Bang!
The original Akatsuki grunts hauled Madara in and threw him onto the stone slab.
Madara offered no resistance during the transport—not that his crippled vessel could have fought back anyway.
"You have mistaken me for someone else. The masked man who fought you was not me. That coward is hiding deeper in this facility. Once you locate him, you can test his abilities and verify the truth yourselves," Madara stated, his tone firm and authoritative.
"I, Uchiha Madara, hide absolutely nothing! I do not change my name, nor do I deny my actions. I would never conceal my face and scurry around in the dirt like a rat. You can ask anyone who knew me during my lifetime; my pride would never allow it.
"I understand your desire for vengeance. That coward is my enemy as well. He stole my legendary name, hijacked my power, and manipulated events to reduce me to this miserable, weakened state."
Even while getting carried like a sack of potatoes, Madara did not forget to deploy Talk no Jutsu.
He registered their hostility the second he saw them.
These grunts made zero effort to mask the hatred burning in their eyes.
Madara calculated that once they discovered Obito hiding in the room, even if they did not immediately drop Madara as a target, they would at least split their aggro and attack them both.
And since Obito was the only living, breathing human in the room, he would inevitably suffer the brunt of the assault.
When the dust settled, the final victor would still be Uchiha Madara!
But...
After hitting the stone slab, Madara finally took a look of his surroundings.
Where the hell was Obito?
How did the brat disappear? There was only one door.
How did Obito vanish into thin air?
Could it be... did Obito somehow shatter the Heavenly Prison and warp out with Kamui?!
"What are you mumbling about? Who else is in this room?" Kyūsuke glared at Uchiha Madara.
"What do we do now?" Daibutsu asked.
"This guy is an Edo Tensei, but he reacted to the pain earlier. He must have that sensory formula installed in his vessel." Kie drew a standard kunai, drove it straight through the back of Madara's right hand, and pinned his palm to the stone slab.
He nodded toward Daibutsu on the opposite side of the bed.
Daibutsu understood the assignment.
He drew his own kunai and pinned Madara's left palm to the stone!
By nailing him to the bed, the squad freed up their hands and no longer needed to physically hold him down.
They had already tested Madara's strength.... he was as weak as a sickly child throwing a tantrum!
There was no chance he could rip his hands free from the kunai.
"You took that without flinching? As expected of the legendary Uchiha Madara."
The squad watched Madara's hands get pierced.
Aside from a microscopic, involuntary muscle twitch triggered by the phantom pain, Madara offered no reaction and did not make a single sound.
The display of sheer willpower left the grunts feeling discouraged.
Faced with an immortal man who did not fear physical torture, how the hell were they supposed to extract satisfying revenge?
"Why aren't you using your intangibility anymore? Decide you don't need it?"
Having no better tactical options, Kyūsuke resorted to basic trash talk.
But verbal abuse was the one weapon Madara feared least.
"I already told you: you have mistaken me for someone else. Intangibility is not my dōjutsu. It is the signature Mangekyō ability of a brat named Uchiha Obito!
His original left eye possesses the exact same space-time power and currently sits in the skull of Hatake Kakashi over in Konoha. You can easily verify this intel. It was Uchiha Obito who hijacked my name to commit atrocities across the shinobi world," Madara defended his identity calmly.
"Is that actually true?"
Hearing Uchiha Madara repeat the claim with such unshakeable, dead-serious conviction, the squad exchanged uneasy glances.
The man did not sound like he was lying.
However, Konan explicitly promised them their murderer was locked in this specific cave system.
Konan would never lie to them about something this important!
And right now, Uchiha Madara was the absolute only person in the vault.
"Got it. Kie is still standing guard outside, right? Send her to gather intel and verify the claim."
"Right, let's do that."
After a brief huddle, one of the grunts jogged back down the corridor and briefed Kie on the situation.
After receiving the objective, Kie sprinted back toward Amegakure to compile the necessary intelligence reports.
Realistically, if they wanted the absolute truth, they could have just tracked down Konan and asked her directly
But the original Akatsuki members possessed a profound sense of self-awareness.
They understood their strength was small compared to titans like Konan and Nagato.
They refused to interrupt the leaders managing Amegakure's delicate geopolitical development over a personal blood grudge.
Within the hour, Kie compiled a thick stack of intelligence scrolls and rushed back to the cavern, handing the files off to her team.
While waiting in the cell, the original Akatsuki members remained highly disciplined and did not inflict any further physical torture on Uchiha Madara.
Madara breathed a heavy, internal sigh of relief.
He never expected these background grunts to possess such rigid moral standards.
They refused to butcher the wrong man just to satisfy their bloodlust!
This played perfectly into his hands.
Exploiting the kindness of others was a Uchiha Madara specialty!
Since Obito loved helping the elderly so much back in his youth, he ought to step out and help this elderly Uchiha right now...
"Kie brought back the latest intelligence reports. It's just..." Hisuke walked back into the cell holding a freshly written scroll, his expression twisted in deep confusion.
"Just what? Hand it over." Kyūsuke snatched the scroll and unrolled it across the foot of the stone bed.
The top section featured Kie's personal summary and tactical analysis.
"According to the collected intel, there really do seem to be two separate Uchiha Madaras operating in the world? That's what Kie wrote here," Kyūsuke read aloud, his brow furrowing.
"Don't jump to conclusions. Read the detailed reports."
"Alright. According to the intelligence network, one Uchiha Madara possesses an old milf fetish. Recently, he infiltrated Sunagakure to court Chiyo, triggering a massive, jealous rivalry with several Kage-level shinobi, including the Third Tsuchikage and the Third Hokage."
"?"
"..."
"The second Uchiha Madara possesses an extreme 'shit' fetish. He previously utilized a high-speed, spinning vortex of raw shit to brutally slaughter a bandit camp. Recently, he hijacked Amegakure's municipal septic tanks and weaponized the shit to attack Konoha, forcing thousands of civilians to swim through rivers of yellow sludge."
"..."
"Is there not a single normal one among them?!"
"Sumimasen, are you the one with the old-woman fetish, or the one with the shit fetish?"
After several long seconds of stunned silence, the entire squad turned to Uchiha Madara and asked a deeply soul-piercing question.
"...The first one."
Uchiha Madara despised assuming the identity of weaker men, and he absolutely refused to lie to save his dignity.
Even though the admission was horrifically embarrassing, he owned it.
"The old-woman fetish one? Didn't you just spend the last hour ranting about how Uchiha Obito hijacked your legendary name to commit evil? Why do I get the distinct feeling your original name isn't exactly clean either?!" Kie yelled, asking a second soul-piercing question.
"You have fundamentally misunderstood the situation. Think logically about the era I originally lived in, and then calculate Chiyo's birth year. I absolutely do not possess an old-woman fetish..."
"Then it's a loli fetish?!"
"Hisuke, hit him with a Lightning Release!"
Bzzzzzt—
The original Akatsuki members possessed a fierce, unyielding sense of justice.
They held off on torturing Madara earlier because they feared taking revenge on an innocent bystander.
But the intel shifted the paradigm.
Even if Madara was not their specific murderer, he was an unapologetic degenerate.
Punishing a monster could not be considered a crime.
"Let's keep reading. Here is the specific intelligence file regarding Uchiha Obito..."