Important repost notes:
1) This is a repost of my first self-insert I originally published in 2014 and took down earlier this year due to incredible harassment over my "controversial" chapter five (details can be found on my tumblr)—which continued up until its deletion. I will not tolerate any manner of gross behaviour this time around.
2) Heap many thanks upon roilian for inspiring me to make this fic public again. I will forever be grateful for their kindness, compassion, and ultimately the respect they have for me and other content creators.
3) I currently am not interested in receiving constructive criticism on this work at this time. I will update this statement or announce it in a future chapter should this change. Please respect this. In the same vein, please try to keep the negativity to a minimum because it's not motivational nor is it particularly helpful. Telling me you don't like the way the plot or characters are progressing does not help me. Telling me you think a chapter was useless and that I need to remove or rewrite it does not help me. I'm the author and have had this fic planned since 2013 and I do not write filler. Trust that I know what I'm doing. If you don't like my plot or characterization, you are free to read one of the many other Rin SIs that exist.
4) While I strive to keep a humour aspect in most of my chapters when it's appropriate, this story isn't marked humour or parody. I say this only so that new readers aren't super disappointed when shit starts to get real like old readers did, because honestly? SI!Rin is in a pretty bad situation.
5) There will be updates once a week-ish until I run out of pre-existing chapters. This is currently a (slightly rewritten and edited) repost for people interested in rereading the story, and maybe to boost my drive to continue it. I don't promise set updates beyond chapter five, nor can I give ETAs for new content. I don't appreciate demands to update. Asking or expressing enthusiasm for updates is totally cool. Being a dick about it isn't.
6) "Well, crap, will there be new content, sonyat?" Yes, eventually. I am currently looking for a beta who would be willing to idea bounce, content check, help me out when I get stuck in (usually hilariously) stupid places, and generally allow me to become excited about the story again. We will mostly be doing fun stuff, but I would like for the person to know their way around technical things.
7) I state it on my profile, but I will state it here once again: I am pretty disabled. A lot of the time I am too ill to be writing, thus the need for a beta and understanding from readers that I can't update the way we all would like.
Now that that's all out of the way, in the words of my all-time favourite comic, "Alright then… one more round."
Originally published in January 2014
AU: Certain aspects will diverge from (most notably chapter 675) canon and the Fourth Databook. I started writing this before the information we know now was released, and I will not be changing most of what was pre-written or planned. I will please ask you not to tell me that I'm "wrong" or incorrect in what I have written. I can assure you that ninety-nine percent of the time, I know. Trust me. If you still feel the need to tell me, please PM me so that we may further discuss it.
Warnings: Please note this fic will depict a spectrum of sexualities and relationship types. If you are uncomfortable with this, you may wish to discontinue reading.
Inspired by: SINHEART/reSINHEART by Marmaroth, Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen, and I've Got You Under My Skin by Frank Sinatra
Starting Out at Six Feet Under
Under Her Skin
It wasn't fun dying—it was, in fact, the worst thing that'd ever happened to me, obviously. Then again, it really wasn't fun waking up in a body that was supposed to be dead. Forget the first part, I could have lived with that (ha!). Rebirth is, without a doubt, the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
The story of my death is not an exciting one. There was nothing spectacular about it. It was pretty much my own fault, really. We're going to go back a little bit for this one, to just before I died.
It all started one evening in my best friend's basement. It was raining like crazy outside, the rain interfering with the power every now and again, causing Claire to threaten her fuse box every time it happened.
We were doing the usual: she sitting in front of her flat-screen TV fawning over anime characters, and I was sitting behind her on a plush leather couch, scribbling doodles in my notebook and trying to ignore her ridiculous cooing.
God, I miss that couch.
"Omigod, he is such a cutie!" Claire squealed loudly, rubbing her face against the screen then kissing the still image with a wet… smerp sound. Not really any other way to, uh, describe it. Yeeeah. I was sure her brother upstairs could hear us over the thunder.
Warren was a few years older, objectively cute, and an aspiring writer—something I definitely appreciated since it was my favourite hobby. My face flushed a little at the embarrassing thought, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, sighing in exasperation to myself.
So, of course it was quite natural someone I respected got to regularly hear 'our' anime nerd-outs. Truly lovely networking. Use your aggressive feelings, Jenn—let the snark flow through you.
"Oh! My adorable, powerful, full-to-the-brim-with-liquid-sex, sexy, sexy love!" Claire squealed again when she unpaused it, and the animated object of her affection began to speak in Japanese.
"Obito, did you launch the plan without even sealing the Eight and Nine-Tails?"
I didn't need to see to recognize that commanding voice. Damnit, I should have known the second she started with the liquid sex part. Oh yippee, we're doing the Madara thing again, slash sarcasm. I heaved another sigh and looked up to read the subtitles, trying to understand what she was carrying on about.
"Can you drop the Uchiha wank for one night?" I asked tiredly, pushing aside my heavy, dyed bangs. I really hated when she started with this. I was probably being too mean, though. I decided to lighten up on her, if only for the fact we hadn't seen each other in about a week and a half.
"My, my, aren't you an ornery bitch," Claire commented wryly, confirming my suspicions.
"My bad," I told her with a pronounced wink, drawing a heart with 'Jenn plus Claire' written in the middle. I flashed the sign at her.
"What have you been up to all this time?" Madara asked one of the other characters in the background.
She winked back at me and said, "Sorry darlin', my heart belongs to this stud." She pointed at him. "I haven't been up to anything bad, I swear," Claire answered him, nuzzling his 2D face. I heard static as she rubbed her skin against the TV. Such a classy lady.
"You were supposed to bring me back with the Rinne Tensei."
My eyes narrowed in disinterest. His voice was starting to get annoying; especially considering Claire kept turning up the volume every-single-time he spoke. "Why don't you just watch it in English?"
Claire stopped molesting the television long enough to turn around and give me a 'WTF' look, liberally peppered with 'you are so stupid.'
"Because it literally came out last Thursday? Also, I don't watch dubs, you know this. Duh," she sassed me a little in return, her lower lip jutting out in what I guessed she thought was a cute pout, but it looked more like she was constipated.
I couldn't contain my grin and chuckled at her. "Sorry, you're right. I can't follow all the different series you watch. Is this the episode where Naruto beats the ever-loving shit out of Sonic the Hedgehog?"
I wasn't a big anime fan, what with most of my information coming from Claire. Out of all the anime she subjected me to, I enjoyed Naruto the most, but I certainly didn't follow it the way she did. Hell, most of the time I didn't even bother paying attention to it.
Huge mistake number one!
And if you haven't guessed by now, I'm no Madara fan—nor will I ever be. I never understood why Claire worshipped him so much. He's far too OP for my tastes (OP meaning overpowered for those of you that aren't staunch MMO players). I was hoping Naruto, in all his fiery, glowing glory, was going to whip dat ass one of these days, simply to see Claire's hilarious reaction. I suppose if I had to pick a favourite character from memory, it would be the shark-guy Kisame from the Akatsuki that Claire also so loved—not nearly as much as she loved Madara, though.
In response to my question, Claire gasped in horror, hands flying back to the TV screen. She stroked it like a madwoman, never breaking eye-contact with me and whispering heatedly, "Don't listen to her, Madara-sama, I'll always love you, I promise. I'm here for you."
"I can't depend on any of you," said Madara on screen with a displeased expression.
Claire's face was priceless.
I cracked up laughing at the odd coincidence and her utterly forlorn cry of, "Why have you forsaken me, God of the Uchiha!"
I guess they're not bad looking for cartoons, I considered, somewhat weirded-out by my own thoughts. Good lord, I can't believe I'm thinking about this! What has that woman done to me?
The rest of the episode continued on with the back-story of the other villain, which Claire lamented since she wanted to perv some more on the young-looking Madara, not his senior-citizen self. Like usual, I ended up not listening too closely, more entranced with my small sketches and notes on the next chapter of the novel I was writing. Yay, post-apocalyptic mutated, super-evolved human survival story? Cliché was what it was, but damn if I wasn't an unrepentant and avid cliché flipper and trope subverter.
Too bad I didn't realize I was about to die and live a few all at once.
The night passed as it did in the same manner after anime time: a raging montage of screeching unholy hell at first person shooters and bitching about our first-world problems.
In the final hours before I left, Claire let me do her skin, hair, and make-up for practice. I was grateful she let me work on her; it helped in my cosmetology courses a fair amount. Claire being, well, Claire made it out like it was a big deal because she was no girly-girl, but I was ninety-nine percent sure her theatrical self enjoyed it.
Ah, the casual life of aimless twenty-somethings. Riveting stuff, ain't it?
At eleven o'clock, it was time for me to head home. The real storm was supposed to hit by one and I didn't want to get caught in it. I had to get up at eight the next day anyway, so that was okay with me.
I had my last conversation with my best friend on her front porch, watching the rain pound down in unrelenting sheets beyond the safety of the awning. Ancient, massive maple trees swayed and groaned in the wind, threatening the quaint houses they loomed over. The lightning and thunder had really picked up, giving rise to an irrational fear within me, poking at a mostly dormant phobia. I forced it down. I was in my mid-twenties now; being afraid of that was so pathetic, like I was still some cowering kid who didn't know better.
Screw that, I wanted to go home.
"See you tomorrow, Clefairy," I said to her with a two-fingered salute, something I did fairly often. If I had have known this would be the last time I would see Claire…
"Are you sure you want to leave in this weather?" she asked me with a concerned frown. I should've taken that as a sign to stay. Claire never worried, I was the worrier, but today I'd felt oddly calm.
They say that's the way you feel before you die.
"I'll be fine," I replied, flipping my hood up.
Famous last words.
So I set out on my journey home, a whopping fifteen minutes.
Sorry, there's my sarcasm again.
No problem, I thought even as the force of the wind threatened to knock me down. It's only fifteen minutes. I'll be good. Rain whipped around me as I held my coat shut tightly, shivering with cold. My clothes were soaked through almost instantly. Okay, so maybe this wasn't my best idea.
I started to run, wanting to get out of the insane storm as soon as possible. The storm will really pick up at 1AM my ass, weather-dick!
And even as I ran, I was good until about halfway home. It was then that everything went to shit. In the most cliché—yes, it had to be a freaking cliché—of all events, lightning struck a utility pole.
I passed under it right as it struck. The transformer at the top exploded in a fantastic shower of volcanic sparks. I screamed at the noise and light, and started to run faster. I don't think I even realized what had happened, but some instinctive part of me knew bright lights and loud noises were bad this late at night… in a storm.
Yeah, these weren't my best moments. I can see why I died.
The wind, as powerful as it was, made full-blown running nearly impossible. Over the howling of the storm and the transformer blowing, I heard a sickening snap.
I did the stupidest thing I could have done at the time and looked up. Several cables came loose from the pole, electricity crackling dangerously from the severed ends.
This shouldn't have been a problem with the wind working against me, therefore swinging the cables behind me, right?
Wrong. Fate, or God—whatever you believe in—really wanted me to die.
The wind changed directions on me. When I realized what was going on, I tried to haul ass out of there.
I never stood a chance.
I could have gone left, right, forward, it didn't matter. Too many cables had come loose, and I was nowhere near fast enough to outrun them.
In those last few arguably precious moments, time slowed down to an agonizing trickle. I threw my head around to see behind me, and watched with wide, horrified eyes as one of the thick wires swung towards me. I tried to dodge to no avail.
It hit me in the chest, pain like nothing I had ever known, incredibly intense and piercing—muscles burning, blood boiling, skin melting, every horrible thing out of Hellraiser—like millions of needles skewering my body with all the skin pulled back. It felt like it went on forever, this infinite pain, when very likely it was no more than five seconds.
At blessed last, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. I let the creeping darkness take me.
三
Did I die?
Ba-bump
That noise…
Ba-bump
Am I dead?
Ba-bump
I should be dead. My fingers twitched.
Ba-bump
Then why can I feel? Everything hurt.
BA-BUMP
I felt my heart clench painfully in my chest, anchoring me to reality. The disgusting metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, dripping down my throat. My skin was on fire, the burning so intense it almost felt cold. All of my nerve endings screamed out in agony. The smell around me was rotten and overpowering.
"Ugh," I coughed wetly, splattering blood over my face as I drew in great gasping breaths of air, feeling as if I'd been on the verge of drowning. Oh my god, that smell… I grappled with my half-responsive hands, trying to make out some semblance of where I was. I couldn't feel the rain anymore. Had I lain unconscious for so long? My hands told me I was laying inside a few inches of some kind of viscous liquid. It was sticky. What the...?
Suddenly, the stench became too much for me and I shot upwards, much to my body's protest, to vomit violently. Each heave made it feel like my heart was going to burst from my chest, Xenomorph style. It hurt so much, so deeply in my chest.
"God," I croaked between heaves. My voice was hoarse and entirely unrecognizable. At least the blood taste would come out. "What have I done—" Blood and bile interrupted my plea for help to someone I didn't believe existed. "—have I done to… deserve… this." My stomach gave a final brutal squeeze. The strength of it nearly knocked me back out.
"Fuck," I swore breathlessly, leaning on my forearms in the thick, putrid filth to spit the remaining bile out of my mouth. I felt the ends of my hair—the few strands that were still clean—dip into it, coming away heavy and clumped together.
Wait—what? My hair isn't that long, can't be that long. I'm practically bald, I only have bangs.
Don't I?
I opened my eyes, finding it hard to focus. Everything was red. I'm having some kind of stroke, aren't I? I thought, dismayed. I got to live through being viciously electrocuted, and now this? I must have been some kind of terrible serial killer in a past life.
The world began to slowly clear, and I realized with a start, that yes, everything was indeed red. It was all red because I was kneeling ankle-deep in a gigantic pool of blood. I tried to scream, but my throat was too injured. It came out as more of a high-pitched hiss.
"Oh my god, oh my god," I panicked, each word producing the feeling of razors slashing the inside of my throat.
There were twisted, malformed trees everywhere, all decorated with decimated bodies, oozing blood. That explained what seemed like the Olympic-sized swimming pool of blood around me, but why? I almost started laughing, the scene so insane and nauseating that it didn't seem real. My stomach churned. I fought back the urge to start throwing up again.
Jesus Christ, what was going on here? Was this hell? Had I died and gone to hell?
You made Kakashi kill you. Something niggled at the back of my mind. What was that? I shook my head dazedly, trying to clear it. I couldn't keep looking at all this death, it was going to drive me crazy.
Shock started to slide in, and I robotically pulled myself up and sat back, legs tucked under me, arms lying limply at my sides, hands beneath the cool, congealing blood. I mushed earth in my palms as I made fists under the blood-lake, staring blankly out into the distance. It felt real, looked real.
My fingernails bit into the skin of my palms with force. My whole body shook for a second with a hard twitch and I sucked in an aching breath, like waking myself from a paralyzing nightmare. I could feel pain. I could feel sick. This wasn't hell, the afterlife, whatever. I refused to believe it.
This had to be real.
My hair clung to my chin and neck, wet and stinking. In some inane attempt to forget the inexplicable experience I was going through, my blood-soaked hands went to it. I grabbed great chunks of it, running my hands through its length.
I pulled hard.
"Ow!" I hissed, not at all expecting it to have hurt because there was no way this hair wasn't a wig! How did I grow fourteen inches of hair in the span of two to twelve hours? It wasn't just that; my body felt lighter, like I'd lost a ton of weight, like things were missing—OhmygodIhavenotits!
I gaped at my chest, hands hovering in front of where I'd once had moderately-sized boobs, nothing large, but still decent! Was this some kind of reverse puberty?
I soon noticed that I had a bigger problem than my lack of breasts. A huge hole was ripped into my shirt right where my heart sat. The goods were pretty much on display, except they weren't at all the goods I remembered. A terrible red-pink scar, gnarled and bumpy, marred nearly all of the skin of my left breast, and I had a gut feeling the scarring didn't end there. I touched it gingerly, wincing when the slightest contact made it burn, sending a shooting pain directly into my heart. For a second, I couldn't breathe, only exhale and give a shaky cough until the palpitations passed.
When did that happen to me? The injury looked nothing like an electrical burn or a 'melt-you-down-to-your-bones-because-you-ran-into-a-lightning-strike' burn.
Use the Mystical Palm jutsu to heal yourself. You have enough chakra now.
"What's happening to me?" I whispered to myself, the bizarre itch in my brain feeling returning for a brief moment. "Where am I?" This was certainly not my neighbourhood, or Claire's. It wasn't even civilization. There were no landmarks, save for what I was currently in, a break in the middle of a forest. The moon was high in the sky, so it was still night, but had it been full? That did not seem right. I couldn't remember. The one damned time I'm not paying attention to the moon…
You're in the Land of Fire. Again, that strange feeling, like something wriggling deep inside my head, attempting to get out. I ignored it in favour of more pressing matters.
I ripped the top half of my shirt off, using the extra fabric in the sleeves to fashion a make-shift tube top to cover the girls and my new awful scar. These aren't my clothes, I realized with dawning horror. Cold chills ran through me. I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here now! Some deep primal part of me was telling me to run (yeah, because the blood pool and demented forestry weren't enough to inspire that in the first place, go figure).
Chakra signatures, people are coming. Gritting my teeth, I clutched my head. This was already getting old. What was it? Some repressed memory trying to surface? It didn't matter, I needed to leave.
I took hold of the blood slick tree next to me, using it to rise. It took all of my strength to pull myself to my feet. I swear I was sweating by the time I managed to stand on badly shaking legs—legs that were too thin to be mine. Get out of this screwed-up mess first, then freak out. Okay, so there were still some working brain-cells left in my head, good to know.
I started to walk slowly, small steps to make sure I wouldn't go careening headfirst back into the decidedly Doom-y landscape. Ten steps in I realized I could go faster, so I did. My walk turned into a jog, then into a sprint, and soon I was flying at a speed I'd never known to possess through the forest in a direction that made me feel safe. My newfound ability made me laugh out loud, part in delight, part in disbelief. It was amazing. Where had this come from? The weakness didn't leave my body, but it lifted a little, an invigorating energy coursing through my muscles, filling them with some unknown power.
I couldn't exactly explain the 'direction that made me feel safe' part, how I knew that this was a safe way to go, but the farther northwest I went, the better I felt.
It's because you're going to Konoha.
"Shut up," I snarled, and was immediately not sure why I'd done it. My confident pace faltered and I tripped over a root, sending myself hurtling forward. Apparently I hadn't understood just how fast I was going. I sailed through the air and tried to curl in on myself; if I hit the ground chest first like I was expecting to… Well, I didn't want to think about what could happen.
Instead, I landed on my side, the force of the impact enough to drive the air from my lungs, and skidded for a few feet before rolling a couple times to a stop. I wheezed and clutched at my burning wound, the jolts of stabbing pain striking spasms through my chest and down my legs. They kicked out like I was having some kind of reflex test done. To any bystander it probably looked like I was having a seizure. Oh man.
I definitely shouldn't have tried to run, I told myself with a grimace. I couldn't have been doing it for more than fifteen—maybe twenty if I'm being generous—minutes; still way more than I ever used to be able to do. Was I far enough from danger, from that shitty hellscape?
The sound of running water came to my ears. Nah, that ain't no sink girl, you're in the middle of a forest! With a shaky hand, I wiped the rather gross amount of blood tinted sweat from my forehead and rolled over to face what had to be a river. I sighed in relief when I was right. Maybe I could wash off some of the crusty blood now. God, I probably looked like a walking corpse. How unfortunate, I thought dryly, I never wanted to give in to the zombie craze.
Useless yet distracting rambling aside…
"Ow—OW!" I exclaimed as I tried to get up, stumbling back to the ground. I cupped my ankle, outwardly seething. Oh, come on, do I not deserve a break at this point? This really isn't funny. Now I have to deal with a twisted ankle on top of all this other bullshit?
No. Use the Mystical Palm jutsu.
"Ah, whatever," I scoffed with an eye-roll.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hands flew through making some kind of hand signs and were glowing green above my ankle. It began to feel better as I concentrated and honed in with my chakra, pleased with how good my control was. I'd always been naturally skilled with it, but all my hard work refining it was really paying off. After all, check out what a great iryō-nin I've become, at my age too! I smiled proudly to myself as I worked. This was nothing; I'd done it so many times I'd lost count. I could heal far more complicated wounds than this.
I checked my ankle over when I was finished, feeling over the bones for fractures and testing the ligaments with a simple diagnostic jutsu. Nicely done indeed. Fully healed!
...
Uh… fully healed? How did I just heal myself?
Er, wait, go back! Something's not right. I made the hand signs again from some memory I didn't know I had and concentrated. That powerful feeling returned, a little similar to what I did to my muscles in the forest, but not really? My hands pulsed with soft green light once more.
The goofy smile vanished from my face as my brain caught up to my racing thoughts. I frowned, eyes bulging out of their sockets as I looked at it, well and truly looked at it.
I'm sorry, full stop: GLOWING GREEN?! CHAKRA?! JUTSU?!
"Oh my god!" I yelled for the umpteenth time—instantly regretting it for the way it shredded my throat. I really do call upon an entity I don't believe in quite a bit. Another weird habit.
Be quiet, the enemy could hear you.
"Dude, screw your 'be quiet' jazz! I'm fucking glowing!" I ranted hysterically, watching as the glow sputtered out and died due to my lack of focus. "Chakra?! Like chakra in Naruto? Like the chakra the blondie with big tits uses? Tsunana? Tsu-something? Whatever! Holy shit, holy shit!"
I scooted to the edge of the river and looked in, unable to ignore the signs any longer.
The face gawking back at me was not mine, even though she mimicked everything I did.
She looked at least nine or ten years younger than me, maybe fourteen years old if my guess was correct—
Yes, you're thirteen turning fourteen.
—with brown hair stopping a few inches under her chin, brown eyes, and one thick purple marking on each cheek. I stretched my cheeks, watching them move with the skin. So they weren't paint, and didn't really look like tattoos, and believe me, I would know, I had my fair share before this. I recalled Naruto characters often had these from birth.
Chakra markings.
I—wow, I'm really considering that I'm now a Naruto character. Great. Grudgingly, it… did make a modicum of sense, though; I could do crazy feats with my body—I didn't really think it was my body—that I would never have dreamed possible before, I had chakra, I had jutsu, and knew how to use both like it was second nature. Most importantly, I had a headband.
Hitai-ate.
The headband I wore told me what I needed to know, that I was from Konoha, the village the show focused most on. It also told me I was a ninja that murdered people.
Not happening, I thought, and ripped the headband off, throwing it into the river. If I had to play this weird game, this weird life, hopefully, at least until I woke up—or some higher power took pity on me and ended this Sims game—I wasn't going to do it as a ninja.
You're a proud kunoichi from Konoha. You wanted to die for Konoha.
I would never go to Konoha or any other ninja village. I was going to ride this out as a normal person, even if I had to hide my new, cool powers.
The purple marks on my face needed to be covered up. Despite the fact that they made me—er, whoever I was supposed to be—look way less boring, they were pretty distinctive, and someone looking for me would instantly know who I was. Unless tons of people had these giant things on their faces—which I highly doubted since I didn't remember seeing anyone with them on the show.
Actually, no, there was that one girl from the last episode I'd watched with Claire. I remembered looking up because of the obscenely bright light and seeing her get killed with a lightning-filled hand… through her… chest…
I looked down at my covered injury, trembling, with eyes so big they could've popped out of my head. My mind boggling at the implication, I thought of the electricity-filled cable hitting my chest.
I came to one very impossible conclusion.
"Son of a bitch!"
三
"Where is she?" A mismatched pair of intense, bloodshot eyes bore into the stunned man's own. The Sharingan burned brightly in its socket, unmoving and wide.
"Hatake-taichō…" Kakashi's subordinate breathed out, frozen, unable to pry off the young jōnin's white-knuckled grip. His furious screams of, "Who killed them?!" lingered hauntingly in the night. Kakashi appeared a wraith, haggard, wounded, and dead-eyed; a shadow of himself, delirious from severe chakra exhaustion. He would die if he wasn't treated quickly.
Kakashi's badly trembling fists gripped the collar of the shinobi's flak jacket tighter, pulling him closer. "Where is she?" he repeated, a hint of something terrible—despair? Mania? Desperation?—bleeding into his raspy voice.
"Taichō, Nohara-san is—she's—" the man fumbled with his words, knowing there was nothing he could say to placate his captain, "she's… gone."
And that was the truth. Nohara Rin was simply gone, missing in action. There was no body to be found.
Kakashi blinked then, like he was coming out of some horrible dream and into a more horrible reality. Slowly, he swivelled around, eyeing the massacre around him. Gone, gone, gone echoed hollowly in his head. Rin was gone, dead by his hand, because he hadn't been able to protect her.
He had broken his promise.
三
Nohara Rin would be declared dead in absentia like her teammate before her, but unlike Obito, who had been buried somewhere in Kusa, those who had been close to her would be left forever wondering:
Where on earth had Rin's body gone?
三
"You showed him mercy because he was a comrade?" Madara asked, unimpressed.
"No… It was fine either way. Whether he lives or dies—"
"She got up and walked away," the original White Zetsu broke in in confusion, interrupting him.
"Insolent creature, now is not the time," Madara said, his eye piercing and terror-inducing, authority ageless and unmatched.
"Rin got up and walked away," Zetsu repeated, too stunned to be cowed by his creator, looking as confused as he sounded. His awed gaze shifted to Obito.
The glare Obito pinned on him was absolutely murderous. His hands clenched into shaking fists. "What part of that do you think is funny?" he demanded.
"Wow, that's messed up," Guruguru exclaimed from around Obito. "She seriously got up and walked away like some kind of zombie!"
"I felt her pulse, she was dead," Obito told them with a snarl, single Sharingan morphing back into its Mangekyō state.
Madara saw that this was going to a bad place. The boy was about to agree to his plans and the Zetsu were on track to ruin it. "Enough, both of you. Begone."
Almost unwillingly, Guruguru uncurled himself from Obito, steadying him as he reformed to make sure he didn't fall over. After all, the right half of his body was unstable for the time being. Obito didn't stop glaring at him even as the clone offered its help.
Zetsu and Guruguru slunk out of the main cavern, the air heavy with killing intent.
"Your clones saw it, right? I don't have faulty wiring?" Guruguru asked when they were out of earshot.
"Yes," Zetsu confirmed. "She got up, went a little crazy, and ran away," he said in disbelief.
Guruguru thought about it for a second with a hum.
"Do humans with large holes in their chests usually walk away from that like nothing happened?"
2014 A/N: And now you know the timeline! She was "dead" long enough for Obito to have left her there, but not enough for the Konoha forces to find her. I always wondered what happened to Rin's body. Did Obito take it with him and bury her? Did he leave it and then Konoha reinforcements took it back with them? I don't think it's ever said anywhere.
A big thank you goes out to Peyton LeVay for helping me sort out my timeline!
I'm aware I do some switching between tenses. Some of it is purposeful. Please inform me if it is awkward or terribly distracting.
Reviews seriously make my day.
2016 A/N: The kanji I use between linebreaks means 'three.' I hope somebody out there enjoyed the repost.
Fic recommendations: LET ME IN by Enbi, mirror, mirror (further, nearer) by starlineshine, and A World Only We Know by Timely