The Kamui vortex snapped shut, leaving behind only the faint smell of ozone and a lingering spatial tension. Sasuke stood alone on the mountain path, his Eternal Mangekyō still active, casting the world in the sharp, profound clarity of permanent power. Obito's retreat had been hasty, shocked, but Sasuke knew it was not an end. It was an intermission. The ghost would return, nursing his wounded ideology, desperate to reassert his crumbling narrative.
A cold wind swept down from the peaks, carrying the hum of Kumo's distant energy grid. Sasuke deactivated his eyes, the unique purple pattern fading into the darkness of his pupils. The confrontation had been brief, but decisive in one regard: Obito was vulnerable. His entire philosophy, his reason for being, was a house of cards built on a single, cherished, childhood misunderstanding. To topple the monster, you didn't just attack the structure; you had to dissolve the foundation.
Sasuke had not spent his month in Kumo solely training. He had been researching. When Indra had first revealed Obito's survival and role, it had been a strategic datum. But after Itachi's death, after understanding the depth of manipulation that could twist a person into a weapon, Obito had transformed from a target into a case study. A pathology to be understood before it could be excised.
He had accessed the Storm Coalition's intelligence archives, cross-referenced with personal records released post-Danzo. He had spoken, via secure channel, with Kakashi. Those conversations had been stripped of emotion, pure data exchange.
Kakashi (via hologram, face shadowed): "Obito… before Kannabi Bridge, he was loud, brash, chronically late, fiercely loyal to his friends. He looked up to Minato-sensei. He had a… a childish crush on Rin. Everyone knew it. She was kind to him, patient. Like an older sister with a rambunctious younger brother."
Sasuke: "And her feelings?"
A long pause. Kakashi: "She cared for him. Deeply. As a teammate, as a friend. She worried about him. She'd scold him for being late, patch up his scrapes. But her… romantic focus…" Another pause, heavier. "It was on the ideal of the perfect shinobi. On the Hatake legacy. On me. She never said it. But it was there. In the way she'd watch training, in the questions she'd ask about White Light Chakra. Obito was the heart of the team. I was the skill she admired. She wanted to be strong enough to stand beside that."
It was a lead. A direction. From there, Sasuke had tracked down the records of the Nohara family, minor clan affiliates, all but extinct. He found a cousin, a woman named Kaede Nohara who worked as a archivist in the Land of Fire's historical ministry. She was old enough to remember Rin. A discreet visit, facilitated by Tsunade's clearance and a Kumo eagle's silent delivery of a request.
The woman had been wary, sad. But the mention of Rin, of possibly clearing her cousin's name from the tragedy of the Three-Tails, had opened a door. In a dusty back room of a riverside estate, she had produced a small, lacquered box.
Kaede Nohara: "She left this with me the week before her last mission. Said if anything happened… to keep it safe. Not for glory. Just… to remember the girl she was, not the weapon she became. After everything that happened… with the Three-Tails, with the official story… it felt too dangerous to bring forward. But now… with the truth coming out about Danzo, about that monster Obito…"
Inside the box, wrapped in faded silk, was a diary. A simple, cloth-bound notebook with a pressed forget-me-not on the cover. The pages were filled with neat, looping handwriting—the thoughts of a teenage kunoichi navigating war, duty, and the complexities of her heart.
Sasuke had read it. Not out of voyeurism, but with the analytical detachment of a investigator building a psychological profile. It was more devastating than any battle report.
The diary spoke of Rin's admiration for Kakashi's skill, her frustration with his emotional distance, her determination to bridge it. It spoke of her fondness for Obito—his warmth, his unpredictability, his innocence. One entry, dated three months before Kannabi Bridge, was pivotal:
"Obito-kun got into another argument with Kakashi today. About rules vs. results. He's so passionate. So sure of his 'Will of Fire.' Sometimes I look at him and see the little brother I never had. So full of life, so desperate to prove he's not weak. I want to protect that light in him. I worry the world will try to snuff it out. Kakashi would call that sentiment a liability. Maybe it is. But it's also what makes Obito-kun… Obito-kun. He makes me remember why we're fighting—for the people, not just the mission."
Little brother. The term was repeated, affectionately, throughout.
Another entry, after a joint training session:
"Kakashi used the Chidori today. It was terrifying. Beautiful. Like a lightning strike given form. He moved faster than sight. When he landed, the look in his eye… it was so focused. So alone. I want to reach that place. Not just to be strong, but to understand him. To stand beside him, not behind him. Obito-kun cheered louder than anyone, even though he'd been showing off his new Fireball technique just moments before. He doesn't have an envious bone in his body. Just endless, stubborn belief. In himself, in us. I hope we can live up to it."
The final entries grew darker, tinged with the fear of the front lines, the burden of being a medic. Then, the mission. The capture. The implantation of the Three-Tails. Her despair, her resolution. The last legible entry, scribbled in haste:
"I can feel it inside me. A monster. They want to send it to Konoha. To destroy my home. I won't be their weapon. There's only one way. Kakashi… he's strong enough. He'll understand. He has to. Please, forgive me. Obito-kun… my bright, brave little brother… I'm sorry I couldn't protect your light after all."
Sasuke had closed the diary. The evidence was irrefutable. Rin Nohara's love for Kakashi was a quiet, aspirational flame. Her love for Obito was protective, sisterly, profound in its own way, but not romantic. Not the grand, tragic love Obito had built his entire shattered existence upon.
He had the foundation. Now, he needed the architect to face his flawed blueprint.
________________________________________
Two nights later, on the border between the Land of Lightning and the Land of Rivers, Sasuke waited. He stood in a clearing where the chakra currents were thin, making dimensional intrusion easier to detect. He had let his presence bleed out subtly, a lure for a predator drawn to Uchiha chakra, especially the potent, new signature of an Eternal Mangekyō.
He didn't wait long.
The air ten feet away spiraled inward, and Obito emerged. He was not in his playful Tobi persona. This was the masked avenger, the weight of his betrayal and power evident in his stiff posture. The single eye behind the orange mask glared with a mixture of fury and lingering confusion from their last encounter.
Obito: "You linger on borders, little Uchiha. Seeking an early death? Or have you come to your senses, realizing the futility of your 'new path' without true power?"
Sasuke: "I've come to give you a gift. A piece of your past you seem to have… mislaid."
Obito's head tilted. "You have nothing I want."
Sasuke: "Don't I?" From within his cloak, Sasuke drew out the small, cloth-bound diary. He held it up. The pressed forget-me-not on the cover was clearly visible in the moonlight. "Recognize this?"
Obito went perfectly still. The air around him grew cold. "Where did you get that?" The voice was low, dangerous, stripped of all pretense.
Sasuke: "From Rin Nohara's cousin. She kept it safe. Rin gave it to her before her final mission. She wanted someone to remember the girl she was." He took a step forward, his voice becoming a clinical, surgical instrument. "I read it. It's enlightening. It tells the story of a talented, kind kunoichi. One who admired Kakashi Hatake's strength and wanted to be his equal. One who saw Uchiha Obito as a bright, passionate, little brother she felt a need to protect."
"Lies!" Obito snarled, but the snarl was undercut by a tremor. "You forged that! A cheap trick!"
Sasuke: "Is it? Check the chakra signature. The paper's age. The handwriting. You knew her. You'd know." He tossed the diary. It landed in the dirt at Obito's feet.
Obito stared at it as if it were a live serpent. He didn't move to pick it up. His masked face was fixed on it. "It doesn't matter. Her feelings… they were pure. Our bond—"
Sasuke: "Was one-sided. A child's crush mistaken for a grand romance. Listen to the truth, Obito." Sasuke's eyes narrowed, and he began to quote, his voice flat, delivering the words like bullets. "'Obito-kun got into another argument with Kakashi today… Sometimes I look at him and see the little brother I never had.'"
Obito flinched as if struck.
Sasuke: "'I want to protect that light in him.' She saw you as something precious and fragile. Not as an equal. Not as a lover. As a child to be sheltered."
"Shut up!" Obito's hand clenched. The Kamui vortex began to swirl erratically at his side, not as a controlled technique, but as a reflection of his spiraling psyche.
Sasuke: "She died in Kakashi's arms, Obito. Not metaphorically. Literally. She ran onto his Chidori. She chose him to be her end. She called his name with her last breath. Not yours. She entrusted her death, her final act of protecting the village, to the man she admired. To the hero. Not to the boy she saw as a brother."
Each sentence was a precise, scalpel-like cut. Obito's breathing became audible, a ragged sound behind the mask. The Kamui vortex flickered, sputtered, distorting the space around it unnaturally.
Obito: "She… she was my light… She was everything… This world took her from me… It's a hell… I'm creating a perfect world where she's alive, where she loves me—"
Sasuke: "You're creating a world based on a lie. On your own pathetic, misinterpreted longing. She never loved you like that. She loved the hero Kakashi was, or could be. And what did you do, her 'little brother'?" Sasuke's voice rose, sharp with contempt. "To avenge this fantasy, this child's crush that was never reciprocated, you murdered her teacher. You murdered Minato Namikaze, the man who believed in you. You murdered Kushina Uzumaki, a woman who would have understood her pain as a Jinchuriki. You unleashed the Nine-Tails on the very village Rin died to protect from the Three-Tails. You made a mockery of her sacrifice. You spat on her legacy."
The Kamui vortex exploded outwards in a silent burst of distorted space, tearing up the ground in a circle around Obito before collapsing in on itself. Obito let out a raw, guttural sound that was part roar, part sob. He staggered back a step.
Sasuke: "You didn't avenge Rin, Obito. You betrayed her. Every single thing you have done in her name is the absolute opposite of what she stood for. She was a healer. You bring only pain. She believed in protecting comrades. You manipulate and sacrifice them. She loved Konoha. You seek to burn it all down and replace it with a pale dream where you get to be the hero you never were in her eyes."
He took another step forward, now within striking distance, but he didn't attack. The psychological assault was far more effective. "You are not her avenger. You are her greatest failure. The little brother she worried about, the one whose light she feared the world would snuff out… you didn't just let it be snuffed out. You plunged it into darkness and called it enlightenment. You built your revenge, your entire worthless existence, on a fantasy. It's pathetic."
Obito was shaking. The confident, nihilistic manipulator was gone. In his place was a deeply wounded, horrifically confused boy trapped in a man's broken body and a monster's mission. He looked from Sasuke's merciless face to the diary in the dirt.
With a trembling hand, he finally bent and snatched it up. He held it, the simple notebook seeming to burn his fingers. He didn't open it. He just clutched it to his chest, over the spot where his heart would be.
Obito: "It's… not… true…" The whisper was shattered, devoid of conviction.
Sasuke: "Read it. See for yourself the girl you claim to love. See how little she saw in you what you wanted her to see. Then ask yourself if your perfect dream world is for her… or just for your own desperate, childish ego."
He turned his back, an ultimate show of contemptuous dismissal. "Your era of theft is over. Your reason for being is a sham. When you're ready to face the real world, and the real consequences of your actions, I'll be waiting. Until then… haunt your ghosts. Just know they aren't the ones you think they are."
Sasuke walked away, leaving Obito standing alone in the clearing, clutching the diary like a life raft in a sea of lies that was suddenly, catastrophically, draining away.
He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He could feel the chaotic, agonized chakra signature behind him, flickering like a dying star. The foundation was cracked. The house of cards was trembling. The final collapse would come from within.
________________________________________
LOCATION: KAMUI DIMENSION
The grey, endless pillars of the Kamui dimension offered no comfort, only echoing emptiness. Obito stumbled through the featureless space, the diary a lead weight in his hand. He collapsed against one of the rectangular pillars, sliding down to its base.
The mask felt suffocating. With a jerky movement, he tore it off, letting it clatter on the intangible ground. His face, scarred and aged by pain and hatred, was twisted in an agony far deeper than any physical wound. His Sharingan, the eye he'd gained the day he lost everything, bled red in the gloom.
He stared at the diary. The forget-me-not. Rin's favorite flower.
It's a trick. A forgery. A weapon. Uchiha Sasuke is clever. He lies.
But another part, the buried, shattered remnant of the boy from Kannabi Bridge, whispered: What if it's not? What if you've been wrong? What if the one thing you built your entire life upon… is sand?
His hand trembled violently as he opened the cover. The first page, in that familiar, neat script: Property of Nohara Rin. If lost, please return.
The breath left his lungs in a rush. It was hers. The chakra residue, faint after so many years, was undeniably, painfully hers. A scent of lavender and antiseptic, the ghost of her presence.
He began to read.
He read her frustrations with academy politics. Her joy at being placed on Team Minato. Her early impressions.
"Hatake Kakashi is as talented as they say. Cold, though. All business. I'll have to work hard to earn his respect."
"Uchiha Obito is… a lot. So loud! And always late! But he makes me laugh. There's no malice in him. Just… a lot of fire."
He read her observations of their dynamic. His own boasts, his declarations about the Will of Fire, her gentle amusement. "He says it with such conviction. Like he's trying to convince himself. I hope he never loses that. The world needs that kind of fire."
Then, the entry. The one Sasuke had quoted.
"...the little brother I never had."
The words on the page were a physical blow. Obito's vision blurred. He read it again. And again. The phrasing was unambiguous. Affectionate. Protective. Familial.
Little brother.
Not "the boy I love." Not "my destined one." Little brother.
A sound escaped him, a wounded, animal thing. He kept reading, desperately now, searching for a counterpoint, for a hidden confession, for anything to salvage the cornerstone of his reality.
He found her growing admiration for Kakashi's skill. Her quiet determination to understand him. Her worry about his isolation. Entries about Kakashi grew more frequent, more focused. Entries about Obito were fond, exasperated, concerned.
"Obito-kun tried to show me his new Fireball technique today. He's getting better! The control is still shaky, but the power is impressive. He was so proud. I told him he'd be a great shinobi. He beamed. It's nice to see him happy."
Like praising a child.
The final entries. The darkness. The fear. The implantation.
"I can feel it inside me. A monster."
And then, the last words.
"Kakashi… he's strong enough. He'll understand. He has to. Please, forgive me. Obito-kun… my bright, brave little brother… I'm sorry I couldn't protect your light after all."
The diary fell from his numb fingers. It landed open on the floor, the page staring up at him.
Little brother.
Little brother.
LITTLE BROTHER.
The word hammered into his skull, shattering the delicate, beautiful stained-glass window of memory he had constructed. In its place was a simpler, clearer, and infinitely more painful picture: Rin, kind, caring Rin, had seen him as a sibling. A beloved, troublesome, childish sibling. Her final thought of him was one of protective guilt, not romantic love.
Everything he had done—the pact with Madara, the manipulation of Nagato, the murder of his sensei, the attack on his village, the endless, bloody path towards the Infinite Tsukuyomi—all of it was predicated on a divine, tragic love stolen from him. A love that had never existed in the way he believed.
He hadn't lost his great love to a cruel world.
He had misinterpreted a kind girl's friendship and built a nightmare upon the misunderstanding.
A hysterical, broken laugh bubbled up from his throat, echoing in the sterile dimension. It turned into a scream—a raw, unfiltered scream of rage, of humiliation, of utter, world-ending despair. He pounded his fists against the unyielding pillar until his knuckles were bloody.
"NO! NO! IT CAN'T BE! IT WAS REAL! IT WAS REAL!"
But the diary lay there, a silent, incontrovertible witness. Her own words. Her own heart.
The Kamui dimension itself seemed to react to his turmoil. The pillars wavered. Distances stretched and compressed unnaturally. His control over his own Mangekyō space was slipping, mirroring the collapse of his psyche.
He crawled over to the diary, picking it up again, clutching it to his chest as he curled into a fetal position. The tears came then, hot and shameful. Not the tears of a tragic hero, but of a fool. A monstrous, powerful, world-breaking fool.
A new thought, even more venomous, slithered into the chaos. If her love was never mine… then what is the Tsukuyomi for?
The answer came immediately, whispered by the last shred of his twisted logic: To make it real.
Yes. That was it. The diary proved the real world was a lie. A world where Rin saw him as a child, where his great love was a fantasy, was a flawed, hateful world. The Tsukuyomi would create a perfect world. A world where Rin Nohara looked at Uchiha Obito not with sisterly affection, but with the adoring, romantic love he had always believed was his right. A world where she had called his name. A world where he was the hero, not Kakashi. A world tailored to his desire, not to the cruel, disappointing truth.
The breakdown solidified into a new, even more desperate conviction. The diary didn't dissuade him. It enraged him. It proved the necessity of the dream. The real world had betrayed him twice over—first by taking her, then by revealing she was never truly his to lose in the way he wanted. Therefore, the real world must be erased.
He stood up, his face a mess of tears and fury. He looked at the diary with newfound hatred. It was not a treasured relic; it was an insult. A testament to the world's fundamental wrongness.
He would succeed. Not in spite of this truth, but because of it. He would use the Tsukuyomi to craft a Rin who loved him as he demanded to be loved. He would have his perfect fantasy, and everyone else would burn in the hell of their own "real" lives.
The conviction was brittle, fueled by spite and a soul-deep wound, but it was enough to glue the shards of his purpose back together. He wiped his face, slipped the orange mask back on, hiding the broken boy beneath the symbol of the ghost.
Uchiha Sasuke had exposed the wound. He had not healed it. He had made it septic. And a septic, cornered animal was the most dangerous kind.
He vanished into a Kamui vortex, the diary left behind on the grey floor, a forgotten testament to a tragedy that had just doubled in scope. The manipulator had been exposed, not to redemption, but to a deeper, more fanatical level of damnation.
End of Chapter – 97