I don't care who you are—if a thought-dead teammate pops up out of fucking nowhere, you stop and stare a bit.
That said, I'd solved the issue of Schrodinger's Ninja, which had only been a debate in my head. It was just a stunner to everyone else (conscious). By which I meant Kakashi. Rin didn't count, and the Kiri-nin probably didn't give a fuck. Obito was alive, Rin was alive, and Kakashi was conscious. All of the Kiri-nin were wary of me, which meant they'd stay out of immediate stabbing range. So far, I was doing a lot better in my corner of the universe than canon had!
Basically… I rolled with it. If you don't roll with things, you tend to get run over anyway. "OBITO, GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!"
Kakashi made a choking noise. The figure by the tree-line, while his chakra jumped in shock, was already dashing across open ground toward us.
And everyone who tried to stop him got punched ten meters through the air. It was a change—in canon, Obito's Mangekyō had been active by now, so he would have gone right through people. But even in our little pocket reality, one of the guys who got punched by him was never going to get up again, since a bit of Zetsu's Wood Release grew through his body and roots burst out of him.
…Zetsu was a game-changer, all right. I couldn't help but imagine that he'd do the same to any of us if the urge pinged off something important in his freaky mutant brain.
Kakashi overcame his shock within two seconds—it wasn't like I'd told him Obito wasn't really dead (since I hadn't been sure anyway), and immediately whistled his dogs over. Bull let go of someone's leg and bounded over, Pakkun on his back, and the two of them clearly planned to stand guard over Rin.
Well, if it was going to be down to puppy-guarding a downed teammate…
Just as Obito reached us, arms whirling as he skidded to a stop before crashing into Kakashi, I swiped some of the blood from my shoulder wound off onto my index and middle finger. Good enough.
I slammed my palm to the ground with a sharp, "Summoning Jutsu!"
Tsuruya appeared out of the smoke, towering over us by at least two meters. Immediately, she jabbed at a Kiri-nin's mask with her beak as he tried to get behind us—he fell back, screaming about a mangled eye. Her wings also blocked incoming kunai, with a sound like rain on steel siding.
(I finished that guy off. Six down, fourteen to go or so.)
"Whoa. What have you been doing these last few months?" Obito asked.
"Recovering." Kakashi said bluntly. When Obito blinked at him, Kakashi went on, "So. This is a new record for tardiness."
Obito, even though his head was in the middle of Spiral Zetsu's unfurled spines and he obviously hadn't had a haircut in the months he'd been gone, still managed to look quite indignant. "Oh, come on! You can't blame me for this one! How's Rin? Is she okay?"
"Unconscious, but she's fine." Kakashi said. As though to prove him right, Rin made a noise that probably meant she was going to be wobbling to her feet soon enough.
Obito's lone eye lingered on his goggles, which Rin was still wearing. The edges might have gotten a bit chipped or cracked, though. He gave me a blank look, eye focused on my forehead, which I ignored.
"Do you need me to guard her, Keisuke-sama?" Tsuruya asked.
I nodded immediately. "Definitely. Kakashi?"
Thank goodness for team training and not having to use full sentences anymore. "Pakkun, Bull. Stick by Rin."
"You got it, Kakashi." Pakkun said.
"So…I guess we just need to kill our way out of here now?" Obito asked. "Just like old times!"
"Probably easier said than done, but yeah." I said. "You and your suit up for it?"
"Suit—oh, Guruguru? Yeah, we're going to be fine!"
Not yet. I still needed to figure out a way to kill that thing.
Speaking of killing things, the Kiri-nin looked like they'd recovered from the bizarre introduction of two extra fighters. They still outnumbered us, but between the dogs and Tsuruya's towering height, it wasn't like they had more range or reach anymore. Rin groaned by our feet.
…Damn, I wish I had a new kodachi. Too little, too late.
"Obito, take the lead." I said, thinking aloud. Guruguru wouldn't let him die—at least, I thought so—and Kakashi's chakra was flagging. My own was unstable, and I'd prefer to choose how close I was to everyone when it inevitably blew up in my face.
…And I needed to look in my scrolls. Screw the Kiri-nin for confiscating them—I didn't even know which asshole had them.
"You got it, Kei!" Obito seemed cheered, at least.
I nodded at him, but I held my hand out to Kakashi. "Kakashi, do you still have that scroll I gave you?"
Kakashi pulled it out of his thigh holster and flipped it into my waiting hand.
"Thanks."
Hopefully, something in here would be able to shut Guruguru down. And me, if it turned out that two Sharingan eyes wouldn't cut it.
Overhead, Tsuruya leaned back and flapped her wings, sending a flurry of steel down-range to scatter the enemy. Under the cover provided by flying feathers, Kakashi and Obito both charged.
I unrolled my scroll on the ground and silently despaired.
Only one compacted Evil Sealing Method variation, and one Chakra Suppressing Seal. I bit my thumb, thinking. I…might have been able to seal Obito's mind control thingy, since the easiest access to the heart for sealing purposes was the sternum and that would just mean getting Guruguru out of the way. But for me, that would mean putting a seal directly over Isobu's seal—interference would render the effects of either seal useless.
Then there was the conundrum surrounding the Evil Sealing Method as a whole. Was it actually capable of so much as holding back the Cursed Seal of Heaven? On a non-Sasuke subject, in particular. If it really was based solely on willpower, then keeping the "destroy Konoha" suppressed would be no problem. If it wasn't…
"Ow…" said Rin's voice.
I ignored my scrolls for a moment. "Hey, Rin-chan. You feeling all right?"
"…I feel like I got hit in the face by a flying clipboard…"
…I have to ask, someday, exactly what she does at the hospital. But at that moment, it wasn't important.
"Well, your nose might be broken, so that's one point in common." I replied.
"…What about you?"
"…Eh, demon container status confirmed. I also have a bunch of voices screaming in my head, my chakra feels funny, and I've finally been outed as a shinobi with split personalities to my friends." I shrugged, trying to be as blasé as possible. I put all the irreverence I had into that. "Also? I think I need that scroll I gave you."
"Um. Okay, here." Rin sat up with some trouble, leaning on Tsuruya's leg, but she did give me the scroll she'd stowed away in her pockets. Tsuruya paused in her metallic feathery onslaught for long enough to reach down and nudge Rin's head with her beak, but that was all.
"Okay, now we've got two of these seals…" I muttered. "And no explosives."
"Kei-senpai…you can just fight with them." Rin said, indicating the boys. Probably. "I would just slow you down."
I looked up.
The best way to describe how Obito and Kakashi fought, together, would have been "cleaning house."
When I was still an ordinary college student, I'd seen episodes of Naruto where it seemed like every single person on the show was psychically predicting the moves of people on their side. The Sharingan pretty much embodied that, which was why it struck me as odd that people didn't use it to enhance their intra-team coordination as much as they tried to out-awesome each other. It was perfect for teamwork and no one used it that way!
Over the previous few years, Obito and I had trained for a kind of pair fighting based more on kinesthetic awareness, since he hadn't had his Sharingan then. He had to know how I moved, fought, and even thought in order to do what was necessary. I had to train for the same thing. Kakashi and I hadn't, but the eye had made up for it.
And now there was nothing to compensate for.
Aside from maybe the fact that Obito-plus-Guruguru was taller than Kakashi by about ten centimeters.
Hey.
Long time no chat. What's going on in there?
…Nothing good. The seal's going insane.
Which one?
Both of them, really. Id is still busy turtle-wrangling, but the other one's starting to deconstruct things around here. We only have so much time.
Dammit. Then what was all that "Chat in the Center of the Mind" shit for?
That bought us time. And then we paid you back. But this can't go on as it is.
"Is…Is that Obito?" Rin asked, sounding more hesitant than ever. Still, she successfully jolted me out of my thoughts.
I nodded.
Rin's expression was blank and disbelieving, despite the evidence of the boy's movements, shouting, and chakra signature. Okay, so maybe that last bit was just me. Rin swallowed hard and said, "How?"
"Gonna have to ask him that." I said. I tucked the scrolls up my sleeves, though only loosely. Fucking Kiri-nin broke my safety catches.
I knew, of course, but I also wanted to know what had changed, since obviously Obito was running around and Rin was still alive. That had not been a part of Madara's game plan—it wouldn't make sense. If he was also responsible for Rin's capture in canon—which was a possibility I was warming up to—then there had to have been a reason for it. The Kiri plot could have easily been an excuse for…well, for picking up a Robin to his Slade. An Anakin to his Darth Sidious.
Seemed convoluted, but anything to do with the Uchiha clan got way more complicated than necessary.
Rin's fingers clenched around the goggles she wore round her neck. "Do you think he…?"
That question, sadly, had to go unfinished, since a pair of Kiri-nin had gotten past the boys and was heading right for us, with some kind of paper seal in hand.
Sometimes the fun moments are interrupted by people who need to be punched in the face. That was one of those situations. There were, after all, still a significant number of hostiles around. Even if, since I was channeling Isobu, everything seemed to be moving a little slower than average.
For a turtle, Isobu's chakra somehow still included a noticeable speed component. I'd have to ask him about that later. Assuming I lived.
I punched one of them in the face hard enough to send him skidding toward the tree-line. Sooner or later, I was going to regret hitting anything that hard, but for the moment Isobu's chakra was keeping up with the strain I was putting on my body. Even if he had to shave the ends of my cells' telomeres to do it. Nothing about cellular regeneration was free.
(I was trying not to think about that part, but of course that meant I thought about it more.)
The second one, though, got two dogs to the knees. Then I kicked him in the chin.
Can I just remind you that the seal on Isobu isn't especially stable?
Much as I hate to admit it, I actually can't do anything about that. For one, even theoretical Tailed Beast sealing was beyond me. I could only suppress chakra using the seals I had, and that was the sort of thing that would knock me out since I also happened to be channeling Isobu at that moment. For another, repairing a seal on your sternum is just asking for a screw-up, based on the awkward angle involved.
Of all the times to hate the fact that Sensei hadn't gotten around to formalizing any kind of advanced apprenticeship...
Never mind that.
Anyway, the herd was thinning. Astoundingly, the boys' teamwork was cutting a bloody swath through the Kiri-nin, which would have been impossible just a few months ago. A punch from Obito could launch someone skyward or implant a horrific root monstrosity in the vein of something dreamed up by Yōko Kurama, depending on which arm he used. Kakashi's Chidori-charged kunai were more energy-efficient than the Chidori itself and no one among the Kiri-nin had the know-how to block them.
Or maybe no one was wind-aligned. Dunno.
With Tsuruya guarding Rin, I kind of felt like not joining in on the fight was a cheap way out. Sure, I'd been captured and kind of tortured a little and certainly put in fear for my life, but I was also carrying around a monster made of pure chakra. Tailed Beast Hosts were rightly feared on the battlefield, since most people didn't expect to have to deal with one due to our rarity, but I was feeling like I didn't really merit that much of a threat.
…Eh.
"Rin-chan, are you okay here?" I asked.
"I…I think so. If they need help…" Rin trailed off.
Seal of approval! Yay!
Also, Isobu's chakra was a bit like an adrenaline high in that I could already tell I'd regret hacking my way through these guys. In both a physical and a mental sense.
And funnily enough, Isobu was one of the Tailed Beasts who didn't have claws and therefore couldn't grant any to his host if he wanted to. He also didn't have rear legs. Amazing, the kinds of things that shoot through one's mind when stress and adrenaline are having a punch-up in the back of one's head.
So, chakra scalpels it was.
At that moment, two Kiri-nin rushed me.
Isobu's chakra boiled up inside my chest, spreading like translucent reddish gas over my vision and the immediate meter or so of air directly around me. Then it solidified, condensed, and an orange thing swept across my field of vision from the left—
—oh hell it's a tail when did I get a tail—
—and smashed tip-first into them, sending the first man slamming into the other and shoving them both across the clearing at speeds that would have made Sensei proud. When the orangey chakra limb pulled back, I could see spikes forming along the length of it, with the end spines curving into what looked like a caricature of a human hand.
…Okay. Autonomous demon chakra cloak. Great. Clearly I needed to be ready for my flesh to start boiling off any minute.
I swallowed hard. I was…almost sure I shouldn't have been entering Version 1 Chakra Cloak or growing tails until I was angry. And, well, I was but I wasn't. Adrenaline was probably making a mockery out of me, but I was sure I wasn't feeling anything like what Naruto had gone through at the Valley of the End. There was no way.
End it quickly.
…Okay. Yeah, whoops, running out of time. All of it.
"Tsuruya, hold down the fort." I told him, and damn if my voice didn't sound like I'd been a smoker for ages. Woo.
"Of course, Keisuke-sama."
I didn't want to see the look on Rin's face. Not when I was starting to feel my skin burn.
I charged.
The first Kiri-nin to get in my way got smashed flat against the ground by my brand new chakra appendage. He might have survived, I suppose, if I hadn't dragged my chakra scalpels across his face and throat a moment later.
I spun, Isobu's chakra flowing in weirdly unsynchronized movements that were alternately too fast or too slow by bursts. As a Kiri-nin's blade passed overhead, I went low and introduced him to a double-mule kick that probably didn't need to be reinforced with Tailed Beast chakra but was anyway.
Brained the next one with a backhanded punch.
And by that point, I had made it over to where Kakashi and Obito were continuing their do-si-do session against the idiots in flat masks.
"Kei!" Obito said, once he spotted me—not hard, given the "perpetual motion murder machine" impression—and Guruguru had shot a spike of his own flesh through the clingiest Kiri-nin. There. Free of enemies for a moment.
Gaaah.
I smiled weakly. "Hey, Obito. Long time no see."
"No kidding! Um…wait." He paused. Then, "What the hell is going on?"
Oh, Obito.
And, well, Kakashi. Gotta take care of that. Kakashi's final opponent was smashed off-course and into a tree trunk by the chakra tail I had at hand, while he stood there with his next kunai raised and sparking. Then he lowered his hand and turned back to me.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, he was looking at me like I was about to explode at any second. Probably actually a thing!
Still. Obito. Been out of the loop for months. Filling him in, right.
"That…is a very long story." I said. "But the short version goes like this: I was kidnapped by a white not-human thing that knew Wood Release, Kakashi and Rin-chan busted in to save me, turns out I am the current container of the Three-Tailed Beast as of ten minutes ago, we were fighting the guards and stuff, and now you're here. And not dead. How the hell did that happen?"
I got all of that out in two breaths and felt immensely, disproportionately proud of myself for a few seconds.
"…What? Man, what the hell!" I wanted to hug Obito for his sheer indignation at the entire situation, though Isobu's chakra would probably make that a bad idea. "I'm gone for a few months and this happens?"
"This had nothing to do with you." Kakashi said, but he sounded more tired than anything, really.
"It has everything to do with me!" Obito argued. He was getting angry. What? "The only guy I know who has Wood Release is Zetsu, and he's creepy and white and talks about poop with Guruguru and he was the one to tell me you guys were in trouble."
…What the fuck.
"We would never do something like that!" Guruguru protested, spines wiggling.
Uh.
I was glad Obito was in the middle of an astonishing epiphany that took me a while even though I had all (most of)the goddamn cards, but maybe it wasn't a good idea to have it when he was wearing the thing that had helped him massacre the Kiri-nin and could easily do the same to all of us. You know, just for safety's sake.
"If it helped the old man keep me there, you would." Obito said darkly.
His eye was spinning.
Kakashi's was, too. "…So this is what attacked the camp and is responsible for this mess?"
…For some reason, I couldn't stop myself from putting my two cents in. "I'm not even sure what Kiri had to do with it. The mind-control seal I have is the same as the one in all of them."
Kakashi's expression was downright murderous.
That was when Guruguru spat Obito out, launching him at me. I managed to shove Isobu's chakra aside in order to catch him without burning him, but my sealing scrolls slipped out of my sleeves. At the same time, Guruguru threw himself backward and started to reassemble himself into a vaguely humanoid shape, while Kakashi tore after him, Chidori sparking.
Crap, crap, crap. Time to put all my excess energy to good use. I shoved Obito back onto his feet and concentrated on keeping the bubbling Tailed Beast chakra from affecting my thought process more than it already had.
And…Kakashi shouldn't have been doing that.
Isobu's chakra slammed down between them, forcing Kakashi to skid to a halt even as Guruguru's spikes shot through the empty space he would have occupied. As it was, the tail absorbed the hit and started to burn through the spiraling spines, forcing Guruguru to stop attacking too.
The Zetsu variant's hollow eye socket was burning into both Obito and I.
"I am so glad I was training that whole time." Obito stage-whispered in my ear.
"You're taking this well." I replied, eyes still on the living suit of armor.
Kakashi skirted the edge of Isobu's chakra and made his way over to us in a deadly silence. I withdrew Isobu's tail, and watched as Guruguru melted away into the ground.
"What is that thing?" Kakashi asked, his tone as cold as I'd ever heard.
"It's, uh—he's kind of like a clone." Obito said. "He works for Madara, so—"
"Madara?" Kakashi demanded.
I shook my head and he bit down on whatever else he was going to say.
"—So he's way stronger than he should be." Obito finished. I wondered what he was thinking of. Any particular incident. "Tsunade-strong."
Fuck.
"Tsuruya, get Rin off the ground!" I roared, and watched as my summon immediately snatched the concussed medic up and onto her back. Tsuruya was in the air in seconds, even with Pakkun and Bull riding shotgun on her back and keeping Rin on board.
"What are we going to do?" Obito didn't have the kind of visual range we needed—though, to be more accurate we needed someone with a Byakugan looking straight down.
Sure, Kakashi and Obito might have had a sort of Rinnegan multi-vision-thing going, but…
And then an echoing voice said, "Spoiled little children should learn to play by the rules." Guruguru surged out of the ground behind Kakashi. Everyone jolted in shock and we all nearly made it out of his reach, but his hand still managed to close on Kakashi's shoulder.
Guruguru only needed contact to kill.
I saw red. Isobu's chakra reached out, twisting one tail into two, coming at the Zetsu clone from both sides—
—Kakashi was already moving, Rasengan in his hand—
—And Obito was moving, too. I could feel his chakra twist—the betrayal, the anger, the no I need to be strongerfasterbetter—and knew his eye was evolving because so was Kakashi's, like a mirror, and—
Two tanned hands, one over the other, came to rest on Guruguru's back. The faint sound of crisp paper was all that told me that there was a paper seal involved. Mine.
"Chakra-Suppressing Seal."
And it was Sensei, oh god, how did he fucking do that.
Guruguru spasmed, releasing his hold on Kakashi just in time to take a Rasengan to the face-analogue because our team's mini-jōnin played for keeps, making his body explode from the neck on up. Sensei ducked underneath Isobu's tails, as though he played Limbo with Tailed Beasts all the goddamn time, dragged Kakashi out of the way, and Guruguru got smashed between them. Obito shot over it all, tucking and rolling in midair and landing on the opposite side of the subdued and possibly dead Zetsu clone.
At most, Isobu's tails might have clipped the ends of Sensei's hair. Oh, and killed Guruguru. That was cool too.
Woo. Isobu: Tailed Beast, Atom Smasher. Good turtle. Best friend.
…My brain was fucking fried.
"Kei-kun." Sensei's voice seemed to be coming from far away, even though he was standing within arm's reach. Tail's reach, too!
"Yeah, Sensei?" I asked, almost giggling.
Sensei poked my forehead with one of my own seals, two fingers behind it. "Chakra-Suppressing Seal."
Whoops, lights out!
"We don't have enough chakra to survive this." The Dreamer's voice was saying.
And why the hell was my mindscape dark?
Wait. Back up. Turn the damned lights on!
Oh, hey. I blinked.
Lights went on. Cool. Distinctively red light, since Isobu was now in residence, but it was light even if it wasn't steady and it really reminding me of a submarine's warning lights—like, before the vessel sunk. In a terminal sort of way.
The Dreamer was barely more than a shattered torso and half a head, with all of her limbs drifting off into scattered motes of dust. She looked like…I don't know, like any Claymore after fighting Priscilla, like what happened when someone took machine gun fire across the torso. Only, you know, no blood was involved. Id, somewhere below us, had lost her human form and morphed into a sort of humanoid thing with massively extended, rubberized arms that circled Isobu's neck and head twice or more. I could only tell what she was based on the process of elimination.
"…Um." I said, feeling very stupid.
"I've crossed the event horizon already." The Dreamer drifted along, upside-down. Her remaining eye wasn't tracking my movement at all.
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked, even though I was already almost sure of the answer. But I had to ask.
Some things have to be said aloud.
"…I expended our combined Yin chakra to maintain control over the Three-Tails and over Madara's seal." Her voice was distant and fading.
Oh.
"…my existence is at an end."
Oh.
Given that the Dreamer had been my backup (in the electronic sense as well as the figurative one), a sort of reminder app and a sounding board, I could guess how that would work. I'd lose everything that made me more than just Keisuke Gekkō, chūnin-level shinobi of Konohagakure. I…didn't necessarily know what that meant—I mean, I was more than just a collection of pop-culture references. I was more than my "foreknowledge." I didn't know what being really reset to age thirteen would mean.
Nothing good, probably. And there would be problems if it meant me-at-thirteen or Kei-at-thirteen. Without my context, Kei was someone entirely different from the girl my teammates knew. But without Kei's context, I would be useless.
"I….I guess we find out what happens when I lose my adult mind, huh?" I said, numb.
"NoT qUiTe." Id's voice was hideously distorted, and she shot up toward us without letting go of Isobu's head. It was the kind of thing that would have fit in well in, say, One Piece, but reminded me of Slenderman instead.
The Dreamer's sole remaining eye blinked, once. "…she's correct."
Id's voice was still disturbing, as was the way her grin stretched a little past what would have fit on her face. Oh dear. Alice in Wonderland indeed. "We ArE pLaNnInG sOmEtHiNg FoR tHaT. eVeN tHoUgH wE wOn'T eXiSt AfTeR."
One of the Dreamer's arms came back together, though it still looked like a visual glitch. She put that hand in mine. Id, on the other hand, grew another jet-black tendril that looped around my other wrist like a bracelet.
"…Goddamn it." I said. I had an idea of what they were going to do, and couldn't even decide what part of myself to be angry at.
"…my chakra will reinforce our seals. Both of them…" The Dreamer's eye went unfocused again. "...I'm sorry it has to be like this…"
"hEhEhEh! I'm NoT! tHe WoRlD iS wAiTiNg FoR yOu."
The memory cloud, buzzing around us, condensed.
"...preparing data dump."
…this was going to hurt.
There was a sensation like a sledgehammer to the head, and a bubbling in my veins. Then falling.
I woke feeling like someone had run me over with a truck.
Worse yet, not all that much time had passed. I could still feel the aftermath of the power high kicking around—ergo, I hurt like hell, and was shaking rather badly. So I hadn't been out that long. If I'd managed to be transported home and to the hospital, I probably would have just felt like lead. As it was, I was sort of regretting the fact that this was not the case.
I sat up anyway, though, since I could feel a branch underneath me instead of bare stone and need to figure out why that I had changed.
And…I kind of cracked Kakashi in the forehead in an impromptu headbutt.
"Of all the stupid—quit standing over me!" I hissed, clutching my head. Ow, ow, headache from earlier emphatically not gone, ow.
But instead of running away like he usually did, Kakashi immediately squished me in a hug.
…Bwuh?
I looked over his shoulder, to where Sensei was sitting with Obito and Rin and Tsuruya was standing over them all like a gigantic living umbrella. They were well within reach, and were facing my way. Obito also kind of looked like he wanted to get in on the hug business, but since Rin was also kind of glued to his side and Sensei had one hand clamped down on his arm, that didn't seem to be in the cards.
"I'm okay." I told Kakashi, patting his back awkwardly.
"…We'll see about that." Kakashi allowed, and gave me one last squeeze before letting go and sitting back on his heels. That gave me enough space to try and get my bearings properly, at least.
Yeah. Gonna have to be sure. "Sensei, I…I think we need to use the other seals."
Sensei nodded, and held up one of my scrolls. It was blank, used up. "Evil Sealing Method? Already done." At my blank look, Sensei continued, "Kakashi told me about the mind-control seal. Ingenious but evil, and also easily shut down."
He patted my shoulder, but my mind was already whirling as I looked down at the exposed strip of skin on my chest. I couldn't see anything aside from the barely-visible seal holding Isobu back, which was already fading into invisibility as I watched.
"It's on your back, Kei-kun." Sensei told me.
…Well, I knew who I'd bet on if Sensei ever had to throw down with Orochimaru.
"And the Three-Tails?" I asked.
"Modified the existing seal with a couple of safety releases. You'll hold until we get back to Konoha."
…Well, damn. There went most of my immediate personal worries.
Still… "What about Obito?" I asked sharply.
"Obito?" Sensei's expressed shifted to concern in an instant and he pulled back from his sole shirtless student to get a better look. Rin also moved out of the way to give Sensei a better chance to examine Obito.
"Kei, I feel fine! There's nothing…" Obito began, then stopped at the look on Sensei's face. I was sure that mine and Kakashi's matched it.
"Actually, there is. How could I have missed this…?" Sensei ended up trailing off into a mumble. "Kei-kun?"
"Sensor. Also got a look at like twenty other ones." I wobbled a hand in midair to indicate 'more or less.' I'd initially been in blinding pain, after all. "The Kiri-nin."
"Well, now they're all too dead to be much use for templates, but I see what you mean." Sensei replied. He seemed to bite down on the inside of his cheek, thinking carefully. "This isn't the place for this discussion. Now that everyone's awake, we need to get out of here."
"Are we going home?" Rin asked, her voice very small and a little strained.
"Yes, via someplace else." Sensei stood. "All right, everyone up."
We stood.
"Link hands."
We all did. Tsuruya also ducked her head, resting her beak on my shoulder.
"Reverse Summoning Jutsu."
…There was a sensation like going through a Portkey—yes, the iconic fishhook behind the navel, yay—and then a crapton of smoke and also feeling like gravity was out to lunch for a moment. Then Kakashi and Rin's hands left mine and, quite suddenly, I smacked face-first into a turf while my sense of balance was still shot. Blech.
Suffice to say that I was never summoning Tsuruya frivolously ever again.
"Rin-chan, Kakashi, Obito, Kei-kun, Pakkun…" Sensei was muttering as I got up, sounding like he was trying to keep track of a kindergarten class on a field trip.
As I started to pick grass out of my clothes, Kakashi was chatting with both of his dogs in a very low voice. Rin swayed, only to be steadied by Tsuruya's wing, and Sensei's hand was on Obito's shoulder again. We all felt tired—well, us kids more than Sensei, for all that he'd done three sealings in less than an hour and probably been fighting before that—and I was mostly just glad that I couldn't feel anything remotely related to a Zetsu in the area.
…Speaking of which, aside from us, there weren't any human chakra signatures either.
Looking around, I was left with the impression that I'd dropped into Alice in Wonderland by accident, or perhaps ended up somewhere in Kusagakure again. While there was short grass, some of which had gotten in my face, mostly the stuff that stood out included oversized leaves, brightly colored toadstools, and the sound of distant running water. And not just streams—I was thinking of an actual, worth-putting-on-a-map waterfall.
"Sensei, where are we?" Obito asked, looking up at the nearby stone monuments through his bangs. In fact…
Wait. He would have had to arrange it ahead of time, but…
"Welcome to Mount Myōboku, home of the toads." Sensei told us, grinning.
Tsuruya shook out her wings, looking around. "This place is much larger than I expected…"
"Some of the toads are pretty big, too." Sensei's gaze swept along all three summons in our group. "Can you all get home from here?"
"Easily." Tsuruya said. She twisted her neck around so that she could see Pakkun and Bull. "Do you mind if I fly you home?"
"It would probably be best." Pakkun said, before nosing his master's palm. "Later, Kakashi."
Kakashi nodded.
As the dogs scrambled up onto Tsuruya's back, Rin moved over to lean on me, instead. The huge crane gave us all one last bow before running off, flapping her wings in long strokes that quickly lifted her skyward. Within moments, all three of them were out of sight.
"…Is there any chance that the toads could think she was a bug?" I asked.
"No." Sensei gave me a funny look. Well, better than a suspicious look…
"Why here, Sensei?" Obito broke in, before pausing to blow his bangs out of his face.
"It's the safest place I know of." Sensei told us. "Not to mention, I managed to send Kōsuke to Jiraiya-sensei, so he should be ready to summon us back to Konoha when we're finished here. Gama should be able to give us a hand."
"Gama"? Or Gamabunta? Hell if I knew. With Gamabunta being a boss summon, I'm still not sure if he would take issue with being used as a glorified taxi, but it ended up not really coming up.
Sensei led us past the groves of gigantic foliage, even if he ended up having to carry Rin on his back. Obito seemed okay—Madara's seal wasn't kicking in, despite Sensei not dealing with it yet—and stuck close to Sensei anyway. I was itching to examine his discolored arm, because I wasn't sure if that was something Madara had ripped off of White Zetsu or if it was something else. I didn't, though. Kakashi stayed pretty quiet, but I reached out and he took my hand for at least a couple of seconds, so at least I knew we were doing all right.
I still owed him an explanation, and I doubted he'd forgotten.
And then we got out of the forest.
As the environment really opened up, I was struck by how extreme the topography was.
The path Sensei had been following ended when the oversized toadstools and clover did, fanning outward and a little as though we were walking through a giant toad's footprint. I looked up, and in the distance could make out a mountain that seemed more of a perfect cone than any lava-spewing geological feature would ever be. There were more of them all around, reminding me of the time I'd visited southern China and been baffled by the limestone pillars that made the region so distinct. Much closer, though, were gigantic gold-yellow shafts of what looked like bamboo arced overhead, before disgorging hundreds of gallons of water from their tips.
"This place is weird." I said.
Sensei bit down on a snicker.
"Are we going to see the Grand Toad Sage?" Kakashi asked.
"Mn, no." Sensei shifted Rin's weight on his back, but didn't complain that she'd fallen asleep again. "We're going to meet up with Gama and possibly Gerotora to get a ride home."
…Wait. Gerotora was…that scroll toad thing. Huh. What the hell was "Gama," then?
…Eh. I decided I didn't care. To be honest, tragedy only ever hit our team like a tire iron whenever Sensei wasn't around, so I wasn't worried that we'd end up with a horrible fate while walking among the toad clan. No Velociraptors here!
And the more I thought about topography and genetically-modified dinosaurs, the less I had to think about the eerie silence inside my head.
Of course, thinking about not thinking about it didn't work. Never does.
The problem with letting my mind wander while adjusting to new formatting, though, was that it was very easy for my crazy thoughts to ping off of something suspect. My headspace was full of memory fragments running loose like sheep without a herder, and it was only a matter of time until one of them tried to butt me back over the fence.
I was mixing metaphors a lot there, but it had to do with my scrambled state of mind. My mind was so scrambled, in fact, that I must have zoned out for quite a while.
For one thing, I ended up feeling Kakashi try to get my attention while my brain was on walkabout before I noticed his chakra move, mainly by prodding my arm. For another, I walked right into Obito's back.
Bump.
"You all right, Kei?" Obito asked, catching me when I wobbled.
I bonked him in the shoulder with my forehead. "…no."
"Do you need someone to carry you?" Obito scratched the side of his nose with his left hand, as though he still wasn't entirely used to his artificial right arm yet.
"…no, thanks." I wanted to drop off to sleep, even if doing so would probably herald the first night terrors I'd had in years, if things were going to revert to before Inoshi walked around in my head. Also, my pride wouldn't let me do that.
"Kei-kun." Sensei said over his shoulder, but when I looked up he was giving Kakashi a wordless order.
"You can't walk without hitting something." Kakashi said.
"Can too." I said.
"Can't."
"Can!"
"Kei-kun, just let Kakashi lead you. All right?" Sensei interrupted before we could really get going, sadly.
"….Fine." I sighed. Okay, back to hand-holding, but with more belligerence!
I felt like I'd been demoted to preschool.
Though the first time Kakashi yanked me back upright when I slumped, accompanied by a toneless, "We don't need you cracking your head open on a rock," I at least tried to pay more attention.
So…fucking…tired…
There was no answer.
Figured.
It was about then that I realized that Kakashi hadn't actually lowered his headband after the fight was done. In fact, his now-three-tomoe Sharingan was locked on me, spinning. I compounded my mistake by making eye contact with it.
SON OF A BI—!
AN: And that...sort of gets somewhere toward the explanation. See you next [whenever I update]!
(Bisuke unsummoned himself once Minato warped out of smelling distance.)
And on a random note:
Seven Fun Facts About Shipping Within Catch Your Breath (as of chapter 50):
1. "Obito" is the most common word in the story, according to Wordle, with "Kakashi" being second.
2. Obito is, so far, the only person Kei has kissed on-page (chapter 45).
3. Rin seems to retain her crush on Kakashi.
4. Kakashi's dogs are the only things that Kei has gushed over, sans volcanoes (chapter 21 and 39).
5. Kakashi's training with shuriken was, in fact, an attempt to impress Kei (chapter 41).
6. Kei has repeatedly referred to Rin as "cute."
7. Obito still has a thing for Rin. She can get him to do just about anything (chapter 12).
(muffled evil author laughter)
