Obito Lets Go

"Konoha" was the village he had once wanted to protect. "Hokage" was the title he had once wanted to attain. Over the past decade or so, he had thrown both into the trash and told himself he could live without them. But at this moment, caught between two powers, with his body breaking down from within and his consciousness beginning to fade from the edges, he reached out and retrieved those two filthy things he had thrown away with his own hands from the garbage.

Obito's fingers curled slightly in the air. His palm was still empty, yet in that hollow grasp, he held something that did not exist—the hem of a white robe emblazoned with red flames. They had been drawn badly. But he had drawn them himself. That robe had never existed; it had only ever been worn in the dream of a fourteen-year-old boy. That dream had lasted a very, very long time—so long that he had thought he had already woken from it.

Naruto's tears were still flowing, but he no longer looked into Obito's eyes.

He turned his head away.

Not because he did not dare look, but because he needed to focus every bit of his attention on that pillar of light. He turned toward Sasuke, and Sasuke was looking at him too. Their gazes collided amid the golden-purple glow of Susanoo Nine-Tails. Not a word passed between them, yet at that very instant, both of them increased their Chakra output.

Golden Nine-Tails Chakra and purple Susanoo Chakra surged along the pillar of light into Obito's body. The overlapping powers formed a massive, spinning vortex within him. At the center of that vortex was a thin stream of dark purple-black Chakra flowing from the wound in Obito's abdomen—not bursting out of control as before,