To change the fate that supposedly doomed Minato-sensei to an early death, Obito sought out the Great Toad Sage of Mount Myōboku and begged for help.
The Great Toad Sage greatly admired Obito's newfound kindness.
Unfortunately, it could only perceive fate and explain what it had seen.
It couldn't actually change fate.
Worse still, even when explaining a prophecy, it was bound by tradition to speak in infuriating riddles rather than simply saying what it meant.
So the Great Toad Sage gave Obito one hint:
A cat has nine lives.
What it actually meant was fairly straightforward.
Obito should repeatedly extract and reseal Minato's Tailed Beast, effectively giving him extra chances to survive fatal injuries.
That was right.
Inside Engraved Tsukuyomi, the relationship between jinchūriki and Tailed Beasts worked very differently from the real shinobi world.
If a Tailed Beast was extracted from its jinchūriki, the jinchūriki wouldn't die.
Instead, residual Tailed Beast power would remain inside their body, giving them one chance to recover from an otherwise fatal injury.
The catch was that this couldn't usually be repeated.
With the One-Tail, for example, Gaara would only receive one extra life.
But because the Nine-Tails had nine tails, Obito could theoretically extract and reseal it repeatedly, stacking as many as nine such chances onto Namikaze Minato.
It wouldn't truly change destiny.
But if Minato was fated to encounter death, those nine extra lives might at least let him survive nine otherwise unavoidable disasters.
Unfortunately—
Obito misunderstood the prophecy completely.
This world's Obito might have become kindhearted, but he was still an idiot.
Out of every ten classes at the Ninja Academy, he had slept through nine and skipped the tenth.
There were countless pieces of basic shinobi knowledge he simply didn't possess.
So the Great Toad Sage's intended meaning never even crossed his mind.
Instead, Obito fixated entirely on the word cat.
His first idea was to use Kamui to sneak up on Minato while the exhausted man was sleeping after a mission and dress him up like a catgirl.
The result was disastrous.
Nothing changed about Minato's lifespan.
Instead, he merely ended up in an extremely unfortunate situation involving his hefty teammate Akimichi Chōza.
After that, Obito heard a strange rumor about something called hakimi being associated with cats.
That immediately caught his attention.
The pronunciation of hakimi sounded vaguely similar to the Eight-Tails, while the original word apparently referred to honey water.
And Killer B was also known as the Killer Bee.
There were simply too many clues!
On top of that, during the Third Shinobi World War, Namikaze Minato had once encountered the future Fourth Raikage and Killer B.
The two sides had clashed over who deserved the title of fastest shinobi alive.
In just a single exchange, Minato had somehow humiliated Killer B right in front of the Raikage.
The Raikage had never imagined that despite looking like the rough one, he was apparently the devoted romantic, while the seemingly respectable Minato was the real troublemaker.
Heartbroken, the Raikage had carried the equally devastated Killer B away from the battlefield.
And just like that, the title of fastest shinobi in the world had gone to Namikaze Minato.
To Obito, all the evidence pointed in one direction.
This had to be what the Great Toad Sage meant by cat.
So Obito used Kamui to infiltrate Kumogakure and steal some of Killer B's so-called "honey."
The shinobi world gained two more miserable men that day.
Killer B woke up feeling as though he had somehow been humiliated all over again and immediately concluded that Minato must have secretly placed a Flying Raijin mark on him during their old battle.
In B's mind, Minato was apparently teleporting over whenever he got bored just to ruin his day.
Minato, meanwhile, woke up feeling strangely uncomfortable and immediately remembered the previous incident in which he had somehow been turned into a catgirl while sleeping.
There was only one person capable of pulling off things that bizarre.
The mysterious masked man.
Minato's hatred of him deepened considerably.
After that incident, Obito secretly observed Minato for a while.
Nothing changed.
Minato's fate still appeared exactly the same.
Obito became increasingly anxious.
Every failed attempt to alter destiny brought the day of their inevitable confrontation closer.
Then, during an accidental return to Konoha, Obito happened to see Kakashi standing before his memorial stone and talking to himself.
Kakashi mentioned that although ninken were useful working summons, he personally preferred cats.
He also remembered that Obito had once been notorious for tormenting stray cats and kicking old ladies who tried to cross the road.
So, in memory of his dead teammate, Kakashi had once imitated some of those terrible habits.
But as time passed, perhaps because of the Sharingan or perhaps because Obito himself had changed somewhere far away, Kakashi gradually became kinder as well.
He began helping elderly women cross the street.
Even when one of them recognized him from some embarrassing performances in his youth and tried to blackmail him for favors, Kakashi accepted it with remarkable patience.
His attitude toward cats changed even more dramatically.
Kakashi went from mistreating them to genuinely caring about them.
Eventually, he even began taking stray cats to medical-nin for neutering because he had learned it could improve their health and lifespan.
When Obito first heard about this, his immediate reaction was that Kakashi had somehow become even stranger.
Neutering cats counted as loving them?
How did that make sense?
Back when Obito had mistreated cats, even he had never gone out of his way to arrange surgery.
Then something clicked.
Obito rushed to the library and began researching.
And what he found left him enlightened.
Neutering really could reduce certain health risks and significantly extend a cat's average lifespan.
Obito's eyes widened.
'So this is what the Great Toad Sage meant!'
Extending a cat's life.
That had to be it.
If Obito wanted to increase Namikaze Minato's lifespan and chances of survival, then he had finally discovered the answer!
For Minato's sake, Obito was willing to bear any sin, any infamy, and even Minato's hatred.
Thus, during the Night of the Nine-Tails, while Obito used Kurama's chakra to heal the injured people of Konoha—
He also made sure Minato would never have to worry about having more children.
That was the missing piece Kushina had noticed.
Why would the now-kindhearted Obito deliberately hurt Minato?
The truth was that, from Obito's own perspective, he hadn't been trying to hurt him at all.
He genuinely believed what he did would help Minato survive.
And in the end—
Minato had survived.
He had lived long enough to watch Naruto grow up.
Therefore, Obito concluded that his decision back then had been correct.
Some might wonder:
Could a person who was genuinely kind by nature still commit terrible wrongs?
The answer was—
Yes.
In another world, there had once been a cheerful, innocent young noblewoman.
Because of her kindness, the king her family served was assassinated.
Because of her kindness, fellow mages lost their chance at freedom and liberation.
Because of her kindness, the people of her homeland were plunged into war.
Eventually, she earned the terrifying title—
The Witch Who Destroyed a Nation.
Countless legends grew around her afterward.
Some claimed she once gathered everyone in a line under the pretense of protecting them, only to unleash a devastating ultimate attack and stack kills for power.
Of course, that part was merely a rumor.
And the saddest part was—
It really was just a rumor.
If she had genuinely been selfish and evil, then at least all those deaths might have served some calculated purpose.
Instead, people died for nothing.
Their deaths accomplished nothing.
They were simply wasted.
That was the evil a kind person could create.
And Obito was the same.
Obito approached Tsunade and openly confessed what he had done in the past.
Then he asked Tsunade, someone who possessed the same strong sense of justice, to join Akatsuki.
Naruto, trailing behind them, listened to the entire conversation like some eavesdropping NPC that spawned whenever two people began plotting in private.
Outside Engraved Tsukuyomi, Kushina watched the scene and suddenly felt hopeful again.
Maybe—
Just maybe—
This world's Obito could finally teach Naruto something important.
Being kind and righteous wasn't enough.
You also needed a brain!
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