Chapter 288: Finding a Common Enemy

“[CHIDORI]!!!”

Sasuke’s eyes widened in surprise when his hand pierced through the unknown man’s stomach without him even trying to dodge the attack, and they widened even further when he realized that not a single drop of blood was spilled.

Meanwhile, Obito considered how exactly he wanted to approach this conversation, and after coming to a conclusion, he started speaking with his normal voice.

“You should work on your temper, Sasuke. If you lose control this easily, you will never be able to defeat Itachi.”

Instead of answering, Sasuke warily jumped back and eyed the place his hand just pierced through with suspicion while becoming even more suspicious due to the man knowing his name. His first thought was that he was trapped inside a genjutsu, but nothing happened no matter how much he flared his chakra, so he crossed that option out. If it wasn’t genjutsu, he could only assume that the person in front of him was using a weird jutsu he had never heard of before.

However, since his attack didn’t do any damage despite being a direct hit, Sasuke at least managed to calm down a little and take a more composed approach.

“I ask you again, who are you, and why are you here?”

Obito scoffed at Sasuke’s interrogative tone but answered him anyway.

“Finally calmed down a little, huh? You can call me Tobi for now, and I was working with Orochimaru to get rid of a common enemy. I came here to give Orochimaru the final piece of the puzzle to get rid of her when I learned a rather interesting story. I heard that you supposedly killed Orochimaru, which doesn’t seem to be the case at all.”

Clear confusion appeared on Sasuke’s face when he heard the claim that he killed Orochimaru. He wasn’t entirely sure about it, but he felt like he had a rather severe nightmare that involved Orochimaru last night, but even he didn’t think that that would have somehow led to him killing Orochimaru while asleep.

Now that he thought about it some more wasn’t Yuna here as well? He quickly shook his head in denial and dismissed that as a part of his weird dream. After all, there was no way Yuna could sneak in here without a single person noticing her. Unfortunately for Sasuke, he knew very little about the [Flying Thunder God Seal]. Information about how S-Rank jutsu work wasn’t exactly common knowledge, after all.

“I didn’t kill him. In fact, this is the first time I have heard about his death.”

Although he already predicted that to be the case, Obito still nodded his head in understanding, despite being rather unhappy about it. If Sasuke, due to some kind of miracle, managed to kill Orochimaru, Obito could at least rest this case, but now he still had no idea what happened here.

On the other hand, Sasuke had significantly calmed down by now and was currently pondering on something else he heard Obito say. Something about a female common enemy he and Orochimaru shared. No matter how Sasuke looked at it, only a single person came to mind when he thought about a woman Orochimaru considered his enemy.

‘It’s Yuna, isn’t it? Although I don’t want to admit it, I am not Itachi’s match yet, so maybe it would be more sensible to set her as a stepping stone for now? Although this Tobi guy and Itachi are in the same organization, considering that he was happily working together with Orochimaru, I don’t think he has much loyalty towards it. I think I can use him to get my revenge on Yuna and maybe even find a way for him to bring me to where Itachi is when I’m confident that I can win against him.’

Sasuke swiftly finished his contemplations and came to a decision.

“That common enemy you were talking about; is it Yuna Uzumaki?”

Obito froze for a moment when he heard Yuna’s name, and moments later, everything clicked into place.

‘IT WAS HER AGAIN, WASN’T IT!? How did she know about this plan!? How did she get here!? How did she manage to time everything so perfectly!? WHAT IS GOING ON!?’

“F* YOU, YUNA UZUMAKI, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU DID IT, BUT I WILL MAKE SURE YOU PAY FOR THIS!!!”

Sasuke instantly jumped back a few meters when the person in front of him suddenly turned crazy, thinking that the plan he just made might not be that great due to the person who he wanted to use being insane.

“Err, are you alright over there?”

Sasuke conveniently forgot that he had a somewhat similar reaction when the second stage of his seal was activated for the first time, so he was currently rather weirded out at the raging Obito.

It took Obito a short while of constant cursing to regain control over himself, and after taking an especially deep breath, he resumed speaking like nothing weird had just happened.

“Yes, it is Yuna Uzumaki.”

Obito considered telling Sasuke that she was very likely the one who killed Orochimaru as well, but after thinking about it for a short moment, he realized that there was no point in doing so. It’s not like Sasuke would consider Yuna his enemy because she killed Orochimaru. After all, Sasuke and Orochimaru only wanted to use each other and had no sense of camaraderie between them.

Obito didn’t know that there was no point in tricking Sasuke to become Yuna’s enemy because Sasuke already considered her to be just that. Information about Yuna and Sasuke’s fight wasn’t widely shared, and even if it was, Obito had better things to do than to take notice of some random battle that happened during a chunin exam.

Additionally, the form Sasuke’s stage two transformation took and who was responsible for it was something neither Sasuke nor Orochimaru would like to share, so no one knew about it either.

In conclusion, even if Obito went out of his way to gather information about the relationship between Yuna and Sasuke, all he could dig up would be that they fought once. A fight, Sasuke lost, which wasn’t enough to cause a bitter feud in Obito’s book.

“If it is about getting rid of Yuna, I’m in.”

Obito couldn’t help but gape at Sasuke when he finished speaking. Here he was, thinking about a way to ensnare Sasuke for his schemes, and he actually decided to participate voluntarily. Could there be anything better than that? Despite being rather happy about Sasuke being so eager to get himself tricked, he wouldn’t agree so easily.

“Why do you want to get rid of here? Although you left Konoha on your own, I know that you don’t have much hatred for it.”

Obito mentally added a “yet” to the end of that sentence and waited for Sasuke with quite a bit of curiosity in his one visible eye.

“She humiliated me, and thus I want to kill her. Anything else isn’t your business.”

Although that answer was a little short for Obito’s taste, he could clearly see the hatred oozing out of Sasuke’s eyes and couldn’t help but wonder what actually happened between Yuna and him.

“Very well, since we have a common enemy, we should work together, but for now, I will keep my distance since Itachi might intervene if he found out about me meeting you.”

Sasuke simply nodded his head, turned around, and walked away without exchanging another word, which caused Obito’s eyebrow to twitch in irritation due to Sasuke’s arrogant attitude. Still, he decided that it wasn’t worth being angry about it.

‘Hehe, act arrogant all you want, but you walked straight into my trap. Now that our cooperation is confirmed, it will be child’s play to manipulate you to do my bidding without you even realizing it.’

Meanwhile, as soon as Sasuke turned his back towards Obito, a sneer appeared on his face.

‘Very good. That was much easier than I thought it would be. Even if the only thing I get out of this is that weird jutsu that allowed him to not receive any damage from my [Chidori], it will already be worth it. Well, he already had plans about how to deal with Yuna, and it should be easy to use him to get to Itachi as well, so I have no doubt that I will be able to squeeze more use out of him than a single jutsu. And then, when he is no longer of use to me, I will remove that Sharingan from his eye socket. I can’t allow a non-Uchiha to possess our eyes.’