Ōnoki stared at the current Uchiha Madara the same way a man might look at his once-untouchable crush getting reduced to a cheap, five-hundred-ryō shampoo girl.
It was just flat-out tragic.
The exact millisecond Ōnoki realized Madara was trapped in a genjutsu, he genuinely considered taking cheap shots at the legendary ghost to finally avenge the deep-rooted trauma Madara had inflicted on him back in the day.
But looking at him now, all Ōnoki felt was a heavy, bitter exhaustion.
At the end of the day, they were both just decaying remnants of the past, stubborn shinobi clinging to a bygone era.
So Ōnoki didn't lift a finger to hurt him. Instead, he simply dispelled the genjutsu.
He even politely backed up a few steps, giving the disgraced Uchiha a shred of private space to mentally recover.
Meanwhile, inside the fading genjutsu.
...
Madara stood triumphant before the crushed Allied Shinobi Forces and the battered jinchūriki in their Tailed Beast forms.
Perched high on a jagged cliff, Madara threw his head back, fully cementing his status as one of the Four Great Uchiha Mad Laughers with a booming, arrogant cackle.
"Hahahahaha—geh?!"
The maniacal laughter choked off instantly.
Ripped out of the illusionary world, reality violently crashed down on him.
He was back to being a pathetic, tragic zombie with no chakra, no strength, and absolutely no way to die!
It felt like plummeting straight out of heaven and slamming face-first into the dirt.
Madara's current sensory abilities were practically nonexistent, so he completely failed to register what had just been done to his own body.
But sometimes, an absolute lack of sensory feedback was the ultimate proof that his body had been tampered with.
Think about the sheer god-tier power he had just wielded inside that illusion.
He had successfully revived, snatched back his Rinnegan, and effortlessly steamrolled the Allied Shinobi Forces and all nine Tailed Beasts.
And now? He couldn't even sense the old dwarf standing three feet behind him!
'It was a genjutsu,' he realized, thoroughly horrified. 'I, Uchiha Madara, actually fell victim to a pathetic genjutsu. Was it Ōnoki? How utterly humiliating.'
Madara clamped his eyes shut, locked his jaw to bite back the lingering laughter, and completely froze in place.
He looked like a literal corpse.
"Uh..." Ōnoki caught the rigid micro-movements, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
'Did getting caught absolutely shatter his pride? Is he literally trying to escape reality right now?'
"Madara, just give up on the Infinite Tsukuyomi. That twisted nightmare isn't the future of the shinobi world," Ōnoki pressed, trying to talk some sense into him.
'Infinite Tsukuyomi?' Madara's mind instantly flashed back to the illusion he just woke up from.
It had flawlessly catered to his deepest desires, playing out exactly like a personalized, localized Infinite Tsukuyomi.
'Could it be...' Uchiha Madara's eyes violently snapped open. 'Of course! It's that treacherous little bastard Obito!'
It had to be him!
Nobody else possessed the intimate details required to perfectly simulate the Infinite Tsukuyomi's activation parameters.
That rat must have cast the genjutsu to actively sift through Madara's mind, extracting classified intel on the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki mechanics!
Perhaps he even dug up... the cursed seal mechanism locked around his own heart!
"Madara, what's with that look..." Ōnoki flinched, startled by the sudden sharpness exploding in the Uchiha ghost's eyes.
Madara locked his glare onto Ōnoki, his brain rapidly calculating his next move.
He urgently needed to pivot his strategy.
Before today, he firmly believed that as long as he sprinted ahead of the pack, victory was guaranteed.
But trapped inside this pathetically nerfed vessel, he literally couldn't run fast.
He had to play a much smarter, dirtier game.
Since outrunning his competitors was completely off the table, he had to shatter their kneecaps instead.
"Ōnoki, I never expected a dwarf like you would ever scrounge up the nerve to lecture me," Madara scoffed coldly.
He wasn't even bluffing.
Waking up from a humiliating genjutsu only to realize Ōnoki of all people had witnessed his lowest, most embarrassing moment was infuriating.
If Hashirama had delivered that lecture, he would have swallowed it.
But who the hell was Ōnoki to preach to him?
"Enough. Keep your mouth shut." Madara raised a hand, ruthlessly cutting off Ōnoki before he could spit out a retort.
"A new variable just entered the board—one that actively threatens the survival of the entire shinobi world. And you are going to handle it."
"..."
Ōnoki's eyes narrowed with extreme suspicion.
'Uchiha Madara suddenly cares about the survival of the shinobi world? Is he for real? Or is he just aggressively changing the subject to cover up his own humiliating blunder?' If so, the pivot was clunky as hell.
"Someone trapped me in a genjutsu just now. Why the hell do you think they did it?" Madara sneered, clocking Ōnoki's disbelief.
"Ōnoki, don't tell me you sat in the Tsuchikage's chair for decades and still can't see through a trick this utterly basic."
"They were trying to rip classified intel straight from your head?!" Triggered by the harsh prompt, Ōnoki's brain finally clicked, his expression darkening instantly.
This was bad.
This was a completely different flavor of the classic 'lure the tiger off the mountain' stratagem.
He specifically flew out here to sabotage Madara's grand scheme, and sure, Madara got stalled—but a completely unknown third party had flawlessly slipped right through the cracks and raided the vault while nobody was looking.
"Wait a second."
Forcing himself to calm down, Ōnoki marched up to Madara and started circling him like a hawk.
He ruthlessly patted down the Uchiha's robes, scanning for physical clues.
"What the hell are you doing?" Madara scowled, slapping his hand away.
"Confirming a theory." Ōnoki's face was dead serious.
Madara getting hit by a genjutsu didn't automatically prove some master spy had come to steal secrets.
It could have easily been exactly like Ōnoki's own situation: some random victim traumatized by Madara in the past finally gathering the guts to score some cheap revenge.
However, after practically strip-searching the Uchiha ghost with his eyes, Ōnoki found absolutely no evidence of physical torture or petty vandalism.
Could an Edo Tensei automatically heal itself after a brutal beating? Obviously.
But here was the kicker: if the attacker knew Madara was an immortal zombie, why would they waste time throwing basic, easily healed punches?
There were no burn marks, no strange odors, and absolutely no foreign residue slathered on Madara's body.
That single detail completely validated Madara's claim.
The mystery attacker genuinely only cared about jacking the classified secrets buried deep in Madara's brain.
"Who was it? Spit it out, quickly," Ōnoki demanded, his anxiety flaring.
"Oh? Now you know how to panic? What happened to telling me to 'wait'?" Madara mocked, flashing a razor-sharp, sarcastic grin.
"And shouldn't you be off chasing after your precious, beloved Chiyo?"
"This..." Ōnoki grimaced, his brain buffering. He couldn't afford to break character and drop the fake 'pursuing Chiyo' alibi.
Once this immediate crisis was handled, he still needed that excuse to stay glued to Madara's side and monitor him.
"Compared to the love of my life, the safety of the entire shinobi world takes strict priority. If the world gets burned to ash, then even if I successfully win her heart, where the hell are we supposed to peacefully enjoy our twilight years?" Ōnoki fired back, delivering a rock-solid, completely logical excuse.
"Fine. Ōnoki, you stubborn little brat, you actually suit my tastes, so I'll throw you a bone," Madara sneered.
"The rat who hit me with that genjutsu was a proxy I personally recruited years ago. Originally, his only purpose was to assist me in launching the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Now, it seems the little brat has finally grown up, and his ambitions have drastically outgrown his leash. He's no longer content playing the loyal tool."
"Give me a name," Ōnoki demanded urgently.
"That traitor's name is Uchiha Obito."
Madara sneered inwardly.
Since Obito had the sheer audacity to betray him, the brat couldn't cry foul when Madara returned the favor.
He was going to dox Obito right here and now, leaking his true identity to the entire shinobi world.
By doing so, Ōnoki and the Allied Forces would shift all their crosshairs onto Obito, actively blocking the brat from becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki, and buying Madara the precious time he needed to pull off his own resurrection.
"Uchiha Obito? Who the hell is that?" Ōnoki's dead-serious expression instantly flatlined into total confusion.
"A naive little Uchiha brat from the Third Shinobi World War. He was the kid your Iwagakure forces crushed half to death under a Tearing Earth Turning Palm."
"..."
Even with Madara dropping the specific jutsu, Ōnoki still didn't have a damn clue who he was talking about.
Way too many nameless grunts had been crushed into paste by that specific Earth Release during the war.
How the hell was he supposed to remember one random kid?