If you like this story, come check out this one:
.
.
Wait, I'm Fugaku? I Think The World's Mine Now!
.
.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/35257044908617305
.
.
Easiest to just click on my profile and find it!
.
.
.
Obito arrived first.
Masked, cloaked, still wearing the name Madara Uchiha like armor.
Nagato, meanwhile, through the Animal Path Pain emerged beside him, his Rinnegan calm and distant.
Konan followed in silence.
Then the rest, one by one, space folding and releasing them just far enough from Kirigakure itself.
Obito deliberately did not warp them into the Mizukage's tower.
That place might be compromised. Obvious.
If traps existed anywhere, they would be there.
This distance gave him room to judge.
Even so, a flicker of irritation surfaced beneath the mask.
Getting them all here had been a chore.
Tracking them down across the world.
Warping back and forth.
Pulling egos and strange motivations through Kamui one by one.
Keeping them from immediately tearing each other apart.
If Nagato hadn't come first, issuing orders in the tone they were used to obeying, it might have been impossible.
He dismissed the thought.
They were here now.
As boots touched damp stone and mist rolled low across the ground, the Akatsuki members spread out instinctively.
Itachi stood still, eyes already reading the terrain.
Kisame cracked his neck, Samehada humming faintly.
Deidara glanced upward, annoyed. "Hn. Damp."
Sasori said nothing.
Hidan grinned.
Kakuzu checked his surroundings like an accountant scanning liabilities.
Obito didn't indulge them.
He turned slightly. "Report."
White Zetsu leaned closer, already synced with the sensory units it had left behind.
Its grin twitched.
"…It's strange."
Obito's posture sharpened.
"Kirigakure is already no longer under the previous regime's control," White Zetsu said. "The resistance has already taken it completely. The village is… even seemingly organized again to a certain extent."
That got his attention.
"Yagura's loyalists?" Obito asked.
"Rooted out," Zetsu replied. "Systematically."
Obito's fingers curled once beneath his cloak.
"And the five?" he asked, already knowing.
"They're the center of it," Zetsu said. "The silver-haired one and the four females. Their clones coordinated with the resistance. Barriers are already being raised throughout the village. Layered. Prepared."
Obito was silent for a moment.
Then, "Yagura."
Zetsu tilted its head. "That's the strangest part."
Obito looked at it.
"He's not in the village," Zetsu continued. "He's outside. Held. Alive. Drained, but not killed."
Something clicked.
Slowly, Obito understood.
"So that's it," he murmured.
This time, their objective wasn't just Yagura.
It was Kirigakure itself.
They had even anticipated his return with a backup somehow.
And they had deliberately shifted the battlefield away from the village on time.
Obito's gaze lifted toward the mist-covered horizon, unreadable behind the mask.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
Very strange indeed. Obito's gaze lifted toward the mist-covered outskirts.
Obito knew reclaiming Yagura now was paramount.
Every second the Three-Tails remained in the hands of such unpredictable individuals pushed the situation closer to irreversible damage.
That was why he and Nagato had already discussed contingencies and rescue tactics before coming here.
At this point, the optimal move was clear.
Recover Yagura.
Secure him in captivity.
Stabilize the Three-Tails until it recovered, then extract it properly.
If that process could even be accelerated somehow through experimentation, all the better.
His old personal plan, letting Yagura die here during this coup to delay the tailed beast collection through a later respawn, was finished.
Moot. Circumstances had changed.
If anything, the entire timetable needed to be accelerated.
After dealing with this group, Obito fully intended to move personally.
Utakata was next.
The Six-Tails jinchūriki had also defected at some point and was still somewhere in the archipelago.
Leaving him unattended here now was unacceptable, not when this group had already proven willing to interfere directly.
If they survived this clash, they would find him eventually.
Better that Obito reached him first.
In truth, collecting the tailed beasts was less risky than it appeared.
One belonged to a minor village.
One was held by a defector.
Another, the remaining one from the Iwagakure, had a jinchūriki who wandered freely under the protection of seniority and reputation, untouchable on paper, but exposed in reality.
And more importantly, no great village would ever openly admit that its greatest weapon had been stolen.
Such an admission was more than humiliation.
It was an invitation.
A declaration of weakness that would draw predators from every direction.
It was a huge taboo most of the time.
That silence was the shield Akatsuki relied on.
Which was why Obito felt confident pushing forward now, abandoning procrastination entirely.
His own restraints, whatever Madara had left behind, could be dealt with later.
The Infinite Tsukuyomi came first.
Everything else was secondary.
Nagato, who until now had only been present through the Animal Path, was deep in thought as well.
His real body had already been positioned by the Uchiha somewhere deeper within the main island mass, still well within effective control range, seated in that familiar chair.
Controlling all Six Paths from Amegakure itself was never an option. Distance still mattered.
The question was why Nagato had agreed to come here at all, and to assemble Akatsuki in full.
The answer was simple.
Through the masked Uchiha's words, Nagato had grasped what kind of threat those five intruders represented.
Anyone capable of forcing Madara Uchiha to withdraw, even briefly, was not something to ignore.
That alone demanded personal involvement.
More importantly, one of the key components of his envisioned weapon of peace, the Three-Tails, was already in their hands.
That alone justified escalation.
There was also something else.
Over the past year, whether intentionally or not, "Madara Uchiha" had begun to let more of his presence leak through.
His aura no longer felt distant or abstract.
Nagato could sense it clearly now, and the conclusion unsettled him.
Either Madara had grown far stronger in that span.
Or he had always been hiding his true power.
The latter felt far more likely.
Nagato had no clear sense of how he would fare against him in direct confrontation.
After all, it was Madara himself who had given him some of the foundational concepts behind the possibility of splitting the various Rinnegan abilities in the first place, the idea of combat across multiple bodies, of remote vision, shared perception, and absolute battlefield control.
So, Madara already knew Nagato's methods inside and out.
Whereas Nagato, by contrast, knew almost nothing about Madara's true abilities.
Only that he was overwhelmingly strong.
Only that he could perhaps pass through things and teleport himself and others.
That was it.
That imbalance mattered.
Which was why Nagato had agreed so readily to come.
Yes, there was deference there, unspoken, born from that gap in knowledge and power.
Yes, he still needed Madara to complete his vision of peace.
But this was also an opportunity.
A rare one.
For the first time, Nagato would be able to observe Madara Uchiha in real combat.
Not through rumors.
Not through secondhand reports.
But directly.
To see how he moved.
How he fought.
How he imposed control.
To close the information gap.
Madara already understood Nagato's capabilities.
Here, Nagato would finally learn Madara's.
That alone made this worth the risk.
Especially since, if Madara ever reneged on his promise, if he sought to use the tailed beasts for something other than the weapon of peace Nagato envisioned, then a final clash between them was inevitable.
At present, Nagato's only real contingency was Konan's preparation, the vast sea of explosive tags accumulated in secret over the years.
In theory, maybe they could counter some of Madara's space-time techniques.
In practice, no one knew if that would be enough.
And relying on a single unknown was foolish.
Better to understand the enemy now.
Even if that enemy still wore the mask of an ally.
Itachi watched in silence.
As always.
To the others, he stood there as another Akatsuki member, cloak unmoving, posture indifferent.
Internally, his attention was razor sharp, parsing everything at once.
This was exactly why he had agreed to this role years ago.
From the beginning, his purpose inside Akatsuki had never changed.
He was still fundamentally a Konoha's spy, embedded deep within the most dangerous organization in the world, a role deemed useful to the village only after his crimes and defection, after he had already shouldered the slaughter of the Uchiha clan. After that night, he relayed information directly to the Third Hokage through covert channels, operating from outside Konoha's borders.
Akatsuki was the target of his vigilance, but more than the organization, he watched the man who had drawn him into it, in the first place, under the name "Madara," the same figure he had encountered while that man was also preying on the Uchiha clan in the shadows, before their demise, they both partook in.
At the time, Itachi had known almost nothing about that masked Uchiha's real goal, only that he harbored some kind of hatred for the Uchiha clan, perhaps since they "betrayed" him in the past, and wanted their eyes. Their interests aligned just enough to coexist, at one point in time, but never enough to trust.
Since joining, one truth had become clear.
Akatsuki did not truly belong to Madara. Not really.
The real authority rested with the legendary Rinnegan user instead.
The one issuing orders. The one everyone deferred to without question.
Madara operated from the shadows, outside the official structure.
Present, influential, but never formally bound.
And not many people in the organization truly knew he existed at all.
Itachi was one of them.
His mission had been to gather intelligence, but Akatsuki made that difficult by design.
Members never met in person.
Holograms hid faces, masked identities, and limited information flow.
In practice, the only person Itachi truly knew well was his assigned partner, Kisame.
Everyone else had been voices, silhouettes, fragments pieced together from speech patterns and behavior.
Which was why this moment mattered.
For the first time since he joined, Akatsuki stood assembled.
Real bodies.
Real chakra.
Real weapons.
Itachi absorbed it all without moving, cataloging presences, temperaments, stances.
This alone was worth years of silent observation.
More than that, it finally offered a chance to resolve the most important uncertainty of all.
Who actually led Akatsuki?
Before he even formally joined, Madara had indirectly claimed ownership to him.
Later, the Rinnegan user commanded everyone openly, and they followed him instead, including Madara himself, seemingly as well.
This battlefield would expose the truth.
Meanwhile, the Third Hokage was gone now.
That loss still lingered.
But the Fifth Hokage was Tsunade Senju, not Danzō as he had once feared, and that alone mattered.
In Itachi's eyes, Tsunade was competent, principled, and human enough to trust, which meant his pact with Konoha still stood.
There was no reason to abandon it.
As for Sasuke…
Orochimaru had taken him, yes.
But Konoha had tried.
Failed, perhaps, but not betrayed him.
In some ways, Sasuke being away from the village was safer, at least for now.
Danzō still lurked in the shadows more than ever there, and Sasuke would never have survived that attention unscathed.
Itachi had contingencies in place.
Orochimaru would not move on Sasuke immediately.
Not before the Mangekyō. He knew.
That bought time.
And when the time came, Itachi would handle it himself.
He always intended to.
Here, however, another variable demanded attention.
The Rinnegan user present now was female.
That was new.
In every hologram, the leader had been male.
The chakra signature was similar, but not identical.
Either this was a proxy, or something far more complex.
Another mystery added to the pile.
Kirigakure itself was also a revelation.
Itachi had not known the village was under Akatsuki's control.
An entire great hidden village - their secret base.
Logistics. Resources. Isolation.
And now it was under attack.
By the same five who had appeared in Konoha a year ago.
That alone explained the urgency.
If Madara had been forced to assemble Akatsuki fully, to act openly for the first time since Itachi joined, then those five were not a minor threat.
They were a real disruption.
Which meant they needed to be understood.
And possibly eliminated.
Especially the unknown Uchiha among them.
The girl who had spoken too freely in Konoha.
Who had pushed too close to the truth.
Who might have influenced Sasuke's subsequent too clean defection.
That could not be allowed to propagate.
Itachi's expression did not change.
But his resolve hardened.
This battle would answer questions years in the making.
And whatever survived it would shape the world Sasuke would inherit.
He intended to make sure Konoha was not caught blind.