Chapter 602: The Kindhearted Obito

In the real shinobi world, Uchiha Itachi had spent years working as a damn double agent without sending back a single useful piece of intelligence.

Inside Engraved Tsukuyomi, however, the exact opposite was true.

Itachi had sold out an enormous amount of Akatsuki’s internal information to Kushina.

Akatsuki was different from the ideological conflict between the Senju and Uchiha. It was an organization built around a third philosophy entirely.

Its goal was to return the shinobi world to the era of the Sage of Six Paths, when everyone could freely choose their own preferences, whether they favored small animals or bond-type relationships.

That was why Akatsuki leader Pain’s designation was Zero, while his second-in-command Konan was known as White Tiger.

One represented the bond-type side.

The other represented the furry side.

Even Akatsuki’s two-man teams were supposedly arranged so that the partners represented different preferences.

Kushina stared at the intelligence Itachi had sent back and found herself increasingly speechless.

He had provided far too much information.

And far too much detail.

Why the hell did she need to know everyone in Akatsuki’s personal preferences?

Still, since the information was already here, she might as well read it.

Pain and Konan’s pairing had already been covered.

At first glance, Kisame and Itachi looked like two furry enthusiasts, but the truth was supposedly the exact opposite.

Kisame was practically half fish himself, yet preferred humans.

If anything, that made him a human enthusiast.

Itachi, meanwhile, had inherited the Uchiha clan’s traditional appreciation for furry creatures and was particularly fond of fluffy crows.

However, when Itachi was eight years old, he had confessed his feelings to Uchiha Shisui right in front of Sarutobi Hiruzen.

Hiruzen had praised him as a bond-type shinobi capable of thinking from the perspective of a Hokage.

Ironically, Itachi was the traitor within Akatsuki, yet his personal philosophy was also the one that most perfectly embodied Akatsuki’s stated ideal.

There was something strangely fitting about that.

According to Itachi’s reports, Kakuzu and Hidan were known as the Immortal Duo.

Kakuzu relied on the tendrils of Earth Grudge Fear and had a habit of surviving even after people pierced his heart.

Hidan, meanwhile, used the Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood, allowing his opponent to inflict the consequences upon themselves while he experienced the feedback.

As for Deidara and Sasori, one specialized in planting bombs at Site A, while the other relied on puppets.

White Zetsu and Black Zetsu were even stranger.

One was basically a plant and therefore perfectly suited to making practical use of waste as fertilizer.

The other seemed to have something wrong with his head, wandering around with severe mother issues and calling people “Mother” whenever the mood struck him.

Akatsuki’s ultimate objective was to collect all nine Tailed Beasts.

They intended to release the Tailed Beasts from their jinchūriki and thereby undo the changes the First Hokage had imposed upon the shinobi world.

Back then, Hashirama had effectively suppressed every school of thought except bond-type ideology.

Other preferences, including the furry tradition that had once rivaled bond-type culture, were sealed away and pushed to the margins of society until mainstream shinobi culture no longer tolerated them.

Akatsuki wanted to break that seal.

Kushina rubbed her temples.

Her problem was that her own objective was different from everyone else’s.

She supported neither the Senju-style bond-type shinobi nor the Uchiha-style furry enthusiasts.

And she certainly didn’t support Akatsuki’s philosophy of “Why choose? Take everything.”

Her original goal had been to seal bond-type shinobi away just like all those other niche preferences, stripping them of mainstream legitimacy and finally restoring some peace and quiet to the shinobi world.

Now, however, the task felt impossibly difficult.

There were simply too many enemies.

Even Naruto couldn’t understand her.

He had betrayed her too.

And then there was Minato.

Even that seemingly harmless husband of hers had been hiding things.

Kushina looked back through the old intelligence reports.

There was one enormous inconsistency in the records of the Night of the Nine-Tails.

Minato hadn’t known who the masked man really was.

Kushina did.

Obito had already been thoroughly influenced by Uchiha Madara and corrected into a naturally kindhearted Uchiha.

Even his release of the Nine-Tails in Konoha had supposedly been intended to heal the entire village.

So why had he chosen to injure Minato?

It made no sense.

Had Minato genuinely never learned the reason?

Or had he deliberately hidden it?

…

Meanwhile, in Tanzaku Town—

Naruto had barely arrived when he noticed a commotion breaking out ahead.

According to the information he had gathered, his target, Tsunade, frequently appeared in places like this.

“Heavenly Foot of Pain!”

A furious shout rang out.

Several gamblers flew backward with shattered dice embedded in their faces before crashing to the ground, their conditions unknown.

A beautiful blonde woman then emerged wearing a green robe.

On the back was a large symbol consisting of a circle crossed by a diagonal slash.

NO GAMBLING.

This world’s Tsunade had been taught from childhood by her great-uncle Senju Tobirama to learn from the Uchiha clan’s natural kindness, righteousness, and hatred of evil.

Although Tobirama had fought the Uchiha during the Warring States Period, he had always deeply respected their innate goodness.

In fact, he supposedly hadn’t even gotten Uchiha blood on his hands.

Even when he fought them, the only thing he had ever killed was Uchiha Madara’s beloved ninja hound, Inuna.

Raised under those teachings, Tsunade had also grown into someone who hated evil with a passion.

After the wars ended, she voluntarily left Konoha and began traveling throughout the Land of Fire, cracking down on gambling halls, illegal entertainment, and other vice.

In Tsunade’s view, Konoha already had the Hokage and the Military Police Force to maintain order.

The rest of the Land of Fire had no such protection.

So she would do it herself.

“Tsu—”

Naruto had just opened his mouth to call out to her when he suddenly spotted a figure who was both familiar and unfamiliar.

The masked man?!

Naruto immediately covered his mouth and disappeared into the crowd.

He watched the masked man exchange a few words with Tsunade before the two left together.

Naruto had no idea what to do.

Was Tsunade actually a good person?

Had the Daimyō judged her correctly?

Should he still give her the blood-written edict?

Naruto couldn’t decide.

Because he had absolutely no idea what kind of person the masked man was in this world.

With no better option, Naruto decided to follow them first.

He slipped into an alley, gritted his teeth, and quickly entered Sage Mode.

By blending into nature itself, he hoped to make himself as difficult to detect as possible during the pursuit.

As for the masked man—

Uchiha Obito was deeply troubled.

He knew that Minato-sensei had been hunting him for revenge all these years.

If Obito hadn’t still carried an important mission for the future of the shinobi world, he would gladly have surrendered himself.

But he couldn’t.

Not yet.

Besides, he had already explained himself to Minato during the Night of the Nine-Tails.

Granted, he had done so while pretending to be Uchiha Madara.

But an explanation was still an explanation.

Unfortunately, Minato hadn’t believed a word of it.

In this world, the Uchiha clan possessed advantages beyond even the Mangekyō Sharingan’s unique ability and its third power, Susanoo.

They also possessed a Fourth Power.

The Fourth Power wasn’t an ordinary technique.

It was closer to a rule.

Madara’s Fourth Power, for example, was called Back to Basics.

Once activated, it dramatically strengthened all his ordinary ninjutsu and even Susanoo, but in exchange, his unique Mangekyō ability would be sealed away.

Obito’s Fourth Power was called Future Vision.

It allowed him to glimpse the opponent he was destined to face in an upcoming battle.

And through that ability, Obito had seen something terrible.

If events proceeded normally—

Namikaze Minato would inevitably die.

But Obito had already abandoned evil and returned to the path of kindness and justice.

How could someone like that simply stand by and allow his teacher to die young?

So Obito had done everything he could think of to change that future.

To change the fate that supposedly doomed Minato-sensei to an early death, Obito sought out the Great Toad Sage of Mount Myōboku and begged for help.

The Great Toad Sage greatly admired Obito’s newfound kindness.

Unfortunately, it could only perceive fate and explain what it had seen.

It couldn’t actually change fate.

Worse still, even when explaining a prophecy, it was bound by tradition to speak in infuriating riddles rather than simply saying what it meant.

So the Great Toad Sage gave Obito one hint:

A cat has nine lives.

What it actually meant was fairly straightforward.

Obito should repeatedly extract and reseal Minato’s Tailed Beast, effectively giving him extra chances to survive fatal injuries.

That was right.

Inside Engraved Tsukuyomi, the relationship between jinchūriki and Tailed Beasts worked very differently from the real shinobi world.

If a Tailed Beast was extracted from its jinchūriki, the jinchūriki wouldn’t die.

Instead, residual Tailed Beast power would remain inside their body, giving them one chance to recover from an otherwise fatal injury.

The catch was that this couldn’t usually be repeated.

With the One-Tail, for example, Gaara would only receive one extra life.

But because the Nine-Tails had nine tails, Obito could theoretically extract and reseal it repeatedly, stacking as many as nine such chances onto Namikaze Minato.

It wouldn’t truly change destiny.

But if Minato was fated to encounter death, those nine extra lives might at least let him survive nine otherwise unavoidable disasters.

Unfortunately—

Obito misunderstood the prophecy completely.

This world’s Obito might have become kindhearted, but he was still an idiot.

Out of every ten classes at the Ninja Academy, he had slept through nine and skipped the tenth.

There were countless pieces of basic shinobi knowledge he simply didn’t possess.

So the Great Toad Sage’s intended meaning never even crossed his mind.

Instead, Obito fixated entirely on the word cat.

His first idea was to use Kamui to sneak up on Minato while the exhausted man was sleeping after a mission and dress him up like a catgirl.

The result was disastrous.

Nothing changed about Minato’s lifespan.

Instead, he merely ended up in an extremely unfortunate situation involving his hefty teammate Akimichi Chōza.

After that, Obito heard a strange rumor about something called hakimi being associated with cats.

That immediately caught his attention.

The pronunciation of hakimi sounded vaguely similar to the Eight-Tails, while the original word apparently referred to honey water.

And Killer B was also known as the Killer Bee.

There were simply too many clues!

On top of that, during the Third Shinobi World War, Namikaze Minato had once encountered the future Fourth Raikage and Killer B.

The two sides had clashed over who deserved the title of fastest shinobi alive.

In just a single exchange, Minato had somehow humiliated Killer B right in front of the Raikage.

The Raikage had never imagined that despite looking like the rough one, he was apparently the devoted romantic, while the seemingly respectable Minato was the real troublemaker.

Heartbroken, the Raikage had carried the equally devastated Killer B away from the battlefield.

And just like that, the title of fastest shinobi in the world had gone to Namikaze Minato.

To Obito, all the evidence pointed in one direction.

This had to be what the Great Toad Sage meant by cat.

So Obito used Kamui to infiltrate Kumogakure and steal some of Killer B’s so-called “honey.”

The shinobi world gained two more miserable men that day.

Killer B woke up feeling as though he had somehow been humiliated all over again and immediately concluded that Minato must have secretly placed a Flying Raijin mark on him during their old battle.

In B’s mind, Minato was apparently teleporting over whenever he got bored just to ruin his day.

Minato, meanwhile, woke up feeling strangely uncomfortable and immediately remembered the previous incident in which he had somehow been turned into a catgirl while sleeping.

There was only one person capable of pulling off things that bizarre.

The mysterious masked man.

Minato’s hatred of him deepened considerably.

After that incident, Obito secretly observed Minato for a while.

Nothing changed.

Minato’s fate still appeared exactly the same.

Obito became increasingly anxious.

Every failed attempt to alter destiny brought the day of their inevitable confrontation closer.

Then, during an accidental return to Konoha, Obito happened to see Kakashi standing before his memorial stone and talking to himself.

Kakashi mentioned that although ninken were useful working summons, he personally preferred cats.

He also remembered that Obito had once been notorious for tormenting stray cats and kicking old ladies who tried to cross the road.

So, in memory of his dead teammate, Kakashi had once imitated some of those terrible habits.

But as time passed, perhaps because of the Sharingan or perhaps because Obito himself had changed somewhere far away, Kakashi gradually became kinder as well.

He began helping elderly women cross the street.

Even when one of them recognized him from some embarrassing performances in his youth and tried to blackmail him for favors, Kakashi accepted it with remarkable patience.

His attitude toward cats changed even more dramatically.

Kakashi went from mistreating them to genuinely caring about them.

Eventually, he even began taking stray cats to medical-nin for neutering because he had learned it could improve their health and lifespan.

When Obito first heard about this, his immediate reaction was that Kakashi had somehow become even stranger.

Neutering cats counted as loving them?

How did that make sense?

Back when Obito had mistreated cats, even he had never gone out of his way to arrange surgery.

Then something clicked.

Obito rushed to the library and began researching.

And what he found left him enlightened.

Neutering really could reduce certain health risks and significantly extend a cat’s average lifespan.

Obito’s eyes widened.

‘So this is what the Great Toad Sage meant!’

Extending a cat’s life.

That had to be it.

If Obito wanted to increase Namikaze Minato’s lifespan and chances of survival, then he had finally discovered the answer!

For Minato’s sake, Obito was willing to bear any sin, any infamy, and even Minato’s hatred.

Thus, during the Night of the Nine-Tails, while Obito used Kurama’s chakra to heal the injured people of Konoha—

He also made sure Minato would never have to worry about having more children.

That was the missing piece Kushina had noticed.

Why would the now-kindhearted Obito deliberately hurt Minato?

The truth was that, from Obito’s own perspective, he hadn’t been trying to hurt him at all.

He genuinely believed what he did would help Minato survive.

And in the end—

Minato had survived.

He had lived long enough to watch Naruto grow up.

Therefore, Obito concluded that his decision back then had been correct.

Some might wonder:

Could a person who was genuinely kind by nature still commit terrible wrongs?

The answer was—

Yes.

In another world, there had once been a cheerful, innocent young noblewoman.

Because of her kindness, the king her family served was assassinated.

Because of her kindness, fellow mages lost their chance at freedom and liberation.

Because of her kindness, the people of her homeland were plunged into war.

Eventually, she earned the terrifying title—

The Witch Who Destroyed a Nation.

Countless legends grew around her afterward.

Some claimed she once gathered everyone in a line under the pretense of protecting them, only to unleash a devastating ultimate attack and stack kills for power.

Of course, that part was merely a rumor.

And the saddest part was—

It really was just a rumor.

If she had genuinely been selfish and evil, then at least all those deaths might have served some calculated purpose.

Instead, people died for nothing.

Their deaths accomplished nothing.

They were simply wasted.

That was the evil a kind person could create.

And Obito was the same.

Obito approached Tsunade and openly confessed what he had done in the past.

Then he asked Tsunade, someone who possessed the same strong sense of justice, to join Akatsuki.

Naruto, trailing behind them, listened to the entire conversation like some eavesdropping NPC that spawned whenever two people began plotting in private.

Outside Engraved Tsukuyomi, Kushina watched the scene and suddenly felt hopeful again.

Maybe—

Just maybe—

This world’s Obito could finally teach Naruto something important.

Being kind and righteous wasn’t enough.

You also needed a brain!