It had taken A two days of non-stop, top-speed travel to return from the Fire Country border.
The moment he set foot in Kumogakure, he bypassed his own home entirely and stormed directly into the Raikage Tower to confront his father.
However, the Third Raikage was not blind.
By the time A arrived, the old man had already been briefed on the phantom memories of the Fourth Shinobi World War.
He commanded fierce loyalty; dozens of his veterans had immediately reported the temporal anomaly to him.
When A finally delivered his boots-on-the-ground report regarding the Otsutsuki and the apocalypse that followed the war, the Third Raikage found himself caught in the exact political trap Obito had predicted.
The father and son were deadlocked.
Both possessed legendary tempers, and after forty-eight hours of screaming matches, they were inches away from a physical brawl.
Right as the tension peaked, the air in the center of the office twisted.
Four uninvited guests materialized out of a Kamui vortex.
A didn’t even blink; he had been expecting them.
The Third Raikage, however, reacted with lethal instinct.
The instant the vortex cleared, the old man’s body erupted in Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
He lunged to capture the intruders.
A moved just as fast.
He intercepted his father, throwing his massive frame into the old man’s path and physically blocking the strike.
“Damn it, A!
What is the meaning of this?!” the Third Raikage roared, sparks flying from his beard.
“Are you conspiring with Konoha shinobi to assassinate your own father?!”
The violent spike in chakra instantly alerted the building’s security.
A dozen Kumogakure Anbu flickered into the office, their blades drawn, instantly surrounding Minato, Obito, Kakashi, and Rin.
“Stand down and get out!” A bellowed at the Anbu.
“This is a Kage-level summit!”
The Third Raikage didn’t miss a beat.
“Ignore this unfilial brat!
Arrest the intruders immediately!”
The Anbu captain froze.
Most of his squad possessed the future memories.
They knew exactly why the father and son were at each other’s throats.
They knew the Yellow Flash and the Uchiha were here to negotiate the survival of the world.
But military chain-of-command was absolute.
They were caught between the orders of the current Raikage and the future Raikage.
The Anbu maintained their perimeter but kept their blades lowered.
A few guards who hadn’t received the memories twitched forward, only to be yanked back by the veterans in their squad.
The room descended into a suffocating, lethal stalemate.
A’s patience snapped.
Lightning cracked across his knuckles.
“I said get out!”
The Anbu captain rapidly calculated the political fallout.
“Lord A,” the captain said carefully.
“We will withdraw.
But I require assurance that the Third Raikage will not be harmed.”
The veterans had seen the era of peace in their memories.
They did not want to trigger a war in this office.
But they could not abandon their Kage.
Kakashi stepped forward, his hand resting casually near his kunai pouch.
“You have my word.
We are not here to harm the Raikage.”
The captain studied the silver-haired Jonin for a second, then gave a sharp hand signal.
The Anbu vanished into the shadows, though their chakra signatures remained clamped tightly around the perimeter of the room.
Furious at his own guards’ insubordination, the Third Raikage slammed his fist onto his desk.
“What exactly do you Konoha rats want?!”
Minato stepped forward, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
“We have no hostile intentions, Lord Third.
We simply wish to have a frank discussion about the future.”
The Third Raikage snorted derisively and dropped back into his heavy chair.
Minato shot a glance at A.
The massive Kumo shinobi shook his head slightly.
The negotiations had gone nowhere.
Minato rapidly mentally restructured his diplomatic approach.
But before he could speak, Obito stepped past him.
“Permission to take the lead on this, Minato-sensei?” Obito asked quietly.
Minato analyzed the situation.
Obito, having orchestrated a world war, understood the psychology of aggressive warlords far better than a standard Konoha Jonin.
Furthermore, there were brutal, undiplomatic truths that Minato—as the future Hokage—could not say without causing an international incident.
Obito had no such political restraints.
Minato nodded and stepped back.
Rin reached out to grab Obito’s sleeve, but Kakashi caught her wrist, shaking his head.
Obito walked to the center of the room.
He didn’t bow.
He looked the massive, lightning-clad warlord dead in the eye.
“Hello, Third Raikage,” Obito said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
“Allow me to introduce myself.
I am Obito Uchiha.
I am the architect of the Fourth Shinobi World War.”
The temperature in the room plummeted.
The Third Raikage’s eyes turned instantly murderous.
With a deafening crack of thunder, the old man vanished from his chair.
He materialized directly in front of Obito, driving a lightning-coated fist straight at the boy’s skull.
Minato and Kakashi flinched, but the distance was too short; they couldn’t intercept.
Rin slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle a scream.
The Raikage’s fist struck Obito’s face.
It passed completely through flesh and bone.
The momentum carried the massive Raikage forward, his fist slamming into the floorboards behind the Uchiha.
The hardwood exploded, leaving a crater a meter wide.
The Anbu captain’s voice barked from the hallway.
A immediately shouted back, “Hold your positions!
Do not enter!”
The sensory ninja beside the captain nodded, confirming the Raikage’s chakra was stable.
The Anbu held the perimeter.
Inside the office, Obito slowly turned around.
He looked down at the Third Raikage, completely unfazed.
“You and your son really do share the exact same temper,” Obito noted dryly.
He knew exactly how to handle men like the Raikage.
Arrogant, hyper-aggressive powehouse only respected one thing: absolute, overwhelming power.
To force the old bull to the negotiating table, Obito had to demonstrate he was utterly untouchable.
Kamui—phasing only the necessary parts of his body into the alternate dimension—required minimal chakra.
He could maintain the defense even in his weakened state.
Obito had been expecting the ambush.
He remembered the Five Kage Summit in the future timeline, where A had attempted the exact same blitz attack.
“Can we sit down and talk now?” Obito asked.
The Third Raikage pulled his fist from the crater.
He ground his teeth, his face contorted in a ferocious scowl, but he didn’t launch a second strike.
He had felt the absolute nothingness of the Uchiha’s body.
The veterans had reported the mechanics of the Kamui, but in the war, Obito had only possessed one Sharingan.
Now, the boy had both.
No one in the world knew the true ceiling of a dual-Mangekyou Kamui.
Even Kakashi didn’t know the full potential; he had spent his life using a borrowed eye that wasn’t native to his chakra network.
Obito stared down the Raikage.
He couldn’t show a single ounce of weakness.
If a Kumo warlord sensed vulnerability, they wouldn’t negotiate; they would crush you.
“You’re wasting your energy,” Obito said coldly.
“Every shinobi in this village combined couldn’t lay a finger on me.”
It wasn’t a bluff.
With both of his original eyes restored, Kamui had virtually zero blind spots.
In terms of pure spatial mobility, Obito was arguably superior to Kaguya Otsutsuki herself.
Kaguya used her Rinne Sharingan to shift the entire environment, dragging her enemies into dimensions that favored her.
Obito, however, was a ghost.
He could slip through reality at will.
Combined with his decades of future combat experience against god-tier threats, standard shinobi tactics were entirely useless against him.
The Third Raikage’s pride burned, but his tactical instincts recognized the truth.
The bizarre ocular jutsu rendered his speed and raw power completely irrelevant.
He deactivated his Lightning Armor and stomped back to his desk, dropping heavily into his chair.
He glared at Minato.
“Konoha breeds terrifying monsters,” the old man growled.
He shifted his gaze back to Obito.
“Speak.
What exactly do you want?”
Obito didn’t blink.
“My original plan was to drag you into my Kamui dimension and leave you there until the Otsutsuki arrive.
If you survived the war, you’d fight them.
If you died, you’d be fertilizer.
Either way, you wouldn’t be in the way of the peace treaties.”
The Raikage’s eyes widened in sheer outrage.
“But your son and Minato-sensei vetoed the plan,” Obito continued, his tone entirely conversational.
“I think they are being naive.
You are an obsolete weapon.
You are blind to the scale of the threat.
Whether you sit at this desk or not doesn’t change the math of the apocalypse.
It would be far more efficient to simply eliminate you and let you die dreaming of your little border wars.”
The Third Raikage roared.
He slammed his fist down again.
The heavy desk groaned, but the legendary Kumo craftsmanship held together; the wood didn’t splinter.
“Don’t throw a tantrum because I’m telling you the truth,” Obito sneered.
“Your son and your veterans know exactly what Naruto, Sasuke, and I were capable of during the war.
And they know that even with the power of gods, Naruto and Sasuke were completely helpless against the Otsutsuki.
So tell me, old man.
If the two strongest shinobi in human history couldn’t stop them…
how exactly do you plan to fight them when you can’t even land a punch on a half-dead Uchiha?”
The silence that followed was deafening.
For the first time in his life, the invincible Third Raikage had no rebuttal.
He looked at his uninjured fist.
The Uchiha was right.
If the boy wanted to leave, or if he wanted to strike from the void, there was absolutely nothing the Raikage could do to stop him.
And the boy wasn’t even in his prime.
The Third Raikage had been born too late to witness the god-like clashes of Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju.
He had died too early to witness the apex of Naruto and Sasuke.
His entire metric for absolute power was the Eight-Tails, a beast he could wrestle to a standstill.
He had assumed the veterans’ reports of the future wars were exaggerated by fear and trauma.
But looking into the cold, empty eyes of the boy who had orchestrated the end of the world, the Third Raikage finally understood.
He was entirely out of his depth.