That self-introduction left Obito utterly dumbfounded.
You are Uchiha Obito? Then who the hell am I?
"That isn't funny." Obito steadied himself, brushing off the dust from where he had been struck.
Thanks to the combined resilience of White Zetsu and Hashirama's cells, his physical injuries were already knitting back together at a visible rate. However, Shura's casual claim—"My name is Uchiha Obito"—had pierced a wound far deeper than any physical blow.
His true name... how could it be used so flippantly by another?
That name had died alongside Nohara Rin, buried forever on that blood-soaked night!
"Whoever you are, you will pay for that!" Obito's voice turned bone-chillingly cold. He flicked his wrist, his blade reflecting the pale moonlight like a shard of ice.
"Why won't you believe me? I really am Uchiha Obito." Menma spread his hands helplessly, his tone almost conversational. "Truth is, I just faked my death at the Battle of Kannabi Bridge to slip away. Do you want to hear my revenge story?"
Listening to this stream of nonsense, a suppressed, icy laugh escaped from behind Obito's mask. He slammed his sword into the ground and his hands blurred into a sequence of seals.
"Fire Style: Blast Wave Wild Dance!"
A searing surge of fire chakra coalesced behind his mask and erupted. Simultaneously, his Kamui activated, warping the space around the flames to create a massive, spiraling firestorm. The fire snaked through the air like a predatory beast, a vortex of heat intended to incinerate everything in its path.
The shockwaves and heat were so intense that the surrounding trees were reduced to ash in an instant.
Facing the encroaching spiral of flame, Menma formed a seal with practiced calm.
A clash of fire, is it? Let's see whose chakra pool runs deeper.
"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
Menma funneled a colossal amount of chakra through his lungs. When he exhaled, the fire didn't just puff out; it surged forth like a tsunami. A wall of flame, tens of meters wide, roared across the battlefield, turning the soil into glass as it traveled.
It was a literal tidal wave of destruction, crashing headlong into Obito's spiraling vortex.
BOOM!
The two techniques collided with a deafening roar. Flames devoured flames as neither side yielded. The sky, which had begun to darken with nightfall, was suddenly illuminated with the brilliance of mid-day sun. The sheer heat was so oppressive it felt as though the air itself was boiling.
Obito poured more chakra into the technique, desperate to prove through fire exactly who the true Uchiha was. But no matter how much energy he expended, his blast could not pierce through Menma's overwhelming sea of fire.
The longer the struggle lasted, the more Obito's heart sank in alarm.
Suddenly, Menma ramped up the output. The roar of the fire intensified, and the wave of the Majestic Destroyer Flame surged forward with renewed, crushing power.
Seeing that the scale of his opponent's jutsu had transcended common sense, Obito was forced to abandon the clash. He instantly phased into his intangible state. Without his support, the Blast Wave Wild Dance was instantly swallowed by the fire-sea, leaving behind a blackened, smoking corridor where the forest once stood.
As the fires died down, Zetsu's head popped up from the charred earth.
"Yikes! How terrifying!" The white half of Zetsu waved its arms exaggeratedly. "Oh wow, oh wow!"
On the scorched ground, Obito's silhouette gradually solidified. His Sharingan was narrowed, heavy with realization.
While both techniques were technically B-rank, that classification only referred to the difficulty of learning them. Their actual power was entirely dependent on the caster's chakra reserves and mastery. Uchiha Madara was famous for making B-rank jutsu look like natural disasters.
"This is getting troublesome, 'Madara'," Zetsu chirped like an annoying insect. "There are two Uchiha over there, you know."
"Shut up!" Obito snapped.
The Tomoe in his right eye began to spin, merging into the jagged pattern of the Mangekyo. He was done playing around.
"I've had enough of this."
However, just as Obito prepared to launch a full-scale assault, he saw Shura clap his hands. Shura turned to the Uchiha girl beside him and placed a hand affectionately on her shoulder.
"You go play with him for a bit," Menma said.
Menma hadn't used his full strength, and he knew Obito was holding back as well. If they kept going, Menma risked exposing his knowledge of Kamui or revealing his Flying Thunder God and Dark Nine-Tails chakra. At this stage, he wasn't ready to show his full hand.
Hikari stepped forward, but then, as if catching on to the joke, she looked back at Menma with a sweet, radiant smile.
"Alright then... Obito."
She didn't know why Menma was using that name, but she sensed it bothered the man in the mask, so she was more than happy to play along.
CRACK.
Behind the tiger mask, it felt as though something had physically shattered.
Obito stared blankly at the girl's tender smile. For a fleeting second, he didn't see a stranger; he saw Rin. He saw the Rin from their Genin days—those mundane, beautiful days where even a boring D-rank mission was a treasure as long as she was smiling like that.
And now, seeing someone else use his name, acting so intimately...
"You... you bastards!"
Obito's voice trembled with a fury so raw it cracked. His Mangekyo spun violently, and tears—hot and uncontrollable—began to well up in his eye.
He reached into his Kamui space, retrieved his discarded blade, and launched it at the black-haired girl with the force of a thunderbolt. He followed right behind it, a blur of murderous intent.
Hikari deflected the flying sword with a kunai and closed the gap. Just as the blade was knocked away, Obito caught the hilt mid-air and swung a vicious backhand horizontal slash.
Clang!
Amidst the sparks of clashing metal, Obito's right eye flared. The space around them began to distort, a swirling vacuum attempting to pull Hikari into the Kamui dimension.
VROOOM!
Suddenly, a pillar of dark-red flames erupted, surrounding Hikari in a protective shroud.
"Amaterasu?!"
Obito gasped in shock. He immediately aborted the suction, leaping back to create distance. If those flames touched him, he would have to sever a part of his body to survive.
Because he was in the middle of 'absorbing' a target, he couldn't be intangible; he was vulnerable.
As he retreated, a skeletal, dark-red arm lunged out from the flames, swiping at him. Obito barely managed to raise his sword to block.
BANG!
The impact sent him skidding back several meters, his blade groaning with fresh cracks. When he finally steadied himself and looked up, his jaw tightened.
A dark-red Susanoo towered over the battlefield—a skeletal giant shielding the girl.
And from beneath her flowing black hair, a pair of peerless Mangekyo Sharingan blazed with an ancient, terrifying light.