"Who the hell is Uchiha Naori?"
The masked man was completely unfamiliar with both names Konan just dropped.
That was totally normal.
Information regarding Uchiha Hikari didn't even exist in the Uchiha clan's inherited records. Only the few clans that had originally sealed Hikari away possessed any scattered files on her.
As for Uchiha Naori, her obscurity made even more sense.
She was directly tied to the inheritance of Izanami. And Izanami was most likely passed down exclusively through generations of clan heads.
It might have even been a strict oral inheritance rather than a physical scroll locked away in some Uchiha vault.
Otherwise, if both the masked man and Danzo knew about Izanagi, there was absolutely no reason they wouldn't know about Izanami.
The only reason the masked man had even heard of Izanami in the first place was thanks to Black Zetsu's exhaustive "Shinobi World Grand Study."
Naturally, it was flat-out impossible for him to know about Uchiha Naori, the ancient Warring States-era shinobi who actually invented the jutsu.
So, he stood there, completely baffled.
According to Konan's introduction, the two women standing in front of him were an Uchiha great-grandmother from the late Warring States period, and an Uchiha great-great-great-grandmother from the early Warring States period.
'What is Konan trying to pull?' he wondered. 'Suppress me with sheer seniority? Pulling rank with an ancestors? Does she seriously think playing the family card will pressure me and shake my resolve?'
Ridiculous!
He respected the elderly and cared for the young more than anyone else alive.
On the night of the Uchiha massacre, he and Itachi split the workload. He tackled the Military Police Force, while Itachi handled the civilians inside the compound.
Itachi slaughtered most of the Uchiha clan's elderly and children, but his efficiency had been a bit lacking.
So, when the masked man returned, he pitched in and cleaned up quite a few stragglers himself.
Whether she was an Uchiha great-grandmother or an Uchiha great-great-great-grandmother, even if his actual grandmother appeared right in front of him, she wouldn't be able to stop him!
At that exact moment, the masked man suddenly recalled that bizarre incident between Kakashi and his grandmother a while back.
He had already sealed away the grandmother he revived through Edo Tensei in a remote location absolutely no one knew about.
From start to finish, he never harbored the slightest intention of meeting his old family again to reminisce about the good old days.
"The creator of Izanami. As a member of the Uchiha clan, do you seriously not know her?" Konan asked.
"Iza—"
The masked man's expression twisted instantly.
Before he could spit out another word, Uchiha Naori took the floor, casually introducing Izanami.
"Izanami is a forbidden technique I developed specifically to counter Izanagi," she explained.
"Izanagi sacrifices the light of one eye as the ultimate price to forcibly rewrite fate, turning reality into an illusion. Izanami is the exact opposite. It also sacrifices the light of one eye, but it traps the target in an endless genjutsu loop. Only by accepting their true fate and recognizing their real self can they escape the illusion."
"..."
The expression buried beneath the masked man's mask looked like he just bit into a lemon soaked in raw sewage.
'What the hell is this?'
Were they resorting to dirty tricks now?
When standard Talk no Jutsu failed, did they just crank the intensity up to eleven?
Wasn't this literal forced redemption?!
"Heh. You're bluffing." The masked man suddenly clamped a hand over his mask and burst into harsh laughter, spotting a glaring plot hole.
"She cannot possibly be the creator of Izanami. If she actually used it, then why are both of her Mangekyō Sharingan perfectly intact?"
"Is that so?" Tobirama suddenly popped onto the platform, blurring into existence via the Body Flicker Technique.
His sharp gaze locked onto Uchiha Naori.
This legendary woman of the Uchiha clan actually engineered a magnificent ninjutsu that permanently blinded an Uchiha eye just to cure mental illness.
The Second Hokage genuinely admired her.
Moreover, this great woman was clearly a fully grown adult, and her personality was infinitely more stable than that other unhinged "Uchiha great-grandmother" standing nearby!
"I can help demonstrate it," Tobirama offered, nodding at Uchiha Naori.
"Very well. Go ahead. I do not wish to see the few remaining juniors of the Uchiha continue down the wrong path, either." Uchiha Naori sighed softly. "Izanami is indeed a forbidden technique designed to specifically counter Izanagi, but if possible, I truly do not want to use it on him. Because Izanami has never been a forbidden jutsu that 'heals the heart.' It possesses absolutely no healing properties.
"If a person stubbornly clings to their own twisted delusions, they will remain trapped inside the genjutsu for the rest of their natural life, rotting away until they starve or simply die of old age."
Uchiha Naori's blunt explanation perfectly patched another glaring loophole.
If she had such an overpowered jutsu, why didn't she just spam it?
Izanami didn't operate like Tsukuyomi, which completely controlled the flow of time.
The genjutsu constructed by Izanami ticked away at the exact same speed as the real world.
Unless the victim was an immortal Edo Tensei, the actual window of time the target had to wake up was strictly limited by their biology.
Even Yakushi Kabuto—who rocked a busted Sage Body in the original timeline—would have eventually ended up exactly like a decapitated Hidan if he never woke up.
He would just slowly waste away and die from sheer malnutrition.
That brutal reality applied tenfold to an ordinary shinobi.
The only way to survive was if someone hooked the victim up like a comatose patient and pumped them full of IV nutrients to sustain their bodily functions.
Hearing this terrifying breakdown, the masked man's heart violently sank.
But he kept his mouth shut.
He wanted to see exactly what they were trying to pull, and how the Second Hokage planned to "help" demonstrate.
"My apologies."
For the very first time in his life, Tobirama actually issued a polite warning before brutally attacking an Uchiha!
The long blade in his hand flashed, cleanly slicing off one of Uchiha Naori's arms and sending it spinning into the air.
In the very next split second, the severed limb vanished from thin air, flawlessly reattaching itself to Uchiha Naori's shoulder.
This wasn't the Edo Tensei's automatic paper restoration.
This was Izanagi—forcibly rewriting the attack she just suffered into a harmless illusion.
The masked man stood completely stunned.
'Wait, isn't that insanely wasteful?' he thought.
Even back when he hoarded an entire laboratory wall full of spare Sharingan, he never squandered them on something so trivial!
An Edo Tensei healed on its own anyway!
Yet she still burned an Izanagi and permanently blinded an eye just to reattach an arm a few seconds faster? What the hell was even the point?!
Sure enough, anyone could clearly see that one of Uchiha Naori's Edo Tensei Mangekyō Sharingan had glazed over, turning milky white and completely blind.
"Wait a moment."
After Tobirama finished casually dismembering someone, he crouched down, slapped a Flying Raijin mark onto the floorboards, and vanished in a flash of space-time ninjutsu.
Not long after, the paper-like fragments clinging to Uchiha Naori's body crumbled and scattered to the floor, exposing the dead husk of a White Zetsu.
The Edo Tensei had been manually released.
'Did the Second warp away to find Orochimaru and cancel the Edo Tensei?' the masked man wondered.
'What exactly are they trying to prove?'
A second later, the Second Hokage popped back onto the platform, bringing Makoto along for the ride.
Makoto pressed his hand against the dead White Zetsu sacrifice, and the mutant plant clone was successfully revived.
"Edo Tensei!"
Without wasting a single millisecond, Tobirama blurred through hand seals and slammed his palms down.
The freshly revived White Zetsu instantly became a sacrifice all over again, and Uchiha Naori was yanked right back into the world of the living.
That's right.
Senju Tobirama warped away just now to check off two boxes: track down Orochimaru to undo the jutsu, and secure a fresh sacrifice.
But since Makoto happened to want a front-row seat to the show, there was no need to haul over another White Zetsu.
Tobirama just grabbed Makoto and had him recycle the original corpse.
"This... this is..." The masked man stared blankly at Uchiha Naori after her fresh reincarnation.
'Her blinded eye had actually recovered?!' The masked man was completely floored.
Just how deep did these freaks delve into the mechanics of life and death?
How the hell did they even discover a game-breaking bug like this?
Izanagi and Izanami literally reset your eyesight if you died and respawned?!
Then no wonder her eyes were perfect.
It seemed the woman standing in front of him truly was the legendary creator of Izanami...