"If you're going to be my apprentice, Obito, then there's a few things you should know."

Strangely, there'd been no ifs about it. Even though Eru Lee had plainly said that he could turn her down, even though she'd even suggested him getting into contact with the shodaime, it'd been pretty clear that for whatever reason she was set and determined that Uchiha Obito, the disowned one-eyed Uchiha and recent science experiment, was going to be her apprentice.

And, even at the age of fourteen when he'd barely known anything about her, he'd had the strong feeling that Eru Lee usually got what she wanted. That and Kakashi had kind of warned him in a roundabout way, and then Minato-sensei had warned him in a less roundabout way, and by the time Jiraiya-sama stopped in for a short word Obito had kind of gotten the idea.

They were sitting on the grounds of the Hatake clan compound, Lee having pulled Obito out of his new bedroom at some ungodly hour without warning, cheerfully waving to Kakashi as he poked his head out of his own room blinked blearily with a sleep heavy eye, and then to Sakumo who was sipping tea and watching their progress with a fond and rather nostalgic smile.

So there Obito was, for his first official day as an apprentice under Eru Lee, in his pajamas, still feeling like he was dreaming, and beginning to think that he'd just made a huge mistake.

"First, pretty much everything I'm about to disclose to you is considered an S-ranked secret. Now, since they're technically my own goddamn secrets, I have no idea why the sandaime and now Minato have to be in such a snit about it, but I am a law-abiding citizen who abides laws. Except for when I don't, like now, because there's some things you need to know."

"Oh… Alright," What Obito really wanted to ask is if they were done yet and he could go to sleep, but, he'd learned how to have some tact over the years.

"Yes, well, just know that you can't go around talking about this to just anyone. As far as I know only Uzumaki Kushina, Uchiha Mikoto, Nara Shikaku, Yamanaka Inoichi, Akimichi Choza, Minato of course, Jiraiya-sensei, Senju Tsunade, Orochimaru, the nidaime, the shodaime, the sandaime for obvious reasons, Sakumo-shishou, Kakashi, the English ninja I think figured most of it out on his own sort of, maybe the Jashinists if you believe half the crazy shit they say, oh wait Dead Last figured it out at some point after basically everyone else knew already, and now you, know all about this stuff."

"…Was that supposed to be a shorter list?"

Lee blinked, and said in a blank sort of tone, "Yes, well, for completely unavoidable reasons the cat has left the bag multiple times… They're very dumb S-ranked secrets."

"Alright," Obito repeated, again really wanting to ask if he could just go back to bed instead, but it didn't seem like that was an option.

"Extremely dumb S-ranked secrets, almost impossible to keep really, I mean even the people who don't know have probably guessed, you know, if it was a guessing sort of secret. And it doesn't really mean anything at the end of things, it's just a word after all, I am that I am and have always been that I've always been. It makes difference to me or to them, really…"

"Lee-shishou," Obito interrupted with a rather put upon expression, his eyes aching, his entire body aching.

"Oh, right, sorry, got distracted. It's just… This conversation never goes particularly well. Well, it did with Minato, sort of, but even then there was certainly a bit of parsing things out that we had to do. Plus, he'd probably known deep down for years..."

"Lee-shishou," Obito interrupted a bit more forcefully this time.

"Right, the secret, well, there's no easy way to put this but… Well, I'm a god."

Obito had nothing to say to that, he wasn't even sure it was parsing correctly, so he just repeated, "Okay."

"… You took that surprisingly well." Lee said, "I don't think anyone has took it that well, even Minato."

"I'm very unflappable," Of course, at that moment, Obito probably wasn't really processing that correctly. Bakashi could come up to him and declare his divinity or else that he'd gone time travelling and been abducted by aliens and gotten to meet some guy named Presley Elvis and Obito probably wouldn't have even blinked.

"I kind of expected more questions, honestly, don't you want to know which god I am?"

When it was clear that Obito was supposed to say something he asked, "Which god are you?"

"The Shinigami."

"Oh… cool."

Now she was giving him a very odd look, raised eyebrows as if she was doubting his sanity when she was the one who had dragged him out of bed to tell him that she was the god of death, "You're very desensitized, it's almost impressive, if it weren't so alarming… I think this bodes well for your apprenticeship."

"Was that it?"

"Well… yes, I guess details will come up as they come up so… Yeah, that's it…"

Obito stood, brushed the dew from his pants, and trudged back into the house to where his warm bed waited.

And it wouldn't really sink in, what she'd said, until much later. Because words are words, but the meaning behind them is far greater, and even as he'd left Konoha Obito would not yet realize what she'd truly meant or what it meant to be a god living among mortal men.

He'd make jokes about it, smile at her references, drop it casually in conversation but they were only words, only a dim understanding of what they could possibly mean…

But at the time there was only his half-dreaming sense of relief of being allowed to rest a few more hours before she put him through whatever trials she felt were necessary. And perhaps, perhaps there was the distant memory, of Lee entering Madara's cave, and how it'd seemed like the rising of a second sun.

Perhaps naturally, Obi-Wan refused to speak with him. As they watched Watto leer and smirk, shouting at Anakin in Huttesse as the boy dutifully took inventory of the ship and its equipment with an expression of miserable guilt, Obi-Wan refused to even so much as meet his eyes.

Instead he settled for staring at him when he thought his master wasn't paying attention, not glaring, but staring with the look of a man who has been stabbed in the stomach and hasn't quite realized what had happened yet.

And in the force Obi-Wan felt almost empty, as if all his emotions had not been released, but instead drained out of him leaving something bitter and haunting behind.

Of course, he was hardly alone in this. Padme had raged, then sobbed, then had become silent and cold, as if her planet had already been lost to war and starvation in that one moment. Panaka now glared sullenly, but had first proposed that they sell Qui-Gon and his padawan into slavery and buy back the ship and the parts.

He had been driven by anger more than thought, but all the same, Qui-Gon could feel through the force, for that blind instant Panaka had truly meant those words.

No, strangest of all, the only ones who seemed remotely comfortable in his presence, was the young woman Lee Eru and her apprentice Obito Uchiha.

Lee sat atop a great mahogany chest that had been pulled from the queen's apartments while her apprentice sat with crossed legs on her throne. Strewn about them were the queen's garments and anything deemed of worth, jewelry and golden embroidery glittering in the suns while Watto continued to furtively glance in its direction.

Greed was there, certainly, greed seemed omnipresent for the toydarian, but so too was a new nervousness, as if seeing the handmaidens and the queen, the clothing and jewels, along with the crew of the ship and Obi-Wan, he was beginning to realize just what trouble he might have bought for himself.

He had said nothing, no doubt having long ago seen the consequences of loose lips, but it was there in the twitch of his wings.

At this point he would have reached out with the bond to Obi-Wan, to nudge him into paying attention to the toydarian, but then he glanced at the stiff back of his padawan once again, and felt the desire slip away from him.

"It's good to see some things remain the same no matter where you end up. Whining civilians are always such a bother."

He looked up to find Lee staring down at him in contemplation, a strangely rueful smile on her face, and when he caught her eye she nodded to the others, huddled together and casting anger filled glances at Qui-Gon every now and then.

"They have good reason to be upset, I have lost our ship, and I have lost them far more than that." Qui-Gon, potentially, had lost them their entire world.

"You didn't lose them anything, they'd already lost it to begin with or they wouldn't be here, you've simply failed to produce a miracle." Lee said before adding, "Besides, you're hardly out of the running yet, there are other ships, and if not that then there are smugglers who can be bribed or blackmailed into taking a few of you at the very least."

Yes, but not all of them, not likely at any rate. And to arrive smuggled in like a thief or a murderer, that, surely, would not aid the queen's cause when she plead her case with the senate. Besides, in a worn-down smuggler's ship, they would never reach Coruscant in time…

"I was reckless." Qui-Gon said, "I trusted too much in a vision that was more hope than truth, and they're the ones paying for it."

Only, it had not felt false, even now there was a sense of something wrong, something shifted where it shouldn't have moved at all, as if the force itself was thrown off balance and disoriented. Anakin was supposed to win the race, even now Qui-Gon was plagued by flashes of what might have been when he reached out to the force rather than what was.

Anakin was supposed to have won the race, there had been no doubt, except…

He hadn't.

And the force itself, if it could be prescribed emotions, seemed to be in a state of shocked disbelief.

"I think what shishou is trying to say, is that it's not your fault. You were dealt a bad hand, and you played, and sometimes that's all you can do… The measure of a true shinobi, or jedi I imagine, is what you choose to do now." There was something in the boy's eyes, in his connection to the force, something that burned, as if Qui-Gon had revealed something about himself unintentionally that the boy… Felt strongly about.

Qui-Gon wasn't sure what the feeling was, it was strangely hard to read him, not as difficult as his master Lee Eru, but difficult all the same. It was something strong, laced with pain and memory as he always seemed to be, but it wasn't raw pain either…

Sometimes it felt as if Obito wasn't reaching out to the force, or allowing the force to flow through him, so much as a small portion of the force lived inside of him, circulating through his blood, and only small miniscule amounts of it ever reaching back to join the whole.

"So, out of curiosity, Jinn-san, what do you plan to do now?"

And there it was, what did he plan to do? If he traded the garments he might be able to buy passage for himself, the queen, and Obi-Wan and perhaps another. He could use the force to buy passage on a ship, to commandeer it from a smuggler, but that could make them far too easy to track and would mark him clearly as a jedi bringing the wrath of the hutts down on all of their heads…

No, what he really needed was the ship, the ship and the parts and…

How had Anakin lost the race?

"I don't know."

"Right, well, you'll think of something I'm sure." Lee said slowly, doubtfully and with raised eyebrows, as if he should have had some kind of backup plan for this already.

And perhaps he should have, but he had counted on the force to guide him, and now for whatever reason the path forward seemed hazy and unclear.

The boy said something, swifter and with far more confidence than his Basic tended to possess, and Lee's expression turned into a strange grim sort of annoyance. Then, just as rapidly, she responded in the same language, meeting the boy's gaze with an unusual intensity, one that seemed to simmer with the force.

But the boy did not hesitate or blink or fold under his master's eyes, he simply stared back, and responded again.

Finally, the woman looked back down at him, "Do you really have no ideas?"

She continued, her hands gesturing rapidly as she spoke, falling up and down with each turn of phrase like pale birds, "You and your apprentice could collect bounties… Extremely rapid bounty collecting that would no doubt have the hutts all over your ass but if your aim is to get out while the going is good then…"

Qui-Gon sighed, offered her a thin smile, and motioned to their surroundings, "The queen's clothing may fetch us enough to trade for a few spots as passengers on a smuggling vessel but… We are being pursued, they will not pay our way under fire, and circumstances are such that arriving in such an unofficial capacity would be a great detriment."

He glanced at Anakin Skywalker, finally walking out of the ship and speaking with Watto, met his blue eyes and read the shame there, "Anakin truly was our only hope,"

Lee let out a long, strained, sigh, and said under her breath, "Minato will not be pleased,"

"Shishou," Obito started but Lee held up a single hand and he fell silent, a look of tight apprehension on his face.

"Jinn, can I trust your people?" She stared down at him now with that strange depth, the force seeming to rise within her very being so that he almost could not stare at her directly and yet had no choice to.

"I'm sorry?"

"I am not here to start a war, Jinn, no one wants a war. Can I trust that your people know when to keep their katana sheathed and let cooler heads prevail? Can I trust they are not consumed by greed and ambition and the desire to control all things? Can I trust that your people, Jinn?"

A war, why on earth would there be a war? He almost wanted to laugh. Clearly, if anything, this showed the woman for the outlander she was. She was almost speaking as if the jedi were a state unto themselves, as if they fought and survived for their own behalf, rather than as servants to the republic.

No, their wars had been with the Sith, but those days were gone now.

At the sight of her expression though he paused, "Yes, Lee, you can trust the jedi. We exist to serve the people and the will of the force, we have no need of wars."

"That's very convenient," Obito said with a strange smile, one he had never seen on a boy so young, "After all, we too, exist to serve the will of fire."

None the less the woman closed her eyes and was silent for a few moments, and in that silence the force seemed to reverberate around her, as if a string had been plucked. Obi-Wan looked up, staring over at them, at her with an alarmed expression, always so sensitive in the force, but then just as it began it was stopped, smothered by something, and the woman spoke seeming to have come to her decision, "Pod racing isn't all that goes on during this fine day of Boonta Eve. I happen to be a part-time arena fighter and am set to be in the pit over the next several nights in a series of rather horrifying encounters I'm sure. Now, unfortunately, I have a bit of a reputation and can't be counted on to be your dark horse like Anakin was. And if I throw the matches, well, they'll probably try to kill me… That said, it's a shot, for you, a very long shot, but take what advantage of it you can and you may be able to haggle enough funds out of outlander suckers to cover the cost of your ship and the parts."

"This sounds like a long shot indeed," Qui-Gon said.

"Well, it's either that or try to round up enough smugglers with sizeable bounties without getting your head blown off or thrown into a death pit. So, your choice." Lee said with a shrug.

"Yes, I will think on it… I've found gambling to be rather distasteful after today's events, if you understand."

She offered him a rather cheerful, if somehow shallow, smile, "Of course, Jinn."

Shmi's hut was getting crowded. Three extra had been more than enough the night before, but this entire crew, stranded on this planet without a place to stay. Needless to say, there seemed to be tension everywhere.

The apprentice, Kenobi Obi-wan, had been glaring daggers at Jinn since the morning when he'd first arrived, and while he'd spared some dubious looks towards Lee-shishou and Obito, and a rather contemptuous and unimpressed one for Anakin, he mostly seemed occupied in passive aggressively shaming his master for failing the mission. The girl, Padme, had gone cold and silent and didn't seem to want to look at anything and when she did it was with the frigid dead eyes you saw in ANBU operatives rather than civilian little girls. And the rest, well, there certainly was an undercurrent of rage to them.

This, this was the after effects of an important mission that had all but imploded, the kind where the fate of a village itself might very well be on the line.

Anakin had quickly departed, head down and eyes staring at his feet in desperation as he made his way out the door citing some excuse of working on the leaf exercise, all the weight of their crushed hopes landing in his thin nine-year-old shoulders.

Which left Jinn Qui-Gon sitting with him and Lee, and Shmi staring at Lee with a mix of alarm, worry, and frustration as Lee refused to expand the hut any further with the jedi inside. In Shmi's defense, Lee had done it before, creating rooms out of nothing for herself and Obito when they had moved in, but times had changed, or rather, there were jedi in the house now and it seemed that after a small internal debate Lee-shishou had decided to be reasonable and not show her hand just yet.

There had been a moment there where she'd flickered slightly, where Obito had been forced to picture himself bowing his head to Minato-sensei and saying that he'd tried, in vain, and explaining all the disasters that were sure as hell going to occur.

But whatever Jinn had said in his little speech had managed to solidify her doubts, or at the very least, not inspire ridiculous amounts of trust for a foreign shinobi.

It was probably how certain he'd sounded of that response, as if there should be no room to question the righteousness of his people, a people who he would not even deliver Anakin to. Because even in Konoha, arguably the brightest and most moral of all the hidden villages, certainly of the great ones, there were deep shadows where you did not dare to look.

In other words, Jinn's words had sounded just a bit too nice for comfort.

Which really sucked for Jinn and his mission as it would take them a long time to build up the funds they needed to get off this rock. Even if they managed to round up bounties, bet on Lee's fight, or whatever else they could manage to do in their fit of desperation.

But, well, as nice as he seemed that was hardly Lee or Obito's problem, or Anakin's for that matter.

Anakin, who no one had gotten a real chance to talk to yet and somebody really should.

Obito spared a glance for Lee and quickly rethought that, certainly Lee had inspired him on occasion, but that was on the very rare occasion and only because he'd come to know her so well. Lee and pep talks in general, on a day to day basis, were rather iffy things that depended entirely on her mood.

That, and she had a tendency to be blunt and brutally honest, which Obito doubted Anakin needed at the moment.

Obito sighed, stood, "Hey, shishou, I'm going to head outside for a bit, help Anakin out."

Unstated was that Lee should probably stay and keep an eye on their jedi friends and find out what information she could while they were all stuck here. Lee was notoriously bad at infiltration, there were a number of stories of seduction missions gone hilariously wrong, but that said it wasn't like they were going anywhere and it wasn't like Obito himself was much better at fishing out information.

Lee offered him a small nod as she sipped at her tea, pouring another cup for Jinn who took it with quiet thanks, and Obito made his own way out of the overcrowded hut (only barely managing to avoid tripping over the orange frog summons thing which had again started flailing much to the apparent irritation of Jinn's apprentice) and outside.

He walked for a few minutes, past the huts, until he reached the edge of the desert.

And there Anakin was, sitting curled into a ball, head on his knees as he stared out into the afternoon sunlight.

Obito walked over, sat next to him without a word, and stared out into the endless desert that served as the horizon, waiting for Anakin to talk first.

Finally, after a strangely long silence, as Anakin normally was such a chatterbox, the boy said, "I failed, Obito."

"Failure is a very strong word," Obito remarked but Anakin didn't appear moved by this.

"I didn't win the race, I lost, and they've lost everything and… I failed."

"You lived," Obito said quietly, "Your mother, shishou, Jinn, and I at least are grateful for that. And I think the others will be too, when they've calmed down enough to see reason. There were risks, Anakin, we all knew that."

"But I lost…"

"Yes, you lost, but sometimes you lose. That's part of what being a shinobi means, coping with failure and setbacks. There's no shame when the fates are against you." Obito paused, started again, and said, "The worst mission I have ever been on was one I didn't fail. Sometimes I wish we had failed it, or that it was never given to us in the first place…"

The Kannabi bridge mission, more than three years ago now. Yes, that was when he had learned that there were fates far worse than mere failure of a mission. He still wondered if he had considered it worth it, if they had failed the mission, or if things hadn't gone the way they had, if Rin hadn't been kidnapped…

What would he have been then? How different would that Obito have been than the one he was now, whose scars had almost started to feel natural, and who no longer stared at his mismatched reflection?

Obito was startled out of his thoughts by Anakin's voice.

"It's… It was my fault, I… I was supposed to win. I was going to win, I know it. But I… I saw what would happen if I won, Obito." Anakin turned to him, and in his eyes there was that miserable guilt, but something else, a sharp, jagged fear, "I saw my future, all of it, and… I saw stars reduced to nothing, entire planets gone, I saw a universe filled with darkness and hatred and everyone I ever cared about was dead… And you left, you and Lee left, and my mother died and… And I didn't want it, any of it! And I, I decided not to win. I lost, Obito, because I wanted to lose! Just… For a second, you understand, for that single second I didn't want to win!"

Anakin moved towards him, wrapped his arms around Obito's shoulders, buried his head in Obito's shoulder, and began sobbing, "And now I've ruined everything! But I… I know what I saw! I couldn't do it, Obito! I couldn't…"

Obito held him for a moment, wondering how he himself was once that small, not so long ago. They'd all been that small, once, him, Kakashi, Rin… Lee-shishou and Minato-sensei, not so long ago themselves, had been this young.

Obito's mouth felt dry, and he hesitated for a moment, before swallowing to begin, "Lee's shishou, Sakumo Hatake, Kakashi's father and a man who would become like a father to me, once failed a mission, years ago now."

They'd told him about Sakumo, it was hard for him not to come up, whether talking about Kakashi or just Lee's own experience as a young chunin then jonin but he'd mostly played a peripheral role in their tales. Still, at the name the sobbing became somewhat quieter as Obito grabbed his interest.

"And it was a mission the village could not afford to fail."

Closing his eyes he could almost picture it, it was a time where he had been in the academy, running around the Uchiha compound, the disappointment of the entire clan, boasting of how he was someday going to be hokage, and blissfully unaware of the true state of the village, of the world.

"You see, the second war had never truly ended, nor the first for that matter, and everyone was waiting for the hammer to fall. For years tensions had been rising, villages rebuilt themselves, alliances were negotiated, and Hatake's mission proved to be the breaking point. Failure meant a third war between the five great villages once again and everyone caught in the crosshairs."

Obito had not known Kakashi then, or rather, he'd known of him. Kakashi had been in the academy only a year at that point, had already managed to graduate, and Obito remembered having been annoyed by that, because why couldn't that have been him instead?

But there were flashes of the younger Kakashi that still resonated, he remembered… He remembered how small he'd been, how serious and stoic, so much so that it was hard to correlate him with the passive aggressive idiot savant demon that he would become by eleven.

"The trouble was that Sakumo could have succeeded, but he would have had to sacrifice the life of every member of his team to do so. In the blink of an eye he'd had to make a decision, and he decided that the lives of his teammates were worth more than the mission. And as such, when he returned, he was put on probation and blamed for the breakout of the third war. Some people still won't talk to him, stores bar him and Kakashi entry, and many more hold at least some grudge, believing either that the war could have been avoided or at least put off for a few more years… But I have always believed he made the correct choice, the only choice any human can and should make, and it seems you've made the same one."

And it had almost destroyed him, and Kakashi with him, and perhaps even Lee herself…

Anakin looked up, wiping at his tears, staring at Obito in awed confusion that was only just beginning to morph into understanding. So Obito reached over to wipe the stray tears that Anakin had missed out of the way, "Sometimes failure is our only option, and there's no shame in that, because there are times when succeeding simply isn't worth it. I don't understand your visions, but I trust you, and if you believe that winning was worse then you have to trust that too, no matter what any of these people might say."

Anakin shook his head slowly, a grim smile on his face, tears still welling at the corners of his eyes, "…They won't understand. Padme, she won't understand."

"Then she won't understand," Obito said, wishing he could say more but… But he couldn't, because the boy could be right, she didn't blame him now but to her Anakin was the boy who lost, the boy they never should have bet on in the first place, sweet, pure, innocent, but nothing to be taken seriously.

And what did Obito know of childhood love working out? After all, Rin had never looked at him twice, before or after the bridge mission. For Anakin though there might be other girls, girls from Konoha that would tie him to the foreign village, a girl who would understand the decisions and sacrifices that shinobi must make, and in that there was something to be grateful for.

Obito would only ever have Rin.

"But this is all unbelievably serious, chunin aren't supposed to give these kinds of life talks, this is best left to those poor jonin sensei bastards," Obito said, his lips twisting themselves into a forced grin, and then stood hauling Anakin up with him, "Besides, you've been staring out into the desert long enough, and while Shmi may be distracted she isn't stupid and it would be best for us all if you came back before she notices you're not in your room or something."

Anakin offered a weak smile in response as Obito pulled him back towards the hut.

"You think maybe we could practice jutsus instead, since we're already out here?" Anakin asked, looking up at Obito with a far too hopeful expression.

Especially since Obito's kneejerk reaction was no, not with jedi hanging around taking down notes on everything Obito or Lee said or did. That was the trouble with these foreign almost shinobi, you couldn't even go about the basics with them around, because Obito had no guarantee they even knew the basics.

To show them henges, basic clones, anything really was to in some way reveal their hands long before Obito was comfortable with it.

They were all still walking on eggshells around each other.

"Maybe later, Anakin, now's not really a great time for…" Something glinted out of the corner of his eye, Obito turned threw a kunai, and was met with the smell of something burning and the sight of blue sparks.

"Obito?"

Obito rushed forward to behind one of the huts and held up a small circular droid with a great red lens that served as most of its body. The lens was contracting and dilating rapidly, the kunai sticking out from the middle and cracks spreading out from it, spinning this way and that, giving the impression of a spasm.

Without a word Obito drove the kunai in further and what artificial life there was in the eye burned out and the droid fell to the earth like any other piece of metal.

"Obito, what's that?"

Obito stared at it, it didn't look like any droid he'd ever seen on Tatooine, not that Obito was an expert on such things. For one thing, it was far too well kept and didn't show any of the strain that the desert winds had on the local droids, and the metal seemed expensive. But that eye, well, Obito could take a stab in the dark as well as anyone else and guessed that someone had decided to get some useful intelligence.

Whether it was after him and Lee or their new guests, whether it was from their new guests, was anyone's guess at this point.

Of course, he could be being paranoid, but then, a shinboi's lifespan was generally measured by his paranoia. And Obito had already had one too many brushes with death for his comfort.

"I have no idea," Obito said gravely, before opening a scroll featuring the ever useful storage seal and stuffing the droid inside, "But I have a feeling our new friends might."

"So, Kenobi Obi-Wan, you're Jinn's apprentice,"

Master Qui-Gon was still sitting at the table, now speaking softly with a sympathetic if worn looking Shmi Skywalker, not that his master looked much better. There was a weight to him that hadn't been there earlier, even in the difficulties they'd faced thus far, a feeling of failure that Obi-Wan had never seen in him before, not even with Xanatos (because that had been something different, something more desperate and raw and pained, this was muted and bleak and something altogether different).

He deserved it.

Sometimes Obi-Wan's master was an idiot, he defied the council, picked up strays from all over the galaxy, and would mistake his hunches for the force whispering in his ear (of course, that he happened to be right most of the time was not something Obi-Wan cared to admit).

This time though, this time he had not been right, and now they were trapped on this backwater sandpit of a planet with someone in pursuit and no easy way to return Coruscant and the jedi temple.

They were on the outer rim, even with hyper speed it would take far too long for a ship from Coruscant to come and retrieve them, and that was if the jedi temple had a ship to spare (which seemed more than highly unlikely given that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were somewhat short staffed to stop an invasion to begin with).

Other than that their only choice appeared to be even more gambling, with almost nothing for collateral, or else turning in bounties and hoping the local population didn't form into an angry mob before they could buy back the ship and parts.

It was more than that though, there was something in the force, something not necessarily malevolent but weighted as if every second they spent here counted towards something. As if Obi-Wan's life would soon unravel entirely and be replaced with something else.

Something centered around that boy Qui-Gon had taken to, Anakin Skywalker.

The boy, he was strong in the force, Obi-Wan hadn't needed to run the tests to feel it. It was in the very air around him, that confidence and strength, but all the same that number kept reverberating through his mind. Twenty-three thousand, more than Master Yoda, more than any jedi's count since they had begun recording them for the archives.

It was almost too bad that he was so old, he would have made a fine jedi, had he been taken in when younger.

And if circumstances were different Obi-Wan might look on him kindly, but like or not Qui-Gon had pinned his hopes on that boy and he had faltered, and now they were all reaping the consequences.

But the boy had also stepped out some time ago, and in his absence, and in the absence of her own apprentice, the woman Lee Eru, who was neither jedi nor anything else familiar, made her way over to where Obi-Wan skulked in a corner and offered him a shallow emotionless grin and a cup of tea.

"The term is padawan, we don't use the word apprentice," Obi-Wan replied, hesitantly taking the tea from her hand, finding it almost difficult to look directly at her. There wasn't anything physical about it, it was all through the force, but none the less there seemed to almost be too much of her, as if she was a lantern where the force acted as the flame, but instead of a small flame to light the path someone had placed a star inside of her to cast light on the universe itself.

She drowned out Anakin Skywalker, that's how overwhelming she was.

"Semantics," the woman said, brushing her pale hand to the side as if to sweep his thoughts away, "Although you don't seem all that pleased with him at the moment."

There were many things he could say to that, few he wanted to say to this stranger whose very presence set his nerves on edge, so instead he admitted, "…He made a poor decision which has made our task that much more difficult,"

"He made the only decision I believe he could but you're opinions are your own. Regardless, you are sort of trapped here for the foreseeable future with little prospects. I imagine that's quite difficult," the woman said before casually adding, or what desperately was attempting to be casual, "So, I don't know much about these jedi and decided I might as well get some information from you while you're conveniently trapped here. How long have you been Jinn's apprentice?"

"Padawan," Obi-Wan corrected, "A very long time now, since I was a child, I will be ready for my trials soon."

"Your trials?"

"To become a jedi knight," Obi-Wan finished for her, to which she nodded as if she had some inkling of what this meant when she clearly had none at all.

"I see, I see, Obito's the same. Well, in truth he's been ready for the jonin exams for some time now, but then where's the fun in that?"

Considering Obi-wan didn't know what that meant he couldn't possibly say where the fun was in that, "Obito is your… apprentice, then?"

"Yes, for almost two years now," the woman said with a more nostalgic smile this time, a softer thing laced with memories, "Time does seem to fly, it seems like just yesterday he was Minato's student."

"That's not very long," Obi-Wan pointed out, a sinking feeling of something lurking in his gut, that wariness back at the reminder that these people were not jedi. Qui-Gon did not seem to think they were Sith, and neither did Obi-Wan for that matter (as if there could be Sith when they were dead for centuries).

No, Obi-Wan believed the theory Qui-Gon had presented to him, that they were from some primitive world outside the republic, where force users had banded into something resembling the jedi order but not quite the same.

One that clearly had no hesitations towards attachment, anger, or uncertainty, no matter the paths they created to the dark side.

"Hm, well, in Konoha it depends a bit on your skill level, but all the same usually you spend your first few years as a genin with one general instructor, and then if you show a certain amount of promise and pass your chunin exams you train under a jonin as an apprentice to hone more specific abilities. Obito spent a few more years as a genin than he has as a chunin so we haven't spent quite as much quality time together as he did with Minato," the woman explained before raising her eyebrows as she looked at him, "Is it more of a set course for you, spend a certain amount of years training under a master and then face your trials regardless of aptitude?"

"No, no, it… It depends on your master,"

It depended on quite a few things, the age you were brought to the temple, your connection with the force, but perhaps greatest of all your emotional fortitude and ability to resist the dark side of the force and all paths leading to it.

Obi-Wan… He had once had grave problems with his temper and with attachment.

"And Obito is…" Obi-Wan's question died on his lips as the boy in question slammed open the door, dragging in Anakin Skywalker behind him, while holding a scroll made of flimsy with his other hand.

Obito was… Strange looking, he'd caught Obi-Wan off guard the first time he'd seen him. It was the scars, Obi-Wan thought, thousands of scars taking up more than half of his body, memory laced into each and every one, that made him so very off-putting. Such that it was hard for Obi-Wan to remember that this boy was younger than him, years younger even, barely out of adolescence.

Obito barked out something in his native language that had Lee Eru looking at him with interest, completely turning her attention away from Obi-Wan to the boy. He threw the scroll at her which she caught without hesitation, with a grace that only users of the force could demonstrate.

Without a word she opened it to reveal nothing but a strange unfamiliar character, one not from the Basic alphabet, which shuddered then glowed as Lee reached through the flimsy and pulled out what looked like a broken probe droid.

"So, rain check on the jedi conversation. Kenobi, you wouldn't happen to know what this is, would you?"

Obi-Wan opened his mouth but his master beat him to it, walking over from his own side of the room with a narrowed and intense gaze, "This is a probe droid, but none that I've ever seen before…"

But it was not a usual make or model of probe droid, this was customized, sleeker than the mass-produced versions and clearly with adjustments created by an expert mechanic. This, Obi-Wan had never seen a probe droid like this, and glancing at his master neither had Qui-Gon Jinn.

That was when it clicked together, as Qui-Gon's eyes widened, Obi-Wan looked over at Obito Uchiha and hissed, "You fool, you've led him straight to us!"

"Nani?"

Already Qui-Gon was ushering out Shmi, Anakin, and the others, telling them to run quickly, although where they would go from there was beyond Obi-Wan's guess with the ship destroyed. Still out in the open was better than trapped in this hut with nowhere to turn.

Obi-Wan stood, shoved at Obito's chest, stared into those bizarre mismatched eyes that by all rights should have picked one color or the other, "This is a probe droid, tracking devices are built inside of them! You have led them straight to us!"

The boy's eyes widened, he looked down at the droid then back at Obi-Wan, and let out a loud curse that Obi-Wan was all too ready to match with his own. But Obi-Wan wasn't waiting for him, without a word he was sprinting out of the small hut, after his master and the rest of them, releasing his anger into the force even as he fingered his light saber to prepare for whoever was in pursuit.

"No missing nins or enemy villages my ass!" Obito cried as he and Lee tore off after the rest of them, not that it was hard to keep up, given that they all were civilians except for the two jedi and Anakin (who was still more of a quasi-civilian being at academy level at the moment).

Really, they were sort of shuffling towards the center of town, the men towards the front and the women and children lagging while the jedi remained on the periphery, eyes darting everywhere searching for the enemy nin.

Although what they imagined they were going to do in the direction of Watto's shop Obito had no idea, if it was stealing back their ship then Obito wished them luck, because if Watto had any brains at all (which he did) then he'd have removed the engine to prevent exactly this kind of thing.

"Funny," Lee remarked in her usual blasé manner even as her hand drifted to the hilt of her katana, "Jinn didn't seem like he was lying when he said that,"

"A shinobi who lies, why, I never," Obito said, practically spitting, not only pissed that they had been played like this, but because this was exactly the sort of bad luck he was expecting, and they couldn't just leave them to it because they had to get Anakin and Shmi out of that mob.

"I thought you said they're not shinobi," Lee said.

"They're close enough!"

And there it was, behind them, coming from the desert there was the sound of a revving engine as dark cloaked death in the form of an enemy ninja rode down upon them on a speeder bike with a red glowing, double bladed laser katana, in one hand.

And all Obito could think to say, as he pushed more chakra into his legs was, "That is the most ridiculous looking sword I've ever seen!"

"It is certainly ostentatious," Lee replied as she kept pace with him, beginning to draw her own katana out of its hilt, "But that said it does give off that nastily lethal sort of vibe."

With that much chakra pumping out of a sword Obito was inclined to agree. And the man's killer intent, Obito had felt those levels of killing intent before, but not outside of massacres, and even then not from anyone truly sane.

"Let's see how he does without the bike," Lee said, and with a wave of her hand the front wheel of the bike exploded, tipping the man forward, however this didn't seem to slow him down at all as he hurtled himself over the bike and began sprinting towards them, still holding that sword.

"Oh, well, he does pretty well without the bike," Lee said frowning, then glanced up ahead at the running civilians and jedi, "Hm, I'd prefer keeping collateral damage to a minimum here. Obito, do you mind catching up to the herd while I take care of this?"

She didn't wait for his response, instead she came to an immediate halt, leaving Obito to keep sprinting ahead as she fully unsheathed her katana to block the man's swing. And his blade stopped for a single moment against her own, her own chakra filling the seals of the katana and clashing against the red of his, but then as if cutting through butter the light sword cut through her own completely forcing Lee to drop back with it and somersault backwards.

Over his shoulder, Obito saw Lee examine her broken sword, then look back up at the tall cloaked figure, "…Well, shit."

Obito in the meantime caught up to the group, Anakin calling out to him, "Obito!"

"Hey, where exactly are we headed?"

Jinn spoke quickly, still ushering them forwards, "To the shop, Watto will not have had much time to dismantle the ship, if we can get the parts together while your friend stalls…"

Obito glanced back, Lee wasn't doing so well stalling him. The man had apparently rather swiftly realized that taking on Lee was time consuming and likely to lead to his death and so was now doing his best to move towards the rest of them instead. Lee had encased his feet in earth but he was quickly cutting through that with his own sword and flinging his chakra outwards to throw her into a nearby hut, causing her again to have to roll out of the way and delay her own response.

Obito turned, brought his hands together and began to move his chakra in familiar patterns as he went through hand seals that were more instinct than memory at this point.

Anakin watched over his shoulder as a great tree sprouted underneath the dark man's feet, catching him inside of its branches as it grew at an impossible rate, towering over all the huts in the slave quarter within seconds.

And the tree wasn't a tree at all but life itself, the universe singing through it, chakra formed into the flesh of plants.

Beside him he heard Obi-Wan gasp and Qui-Gon stop entirely and they all seemed to stop and stare at both Obito and the tree until Obito cursed and yelled at them, "Don't you idiots have somewhere to be?!"

And then they were moving again, Anakin sprinting, trying to remember how to move chakra through his legs even though he was so tired already and it was far from instinct. Padme was slower though, she was the fastest of the handmaidens and the queen, but still not fast enough, Anakin wasn't even fast enough.

There was that buzzing noise and Anakin didn't need to glance behind him to know that the man had cut himself down with his red light saber.

Especially when Obito shouted, "I hate that goddamn sword!"

There was a rush of flame and a quick glance behind showed Anakin a great fireball headed towards the man, which he managed to dodge partly, most of his cloak burning in the process, but despite whatever pain he was in he kept running without hesitation.

Running straight towards them.

Inside Anakin's head all thoughts he'd had before, of losing, of the future, were drowned out by the pounding of his own heart and the harshness of his breathing. But the visions still danced before his eyes, so that instead of the street he saw himself winning the race he hadn't won, running into the desert with this same man behind them (filled with nothing but rage, hatred, and anguish), except instead of fighting Lee he was fighting Qui-Gon Jinn while Anakin was jumping onto a silver ship that wasn't there, a ship that had been sold to Watto…

"This is getting irritating," Suddenly, out of nowhere there was a great flash in the air's chakra, and Lee was right next to him, her face contorted into an annoyed grimace as her eyes darted back towards the dark man.

Before he could say anything before any of them could, there was a feeling of focus, as if some great force were magnified upon them, almost crushing them. Lee closed her eyes, her face perfectly calm, and then, without a word, without any warning, space and time were wrenched away entirely and Anakin was standing in the middle of the desert, Mos Espa nowhere in sight.

Author's Note: I promise, I'll update real things that aren't side fics of tangent fics next time, but this was already halfway done so why not. Especially since it's getting very tempting to spoilt certain plot points in "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" in this fic, which I'd rather not do. With that said it might be a while until the next update, unless, of course, I feel drawn to this one again.

Still, thanks to readers and reviewers, as always you are fantastic and reviews are still much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Naruto