Rin's eyes blinked open to a man, no, a being she had never seen before standing in front of her.

Everything about him screamed ' otherworldly'. He looked similar to Kaguya, with his horns and the red eye in the middle of his forehead, but much older than she appeared to be. Then again, Rin wondered hysterically, what did she know about the aging patterns of aliens?

The world around her was still split in black and red. The vision of the world had frozen on Kakashi's crackling body, with Naruto next to him, expression frozen in fear as he tried desperately to heal Kakashi, not taking notice or care of the cracks on his own body. Naruto was too late.

It was all so late. She hadn't felt tired in a while, but now exhaustion dragged on her bones.

"Hello?" she rasped, realizing she had been essentially ignoring the man right in front of her. She hadn't spoken in so long. "Who are you?"

The man stared at her for another beat, then, "My name is Otsutsuki Hagoromo."

Rin's eyes widened. The Sage of the Six Paths was here? "Otsutsuki-sama," she bowed. "I apologise for not recognizing you—"

He chuckled, a deep rumble, before shaking his head. "Do not worry, child. You would not have met me on the battlefield." His eyes surveyed her clinically, lingering on the cracks that were no longer spreading. "Though it appears you managed to make it there after all."

Rin looked down. The cracks spanned her body, but she no longer felt them when she pressed them. She didn't understand why or how they appeared.

"I don't…" She trailed off, because the Sage finally had an emotion on his face she could read—pity. She frowned.

"Do you know what's happening, Nohara Rin?" he asked. She shook her head. He stared at her for a moment, before tilting his head.

"Why did you stay here so long for Obito?"

Rin blinked. She hadn't expected that question, but the answer remained clear, no matter how much Obito spiraled in the time she was gone.

"He's my best friend," she whispered. Rin looked down. "I—if I had known this is what would happen if I died before him, or that he was alive at all, I might have tried waiting for Minato-sensei. If he was there...maybe he could have helped. I just thought there was no chance to beat the Kiri nin and not destroy the village...I wanted…"

She wouldn't have said this out loud to anyone , not to Kurenai or Asuma, Kushina-nee or Sensei or her kaa-san, and definitely not Kakashi. It wasn't something she was proud of, it wasn't something that was logical, it wasn't something that made sense to anyone but her, but…

That half-year, those 6 months without him...were their own hell.

Kakashi had almost completely disappeared inside his own head, appearing later and later to their dinners and get-togethers, uncharacteristically lax, like he was trying to merge his and Obito's personalities into one. She wanted to scream, wanted to yell for him to stop because he wasn't Obito, couldn't he understand that he would never be Obito? But he was mourning in his own way, and she could barely shove away her own grief when he showed up at their meeting spots with that one haunted grey eye and Obito's eye covered by his hitai-ate. In any case, it didn't matter—most of the time he treated her less like a teammate and more like a treasured object to protect anyways.

Minato-sensei was in the running for Hokage and busy with diplomacy, but Rin thought he honestly plied himself with more work to avoid his grief. She couldn't blame him—if she let herself think of it too long, Obito's absence swelled to a chasm that threatened to swallow her whole. Kushina-nee and Kurenai tried to be there for her, and they helped, but they couldn't get it. Not completely.

Not Kurenai, who still had Asuma to smile and laugh with her, inside jokes only they could understand. Not Kushina-nee, who could come back from missions to watch Minato-sensei trying and failing to cook her favorite dishes.

They talked to her, they laughed, but at the end of it, she went home alone. There was no one she could talk to about her medical studies, no one who would tell her crazy stories of the rabid cats of Konoha or how Haruki-ojisan at the orphanage always needed help weeding his garden. It was quiet. She hated it.

(She'd regretted all the times she'd told Obito to be quiet. She just wanted to hear his voice again.)

She went to the Memorial stone multiple times a week to tell him about her day. She had tea with Obito's baa-san weekly and helped her around the house. She left home hours earlier to help the people Obito would always stop for. She pretended there wasn't a hole in her heart from the boy who spent almost 10 years by her side. She pretended, and pretended, but in reality...

"I just wanted to see him again," she whispered.

The Sage looked pensive. "And you were able to temporarily send yourself to the physical world to attempt to help your former teammates."

Rin shrugged. She wasn't sure how she figured out how to send herself back. She just saw Obito and Kakashi trying to stop the end of the world, and she needed to help her team. Just one more time.

She hadn't had a lot of time to think of it, but looking at her bare, cracked wrist, she had one theory.

"The Nohara used to wear accessories to keep their chakra in their bodies," Rin explained. She didn't have a clan, and their 'kekkei genkai' of sorts wasn't powerful or even useful, but it forced her to get great chakra control early. She held up her wrist, showing her red bracelet—the bracelet was now in shambles. "We're born with leaking chakra, so an accessory helps to contain it, but we have to learn chakra control to keep it there. Maybe I was able to use some passively stored chakra?"

The Sage glanced at the bracelet, saying nothing. Rin tried not to squirm.

"The...Nohara," he finally said. Something about the way he said 'Nohara' sounded off. He glanced back at her. "Interesting. But without a dimensional technique, you would still be here."

Rin looked down. She wasn't sure exactly how it had worked, but, "I think...I tried to use Kawarimi for the space between Kakashi and Obito." She didn't think it would work, but she'd been desperate, and there were no rocks or trees in Kaguya's dimension. Once you're already dead, there's no worst case scenario. She didn't think she could hurt her teammates by trying.

"A...replacement technique, between worlds." The Sage clearly was not expecting the answer. He smiled. "Impressive."

Who else could say the Sage of Six Paths had complimented them? "Thank you. But I don't think I can do it again." Not that it would matter. She looked down at the world, where Naruto and Kakashi were in their last moments of life. They'd be joining her soon, and who knew what would happen afterwards.

A few more minutes passed in silence, with the Sage surveying her and Rin wondering how rude it would be to ask to see what would happen to her friends.

"I suppose I owe you an explanation," he said. He pointed towards the cracked vision of the world, where Kakashi and Naruto were frozen, rent into impossible pieces.

"Time is frozen, at the moment. Temporarily halted, depending on what happens next," he said vaguely.

"What happens next," she echoed.

He hesitated. "What is happening to Naruto and Kakashi is, in a sense, happening to you." The words didn't compute to Rin. She hadn't gotten hit by one of the bones, she had just led them in front of Kakashi's students. Rin looked down at herself once again. The cracks did look incredibly similar.

"But I wasn't hit by the bones," Rin said. The Sage nodded.

"You weren't," he agreed easily, "but you tried using a Kawarimi between dimensions. You no longer have a body, so you sent your soul instead." Huh. Rin did not know that.

"Souls are not meant to be tangible. The technique being used to bring back souls from the Pure Lands uses the bodies of others to anchor souls and safeguard them, and the bodies dissolve when the soul ascends once more." His expression didn't change, but Rin thought he seemed...disgusted. "You had no such protections for your soul, and by sending your soul to Kaguya's dimension, you have damaged it extensively. It's why you see those cracks, and why your purgatory now looks this way."

She looked down, and fought the urge to cry. She had done it to herself, she had led her boys to death, and there was a consequence. Of course there was.

"What happens now?" she said. "I...die?" Again?

The Sage paused. "Essentially. Once I unfreeze the flow of time, your soul will continue to disintegrate. You will not be able to ascend to the Pure Lands. Neither will Kakashi and Naruto."

Rin's head shot up. She wasn't sure which eye to look into. The red one? Or was that rude? "They won't?"

Hagoromo shook his head. "My mother's technique is all-consuming. Their souls are going to disintegrate, including the chakra imprint of Ashura. Hashirama will fall as well."

Was there no hope at all?

"Please, I—" she struggled for hope, but it ran like sand through her fingers. Naruto was about to die, and everything would be lost. "Is there anything we can do? Is there a way I can help?"

The Sage said nothing, and continued to stare. Rin tried not to shuffle her feet.

"We face an impasse," The Sage said, finally breaking eye contact. "At the current time, there is no hope for Naruto and Sasuke to seal Kaguya. Even if Hashirama had been in his proper body and was able to seal Kaguya with Sasuke, there won't be enough time for him to receive Ashura's chakra." He looked a bit frustrated.

"It's possible to bend time, but not without an avatar to use as a marker. But maybe…" He gave her a quick glance.

"You died early, sacrificing yourself for your village." he said. "You sacrificed your time in the Pure Lands to watch over your friends, and you sacrificed your soul to help your friends save the world from Kaguya."

Rin remained silent. The Sage looked towards the view of Kakashi and Obito.

"Your death led to Obito's destruction, and Obito's machinations drove the world to ruin." Rin flinched. Was he was here to punish her?

The Sage looked back towards the screen. "If Ashura's imprint perishes here, his cycle of rebirth will stop, which will stop Indra's as well, then all is lost to Kaguya." He narrowed his eyes. "I need to remove Ashura's chakra imprint now, or it will be lost forever."

Rin frowned. "Remove it?" The chakra was already in Naruto. How could it be removed?

"I gave Ashura and Indra's reincarnations my chakra. I can take it away, and Ashura's chakra imprint as well. If another eligible avatar is available, the chakra imprint can live on." He glanced at Rin pointedly.

She felt herself blinking owlishly. "Me?"

The Sage nodded slightly. "I could try and send Sakura back, but she does not have any Uzumaki or Senju blood, and she was also born after critical events towards the revival of my mother had been taken. She also does not have sufficient knowledge of those events. Sasuke would be a less than ideal choice for the same reasons, and a transmigrant of Indra already existed during your lifetime." The Sage made a face. "Obito is a critical player in my mother's revival, born at the right time, but he could not carry Ashura's chakra either." He gazed back at the screen. "In any case, becoming the ten tails jinchuuriki warped Obito's soul as well."

Rin winced.

He smiled at her then. "The chakra of my Ashura's clan, the Senju, still runs through you; faint, but there." Rin jolted. She...a Senju? What?

"This compatibility would allow you to become a sort of transmigrant of Ashura, similar to Naruto and Hashirama." his smile dimmed. "I have to warn you, however, that becoming Ashura's transmigrant may come with its own consequences. I believe that putting Ashura's imprint in you will keep your soul and his form from destabilizing, but it will not be painless," he warned.

Rin frowned. She wasn't looking forward to pain, but...she glanced at the world again. Kakashi's face was a mosaic of splinters and grief. Obito looked desolate. Kakashi's kids looked broken, even without being hit by Kaguya's technique.

She thought back to the decades she had witnessed: Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee, unable to watch their little boy wander Konoha. Naruto, growing up shunned by the village. Kakashi, waking up early every day to spill his regrets on the memorial stone. Obito, slipping farther and farther into darkness until she could barely recognise him. Her kaa-san dying during the Kyuubi attack. Kurenai finally getting together with Asuma and Rin being unable to see it.

She had to do it, didn't she? Even if she stopped existing here, she wouldn't be able to live with herself knowing she didn't at least try.

"I understand, Otsutsuki-sama. If I can change Obito's mind...No, I will change Obito's mind." Rin wouldn't take no for an answer. She'd stop Obito, and so many people would be saved.

Hagoromo nodded. "I had a feeling you would say that." He laid his hands over the vision of the world, and golden chakra seeped from Naruto, pure sunlight spilling from a cup. In Hagoromo's hands was a condensed ball of golden energy.

The energy pulsed, growing and growing until a man stood in front of them, wearing white robes that matched the Sage, with spiky brown hair and brown eyes. Similar to her, cracks spanned his body from head to toe. He blinked owlishly, before turning to the vision.

"What…?"

"Ashura," The Sage said. His eyes looked sad. "Do you remember?"

"I…." Ashura looked back at the vision, and Rin thought his eyes flashed gold. He nodded slowly. "We were fighting baa-sama—uh Kaguya? I don't…" his eyes looked far away. "Me, Kakashi-sensei, Sakura-chan and Ind—" he shook his head. "Sasuke."

"We don't have much time, son," The Sage grasped his shoulder. "Your soul is fracturing."

Ashura looked down for the first time, and his eyes widened. Rin wondered if that was what she looked like when she learned that she too was on the verge of falling apart.

"I see," he said, swallowing harshly. His eyes met hers, and he narrowed his eyes. "Tou-san, who is—"

"I am sending you both through time," The Sage interrupted. Ashura took a step back. "As you know, your last reincarnation, Naruto, was hit with Kaguya's technique. Nohara Rin sacrificed her life for peace, and sacrificed her soul for the hope of the world and her friends." The Sage of Six Paths met her eyes, and they looked warm, approving. "It's why I think she'd be an ideal choice for your next transmigrant."

"But she already has a soul," Ashura said, confused. The Sage nodded.

"I am aware. However, I believe that the weakened nature of both your forms will allow diffusion between chakra for the both of you, giving you the strength you need for your next reincarnation, and allowing her to draw upon your strength in the meantime." He grasped Ashura's arm. "Hopefully stopping Kaguya from ever coming back again, and your next reincarnation and Indra's reincarnation shall be your last."

Ashura's hair lightened and grew into slightly longer spikes. His eyes swirled from brown to blue. "Stopping with me and Sasuke, huh…" he frowned, and looked back at the vision. "What happens to the timeline now? And...my friends."

The Sage's expression didn't change, but something about him seemed utterly sad at that moment.

"The timeline will be wiped from existence at the point you and Rin go back." Ashura winced. "If you're able to stop Obito's path of destruction before he attacks Konoha and begins the Akatsuki, then the timeline continues, Naruto and Sasuke become the next reincarnations, slated to end your Samsara through their friendship, and Kaguya is no longer able to come back."

Ashura tilted his head. "What happens if we fail?"

"If you fail, the next reincarnations of you and your brother will be delayed, if not halted. Obito's plan continues, and my mother will be unimpeded in her quest to return to Earth."

Ashura shuddered. "Baa-sama is the worst." The Sage gave him a withering look, but didn't respond.

If they failed...Kaguya could come back, and no one would be prepared to do anything about it. They had to get Zetsu and the Rinnegan, so the Fourth Shinobi war could be stopped. So Naruto and Kakashi wouldn't have to perish.

Rin looked at Obito, almost 2 decades older than he was at Kannabi Bridge. Naruto was able to change his mind and get him on the right path. Her best friend was still in there, she just needed to drag him out (and get that awful curse mark out of his chest).

"I'll do it," she said. "We can stop it all from happening. I know we can."

Ashura turned his head back to her, and smiled. "It's nice to meet you Rin! Obito told me a lot about you." That didn't hurt, she told herself. Not at all. "Thank you for letting me piggyback off your soul for a little bit." His hair slowly darkened to what it was before.

What does one say in these situations?

"Uh, you're welcome….Ashura-san." He waved his hand away.

"You can just call me Ashura!"

Rin nodded. She had a feeling that the millions of questions she had wouldn't get answered.

The Sage tilted his head. "I suppose...my other son will go back into your body as well. But with the original seal used...other measures must be taken." He grimaced, and looked at Ashura. "Measures we do not have time to fully explain. Every moment we spend here is a moment lost in the timeline. I apologise in advance, Rin."

Other son? Before she could ask, the world spun, and the vision she'd had over the world for the past few decades...faded away. Images flashed in front of her: the ritual Kiri did to place something inside her, running with Kakashi on their mission, and herself, launching in front of Kakashi's attack,

"Oh, that looks brutal," Ashura muttered.

Fire broiled in her chest. The Sage summoned a piece of paper, and began what looked like a seal, but nothing like Rin had ever seen before. Lines arched and curved, becoming what looked like an intricate mandala. He finally drew some concentric circles, before stepping back.

"I believe this will work. May I?" She glanced at him, questioning, but he took the paper and placed it on her stomach. The paper glowed, and disappeared. The fire abated slightly, and in her mind's eye, a turtle sat in the middle of a lake, looking bewildered and lost. Rin's stomach clenched. This was—this was the beast sealed inside her that day, wasn't it?

"What was put inside me?" Rin whispered.

The Sage looked at her, and for some reason, Rin thought he looked...disappointed.

Rin ran her head over the scenes. It looked like she was being brought back to her last day alive. If the Sage's seal held, then the Kiri seal wouldn't harm her, right? She could run with Kakashi back to the village, and drag Obito along. Maybe she could use Kawarimi on a local Kiri nin, and try to get Kakashi and her into Konoha's backwoods before Minato-sensei could come. Or waiting the precious few minutes before Obito would be there to help. It would be tight, but maybe she could…

The Sage put a hand on her shoulder and Ashura's, and their bodies began to glow.

The earlier feeling of flame had increased exponentially. She doubled over, gasping. There was magma running through her veins, there had to be. It felt like claws had wrapped themselves around her chest and tugged. She gasped, unsure of when the world had gone dark. Was she—how did she end up on the floor?

She turned watering eyes up to the Sage, whose mouth was still moving. Not that she wasn't grateful for the second chance, but...didn't he...realise she could barely hear him over the sound of her heartbeat?

Wait, heartbeat?

"...believe this ….part, Nohara Rin…. hope that you are able to change ….Isobu ...Ashura ...reconciliation."

The world spun once again, the fire erupted in her chest, and she knew no more.


Perhaps the first thing Kakashi's tou-san had taught him was trajectory. After missions, he'd scoop Kakashi up and take them both to the backyard to work on katas or kenjutsu or throwing kunai.

"You have to keep moving," tou-san would say when Kakashi would dodge a blow with a stilted parry. "Stop stopping , cub. Don't doubt yourself. You have to keep moving to finish a move and flow into the next one."

They'd start again, and tou-san would remind him, patiently, to flow into his katas with a similar grace to tou-san's wolves.

Keep moving. Stop Stopping.

He wished his tou-san could have taken his own advice. It was the only lesson Kakashi had taken from the man after he died. Keep moving. Stop stopping. It had taken him to Minato-sensei, and further, to Obito and Rin, before it all went wrong.

The worst part of Obito's gift, Kakashi decided, wasn't the scorn of the Uchiha or the perpetual chakra exhaustion, or even the sharpened memory; it was watching catastrophes build in slow motion and being unable to stop them.

Watching Rin's descent and knowing that nothing he could do would stop her from falling into his line of fire would be a moment he would never be able to forget, Sharingan or not.

He'd tried; he'd tried to keep Rin safe, like he'd tried to help Obito in his last moments, like he'd tried to be there for his father. And in each and every time, he failed.

Keep moving. Stop stopping.

Kakashi heard the sickening squelch as he broke through Rin's chest and the horrifying warmth of her blood on his fingers. He had grabbed hold of a heart that had always been too big for the world, and his momentum pushed him through.

Rin's lips trembled as she looked at him, looking horrified and more than a little surprised. Kakashi didn't know why. She coughed, sending drops of blood over his clothes, his face.

"S—sorry," she whispered. Why was she apologising? And her legs gave up beneath her. He held her, took his shaking hand out of her chest, tried to ignore the hole, the way her shattered ribs scratched his forearm and the sheen of red coating his fingers.

He couldn't.

The Kiri nin still surrounded them on all sides. Kakashi had to run, find Minato-sensei, something. Kakashi tried to move, to get Rin (thebodythebody) to safety, but his limbs would not agree.

A thump. He had let go of Rin.

For a moment, his vision of the world sharpened in a way that hones in on Rin's too still body, the blood droplets hitting the floor beginning to pool around her.

Then his vision doubled, tripled, and it all went black.


As he jumped through the forest, Obito had the brief, errant thought that he hadn't worn shoes in months.

Obito didn't know what to expect when he got onto the field—if Rin and Kakashi were surrounded by Kiri ANBU and Jonin, they'd need help. Maybe more than Obito could provide. He honestly wasn't sure how much he could do in Guruguru's body. But he'd try his best. For both of them. And afterwards, they could go home, and Obito would yell at Minato-sensei for never being in the right place at the right time, fast as he was.

Obito cleared the trees, and finally reached the fighting.

And what he saw…

He saw…

An entirely foreign image, made up of what had to be real people, faces, motivations, but there was his best friend with a hole in her chest from none other than his teammate.

The black space around his left eye rippled strangely, and he could see.

Short brown hair, cut above her collarbones because she'd always hated how her hair would stick to her neck. Twin clan markings from a clan that never was. Chocolate eyes, always warm, now wide-eyed and terrified. Blood dripping on tanned cheeks.

"S—sorry," she whispered. Her eyes fell shut, and her body sagged.

An entirely foreign image, composed of the people Obito thought looked like people he knew, in positions that were utterly unfamiliar.

A rock jabbed the arch of Obito's foot. His toes twitched around the intrusion.

The figure that looked like Kakashi moved his hand out of Rin's chest. Around them, a squad of ninja watched, making random, nonsensical noises of outrage.

An entirely foreign image. And an entirely familiar chakra, one that felt like steam from Hōjicha tea and the gentle ebb of the Naka at its calmest, fading and fading until it….disappeared. He ignored the fizzing lightning chakra barely flickering beside her.

Who are these people?

Water crashed around the rocks of the area, sounding strangely muted in Obito's ears. Kakashi fell face forward on the floor.

What is this place?

The Kiri ninja grabbed their weapons, shouting something that Obito didn't know or care to hear. Shuriken came towards him, and he didn't move. What was the point?

The shuriken phased through his body. The water roared in Obito's ears, and he suddenly couldn't stand the noise. He screamed wordlessly and charged forward.

The water calmed in Obito's ears. It began to rain, and Obito didn't stop his crusade, not when multiple ninja came at him at once, not when they swung their swords, especially not as they moved towards Rin.

You could ask him what happened, and he could tell you snippets: the look of the vines as they twisted in and out of someone's torso, the squelch of the mud infused with blood and other bodily fluids, the shattered mask of the one nin who had the audacity to try and collect Rin's body.

What Obito could remember, though, was the feeling of rain on his skin, and the ocean that crashed in the distance, in his ears. The rhythmic cadence of water as it surrounded him, calming and infuriating all at once.

He fought through the rain, until he could hear no more screams, until he tried to wipe away the incoming droplets on his mask (Guruguru's face?) and came back with bloodstained fingers.

Blood squished between his toes as he finally stopped at an entirely familiar body in an unfamiliar, inconceivable position. She was surrounded in a halo of blood.

He couldn't feel her chakra. He couldn't feel…

He placed trembling hands towards her neck, and his fingers phased through. Rin wasn't breathing, and Obito jolted as his fingers came in contact with her skin and electricity sparked. His fingers smoked.

Unfamiliar. Inconceivable. Unknown.

Illusory.

And Obito finally understood. The roaring in his ears subsided.

"I get it now," he whispered. He cradled the body, trying to ignore the electricity that arched through him. If he thought of it, he'd kick the grey-haired impostor next to him until he bled, take his eye back because Kakashi was nothing but a disappointment, and no better than the pieces of Kiri nin strewn about the clearing.

Life wasn't worth living without Rin. Obito could go through war with his best friend at his side, the ups and downs and dubious morality that had stretched him thin, but this

Unfamiliar. Inconceivable. Unknown. Illusory. Obito repeated the words in his head until he could almost hear them with every beat of his heart, a new mantra for his new path.

"This is hell," Obito said softly, brushing hair and dirt out of Rin's face. "Isn't it?"

Rin's body had turned so cold.

He's in hell.

Obito glanced back at Hatake Kakashi. It would be so easy to rip his gift right out of the bastard's face, but better yet…

"This is hell," he reminded his teammate. The bastard didn't move. "And until I can make heaven, you'll suffer right here with me."

Obito stood, gathering Rin in his arms, ignoring the incredible ache that had started to settle into his limbs. He had an old ancestor to return to, plans to fulfill….

He looked down at her face, and frowned. He tugged the travesty of the Will of Fire off her forehead, dropping Konoha's symbol next to Kakashi's feet. Obito closed Rin's unseeing eyes with a trembling hand.

He had a grave to dig.