The summons came at dawn on his fifth day of consciousness, delivered by an ANBU operative whose mask revealed nothing but whose posture spoke volumes about their opinion of their assignment. Obito was strong enough to walk now, though he moved with the careful deliberation of someone still mapping the boundaries of their recovery.
The room they brought him to was not what he had expected.
Instead of a cell or formal interrogation chamber, he found himself in what appeared to be a converted medical office. Two chairs faced each other across a small table, sunlight streaming through a single window that was almost certainly reinforced with chakra-resistant materials. It was designed to feel non-threatening while maintaining absolute security—a perfect example of Tsunade's approach to difficult situations.
She was waiting for him, along with Shikaku Nara and two others he recognized but had hoped never to face again: Inoichi Yamanaka and Ibiki Morino. The interrogation specialists. The men whose job it was to extract truth from the most reluctant minds.
And Kakashi.
His former teammate stood near the window, his back to the room, but Obito could feel the tension radiating from him like heat from a forge. They hadn't spoken since that final battle, and the weight of everything unsaid hung between them like a blade waiting to fall.
"Sit," Tsunade said, and though her voice was calm, there was no mistaking it for a request.
Obito took the chair indicated, noting how it positioned him with his back to the wall but facing multiple potential exits. They weren't taking any chances, but they also weren't treating him like a caged animal. Yet.
"You understand why you're here," Shikaku said, opening a folder thick with documents. "The Akatsuki operated for years under your direction. We need to know everything—members, hideouts, resources, allies. Everything."
It should have been simple. A straightforward exchange of information. He had no loyalty left to the organization he had created and perverted. No reason to protect the secrets of a dead cause. But as he looked around the room, at these faces that had once trusted him and now watched him with varying degrees of suspicion and disgust, Obito realized that nothing about this would be simple.
"Where do you want me to start?" he asked.
The question seemed to catch them off guard. They had prepared for resistance, denials, manipulation. They hadn't prepared for immediate cooperation.
"The beginning," Inoichi said, his pale eyes studying Obito's face with the intensity of someone reading a particularly complex scroll. "Tell us about the night the Kyuubi attacked Konoha."
Of course. They would start there, with the moment that had announced his presence to the world as something more than a dead boy's memory. The night he had torn the Nine-Tails from Kushina Uzumaki's womb and turned it against the village that had once been his home.
Obito closed his eyes, not to hide from their gazes but to organize memories that felt like handling broken glass. "I had been planning it for months. Watching the Uzumaki woman, learning the timing of the birth, understanding when the seal would be at its weakest."
"Why?" Kakashi's voice came from the window, tight with something that might have been pain. "Why start there? Why target a newborn child?"
The honest answer was too simple and too complex at the same time. Because he could. Because it would hurt them. Because in his twisted logic, showing them the world's cruelty was the first step toward saving them from it.
"Because Madara told me it would be symbolic," he said instead, choosing the partial truth that would hurt less. "The birth of the Fourth Hokage's son, the hope for the next generation. Destroying that hope would demonstrate the futility of the current system."
"Madara was dead," Shikaku pointed out. "We know that now. You were making these decisions yourself."
There it was—the heart of what they needed to understand. That the creature they had fought, the force that had orchestrated so much death and destruction, hadn't been some ancient evil or manipulated puppet. It had been one of their own, a boy they had failed to save, making conscious choices to hurt them.
"Yes," Obito said simply. "I was."
The admission settled over the room like poison gas. He watched their faces process it, watched understanding bloom into horror and anger. This wasn't about being misled or coerced. This was about a Konoha ninja who had chosen to become their enemy.
"The Uchiha massacre," Ibiki said, his scarred face impassive. "Your role."
Another wound to probe. Another truth that would make them hate him more. "I provided Itachi with intelligence about patrol routes and security measures. I offered him sanctuary afterward, though he refused. The plan was his and the Third's, but I made it possible."
Kakashi turned from the window, and Obito saw his own horror reflected in his former teammate's visible eye. "You helped him kill his own family. Children, Obito. There were children."
"I know."
"Do you?" Kakashi's voice was rising, years of suppressed emotion finally finding release. "Do you know what you did? Do you understand—"
"Enough." Tsunade's command cut through the building tension. "We're here for information, not therapy."
But Obito could see that it was too late for such distinctions. This wasn't just an interrogation. This was a reckoning, a confrontation with the human cost of his choices. Every question they asked would be another stone thrown at the glass house of justifications he had built around his actions.
They continued for hours. The Akatsuki's recruitment methods. Pain's assault on Konoha and his role in it. The capture and extraction of the tailed beasts. The manipulation of Sasuke Uchiha. Each topic brought fresh revelations, fresh horrors to lay at his feet.
With each answer he gave, Obito watched the room's occupants reassess their understanding of the past decades. How many tragedies could be traced back to his influence? How many deaths bore his fingerprints? How many families had he destroyed in service to his grand delusion?
"The other members," Inoichi said, consulting his notes. "We need details about their abilities, their motivations, their potential surviving allies."
This was easier, somehow. Talking about Deidara's explosive obsessions, Sasori's puppet mastery, Kisame's loyalty to the concept of truth in a world of lies. These were clinical details, tactical assessments. They didn't require him to examine his own soul.
But then Shikaku asked about Pain, and suddenly they were back in dangerous territory.
"Nagato believed he was bringing peace," Obito said carefully. "His methods were extreme, but his conviction was genuine. He thought that making the world understand pain would end conflict."
"And you encouraged this belief," Tsunade stated.
"I cultivated it. His trauma made him susceptible to certain ideas about justice and suffering. I provided him with a framework to channel his anger."
"You used him."
The accusation hung in the air like smoke. Obito met Tsunade's gaze steadily, seeing the disgust there, the moral revulsion of someone confronting calculated evil.
"Yes," he said. "I used them all."
That was the truth they really wanted, wasn't it? Not the tactical details or strategic assessments, but the acknowledgment that every member of the Akatsuki had been a tool in his hands. Broken people that he had found and shaped and aimed at the world like weapons.
"Why?" The question came from Kakashi again, but this time it was quieter, more personal. "Why do any of it? What could possibly justify—"
"Nothing."
The word cut through whatever Kakashi had been about to say. Obito looked directly at his former teammate, seeing the boy he had once died for struggling with the monster he had become.
"Nothing justifies what I did," he continued. "No trauma, no manipulation, no grand vision of a better world. I made choices, and people died because of them. That's the only truth that matters."
The silence that followed was deafening. They had come prepared to extract information from a reluctant prisoner, and instead they had found someone ready to confess to sins they hadn't even known to ask about.
It was Inoichi who finally broke the silence. "We'll need more detailed intelligence about hidden bases, remaining resources, potential cells operating independently."
"I'll give you everything," Obito said. "Locations, codes, contacts. Whatever you need to clean up the mess I made."
As the interrogation continued into the afternoon, Obito found himself strangely relieved by the process. Each secret revealed was a weight lifted, each confession a step away from the shadows he had lived in for so long. He was dismantling the architecture of his own evil, piece by piece, detail by detail.
But he could see in their faces that his cooperation wasn't making this easier for them. If anything, it was worse. A defiant enemy could be hated cleanly. A remorseful one raised uncomfortable questions about justice, mercy, and what to do with monsters who insisted on being human.
By the time they finished, the sun was setting outside the reinforced window. Obito had given them enough intelligence to hunt down every remaining Akatsuki safe house, every hidden cache of weapons and resources, every contact who might still be operating under his old orders.
He had, in essence, completed the destruction of everything he had built.
As they prepared to leave, Kakashi lingered by his chair. For a moment, Obito thought his former teammate might say something—offer forgiveness, express hatred, demand explanations that couldn't be reduced to tactical intelligence.
Instead, Kakashi simply looked at him for a long moment, and then walked away.
Obito sat alone in the emptying room, watching the last light fade from the window, and tried to decide if the hollow feeling in his chest was regret or relief.