Obito-Sensei Chapter 56

There's The Past and Here's The Future

When the time was up, Obito left way too much money on the table and drew Rin into the Kamui without even bothering to get up from the table. When they appeared in his personal world, they were still holding hands: Obito had done it without really thinking about it. Rin gave it a squeeze, and that was when he realized what he had done.

He jumped, looking over at her, and she grinned. "So easy," she teased. Obito managed a smile despite the circumstances.

"Just a little bit this way," he said, taking them four steps to the right. Rin trailed along with him, looking around the empty world.

"How do you do that anyway?" she said, and Obito shrugged. "You've never been able to explain it to me."

"I dunno how I could," he said. "It's a feeling, and a look. Like an echo that I can almost see. When I look around here, I see a million invisible ghosts, but I don't see them. It looks the same to me as it does to anyone else. I guess that doesn't really make sense."

"You're right, you couldn't," Rin smirked. "I guess it's like how you figured out how to use the Kamui right away, right? It's an instinct."

"Yeah." Her hand was warm, especially in the cold of the Kamui. "An instinct."

They swirled down the dimensional drain once again and reappeared in front of the Hokage's office. The ANBU on duty was another member of the Yondaime's bodyguards, Raido: he was wearing a Snake mask, and while he didn't jump when they arrived the way he shifted made Obito sure they'd definitely startled him.

"Jeez, Obito," he said mildly. "Give a guy some warning, would you?"

"Itachi is in the village," he said, and Raido froze. "Is the Hokage here?"

Raido opened the door without a word and revealed Minato beyond it. The Hokage was in the midst of standing up from his desk and stretching with a yawn, and he paused at seeing Obito and Rin beyond the door. His eyes fell to their held hands, and a smile began to creep across his face. "Obito? Rin?" he asked. Then he read Obito, saw the way he was standing, and became ready to fight in a moment. "What happened?"

"Itachi was here," Obito said, stepping into the office. He finally let go of Rin's hand. "He crashed our date, about ten minutes ago. He told us that people would die if we didn't give him that much time."

Minato took in all that unbelievable news in the blink of an eye and nodded. "I'm glad you didn't test him. There's no way Itachi wouldn't set up a safeguard," he said, leaning down over his desk. "After ten minutes, I'm sure he's out of the village already?"

"Probably," Obito confirmed. He was trying to stay cold, still shaking off his re-lived memories. He needed to stay focused. "He visited Mikoto as well, but claimed that he didn't harm her. He said he was here looking for Sasuke."

"Sasuke?" the Hokage asked, puzzled. "He didn't… that's odd."

"That's what we thought," Rin confirmed. "He seemed to have no knowledge of Sasuke's defection. And…" She dug into her hip pouch and removed the container Itachi had left them. "He apparently returned Shisui Uchiha's stolen eye."

Minato stared at them, his face set in intense thought. Obito shifted, not sure where his sensei's mind was going. When he wanted to, Minato could go from utterly open to absolutely opaque in seconds.

"The sensor net didn't go off," he eventually muttered, giving up on leaving the office anytime soon and sitting back down. "It didn't detect anyone entering the village intending malice towards it."

"Has that actually been working?" Obito asked, surprised despite himself. "I know Kushina was talking about it, but the barrier only went red for that one test."

"That was just for the test," Minato confirmed. "It's caught quite a few people in the last year, actually. The actual sensor net only pings a member of the barrier team who is assigned that duty, unless there is an overwhelming number of signatures. Then we'd get a dramatic red sky." He sighed. "So, that might be some of the most rigorous evidence we'll get for Itachi not intending any harm to the village. Bizarre, considering what he's done."

"Maybe the sensor didn't work," Obito said. Minato inclined his head.

"Nothing's infallible," he confirmed. "But it's certainly interesting." He drummed his fingers on his desk. "Did he say he was going to Rain next? Or give any indication of his employment by them, or the Nanabi?"

"He did. But for the rest, nothing," Obito said. He started to pace, fiddling with his fingers. Rin stayed still, rocking back and forth on her feet. "I'm not sure if it was on purpose or not. He seemed distant. Rin wondered if he was on drugs."

"He wasn't," Rin interjected. "If something was wrong with him, it wasn't that."

"I don't like the idea that Itachi Uchiha doesn't have full command of himself," Minato chuckled. "But I guess him not being entirely rational was self-evident after the Massacre, even given his motivation." His eyes sharpened. "I wonder how Rain will receive him. That could tell us quite a bit."

"It will," Obito said, and Minato cocked his head.

"Were you alright?" he asked. "Seeing him again? It wasn't quite the same in Waterfall, chasing after him like that."

"I'm alright," Obito said shortly. "But seeing him like that, the way he acted, it made me remember the Massacre. I usually try not to." He breathed out. "Sensei, I never asked you on that day. There was too much to do, and then afterwards, I didn't think it was important. But seeing how Itachi was today… I saw a lot that night. I think some of it was important; I just didn't know it at that time."

"What you didn't ask me?" Minato asked, and Obito nodded. He noticed Rin was giving him a curious look, but didn't know how to respond.

"That night, you burst into the room to kill him," he said. Minato nodded along, his eyes getting a little distant: he was remembering as well.

"Right," he said. "Your clone found Kushina and I. We were up late… watching a movie?" He nodded, confirming to himself. "It led us to the compound, and then we made our way to the clan head residence. I would have just destroyed the building to prevent an ambush, but I heard Sasuke inside, so I went in through the wall. And then…"

"Itachi had prepared a genjutsu. The Tsukuyomi," Obito continued, feeling a strange sort of nostalgia for this familiar after-action report. "He struck you with it. It knocked you out, Kushina entered through the ceiling, Itachi damaged her seal with his Mangekyo, and then Mikoto snapped you out just a couple seconds later."

"Right," Minato said with a grimace. "Only time I've ever been unconscious in a fight. And?"

"Itachi was going to use that Tsukuyomi on Sasuke," Obito said, and Minato shifted. That detail had been so minor as to escape notice for all of them but Mikoto, Obito thought, and who could blame her for being so focused on her son? "That was why he prepared it. He told Sasuke he was going to show him the true purpose of the Uchiha Clan."

"Interesting," Minato muttered as Obito pressed on.

"I don't know how the Tsukuyomi works," he admitted. "I know it's a terribly powerful genjutsu that can distort time itself, but that's just from clan legends. I'm not sure if it is flexible according to the user's will, or if it has to be programmed with a set illusion like other complex genjutsu. But if it's the latter…"

"I think it's the latter," Minato mused. "Or perhaps it's both. I would not be surprised."

"Does what you saw make you say that, sensei?" Obito asked. Minato looked almost wistful, the last look he would have expected on his sensei's face when they were talking about this.

"I haven't thought about it in years," Minato admitted. "It didn't make as much of an impression as the rest of the night, especially since it was so short." He grinned without joy. "The Kyuubi almost escaping took most of my attention."

"What was it?" Rin cut in, and the tension in the room broke as both Obito and Minato jumped a little. She was the only one there who didn't have a firsthand memory of the night to be immersed in: Rin had only arrived afterwards along with several other medical ninja to tend to the less than half-dozen wounded that Itachi hadn't finished off.

"It's hard to visualize, since it was slightly surreal," Minato said, propping his head up on his knuckles. When he spoke, he did so slowly, taking great care to articulate every detail. He thought this was just as important as Obito did.

"I was frozen in place, high in the sky, but I could see everything below me in perfect detail, like the entire world was laid out in front of me. There was a disaster, like an earthquake and a storm and a wildfire all at once, that was raging across the entire world. It flipped over continents and burned the oceans to vapor, and I knew that that disaster was a war, the kind that would end the world without a doubt. I watched it kill everyone I knew. Literally, like time was freezing and I was at their side when it happened. My friends, my family, Kushina and Naruto, both of you. Kakashi was there too, everyone else that I'd lost, and even my enemies. Shinobi I'd killed and those that were still alive both. The disaster tore apart every single one of them. I was left alone in an empty and destroyed world, like I was the sole survivor of the apocalypse."

"But then, things changed. Time turned back, and the world was restored. Everyone who'd died returned as well, right as they'd been before. But it was like they all had seen the same thing I had, that they understood they'd barely avoided the apocalypse. I was surrounded by everyone I'd ever known, but whether they were an enemy or a friend I only felt affection from them. The world was calm and at peace, eternally, and so was I."

Minato frowned. "It repeated several times, a bit different in detail but essentially the same with each repetition, and then Mikoto woke me up."

"That's really fucking weird," Rin muttered. Minato laughed in agreement.

"It was. I suppose I didn't think about it too much without the context. I thought at the time that Itachi was just inexperienced with the technique. Perhaps he'd intended to torture me by showing me all that death, but my own will brought the world back together. Now though, that's obviously naive. It doesn't look like it makes any sense to you either, Obito?"

Obito wasn't trying to hide how confused he was. "Yeah," he admitted. "But it does confirm something for me. Unless we all…" He laughed. "Well, we already did, but unless we misjudged Itachi even more than we did, I don't think that sort of thing would be what he'd call the purpose of the Uchiha Clan. What does it even mean? Saving the world?"

"It could," Minato said. "Or remaking it."

For some reason, that phrasing made Obito twitch. Mikoto's words returned to him in a rush, her face twisted in hatred and denial before him.

'It's all there! Our history, and our destiny! If you turn away from that, you don't belong in this clan!'

The stone in Naka Shrine, he thought. The secret place under the seventh matt. He'd never returned there after the argument and never given it a second thought, writing Mikoto's words off without care. But who was to say she was the only one who believed whatever was on that old rock?

Ignoring it might have been a mistake. He had to follow up on that.

"I might have an idea about that," he said to both Minato and Rin's surprise. "I'll look into it."

"Right now?" Minato asked.

"When I have a moment. Why?"

"I was about to come and find you," Minato admitted. "That rumor about Katasuke Touno turned out to be true."

"Oh?" Obito asked. He glanced at Rin, and she jerked her head towards their sensei. "So he really was trying to leave the Hidden Cloud then?"

"Yeah, and in a hurry about it. He tried to leave the Land of Lightning earlier today and was detained by one of the Daimyo's personal shinobi guards. He's currently being held in a border outpost by her and some of the Daimyo's soldiers."

"The Daimyo's own?" Obito asked. Minato picked up a freshly drawn-up mission scroll from his desk and tossed it at Obito. "Is Cloud coming to collect him?"

"Immediately," Minato said. "But you might be able to beat them there. I want you to break him out and bring him back to the village right away. He's a resource we can't pass up. Don't engage the Land of Lightning's forces or the Hidden Cloud no matter the situation; better that they recapture him then an open fight between us, alright?"

Obito caught the scroll and turned to Rin. "Is this okay with you?" he said with a grimace. "Sorry our date got ruined."

Rin just laughed. "Believe it or not, not the worst I've been on," she said with a sly look. "At least it wasn't boring." She stepped forward, obviously not sure of what to do at first, and then gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Maybe we can go get dessert if you finish up quick enough." She smiled.

"Dessert would be good," Obito said, sure that he was smiling like a damn idiot. "I'll try to be fast. See you both soon."

He swirled into the Kamui but kept the connection to the real world open for just a moment, allowing a whisper of the outside world through.

"How'd the date go?" he heard his sensei ask with childish glee. Rin's response was just barely audible as the Kamui finally closed up. She sounded smug.

"I caught a ghost."

Left alone in his world, Obito started skipping north towards the Land of Lightning. He felt his mind should have been boiling over with speculation and concern, but there was a lightness to his step totally at odds with what he'd expected after seeing Itachi.

He had a lead, and he had a girlfriend. As far as days went, this was almost as good as they got.

AN: Shorter chapter today, but next week's will be much longer. Hope you enjoyed it!