And what was with that arm?
Uchiha Itachi watched closely as Uchiha Obito's hand touched Aburame Torune's Rinkaichu. The flesh decayed instantly.
That part he understood. The Aburame Clan's secret jutsu, the Rinkaichu, destroyed anything they touched. When Yamanaka Fu accidentally brushed against Torune earlier, he'd collapsed screaming as the nano-bugs ate into him.
But Obito didn't react at all. Instead, he simply detached his entire right arm and tossed it aside like garbage.
That arm is wrong.
Itachi analyzed every detail. He can remove it without effort and there's no blood. That means it's been modified. It isn't normal flesh at all. Maybe that's why he can survive in this era. His body probably stopped being human a long time ago.
Itachi wasn't naïve. He knew what human experimentation and body modification were, but this was nothing like the cases he'd heard of. Even so, it explained a lot. How could a normal person survive for more than a hundred years? It didn't make sense.
Ninja wielded incredible power, but at the end of the day, they were still human. A shuriken could kill them just like anyone else.
Senju Hashirama was the God of Shinobi, unmatched on the battlefield, yet he still died in his thirties. The Second Hokage, famed as the water god and the fastest in the world, died too. The Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, managed to live long, but age had stripped away most of his strength.
But if someone abandoned humanity altogether through artificial means… a lot of impossible things suddenly became possible.
A human had limits. A modified existence didn't.
And the more Itachi thought, the clearer it became why Sasuke had strayed from the path Itachi designed. He was supposed to become Konoha's great hero. Instead, he became a missing-nin hunted across the world.
The reason was obvious.
This so-called Uchiha Madara had gotten to him.
The moment that thought settled, Itachi began planning how to remove Obito for good. He needed to plant his ocular power in Sasuke's eye, so that the moment Sasuke encountered Obito, the Transcription Seal would release Amaterasu and burn him down.
But even that wasn't foolproof. Obito could phase through attacks. No matter how powerful Amaterasu was, if Obito slipped into another dimension, the flames were useless.
I have to figure out the timing of his phasing. Only by catching that window can I kill this troublesome Uchiha Madara.
Itachi started mapping out every angle.
Meanwhile, Hatake Kakashi recorded every detail with the same silent intensity.
A phasing ability. A private dimension. An arm that wasn't human. Likely some kind of artificial body modification. Probably the reason he was still alive. On top of that, this masked man was involved in the Uchiha Clan massacre.
Worse, from his exchange with Shimura Danzo, it was clear the two had been in contact long before this. They may have coordinated the extermination together.
Danzo's malice toward the Uchiha Clan wasn't a secret in the upper ranks. He'd wanted them wiped out entirely. If Root participated, it explained everything. It was impossible for a single teenage Itachi to slaughter the entire clan without leaving a single survivor besides Sasuke. That was the real impossibility.
The issue was never that Itachi could kill Uchiha. The issue was that no one escaped.
Root's involvement made the whole picture make sense. It also explained Kaede Kitahara's note in the diary about Danzo's arm full of Sharingan. If Root joined the massacre, of course he'd have access to that many eyes.
And this Uchiha Madara was very likely involved as well.
Then there was the coat he wore. Black cloak, red clouds. Akatsuki.
Which meant the Uchiha Clan massacre had three known contributors: Itachi himself, Danzo's Root forces, and Uchiha Madara backed by the Akatsuki. So the question was, did Konoha's leadership know?
If Root had taken part in the slaughter, had the Third Hokage approved it? If the answer was yes, that truth alone could shake the entire ninja world.
There were too many secrets buried in this incident.
And this also answered a long-standing question Kakashi had. The Akatsuki was a group of S-rank missing-nin, all of them at least Kage Level. Like that flying orange-haired man who shouted about "carrying rice," monsters one and all. How could such people gather under one banner?
Because there was someone in the organization strong enough to hold monsters in line. Someone named Uchiha Madara.
And this terrifying group had a goal, or at least one of their goals: the Nine-Tails Demon Fox. What were they planning? In the future, they'd even invade Konoha. Just imagining it gave Kakashi a headache.
But for Uchiha Sasuke, the focus was simpler. Everyone said this battle was between him and Danzo, yet he still hadn't appeared in the footage.
Just as that thought formed, Obito entered his Kamui space after defeating Danzo's two guards. Inside were two figures: Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Karin.
The moment Obito arrived, Sasuke snapped, "Let me out."
Outside the screen, Kakashi added another note. This was definitely a space-time ninjutsu. It could teleport people into a special dimension. Even more surprising, the Kamui dimension wasn't singular. Torune and Fu weren't in this one, which implied they'd been pulled into another.
Itachi and Sasuke didn't recognize Danzo's two escorts, but Kakashi did. He'd been in Root once, served in Anbu as a squad leader. Those two were Danzo's most trusted operatives.
Their absence from this dimension said everything.
Like Itachi, Kakashi instinctively began planning how to counter Obito inside this kind of space. If Kamui had multiple separate dimensions, the situation was terrifying.
Obito could lock someone away forever in one of those spaces. He didn't even need to fight them. They'd starve to death with no escape.
So what then?
How do you break free from a prison like that?