Sarutobi Hiruzen looked at them warily. "Let me get this straight. You two are claiming to be from the future and - not only that - to be the older versions of Kakashi Hatake and Obito Uchiha?"

The Sakumo look-a-like coughed sheepishly. Most of his face was covered by a black cloth mask, not unlike the boy he was claiming to be. "Yes, exactly."

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Time travel, of course. Perfect, just perfect. And the only instance of it just had to occur three months before he retired and passed on his mantle. "Do you know how much paperwork this is going to cause for me?"

The two exchanged a look. "Actually, I do," volunteered the man claiming to be Obito. His companion stared. "What?" He defended, "Running a S-ranked criminal organization isn't as easy as it sounds, alright? You wouldn't believe the shit Kakuzu would try to pull on a daily basis - I had to go over every expense with a fucking magnifying glass -"

"Wait," said Sarutobi slowly, his eyes narrowing. "What are you saying about running a S-ranked criminal organization?"

The older Kakashi gave his partner a glare.

"...It's not like I'm still in charge of it, alright?" Obito complained, "Anyways, I was pretty much brainwashed into doing it by crazy old Madara-"

"What?"

"-and yeah, it's mostly my fault, but that senile old man was the guy who convinced me into it."

The Hokage opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it. "You know what," he said finally in a long - suffering tone of voice, "explain to me exactly what kind of world you two are from."

The two paled with surprising synchronicity.

"Well," said Obito, "that went better than I thought."

"If you mean that you didn't get executed for leaving the village to run a criminal organization dedicated to putting your eye on the moon, I agree completely," Kakashi drawled. "I'm actually surprised he let us stay, considering the circumstances. But again, you did twist a few facts..."

"I couldn't exactly tell him everything, can I? He knows the basics. That's enough."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "You told him that a pair of overpowered morons tried to put an illusion on the world and were defeated. However, you neglected to tell him that one of those overpowered morons was you. I would think that's pretty important information."

"Hey, I explained the criminal organization and Madara to him."

"You told him that the organization completed bounty missions that villages wouldn't take. Kinda left out the 'capturing jinchuuriki to suck the demons out of them'. Anyways, I think he already thought you were crazy when you told him about the old man who lived with his pet plant creatures under a cave in Iwa."

A pause. "...So that's why he looked at me like that."

Kakashi sighed. "What's done is done, Obito. Let's go find the place we're supposed to be staying in and work to get back to our own time." He waved the address the Hokage had given him.

The scarred man squinted at the paper. "I don't recognize this address. You?"

"Have no idea. It'll be a surprise, at least."

So when the duo finally stopped in front of the looming gates of the main Uchiha compound, Kakashi groaned. "Obito, you didn't recognize your home address?"

"It's been decades!" Obito defended. "Besides, I did had to get half of my brain replaced by plant material. I'm lucky I didn't end up as a vegetable. So what if I can't remember a few house numbers?"

"...Right." Kakashi eyed the compound gates. "...Why did they send us to the Uchiha compound? Surely there are other places in the village."

"Because of me. The Sandaime probably told them about our situation, and they must have wanted to talk to us. Me. Probably want to interrogate me on the future."

Someone inside the gates noticed them standing there and raised a hand in greeting. The Uchiha man strode over and opened the gates. Now that he was closer, Kakashi realized that he recognized the man. "Fugaku-san?"

"Ah, Kakashi, considering the circumstances. I'm used to you being a few feet shorter, you see." He glanced over to Obito, and his welcoming expression turned a bit colder. "...Obito. The Sandaime-sama explained your situations to me. I told him that I was glad to help, in any way possible. Come on in."

Obito couldn't help but stare at his surroundings. The last time he had seen this place, it had been soaked with the blood of dead Uchiha - dead Uchiha that he helped kill. He clenched his hands at the memory.

After his attack on the village with the Kyuubi, all the Uchiha houses around Konoha had been relocated and put into one big compound - this one. Easier to keep an eye on the Uchiha, Obito supposed.

He shuddered and lowered his gaze resolutely. That was the past, and no matter how much he wanted to change it, he couldn't.

Or could he?

His thought process was interrupted when Fugaku slid open the door of a nearby house. "You two will be staying here," he said, gesturing inside. "There's one bed, I'm afraid - but that shouldn't be a problem, should it?"

"Hngk," said Obito. "No, it isn't," said Kakashi.

"Ah. Good. Feel free to settle in. And, if you two don't mind... Mikoto would really love having you two over for dinner tomorrow night." And, with a surprisingly genuine smile, Fugaku left.

The door slid shut. "I'm guessing that's not exactly optional," said Kakashi.

"No, it isn't," groaned Obito. "Shit, this is not going to end well."

"No?"

"Look at me, Kakashi. I have one eye. I'm an Uchiha. The Clan's going to fucking murder me."

"I doubt they will be able to. It's not as if you haven't done the opposite before."

"Shut up, Kakashi," said Obito without much heat. "Anyways, it's more about the... psychological part, not the physical. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can take the majority - but they can take it out on us - me - for however long we stay here - which should be quite a while, considering how we have no idea how we actually got here."

"Hn. You have an explanation in mind?"

"I can always tell them the truth," Obito decided. "They shouldn't be too pissed if my eye still belonged to a Konoha shinobi, not some random enemy nin out there in the world."

"Don't you dare," warned Kakashi. "You have no idea what happened after Kannabi Bridge. Your clan went completely berserk - I'm pretty sure they wanted to disembowel me with a senbon, if that's even possible. You're lucky you died when you did. You didn't have to face the fallout."

He paused. "Did you hear something? A squeak?"

Obito blinked. "Uh, no. Are you hearing things?"

"Yes- no. I don't know, but whatever made it isn't here anymore." He paused. "You don't think it's -?"

"Knowing myself, probably. I'm harmless, don't worry about it. I'm pretty sure he won't blurt anything out, considering that he's going to be in a lot of trouble if the clan finds out about my eye."

"So," said Kakashi. "We're in the past."

"Seems so."

"Where almost everyone we lost are still alive."

"Yup."

"Have you thought about -" Kakashi hesitated. "-changing anything?"

"You think I haven't?" Obito snapped. "But think about it! If we change the outcomes, we won't exist anymore. And since we don't exist anymore, we won't be here to make the changes in the first place. I'm not to eager to make an infinite paradox, Kakashi."

"But we won't," said Kakashi. "We've already made plenty of changes and we're still here. I, for one, don't remember older versions of you and myself making out in the Forest of Death."

Obito's jaw dropped. "You mean-?"

"I don't think this is our timeline, Obito. Our younger selves are pretty stupid-"

"Speak for yourself, Kakashi."

"-but Sensei isn't. Neither is the Sandaime-sama. They have at least some foreknowledge due to our explanations, enough to change something in our timeline. There's a reason time travel has never occurred before. The travelers would eventually end up fading from the timeline, because they simply don't exist in the new one."

"So we're not in the past?"

"Yes and no. Personally, I think we're just in a parallel dimension where events had happened slower than they had in ours. It's the past, technically, just not our past."

"You're saying that we can change everything," said Obito. "Rin won't have to die, Sensei would live a happy life with his family -"

"-and you'll still be in the village," said Kakashi, "not half-smushed in a cave somewhere in Iwa."

"Let's do it," Obito said resolutely.

"Maa, calm down. We can't do anything until the Kannabi Bridge mission anyways, whenever it happens."

"Fine." He paused. "Hey Kakashi, remember what got us sent here in the first place?"

"If you mean your libido, yes."

"Shut up, Kakashi. Like you didn't want it. Anyways, it just hit me. We've still haven't accomplished what we've set out to do."

A sigh. "Obito, you horny bastard..."

"My plan succeeded, you know. That blonde brat of yours can't interrupt us now." A smirk. "And we have a pretty damn big bed right there, so you can't complain about location."

"...Fine. You do realize that if your younger self hears, he's going to be traumatized for life."

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Maybe this way, I can actually find out about the birds and the bees without getting it explained to me by a creepy old Uchiha ancestor."

A pause. "Uchiha Madara was the one to give you sex ed?"

A cough. "Yeah, let's talk about this later. The last thing I want on my mind right now is his wrinkly old face." But, as if he couldn't resist, Obito added, "And what, did you think his hard-on for Hashirama was only metaphorical? Madara had a lot of issues. Hell, he had issues with people watching him piss."

"Wait, what was that?"

"Shut up Kakashi."

Obito Uchiha, 13, stared at the mirror with wide eyes.

It was obvious now. How could he have not seen it before? He should have guessed from what the older versions of him and Kakashi were doing when his team had first encountered them in the forest. What he overheard from their conversation was just the final piece in the puzzle.

He gazed upon his reflection. No wonder his team was looking at him in such a weird way. They knew the truth too. They just didn't want to tell him.

His brain added two and two, and got five.

There was only one possibility, decided Obito. With a heavy weight in his heart, he crawled under the bed and retrieved a dented wooden bat.

He had been turned into a zombie in the future - one of the face-eating ones that he saw on the occasional mission. The scars that marred his future self's face was evidence enough of that - the missing eye too; he knew zombies were often missing body parts. And, even worse, he had tried to infect Kakashi - who was a complete bastard, yeah, but also didn't deserve to be turned into a - he shuddered - face - eating zombie.

Obito hefted the heavy bat onto his shoulder. There was a resolute expression on his face and a look of utter determination in his eyes.

He had to end this before the zombie infected everyone in the village. It was himself who was the zombie, so it had to be him who took care of the situation.

Obito gulped. He had never killed a zombie before. He had used the bat, sure - the dents were proof of that - but those had always been from poles or benches he had accidentally hit. His team never let him finish things off.

...Tomorrow then, he decided. He would confront his older self tomorrow.