Obito-Sensei Chapter 39

Best Intentions

After Kisame left, Obito considered the outpost from a distance.

Tucked into the mountains, it was a little unconventional for a shinobi; the primary entrance was a cave hidden by bristly mountain plants, doubtlessly equipped with traps to deter anyone recklessly approaching and warn anyone inside of new arrivals. All hideouts like this had another exit or entrance, that was just common sense, but in this case Obito wasn't sure where it would be. The mountain above was sheer, so any sort of ladder or vertical space meant for wall-walking would extend rather far up and make a quick getaway that much slower. A back entrance would have the same issues, which pricked the possibility in his mind that the cave entrance was a red herring: big and obvious and defendable, but not the actual way into the outpost.

But Kisame had seen the Cloud team, two men and two women, enter the cave, not some other secret entrance, so Obito had no choice but to confront the fact that no matter how much everyone wished otherwise, sometimes things just weren't made perfectly. This outpost probably did not get much use: Frost was the only land border with Lightning, true, but it did not have any shinobi of its own. Any large-scale shinobi movements towards Cloud would be detected long before they reached a runty outpost like this by sources within the nation's various governments, so it was hardly an important listening post. It probably did just have a crappy evacuation route that had never been sincerely considered as useful.

After a minute of thought, Obito stood up with a sigh and shoved his hands in his pockets. An old and insincere trick, but it had come in handy a couple times, so there wasn't any reason not to use it. Even Shinobi were less paranoid if your hands were clearly occupied.

He ambled towards the cave entrance, keeping a careful eye out for any hidden ninja or traps. His Sharingan burned in the night, finding nothing, and after a second of hesitation he slipped through the brambles and branches blocking the entrance. The cave was warmer than the brisk mountain air, and Obito took a breath in, smelling rot. It went deep, he thought, peering into the impenetrable darkness as his Sharingan rendered it with supernatural clarity. There were probably several branches, and at least one of them had mold in it. Most likely, the outpost had been set up inside of an existing cave instead of some Earth Jutsu user making one.

As he soundlessly walked forward, he noticed a wire strung across the ground and rolled his eyes. An amateur trick that could only deter any non-ninja who wandered this way. His foot passed through it and he looked from side to side, looking for anything more. The passage was growing broader and taller, all natural light obscured at this point. And yet, there was still some light. So faint that only the Sharingan could detect it, spilling from one of the smaller caves that branched off to the left.

Obito continued wandering, following the faint light, and it grew brighter. As he walked through the dark, he wondered what his team was up to. They'd been in this country just recently, after all. Were they happy? Were they healthy? Had they learned anything new? If they were trusted enough to leave the Nation, even with company, they must have been doing well in their mission, but were they just being strung along or was it true success? He didn't know, and it filled him with a tremendous frustration. He hadn't regretted his decision yet, but moments like this midnight introspection made him want to burn the world down.

Minato was the best of the Kage, he was sure. And yet, the best of the Kage had put this in motion, given away children, to find out if another war was necessary or not. It made his gut twist. He never had heard from his sensei about the Hunter team sent after Sakura: had they given up, or been chased off?

Obito was so absorbed in thought that he almost missed the source of the invisible light, silently padding right past a stone that was flush to the wall. He stopped, backing up a couple steps, and followed the play of dust particles dancing in the air to the top of the stone. It was a separate piece, he realized. The outpost was hidden behind it, and lit by what was almost certainly torchlight.

He pressed his ear against the stone, closing his eyes and focusing. He was rewarded with a murmur. One, two, three voices, quietly speaking behind the wall. The words couldn't be distinguished from each other, but they sounded relaxed. They should have: Obito understood now that the outpost's location was focused on concealment, not escaping an engagement. It was no wonder they'd stopped here instead of pushing on back to Cloud: this was a place where you could bunker up and never be found by most ninja.

But Obito wasn't most ninja, so he just stepped through the wall.

The stone wasn't too thick, a little more than a foot, and the transition from darkness to light was near instant. Obito found himself in a small and spartan room with bunks lining the walls, a circular table surrounded by chairs in the center, and a single adjoining room connected by a rough hewn door. There were three people seated at the table, two of them wearing Cloud's symbols; a woman with dark skin and purple hair, and a pale, tall man with knives strapped to both his shoulders. The last was a young man with square glasses and a squarer face, his features jovial and bright.

The Cloud shinobi had impressive reflexes. Before Obito had even fully cleared the wall, they leapt to their feet, eyes wide with fear. One of them tugged the knives from his shoulder, holding both in a reverse grip: the other ran through five hand-signs and slammed both her palms to the floor as the man with glasses tripped backwards in his chair and sprawled across the floor. Obito watched the sequence with interest; he knew most of this jutsu. It was a modified-

The roof collapsed, dumping several tons of stone directly on top of his head, and Obito felt a sick, squirmy feeling in his chest that was something between nostalgia and agony. He didn't take a moment to dramatically pause and let them wonder if they'd gotten him, which he'd never admit that he'd definitely done a couple times when he was younger. Instead he just kept walking forward, and a knife sheathed in lightning flew through his clavicle and buried itself in the new pile of stone behind him.

The shinobi who'd thrown it stared, bug-eyed, as Obito emerged from the rubble. The woman was making a similar expression, scrambling back towards the doorway.

"Oh fuck," the man said. "It's Obito Uchiha."

Obito crossed his arms, glancing between the two of them. "Good thing too," he noted as the man straightened up with an uneasy expression. "You'd have a corpse on your hands otherwise."

"A corpse we could get rid of," the woman said, her eyes darting back and forth between Obito and the square-faced man who was pulling himself out of his fallen chair. "That's not quite an option here."

"How cold!" Obito grinned, watching her eyes. He always felt more confident with people he didn't know; they didn't know the real him, only the reputation. As he spoke, another two shinobi, a man with a glaive and a woman with burning orange eyes, rushed out of the other room and slid to a stop, faces going pale.

"Why are you here?" the man with the knives said, and Obito gave him a curious look.

"What's your name?" he asked, and the man flinched.

"Shinzo," he said, and Obito clicked his tongue.

"Well, Shinzo, I'm not here for anything nasty," he said, and the other shinobi in the room only grew more tense. "And I'm not interested in starting a fight." He glanced over each of them in turn, and noted that the woman with orange eyes had horrible bruises all over her left arm, which was held in a sling: probably broken. The one that Haku had almost frozen? Almost certainly. The others had small injuries as well, mostly more bruises or little cuts. They'd been roughed up, but nothing more.

"You followed us here." The man on the floor spoke up, propping himself up on his elbows. He really was young, probably barely twenty. "Are you chasing after me too?"

Obito smiled and stepped forward, extending a hand to help the man up. "Katasuke Touno?"

Katasuke gave an uncertain smile and started to reach out before Shinzo snapped at him. "Don't touch him," he told the man, keeping his eyes fixed on Obito. "He'll eat you."

Katasuke withdrew his hand with an alarmed look, and Obito laughed. "I definitely would not," he said, trying not to show he had been considering it. Well, drawing him into the Kamui, not eating him. "But I understand."

"So what, you're here to snap him up?" the woman who'd buried him said. "Konoha doesn't have anything better for you to do than tracking down no-names?"

"Hey!" Katasuke protested, scooting back away from Obito and climbing to his feet. The woman rolled her eyes.

"If I were here to grab him I already would have," Obito said. "The Hokage tries to avoid kidnapping; people usually just end up running anyway, right?" He took a step forward and pulled one of the chairs towards him, settling down in a casual position, one arm hung over the back of the sturdy wooden frame. "I'm just here to get a feel for him."

"Huh." Katasuke righted his chair and took a seat across from Obito as the Cloud shinobi watched from the sides of the room, ready for anything. "Well, I'm glad you're not here to grab me." He moved a little stiffly, and Obito looked him over, searching for a wound. He couldn't see anything, but the man's left leg was dragging a little. Maybe an old injury? "I was worried that the Daimyo was being a sore loser," he finished with a grin.

"A sore loser, huh?" Obito leaned back and crossed his arms. "Did they reach out to you or something?"

Katasuke shrugged, his eyes flicking downward. An obvious tell, or a good fake one. "No, nothing like that. But there've been more people paying attention to me in the last week than in my whole life." He laughed, a full-throated and sincere sound. "I guess as soon as you pick a village all the other start wondering what they're missing, huh?"

"So you picked Cloud?" Obito asked. "I was told the Land of Lightning reached out to you."

The flick downward again. Unless Katasuke was so good an actor that he could fool even the Sharingan, the uncertainty was real. "It was half and half, I guess. Why do you care?" He tried to imitate Obito, to lean back and look at ease, and failed miserably.

"Like I said, I was sent to get a feel for you," Obito said, scratching at his scar. "The Hokage is very curious why Lightning would reach out to you, especially when Cloud has been so focused on building its strength internally in the last couple years." He glanced around, gauging the other shinobi. They all were frozen, entirely unsure what to do. He couldn't blame them. He'd caught them off guard, tracked them down; he was calm now, but Obito Uchiha was still the Hokage's personal hitman, the man who had bathed in the blood of a hundred ninja from Stone before he turned fifteen. They probably thought that if they intervened, he'd bury their bodies beneath the mountains.

Katasuke gave him a doubtful look. "Even I've heard of you," he said instead of answering Obito's implied question. "I guess I'm just shocked I merited this."

Obito shrugged. "I had a quiet week," he said with a grin, and Katasuke chuckled.

"Okay, well, hey, if you're just here to understand…" he said, glancing at his Cloud escort. Shinzo pursed his lips and nodded, and Katasuke reached down, grabbing the hem of his pants. Obito cocked his head as the man rolled his pant leg up, exposing the skin of his left leg.

Except there was no skin. Instead, there was dirty metal in the shape of a leg. Obito leaned in, resting his elbows on his knees as he peered at Katasuke's leg, fascinated. It was like tarnished stainless steel, with cables running above and below it like muscles, an unerring facsimile of a real leg. More than that, his Sharingan saw what someone else could not: Katasuke's chakra was running through his leg, just like it would a normal limb. The artificial leg had an artificial chakra system.

"Wow," he whispered, and the look of pride that crept across Katasuke's face was unmistakably genuine.

"Thanks," he said, rolling his pant leg back down. "It's my pride and joy."

"I'd bet," Obito said, blinking. A completely artificial leg, and all he had was a little stiffness? He couldn't believe it. "You made that? I've never seen a prosthetic like it." Ninja and civilian alike lost limbs as a fact of life, but the most advanced Obito had ever seen were plastic and polycarbonates that could never fully mimic a limb, and even those could only be afforded by the rich. Katasuke's leg was light-years ahead of anything of its kind in its construction, and having a chakra system that integrated with his?

Inconceivable.

"It took years to develop," Katasuke admitted, drumming his fingers on the table. "I lost my leg at the end of the Third War, and I couldn't stand it. So I decided to make a new one." He leaned forward, looking a little desperate. "Lightning's agreed to give me all the materials I'd ever need. All the funding. No one else seemed as interested, so I said yes." His lips twitched. "You understand, right, Obito Uchiha? No one deserves to live without a limb, no matter what Hidden Village they work for. If I had it my way, I would make them for everyone."

He sat back, his face falling. "But that's not the way the world works, right?"

"No," Obito admitted, looking the man over. "It's not." He looked over at Shinzo, the apparent captain of the Cloud squad. "So, that's what Cloud wants him for then? To make prosthetics?" He frowned. "To expand your weapons program, maybe?" Katasuke gave him a dour look.

Shinzo's eyes narrowed. "We weren't informed," he said curtly. "Our mission was to escort him, not hear his life's story."

"You should have asked more questions," Obito said, playing Katasuke's words in his head. The man had no loyalty to any village, only to his dream: that made him both an effective and dangerous spy, should he choose to become one. "He's clearly a genius. Did you know his leg has an artificial chakra system? It's a miracle."

He stood up, and the other ninja flinched. "You better keep him safe," he warned. "Don't let him waste his time making weapons, if that's why Lightning reached out to him. He's someone that could change the world." He'd never heard of a machine that could store chakra of any sort. A couple years ago, he would have kidnapped Katasuke without hesitation, despite his words.

But today, it felt wrong.

"I've got one more question," he said, and the woman with orange eyes grumbled under her breath. "I was told you four ran into a team from the Nation of Rain up here. Sounds like they were interested in Katasuke as well."

"Those bastards?" the woman spoke up, stepping forward. Shinzo shot her a look.

"Kiyou..." he muttered, and she hissed, shifting her broken arm.

"I thought I recognized one of them," she said with a sneer, looking Obito over. "And if you're here, I must have been right. That was the Hokage's son, wasn't it?" The sneer deepened. "Come looking for the ones you lost?"

"Maybe," Obito said, wondering how she knew he'd been their sensei. Cloud hadn't attended the Chunin Exam, but it was a no-brainer that they'd sent agents of the village or Lightning to observe the competitors, and it wouldn't have been hard to learn that from there. "I was told there was a girl with pink hair with them as well. She had a water sword." The other male Cloud ninja rubbed at his neck. "Was that true?"

"True enough," Kiyou said, baring her teeth. "They chased us all the way to town, and a little beyond it when that fish freak ran us off. Real bloodthirsty bunch: you must have trained them well."

Obito took a step forward, and despite her bravado Kiyou flinched. He spoke quietly and clearly.

"How'd they look?"

The woman blinked. "Eh?"

"How'd they look?" Obito said, trying to exude patience. "Healthy? Happy? Like they were eating their vegetables?" Another step, and this time the woman backed up. "I would like to know. Now. Tell me."

"We didn't get a good look," Shinzo interrupted, drawing Obito's attention away from the now wide-eyed woman. "But they were well coordinated, and strong. If those kids were fourteen, it could have fooled me. They acted like they were twice their age." He gestured. "That girl almost cut Daisuke's head off."

"If she'd wanted to cut his head off," Obito said dismissively, "she would have." The man, Daisuke, looked offended. "Still, that's good to hear. I wouldn't want Rain to mistreat them."

"Is it true she killed Waterfall's leader?" Daisuke asked, and Obito gave him an incredulous look. "Hey, if anyone would know-"

"I heard she beat him up," Obito said, still not sure if that story was fact or fiction. It was a crazy rumor that had started making the rounds recently, spread from who knew where. Sakura wasn't the kind of person who went around beating on foreign leaders, so far as he knew, so the whole thing seemed ridiculous. "Where the hell did you hear that?"

"You knew them?" Katasuke asked, and Obito looked back at the still-seated man. He shifted under the sudden attention of the Mangekyo Sharingan. "I mean, it sounds like it. Were… you their teacher or something?"

"I was," Obito said shortly, and the man paused.

"You don't hold a grudge?" he asked. "If they went to Rain…" He laughed under his breath. "I heard the Hokage's son had defected, I didn't know it was to them. That's a little crazy, isn't it?"

"I don't hold a grudge," Obito said, ignoring the second question. "I'll start thinking about it if they don't come back."

"Why does it matter?" Katasuke asked. "What village they're working for, I mean."

"They abandoned their friends and family." Obito's voice was curt, driving the man's eyes down towards the table. "They abandoned me. I can forgive them for that, if they realize it was a stupid decision." He grunted. "It was nice to meet you, Katasuke. I hope you find success in the Land of Lightning."

Katasuke looked up at his name, and Obito flexed one of the non-existent muscles behind his eye, relishing the supernatural feeling of burning chakra coiling inside his eye. As they made eye contact, he pushed a mild genjutsu directly into the man's brain, and the genius twitched, an involuntary muscle reaction.

It was a simple and direct illusion, only auditory. For a moment, Katasuke would have continued to hear Obito speak.

'And, if you find that it's not going in your favor, you may find a home in the Land of Fire.'

With that, he stepped backwards through the wall, out of sight, and immediately whipped himself away into the Kamui. That one always freaked people out, he thought. He looked around his inner world, reaching down and picking up a candy bar wrapper with a frown. He'd dropped this miles away, but a gust of wind must have come through his Kamui and thrown it all this distance.

Probably bad luck to litter in your private dimension, he thought, looking around and wondering how much junk there really was sitting around in here. It wasn't something he'd ever cared about, but that had been when he was young and convinced he would die an early and blind death. He just hadn't modified his habits since then, like so many other things. He sat down, crossing his legs and propping his chin on his knuckles.

Katasuke had surprised him, he had to admit. "And why not?" he said to the emptiness inside his eye. "He's a good guy. A shame that Lightning reached out before Fire did." He scratched his chin. "Or that Fire's offer wasn't good enough, maybe."

Prosthetics. That was a thorny issue, he thought. Benign on the surface, but he knew many shinobi who'd consider that an unacceptable escalation. Prosthetics like that meant that a shinobi who lost an arm or a leg would be able to be deployed at full strength, or close enough to it, as soon as they were fitted with a replacement. It was no wonder Lightning was so interested in the man, and Rain as well. Technology had never been able to keep pace with chakra; Obito had seen experimental technology before, flamethrowers that could mimic fire jutsu, mechanical contraptions that could detonate like explosive tags, but nothing that was as convenient as a ninja or as easy to mass produce.

But Katasuke's leg wasn't like the technology Obito knew: it was more like the elegant and deadly puppet jutsu of Suna, used to assist the real body instead of making an autonomous one. Perhaps a puppet master could do the same thing, he wondered, making an artificial limb or even body for themselves, but it would be the result of a lifetime of work: Katasuke was young, not even thirty, and his limb had been a seamless integration of his body's chakra system. It was unbelievable.

He probably should have grabbed the man, what he'd said be damned. He could go back and do it now. But kidnapping someone just because he'd be useful wasn't the kind of person he was. Or, he amended, wasn't the kind of person he was trying to become. Sensei had understood that when he'd sent him; if he'd want Katasuke taken no matter what, he would have sent someone like Gai, who would have done it with a smile and an apology.

Obito sat there in the dark for some time, pleasantly losing track of time in the dim and silent malaise of the Kamui, staring out into the endless abyss. It mirrored the real world, so far as he knew: if he walked far enough, he'd circle around and come back to this exact point. No matter how far you moved forward, eventually you'd arrive at where you began.

Eventually, thousands of moments of introspection and mindlessness combined later, Obito stood up. His mission was complete, but he didn't want to head back quite yet.

He wanted to visit the coast first.

###

Nine days later, Rin Nohara was in her office, watching the sunset and wondering where the hell Obito was.

It had been a pretty long day, even by the standards of medical administration. Nothing too dramatic in terms of injury, but there'd been a goddamn heart attackof all things that had been rushed in the door after noon, and dealing with that had taken the rest of the day. How any shinobi could slack off hard enough to get any sort of heart disease boggled Rin's mind, but she'd long ago given up on trying to understand people's unhealthy habits. The paperwork hadn't been terrible today either, only boring, and boring she could handle.

She sighed and sat back in her large and uncomfortably comfortable chair, glancing up at the clock. She could afford to leave now; she'd gotten enough of her stack cleared, enough that she wouldn't feel guilty leaving it. Requisition, treatment approvals, drug experimentation: Rin's position as a Head Medical Ninja sounded like an exciting one, but she was always more jealous of the people actually doing that sort of stuff, creating new treatments instead of rubberstamping them.

As she started to sit up, a young man stuck his head through her office door, fixing his ice blue eyes on her. Tanjiro Tanaka, one of her many assistants and a competent doctor in his own right, if a little too nervous for his own good. "Lady Nohara," he said, and she glared at him. He swallowed. "The Lord Hokage's wife passed a message to me. She wanted to meet you after work."

"Oh." Rin twisted her frown into a smile, apparently unsettling the man. "Thanks, Tanjiro. Did she give a place?"

"Her home," he said, bowing and retreating. Rin let him go and then sighed, finally pushing herself up and from behind her desk. Even if her last mission outside of the village had ended in a minor village burning down, she found herself thinking she'd rather have another one like that than another week of sitting behind a desk.

Kushina, huh? She wondered what the woman wanted to talk about as she organized her desk a final time and left her office behind. Maybe Obito. There hadn't been any word from him in eight days, and even that had just been him dropping a note in Minato's office.

'Didn't know when he'd be back' is what he'd said, and Rin snorted at the memory as she made her down the halls of the hospital. Obito had probably thought finding Myoboku would be just another jaunt for him: he'd been able to teleport wherever he wanted for more of his life than he hadn't been able to, and she was positive it had twisted his sense of time. But apparently, the hidden Mountain of the Toads was a little tricker to find than a hidden village or a cowering clerk. Knowing Obito, he'd be far too stubborn to return before he found it.

He could be gone for a while.

It was funny. He'd never shown any interest in acquiring a summoning contract before now. As Rin took the stairs, she stared out over the bustling village and smiled. Even if Obito hadn't admitted it, the reason was obvious. Just like everything else, he'd been devoted to working alone. Like he'd said up on the Hokage Monument, he was a ghost; relying on others would only put them in danger, he thought. Summons wouldn't have fit that style.

And maybe, she thought, just maybe he'd been moronic enough to think he didn't deserve it. He was definitely thick enough. She still found herself remembering the night before he'd left with an embarrassed, disbelieving clarity.

Had he really not seen what she was doing? Or had it been a polite rejection? She had no idea, and that fact scared and amused her in equal measure. Obito could look at a prepared position and instantly pick out everywhere a ninja could be hiding or a trap could be laid, could flawlessly keep track of thirty shinobi attacking him from every angle, but god forbid he notice someone taking an interest in him.

Why had that happened anyway? Just from their conversation on the Monument? It was a little sad, Rin thought. Obito had only had eyes for her when they were young, but she'd been interested in Kakashi, not the klutzy Uchiha. Then, afterwards, she'd been too hurt and he'd inherited too many responsibilities, becoming too strong too fast for the both of them. They'd continued that dance for more than a decade now, never mentally in the right place at the right time, and now, when he'd reawakened the version of himself she was interested in as more than a friend, he couldn't take the hint.

Her own fault just as much as his, she chided herself. If she wanted him, she'd have to catch a ghost. That was a little exciting, right?

There were other reasons he was on her mind, Rin thought. The note he'd left had included details about the work of the man he'd been sent after, Katasuke Touno. A rogue ninja born in the Land of Fire, but who'd never been a Shinobi of Konoha. Chakra conductive prosthetics were something that Rin had considered in the past: she'd had to make battlefield amputations before, and tell several ninja that no matter what she did, they wouldn't be getting that limb back.

But from what Obito had written, Katasuke's work was unbelievably, unfairly advanced. A metal limb with an artificial chakra system was a game-changer in every sense of the word. Rin was a little irritated that Obito hadn't dragged the man back, or taken his leg; a cruel thought, but the idea that Cloud of all villages would be the one to get their hands on such technology was crueler. They'd certainly never share it: Kumo was always interested in military superiority over every other consideration.

Their best hope was that the man would defect, or that the opportunity would arise to take him. Rin would kill an arbitrary amount of people to acquire prosthetics like the Katasuke had; the suffering it would prevent was incalculable.

But then, she thought, maybe sensei's plan would eventually come through, and even a place like Kumo would see there was more to gain from sharing technology like that rather than hoarding it. It was a pleasant and idyllic thought, and it carried Rin down the rest of the stairs and out into the street.

Once she was there amidst the pleasant bustle of Konoha, her thoughts drifted once more. Still stuck on the subject of limb replacements, they wandered over to her last teacher.

How long had it been since she'd seen Tsunade Senju? Five years, Rin was pretty sure. It had been a strange relationship, half teacher-student and half owner-thief, done more out of a sense of obligation to the Sandaime than anything else. What Tsunade hadn't been willing to teach her she'd stolen, and she honestly couldn't tell if the woman had ever forgiven her. Prosthetics had never been one of Tsunade's focuses; the Sannin had always been more focused on saving people's lives than fixing them up afterwards, though Rin was pretty sure her regeneration could replace a limb if push came to shove.

Hopefully it never would. Rin wondered where Tsunade was now, if she was still traveling with Shizune. The level-headed girl would keep the older woman safe, she thought, but it was still a tragedy for such an incredible medical ninja to have cut herself off from the world that had created her. She was sure the only thing that could possibly bring the Sannin back to Konoha would be a war, and even that wasn't a sure thing. Rin had helped cure her fear of blood, but it was more than just phobia that kept Tsunade from coming home.

Halfway between the hospital and Kushina's home, she spotted a familiar face in the press of the crowd. Kurenai Yuhi made eye contact with her from across the street, and Rin refused to look away, pinning the woman with her eyes. Kurenai blushed, and altered her path to intercept her. There was someone with her. Hinata Hyuuga, a little taller than last time she'd seen her. Girls grew so fast at that age; Rin knew she had.

"Rin," Kurenai said as they met up in a lul in the crowd and moved to the side of the street, Hinata trailing them with a curious look. "I'm so sorry. About Asuma."

Rin crossed her arms. "You don't have to be sorry if he's learned his lesson," she said. Kurenai frowned.

"It won't happen again," she said. 'We made sure of that. But you have to understand… what he was feeling."

"I don't," Rin said, unimpressed. This is what she'd been taken aside for? More half-assed excuses? "None of this was Obito's fault. If you blame him for it, you're only showing your own mediocrity."

Kurenai's gaze went cold. "They were his responsibility. It can only be his fault," she hissed. She glanced back at Hinata. "Everyone in the village lost something when they left. A symbol, a friend, or something more. All those wounds fall on Obito. That doesn't mean Asuma should have done-"

"Hit him?" Rin asked flatly.

"Hit him," Kurenai said. "It doesn't, but it's also understandable. No one wants to drive Obito away; his loyalty to the village is unquestionable. But when something like this happens… it's hard to be rational. You must know that, right?"

Rin narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, regarding the woman. "What do you think, Hinata?" she said, not even glancing down at the girl, and Kurenai jolted, caught off guard. The Hyuuga flinched as well, looking up at Rin. She dropped her gaze and softened her expression, looking into Hinata's pupil-less eyes. "Do you think Obito deserves any of this?"

Hinata stayed silent, looking up at her and chewing on her lip. When she spoke, her voice was soft but sure.

"No," she said, and Kurenai looked down at her with a neutral look. "No," she said again, shaking her head. "Sasuke and Naruto and Sakura made their own decision. Obito-sensei's only failing was being unable to catch them." She narrowed her eyes, an uncharacteristically harsh look, and Rin cocked an eyebrow. "If it was their own decision."

Interesting thing to say. Rin kept eye contact with the girl for a moment longer before looking back to Kurenai. She smiled.

"From the mouths of babes, etcetera," she said. Kurenai twitched. "Did you think it was someone else's decision, Hinata?"

"I don't know," Hinata said, her courage failing. She looked down to the street, her bangs falling across her eyes. "I hope so. It wouldn't be as…"

Her voice failed, and she clasped her hands together, twisting them and staring at the ground.

"Wouldn't be as bad," Rin finished for her. "Yeah. Let's hope, huh?" She strode past Kurenai, turning to fire a last volley over her shoulder. "Tell Asuma that if he pulls something like that again, he'll be talking to me instead of his mommy." She grinned, not even trying to not look nasty. "I won't be as gentle."

Kurenai watched her go with an unreadable expression, and Rin lost herself in the crowd again, not caring about the occasional look she received. The opinions of the ignorant and fools was not something she concerned herself with; after you made a decision like which life to save between two ninja bleeding to death in front of you, something like people judging you for what company you kept was revealed as completely pointless.

Eventually the crowds thinned out as Rin entered the residential zone, and she rotated her shoulder, working out a kink. What an infuriating woman, she thought. Kurenai was one of those people who looked reasonable but Rin couldn't respect at all; always flip-flopping, following the prevailing wind. An exemplary ninja, but that was it.

Not a fair assessment, Rin knew, but it was hers.

Kushina's home was a relatively short walk past other, larger houses and over two of Konoha's canals, and Rin allowed herself to enjoy the journey, the whisper of the water and the caress of the wind. When she arrived at Kushina's home, the gate to the front yard was already open. Rin let herself in, knocking twice sharply on the door before opening it as well.

"Rin?" Kushina's voice came from deeper within. "Is that you? Come in!"

Rin wandered down the hall, avoiding the picture of Kakashi as always, and stopped dead at the end of it. Kushina was seated in the living room, normal enough, with a huge scroll stretched out in front of her.

But Mikoto was kneeling on the other side of it, observing Kushina's work, and Rin felt her heart rate spike at the side of the Uchiha's perfect black hair. She was filled with the urge to bury her fist in the woman's brain.

Kushina looked up at her, and Rin wondered just how much time she spent working on Fuinjutsu like this. Her jealousy spiked again, quickly buried.

"Hey!" she said, stepping fully into the room and pointedly ignoring Mikoto. "What's up?"

"Right back atcha," Kushina said with a grin, turning her attention back to the scroll as Mikoto remained silent. "I wanted to check in with you, see how you were doing." Her expression softened a little. "Things are still rough out there. Obito still hasn't come back?"

"Nah, he's still out and about," Rin said, leaning against the wall. "Who knows how long it will take him."

"Yeah, he didn't pick something easy for himself," Kushina said, furrowing her brow.

"What's she doing here?" Rin asked, gesturing at Mikoto. The Uchiha didn't look back at her, just kept her head lowered and eyes fixed on the scroll. Kushina's eyes narrowed.

"Cause she's my friend," Kushina said, severe as a cliff. Rin stiffened at the older woman's look. "Deal with it."

She'd stepped in something that went beyond just her own anger, Rin realized. She backed off, raising one hand and dropping her head, and Kushina grinned. It wasn't a very nice smile, but it was enough for Rin to know she was forgiven.

"She asked for my help with a new barrier," Mikoto said, her tone level. "I'm always happy to help. It's the least I can do."

"A new barrier?" Rin asked with an aside look. "Another?"

"This is for my personal use," Kushina said with her normal smile. "Not something for the village." She twirled a finger through her long red hair, and Rin wondered, as she had many times before, if she could even come close to pulling off something like Kushina's style. She'd grown her hair out after training with Tsunade, but Kushina's went all the way down to her waist, and the woman owned it with infuriating elegance. "It's for the Kyuubi."

"The Kyuubi?" Rin felt a chill travel down her arms. "Kushina, is the seal…?"

"The seal's fine," Kushina said, dismissing Rin's concern with a wave of her hand. "Mito's work was one of a kind."

"She's determined to bring the Beast out," Mikoto said, turning to face Rin. Even with the contempt filling her heart, Rin couldn't help but see the deep sorrow in Mikoto's eyes. And why not? Even if the woman was a traitor, she was a traitor whose whole family had died or fled. "Kushina believes that the next step in her development is to master the Nine-Tails."

"Seriously?" Rin laughed. "Has anyone ever managed that? That thing doesn't seem like something that… can be."

"It might not," Mikoto said with a shrug. "No one has been able to control the Kyuubi since Madara Uchiha, and that was only with the power of his Mangekyo Sharingan."

"No one's been dumb enough to try," Kushina said. "That's what I'm going to fix." She slapped a palm down on the scroll with a proud grin. "Minato's helped me with this too, though obviously he's being a little bitch about it. It's a really simple concept, Rin: if I can't control the Kyuubi, this will keep anyone from getting hurt." The smile grew a little fiendish. "Well, anyone who I don't want getting hurt, anyway."

"So what, it's a second cage?" Rin asked. Kushina nodded.

"Sure," she said. "To set up a cage match. I've been drawing more and more of the Kyuubi's chakra out. I put this up first; it's a nice and simple grid, only a hundred by hundred, barely takes any of my chakra. Then I can use the Fox without worrying. If it gets too much for me…" She shrugged. "Then Minato or Obito can handle it. Or Mikoto."

"That seems risky," Rin said. "Its chakra is pretty toxic, isn't it?"

"It is," Mikoto said. "But she won't be dissuaded." She offered a smile, her scars crinkling. "I tried."

Rin cocked her head, not sure what to think. Eventually, she sighed.

"I miss him," she said, and Kushina gave her a funny look. "Hey, don't give me that. I'm worried about him. I don't know what he's up to out there, beyond looking for the Toads." She scratched her temple. "And I'm surprised at how well he's handling everything. When he told me he'd let them go…"

"Obito had more faith in our sons than anyone else," Kushina said. "And he still does. So long as he's got that faith, it doesn't matter how much of it the village loses in him. He'll stand by it." Her eyes faded a little. "But it's getting hard. Not knowing how they're doing." She rubbed the back of her neck. "I wonder what he's learning there, you know? I hope it's good lessons."

Mikoto started to speak, paused, began again. "I'm sure they're fine," she said, clearly not believing it. "Sasuke would…" She stopped again, looking fragile. It made Rin uncomfortable; Mikoto Uchiha wasn't supposed to look fragile. "They'll keep each other on track. That's why they went together. They'll come back together too."

"Of course," Rin said, feeling insincere even if that wasn't her intent. "It's what he trained them to do. And Naruto and Sasuke will always have each other's backs. You two made sure of that. And Sakura…"

She hesitated. And Sakura, right?

But for a long time, Sakura had been the only one of the trio that unsettled Rin, and so for a second she found herself doubting her words.

A girl who Obito had transformed from a meek and humble child into an ambitious and angry teenager. Rin didn't know Sakura well enough to know if the potential had always been there, though it must have been. But at the core of it, Sakura freaked her out. Maybe because she reminded Rin of herself, or a version of herself she could have been, or maybe just because of the influence the girl had had on Obito's life in such a short time.

She had near perfect chakra control, Rin thought. That was the core of it. Sakura Haruno was a born medic, the once in a generation kind who could have helped an incredible amount of people. She still had that potential, of course, but Rin could never escape the feeling that Sakura had chosen a path of violence. She'd turned her perfect control into a literal sword.

She'd never told Obito about just how much that distortion of talent disconcerted her. What point would there be? It was just a gut feeling, and a silly one that didn't respect the realities of Sakura's life. She'd been pushed down that path by the Chunin Exams, and Gaara of the Desert. Where she might have ended up if she hadn't had to fight for her life in a battle before the entire village was immaterial: it hadn't happened and never would.

And yet, every time she saw Sakura, thought about her and the rest of Obito's team in the Nation of Rain, Rin couldn't help but see that scalpel transformed into a sword.

"Sakura will finish her mission and bring them home," she finished, her pause barely more than a half second. Mikoto gave her a smile.

"I hope so," she said, and Kushina nodded at her side, both of the women subdued and grey. "It's all I'm waiting for now."

"Every day, we're waiting for them to come home."