Warnings: necromancy, various traumas, implicit mind control/manipulation, temporary possession, more swearing than usual, excessive use of revivification techniques, not all of which were intentional

There are backup plans in place, dozens of them. Kakashi's aware of the majority of them, most specifically 'Jiraiya is in charge of reverse-summoning us on Kanna's signal if things go way south' and 'here's the roster of people who are going to take care of the kids if we all get severely injured," which is… not-so-coincidentally also mostly Jiraiya.

And if Jiraiya's busy with some horrifying fuuinjutsu accident coming out of this mess, which is unfortunately not out of the question, Kakashi has volunteered Gai and Tenzō to help. One of them is much more enthusiastic about being named backup babysitter than the other.

"You voluntold me," Tenzō complains.

Kakashi shrugs. He did. "I just need a sensible adult around if the kids need looking after."

"You already have Gai," Tenzō points out.

"There's four kids and one teenager, and three of them regularly break the laws of physics," Kakashi points out. "I love and trust Gai, but he's just one person."

Tenzō groans. "Senpai, I'm not good with kids."

"So? I'm not asking you to teach them forever, I'm asking you to be backup on the off chance that something goes so horribly wrong that Jiraiya and I can't do it. I mean, the Uzumaki have friends too, but we don't want Anko and Karin egging each other on, and Shizune's out of town."

Tenzō pouts.

"Tenzō," Kakashi says, drawing out the last vowel as long as he can, "I promise this isn't a permanent thing. They're mostly self-sufficient and you'd just be making sure they don't take over a small country or storm the hospital or… whatever it is that they decide needs to be done."

Tenzō looks at him for a long moment.

Kakashi offers him a grin. It's not much of one, given the mask, but it's still on offer.

"You're actually concerned about whatever this mission is," Tenzō says, words slow and measured, like he was only just realizing something. "This isn't just you teasing me or trying to offload a random chore, you're actually worried."

"Well," Kakashi says, wincing, "I'm not sure how it's going to end. It might be like Ame, where everything actually goes smoothly, but…"

He can't explain the details. Tenzō gets it.

"Things are heating up," Kakashi finally says. "And I just need a hell of a lot of backup plans. I'm pretty sure the others are doing the same thing."

"They didn't ask you to do this?" Tenzō questions.

Kakashi flinches, and looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. "Kind of? They said that if something happens to one of them permanently, I'm next up on guardianship since Jiraiya's out of town so often. But I need a backup plan if something happens to me, at least short-term."

"Hokage-sama could handle it," Tenzō points out, but the faith isn't in his words.

Kakashi takes Tenzō's hand and laces their fingers together. He presses the back of one rough, tanned hand to the cloth on his cheek. "Please?"

"Ugh," Tenzō says. "You're disgusting, senpai."

Kakashi blinks and forces a tear into his eye, making it just wet and glossy enough to really sell the puppy eyes. He whines piteously.

"Impossible," Tenzō huffs. "Alright, I'll be backup if Gai gets overwhelmed and you really need it. But only if it's a real emergency, okay? I've got other stuff to do."

Great.

#

The initial meeting place is down in southern Fire, well past the edge of the Hashirama forest. It's an old Uchiha compound, actually, one that's mostly stone and now in ruins. Kakashi thinks he remembers it as being one that was occasionally visited one pilgrimages by the Uchiha clan, before.

He wonders if Sasuke's ever going to take those same trips to visit the places his ancestors once lived.

"You good?" Kanna asks.

"Feels like ghosts," Kakashi says. "Lots of them."

Not as thick as the compound back in Konoha, but still. Something. Kanna eyes him for a moment, judging, and then nods.

"Old places always do."

Aa.

That they do.

"So, how long?" Kakashi asks, leaning back against a stone pillar with hairline fractures all throughout.

"Half an hour until the arrival window is over," Sakura says.

She knows his internal clock is good enough that he didn't need to ask. She doesn't call him on it.

"If there isn't an old lady that needs her bags carried," Kakashi mutters, and Sakura hides a giggle behind her palm. He's grateful that she can find the humor in it. His own attempts to do so are some of the only things keeping him afloat in the situation.

"Or a very angry cactus," Kanna mutters. She's got her eyes on the distance, unseeing of the world around her. The frown is grim and ever-present, and Kakashi tries to remember that she is, in fact, just like this.

Sakura takes her hand, and Kanna grimaces.

Kakashi's been briefed on this, obviously. Zetsu's got some kind of technique that can hide from even Kanna's sensing, unless she taps into Kurama and does some weird empathy check. If Obito's let slip what's going on, let Zetsu know that he's meeting with someone to poison him against the Moon's Eye plan, then the monster-in-chief might have wised up enough to send a clone.

Kanna can keep track of the main one, as long as he doesn't know he's being tracked. As long as he's letting down his guard. As long as he thinks he's safe.

Her head snaps to the side, just a few degrees, and she says, "On their way."

"Disappeared? Both?"

Kanna nods sharply. Kamui, then.

"Zetsu?"

"Stationary," Kanna says. "Can't figure out emotions this far. I don't… think he sent a clone."

That's good.

Kakashi forces himself to untense, muscle by muscle. He's still ready to spring into action, but it won't do him any good to be wound tight as a spring.

They wait.

The wind winds its way through the ruins, and does little to herald the arrival of two very, very dangerous rogue Uchiha.

The air simply rips open ahead of the trio, and then there are five.

Kakashi doesn't react. Obito's wearing a mask, and Itachi is—

Itachi is so small.

Kakashi's heart catches in his throat, because he knows exactly how old Itachi is, fought by his side in ANBU, and he still can't… he can't. He knows what the boy did under orders, and Itachi is so much smaller and frailer than even Kakashi was at his age.

He's fifteen and Kakashi can see the weight of the world on his shoulders, even past the too-blank eyes.

"Konoha," Obito greets, voice deep and gravely and unfamiliar as hell.

"Not bothering with the Tobi act, then," Kanna says, deceptively light. "Hello, Akatsuki. Or, well, Uchiha. Both of you."

Obito tilts his head, body language unbothered past the amorphous cloak, and face hidden more completely than Kakashi's own. "Hm. You know things. Do they?"

"The only person here that doesn't is the teenager," Kanna says, flat as hell.

Obito turns his head just enough to look Itachi, who… doesn't react.

"I don't suppose you let slip to Zetsu what's happening?" Sakura asks, light and nowhere near as pointed as the question should be.

"He is unaware," Obito says.

Kakashi has his hands in his pockets. His wrists are tight with how tightly he's clenching his fists, and his borrowed eye is itching fiercely.

"Truth," Kanna declares. "Thanks for keeping things… discrete."

Obito turns his head just enough to stare pointedly at her.

Kakashi struggles to control his breathing.

"Um," Sakura says, the knuckles of one hand pressed to her teeth. "Er."

Obito looks at her, and even with the mask, even with the cloak, even with no words, he manages to convey 'Well? Get on with it.'

"I just…" Sakura trails off, and the world around them fuzzes and snaps and fills with smoke.

A moment later, they're underground, and the walls are covered in seals.

"…stalling," Sakura finishes. "I just… was stalling."

Both of the Uchiha are in ready positions, kunai in hand. Tension is in every limb, and Kakashi would guess they're starting to notice how sluggish their chakra suddenly is.

"Should have known you would—"

"Oh, get wound," Kanna interrupts. "You have killed way too many people with tricks for us to not try to set up a preventative measure."

The look on her face is astoundingly disgusted.

"You are weakened as well," Itachi says quietly. "A chakra-reducing measure like you must be using can only be targeted so much."

"Mostly targets Uchiha," Kanna says. "Primarily using Sharingan-specific chakra markers. Makes it really hard to externalize any jutsu. So."

Obito snarls and the air rips around him, and him alone, and he disa—

Nope.

The air spits him back out, a meter and a half to the left. He stumbles. He pulls up the mask just enough to retch and spit out something that might be saliva and might be bile.

"Ouch," Kakashi mutters.

His eye throbs.

"Oh, just take it off," Kanna snaps. "Literally everyone in this room knows who you are."

"It's not a room," Itachi intones quietly. "It's a cave."

"It's an enclosed space," Kanna hisses. "Counts as a room if I—"

"Kanna," Sakura says, and the woman stops.

"What do you want?" Obito demands. "I'm not even going to ask how you managed to do this, but what do you fucking want?"

"Ceasefire," Sakura says, stepping forward. "At least. Zetsu lied to Madara, and Madara lied to you."

Itachi doesn't shift his weight or act perturbed, but Kakashi can still see it.

"You can't make claims without evidence," Obito counters. "The world is rotten—"

"And Zetsu aims to kill everything," Kanna snarls. "Get your head out of your ass and—"

"And you," Obito growls, mask turned towards Kakashi. "You dare show up here, when you claim to know who I am, after what you did, you fri—"

"That is enough!" Sakura says, and the ground cracks below her. "You are acting like children."

Kakashi meets Itachi's eyes. He tries to ignore Obito, and offers the kid a little wave, because Kakashi hasn't said a word to either Uchiha, and Itachi's more lost than a single other person right now.

Itachi stares at him.

"Kakashi is here for reasons that will be clear," Sakura continues. "But we are going to discuss this like calm, rational adults, and you are going to listen before you start flinging insults, or I swear I will be putting people in hospital beds."

Kakashi takes a step away from her.

"Not you, Kakashi, you've been a dear," Sakura tells him, voice sweet as sugar, smile bright as sunshine. "And Itachi, honey, I am so sorry about all of this, you deserve better."

Obito's still glaring at Kakashi. It's not great. He finally says something.

"I'm about eight panic attacks in a trench coat right now. There is a fuckton of repression happening and I am going to have nightmares for weeks after this."

Obito scoffs.

"It's okay," Sakura says, patting his shoulder. "We're just happy you're here."

"I'm not," Obito says.

"You're not happy about anything," Kanna dismisses. "Because you're under a motherfucking slave seal, dumbass."

Kakashi steps back and away and—though he's a little embarrassed to admit it—pulls out his battered copy of Icha Icha to hide behind.

"Are you seriously reading porn right now, Bakashi?" Obito asks, and wow, he can rival Kanna for disdain-per-word quotient.

"No," Kakashi says. It's even true. He's not reading. He's staring unseeingly at the little bits of thread that bind the book together, and trying to get his heart to stop breaking.

"We can discuss Kakashi's terrible coping methods later," Sakura says. "That's not what we're here about."

"It's a little bit what we're here about," Kanna says.

"Babe. Please. The track. Stay on it."

Obito makes a gruff noise of such impatient bitching that Kakashi raises his book a few millimeters. "Yes, I'd love to know why we're here."

"The basic answer? What we already said about Zetsu lying to you," Kanna says. "The less basic answer… well, that, but with examples, and proof, and telling you how his plans are going to end."

"Get on with it."

Kanna and Sakura share a look, and then Kanna summons two coffins.

They stand straight in the middle of the room, and Kakashi idly imagines that he can see the irritation in the Uchiha over the fact that Kanna can do things here.

Kakashi, for his part, is well aware of the fact that Kanna prepared for these coffins extensively, and even if she hadn't… well. This is her trap.

"What," Obito breathes, so quiet that Kakashi can barely hear him. "What have you done?"

"What we had to," Sakura says, grim as death.

The coffins fall open, and Obito stays frozen.

As Itachi's face turns paler than it is, Obito whirls and screeches and throws a kunai at Kanna. He lunges forward at Sakura, and Kakashi goes to meet him.

It's unnecessary, because Kanna's chakra is soaked into the bones of every seal here, and her chains snap out to grab Obito.

Obito, who can't go intangible while in this space.

"Stand. Down." She hisses.

"YOU DUG UP HER GRAVE!" Obito screams.

"Exhumed, technically," Kanna says. "I just needed a DNA sample, and I got all the paperwork done."

"Not the time," Sakura chides in a whisper. She steps forward. "Listen. I know this seems twisted to you, but—"

"I'm going to kill you," Obito growls, and Kakashi catches a flash of Sharingan behind the mask, what little chakra Obito can call up as he writhes in place within Kanna's binding. "I am going to—"

"Edo Tensei," Kanna snarls back, and the two corpses wake.

Kakashi closes his eye, and waits, and doesn't want to hear something that's going to break him.

"Obito… Obito, please stop."

The sound of struggling disappears, but Obito's breathing is harsh and beleaguered, and Kakashi still can't open his eye.

"Rin-chan…" Obito says, and it's a grief-shattered whine of a noise, halfway to a sob. "They—they shouldn't have—"

"Obito, listen to me," Rin says, and Kakashi can't take it anymore. He peels his eye open, sees paper-flaking Rin, still as small as she was the day she died, with her hands on a demasked Obito.

Obito looks at her through tears, as though she is his salvation.

(Behind them, the other corpse approaches Itachi, who looks about ready to collapse.)

(Kakashi isn't proud of this tactic, but the fate of the world rests on it.)

"I've been watching," she says softly, "and I know. I know what you're doing, and why, and you have to stop."

He shakes his head minutely, "No, no, you're not real, you're not—"

"Obito," Rin says again, like saying his name enough times will make him finally sit down and listen. "Obito, the Kiri shinobi that put a bijuu in me were controlled by the Sharingan."

Kakashi's breath catches, but not as loudly or as sharply or as brokenly as Obito's does.

"No," Obito whispers.

Rin brushes thumbs over his face, and her smile is full of pity. She looks at Sakura and Kanna. "What else were you planning on telling him?"

Kanna shrugs, and Kakashi almost doesn't catch the worried flick of her eyes to Sakura. "There's a lot. We needed you to… break down some barriers first."

(Sakura's wearing her migraine face.)

(Bad sign.)

(Very, very bad sign.)

Rin nods, and turns back to Obito. "I died, and it was… bad. I'm dead, and I still feel guilty for making Kakashi do it."

Obito chokes and there's that rough sob again, and Kakashi doesn't want to watch, but—but it feels wrong to turn away.

"They put a slave seal on my heart," Rin tells him. "And an unstable seal for the Sanbi. They planned to drive me to Konoha and release the Sanbi, and I made the choice to avoid killing everyone I loved the only way I could think of."

Kanna loosens her chains, and while Kakashi tenses, ready to move… it isn't necessary.

Obito falls to his knees, hands in his lap, and stares at Rin from the visage of a man ruined in soul and mind by the people around him.

Kakashi kind of wants to vomit.

"Zetsu isn't Madara's will," Kanna says, voice low. "He's Kaguya's, and Madara was old enough to fall for it. When the Geddou Mazou is filled with the nine bijuu, it will become the Juubi, and once the Juubi awakes, it is only a matter of time until Kaguya returns from her prison."

Obito turns to look at her, and his gaze is dead.

"Kaguya wants to take back all the chakra in the world," Kanna says. "And yes, there will be a perfect world via genjutsu, but not for long. The white Zetsu clones aren't made of Hashirama's cells. They're her previous victims, sucked clean of all life and love and spirit, transformed body and mind into servants of Kaguya and her thrice-damned tree."

"How many—" Sakura cuts off with a sharp gasp, wincing, and then tries again. She blinks hard, one hand to her temple. "Sorry, bad timing. How many of the children that Orochimaru gave the Mokuton to survived?"

"One," Obito says. "Out of, what, sixty?"

Sakura smiles, and it isn't kind. It isn't nice. It isn't happy. "How many young Uchiha, presumed dead on missions, do you think he went through before one of them survived?"

Obito shudders. His face twists into a grimace of pain, and one hand comes up to clutch at his chest.

Rin finally turns away from him, just enough to look at Kakashi and mouth, 'I'm sorry.'

His heart breaks again.

A different piece fixes itself.

(Fuck.)

"I'm not going to say he organized for the Kannabi mission to go that poorly," Sakura says, "Because I don't know that. But the timing for your arrival to Rin's death, the choice to use her of any Konoha shinobi, everything about that incident points to Madara and Zetsu having a vested interest in forcing you to develop a Mangekyo."

"And breaking you enough to make you emotionally malleable," Kanna says. "You wanted to go back to Konoha before that, didn't you?"

Obito sucks in a ragged gasp, and clutches harder at his chest. "You're lying, you have to be, I would have noticed."

"Not with a slave seal," Kanna says, and while there's sympathy in her voice, there's also… a grudge. "Those things twist you."

"I do not have a—"

"You do," Rin interrupts him. "They put it on—after. I watched."

She watched.

She…

Kakashi's going to be sick, maybe.

He checks on Itachi and his favorite corpse-slash-temporary-zombie.

They seem to be doing fine.

Probably.

There's a whole lot less of the drama over on their little corner of the cave, at least. Mostly, they're staring into each other's eyes, which probably means some Sharingan-based nonsense is going on. There isn't any ocular bleeding yet, so… success, as far as Kakashi's concerned.

"I can remove it," Kanna says. "You've got a healing factor now. Won't be too complicated, with less of a worry of, you know, sudden heart failure."

"Your wife is one of the best medic nin alive," Kakashi says. "You are not letting Obito die."

"I literally just said that, but thanks," Kanna snips.

"Children," Sakura says.

"They're not going to kill you," Rin reassures Obito, a soft and loving smile on her too-young face. Obito's always been the silly little brother to her, and even now, with Obito so much older, the dynamic holds. Silly little brother that needs a bit of reassurance. "They're good people."

"I'm not a good person," Kanna says, immediately.

"Sakura keeps you on a leash," Kakashi says, and then hurries to add, "Metaphorically, I mean. For, like, morals and stuff."

She shoots him a dirty glare, but steps forward to Obito.

Kakashi takes the moment to sidle over to Sakura and press his shoulder to hers until she leans into him.

"Migraine?" He asks lowly.

"The worst yet," she mutters.

Wow.

Really bad timing.

Kanna's doing something with a senbon and a scroll that's been opened to reveal an overlarge slave seal removal fuuinjutsu, and basically everyone is watching.

Kakashi's just… relieved, maybe? That they'd hedged their bets correctly. That Rin had been enough.

That Obito had just needed her word to… not to trust, maybe, but to be off-kilter enough to let things happen instead of trying to kill them all.

"Yeah," Sakura laughs, rubbing at her eyes. "It's almost like—Rinnegan."

What the absolute fuck.

Kakashi takes all his attention off of Obito and Kanna and Rin—poor, sweet, dead Rin—and turns to look at holy fuck that's a Mangekyo in one eye and a Rinnegan in the other.

Sakura's head falls to the side, expression blank, and she stares at Itachi and his taller shadow.

Her gaze shifts to Rin.

She blinks, and raises a hand.

"Sakura?" Kanna asks, standing up slowly and drawing out her chains from her back.

(The migraine was a Sharingan.)

(It was always a Sharingan.)

(A Rinnegan.)

(The seals were always going to have an effect on anyone with Uchiha DNA, even as little as Kakashi had in his borrowed eye, and they'd known that going in.)

She blinks again, and there is heartbreak on her face as she looks at Itachi, and a Kakashi's subconscious notices Kanna's chains have had to restrain Obito again.

Sakura speaks in a voice that isn't hers, deeper and darker and the words a faintly different shape.

"A final gift, from a future that won't come."

What the fuck what the fuck what the fu—

"RINNE TENSEI."

Power.

Overwhelming, terrifying, unearthly chakra.

The Shinigami rises.

No.

It is not the Shinigami.

It's—something close. The same family, in a sense.

The power is the same.

The mouth opens and there is light and power and it is dizzying in the cave's dim lights and the fuuinjutsu going haywire across the walls.

The creature disappears.

Sakura's eyes fade back to black, and Kakashi shoves this into the back of his mind until he can process it, until he can understand it in safety, because this isn't normal.

Rin is alive. Properly alive.

Sakura's arm drops and she sways on her feet and Rin is alive.

"Oh," Rin says quietly, looking down at her hands and checking her own pulse. "I… didn't expect that."

"I didn't plan that," Sakura says faintly, a hand to her head. "I—Sa—what?"

Kanna looks at her, mouth open. "You didn't mean to do that?"

Sakura looks at her, and grimaces in a way that reeks faintly of embarrassment. "No?"

"You—you brought back the dead. Fully."

"Apparently?"

Kanna's fuming. "That would have killed you!"

Sakura cringes. "I didn't mean to, it was… him."

Oh, great, ambiguous sentences that Kakashi doesn't want to tear apart because what the fuck and also how the fuck and maybe a dash of hey maybe let's get back to Obito.

"You're shitting me," Kanna says, and the confusion would be sweet if not for how every fiber of Kakashi's being is screaming for this to be over. "You—he—you basically performed a full resurrection by accident!"

"I'm sorry!" Sakura protests. "I didn't mean to! I'm pretty sure that was possession!"

Kanna gestures expressively but ineloquently, makes a wordless noise, and walks over to the nearest doton-formed wall to slam her head against it.

Sakura cringes again.

"What the fuck," Obito croaks, and Kakashi thanks him for saying the thought on all their minds.

"There's a lot I can't talk about," Sakura says, apologetic to the end. "It's, uh, really complicated."

"He left a chakra imprint?" Rin asks, eyes on Sakura. "I—how did it survive the trip?"

"I didn't even know it was there," Sakura admits, black eyes, secretly Sharingan eyes, ticking across the cave. Suddenly, she focuses on Rin. "Wait, how did you know about—"

She doesn't get to finish her sentence.

The reason is that the actual Shinigami shows up this time, and Kakashi recognizes it.

Obito scrambles back, apparently recognizing it even more.

Sakura sways, and falls to her knees.

"Sakura?" Kanna asks, stepping closer to her, and glancing up at the Shinigami. "Babe, please answer me."

Sakura's head tips back, eyes unseeing.

Mouth open.

Barely breathing.

The Shinigami looks down upon them, and judges.

The Shinigami looks at Sakura. It looks at Kanna. It looks at Obito and Itachi. It looks at Rin and Shisui.

It barely glances at Kakashi, and for that, he is grateful.

There is a gash in the fabric on its torso, but there are further layers of fabric behind.

(Kanna only has eyes for her wife, and Kakashi doesn't know what's about to happen, but he does know that she wasn't done with the Slave Seal removal.)

(Kakashi makes the call that he's always had to make. He can't do anything about the Shinigami that Kanna can't do, so he'll pick up what she's not focused on anymore.)

(He turns on his Sharingan, uses a shunshin to get to Obito and Rin, and picks up the fuuinjutsu he'd spent hours poring over just in case something made him responsible for it instead of Kanna.)

At length, the Shinigami nods.

It disappears.

And Sakura screams.

:D

:D :D :D

:D

(In my defense, this chapter is technically me doing exactly what people kept asking for in comments.)

(Just.)

(You know.)

(The Monkey's Paw version.)