Chapter 137: Trust Me
The three of them walked shoulder to shoulder, every step slow and deliberate, eyes sweeping the darkness for the slightest sign of danger.
Just like in Obito Uchiha's nightmare, what greeted them was not a vast steel vault or a concrete bunker, but a pitch black hollow.
No metal walls. No massive man made supports.
It was a cavern, a tunnel gouged out of something that felt like a tree grown underground. The air was cold and damp, the kind of chill that did not just brush the skin, but seemed to creep straight into the bones.
As they moved deeper, Kakashi's boots scraped across the floor. He frowned.
As expected, this is not steel.
He pressed his weight down, listening to the feedback through his soles. The ground did not ring with the clear, familiar hardness of metal. It was denser, fibrous, but still unnaturally solid.
The walls and floor were made of wood that looked like steel.
Wood that drank in chakra.
Wood that refused to splinter.
To Kakashi's trained eye, its structure was obvious.
There is no wood like this in nature.
Harder than steel. Able to absorb chakra. Rough grained, dark as forged iron. Grown enormous. In theory there are only two possible sources for something like this.
Neither of them is good.
If this is some kind of sealing facility created by the First Hokage, that is at least explainable. The First Hokage was terrifying, but his power had limits. He had never shown techniques capable of erasing all life on the surface of the world.
If it is the other thing, then Kakashi really did have to wonder whether he should leave a message carved into his own genes, waiting for Aizen to one day drag his scraps back with a reverse summoning, just so someone could learn what happened here.
"Why is it always Aizen who stirs up trouble, and I am the one stuck doing the cleanup?" he muttered under his breath. "This world is really unfair."
"Huh? What are you talking about? Kakashi, what do you know?" Obito asked.
"I have two possible explanations for this place." Kakashi's voice dropped. "If it is a Wood Release research base built by the First Hokage, we might be fine. The old man was actually a decent person. We would just need to get through and use Resonance from outside.
"But if this is what remains of the God Tree and someone is still researching it, then we are in real trouble."
"What do you mean?"
Obito hurried up to stand beside him, nerves making his movements jerky.
"If someone is researching it, who is it supposed to be? And why is studying the God Tree such a bad thing?"
"Because if I am not mistaken, this is very likely to be"
Time snagged.
Then it twisted.
In Obito's eyes, everything around him blurred, sped up, and then shattered like glass.
For a heartbeat, reality dissolved into abstract color.
When it snapped back into focus, he saw Kakashi Hatake, as if following the script of his nightmare, spring sideways into a corner for no apparent reason.
"Huh?"
"Ah?"
Their chakra chains snapped without a sound.
The black wood that covered the floor and walls had silently warped and knotted together beneath them, reshaping itself into jagged, armor piercing spikes. They shot up from below, lancing through the space where the three of them stood and slicing cleanly through the glowing chains that linked their waists.
The attack was so fast and so precise that even Kakashi had no time to react. By the time he turned his head, the spikes had already drunk in the chains, dissolving the chakra into flickering light. Instinct propelled him away, his body lowering as if he were checking the trap, assessing the structure.
But Kakashi did not examine anything.
He simply stared at Obito, eyes wide, as if he had just seen something that should not exist.
Obito stared back, his expression twisted with hurt and panic.
Why are you looking at me like that?
You are the one who moved. You jumped away on your own.
Why did you run off to face that dream by yourself, Kakashi? You could have just stayed put. If you had stayed where you were, if you had walked a different path, you would have been safe. You could have been happy. You did not have to take this on alone.
If you just do not walk into this ending, you do not have to fall.
So why, Kakashi, why did you
"Obito. What are you doing?"
"I"
His own voice sounded distant.
Obito looked down in a daze and saw his hand braced against Kakashi's chest.
A black rod in his palm was crumbling into dust, fragments falling away like sand. On the other side, in his other hand, he was still gripping a wooden spike, the same kind of weapon that had shattered their chakra chains.
Huh? That is me?
So it was me.
I was the one who pushed him away.
As he watched the lingering chakra slowly disperse from his palm, Obito felt his vision tilt.
He should have realized it earlier.
In his nightmare, he had driven his hand through Rin's chest.
If he could do that in a dream, then why could he not be the one who shoved Kakashi into a trap?
"Rin, back up. Obito might be controlled. Damn it, this is the Infinite Army"
Kakashi's voice reached him from somewhere far away.
Kakashi. Kakashi, I cannot hear you.
Rin's voice overlapped with his.
"Kakashi. I cannot hear you clearly. Is there interference? What is this?"
The scene matched.
Piece after piece slid into place.
Like he was looking at strangers, Obito watched memories and nightmare fragments fuse together.
Gray white cyborgs surged up from the ground around Kakashi, countless semi mechanical bodies lunging forward. Even trapped by a seal, the heir of Las Noches was wrapped in swirling black light, already forcing the binding apart through sheer power. In a few seconds, he would break free.
Only Rin, the Kido specialist, stood exposed.
Online battles were one thing.
This was reality.
No matter how strong her Kido was, sudden close range combat had always been her weak point. Faced with that tidal wave of enemy constructs, she was quickly smothered.
Obito watched his own hand move.
Gray black wood crept up his arm like armor, wrapping around his fingers, shaping itself into a killing tool as he rushed toward Rin's back.
Do not.
Do not.
Do not hurt Rin.
His own body ran ahead of him, reaching out to her as if in joy, as if relieved to see her. Obito's consciousness lagged behind, screaming, clawing at the edges of control.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Time froze again.
Chakra surged violently in his eyes, shredding the genjutsu that had been wrapped over his consciousness.
For the briefest fragment of an instant, the space time barrier around them glitched. His ability brushed the outside network, and in that tiny, one ten thousandth of a second gap, the familiar old man appeared once more in front of him, suspended in the frozen world.
"Three tomoe, evolving straight into the Mangekyo," the old man observed. "If you really kill that girl, you will definitely awaken the Uchiha clan's legendary eyes."
"Mangekyo or whatever, I will save Rin," Obito snarled. "Tell me how to save her."
"Save her?"
The old man looked at Obito's face and smiled in a way that could only be called cruel.
"If you are only asking that now, it is already too late."
"The ones that attacked her are those white things, aren't they? The semi mechanical constructs." His voice dropped, each word like a blade. "That is the Infinite Army. Once they wound someone, the change is irreversible within seven days.
"No matter what past life they had, what bonds or memories they shared, under that transformation they become nothing more than fodder. The excess is disgorged back into the world as waste. What is left becomes one more soldier of the Infinite Army."
"Isn't it cruel? This kind of thing is almost impossible to undo."
Almost.
Almost.
There is still a chance.
Tell me.
Obito leaned toward him like a madman, pupils shaking.
No matter what it costs. No matter what I have to do.
I only want Rin to live.
I do not want her to die.
Rin has to live.
"Haha. It is actually very simple," the old man said. "You understand Impure World Reincarnation, don't you? I am only a ghost in the network right now. What you need to do is summon my soul and let me take the place of that white thing."
"What do you mean?"
"A copy like that does not have a soul to begin with."
The old man stood atop one of the gray white constructs, his expression still mocking.
"But at the same time, it serves as a vessel for all souls, the final graveyard for every spirit they consume. Once a soul occupies that shell, the Infinite Army's rules say that soul becomes the sole commander.
"When that happens, the traces of infection left in the body of the girl you like will dissolve at my command."
Obito fell silent.
"This is a gamble, Obito Uchiha."
The old man watched him, eyes narrowing in something like amusement.
"You can trust me completely, Uchiha kid. If you want her to live, you have to trust me. Do you remember what I asked of you when I taught you?"
Trust.
"That is right," the old man said. "Now is when you prove it."
He smiled at Obito's twisted, desperate face, as if this entire nightmare were nothing more than an experiment finally reaching its most interesting stage.
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