Inside Kirigakure, within the Mizukage's office, the lamps burned low.
Yagura sat behind the desk, hands moving across paperwork with mechanical precision.
Seal approvals. Supply requests. Execution orders buried between routine reports
His expression never changed.
His eyes never lingered.
Across the room, a masked figure lounged on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, posture relaxed to the point of mockery.
Obito.
He didn't bother hiding his presence.
There was no need.
This room belonged to him far more than it ever had to Yagura.
"So," Obito said lazily, breaking the silence. "They're finally moving."
Yagura didn't respond. He didn't need to.
Obito's smirk widened beneath the mask.
The White Zetsu network had been whispering for days now.
Mei Terumi's little resistance, once scattered and cautious, had begun synchronizing.
Sleeper agents inside the village. External defectors converging. Signals lining up.
A coup.
At last.
Exactly on schedule.
"Good," Obito muttered. "I was starting to wonder if they'd lost their nerve."
He leaned back into the couch, fingers drumming idly against the armrest.
Kirigakure had outlived its usefulness.
It had served its purpose as a shield. As a logistics hub. But now?
Now it was time to strip it down to the bone.
A massive civil war would do nicely.
Not a clean overthrow.
Not a decisive victory.
Shinobi killing shinobi until nothing resembling cohesion remained.
By the time the dust settled, there would be no village left to reclaim.
Just ruins. Empty ranks. A hollow shell wearing the name Kirigakure.
Permanent damage.
And when Obito finally stepped away, there would be nothing worth taking from it again.
His attention drifted elsewhere, already moving past the village in his mind.
The Akatsuki was progressing.
The tailed beast collection had begun.
Variables still needed trimming.
Loose ends would need attention.
Kirigakure was just one more piece to be discarded.
Obito's smile sharpened.
"Do your job," he said softly, almost fondly, to the unmoving figure at the desk.
Yagura continued writing, pen scratching steadily across the page.
Outside the office, the mist curled through the village streets, unaware that it was about to be soaked through with blood one last time.
Obito knew that in truth, Akatsuki had never lacked the means to begin.
Logistics had been secured long ago.
Funding, supply lines, safe routes, and hideouts, information brokers, technological infrastructure in Amegakure, Nagato's needs, spy networks.
It was nothing that required fifteen years of delay to begin with.
So why now?
Why had the plan waited this long?
Because Obito Uchiha did not want to relinquish control.
A decade and a half had passed since the night his life ended and began again.
Since Madara Uchiha pulled him from death.
Since he woke up in a world already broken.
Since he crawled back in time to witness Kakashi's hand pierce Rin's chest.
He accepted Madara's dream.
A world without pain. Without loss.
A world where Rin would smile again.
But he did not accept Madara's ownership of it.
Obito never intended to be a vessel that handed the future to someone else.
Not to a corpse clinging to relevance.
That world would be his.
He would be the one to carry Infinite Tsukuyomi.
The one to decide when it began.
The one to stand at its center.
Which meant Madara could never return.
Madara had instructed him clearly.
Revive me once Nagato matures.
Use the Rinnegan. Fulfill your role.
Obito never intended to comply.
He wasn't naïve enough to believe Madara had saved him for free, without drawbacks.
A man like Madara Uchiha did not unplug himself from life without contingencies.
Without redundancies. Without insurance.
Black Zetsu was one of them.
And Obito knew it.
That thing was different from the white Zetsu. Stranger. Quieter.
Its chakra was faint, almost nonexistent, yet it lingered everywhere Madara's influence did.
Watching. Listening.
Obito had no idea how much of Madara remained embedded within it.
And worse, he suspected that wasn't all.
Over the years, Obito had tested himself again and again.
Carefully. Quietly. Always probing his limits. His autonomy.
And each time, the same conclusion returned.
There was something inside him.
A seal. A curse. A jūinjutsu.
Not obvious. Not reactive.
Something deeper. Likely centered on his heart.
He couldn't identify its full parameters.
Couldn't remove it.
Couldn't even be certain when or how it would activate.
Black Zetsu never intervened when he delayed the plan.
That silence terrified him more than resistance would have.
Because Madara was never the type to rely on a single safeguard.
This was why Obito stretched everything out.
Why the plan crawled instead of surged.
With his Kamui, his mastery, and Nagato at his side, there was no force in the world that could have stopped them from collecting the tailed beasts outright.
The S-rank Akatsuki were unnecessary.
Disobedient. Unstable. Dangerous liabilities. Especially meshed together.
It only meant that the sealing process, extracting the tailed beasts into the Gedō Statue, would take longer without their supplemental chakra. Slower. More tedious.
But never impossible.
For Obito, however, they were mainly tools. Tests.
Every year that passed without consequence was another confirmation that Madara's leash was loosening. Or weakening. Or perhaps incomplete.
Obito waited. Watched. Pushed boundaries.
Tried to grow in silence. Hoping for a crack.
Hoping to find a way to sever whatever final hold Madara had left behind.
And if that mark on his heart truly couldn't be removed by himself in the end?
Then perhaps someone else would destroy it for him, by accident.
Savior and mentor. What a joke.
It was obvious Madara had never been anything but a manipulator, using him from the moment he was pulled out of the rubble.
Obito wasn't naïve enough to miss that.
He'd simply chosen to play along, to survive long enough to turn Madara's own plans and teachings back on him.
That was the real question, after all.
How could Obito be certain Madara would truly follow through?
The promise had always been framed carefully.
Whoever completed the plan would gain ultimate control.
But control over what, exactly?
The world sealed in Infinite Tsukuyomi, or the world itself afterward?
Who was to say Madara didn't intend to return, reclaim everything, and rule directly instead of surrendering reality to an illusion of peace?
Obito had no intention of finding out the hard way.
Eternal peace could not be entrusted to Madara Uchiha.
If Infinite Tsukuyomi was to happen at all, it would be Obito who brought it about.
Madara might have written the doctrine.
But Obito intended to be the one who proved he understood it better than its creator.
He took Madara's name externally for its weight, not out of habit, and not because he enjoyed impersonating another man. And certainly not to let fifteen years of his own work be swallowed and claimed by someone else.
As for Nagato?
Nagato was never Obito's rival.
Madara was.
Even from the grave.
Nagato believed himself indispensable.
The Rinnegan's chosen.
The executor of divine judgment.
He never realized that Obito, with Madara's teachings and his own Uchiha and Senju blood, could control the Gedō Statue more cleanly than he ever could.
Without backlash. Without decay.
Nagato never realized that the black receivers embedded within him, the tether binding him to the Gedō Statue, and even the Rinnegan itself were still laced with lingering fragments of Madara's Six Paths chakra.
Fragments Obito now knew how to command.
Nagato also understood something he rarely voiced aloud.
The ideal weapon he envisioned, the foundation of the world he dreamed Akatsuki would create, the fusion of all tailed beasts into a single instrument of balance, pain giving birth to peace, was not something he truly knew how to complete.
That knowledge belonged to only one person.
"Madara Uchiha."
At least, that was what Nagato believed.
Akatsuki had been built on that assumption.
On the idea that Madara alone understood the final step, the true method to unify the tailed beasts and turn suffering into a mechanism for lasting order.
And because of that, Nagato followed.
Not as a subordinate who was openly commanded, but as a visionary who accepted that someone else held the missing piece he could not yet grasp.
That was the real leverage, even without the potential coercion.
That was the real control.
Which was why Nagato was never openly ordered around, and yet it was always unmistakably clear who held the upper hand, even within Nagato's own organization.
Shortly after what happened with Yahiko and Hanzō, it was Nagato who accepted his direction during their first real meeting.
Akatsuki became Nagato's in name after Yahiko's death. Nagato took his revenge on Hanzō and rebuilt Amegakure as the organization's main base through his own will and strength.
But from the shadows, it was always "Madara Uchiha".
Only Kisame had been truly recruited directly by Obito and was trusted by him.
Only Nagato, Konan, Itachi, and Kisame knew the name Madara Uchiha.
However, his authority from the shadows was clear by steering only Nagato, the leader, and it was enough the entire time.
But now, time was running thin.
Nagato was growing impatient.
Akatsuki was restless. The world was destabilizing faster than expected.
And Obito could no longer delay without losing momentum.
So the plan moved. Not because he was ready. But because it could no longer wait.
Their first target was the Seven-Tails jinchūriki from Takigakure.
It was the easiest and most logical initial opening and a fitting walk-through of sorts.
Takigakure was the only smaller shinobi village outside the Five Great Nations that possessed a tailed beast.
Strong for a minor village, yes, but still isolated, lacking the layered defenses and political deterrence of the major powers.
Kakuzu and Hidan ambushed her while she was returning from the joint Sunagakure–Konoha Chūnin Exams.
Quick. Efficient. Brutal.
The first capture was secured.
Obito had deliberately pushed Nagato toward a specific operational structure long ago, one where each Akatsuki member would be responsible for a single tailed beast. But it still meant two members per target, since the members could only move in teams. Enough power to overwhelm a jinchūriki, but not so many that coordination collapsed under clashing egos.
Akatsuki was strong.
It was not harmonious.
Trying to deploy all ten members at once would have been a logistical nightmare.
Volatile personalities, conflicting methods, too many variables.
On the other hand, sending lone operatives was just as inefficient.
Even S-rank shinobi could fail against a guarded jinchūriki, and failure meant exposure.
Two was the balance point.
Powerful enough. Contained enough.
After the Seven-Tails, momentum followed.
Konan captured the Five-Tails jinchūriki alone, striking while he was outside his village on a high-level mission. Just isolation and precision.
Another beast secured.
From the outside, it looked like escalation.
In truth, it was a restraint finally ending.
The optimal solution would have been obvious to any strategist.
Split the Akatsuki into two large strike groups.
Sweep targets rapidly.
Finish the collection in a fraction of the time.
Instead of locking Akatsuki members into permanent two-man teams, pairings of criminals with clashing egos, methods, and temperaments, where even agreeing on when or how to approach a single tailed-beast target became a constant struggle, it would have been far more efficient to abandon that structure entirely.
Long-term assignments were the flaw.
They bred friction, delays, and passive resistance, especially among people who answered to no authority but power.
That was precisely why so many early captures had stalled until Nagato finally applied pressure out of sheer urgency.
A far cleaner approach would have been to form temporary strike groups from the start.
Assemble them for a single operation. Hit the target. Disband immediately afterward.
No time for infighting. No prolonged negotiations over methods.
No festering resentments. Just focused violence, then separation.
From a purely strategic standpoint, it was the obvious solution.
Which made its absence all the more telling.
Obito had never wanted it fast.
He had designed the system to be slow.
Painfully slow.
Every delay bought him time.
Time to refine his Yin–Yang Release.
Time to test the invisible leashes Madara had left behind.
Time to probe the limits of Black Zetsu's silence.
Time to confirm whether the control he felt was truly his own.
The tailed beasts were never the bottleneck.
Obito was.
But now, the world was shifting.
The plan had to move forward.
Even if some chains were still unbroken.
Deliberate procrastination, that carefully maintained, slow pace, was no longer a luxury.
Obito could feel it.
He was drifting dangerously close to the point where Black Zetsu might finally intervene if the collection didn't accelerate.
After all, to truly sever Madara's control, time alone wasn't enough.
He needed to become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki before Madara ever could.
And for that, he needed the Rinnegan in his own hands.
Which meant Nagato still had a role to play.
So it wasn't that starting during this year was that bad for him.
It was simply the most optimal moment.
Obito refocused on Yagura again with a faint, almost playful indulgence.
Once, this jinchūriki had been the brightest point of the village. A prodigy.
A perfect host at a young age.
Stronger than most jōnin before he was meant to be.
When the Third Mizukage finally died, not long after the incident with Rin, Yagura had filled the vacuum seamlessly.
A symbol. A solution.
Now he was a puppet.
A weapon turned inward, terrorizing the very village that once praised him.
Obito found that irony satisfying.
By the time Madara died, Obito already had his Mangekyō.
More than that, he had inherited something far rarer then.
Madara's unique Yin–Yang–based genjutsu framework, a Mangekyō-exclusive art refined beyond ordinary Uchiha techniques.
That was the secret.
It was the only reason a perfect jinchūriki could be controlled so completely.
Man and beast both. For more than a decade.
Without Obito even needing to linger nearby most of the time, beyond periodically adjusting commands.
This wasn't crude domination that needed constant reinforcement. It was a system.
A layered imprint. The same method he used on Kirigakure's elders, on men like Genji, on key shinobi who thought themselves independent while quietly steering the village exactly where he wanted it.
The beauty of it was efficiency.
No constant reapplication. No visible strain.
Soon enough, the rebels would come.
He knew that.
Tomorrow, the village would reach its crescendo.
Yagura would die.
The Three-Tails would disperse and begin its natural respawn.
Another piece moved into position, ready to be sealed again later.
Everything was proceeding as it always had.
And yet.
Obito felt it.
A faint tension brushed the edge of his perception.
He dismissed it with a quiet smirk and turned his attention back to Yagura, fingers tapping lightly against the armrest.
He was calm now.
Not the quiet that came from acceptance, but something colder, almost artificial.
Nothing like the boy he used to be.
All of his so-called bonds had been hollowed out long ago.
Outside of revenge, one of the few things still capable of stirring him, he moved through the world like a ghost, present but untouched.
Names. Friends. Promises.
Empty labels, all of them, belonging to a miserable world that had demanded Rin die at the hands of the person she loved most.
A world that required that kind of sacrifice was already broken.
Already false.
Once, he had been an orphan with nothing but Rin as his light.
His other anchor, Kakashi, too, had mattered, rival and friend both, even through the resentment and pain of Rin choosing him instead.
And yet she had died anyway. Killed by Kakashi's hand.
By Kirigakure's cruelty.
By a system that chewed people up and called it necessity.
Those memories surfaced again now, uninvited, sharp as ever.
Tomorrow, that quiet chapter would finally close.
The last remnants of restraint would fall away.
Obito would move from the silent revenge completely to execution.
From preparation to creation.
This world would be overwritten, reshaped into something that no longer demanded sacrifices like Rin's.
A world worth living in.
And in that world, he would see her again.
The thought steadied him.
Obito stared into the night, utterly convinced, utterly resolved, as the village below continued breathing on borrowed time.