appeared, it was not in the realm of reality. He stood in a fabricated replica—an illusion made physical—of Konoha's Memorial Stone Plaza. It was eerily quiet. The wind didn't blow. The leaves didn't move. Time seemed locked in amber.
Immediately, Obito's instincts kicked in.
His Mangekyō Sharingan spun rapidly, and he reached for his eye's power.
But Kamui failed.
Nothing happened.
No shift to the other dimension. No swirling void.
Yun's voice came from the shadows, distorted and unrecognizable.
"There's no point trying. Your Mangekyō eye techniques have no effect here. In this space, the rules are absolute."
Obito's response was immediate. He lashed out with the chain in his hand, retreating ten meters in an instant, posture guarded and tense.
"Don't be so tense." Yun said, stepping forward as a humanoid silhouette wrapped in pitch-black fog. "Your mind should already understand this place. The rules were embedded when you were summoned. You're in a trading space—not a battlefield."
Obito narrowed his eyes, but then paused. A flicker of comprehension crossed his face.
"…I see."
He glanced at the scenery again, registering the structure behind the silhouette—the Memorial Stone. On it were familiar names. But one stood out.
Nohara Rin.
Obito's hands clenched into fists at the sight of the flowers.
Kakashi's again.
He'd been too busy lately to remove them. That hypocrite had no right to place flowers here.
"This space pulled this scene from your consciousness." Yun said, "Not for sentimentality, but because the space believes it will facilitate a more... complete transaction."
Obito's eyes remained locked on the stone.
Yun added, "I take it this still means something to you."
Obito gave a short, dismissive laugh. "Spare me the theatrics. You dragged me here. What's the point? You think showing me Rin's name will break me? You know who I am?"
"I do." Yun said plainly. "But that's not important. You're not here for confrontation. This space prohibits it. You can't touch me. Not by physical means, nor ninjutsu, nor space-time manipulation."
Obito's chakra flared momentarily—testing the claim—and quickly dissipated, restrained by the invisible cage around him.
"So what do you want?" he asked.
"I'm an information broker. You're here for a trade. Knowledge, for a price. That's all."
Obito scoffed. "And you presume I care? This world is meaningless to me. What truth could possibly change that?"
"You haven't asked the right question yet." Yun replied, turning his gaze back to the memorial. "Don't you want to know who was truly responsible for Nohara Rin's death?"
Obito's sneer twisted into a scowl. "I already know. Kirigakure captured her. Implanted the Three-Tails. She asked Kakashi to end her. That's the whole story."
Yun looked at him directly. "You're wrong. What you saw was only the surface."
Suddenly, the clouds above them shifted, forming words in the sky.
[Truth]
The meaning settled like a weight across Obito's shoulders.
"…Truth?"
He looked back at the memorial.
Could there really have been another layer to that day?
Yun took a step forward. "One chip. That's all it takes. I'll give you the name of the one who orchestrated the entire scenario. Not Kirigakure. Not just chance. A deliberate manipulation."
But Obito didn't flinch. He let out a short laugh.
"I don't need your trade. I'll find the truth myself."
Yun's brow furrowed slightly. That... wasn't in the script.
This whole setting—the memorial, the image of Rin, the emotional anchor—was designed to provoke a transaction. But Obito was more composed than expected.
More dangerous.
"Years have passed since the Battle of Kannabi Bridge." Yun said slowly. "If you could uncover the truth, you would have done so already. Instead, you manipulated Yagura and turned Kirigakure into a slaughterhouse. That doesn't sound like patience. It sounds like desperation."
Obito smiled faintly beneath the mask. "You think I've been blind? You're wrong."
He touched his left eye—still hidden behind the mask.
"For reasons I don't need to explain, I've recently gained clarity. The kind you can't provide. But you did give me something today… a point. And from that point, I will draw the entire picture."
Yun's heart tightened slightly.
That wasn't just rhetoric.
It was a warning.
Whatever this ability was, it hadn't existed before. Yun had never encountered it in his predictions or simulations. And if it was tied to the left eye…
Something had changed.
"Then let me ask you one thing." Yun said quietly. "About the Project Tsuki no Me of yours. Are you sure you understand its purpose? Do you truly believe in it? Or are you just following the pain?"
Obito remained silent.
Yun added, almost as a whisper, "You… can't even commit suicide, can you?"
Obito flinched.
Just a little.
But it was enough.
In this space, even silence revealed the truth.
*****
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