.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

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Another muted, cloudless, slightly chilly night. This time, Sarada had equipped herself with a kunai pouch, a battery-powered lantern, a warm jacket, and a watch. She sat, perched on edge of the dock by the lake, and listened to the soft tick of her watch as the seconds crept on by.

Mama had a late-night shift at the hospital tonight, so Sarada had made a shadow clone in case Mama came home and checked on her while she was still out. That had set off an uncomfortable twinge of guilt—Sarada had always been the exemplary daughter, after all. Not like Boruto, always playing the delinquent, going against the rules, and generally causing the Nanadaime heaps of stress.

But Sarada still was a good daughter. Wasn't she? She set her shoulders, frowning down at her reflection in the still water. It was 11:24 PM. If Obito didn't show up by midnight—which was when Mama's shift ended—Sarada would head home. This would be a quick, short jaunt. No worrying or stressing involved.

This was a mystery Sarada just couldn't let lie.

Uchiha Obito.

…Was that even possible?

She waited. Waited some more, her entire body on edge. What if Obito never showed up, tonight or any other night after this one? Would she never figure out the mystery of where he had come from? Had last night all been a complete fabrication in her mind? Right now, in the inky darkness with only the cicadas and the glow of a half moon to keep her company, she was almost tempted to believe it. Nothing, nothing added up.

She glanced at her watch. 11:31 PM.

"Only?" she said under her breath.

Sarada got to her feet, unable to stand waiting there any longer. If she was going to be waiting here for another half hour, she might as well follow Obito's lead and get some training in as well.

And, as a matter of fact, this lake was the perfect place to practice her fireball jutsu. Doing so at night would likely make an even prettier picture. Her face set into a determined smile.

She formed the hand seals, flying from one seal to the next in quick, practiced succession. Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger. She breathed in air—

Held it for a millisecond—

—And then breathed out fire. A brilliant ball of yellow and orange erupted out onto the lake surface, heat and light blasting her in the face. In a pleasantly, ticklishly warm sort of way.

Sarada's lips quirked up. She would never tire of that jutsu.

She practiced a few more times, threw her shuriken and kunai around a bit despite still not finding that original tree with the burl, and even tried a few of her newer lightning jutsus.

11:59 PM.

Sarada grimaced. If Obito didn't show up in the next minute… She glanced back out over the lakeside path, where it wound into the distance in one direction, and branched off behind a shop in the other. Obito could conceivably be right around the corner. With a sigh, she looked up at the moon, and half-heartedly tried to calculate how long it would take for Mama to wrap up an operation, pack her things, and ride the rail home.

She froze.

Five things happened in the span of a heartbeat.

One, Sarada's watch struck midnight with a distinct click.

Two, her eyes zeroed in on the Hokage Monument, which was suddenly, very conspicuously, lacking the faces of the Yondaime, Godaime, Rokudaime, and Nanadaime.

Three, the dock, lake, trees, and clouds all—for lack of a better word—shifted.

Four, Obito appeared right out of thin air beside her on the dock and let out a surprised yelp, as if he was the one who had been there the entire time.

…A brief intermission while Sarada toyed with the idea that it might all just really be a dream.

And then five: Her brain proposed to her the implausible, but currently all-too-plausible, explanation of time travel.

Time travel.

Time. Travel.

Despite her heart racing and mind in full-on panic mode, Sarada jerked one hand up in a forced-casual greeting.

"Hello, Obito," she said, her voice an octave higher than normal.

Obito, mid-way through a panic attack of his own, scrambled away so quickly that he fell off the side of the dock.

Sarada winced. At least he had managed to remember to stay on the surface on the water.

His eyes were wide.

"Who the hell are you? Where'd you come from? How do you know my name?" He took a breath of air. When he exhaled, his breathing sounded just as panicky as Sarada's own.

Sarada stared back at him, her eyebrows knitting. "You… don't remember me? I'm Sarada. I suppose I'm not the only one with a faulty memory—"

She stopped. Her eyes widened, too.

Obito clambered back onto the dock, seeming to have made a quick recovery from his shock, because now he was eyeing her with a touch of offense. "Excuse you, I have great memory! What are you even talking about? I've never seen you before in my life."

Time travel, thought Sarada, her mind racing at break-neck speeds and scrambling to fit the pieces together.

Time travel was why she was currently here, in the era of the Sandaime, with Uchiha Obito, the inexplicably taboo name connected to the Fourth War. Time travel was also the reason why she remembered Obito, but not the other way around. She was at a point in time even earlier than she had been at last night—meaning that while this was her second meeting with Obito—

It was Obito's first time meeting her.

She swallowed. "Never mind."

Obito scrutinized her. "What kind of Shunshin was that? That's, like, Sensei levels of speed! Except Minato-sensei teleports, and you," he waved a rusty kunai at her, "wait, who the hell are you again? Salada? Sakura?"

"Sarada," she said. She hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Uchiha Sarada." Her lantern was bright enough that even an idiot could figure it out, anyways, with the huge fan emblazoned right on her jacket. "You probably don't remember me, since I'm, uh," she pulled out the first excuse she could think of, "homeschooled."

"You're an Uchiha too?" He dropped his kunai back into his pouch and pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, squinting. "What kind of Uchiha wears pink? And glasses?"

"In that case, what Uchiha wears orange? And goggles?" she shot back reflexively.

"Orange is a great colour! And for your information, goggles are for keeping dust out of your vision. Plus it means enemies can't steal my eyes. Everyone's gonna be after me once I get my Sharingan, you know," he boasted, sticking his thumb at himself.

So he was an Uchiha. Almost definitely the Uchiha Obito that Mitsuki had mentioned as being from the Fourth War. Sarada's mind flew through a dozen possible scenarios. Had he been a hero? Someone who had fought alongside Papa, Mama, and the Nanadaime against whatever evil megalomaniac declaring war against all of shinobi? But… hadn't the Uchiha massacre taken place long before the Fourth War?

"What are you doing here, anyways?" Obito asked, blissfully unaware of Sarada's internal turmoil. "And what's that?" He walked forwards and plucked Sarada's battery-powered lantern from off the ground.

"Whoa," he breathed, turning the sleek object around in his hands. "You must be loaded. All the electronics shops I know turned crazy expensive ever since the war started."

Sarada politely grabbed it back. "I'm here for the same reason as you are—training."

But—if she was somehow back in the Sandaime's reign (and gods, was that a surreal thought)—she couldn't just stay here and do whatever she pleased. From all the science-fiction books she'd read and all the horrible movie adaptations Boruto had forced her to sit through, the dangers of time paradoxes were all-too-clearly imprinted on her mind. She very much so did not want to disintegrate, cease to exist, irreversibly change the present, or cause the universe to implode.

Obito looked surprised. "How'd you know I was here to train?"

…But her hour-long rendezvous last night hadn't had any visible changes, as far as she was aware. And it had been an hour long. Surely talking to Obito a bit longer—just a couple of minutes—surely that couldn't hurt?

(Uchiha, a voice at the back of her mind whispered.)

"I know lots of things," she said finally, going for an air of mystery.

Obito gave her a deadpan look. "You even any good? Or d'you just go around popping up in other people's faces in the middle of the night, just to give them heart attacks?"

"Of course I'm good," Sarada said. "Name something you can do, and I'll do it better." She pushed up her glasses. "After all, I'm going to become the Hokage."

Eighth Hokage, that was. Not Fourth. Or Fifth. She tried to put a tamper on the little section of her brain that kept incoherently screaming that she was inthepastinthepastinthepast.

Obito blinked. "You? You want to become Hokage? Damn, and I thought you were a stuck-up rule-follower like Bakashi."

Sarada opened her mouth, about to feel insulted by being compared to a "stuck-up rule-follower like Bakashi", before suddenly realizing that this "Bakashi" probably was the Rokudaime. Like Boruto had been joking.

And wait—the Rokudaime had been Obito's teammate? The Rokudaime had been a stickler for the rules?

Sarada's head was starting to hurt.

"Sorry I put you in the same boat as my jerk teammate," Obito said sheepishly. He rubbed the back of his head. "I guess if you want to be Hokage, you can't be all that bad."

Sarada huffed lightly. "Likewise, Uchiha Obito. And I suppose if either of us become Hokage, it will still be a win for the Uchiha clan either way."

At that, Obito's face flattened. "The clan?" he said dully. "I couldn't care less about our stupid, snobby clan. If Bakashi's stuck-up, they're ten times more stuck-up. All they care about is the stupid Sharingan. I'm only becoming Hokage so I can prove them all wrong, y'know."

Sarada mentally gave herself a pat on the back for her smooth shift of topic towards the Uchiha, but… "They're really that unpleasant?" Her brows furrowed.

Ha, ain't you that Uchiha kid? The one who doesn't even know that all her relatives were a bunch of fuckin' psychos. Ignorance is bliss, eh?

Her chest tightened. No. "Stuck-up" did not equal "psychopathic". Surely.

Obito looked at her oddly. "What universe do you live in? Don't tell me you actually enjoy the weekly clan meetings."

"Of course not," Sarada said quickly. "I just… don't associate with the rest of the Uchiha clan very often."

Inwardly, she tried to rationalize that Obito was most likely exaggerating the aloofness of the Uchiha for commiseration's sake. Then again, Papa was… quite distant, too. It could very well be a genetic trait—but aloofness, in itself, wasn't inherently terrible, right?

"Lucky," Obito said, with heartfelt emotion. "I wish I could just not associate with my stupid relatives." He grabbed his rusty kunai again and twirled it in his hand.

"They can't all be that bad," Sarada insisted, desperately clinging on to the topic in an attempt to glean as much information as she could.

"Yeah, and the Hyūgas are real fun partiers," Obito said with a snort. But he relented, grasping his kunai by the handle and tapping his fingers on it absentmindedly. "Alright, maybe 'Tachi and Shisui are decent, but that's just cause they're kids and haven't been brainwashed yet."

Like before with the Rokudaime, Sarada's brain was once again niggling at her that something sounded familiar. 'Tachi… as in…

"Itachi?" she said, eyes wide, trying to keep the surprise in her voice to a minimum. Uncle Itachi? The Uncle Itachi that Mama had mentioned all of two times, Papa's older brother? The Uncle Itachi about whom the only detail that Sarada knew was that he had somehow played a heroic role in the ever-mysterious Fourth Shinobi War?

Obito bent down, picked up his lantern, and held it up to her face. He squinted. After a moment's deliberation, he lowered his lantern again with a huff. "Seriously, if you didn't look and act like you could be straight from the main family, I wouldn't believe that you're an Uchiha. You must live under a rock the size of a mountain."

Sarada laughed nervously. "Ah, what about a Sasuke?"

Papa. Did Obito know anything about Papa?

Obito stared. "Can I live under that rock with you? Man, everyone knows about Sasuke, and the kid hasn't even been born yet. That's the name Fugaku and Aunt Mikoto are planning to name their second baby."

Papa… hadn't even been born yet. The dizziness returned full force, and Sarada almost wanted to just… sit down, suspicious stranger standing next to her or not. Her head whirled. She was in a time where Papa wasn't even alive, or Mama, or Boruto or Chōchō or—or anyone she knew, really. The Rokudaime was her age.

Sarada chewed her bottom lip. But this wasn't a misfortune. No, far from it; this was an opportunity. Was there anything else she could ask this Uchiha Obito, this ghost of the Uchiha, without giving away something incriminating about her situation? She had so, so many questions, about the massacre and the Fourth War and even about Papa's past, but none of those things had taken place yet.

She felt a finger poke her between the shoulder blades. She jerked herself out of her thoughts, spinning around. "What are you—"

"Doesn't look fake," Obito mused. "And the fan's pretty hard to get right. Maybe you stole it? Then again, I don't know a single Uchiha that would wear bright pink like you do."

Sarada's eye twitched. "I'm an Uchiha."

"You sure about that? Cause you really don't seem—"

She activated her Sharingan, and then proceeded to burn the flabbergasted look on Obito's face into her memory.

"Okay, okay, you don't need to rub it in my face," Obito said, pouting. "How old are you, anyways?"

"Thirteen," Sarada told him, one eyebrow raised as she let the clarity of her Sharingan-bolstered vision fade back to normal.

Obito crossed his arms. "Well, I'm not thirteen yet, so I bet I'll get my Sharingan by then." He still looked disgruntled.

Sarada's lips quirked. Ah, Obito really wasn't so bad. A bit too similar to Boruto, maybe, but much less bratty, which did count for something.

She gave a start. Wait. What time was it?

A glance down at her watch told her it was 12:05 AM.

The walk here, to the Uchiha district, had taken twenty minutes. The rail line by the hospital left every five minutes. If Mama packed up slowly, took the 12:10 three-minute rail ride, and then walked the remaining three minutes home…

Oh, hells.

"Sorry, Obito, I have to head home," she said quickly, backtracking down the dock.

"What? You just got here, though!"

"I'll see you some other time," Sarada promised, despite having no idea if she would ever manage to find Obito again. Her guilt at sneaking out behind Mama's back was far stronger than her desire to keep talking to Obito.

"Uh, I guess, then…" Obito lifted a hand in a wave, looking a little disappointed, but mostly bewildered.

Sarada gave a wave back, then turned around and broke out into a full-tilt sprint. Shops and homes blurred past her as she ran, some of them still with lanterns, bright signs, or light shining through the windows. She let out a sharp, frustrated breath.

It was alright. She could always come back and explore another night.

As she ran out the front gates of the Uchiha district, the world shifted once more. The faint cloud of chakra signatures behind her vanished, and the small, gravelly path she had been standing on suddenly turned into a wide, paved road.

Sarada exhaled. So that was how this worked.

She glanced at her watch one more time, stuffed her hand-held lantern into her kunai pouch, took another deep breath, and ran.

It was in record time that Sarada practically flew to her house, raced up the side wall, rapped frantically on her bedroom window for her clone to let her in, tossed on her pajamas, crashed into bed, and dismissed her clone.

12:15 AM.

Not forty seconds later, she heard the sound of keys in the door.

Trying to slow her breathing down, Sarada closed her eyes and reviewed the events of the past fifteen minutes in her head.

So.

Time travel. Uchiha Obito. The Fourth Shinobi War. Uncle Itachi. Time travel.

Sarada threw away any hope of falling asleep before two o'clock.

A/N: It may be a while until my next update, unfortunately. But I have this whole thing plotted out! And thank you, to everyone who left comments and expressed their enthusiasm about this story's direction. Trust me, I'm just as excited as you are to get this show on the road!

Thank you to Starship Phoenix for beta-ing again, you are the greatest!