— — — — — —
"Rin! You're okay—thank god! That's such a relief!"
Obito had finally come to his senses. His voice cracked with emotion as he suddenly pulled the completely unprepared Nohara Rin into a tight hug.
Tears streamed down his face uncontrollably as he murmured, "It wasn't real... thank god it wasn't real..."
"Obito?"
Rin had instinctively raised her fists, ready to deck him again after being suddenly grabbed, but hearing his broken voice and those desperate words made her pause.
Instead, she gently returned the hug, patting his back softly to calm him. "It's okay. I'm fine. Everyone's fine."
"I'm here, Obito."
She could finally feel how deep and sincere Obito's feelings for her truly were.
This time, she didn't push them away. For once, she chose to face them—fully and honestly.
Renzo had already given her a rough explanation of the illusion Obito had been trapped in, but Rin hadn't realized just how deep his obsession—and his pain—ran until now.
And seeing it with her own eyes… she knew she couldn't keep avoiding it anymore.
In the past, she'd admired Kakashi, then Renzo, but that wasn't love. Only now did she truly understand what love was.
For the first time, Rin and Obito held each other tightly.
. . .
Kakashi, watching the scene quietly, didn't really react much. If anything, he looked... a little relieved?
Well, that made sense. He'd always seen Rin as a comrade, a teammate—nothing romantic.
"Wow…"
Asuma, off to the side, watched the whole thing unfold and clicked his tongue. "Looks like it actually worked out for him."
Talk about a blessing in disguise.
Wait...
Pfft! Who was he kidding? Blessing in disguise, my ass!
This punk even awakened his Mangekyō Sharingan. His strength was about to take a massive leap forward.
Sure, he'd taken a hit mentally and probably needed some time to recover, but let's be honest—he hit the jackpot.
Power and love? That's a double win.
If Asuma wasn't already doing great himself in both departments, he might've been a little jealous.
"Hmm… now that I think about it, looks like Kakashi's the only single guy left in our group, huh? Maybe I should talk to others about setting him up with someone?"
Asuma rubbed his chin, stroking the faint stubble that had started forming, and shot Kakashi a weird side glance.
Kakashi: "…"
"…You're thinking something shady, aren't you?"
Kakashi stared at Asuma's shifty face, deadpan.
"Ahaha! What? No way! You're totally imagining things!"
Asuma laughed awkwardly, trying to play it off.
...
After a while, Obito finally started to calm down.
He also realized something else—Rin hadn't rejected him. She'd actually accepted his feelings.
Satisfied with that, he didn't push his luck and just let her go, turning to glare at Renzo instead. "Boss! You really went all out with that illusion. You could've at least given me a heads-up!"
"Do you even know what I went through?! I thought everything was real—I was ready to burn the whole damn world down!"
"That genjutsu was way too realistic!"
And the worst part? Renzo had sneakily sealed off his memories from during the illusion.
Even with the Mangekyō active, Obito couldn't break through that memory seal. Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.
He had only one thought: "Uchiha Renzo is a damn monster!"
"How else was I supposed to get you to awaken the Mangekyō?" Renzo rolled his eyes. "You think it's something you can just turn on like a switch?"
"Alright, enough whining. I want to analyze your eye techniques. Sit down over there."
"Huh? You can actually study an eye technique? Aren't they, like, innate abilities? You can't just learn them like a jutsu, right?"
Obito looked completely confused.
"Don't worry about the details. Just sit your ass down."
Anyway, this kind of thing was way out of Obito's league.
"Oh, okay."
Obito obediently sat across from Renzo, who activated his Eternal Mangekyō and began using his dōjutsu Omniscience to analyze Kamui.
Meanwhile, Rin and the others quietly returned to their training.
— — —
Five Days Later
"All done! You're free to go now—don't need you anymore."
Renzo waved Obito off with a dismissive flick of his hand.
"Huh?" Obito blinked. "Already? That fast? So, uh… did you figure anything out?"
"Of course I did. Who do you think I am?" Renzo grinned. "Next time you see me using Kamui, try not to be too surprised."
"…Wait, seriously?! Boss, does that mean I can learn it too?!"
Obito's eyes lit up like fireworks.
"Keep dreaming."
Renzo shook his head. "The only reason I can pull this off is because my eye technique is analysis-based. I can figure out how your Kamui works and replicate it in my own way."
"You don't have that ability—so even if I explained it to you, you wouldn't understand a thing."
"So instead of fantasizing, why don't you focus on mastering your Mangekyō and those two bloodlines of yours? Better get moving before Asuma and Kakashi leave you in the dust."
With that, Renzo closed his eyes again, starting the process of constructing his own version of Kamui.
Thanks to his Dojutsu, Takamagahara, he didn't need to create a whole new dimension from scratch like most people would. That made things a lot easier.
"Damn! How many days did I waste already? Ugh, forget it—I'm out! I need to see Rin!"
Obito slapped his thigh in frustration, then bolted out like his pants were on fire.
---
After three days
Renzo spent another three days, carefully engraving both forms of Kamui into his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. Once he was done, he could use them anytime he wanted.
"Alright, time to check out the moon."
With that thought, Renzo stood up, left a Wood Clone behind to watch the house, and teleported out of Konoha, heading straight for the spatial anomaly he had located earlier using the chakra satellite.
"This should be it."
A few dozen minutes later, he arrived at a cave. In front of him was a large underground pool.
Without hesitation, he dove in and swam deeper and deeper. Soon enough, he felt a familiar spatial fluctuation and the pull of a portal. He followed it.
Moments later, after a flash of distorted space, Renzo found himself in another underwater cavern.
He scanned the area with his spiritual sense and confirmed—he was on the moon.
Surfacing quickly, he took a deep breath… only to be immediately attacked.
FWOOOSH!
A massive crab claw burst out of nowhere, aiming straight for his head.
CRACK! CRACK!
The claw slammed into a spherical mental barrier surrounding Renzo. No matter how hard the puppet crab strained, the shield didn't budge an inch.
"Whoa, that's a big crab… Shame it's just a puppet. Eh, might be worth dissecting later."
Without missing a beat, Renzo activated his Eternal Eye and, with a flick of his wrist, tossed the puppet crab into his Takamagahara—specifically, a prison space he had set aside for storage and research.
Thanks to Kamui, he didn't need to project or open his domain anymore. He could just warp stuff in directly. Definitely a handy upgrade.
At that exact moment, deep within an ancient castle on the moon, a white-haired, blind man suddenly jerked his head toward the portal chamber.
"A shinobi… made it here from the surface?"
His expression twisted with rage.
"You're dead!"
He gently placed the newborn Toneri back into his cradle, then rallied a massive army of puppet soldiers and stormed toward the intruder.
"You shouldn't have come here. Die!"
Without waiting for a response, the man unleashed a flood of puppet warriors toward Renzo. At the same time, he raised his hand, forming a bright sphere of chakra.
"Yang Release: Light Orb!"
"Oh? You're going straight for a Yang Release jutsu, huh? Interesting. No wonder your people's bodies can evolve pure Byakugan into Tenseigan… That actually explains a lot."
Renzo barely raised an eyebrow. With a thought, his mental barrier absorbed the Light Orb like it was nothing. Then he reached out, and a shimmering blade of space began to form between his fingers.
"Dimensional Slash!"
As soon as it left his hand, the spatial blade exploded in size, stretching hundreds of meters long. It sliced through the air with a high-pitched hum, cutting clean through the puppet army like a wire through butter.
KRSHHH!
In the blink of an eye, over 23,000 puppet soldiers were sliced in half. Their bodies fell apart in eerie silence, each cut impossibly smooth.
Renzo had held back—if he hadn't, that slash might've cleaved the moon in two.
Then, with a soft whoosh, he vanished… and reappeared right in front of Toneri's father.
His pale hand moved with deceptive calmness, grabbing the man's neck—
CRACK!
A twist. It was over.
He tossed the body into Takamagahara's experimental lab space.
Then Renzo swept the entire moon with his spiritual sense.
Deep within the lunar core, he picked up the presence of some extremely complex sealing techniques.
And one life form.
"Oh? Another person? Must be Toneri."
He teleported again—and just as he thought, he found a tiny white-haired boy, about one or two years old, sitting alone. Though his eyes were blank, his presence felt unusually sharp.
"Who are you?" the child asked, turning his head in Renzo's direction, his young voice calm and curious despite his blindness.
.
.
.