"Okay, can you at least tell me what's going on?" Rin asks as Yahiko drags her through the dimensional in-between space that makes her skin crawl on the few occasions she uses it.

"I was patrolling through Ame for ambiguous deaths, right? And I took a detour to check in on some old friends. They've kind of gone off the rails so I just stop by whenever I have the opportunity to see just how far they are, yeah?" Yahiko tears open a rip in the fabric of space-time, and Rin suddenly finds herself in the middle of a torrential downpour.

Being dead means she doesn't get wet, but it's not exactly comfortable to feel hundreds of little drops of water phasing through her body every second.

"And," Rin huffs and crosses her arms, focusing on Yahiko. "What does this have to do with me?"

"I… spent a long time thinking the guy manipulating them was Uchiha Madara, who'd somehow kept age from destroying him. But, like… I saw him take off his mask." Yahiko rubs the back of his neck. "I don't really know how to explain it, but it's definitely not Madara, and I think I know who it might be? But I want your opinion since you're former Konoha and there's definitely a Sharingan involved."

Rin purses her lips, but nods. "You could've gotten Kushina, you know."

"I know you better." Yahiko gestures for Rin to follow him, and starts sprinting through the city that was once his home. "And… yeah, you'll understand when we get there."

Rin isn't really sure if she believes that, but she follows Yahiko anyway. She's been to Amegakure once before, and that was with Leah and Yahiko, when Leah was demonstrating proper soul-collection techniques for Yahiko to use.

The rest of the run passes in silence, until they get to a tall building near the center of the city. Rin wall-walks her way up, but Yahiko uses that standing-on-air technique that he's been figuring out recently.

(Rin is of the opinion that Leah shouldn't be taking cues from other universes or from fiction, but she can admit that some of it is pretty useful.)

"I really hope the fake Madara is still here." Yahiko mutters, pulling Rin through the wall and into the building once they're high enough. The wall is more comfortable to phase through than the rain, but Rin isn't completely comfortable until she's standing in the room with nothing but air to deal with.

Yahiko starts to pull the door open, and then stares down at his hand as it goes through the doorknob. Rin isn't particularly surprised when he pouts, but she does feel that he should be used to it by now. She follows him as they begin to comb through the floor that Yahiko thinks the fake Madara is on, and find him in the same room as Yahiko's friends. There's a mask on his face, a strange orange one with black stripes across it, and Rin finally gets a good look at Konan and Nagato.

"Konan is very pretty," She tells him, because she figures that's probably a nice, diplomatic thing to say about the people who seem to be trying to build a superweapon, if the conversation she's hearing is any indicator.

"Yeah, she is…" Yahiko gives the woman in question a longing look, and then sighs and turns to the fake Madara. "I'm… not actually sure how to show you this guy's face. Like, I saw him take off his mask when he was alone in a bathroom with no cameras, but…"

Rin shrugs and lights up her hand with medical energy, leaning forward to press it against the space beneath the fake Madara's mask. The technique won't do anything truly useful on the living unless she completely and totally overloads it, especially since Rin only has spiritual energy these days, but it can incite a very powerful itching sensation since it's mostly the power of the dead.

(Leah likes to let her 'minions' experiment. It's the main reason Rin's been to the World of the Living as many times as she has since she died, and even that isn't exactly much.)

It actually takes a few minutes for the fake Madara to excuse himself from the conversation and leave for the bathroom, which Rin is reluctantly impressed by. People haven't been able to stand the feeling for more than a few seconds in the past, so this person must have excellent self-control.

"Good work, Rin-chan." Yahiko claps her across the back, and after a final look at Yahiko's still-living friends, the two dead shinobi follow the fake Madara to the bathroom.

"Goddamn scar tissue…" The fake Madara mutters just as he opens the door. Rin notices the man look around to check for hidden cameras before he actually takes off his mask, though her view is partially blocked by the door that swings through her body a few times.

(It's a very mobile door that doesn't seem to want to close properly. Yahiko ends up forcing it to slow down and close properly himself, which Rin thinks is a bit of a waste of energy; solidifying their bodies enough to affect the physical world is not a particularly easy task.)

The fake Madara finally takes off his mask, and it takes Rin a few seconds to recognize him. It's been four and a half years since her own death and five since his.

Supposedly.

Apparently, he's been alive and pretending to be Uchiha Madara this whole time.

"Obito?"

o.o.o.o.o

Yahiko is really, really glad the living can't hear the dead unless, like, a whole bunch of effort is put into it. Seriously, Yahiko's tested it, he has to basically scream for them to even hear a whisper.

Except, like, priests and shrine maidens and people who make it a point of their lives to be sensitive to that sort of thing, who can usually get whispers from talking and maybe a vague outline. And the Nibi Jinchuuriki, who basically sees them like real live people. Yahiko ran into her once on one of her missions and when she'd addressed him directly, he'd kind of fallen through the roof of the teahouse he was standing on.

("You can see me?" He asked, staring at her.)

("What, are you supposed to be invisible?" She looked down her nose at him, and Yahiko came to the conclusion that this was some kind of defensive cockiness. Maybe she'd recently gotten promoted, and was trying to prove with attitude that she wasn't too young for it. She only looked about eighteen at the time.)

("I'm supposed to be dead." Yahiko had answered, and that lead into a long discussion where the Nibi, Matatabi, had eventually interfered to tell them about her particular powers.)

(Yahiko really has to remember to tell Leah about that sometime. Yugito's fun. Leah would probably like her.)

Anyway, the point was that Yahiko is super glad that the fake Madara didn't hear Rin say his real name. Or what is probably his real name. Rin keeps a copy of her genin team picture on her desk, and Yahiko's seen it enough times to see the resemblance between the supposedly dead teammate and the man that's spending his free time manipulating his friends. He's even heard the story of the Kannabi Bridge mission once, which let him make the connection to the admittedly horrific scarring on Obito's face.

"What the hell happened?" Rin asks, still staring in confusion and possibly fear. Yahiko isn't sure. "He was… he was never like this when I knew him."

"I don't know," Yahiko says with a shrug. "I just know that I kind of recognized him, and I remembered your story about the rockfall, and I figured there were really only so many supposedly dead Uchiha whose bodies were never recovered that looked to be about the age you would have been, and you'd probably recognize him even if he wasn't your teammate, right?"

Yahiko stops rambling as Rin darts forward to get a closer look at Obito's face, with the missing eye and everything.

"What are you doing?" A voice asks, and Yahiko turns to see one of the strangest people he's ever encountered. Was that a Venus flytrap eating their head?

"The scars just started acting up, Zetsu. I'm fine." Obito says, glaring at himself in the mirror. Well, he's also technically glaring through Rin, so like, that's a thing too.

Rin hasn't moved much. Yahiko gets the feeling he should maybe be worried.

"At least we know why he never showed up in Hel, even though he fit the self-sacrifice schema?" Yahiko offers, trying to get Rin's attention. It works enough for her to turn a glare on him, and he smiles and shrugs in return. "And now you know where he is, so you can keep an eye on him and everything!"

"If Leah lets me do that." Rin mutters, circling Obito. "I want to see what they did to fix his arm. His face is scarred, but I don't even know how they could have fixed the rest without some really intense prosthetics."

Yahiko shrugs, because medical stuff really is Rin's specialty, dead or alive.

"You should be more careful, Tobi. What if someone comes and sees, you idiot?"

Yahiko's torn between staring at the plant guy that clearly has two different voices, and probably personalities, and marveling a bit at how ridiculously simple the pseudonym is.

(Probably) Obito give plant guy (Zetsu, was it?) a Look. "You don't need to call me that. 'Madara' will do."

"Best to get in the habit before we're near people we might not have the option of slipping up around." The white side of Zetsu's face smiles cheerily, even as the other side continues with, "Plus, it pisses you off more."

Obito's Sharingan spins to life, and Rin hisses out a breath as it does. Well, at least they know for sure the guy's an Uchiha. Yahiko's pretty sure they're both convinced he's actually Obito at this point, but there's not, like, any proof yet. Just a lot of creepy coincidences.

"You shouldn't threaten us, Tobi. We saved your pathetic life from that rockslide, and we can take that back any time."

Yahiko hears Rin gasp just the tiniest bit at that, and thinks that that probably cinches it. Almost definitely Obito at this point.

"Tch." Obito turns and leaves the bathroom, walking right through both Rin and Yahiko on his way through.

Yahiko catches the look on Rin's face as it switches from heartbroken for her apparently-not-dead friend to determination.

"Rin, whatever you're planning on doing—"

"I don't care how loud I have to be or how much effort I have to put into it. I am going to make him listen to me." Rin practically growls, stalking out of the room. Yahiko wonders if this is the kind of thing she would have done back when she was alive.

He thinks Rin would have been much nicer about it. Hel's been kinder to her than most, but hers is a post that has taken a hammer to her smoother edges and revealed the steel beneath. Rin isn't reluctant to be the one to implement tough love anymore.

"OBITO!"

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: Obito's mask in this chapter is based on the one he wore the night Naruto was born.

Next Time: She knows that they'll burn.