"And then?" Makoto pressed, keeping his gaze steady.
According to Konan's story, the only concrete proof they had of the masked man's identity was his own edgy claim that he was controlling the Three-Tails Jinchūriki.
"After that, we dug into the archives and uncovered the actual historical truth about Uchiha Madara. Once we understood how the real Madara operated, we realized the masked freak couldn't possibly be him," Konan replied earnestly.
"Oh? Why not? Was his chakra too weak?" Mei Terumi asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No, the guy's power was all spacetime ninjutsu, making it annoying to scale. We judged him purely based on his personality," Konan shook her head.
Honestly, personality alone was a dead giveaway!
Makoto nodded in agreement.
Anyone with half a brain who knew Madara's actual life story would immediately flag the masked man as a fraud.
During the Fourth Shinobi World War in the original timeline, Ōnoki was only deceived because Madara represented a boogeyman he refused to mentally process.
If it had been the real Madara, he would have just stripped naked and danced on a battlefield with joy.
Why would the Ghost of the Uchiha hide behind a cheap plastic mask acting like an edgy teenager?
"If it were the real Madara, he would have just brute-forced Nagato into submission. He wouldn't be skulking in a dark closet gooning to a corpse puppet and shouting 'Zero, take off your clothes!'" Konan stated with a deadpan expression, summarizing the Akatsuki's official intelligence report.
'Yeah, that tracks,' Makoto thought, considering the unhinged behavior of the Uchiha in this fake world.
"Speaking of which," Mei interjected, raising a finger. "When Yagura, our Third Mizukage, was found dead, the autopsy showed heavy signs of assault. We also found a bizarre history book hidden in his bedroom, though its contents... well, they wildly contradict what the rest of the world knows."
"Konan, since you have the location on the Three-Tails, keep leading the way," Makoto instructed.
"Mizukage, tell us what you know."
Konan nodded and took the lead through the damp forest.
"The history book we found was brief, so we didn't think much of it at the time. Looking back, it must have been a diary left behind by the real Uchiha Madara, not that masked man," Mei explained as they walked.
"According to his notes, after Madara hypnotized the Nine-Tails with his Sharingan, he first leashed the giant fox to the front gates of Konoha like a guard dog before walking in to challenge Hashirama to a duel."
"However, during that brief window, Hashirama's younger brother, Senju Tobirama, used the Flying Thunder God to teleport directly to the village entrance and... well, he did unspeakable things to the tied-up fox."
"The diary also covered Tobirama's death," Mei continued. "Later on, Tobirama heavily coveted the Eight-Tails and planned to launch a stealth invasion on the Hidden Cloud Village during peace negotiations."
"According to official textbooks, the Cloud Village's righteous ambassadors, Kinkaku and Ginkaku, heroically killed Tobirama."
"But the diary tells a different story. The Gold and Silver brothers had previously consumed the raw flesh of the Nine-Tails, giving them the ability to transform into miniature versions of the fox. This immediately caught Tobirama's attention."
"Tobirama, apparently too eager to pet and play with the two miniature furries, got completely distracted."
"He forgot to use his Flying Thunder God to escape the ambush."
"While he was busy trying to touch their fluffy ears, the real Uchiha Madara—who had faked his death, jumped out of the bushes and ganked Tobirama and the brothers all at once."
...
"Damn that Uchiha bastard! How dare he slander my spotless reputation! No matter the timeline, Madara is inherently evil!"
The real Senju Tobirama, watching the broadcast from the audience stands, violently ground his teeth together.
"Huh? Were Kinkaku and Ginkaku ninjas from the Cloud Village?" Hanabi suddenly asked, tugging on Tsunade's sleeve.
"Yes, why do you ask?" Tsunade replied, assuming the kid was just trying to learn some geography.
"Then why does Fuu keep calling Makoto her 'Silver Horned King'?" Hanabi scratched her head, genuinely confused.
Tsunade stared blankly at the Seven-Tails Jinchūriki sitting nearby.
"Why the hell do you call him that?"
Fuu just pouted and looked away.
Apparently, during their private "sparring sessions," Makoto made some very specific grunting noises.
What else was she supposed to call him?
...
Down in the illusion, the mist gradually thickened into a soupy white wall.
Mei glanced down at her map and frowned.
She urgently called out to Konan, "Wait! Stop moving. Have you actually been to this specific sector before?"
"No, this is my first time in the Land of Water. I'm just tracking the Three-Tails using a chakra scale Kisame gave me from his sword," Konan said, holding up a twitching blue scale.
"You should have mentioned that sooner. We almost walked right into a death trap. This entire area is the natural habitat of the Second Mizukage's summoning beast, the Giant Clam. If any weird hallucinations pop up, just stay calm," Mei warned the group.
"A giant clam? Like, it makes mirages?" Uchiha Hikari asked, tilting her head.
Hikari had literally coded the Limited Tsukuyomi engine with her eyes.
She was curious what it felt like to be caught in a localized hologram inside her own matrix right now.
"Exactly," Mei replied, her face serious. "Don't just assume your Sharingan will auto-block it. The clam's illusions don't mess your brain's chakra network to make you see things. It projects actual, holograms directly into the physical environment."
The second Mei finished speaking, the forest around them glitched and shifted.
A massive boulder suddenly plummeted from the sky right above their heads.
Not wanting to risk finding out if the physics made the rock real or fake, Konan instantly wrapped the three of them in paper wings and yanked them into the bushes.
Thud.
The boulder crashed into the dirt.
"Kakashi, I never gave you a gift for making Jonin. I'm going to give you my Sharingan..." a weak voice suddenly echoed from beneath the crushed rock.
Makoto scratched his head, completely bewildered.
This specific tragedy had been shamelessly replayed via flashbacks a million times in the anime.
But how the hell was the clam projecting a specific flashback out in the wild, using assets that didn't even exist in this timeline's memory banks?
In the hologram playing out before them, a young Kakashi now wore the Sharingan, while Obito lay crushed beneath the boulder, coughing up blood.
The cave ceiling began to aggressively crumble again, prompting Rin and Kakashi to evacuate.
But before leaving, Kakashi suddenly stopped and turned back.
He knelt beside his dying friend.
'Oh, how touching.... he's grabbing Obito's goggles as a memento,' Makoto thought.
Kakashi hesitated for a second.
Then, he reached his hand directly under the massive rock pinning Obito's lower half.
"Obito," Kakashi said with a dead-serious face.
"Of the three great sins a man can commit, dying a virgin without descendants is the worst. Orochimaru's technology is top tier these days. Don't worry, my brother. I'll make sure your lineage survives."
With those parting words, Kakashi casually harvested Obito's remaining balls from under the rubble.
Then he sprinted out of the cave with Rin.
The hologram glitched and shifted to the next scene.
The paralyzed, newly castrated Obito was dug out and rescued by the elderly Uchiha Madara.
After a few months of awkward physical therapy in a cave, Obito learned that Kakashi and Rin were being hunted by Kirigakure ANBU.
He rushed to the scene, only to find a bizarre standoff.
Due to the Mist Village's twisted Blood Mist fertility policies, the tracker ninjas weren't actually using lethal jutsu.
Instead, they had surrounded Kakashi and Rin and were obsessively patting the teenagers on the head while throwing a small, pink water balloons at them to appease some local fertility god!