"Urgh..."
Obito groaned as he woke up again. He hadn't been punched ever since unlocking his Mangekyo Sharingan, so this was a surprise. That didn't mean that he had never been punched before. The feeling brought him back to his rivalry with Kakashi, where he was always worse than him.
"Welcome back."
Obito turned around and saw Tenji drawing what looked like Fuinjutsu on different sheets of paper. Obito reached up to his face, noticing that his mask was gone. He acted fast, using Kamui and phased out of there. However, a moment later, he appeared again, in great pain.
"AARHHH!!!"
"Well, it seems it worked," Tenji said.
"What... did you do?" Obito asked.
"In the time you took to wake up, I did some research into space-time ninjutsu. Zetsu told me about a man named Tobirama Senju. Quite a talented man, I must say. He had the right idea, but his mind was still too narrow. You see, in my research of the Hyuga's Cursed Seal, I found out that there was almost no limit to what you could do with them. So, naturally, after hearing about the Hiraishin no Jutsu, it was rather simple to create a seal that would stop you from leaving."
Obito looked at Tenji with anger and hate. Kamui was the best escape jutsu in existence, and yet here was someone who still managed to chain him. He chose not to believe Tenji's words and tried again. But the result was the same. He felt great pain after he tried to appear in another location, other than his personal dimension.
"Urgh..."
"I had several theories on how you managed to phase through everything. Either you truly only phased through solid objects, which I quickly discarded after using a jutsu on you, or you phased through anything that contained chakra, or you phased through anything you could see, and so on and so forth. To think that you displaced yourself from this dimension entirely, that was new, but very enlightening."
"How did you know which one it was?" Obito asked.
"I didn't. So I prepared for all of them. Using seals is like forming wet clay for me. It's fun to see what I can come up with."
"..."
"What do you want?" Obito asked.
"We will talk. Zetsu told me what Madara Uchiha told you. How you were always dead last at school, how you almost died, were saved and then saw your love be killed by your best friend."
Obito grew angry. There was nothing to talk about.
"I will not talk to you about anything! I will get out of here, even if I have to kill you."
"You are welcome to try. But it won't make your pain go away. Madara's plan of creating a world without pain is as stupid as it was fake," Tenji said.
"SHUT UP!" Obito screamed.
He flashed towards Tenji and started attacking him. He was beyond angry right now, and for some reason didn't act rationally. His feelings were amplified to the max, and he only wanted to kill Tenji, to drown the others, he felt. But Tenji already told him that he understood him and his jutsu. There was nothing Obito could show him that would surprise him.
Obito rushed through several hand seals.
"Fire Style: Blast Wave Wild Dance Jutsu"
Tenji didn't panic at all. He unsheathed his sword and infused it with water nature transformation chakra. The sword changed right away into a polearm: a small, single-edged bladehead attached to a long wooden pole. The blade was covered by a wooden sheath inscribed with 'Tenji'. Seeing the large fire jutsu approach him, He twirled the polearm around.
From nowhere, water appeared around Tenji, forming a dome and protecting him from the fire jutsu. The hot water didn't stop its movement, though and followed Tenji's movements. He directed it towards Obito, attacking him with it. Seeing the water approach, Obito didn't bother dodging and relied on Kamui to save him. At the same time, he produced several sharp wooden spikes from his body. He grabbed several of them and threw them through the water, towards Tenji.
Tenji didn't bother dodging himself. He simply unsheathed his polearm. A bright light blinded Obito momentarily, giving Tenji more than enough time to cut through the wooden spikes and smash the blunt side of it into the young man's stomach while Kamui wasn't on.
"When I told you that I understood it, I wasn't merely talking about your Kamui. I was talking about you in general. I understand what it means to be you and how you think and fight. I knew your moves ahead of time and how to deal with them in the simplest way," Tenji said.
"Bullshit!" Obito spat.
"You think so? Well, you got me."
Two hands appeared from the ground below Tenji and grabbed his legs. He was pulled down, while at the same time, the real Obito used several other jutsus at the same time. Several thick roots emerged from the ground, targeting Tenji and attempting to crush him.
"Wood Style: Great Spear Tree Jutsu"
But Obito wasn't finished yet.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu" "Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu" "Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu" "Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu"
Tenji watched as dozens of fireballs flew through the air. The tree roots caught him and began crushing his body, while the fireballs exploded everything into bits. Obito breathed hard. He had an angry but strangely satisfied look on his face as he looked at the large dust cloud.
"That was impressive."
!!!
Obito turned around to a perfectly fine Tenji. He stood in the very same place that he had when Obito first woke up, without his sword drawn. The ground looked pristine, as if they hadn't been fighting a moment ago.
"W-hat? What's going... on?" he asked.
Tenji only cocked his head slightly. Obito disrupted his chakra flow to disrupt the genjutsu he thought he was in right now, but nothing changed. He wasn't in a genjutsu, so did this mean what he saw now was real? Had he been in a genjutsu previously, and the fight wasn't real?
"When did you place me in a genjutsu?" he asked.
"Genjutsu?"
"Yes! When did you place me in your genjutsu?!" Obito asked.
"I never placed you in a genjutsu. I think the idea behind genjutsu is good, but the application is rather simple. Far too easy to dispel, when the possibilities are endless. What I used is something different. I call it Kanzen-Saimin, or 'Perfect Hypnosis'."
Obito's eyes widened in shock.
"Since when have I been under this hypnosis?" Obito asked.
"What makes you think that you were ever not under an illusion?" Tenji asked.
!!!
Obito was shocked once again. That was ridiculous. He remembered everything, the fight against Tenji, which ended in him being knocked out, then his anger and the way he tried to get away using Kamui, only for it to fail and then...
'Hold on. That's right! The reason why Kamui failed must have been because I was under an illusion this entire time! Figured me out, my ass! He lied the entire time. I can still escape this. The only question is how to remove myself from this hypnosis. Do I have to kill him?'
"I'm sure you must think that killing me is the only way to escape this hypnosis, right?" Tenji asked. "Well, you may be right, but how do you know for sure? What everything I just told you... was a lie?"
"WHAT?! What are you talking about this time?" Obito asked, annoyed.
"How do you know that I told the truth? How do you know that what you experienced today is real? What if the last few months weren't real either? Because the truth is, I appeared before you long ago, and we had this very talk back then as well."
"HUH!?!! Impossible! I would know if that happened! I would--"
"Would you? But what if I used my jutsu to rewrite what you remember? I'll be honest with you, Obito. I lied again. I actually met you long before, years ago. The day you were hit by that boulder was the day we met."
"..."
"True, another lie, we knew each other from the Academy. I was the one who sat in the back all the time."
"..."
"Alright, I lied again, it wasn't, I'm actually... your father!"
"..."
"Your entire life has been a lie, Obito. Nothing is real; you have been living all these years in a fraction of a second, because I placed you under an illusion. Do you see? Everything you did was my design."
Obito's world seemed to tilt. He heard Tenji's words like through water. He turned around, looking for something to anchor him to reality, to tell him that what he was hearing was all lies, that everything had been a bad dream. But there was nothing. Only the constant words of Tenji, telling him that he had lived a lie. He thought back to his time in Konoha, the time when he was in the Academy. He remembered his grandmother, Kakashi, Asuma... and Rin. Were they all truly real? Was all of this an illusion, created by that man?
"STOOOOOPP!!"
A wave of chakra was expelled from Obito as he vented his frustration and anger. Tears ran down his face as he stared at Tenji.
"Rin is real! She was everything to me! And Kakashi killed her!! A world like this, a cursed world, doesn't deserve to remain as it was! I will change it. She mattered, and I will not allow you to slander her!"
Tenji's expression changed from the arrogant, condescending one he had worn before. He looked at the hurt Obito held and sighed.
"So she mattered. She mattered because she was real."
"Yes," Obito agreed right away and attacked Tenji again.
But Tenji didn't bother with the young man and simply dodged all his attacks.
"But if she mattered to you because she had been real, what do you think all those others will feel when you take that reality away from them? When you strip them of their freedom of choice and become trapped in an illusion?"
Obito stopped, hearing Tenji's words. He was right. In a way, he was doing the exact same thing, Tenji had been doing to him during their fight. And Obito got to feel first-hand what it felt like to have no control over your life and not realise that anything you did wouldn't matter, because you had no choice.
"Living in a dream might sound good in theory, but it's not living in the first place. It's the easy way out, Obito."
"..."
"I know what it's like to stand in front of a hopeless situation. It's what you do in those situations that counts. Running away and hating the world won't get Rin back, and forcing the world into an illusion won't either. I understand the appeal, but it isn't the best way to go about it. I know someone who almost did the same thing, but stopped halfway. Doing this will make you the loneliest man in existence."
Obito didn't answer; he couldn't. He had no idea what to say.
"Follow me, Obito. I will show you how to change this world. It will not be pretty; it won't be easy. You will face great hardship and doubt, and you will have to push beyond your limits. But when we are done, you will not recognise what we have built. So what do you say?"
Obito was about to answer, when Tenji said another thing.
"But remember, I was denied the chance to be with the woman I love once already. That won't happen again. And I will rip apart anything and anyone who stands in my way this time. So make sure you know that this is what you truly want."
...