Chapter Text
Skull scowls. It's not an expression his fellow Arcobaleno are familiar with, typically petulant features shaded fierce.
Reborn watches their assailant retreat too quickly to track before Skull turns to face them. He's never seen the lackey's shoulders squared, his back strong and straight as purple eyes swirl into red and black and the world fades away before they can question.
"Forget," they hear. The voice is familiar, impossibly soothing, relentless and controlled. It is so easy to obey.
Flames are dying will, but chakra is life.
Mammon is the best at their craft. They have ruined more minds with illusions, destroyed more lives with information thought quieted, than they care to properly track.
As a rule, they don't lie because lies are cheap and weak. A person lies because they can't face the truth or they fear the results of that truth. Lying is easy.
Mammon tells the truth, even when it is a truth they imagine into illusion - it is one reason they are the best.
Of course, just because Mammon does not lie does not mean they don't recognize a liar.
They have forgotten something. Something unexpected and curious and they can still feel that but they cannot remember why. An illusionist's mind is not sacrosanct, but it must be without doubt in its reality. No one enjoys the stories about Mists who lose track of the lines. Not even other Mists.
Mammon does not lie, but they will not admit to being afraid.
Not even when every unavoidable glimpse of the Arcobaleno lackey being his typical, pathetic self sees the surface of their mental landscape quake.
They cannot remember why. But they suspect Skull does.
Skull keeps one eye on Mammon over the two weeks that follow Naruto's little scouting trip. He knows if anyone outside the Hidden Countries could break through an Uchiha illusion, it would be the Strongest Mist.
But for all that Mammon twitches and avoids him, there is no recognition in their fear. Empty suspicion he can manage.
After all, in the Outer World they think he was chosen for being the best stuntman, or the Strongest Cloud. They're not wrong, but they're not entirely right either.
Before he was Skull, before he was even Cloud - Obito was the best liar in any world. He could convince even his skeptics that the impossible was possible, and vice versa.
Everything Obito has ever been was some kind of lie. The Sharingan made it easier, but Obito never needed it to convince the world that he was weak or crazy or earnest.
Obito only loves things that can never exist. So he lies, even to himself. He tells the world a story about who he is, how he fits, and then he lets himself believe.
That's the trick with the best lies. People have to want to believe.