"Heh heh... Who said my eye technique only lasts half a minute?"
Obito laughed low as he studied Menma's calm expression. "Too bad, you guessed wrong. It still has five and a half minutes left—four and a half more than your little one-minute trick."
Obito chuckled darkly. "The second it ends, I'll leave and release the tailed beast you're controlling. Everyone who pledged loyalty to you for its chakra will turn on you."
Menma just watched him, silent. He didn't know if Obito was overconfident or just plain stupid, but the guy was practically handing him a victory list. Considering how thoroughly Menma had played him from the start—not even getting his Kamui back from Kakashi—Obito was already doomed. Even Naruto's talk-no-jutsu had made him hesitate and regret everything. Pathetic.
Menma just waited. No need to say anything more.
Obito took his silence as weakness, smugly returning to his initial posture. "Nothing else to try? Guess your eye technique isn't anything special. Not like Itachi's or Shisui's."
"Ah, right, right!" Kurama—the Nine-Tails—was clearly bored out of its mind. It glanced at the kunai on Obito's belt. "Hey, Menma, stop playing with him. See that kunai? Make him pick it up and stab his own mouth. Let him learn his words aren't as tough as steel."
Kurama shook its head, feeling like a genius. But that smug look froze the second Menma's cold stare landed on it.
A chill ran down Kurama's spine. It felt death itself closing in.
It instantly threw its hands up. "Shut up! I didn't say anything! Just farting! Yeah, farting!"
Kurama shut up, but Obito was sweating buckets, glaring at the fox. His intangibility wasn't invincibility—it just shifted his body to another dimension. That kunai on his waist? It was shifted with him. It could absolutely hurt him.
But Menma didn't make him grab it and stab himself. He just stood there, waiting for the intangibility to end.
Obito assumed it was because his subordinates had ratted him out, and he was too embarrassed to make a move. That has to be it. He didn't dare run his mouth anymore.
Second by second, the space around Obito rippled like water. His body was returning.
Menma raised his right hand, dark chakra forming into a massive, skeletal arm that wrapped around Obito.
He could have forced Obito to kill himself like Kurama suggested, but that would expose a weakness in his technique. Nagatsu Hiko-no-Mikoto—total body control with only a few seconds' cooldown—had a catch.
Just like Kotoamatsukami had a multi-year cooldown, this technique had a different flaw: it broke if the target was injured while controlled.
If Menma made Obito stab himself, control would snap the second the blade cut his jaw. For someone like Obito, that kunai would only pierce a couple centimeters before he stopped it. A mouth wound worse than an ulcer, sure—but he'd break free and escape easily.
Even with that flaw, it was still overpowered. A forced control every few seconds? Even Madara and Hashirama couldn't handle that.
As the space stabilized, Obito's body fully returned. Menma's skeletal hand instantly clamped down.
SPLAT!
Red, yellow, and white fluid burst out like a hot dog with ketchup, mustard, and mayo exploding at once. At the same time, Obito's left eye turned white.
The mess vanished. Izanagi.
"You arrogant bastard, ignoring your own intel! You missed your shot!" Obito appeared behind Menma, mask hiding a smug grin as he activated Kamui again.
But in his peripheral vision, a golden-red flash froze his smile. He whipped around.
Too late.
A blade-sharp fox tail erupted from the ground, spearing through his intact left leg and arm.
"That chakra tail... you predicted me?!" Obito stared in shock. He saw eight other tails had vanished into the ground behind Menma.
Menma didn't even turn around. "You've got one more Izanagi left. Guess where I didn't set a trap."
Obito ignored him. He sliced off his pierced limbs in a flash, then went intangible.
Seven more tails burst from the ground, skewering the spot where he'd been.
"One second! Just one damn second too slow!" Obito materialized a distance away, drenched in sweat. If he'd hesitated, he would be meat on a stick.
He didn't wait for another attack. He dropped intangibility and forced his Kamui at max speed.
Vanish.
Menma arrived at the empty spot, retracting his tails. "Still too slow."
The swirling six-pointed star in his eyes watched the ground with quiet regret. Explosive power is one thing, but spatial abilities... they're a different game entirely.
Still, after this long, his main body should've gathered everything needed to trade those two Kamui abilities...
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