Inside the Supreme Tribunal.
Kakashi stood at the side of his teacher, Minato.
Obito had already removed his mask, exposing the grotesquely twisted half of his face. Special shackles locked his limbs tightly, suppressing the enormous chakra within him.
Beside him, Black Zetsu was imprisoned within an invisible energy field.
Rin stood on Kakashi's other side.
This should have been the moment the Minato team reunited—yet reality was twisted into something cruel.
His teacher, his comrade, and the close friend he had thought long dead were all standing here.
Around the hall, massive light screens rose up. On them were Konoha's senior leaders.
Fugaku's face was expressionless. Shikaku stood with his arms crossed, brows tightly furrowed. Tsunade, Jiraiya, and the clan heads and advisers of the other great families all watched the center of the tribunal in silence.
Shinju walked in from the side and stepped into the center of the hall.
He swept his gaze across everyone.
"Today, I did not summon you here to judge crimes."
"We are here to bear witness to the truth."
Shinju's eyes finally settled on Black Zetsu.
"A truth that has been concealed for over a thousand years—the truth about this world's very root."
He raised his right hand and made a simple gesture.
The metal floor at the center of the hall slid silently apart. A beam of light shot straight up to the ceiling, forming a flowing, three-dimensional sphere of imagery.
Shinju was using a special method to extract Black Zetsu's memories and expose them to everyone.
A woman descended from the heavens. Her name was Otsutsuki Kaguya.
She devoured the fruit of the God Tree and gained a power called chakra, ending endless warfare through absolute force.
In the images, she was the Rabbit Goddess—and also a tyrant to be feared.
Then, her two sons appeared.
Hagoromo and Hamura.
The brothers could not accept their mother's rule, and a world-shaking war erupted.
In the end, they successfully sealed their mother. The product of that seal was the moon.
A faint stir ran through Konoha's leadership on the screens.
These were legends—myths that existed only in the oldest scrolls.
The Sage of Six Paths, Hagoromo, fearing his mother's power would one day bring disaster again, split the Ten-Tails' chakra into nine parts and created the nine tailed beasts.
He founded the Ninja Sect and spread the concept of chakra, hoping people would use that power to understand one another rather than fight one another.
The Sage of Six Paths chose his younger son, Asura, as his successor—sparking dissatisfaction in his elder son, Indra.
The brothers turned against each other, beginning a fated conflict that would last for a thousand years.
Their chakra, their will, continued reincarnating through their descendants—seeking hosts, waging endless battle.
Then, a mass of pitch-black substance was born from the sealed will of Kaguya.
It called itself Black Zetsu.
Its sole purpose was to revive its mother.
It lurked in silence, waiting for an opportunity.
It found the stone tablet hidden within the Naka Shrine—guarded by the Uchiha for generations—and used Yin-Yang Release (Onmyōton (Yin-Yang Release)) to alter the words the Sage of Six Paths had left behind.
A monument meant to warn future generations against the lure of power, and to urge understanding and peace, was twisted into a lie—guiding the Uchiha to pursue ultimate power and claiming that only by activating Infinite Tsukuyomi could true peace be obtained.
Fugaku's body jolted violently.
He stared, deadlocked, at the image of the tampered tablet.
As the Uchiha clan head, he understood better than anyone what that tablet meant to his people.
The source of the Uchiha's pride and power—their distinction from every other clan.
And now, the image told him that what they had pursued for generations had been, from the beginning, an utter deception.
The reincarnations of Indra and Asura appeared in the Warring States Era.
Madara and Hashirama.
The images displayed their entire journey—from boyhood friends to mortal enemies.
The final battle at the Valley of the End, the fight recorded in history, was shown with every detail crystal clear.
The result was known to all: Madara fell in defeat.
But unexpectedly—Madara had not died.
At the final moment of battle, he had bitten off a piece of Hashirama's flesh.
Later, he transplanted Hashirama's cells and awakened the legendary Rinnegan.
Worse still, he summoned the sealed husk of the Ten-Tails—the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path (Gedō Mazō (Demonic Statue of the Outer Path))—and, relying on the life force it fed him, clung to life in a dark underground cave.
Obito had always viewed Madara as his guide—a great pioneer who saw through the world's hypocrisy and tried to create true peace through extreme means.
So the truth was this.
It was hard to accept.
The Third Shinobi World War.
Kannabi Bridge.
Kakashi saw his younger self. He saw the Obito who always made excuses.
And he saw Rin.
The boulder fell, crushing Obito's right side.
The promise that could not be kept. The Sharingan transplanted into Kakashi.
Everything was vivid, as though it were happening again.
Then, Madara saved Obito.
Using Hashirama's cells, he created a new body for him.
And to that boy who had just lost everything, he poured poison into his heart—describing the ugliness and despair of the world, painting a "perfect world" of happiness under the Eye of the Moon.
At that time, Obito still doubted Madara's plan.
Deep in his heart, the people he cared about most were still Rin and Kakashi.
Rin was captured by shinobi of the Hidden Mist.
Kakashi watched as they forcibly sealed the Three-Tails, Isobu, into Rin.
The Hidden Mist's plan was to turn Rin into an unstable "tailed beast bomb." Once she returned to Konoha, they would release the seal, letting the Three-Tails rampage and destroy Konoha from within.
And all of it unfolded under Madara's surveillance.
Through White Zetsu and Black Zetsu, he personally planned and pushed the conspiracy forward.
He needed a trigger—something that would make Obito sever the past completely and throw himself into the plan without hesitation.
Rin awakened along the way. She sensed something wrong with her body and realized the enemy's plot.
She refused to become a tool that would destroy the village.
While fleeing from ANBU who mistook her for an enemy, she saw Kakashi coming to rescue her.
In despair, she made her final choice.
Lightning crackled around Kakashi's right hand. The shriek of Lightning Cutter (Raikiri (Lightning Cutter)) seemed to pierce memory itself, echoing through the tribunal.
He charged toward a Hidden Mist pursuer.
Rin used her last strength and rushed straight into that lightning.
Kakashi watched himself—once again—pierce Rin's chest with his own hand.
Far away, Obito—sharing vision through White Zetsu—also saw it.
He had always believed it was this false, ugly world that killed Rin, and that Kakashi, that useless trash, had failed to keep his promise to protect her.
But Rin's death was not Kakashi's fault.
It was a trap designed specifically for him.
And he himself was the most foolish tool within that trap.
Everything that had supported him up until today was crushed into dust in that instant.
"Obito," Shinju's voice rang through the silent hall.
"You thought you were the one moving the pieces, trying to change this world."
"But in truth, you weren't even a piece on the board. You were nothing more than a stone Black Zetsu picked up off the roadside to fulfill his pathetic plan. Your pain, your hatred, your Eye of the Moon—everything from beginning to end was a joke."
"Lies! Nonsense! You lowly insects!" Black Zetsu finally gathered enough strength and let out a piercing scream.
"My mother's greatness is beyond the understanding of worms like you! Everything in this world came from her! Returning everything to her is the only true path this world has!"
A white-haired figure appeared soundlessly behind it.
Hatake Sakumo held the White Fang short blade in a reverse grip and, with the pommel, struck Black Zetsu's core—clean, decisive, and merciless.
Black Zetsu's scream cut off abruptly. It could no longer move.
Obito had completely given up resisting.
Rin looked at him now, her eyes filled with sorrow and pity.
The boy who once dreamed of becoming Hokage and always talked about "comrades" had become this.
And the root of it all was so absurd.
The footage ended. The beam of light in the center of the hall vanished, and the device slowly sank back underground.
Inside the tribunal, there was a deathly silence.
A thousand years of hatred, war, and sacrifice—the truth behind it all—was now laid bare before everyone.
On the light screens, Konoha's leadership said nothing, all of them processing information vast enough to overturn the entire history of the shinobi world.
Shinju's gaze swept over the broken Obito and the immobilized Black Zetsu.
In the end, his eyes stopped on Obito, and his voice declared clearly:
"Uchiha Obito, to pay for your crimes with death would be far too easy."
"From this day forward, you no longer have a name. You are nothing more than a convict."
"The rest of your life will be spent atoning—endlessly—for every sin you have committed."
"This is the final judgment I will grant you."
(End of Chapter)
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