Genjutsu World
AN: Posted this in tumblr ages ago. Just putting this up here while people panic over whether the website will be deleted or not.
Warnings: The Rating is mostly for the language...and the graphic images.
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Obito woke up.
It wasn't anything anyone ought to note, but it was certainly something he ought to note, because he was very certain, very really certain that he was supposed to be dead. Like, meeting-Rin-in-the-after-life kinda dead.
His last memory was taking a hit meant for Kakashi in the fight against Kaguya.
So why was he here, in a ratty apartment, with his arms around an unknown woman?
Had he finally succumbed to the Eternal Tsukuyomi? Was using Susano'o merely a stopgap and not really an effective defense against it? When had he been hit? Before the fight, or after it? The struggle against Kaguya must have been part of a genjutsu, to give them hope before viciously crushing it out.
For a moment, despair welled up in him, threatening to engulf him in it. He wanted to drink something. Something powerful and enough to probably kill his liver. He was minutely sympathetic with the Slug-Sannin. Was this how she felt all the time?
And then the unknown woman stirred in his arms.
He froze.
"'bito?" she slurred, voice thick and slurred with sleep. She yawned, nuzzling into his arm and then pressing little kisses to it. "Good morning."
Ah, hell.
"Good morning," he murmured.
The woman stilled before turning to look at him incredulously. Some part of him died when he finally registered who it was in his arms.
Expressive eyes rapidly blinking away sleep, purple marks on her cheeks and lovely nose scrunching up. It was Nohara Rin.
"It's fair strange," she remarked. "You woke up earlier than me."
He didn't know how to answer that, so he took advantage of her close proximity to nibble bites on her shoulder.
She giggled, taking that as an answer. "Oh, you're just feeling cuddly today, aren't you?" she stretched, allowing him more space. "Days like these are rare, 'bito. You don't really like mornings, huh? No wonder you're always late."
He drew back at that. Becoming an underling of an un-dead ancestor had killed his bad habits, but it took extreme things to make him wake up early. S-rank missing nin or not, he did not wake up earlier than eight in the morning.
"I'm not late," he informed her, a little crease in between his eyebrows. "The rest of the world just likes to come too early."
She patted his shoulder indulgently. "Yes, yes. We've all heard it a dozen times."
Evidently, he'd repeated that often enough.
Wait, we?
"Come on," she continued, oblivious to the bomb going off in his brain. "Kakashi's ornery enough but have him wait another hour and he really will pull through with his threat and publish your drafts."
Again, what? Drafts?
Distantly, he remembered being young and writing stories until dawn, another one of the reasons why he hated mornings. Nobody should be cheerful next to him when he'd suffered through writer's block and wasted three hours of staring at blank sheets of paper illuminated by a dying flashlight.
"He wouldn't dare," he muttered under his breath.
She just smirks at him and insistently pulls at his hands, forcing him to get up and leave the lovely, warm bed.
(When was the last time he'd had a lie-in? His memory is blank after ambushing the Kage Summit. And damn, that had really backfired. He'd just tried to save his baby cousin. It was amazing how looking at Oonoki's face had triggered his speech about starting the Fourth World War. It was supposed to start without warning, dammit. Giving people warning just plain backfired on him.)
"Do I have time to get breakfast at least?" he grumbled.
She just laughed. The minx.
.
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Kakashi doesn't fidget.
True, he was alone and waiting on the two people who completed his unit, but this wasn't anything unusual. If Obito was early, that was the time people had identity checks.
"He's really pushing it, isn't he?" Minato-sensei sighed. "Isn't Rin helping on keeping him on time?"
Kakashi snorted. "Not at all," he said as sarcastically as he could manage. "Instead of spending one hour staring at his coffee cup, he now spends one hour staring at her when he wakes up."
Not that it wasn't romantic. Among the three of them, Obito was the most romantic and he didn't even know it. Rin was practical and kept it that way. Minato-sensei was more likely to recognize which flowers could be used to aid assassination than to know what to do with them on a date – it was a miracle Kushina-san even married him - and Kakashi just plain didn't care.
As though summoned, the duo barge in, not out of breath but definitely having signs of people who hurried. Obito's clothes weren't buttoned properly and he was still tying his hitaite properly, covering the gaping socket.
Kakashi looked away on instinct. His left eye twinged.
"You're late," he barked, just to say it. "What on earth have you two been doing?"
Rin answered for him, grinning and holding back laughter. "Are you sure you want to know, Kakashi?"
Despite the situation, he blushed.
"Stop teasing him, Rin," Minato-sensei interrupted, a smile on his face. "Is Obito well-enough to take a mission, Rin?"
Like a switch had been flicked, the three of them went serious. Rin nodded. "As well as he can be, what with the idiot straining his eyes to the point of bleeding the last time."
Obito frowned but didn't say anything. Kakashi was starting to get suspicious. Obito wasn't really a morning person, but he wasn't quiet either. Rin had just called him an idiot, and he didn't respond.
Kakashi caught Minato-sensei's eye and the blonde just shook his head. The hokage tossed him the scroll and gently shooed them out of the door, shooting concerned looks at the Uchiha.
"What's it about?" Rin asked, tiptoeing near him to read it.
Kakashi raised it higher just to be contrary. "Nami no Kuni. Huh, something about assisting in fighting back pirates. That's something I haven't tried yet."
Rin huffed and smacked him on the shoulder. "I haven't tried that either. What are we bringing?"
"Rations," Obito volunteered. "Towels."
Kakashi and Rin stared at him.
"Okay," Kakashi finally said. "Bastard, what's up with you? You've been acting strange."
Obito blinked his lone eye at them slowly. "I got lost on the road of life," he murmured.
And damn it, he didn't even sound sarcastic.
.
.
It would have been funny if it wasn't true. Obito did get lost on the road of life. Like, lost enough that he became one of the world's greatest villains. All because his best friend murdered the woman he loved. Granted, that was enough to drive other people insane. He was just a different case because he managed to drag the rest of the world to hell too.
"What," Kakashi asked flatly. It sounded less like a question and more like a statement.
"I still don't know if I'm awake or in a genjutsu or anything," he continued. "Thus, I am lost."
Rin sighed. "Kakashi, Obito is just being strange today. Let's finish this mission and see if we can help Obito get out of being lost."
Kakashi glared at her. "Are you humouring him, Rin? He's spoiled enough as it is."
Obito felt a little offended at that. Being called an idiot was fine, because he really was. Spoiled though...
"I am not spoiled," he said. "Just because I like to sleep-in now and then doesn't mean I'm spoiled."
Another round of staring. Obito was really getting tired of it.
"Can we just get on with the mission?" he asked, nearly pleading. "I mean, we can discuss the differences of me being lost versus me not being lost on the road of life."
Rin snorted with laughter, slinging an arm around his waist. "Yeah, so we can. Come on, slowpoke."
With that, they ran, leaving a startled Kakashi to catch up with them.
"Idiots," Kakashi groused as he ran beside them. "Obito could be mentally compromised. Why are we still doing a mission when he's mentally compromised?"
Rin shot him a look. "Really? Obito? He's always mentally compromised, Kakashi. Just depends on what level."
Obito spoke up, saying, "I feel like I should be offended or something. That was nearly an insult."
This time, Rin shot him an incredulous look. "Obito, only you could tear apart someone's arm, set it on fire and toss it to someone else for the shock value just because you ran out of explosive tags."
Huh. So the persona – the other Obito this genjutsu world embodied was plain damn nuts. It probably explained why being strange was viewed as normal. Rin, who seemed to be his lover, didn't even act concerned. So, if he acted as a sane, normal person, he might be dragged to T & I. Good to know.
"It was there," he said. "And I needed something to make them stop."
Kakashi sighed. And that was that.
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.
Things sunk in when he was half-way to setting up his bedroll.
He was here, in a genjutsu world, where his teammates were still alive, where Rin was alive and Minato-sensei was well.
It was a good thing he was sitting down or he would have staggered.
Was this why people didn't try to break Eternal Tsukuyomi? Because they just went along with it and it felt so nice and too beautiful to break apart?
This genjutsu world wasn't exactly beautiful. But it was breathtaking simply because he could take in fresh air and not ash, because Konoha was whole and his teammates were there. Rin was fine and Kakashi wasn't an angsty, brooding guilt-riddled muffin.
He didn't want it to be not-real. It would hurt and drive him crazy if this was just an illusory world. Could he even bare to break the genjutsu anymore? He was a coward and his hands wouldn't even cooperate to make the proper hand signs.
"Obito?" Rin asked, sweet voice tinged with worry. "Are you alright?"
He nodded automatically. Rin shouldn't have to worry, his brain said. Rin's smile should not dim.
Theoretically…
"Neh, Bakashi," he said, voice quietly contemplative and making his teammates exchange glances of alarm.
"What is it, Uchiha?" Kakashi prompted when he'd waited in silence for too long.
"If," he started, trying to find a way to phrase it without alarming anybody. "If you want to stick your opponent in a genjutsu of utopia, logically, you'd remove their memories of you putting them in a genjutsu so that they wouldn't try to break free of it, right?"
Rin, humoring him as usual, nodded. "Right. Because leaving them to remember would be counter-productive," she told him.
Kakashi, the bastard scarecrow that he is, immediately poked holes in that argument. "Depends," he said. "If there's a chance they could break free, I wouldn't leave them any memories. If they couldn't break free, I'd let them remember so that they can struggle futilely and waste their energy, thus killing themselves faster."
To Obito's immense gratification, it wasn't only him that was staring at the prodigy. Rin was giving him a look of complete exasperation.
"Honestly," she sighed. "It's theoretical, Kakashi. And wouldn't it be better to just immediately kill the person after trapping them in a genjutsu? It doesn't do to leave living enemies behind you that would try for revenge just because he hated what you did."
That was another point. How long had he been in this theoretical genjutsu world now? Time didn't matter though. Those truly skilled enough could bend time and space with their Sharingan. Obito knew Itachi was one such genius capable of it.
"Ehh," Obito sighed. "I hate theoretical discussions."
Rin finally laughed. "Is that you've been so quiet? Has Sasuke been asking you questions? You know you're not supposed to help him with his homework."
"The brat," Obito sighed, remembering that vengeance driven boy in his memories. "Relentless and persistent. He's lucky he's cute."
Kakashi choked on his laughter. Rin cuffed him on the shoulder. "He really is," she agreed. "Just because he set a katon jutsu to your bathroom."
"He's not cute," Kakashi disagreed immediately. Obito knew he was doing it just for the sake of it. "He's a spawn of satan, a demon from hell. I can't understand how he's Itachi's little brother."
Rin smirked that evil little smirk that made her look so beautifully wicked.
"You only say that," she said. "Because you want to sleep with Itachi. He's a cruel, sadistic ANBU agent specializing in genjutsu and interrogation. Everybody is scared stiff of him too."
Obito experienced a world-tilting moment. That was his baby cousin, who, one memory toddled around carrying a book and in another, coughed up blood with blank eyes holding the spinning Mangekyou. Putting 'Itachi', 'sleep with' and 'Kakashi' in one sentence gave him a headache.
Kakashi went a deep pink, all the way to his ears. "Rin!" he hissed.
Obito groaned, covering his ears and feeling a bit green. "Oh gosh, my poor ears."
Rin's wicked laughter sent both boys scurrying to their bedrolls.
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Obito had an epiphany somewhere between ducking one stray shuriken and creating the hand seals for a katon jutsu, aborting that because they were in a wooden boat, and turning it into a suiton jutsu.
If he was in a genjutsu - and was this really a genjutsu? – shouldn't he have felt the overlaying chakra of it by now? If Kaguya was too powerful for it to be felt, would he really remember her at all? His mind was still intact, his skills were still the same. His memories were untarnished.
Could this really be another world, a second chance?
He looked to the laughing Rin as she ran circles around the pirates and strung them up by their ankles. He looked to the annoyed Kakashi as he ended up having to duck behind a barrel because Rin's rope trick made them all misfire.
Obito ducked another pirate and kicked him in Kakashi's line of fire. Kakashi sighed and cleaved him in two obligingly, too used to their antics in a mission.
"Stop playing around you two," Kakashi said and it was in the tone of their commanding officer. "Hurry it up."
Rin pouted and stomped once, letting the water fill the boat. Obito rolled his eyes, because really, they should have asked him to do it already, hands forming a katon jutsu. He was better at it than both of them, fire being in his blood. Rin was earth natured and Kakashi had lightning.
So now, the ship was sinking and on fire.
The pirates all jumped ship and swam to the shore, headed to where a round of angry villagers were waiting to show their displeasure.
Rin laughed as they all stood on top of the sea, and Kakashi too was amused. The fires of a sinking ship bathed their faces in gold.
If this was a genjutsu, Obito mused. Then he sure as hell was living here to the fullest. He would have no regrets.
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ROFL.
Reviews Pls.
~hallen