Obito now stood against another wielder of time and space, and it was suffocating.
Every move he made, Kaito met.
Every shift in reality, Kaito closed.
He slipped into the void, flickering across the battlefield to gain distance—but Kaito was already there.
Obito reappeared—
SHINK.
A blade sliced toward him in a perfect, merciless arc.
Steel met flesh. The world paused.
Then—shimmering light. The wound vanished.
Izanagi.
Again, it rewrote death into illusion. But Obito's lungs burned. His body staggered under the weight of reality being torn and restitched.
He couldn't keep this up.
And Kaito knew.
The boy advanced, relentless. Not reckless—methodical. Each strike was a trap. Each angle a step closer to checkmate.
Obito wasn't fighting anymore.
He was surviving.
The battlefield seemed to shrink. Kaito's rhythm controlled the air itself. The ringing steel. The breathless silence between strikes. It wasn't combat.
It was a hunt.
And then—
Eyes.
In the rubble, the shadows shifted. Hidden observers emerged, cloaked in dust and stillness.
Among them, one pair of cold, calculating eyes watched through the ash.
Danzo.
Half-shrouded by debris and fading mist, the old warhawk crouched in silence, his lone eye burning with measured malice. The crimson ring of his stolen Sharingan reflected the duel ahead like a prophecy.
"So... that's the one wearing Madara's mask," he muttered. "And the other…"
His voice dropped into a rasp.
"Kaito Uchiha."
The name felt like poison in his throat.
His knuckles tightened around his cane, joints cracking.
That chakra. That power. The Mangekyō radiating from the boy turned every theory into nightmare.
"He's awakened it."
Danzo felt the truth coil around his spine.
Of course, it would be him. The prodigy Root couldn't reach. The one whispered alongside Shisui and Itachi.
"As expected. The Uchiha plague mutates faster than we can burn it out."
Kaito's movement—seamless, seal-less, silent.
It was Minato's genius reborn in Uchiha flesh.
But worse.
No tags. No delay. Just will and line of sight.
Danzo had prepped for Obito—intel, files, predictions.
This?This wasn't in any report.
His breath caught.
"So it was you…" he whispered. "The Rain leaks. The ANBU betrayal. The counter-raids. You've been operating behind the curtain."
Suddenly—space folded.
Kaito blinked into view.
Then vanished again.
THUNK.
A blade tore through Obito's chest, spraying blood. He staggered—
But again—the body unraveled.
Reformed. Whole.
Izanagi.
Danzo's breath hitched.
"To force him to burn another eye…"
He didn't finish the thought.
Because he felt it then.
Fear.
A taste he hadn't known in decades.
Even the eye of Shisui, buried beneath his bandages, ached in response.
Kaito could corner Obito.
That meant he could corner anyone.
In the shadows, Root operatives shifted. Hand signs flashed like ghost-speech: Kill. Surround. Wait.
They needed no order.
They waited for an opening.
Danzo's grip crushed the cane beneath his fingers.
Every jutsu has a flaw. Even the Yellow Flash had limits. Kaito's technique had to have one.
Distance. Delay. Fatigue.
He would find it.
And when he did—he would rip it out.
His Sharingan pulsed behind the cloth.
One clean opening.
Just one.