Looking into the hood of the black cloak, he saw a face that resembled his own. Despite the fact that he found himself looking into a pair of empty eye sockets, he had the distinct impression that the spirit before him was looking down at him in disapproval. The man said nothing by way of greeting and said nothing as the world swirled into mist and vanished only for him to find himself in a place he'd never seen before when it re-assembled itself.
As he stood watching, he and Naruto battled a masked stranger beneath a dome of ice, he took a blow meant for Naruto, and Naruto went wild avenging him, turning into a feral creature who was only stopped when his opponent's mask cracked.
The world turned to mist and re-assembled itself again.
He stood watching as he, Naruto, and Sakura battled a stranger and a number of snakes. Naruto once more turned feral as he defended him and Sakura from a much stronger opponent, determined to protect them even if it cost him his life.
The world turned to mist and re-assembled again.
He stood watching at the Valley of the End while a slightly older version of himself battled the Uzumaki who had twice proven himself a comrade in arms. As the battle unfolded it was revealed that he was the one who had turned traitor despite the fact that the village had treated the Uzumaki boy most cruelly. The battle ended after his older self punched the Uzumaki through the chest and left him for dead.
The world turned to mist and re-assembled several times as he watched himself do things for power that horrified him.
The world turned to mist and re-assembled several times more, showing flashes of a life of crime that would have shocked his mother and shamed his father as he willingly turned traitor to the village, joined the one who had slaughtered a good half of his clan, came close to killing someone who had willingly followed him, nearly killed one of his teammates, and actively plotted the demise of the other, and personally handed over one of the components that had been needed to create the Jyuubi which was unleashed upon the world by Tobi and Madara.
Then, after Naruto had been greatly weakened by the fight that had claimed the lives of much of their generation, their final fight came. Despite the older Naruto's obviously weakened state, it was a battle for the ages. In the end, his older self outlived Naruto but, not by long. Following Naruto's death was a traitor's death for him after his injured older self was gathered up by the few survivors of the shinobi alliance that had gone up against a group that had been called the Akatsuki which had been led by Tobi who had been acting on Madara's orders.
As he stood there on that desolate field staring at the open and unmarked grave that was meant for him, he heard the words that made it clear that the late Uchiha clan was unlamented and that rather than avenging his family he'd brought shame upon them that would be remembered for ages. His name would be cursed throughout time alongside that of Madara.
"How do I stop this?" he asked as he watched a crying Sakura ram a stake through his older self's heart before he was tipped into his grave, his burial witnessed by many who clearly weren't mourners.
How could he stop what he'd seen was to come? It seemed to be fate. Seeing how things turned out, he could easily see how he had made each of those decisions even though they horrified him now. He could easily make similar decisions when the time came considering how reasonable several of them seemed.
Rather than answering him, the stranger who looked like his older self and could very well have been his older self seemed to be determined to push him into the grave with his deceased counterpart.
"How do I stop this?" he asked again, hoping that this spirit who was there to change his fate could give him some sort of starting point.
It was easy to say "Don't be an asshole" and "Don't kill your friends and fellow villagers" much as Obito who turned out to be a missing aspect of Tobi had done earlier. But, as Tobi showed, it was more easily said than done. One mistake could send him careening down a very slippery slope without him even noticing it until well after it was far too late.
Rather than answering his repeated question, his older self continued to silently push him towards his grave.
"How do I stop this?" he asked again as he teetered at the edge of the grave into which his body had been dumped without even the consideration of a coffin of the meanest sort. A grave in which there was only the corpse of his older self and the dirt and not even a cheap particleboard box to separate the two.
The hooded version of his older self continued refusing to answer as he fell backwards into the grave. Instead of landing on a corpse and having dirt shoveled over him as he expected would happen as one of the bystanders at the burial who'd completely ignored his presence had been equipped with a shovel, he found himself lying on his bed as the light of the early-morning sun streamed into his window.
Looking at the early-morning sun that shone cheerfully in the sky outside his window, he'd been half tempted to dismiss what had happened the night before as a dream that had been brought on as a result of his rather unusual near-death experience. But, there had been too many things in that "dream" that he couldn't have possibly known for him to completely dismiss it out of hand. That, and the future scenarios he'd seen were far too plausible considering some of the half-forgotten stories the clan elders had told him when he was small.
Deciding to take the dream as the warning it was meant to be, he went to his desk and started writing what he'd learned in the dream in a language that could only be decrypted by another Uchiha. There was a great deal of valuable information, as well as a great deal of information that could cause untold chaos and destruction in the wrong hands. If it all turned out to be true rather than a figment of his overactive imagination that was.
After hiding his notes in his usual hiding spot, he went out to meet his team.