"I seem to be on some sort of a time limit, so I guess I should be hurrying up and getting you to more recent history." he said after he flickered again.
The scene changed. They were in a storage room somewhere where the Fourth Hokage stood holding a baby. As he one-handedly grabbed a number of odd looking kunai, he had the same look on his face that his father had when he got his hand slammed in the file vault door and did his best not to cry. The Fourth Hokage then set the child down and vanished, reappearing elsewhere where he battled a man wearing a mask who had a beautiful red-haired woman chained between some rocks.
The instant he rescued the woman, they vanished together and turned up back in the storage room where the red-haired woman was laid down next to the baby. There was a short conversation between the Yondaime and the red-haired woman that confirmed that the baby was their child. If that wasn't shocking enough, the woman called the baby Naruto.
"Naruto? Naruto as in...?" he said stunned as he stared down at the blond baby who lay next to the red-haired woman who bore a strong resemblance to his teammate. That clanless idiot was the son of the Fourth Hokage?!
"Yep as in Son of the Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato, the chosen of the Toads' prophesy who will bring about a lasting peace since Jiraiya made the right decision, and the reason Kakashi bent the rules so badly that they nearly broke in order to pass your team despite your abysmal teamwork." Obito said.
"Yeah right. The team passed because I am on it and there's no way in hell the Hokage or the Council would let the last of the Uchiha fail." he said
"You're really full of yourself aren't you? The only reason the team passed was because of Naruto who got placed on the team as a bribe to get Kakashi to train you after the guilt trip over my death didn't work. He knew that if he failed the team, no other Jounin would take Naruto as a student." Obito said.
"It's because Naruto's an idiot." he said.
"No, it's because of what's going to happen a few minutes after what I just showed you. Now watch closely." Obito said as the scene shifted to a point in time several minutes after the scene in the storage room. All around was an unearthly red light that cast a hellish glow about the village. Towering above the forest that surrounded the village was the largest and meanest fox he'd ever seen. This terrifying beast could be none other than the Kyuubi that the Yondaime Hokage had killed.
"What do you see skulking around by that building over there?" Obito asked as he pointed to a ruin near the fox's paws.
"Guy in a weird orange mask, why?" he replied. What was so important about some guy in a mask when he was about to watch the Fourth Hokage defeat the Kyuubi?
"That's Tobi. He summoned the fox to destroy Konoha at Madara's behest." Obito said.
After Obito was done pointing Tobi out to him, he was treated to a view of the battle between the Fourth Hokage and the Nine-Tailed Fox that nobody living had seen. Instead of doing some super powerful jutsu as he had imagined the Fourth Hokage doing when he was told that he had killed the fox to save the village, the man had drawn a seal on himself and on his son's abdomen and called upon a Shinigami while the red-haired woman held the creature down with chains. The creature shrunk until it was half the size it originally was. The remaining creature was sealed away inside Naruto after a poignant goodbye from his parents who had been impaled on one of the creature's claws.
"Poor Naruto. Minato-sensei wanted him to be seen as a hero." Obito sighed as the scene quickly flickered through a bunch of major and minor incidents of abuse towards the Uzumaki, Including an assassination attempt that was thwarted by a much younger Hatake Kakashi.
"Now we come to the last few things I'm supposed to show you." Obito said as the scene shifted to a meeting of members of his clan during which they plotted to bring the Hokage down by force and place one of their own in his position, believing that his age made him weak. "These meetings had started long before the Kyuubi attack, but the planning really didn't take off until a couple of years before the massacre. The Third Hokage had tried to find a relatively peaceful solution when he became aware of the fact that our clan was plotting treason, but the Council went behind his back."
As the adults in his clan conspired, the scene shifted once more.
That Man stood before the three Council elders dressed in his ANBU uniform.
"We would not ask this of you if the situation weren't truly dire." Koharu said.
"Konoha is still recovering from the Kyuubi's rampage. Our numbers are much lower than they were before the Third Shinobi War. If a war were to be started we would be destroyed." Homura said.
"Your family's planned actions would spark that war." Danzo said. "It is why we have asked you to eliminate the threat before it goes so far."
"But why all of them?" That Man asked.
"We ask only that you eliminate the guilty." Koharu said. "Those who knew but did nothing are as guilty as those who plotted treason."
"I understand. It shall be done for the sake of Konoha and the safety of the Fire Country." That Man said, sounding saddened at the prospect.
It was while That Man had been wandering about town as if trying to clear his head that he ran into the masked man that Obito had revealed was someone named Tobi who had been working for Madara outside what appeared to be a run down apartment complex. It was during the conversation that had started with a question about what a masked man was doing in this area at this time of night if he wasn't ANBU that Tobi revealed that he was trying to retrieve the Kyuubi to turn it loose on Konoha once more. That Man then persuaded Tobi to take revenge on his clan instead of the village as a whole, and Tobi told That Man how to get the Mangekyo Sharingan and told him he would train him in its use before they parted ways.
"And that's why more than the adults in our clan had died. Tobi - who is completely insane if I might add - was the one who killed your favorite cousins as well as the innocents that were younger than you. Itachi was only supposed to kill all of the members of the clan Genin age and above." Obito said.
The scene changed, and suddenly he was watching his brother kill Shisui at the older teen's behest, and get the Mangekyo as a result. As Shisui died, the scene flashed through the various former possessors of the Mangekyo killing family and friends to obtain it before clan law had forbidden such things to prevent the extinction of the clan.
"Itachi sacrificed a great deal to prevent war, his ideals, his reputation, his favorite amongst his remaining cousins, his clan, and you." Obito said as they watched Shisui's body float downstream. "He was always loyal to Konoha, even when it brought him nothing but pain."
The scene flashed again. He found himself in the midst of the massacre, but it was different from the way That Man had depicted it when he put him under the influence of the Tsukuyomi. Instead of That Man killing the entire clan from the oldest of the elders to the newborn infants in their cribs, That Man killed all of the active shinobi and the conspirators in the failed coup as Tobi went wild and killed the rest. The scene seemed to end as That Man put him under the Tsukuyomi the instant before Tobi passed by their window and glanced in.
"And this is where I must leave you, because I seem to have overrun my allotted time and the next spirit who is due to visit is getting impatient." Obito said the instant before he blinked out of existence.
Edited 12-25-12