Konoha at night carried a strange kind of peace... the kind that only existed because the village truly believed it was safe.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then fell silent. Wind slipped through the trees lining the empty streets, stirring the leaves into a faint whisper beneath the silver wash of moonlight.
A few homes still had warm light glowing behind their windows, but most of the village had long since surrendered itself to sleep.
Then, in the darkness of a narrow alley, space twisted soundlessly.
A warped distortion spiraled open, and Obito stepped out of Kamui as if the night itself had spat him back into the world.
His mask hid his face, and the single eye visible through it remained cold and unreadable as it swept across the sleeping village.
"Prepare the necessary formations. I have something to deal with personally."
Almost at once, a white head popped out of the ground.
"Hehehe… aye aye, Captain. Leave it to us."
The White Zetsu spoke in a low, strange voice, his grin as bizarre as ever. Then he sank back into the earth as though swallowed by it.
Obito wasted no time either. His figure blurred and vanished.
The next moment, he appeared inside Kushina's house.
It was not guarded like a fortress. For all the importance of the people within it, the home itself still felt like a home.
The room was dim, lit only by moonlight slipping through the edges of the curtains.
Kushina Uzumaki slept soundly.
She was curled slightly on her side, her long red hair spilled across the pillow like a pool of quiet flame. Her arms were wrapped tightly around another pillow, so tightly that it looked less like comfort and more like habit.
As if even in sleep, Kushina refused to let go of what belonged to her.
Obito stood there for a long moment, watching her in silence.
Then he lifted his head, and beneath the mask, his right eye slowly opened.
The Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan turned within its socket, the pattern rotating as chakra flowed into it.
For a brief moment, curiosity got the better of him.
He wanted to know what she was dreaming about—what kind of dream could make her hold that pillow so tightly.
So he cast a subtle illusion first, brushing against the surface of her unconscious mind.
A little while later, he withdrew.
His expression beneath the mask turned complicated.
He looked at Kushina in a completely different light, and goosebumps rose along his skin.
"You really are something…"
Obito exhaled quietly, wiping the faint sweat from his face. Then, almost absentmindedly, he placed a hand on her soft red hair and gently stroked it once.
"Sigh…"
He had indeed seen something unexpected.
But now was not the time to dwell on it.
His gaze sharpened again.
It was time to do what he had come here for.
"Kotoamatsukami…"
He did not need to say it loudly.
Anyone who truly understood that genjutsu knew how terrifying it was.
This was not the kind of illusion that announced itself as an invasion. It slipped into the mind so naturally that it felt like a thought that had always belonged there.
A command inserted so perfectly that it left behind no trace of outside interference.
Kushina's brow twitched faintly, as though something in her dream had annoyed her.
Then her face relaxed again. Her breathing deepened, and the pillow remained locked in her arms like a promise she would never release.
After giving her one long, deep look, Obito turned toward the next room and passed through the door with Kamui's intangibility.
Naruto was asleep too.
Wrapped up in his blankets and sprawled across the bed in the careless way only a child could manage, he looked completely defenseless.
Even in sleep, though, there was still a trace of stubbornness on his face, and his breathing came in soft little bursts.
"Sasuke… I will… ha…"
The words slipped out of his mouth before he drifted right back into snoring.
Obito fell silent.
So he was dreaming about Sasuke.
A strange chill ran across his skin, and for a moment he could only think that this mother-and-son pair really was something else.
He shook his head and stood over the boy.
Then he cast the illusion again.
This time, however, the instant his chakra began to slip into Naruto's inner world, something vast, powerful, and hateful stirred beneath the seal.
A heavy pressure rose from Naruto's stomach with violent hostility, like a colossal gate being forced open from the inside.
Obito narrowed his eyes.
In the next moment, his consciousness appeared in another space.
Dark water stretched beneath his feet. Damp air lingered in the gloom. And before him stood a massive cage, towering like a prison built to contain calamity itself.
Inside it was the strongest of the tailed beasts.
Kurama.
The Nine-Tails loomed in the darkness, his enormous body radiating wild menace. His fur bristled as scarlet chakra churned around him like a raging storm, and the instant his massive eyes snapped open, murderous fury flooded the entire mindscape.
"YOU—!"
The roar shook the space itself.
Kurama slammed against the seal with such force that the water below exploded upward in violent waves. His claws screeched across the bars, his fangs bared, his eyes blazing with savage hatred and immediate recognition.
"It's you again…!"
"You foul-eyed wretch…! You dare crawl back into this place?!"
"I'll tear your soul apart! I'll rip you open and drown this entire village in your blood!"
The red chakra raging around him swelled violently, filling the space with suffocating malice.
Obito's cloak fluttered lightly in that storm of hatred, but he did not react.
He simply looked up at the fox with his one cold eye.
Kurama's pupils narrowed.
Then something in his expression changed.
"No…"
"…that eye…"
Obito stared at him for a moment before speaking at last, his voice flat and unimpressed.
"You really haven't changed at all."
Kurama snarled, lips pulling back further.
"Silence!"
"You're Pathetic." Obito said coldly, looking up at him without the slightest fear.
"Uncivilized, loud, and incapable of holding a proper conversation. Grow up already. You've lived for at least a thousand years."
He looked at Kurama with open disdain.
To be fair, the Nine-Tails had every reason to be angry.
Kurama had once roamed free in the wild, living as he pleased, only for Madara Uchiha to appear and force him into submission like some personal weapon.
And after Madara fell, things only became worse.
He was passed on from one monster to another, reduced from a beast of the wild to a caged existence under Hashirama's power.
Even so, Obito couldn't help but feel that Kurama was hopelessly lacking in wisdom.
For a being who had lived that long, the fox should have learned more than rage.
A creature with centuries behind it should have known how to endure, how to scheme, how to wait for the right chance to break free.
Instead, Kurama did little beyond lashing out and roaring at the bars of his cage.
Obito almost found it embarrassing.
Someone like Ryomen Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen would have mocked him outright. That kind of ancient monster had known how to deceive his vessel, manipulate every opening, and claw his way back to freedom through sheer cunning.
Kurama, on the other hand, only knew how to throw tantrums.
Honestly, even an ordinary person living for so long would have become something like a sage by now.
But Kurama?
Kurama had spent all those years growing older without growing wiser.
Kurama's chakra erupted again when he noticed the strange look in the Uchiha's eye.
The Nine-Tails surged forward in resistance, slamming against the seal and making the entire mindscape tremble.
"Don't look at me with that eye, Uchiha!"
"Tch."
Obito didn't bother responding.
Without any warning—or courtesy—he activated Kotoamatsukami.
Even as the genjutsu began to take hold, Kurama continued to thrash violently, his voice filled with fury.
"Don't you dare—!"
"RRRRAAAAGH—!"
The giant fox's breathing turned ragged as the Sharingan's power forced its way in, piece by piece, pushing through that overwhelming hatred and resistance.
Scarlet chakra surged wildly, then gradually began to destabilize.
Kurama snarled again, but this time the sound came out lower, strained—like he was choking on his own rage.
"You… filthy… parasite…"
Obito said nothing.
The moment the genjutsu settled, he withdrew from the mental space without another word.
Back in the room, Naruto remained asleep, breathing softly, completely unaware of what had just taken place within him.
Obito no longer needed to stay.
His body blurred as he stepped back into Kamui, vanishing from the house.
A moment later, he reappeared above the village, standing atop a high hill bathed in pale moonlight.
From here, Konoha looked peaceful… almost beautiful.
The kind of place people would willingly throw their lives away to protect.
Obito stood still for a moment, silently taking in the sight.
Then the ground around him began to shift.
A pale hand rose from the ground like a sprout breaking through soil.
Then another.
Then several more.
White Zetsu emerged one after another, their bodies peeling out from surfaces as if they had always belonged there. They climbed from tree bark, from the ground itself.
Their grins were wide, their eyes bright with that unsettling mix of curiosity and childish excitement.
And then Tobi appeared among them.
He landed lightly beside Obito, his orange mask tilted as he looked around with exaggerated curiosity.
"Oooh… scary, scary," Tobi said in a sing-song voice, glancing down toward the sleeping village. "You really did it. That was fast. As expected of Captain—"
He froze dramatically halfway through.
Then he coughed theatrically and puffed out his chest.
"As expected of the great and mysterious one!"
Several White Zetsu immediately snickered.
"He almost messed up his own act again."
"What an idiot."
"Maybe we should bury him halfway and leave him there."
Tobi threw his hands up dramatically.
"You guys are so mean! Honestly, I'm the only cheerful one here. A man can't even make a little joke?"
The White Zetsu began talking over one another at once, their voices overlapping like a chaotic chorus.
"So this is the famous Leaf Village!"
"It's smaller than I thought!"
"It's cleaner than the Rain Village."
"So many rooftops!"
"So many people to fuc—" one of them started, grinning mischievously.
"Enough."
A single sharp glance from Obito cut through the noise.
One of the White Zetsu—who had been grinning and clearly enjoying Tobi's "special" antics—froze mid-sentence.
The chatter died instantly.
Even Tobi straightened slightly. The exaggerated playfulness dropped, just enough to reveal that he was serious now.
Obito stepped forward into the moonlight.
"Begin."
The White Zetsu moved immediately, though a few still giggled under their breath.
"Yes, yes."
"Focus, focus."
"Serious time."
Their behavior flipped in an instant. The foolishness vanished like a switch had been turned off, replaced by eerie efficiency.
Obito stepped to the center of the hill.
Then he slowly lowered himself, sitting cross-legged as if taking a seat upon an invisible throne.
The White Zetsu spread out in every direction.
They slipped across rooftops, walls, and ground with unnatural speed. Some sank into the earth and resurfaced far away. Others leapt silently from structure to structure, pale figures scattering into the night.
From above, it would have looked like fragments radiating outward from a single point, gradually circling Konoha piece by piece.
When they finished positioning themselves, the entire village had unknowingly been encompassed.
If someone could observe from the sky, they would have seen faint black markings spreading across Konoha—forming a vast, strange array with eerie patterns connecting everything together.
At the center of it all sat Obito Uchiha.
Then red chakra threads began to emerge from his body.
Obito's eyes narrowed slightly as chakra surged outward.
"Pseudo Infinite Kotoamatsukami!!"
Dozens of them spilled outward like living strands of blood-colored light, writhing in the moonlight before shooting across the connected markings.
They raced through the formation with terrifying speed, embedding themselves into each White Zetsu one after another.
Every time a thread reached one of them, the White Zetsu's body shuddered faintly.
"Ugh…"
"That feels disgusting."
"Like something crawling inside me."
"That's because something is crawling inside you."
"Hehehe… now we're all connected."
Obito, seated at the center of the formation, took a slow breath.
Then he exhaled, a faint sigh of relief leaving him when he felt the technique stabilize.
It worked.
If not for the enormous chakra reserves he possessed, something on this scale would never have been possible.
Originally, he had intended to cast a one-time genjutsu over the entire village. But doing it individually would have taken too long, and time was something he didn't have the luxury of wasting.
So he chose the most efficient method—one that minimized both time and energy consumption.
By using the White Zetsu as relay points, he created a network capable of spreading his genjutsu across the entire village simultaneously. Each White Zetsu acted as a conduit, receiving his chakra and transmitting the illusion outward.
And because they were beings infused with Hashirama's cells, their compatibility with chakra manipulation made the process far smoother than using ordinary clones or pawns.
More importantly, the burden on him was drastically reduced.
Through the network, the chakra expenditure was distributed. Even while controlling something this massive, Obito remained vigilant.
He had no intention of wasting even the slightest bit of his chakra unnecessarily.
Soon, the White Zetsu began acting in unison.
Their numbers far exceeded the population of the village, allowing them to cover Konoha with terrifying efficiency. The genjutsu spread like an invisible tide, slipping silently into every corner.
The process was completed in almost no time at all.
When it was over, Obito slowly rose from the center of the formation.
His figure blurred, vanishing from the hill.
A moment later, he reappeared atop the Hokage Rock, overlooking the sleeping village.
Everything remained perfectly still beneath the moonlight.
Seeing no abnormalities, Obito couldn't help but let out a low chuckle.
"…That went smoother than expected."
"With this, everything should proceed without unnecessary complications."
The night wind brushed past his cloak as he turned slightly.
"Now… all that's left is to wait."
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