It was night before they knew it. Naruto was tired, and the back of his head, neck and shoulders were sore from all the times he got smacked with a stick. But he'd persuaded Fukasaku to let him use clones to speed up the training, and it was helping. He was only maintaining two at a time, but each time one got popped, Naruto got a better feel for what to do and what not to do. Each one sharpened his sense of balance and control.

He was almost there. He could touch that sensation of extended senses he'd felt in the other dimension. Naruto tried pushing his senses a little further, brows furrowed as he concentrated.

The first significant thing he sensed was a strange trail of energy that began where he sat and extended out, like an invisible thread that stretched on and on for miles.

Frowning, Naruto reached his hand out half-consciously, curling it around the small current.

White light flashed behind his eyes like the bright flash of a camera, paralyzing his entire body. A looming pair of yellow eyes flashed and he wanted to cry out in surprise, but everything was frozen during that split second.

Then it was gone, and he pitched forward from a hard smack in the back of the head.

"Owww! Hey, I had it that time!" Naruto grumbled, rubbing the back of his head. He looked up. All the Natural Energy had been knocked out of him, and he couldn't sense the thread anymore.

"Sorry. It looked like the balance shifted for a second. I thought you were going to lose control of the energy," Fukasaku said. He looked tired, as well.

Naruto leaned back on his hands, stretching his legs out for a moment. Was it Orochimaru? He could still have a connection from the control tag now that they were back in the regular world, and if so, did that mean he could still see and hear everything Naruto did?

"Naruto-chan, do you need to take a break?"

"No! I've definitely got it now!" Naruto brushed off his hands and got back into stance. "At least one more try. I'm almost there."

The sense of everything around him returned slowly, like a picture that gradually got clearer and clearer.

He could feel the thread again. But this time, instead of trying to touch it, he reached alongside it. It went a long way before curving off, going through objects and living things as if they weren't there.

Shifting his attention, Naruto extended his senses all around, excited to see how far they could go.

It was as if each thing led to the next with almost no effort. He caught strange, discolored visions of everything his senses touched. His sight flowed with the movement of the world's energy.

His senses were pulled into the current of some far-off irregularity, something that twisted the energy of the world around itself.

Something huge. Immense. Completely incomprehensible in scale.

The second Naruto caught sight of it, he almost lost the balance again, but he brought the energy back under control before the stick came flying at him again.

What was that thing?

Naruto honed his focus, a strange sort of fear creeping into him. This wasn't like the many times he'd feared for his life or the life of someone else. It was an almost detached sort of dread.

He knew that thing, whatever it was, was as vast and uncaring as the sun or the ocean.

I recognize that energy. It's the Juubi! the fox within him growled, fur bristling in response to the immense pressure Naruto felt.

Naruto put off asking about that for the moment. He did his best to avoid getting distracted so he could look more.

It was difficult in the hurricane of chaotic energy. He wouldn't be able to hold the Mode much longer.

A whiskered face flickered into his vision. His older self!

He wasn't in his Kyuubi Chakra or even Sage Mode. In fact, he didn't appear to be doing anything at all. He was staring up with a horrified look on his face. Confused, Naruto tried casting around so he could figure out what was wrong.

He noticed his older self was holding onto someone. He hadn't seen them at first because they didn't have any life energy inside of them.

They were dead.

Limbs starting to tremble imperceptibly, Naruto struggled to focus on the person's face. This... this wasn't a dream, was it?

"Neji, go out there and show them what a Branch House member can do."

"Of course."

Despite his wavering control, for a moment, Naruto could see everything so clearly it was almost like being there. Someone was talking. He could hear them as easily as if he was sitting in the same spot as his older self and Neji.

"Those words… 'I'll never let my comrades die.' Now look around you, and say it again!"

Silence. But Naruto's older self looked slowly around, and the younger did the same. The battlefield was littered with bodies. Many of them were impaled with sharp roots, others were crushed. The feeling of death was everywhere.

It felt like an awful dream. Everything grew confusing. The words being shouted out now mixed together with impressions and memories Naruto had tried to forget. All the threads of energy were twisting together around the mass of incalculable power nearby, making them hard to distinguish from one another.

"All of this is reality."

"Why must you cling to reality?"

"Do you honestly think that's different from what I am trying to do?"

It was him.

The voice sounded different, but Naruto was certain of it. Madara was trying to do the same thing he'd done before.

Anger chased out the floundering confusion that clouded Naruto's vision.

'Don't listen to him! He tried to get to me, too!' Naruto tried to shout at his older self, but it didn't work. He swiveled his sight around, tracing the gaze of his older self to locate the speaker.

The massive thing he felt was there. Naruto quickly tried not to focus on it—the thing was a void that distorted everything when he looked at it. He dragged his gaze up further, where two figures stood atop the thing's back.

There was a man wearing old-fashioned armor who looked like an Edo Tensei—weren't they all supposed to be gone?—but he was standing a little further back. The one he was searching for was standing closer, and staring fiercely down at him... at his older self.

It was him. He wasn't wearing the mask, but...

But...

That face didn't look exactly the same. Half of it, the half with the Sharingan, looked squashed and wrinkled. The other eye held a Rinnegan. And the look he had—the hard, scathing look he had was definitely not the same. But it was the same face. And the same energy.

"Obito," Naruto whispered out loud, voice wavering.

"What?" the younger Obito's voice cut through his shock, and Naruto heard him plop down to the ground beside him.

Naruto's eyes flew open, and his long-reaching senses dissolved.

All of that death. The Juubi. The hopeless look on his older self's face.

The Kyuubi was right. Naruto had met Obito long before now. But he didn't want him to be right. It wasn't fair.

That Obito wasn't the same one beside him right now. It should not have been like this.

"What is it, Naruto-chan? You were doing well before it ran out," Fukasaku said. "Why didn't you move once you got into Sage Mode? Did you sense something?" He paused. "Is something wrong?"

"What he's is doing to the older me right now is exactly what he tried to do to me back in Suna," Naruto muttered, rubbing his temples. "I recognize it. It's just like when he shoved Sasuke in my face. I already had it happen and got over it once, but the older me hasn't. And I don't want that to happen to Obito, either. So I can't let this slow me down right now."

That was right. He couldn't let this freak him out. Both of their older selves were in trouble right now.

Above all, they had to get to the battlefield. They'd already been through too much together to let the circumstances between their older selves stop him.

Idiot. And who do you think made it that way? We should be more worried about the Juubi. Forget the Uchiha brat and concentrate on getting back to our own time.

True. Maybe that had been the whole point of imprisoning them together, but Naruto couldn't back down from what he knew. If Orochimaru wanted a show, they'd give him a show.

"Seriously, are you okay? What are you talking about? Did you get sunstroke or something?" Obito asked skeptically.

"Sennin-jii, can you take us to the battle right now?" Naruto said urgently, turning toward the toad. "You've seen that I can use Sage Mode, right?"

"Hmmm, I wouldn't say you've mastered it," Fukasaku said. "You still look like a toad when you use it. But, I suppose that's alright. Jiraiya-chan never fully mastered it, either. You'll be able to do it when you're older, or maybe with a lot more practice."

"So then?" Naruto jumped up excitedly.

Fukasaku gave another 'hmm', and then a sigh. "It's already dark, and you must be tired from today. Let's have dinner, get a good night's sleep, and then head out in the morning. I can come along then, too."

"What? But we had a deal!" Obito complained.

"Alright, Sennin-jii," Naruto said, interrupting him. "But is it okay if we stay out and train some more, as long as we agree not to stay up too late? Shima-baa can send us a bento or something."

"Well... it couldn't hurt, as long as you stay away from the oil while I'm gone."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. C'mon, Obito," Naruto said, pulling Obito, who continued voicing his complaints until they were well away.

"Hey, what gives? Are you going to wait around here without even putting up a fight?" Obito said after he had been pulled to a grove with a small pond and little toad statues.

"No. We need to leave as soon as we can, but I get the feeling no one is gonna let us go if they find out what I saw a minute ago." Naruto kept his voice down and looked around for any listeners nearby. "Have you figured out how to get back into that dimension yet? Maybe if we go there, we can come out of it somewhere else."

"I've tried, but I can't figure out how to do it. What is all this about? What did you see? You've been acting weird ever since you went in the Mode."

Naruto took a deep breath. "I found out where your older self is."

"What?" Obito turned to give him his full attention, eyes wide underneath the goggles. "How do you know that? And where is he—me, whatever?"

"The way Sage Mode works, I can sense all kinds of energy and people, even from far away." Naruto kept walking as he explained, putting more distance between them and the training ground, and Obito followed him. "I felt this huge disturbance far off, so I tried using the Mode to figure out what it was. I started seeing flashes of different people, and it wasn't really clear until the end, but... I definitely saw the older you. His energy felt like yours, and I saw his face. But—"

"Yesss! So now we know I didn't die!" Obito said, energetically pushing aside the oversized lillies they were trekking through. "I knew it couldn't be true. I had this feeling. We can just go talk to him directly! But, uh... where are we going?"

"I wanted to go where no one could hear," Naruto said. He took a careful look around, then turned back to Obito. "Listen, when I said Madara captured me and told me about his plans, I was mistaken. It wasn't really Madara, but someone pretending to be him."

"Huh? Okay." Obito looked taken aback by the grim urgency in Naruto's tone.

"I'm saying it was your older self!" Naruto grabbed him by the shoulders. "That's why no one knows what happened to you, because you started wearing a mask and calling yourself Madara! I don't know how, but your older self is the one behind this war!"

What are you doing, idiot brat? I told you, forget him! This is just another distraction, the Kyuubi growled, but Naruto ignored it. Maybe the fox had been right about Obito, but Naruto was fiercely against allowing things to stay on this track, whatever it was. He had a right to know.

Obito stepped back, looking confused and slightly suspicious. "What?"

"I still think we have to go see him, but if Sennin-jiichan or one of the others realizes, there's no way they'll let us go. I mean, since it's your older self—"

"Stop saying that!" Obito demanded, teeth gritted. "You've never pulled that move off before, right? Obviously, you made a mistake."

"I'm telling you what I know so that maybe we can do something about it!" Naruto was gearing up for a fight. "The Kyuubi said he thought it was you, too, but I didn't believe him until I saw it myself. And he and everyone else would want us to leave it alone, but I'm sick of listening to other people say what I can and can't do. So we're going to leave here and talk to him ourselves! It's fine if you don't believe me, because you can see for yourself once we get there."

"It doesn't make any sense," Obito said, anger fizzling out as quickly as it came. His posture visibly slumped. "I hate war. Why would I want to start one?"

He looked disgusted, and with that expression, Naruto could see even more of a resemblance between the younger Obito and the older one. But that didn't make him waver. In fact, it made him understand even more. The older Obito also hated war. He'd even said as much.

Naruto clapped a hand on Obito's shoulder. "I've heard a lot of shocking things since coming to the future, including losing my master, and... even though my older self is okay, my best friend wants to destroy the village. Whatever's going on with your older self, I know the you right here now is a friend. It's not too late to do something about it when you get home. No matter what happened, you can change it. We'll figure it out." Naruto smiled. "Right now, what you need to do is use your teleportation jutsu to take us to the battlefield. Your older self could do it, so I know you can, too."

"But..." Obito's voice faded out strangely. "I don't know how to do it… I mean, especially to a place I've never been before? I don't even know how that would work."

Naruto crossed his arms. "If you can at least get us off this mountain, maybe we can figure out how to get there after. I should be able to find the place using Sage Mode. And maybe the older me will sense we're here, too."

"Alright," Obito said quietly. His eyes flared red and he took another step back, face set into a look of concentration.

But while knowing about his older self lent a sense of importance and urgency to the task of teleporting them to the battlefield, Obito couldn't figure out how to actually do it.

He concentrated for what felt like hours. Obito tried all kinds of things—mentally picturing himself appearing in that dimension, trying to focus more chakra into his eyes, staring really hard into the air hoping to see a rift or something that would give him a clue.

After they had been there a while, a small toad came by with a note from Shima and a couple of bento boxes for them. Obito wanted to seize the chance to take a break right then, but changed his mind when he saw the onigiri made of caterpillars.

"We don't need to eat anyway, remember?" Naruto said impatiently, tossing the food out as soon as the toad left. "Just hurry up and figure out how to teleport!"

"Yeah, I'll just do that, no problem," Obito snarled. "You know, I think this isn't going to work. Even if we get to that other dimension place, won't we just be stuck there again? Then you'll have to call the old toad again, and everyone will get on our case for trying to sneak off. And we still wouldn't have gotten anywhere."

"It doesn't hurt to try! It's too soon to talk about quitting. What were you thinking about when you did it the first time?"

"I told you, I wasn't really thinking about anything. I was just trying to pull you away before Orochimaru could do that body-control thing again. The ceiling was about to fall on us, I thought we were both going to die, and next thing I knew I was waking up in that other place."

Naruto rubbed his chin as he thought back to that moment. He couldn't remember anything useful.

But they had to do something. At this rate, they'd never get there. It made sense that Obito could activate the jutsu in a life-or-death situation, but it wasn't like they could replicate that here.

Or could they?

Naruto remembered the first time he managed to do a proper Summoning. Jiraiya had told him to use the Kyuubi's chakra, but no matter how hard he tried, Naruto couldn't seem to call on it without the threat of danger. That was when Jiraiya decided to push him off a cliff, to force him into a threatening situation. It worked so well, he managed to summon Gamabunta.

"Okay!" Naruto said suddenly. "I think I know where we need to go."

"Huh?" Obito looked over at him with a raised brow.

"Yeah! I was just thinking, maybe if we go to the right spot, you'll be able to concentrate better. There's a really high up place where me and Sennin-jii went near the start of my training. He said it's a good spot for meditation. Maybe it'll help."

"Maybe. I guess it's worth a shot," Obito said without much enthusiasm.

"It's not that far from here. C'mon!"

Naruto jumped away, and Obito followed after him.

Naruto was already congratulating himself on his brilliant plan.

The place was, as he'd said, not very far away. They were close to the highest point of the mountain, where cliff faces and breathtaking waterfalls overlooked the lush forests that carpeted Mount Myoboku. It really was a pretty place, with a canopy of stars above and the calls of thousands of toads below.

"It's over here," Naruto said, leading Obito to the very edge of one of the tallest cliffs, making a show of looking out over the landscape. "Look, stand right here. Can't you feel the energy around this place?"

"Not really. I don't see how this is any different," Obito said. Nevertheless, he activated his Sharingan and stood where Naruto was, settling into a stance with his feet apart and his hands in a ram seal.

Naruto backed away slowly behind him, trying not to skritch his sandals on the ground and tip Obito off to his movement.

"It's a nice view," Obito said after a second. "At least, if I'm going to be standing here doing nothing—"

Taking a running start, Naruto tackled Obito in mid-sentence. His momentum kept them moving forward, and they both tipped over the edge of the cliff.

Gravity reversed itself and they plunged head-down, rushing toward the distant spikes at the bottom of the mountain. The starry night sky stretched out endlessly below their feet.

"What are you doing?" Obito screamed. He tried to struggle free, but Naruto held on tightly. This place wasn't slick like the gorge Jiraiya had pushed him over. There had to be no chance of Obito finding a place to cling to the side of the cliff.

"Teleport us to safety!" Naruto shouted over the rushing wind. "I know you can do it! Otherwise, we're going to get impaled about a hundred times, and I don't wanna find out if we can survive that!"

"Are you insane?"

Obito's face was set in a grimace of terror. Naruto saw the tomoe in his eyes shift and make room for more. He had three in each eye now.

The ground was rapidly becoming more visible. Naruto really hoped Obito would figure it out. Their bodies were made of tough stuff, but this was the sort of fall it might be better to die from than survive.

It almost felt like they were slowing down. The space around them stretched and bent slightly, like wrinkles in a backdrop made of paper. The scenery above and below grew paler, almost transparent. Through the thinning material of that place and moment, they could almost see something... some place else.

Then it was like they weren't anywhere at all. It still felt like they were falling, but up or down no longer had meaning. Obito grit his teeth, straining to make the other dimension come more fully into view, make it more solid.

Naruto heard someone's voice. It echoed around them in brief snatches, like a broken radio without static.

"You haven't realized it."

Someone was talking? Where? How? He couldn't place the voice.

"You've been trying to merge your past self with the current Naruto... hearing the old you in Naruto's words."

"What the hell?" Obito wondered out loud, but his voice didn't travel. From his expression, Naruto could tell he could hear the voice, too.

There were more words, but they emerged only to fade out before they could be heard. Sometimes they overlapped with one another in disconnected snatches.

"All I can give you is death."

The other person said something in response, but it was blotted out, muffled.

The regular world suddenly became more visible around them.

The ground was very close.

"Obito!"

Naruto's shout made it through.

"I'm trying!" Obito squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.

The outside world blinked out.

They landed on a hard, flat surface, but it was a very short fall. It felt like waking suddenly from vertigo. Naruto rolled over and immediately bumped into one of the many square columns that made up the other dimension. He looked around.

Obito opened his eyes. They'd both managed to stay conscious this time. Naruto gave a victorious grin and a thumbs-up.

"Okay," Obito said. "I'm still really pissed you did that, but—"

There was an explosion from some distance away, and they both jumped. Without having to discuss it, both Naruto and Obito got to their feet and peeked carefully over the edge of the column.

It was far enough away not to be able to hear every clash or punch, but there were definitely other people here, and they were fighting. The huge explosion was caused by one combatant blocking a fireball hurled by the other one.

"What is going on? How is there someone else here?" Naruto hissed, keeping his voice low even though there was very little chance the people would hear them.

"We have to get closer."

It was exciting, even if they didn't understand it. Finally, something was happening.

Naruto and Obito crept around that column to another of the same height, gradually getting closer. The fight raged on, and the people didn't notice.

Naruto stopped and gripped Obito's arm tightly when the entire area was illuminated by a brilliant blue light. It surrounded the body of one of the fighters, electrocuting him with the harsh shriek of lightning.

"What? We need to get closer. Don't tell me you're chickening out?" Obito turned back to him, annoyed.

"It's Kakashi-sensei."

"Huh? Are you sure?" Obito craned his head over the column they were standing behind, and Naruto did the same. "Then who's the other—"

The two bodies clashed against each other, and the boys stopped and stared, frozen in place. The question didn't have to be answered, because now it was completely obvious. The lightning-enhanced kunai illuminated the Uchiha crest on the back of the older Obito's coat, because it and Kakashi's hand had gone all the way through him. Meanwhile, Kakashi was stabbed through his side with a black rod.

There was a horrifying second when everything was still, caught in the macabre image, but then the kunai dropped slowly out of Kakashi's hand and clattered to the ground. The older Obito's body heaved, and he coughed up blood. They shoved away from each other. Kakashi sank to his knees and pulled the rod out of his side.

"It's over, Obito."

The younger Obito stared with his mouth slightly open, watching everything play out in front of him, uncomprehending. He watched his older self sit up and half laugh, half cough. He looked up and gave a smile that made the younger shiver.

"You can have this battle. But I'm not giving up the war!"

The air crinkled again, converging in a spiral around the older Obito's single Sharingan. Within a few seconds, he had completely disappeared.

The younger's hands on the edge of the column were gripping so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

He grit his teeth and pulled himself up, vaulting over the column. Naruto tried to catch him by his coat, but missed. Obito jumped down and started walking toward the battle site, all his limbs shaking.

Kakashi was still slumped on his knees, breathing labored. But he looked up when Obito jumped down to the blocks on that level.

Mismatched eyes widening, Kakashi stood and stumbled backward.

But his surprise only lasted for a second. Regaining his footing, Kakashi's expression changed to a glare. He held up a shaking hand, and it burst with sharp blue energy.

"I told you, I'm not interested in your illusions," he said.