"Rin, I will create a world where you exist once more!"
Kaito's mind echoed with Obito's grief-stricken words, and then the scene shifted, and he found himself standing in a river of blood, cradling Rin's blood-soaked body in his arms.
Kaito was stunned: what was happening?
'Wasn't I just at home watching Naruto?'
He looked up and saw a blood moon hanging high overhead, a massive tree looming behind him, the corpses of Kiri-nin hanged from its branches raining blood down below, his right arm missing, a broken branch jutting from the shoulder, and Spiral Zetsu wrapped around his frail body.
"Is this a dream?" he murmured, then crouched down and picked up a kunai, lightly dragging it across his face, and the sharp sting came through with perfect clarity, making him aware of a shocking truth at the same time: 'This isn't a dream. I've actually transmigrated, and into Obito's body at this exact point in time!'
"Obito, are you alright?" Spiral Zetsu asked with concern, speaking in Japanese, though Kaito could understand every word, presumably due to some kind of world synchronization.
"I'm fine," Kaito replied after a brief pause, and as someone who was both a hardcore anime fan and a web-novel addict, he adapted to reality quickly.
"Let's return to Lord Madara," Spiral Zetsu said.
Indeed, Madara had arranged for Obito to witness Rin's death, intending to break Obito's spirit and drive him back into Madara's hands, where he would willingly submit to indoctrination and become a loyal puppet for reviving Madara and executing the Eye of the Moon Plan.
But unfortunately, the one standing here now was not the pitiful Obito, but Kaito, a transmigrator.
As a die-hard Naruto fan who had rewatched the series no fewer than ten times, Kaito understood everything that happened at every point in the story, and he knew the true nature of the Naruto world better than anyone else in it, and so he would absolutely never fall into Madara's schemes the way Obito had, ending up shattered and destroyed.
He already had the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.
'Sorry, Rin. I can't create a world where you exist, because having only you would never be enough.'
Kaito surveyed the surrounding environment, and the paths of moisture in the air and the trajectories of every grain of sand on the ground all presented themselves to his eyes in meticulous detail.
"So this is what it's like seeing through the Sharingan in first-person," he remarked, pulling his gaze back and looking down at Rin in his arms.
Rin's body was still warm, but he was not so cruel as that, and his thought was simply to preserve her body for now and figure out what to do with it later, and the place to keep it was, of course, the Kamui dimension!
He gently set Rin's body down, then pressed a hand over his right eye with his fingers parted just enough to focus his line of sight on Rin, and a faint, subtle sensation stirred within him.
A surge of heat rose inside his body and gathered toward his right eye.
'This is chakra!' Kaito realized.
His right eye grew hot, the pupil trembled, and threads of blood appeared at its edge, because this was his first attempt at using a dojutsu and it took him quite a few tries to get it working.
Whoosh!
At last, that familiar space-time vortex appeared before him, spinning counterclockwise under Kaito's control, and Rin's body was drawn into the Kamui dimension.
"Phew," Kaito exhaled, and looked over at Kakashi, who lay facedown in a pool of blood not far away.
Kakashi was unconscious and completely unaware of everything.
Kaito walked over to Kakashi, turned his body face-up, and the first thing he did was pull down Kakashi's mask to get a look at his true face.
This had been one of the great unsolved mysteries throughout Naruto and even into its sequel.
After seeing Kakashi's real face, Kaito nodded in appreciation: no wonder they called him the Copy Ninja, the man was genuinely handsome, which explained why Rin had been so head over heels for him.
But Kaito was not petty enough to kick Kakashi while he was down just because he was a rival in love, and on that point he would respect the original story's events and leave Kakashi alive, though...
"Without the Uchiha bloodline, your body cannot bear the power of this Mangekyō, so let me lighten your load, Kakashi."
As he spoke, Kaito reached out and pressed his hand against Kakashi's left eye socket, and with a wet sound, Kakashi's left eye was removed, and since that eye had originally belonged to Obito, Kaito was naturally taking it back, as he had none of Obito's emotional hang-ups about walking away from power within easy reach.
Most importantly, the power dwelling within this eye was Kamui, the most unrivaled Mangekyō technique in all of Naruto.
Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi were mediocre by comparison, and even Kotoamatsukami could barely match Kamui, though it had an unfortunately long cooldown.
But with Kamui in both eyes, one could reign supreme over everything, and no cheat ability could compare.
Kaito copied what Madara had done and pressed the eyeball directly into his empty left socket, and a thin trail of blood ran down from the corner of his left eye.
Because of the Hashirama cells, the optic nerve connected quickly, and Kaito's left eye opened to reveal the three-tomoe pattern of a double Mangekyō Sharingan, and the world he saw through his eyes was entirely different from before.
"As expected, the view is far clearer with both eyes, and power keeps surging outward, just as Madara said: whether it is the Sharingan or the Rinnegan, you can only draw out their true power when you have a matched pair!" Kaito was deeply excited, but his heart had not fully settled yet, because one more obstacle still awaited him.
Lord Madara, the title by which Naruto fans reverently referred to Uchiha Madara, who was also one of Kaito's favorite villains, but since he had transmigrated into the Naruto world, Madara was the first hurdle standing in his way.
In the underground base, the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path loomed tall, and Madara sat on a stone throne before it with three white tubes extending from the statue into the back of his neck, sustained only by the life force the statue supplied.
"I have returned to sever the fated chains of this world!" Kaito stood before Madara and delivered his declaration in Obito's manner, keeping his expression calm while his heart raced with tension.
'A few of my actions were slightly different from the original Obito's, and I can't be certain whether Madara, that old fox, noticed anything off.'
Madara studied the Obito before him, and after a long silence the corners of his aged mouth curved into a faint smile: "Hmm, no one else discovered you, I trust."
'Phew.' The exact same line as in the original, and Kaito let out half the breath he had been holding.
At this moment, a White Zetsu standing beside Madara spoke up: "Only I saw it, Obito killed all of the enemies, so there is no problem, but he did not seem willing to finish off Kakashi, he only took Kakashi's eye, and when Konoha's reinforcements arrived he was just standing there with his hand over his eye in a daze."
Madara fixed Kaito with a deep gaze and said: "Unable to bring yourself to finish off an old comrade?"
Kaito played the part all the way through, spreading his hands with a dismissive air: "No, I simply don't care, whether that man still exists in this world or not means nothing to me, in the world I am about to create there will be a Kakashi, and there will be a Rin too, so tell me how to create that dream world, Madara!"
"No need to thank me. Come." Madara smiled.
Kaito strode forward.
"From this day on, you are the savior. Look into my eyes!" Madara's Sharingan activated, and Kaito entered the genjutsu space.
Inside the genjutsu space, Madara told him everything just as the story dictated, covering the Ten-Tails, the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, the Infinite Tsukuyomi, the Rinnegan, and more, and although Kaito already knew all of it, he kept his expression neutral and listened without a word.
Leaving the genjutsu space, Madara rose and placed his aged hand on a nearby White Zetsu: "Obito, I will now teach you the Uchiha's forbidden techniques, the Six Paths Jutsu, and Yin-Yang Release."
Crackle, crackle, crackle. Half of White Zetsu's body turned jet black, and Black Zetsu was born, and Kaito fixed it with a long, searching look.
"I have poured my will into it, you may regard half of it as me, and this is a diminished product, you may use these figures created by Yin-Yang Release as pawns!"
As he spoke, Madara formed a seal with two fingers.
Crack! From the chest of the Hashirama-cell artificial body cultivated by the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, a black rod responded and emerged.
"That black rod is the physical embodiment of my consciousness and can be used when employing the Six Paths Jutsu."
With everything arranged, Madara stepped forward, and snap! The three binding tubes connecting him to the statue went taut and then fell slack, and the lamp-extinguished Madara slumped back into his stone throne, wheezing: "Hah, hah. Good, go now. For the time until I am revived, you are Uchiha Madara!"
Kaito kept his eyes fixed on Madara until he breathed his last: 'Madara, rest easy, there will be no reviving you, the Eye of the Moon Plan will never come to fruition, but I will collect the tailed beasts, revive the Ten-Tails, and become its jinchūriki myself.'
"Obito, let us begin Lord Madara's plan, first we go to Amegakure to find Nagato and cultivate his Rinnegan in preparation for reviving Lord Madara," Black Zetsu and White Zetsu walked over.
"Yes, I understand, though the order will need to change a little."
Crackle! Kaito opened his Mangekyō and trained his left eye on Black Zetsu.
He was going to deal with Black Zetsu here and now!
Kamui!
"Ah! What are you doing?!" Black Zetsu's face contorted with terror.
"This is what it means to sever fate!"
-------
This novel is pure authentic Naruto, with no external cheat abilities or extraneous elements, the one true choice for genuine Naruto fans.
[Kaito will be called Obito from now on. For the betterment of story]