It wasn't a surprise that Obito had been shaken.
Fear, after all, was not something he was unfamiliar with, he simply hadn't felt it in a very long time.
Since the day Kamui had awakened, the world had stopped being dangerous to him in the same way it was to others. Attacks passed through his body like ghosts. Blades, fire, lightning, even biju-level force, all of it became meaningless once he chose to not exist for a moment. That certainty had shaped him, hardened him. Given him the luxury of arrogance.
Being hit was no longer part of his expectations.
The first time it had happened was during the Nine-Tails incident.
Minato Namikaze.
The memory surfaced unbidden, yellow flash, impossible speed, a hand already forming a Rasengan before Obito's mind had even processed the danger. At the time, Obito had rationalized it easily. The Fourth Hokage was a monster even among monsters. His Flying Thunder God bordered on precognition, and Obito had been inexperienced, emotional, rushing ahead with a half-formed plan.
That loss had been understandable.
The second time was years later, the first time he crossed paths with Ren.
That one had stung more.
Back then, Obito had been lax, testing, probing, indulging in superiority. Ren's reaction speed had exceeded expectations, and Obito had paid the price with a shallow but undeniable hit. Even so, Obito had walked away confident. He had adjusted his assessment, recalculated Ren's danger level, and moved on.
This time.
This time was different.
There had been no carelessness.
No emotional distraction.
No underestimation.
Obito had been fully focused, Mangekyō spinning, senses sharp, timing flawless. He had accounted for Ren's abnormal reflexes, his perception, his ability to read attacks at the last possible instant. He had prepared for all of that.
And still Ren had struck him.
Not through brute force.
Not through overwhelming speed.
But through something far worse.
Flying Thunder God.
Obito stood amid the shattered stone, cloak torn, breath steady but heavy. His mind raced, assembling fragments into a complete, terrifying picture.
He and Zetsu had known Ren was learning a space-based technique. That much had never been in doubt. Given Ren's lineage and temperament, Flying Thunder God had always been the most likely candidate. Still, Obito had believed there was time. Space sensing, theoretical groundwork, maybe rudimentary teleportation under strict conditions.
What he had just seen shattered that assumption completely.
Ren hadn't merely teleported.
He had marked Obito mid-exchange, during a phasing maneuver no less, and then followed up with a Rasengan instantly after arrival.
That mattered.
That meant control.
High-level control.
Flying Thunder God wasn't just about teleportation, it was about what came after. Momentum, chakra stability, orientation, attack execution in the same breath. Even shinobi who learned the technique often needed pauses, resets, or support seals.
Ren hadn't paused.
He hadn't staggered.
He had arrived and attacked as if space itself were nothing more than a step to the side.
'That level of proficiency…'
Obito clenched his fist.
'This is on par with Minato.'
That realization settled like lead in his chest.
And that changed everything.
Obito had only ever defeated Minato Namikaze because Minato had something Obito could exploit, Kushina and Naruto. A hostage situation that forced hesitation, forced sacrifice, forced the Fourth Hokage to choose between victory and lives.
Ren had no such weakness.
Naruto was gone, hidden, protected, unreachable.
As for Fugaku or Itachi…
Obito's gaze flicked, briefly, toward the other side of the compound where chakra signatures clashed and Sharingan flared. Even if he could seize one of them, there was no guarantee Ren would hesitate. Worse, there was a very real chance Ren would simply kill Obito to revenge the hostage afterward.
That was the difference.
Minato had been a protector first.
Ren was a predator.
The plan tonight had never required victory here. Obito had known that. His role was delay, misdirection, keep Ren occupied while Danzo escaped and chaos took root. It was a convenient opportunity, not a linchpin in the Eye of the Moon Plan.
And now that window was closing fast.
Obito understood this with brutal clarity.
If Ren had truly mastered Flying Thunder God, then a prolonged engagement was suicide. Every exchange increased the number of markers. Every near-miss tightened the noose. Kamui was powerful, but it was not omnipotent against someone who could choose where and when to exist faster than thought.
There was no shame in retreat here.
Only survival.
Obito straightened slowly, chakra drawing inward, posture tightening as his decision crystallized. Tonight's objective had failed, but the war was far from over. There would be other villages, other fronts, other opportunities.
Ren Senju had forced his hand earlier than expected, but that, too, was information.
Valuable information.
Obito's Mangekyo slowed, space beginning to ripple faintly around him as he prepared to disengage.
'This isn't over,' he thought coldly. 'But this battlefield is no longer mine.'
And for the first time since he had become something beyond human, Obito made the calculation he had avoided for years.
Escape was not cowardice.
It was necessity.
~
Right now, Ren was riding a high he hadn't felt in a long time.
Not the reckless kind of excitement that dulled the senses, but the sharp, focused exhilaration that came when something worked exactly as it was supposed to, when theory, training, and instinct aligned in a single, perfect moment.
Flying Thunder God.
He let the feeling settle in his chest as he straightened slightly, shoulders loosening, breath steady. For the first time since he had begun learning the technique, he had used it properly against a real opponent. Not a training dummy, not a clone, this was not a controlled experiment.
Against Obito.
And it had worked.
That alone was enough to make his lips curve upward.
Before today, there had always been that lingering doubt. He knew the mechanics. He knew the seals. He understood the space distortion, the anchoring, the instantaneous displacement. On paper, and even in practice, it all made sense. But battle was different. Battle was chaos, pressure, imperfect timing, and opponents who didn't politely wait for you to finish forming a jutsu.
There was always a chance that when it mattered most, something would slip.
That doubt was gone now.
Still, Ren wasn't deluding himself.
From the outside, what he had just done looked frighteningly similar to Minato Namikaze's level of mastery. Instant relocation, flawless orientation, a Rasengan delivered without hesitation or recoil. Anyone watching would assume he had reached the same realm as the Fourth Hokage.
Ren knew better.
He understood exactly why it had worked.
First, chakra.
He had spent chakra like water. No, it was more like a tailed beast. The teleport itself had been expensive, far more expensive than he liked to admit. Space tubes didn't form easily, and forcing it to do so in the middle of combat came at a steep cost. Just that single application of Flying Thunder God had burned through nearly a third of his total reserves.
A third.
For most jonin, that would have been catastrophic. For them, it would have meant exhaustion, shaky limbs, dulled reactions, death within minutes.
For Ren, it was simply… noticeable.
If he had to quantify it, he had just spent roughly as much chakra as an average level 60 jonin possessed in total. It was inefficient, brutal, and absolutely unsustainable in a prolonged fight.
Second, control.
His master-level chakra control had carried him through what should have been impossible. Stabilizing himself mid-teleport. Maintaining orientation. Forming and sustaining a Rasengan immediately upon arrival. There was no wasted chakra, no slippage, no backlash tearing at his tenketsu.
Without that level of precision, the attempt would have ended in disaster.
And finally, Hyperfocus.
That was the real difference.
His mind had slowed the world just enough for him to choose the exact instant Obito transitioned between states. Not fully intangible. Not fully solid. A fraction of a heartbeat where the space-time technique recalibrated.
That was the opening.
Without Hyperfocus, he would never have seen it, let alone acted on it.
Ren exhaled slowly, flexing his fingers.
Obito, of course, didn't know any of this.
From his perspective, Ren had just casually displayed Minato-level proficiency with one of the most terrifying techniques ever devised. Ren could almost feel the shift in Obito's intent, the way his posture changed, the subtle tightening that screamed retreat rather than engagement.
'He's thinking about escaping,' Ren realized easily.
And that…
That wasn't acceptable.
Not tonight.
Ren didn't need to kill him here. He understood the broader game well enough to know that Obito wasn't meant to fall yet. But letting him leave untouched, unpunished, felt wrong.
Interest had to be paid.
'At least an arm,' Ren thought, almost cheerfully.
Before Obito could fully commit to the swirl of Kamui, space folded again.
Ren vanished.
He reappeared beside Obito mid-transition, close enough that he could feel the distortion ripple across his own skin. There was no hesitation this time.
Ren drove his fist forward.
The impact was ugly.
Obito's body was caught between states, forced to snap back into solidity as the punch connected squarely with his abdomen. The sound was dull and heavy, like flesh meeting iron. Chakra flared violently as Obito was launched backward, the Kamui swirl collapsing in on itself as the technique was forcibly canceled.
Obito arched, blood spraying from his mouth as his body tore through rubble and stone before skidding to a halt.
Ren didn't pursue immediately.
He straightened, rolled his shoulders once, and felt the faint drain in his reserves. Without thinking, he dismissed one of his chakra battery clones. The feedback was immediate, warmth flooding his coils, reserves refilling until they were once again comfortably full.
Chakra was the one thing he could afford to be wasteful with.
Obito pushed himself upright, one hand braced against the ground, the other hovering near his stomach. His breathing was controlled, but Ren could see the damage. It was not fatal or crippling.
But it was real.
Ren grinned.
The two locked eyes across the ruined compound, the air between them taut with unspoken intent. Obito now knew, truly knew, that escape wouldn't come easily. That the fight had shifted from inconvenience to danger.
And Ren?
Ren was already calculating how much more he could take before the night was over.
~
On the other side of the compound, the fighting had never truly stopped.
Blades still rang, chakra still flared, and bodies still fell, but for a brief moment, the rhythm faltered. Not enough to be called hesitation, but enough that every experienced shinobi present felt it. A subtle hitch in the flow of battle, born not from weakness, but from awareness.
They had seen it.
The distortion in space.
The sudden displacement.
The unmistakable signature of a technique etched into the collective memory of an entire era.
Flying Thunder God.
For a heartbeat too long, several pairs of Sharingan flicked toward the distant clash between Ren and the masked man. Most of the older Uchiha had been alive during the Fourth Hokage's reign. Some had fought under him. Some had fought alongside him. And Fugaku, Fugaku had done both.
He knew that technique better than most. He knew what it meant when it appeared on a battlefield.
When Ren vanished and reappeared in that impossible, instantaneous manner, Fugaku's jaw had tightened despite himself. He hated the brat, his attitude, his arrogance, his casual dominance, but that hatred didn't blind him to reality.
That was not imitation.
That was mastery, crude and costly perhaps, but lethal all the same.
His eyes tracked the aftermath of Ren's strike, the way the masked man had been forced out of intangibility and thrown back. Fugaku's mind worked quickly, dissecting what he had seen.
'So that's how…'
It wasn't that the masked man was invincible. It was timing and precision. Speed pushed beyond the margin where phasing could be completed safely. If one was fast enough, fast enough in the right way, then even that ridiculous space-time technique could be cracked open.
With Ren there, the masked man wouldn't be free to act as he pleased.
That realization brought a grim sense of relief.
Whatever else happened tonight, that problem was no longer his alone.
Fugaku pulled his focus back to the present just in time to intercept a blade aimed at his throat. Steel met steel, sparks bursting between them as he twisted and shoved the attacker aside with brute force. Another Uchiha rushed in from his blind spot, three tomoe spinning madly as fire chakra gathered in his lungs.
Fugaku didn't let him finish.
A short burst of flame collided midair, detonating between them and forcing both sides to disengage. Fugaku landed lightly, breath steady but heavier than before.
This was taking its toll.
Fighting Uchiha was always different. They were fast, perceptive, relentless, and those with fully matured three-tomoe Sharingan were far from ordinary shinobi. Individually, none of them outmatched him. Together, in numbers, they were dangerous.
To his side, however, the contrast was stark.
Itachi moved through the battlefield like something born from it. He was silent, precise and extremely efficient.
There was no wasted motion in him. No hesitation. Each strike was final, each kill clean. Genjutsu layered seamlessly into taijutsu, kunai appearing exactly where an enemy's guard faltered, blades sliding between ribs with surgical calm.
It wasn't a battle for Itachi.
It was a process.
Watching his son like this made Fugaku's chest tighten in a way he couldn't quite name. Pride warred with unease. This wasn't simply talent or training on display, it was something colder, more detached.
'He looks… wrong,' Fugaku thought grimly. 'I'll talk with him, when this is done.'
Another wave surged forward, and Fugaku stepped to meet them, Sharingan blazing as the night swallowed the compound in deeper shadow. Chakra clashes illuminated faces twisted with conviction, resentment, and desperation.
Just like that, the night pressed on.
~~~~~
{Obito is scared and Ren is having fun, what a nice day to be alive in the Naruto world.}
{Also, Ren vs Obito just ended on Pat, with Ren being successful in his dealings. Read it on pat now if you want to see Obito despair faster.}