Obito-Sensei Chapter 71

Inspires Terror

A couple minutes before the sky went red, Obito was shopping with Asuma Sarutobi and trying to figure out if there was actually an apology coming his way.

"What do you think about this set?" Asuma said, gesturing to a spread of kunai, and Obito let his eye wander lazily over them.

"Decorative."

"What, you don't have decorations?"

"I have decorations," Obito said, which wasn't really true but he was damned if Asuma would find that out. "But my place already had plenty of real weapons, so more that aren't practical doesn't really seem appropriate."

"Alright, alright," Asuma said, giving up and meandering on as the store's owner nervously watched them. The third Hokage's son and Obito Uchiha were both known to be big spenders, after all, so them being here could be good luck. Obito was used to that kind of look. "So something practical then. What about a kama? Or two?" He picked the sickles off their hooks and gave them an experimental twirl. "Traditional, and once you've got both your eyes back at one-hundred percent your Kamui is gonna be even more powerful, right?"

"It should be," Obito admitted, giving the kamas a glance. Very modern, but still a wooden grip. He would prefer steel; less likely to break off in any enemy.

"So with these maybe you could go for a grim reaper sort of look," Asuma said with a grin. "Really scare some Cloud bastards, you know?"

"That's not really my style, I guess," Obito said, though internally he had to admit it did sound pretty funny.

"Man, you're hard to shop for, you know that?" Asuma groused, setting one of kama back down.

"I already have pretty much everything I need," Obito said with a shrug. "Besides, it's not like we came out here to shop, right?" The owner deflated, and Asuma gave him a sour look.

"Can't I build up to it? It's a little embarrassing, after all," he said, one hand unconsciously tapping at the cigarettes in his pocket.

"You don't have to do it at all," Obito said, crossing his arms. "I'm not asking for one."

"Ah, shut up," Asuma said. "Fine, I'm sorry, are you happy?"

Obito scratched at his eyepatch; his whole face had itched since Rin had implanted Shisui's other eye. He wondered where she was right now; probably at the hospital like usual. "Like I said, I wasn't asking for one," he said, but a grin snuck out onto his face. "But I'll accept it, Asuma. Thanks."

"Mmm," Asuma grumbled. "I really am, you know. Stuff like that is why I left in the first place. I lost my temper, and it made me an idiot. It should have been obvious to me what had happened." He snorted. "I mean, be real, there's no way those kids could have gotten away from you unless you let them."

"Hey, give them some credit," Obito said. "Even back then, they were all great shinobi. They could have pulled it off."

"Yeah, right." Asuma was clearly unconvinced as he turned to the owner. "I'll buy this one," he said, waving the remaining kama. "Maybe someone else will be happy to get it as a gift."

"Excellent choice, Lord Sarutobi," the man said patiently. "Let me just-"

There was a loud crack outside, and Obito and Asuma froze. As the owner protested, they both burst out of the front door and were immediately transfixed by the sky.

The sky above Konoha was dull red, and a thick snow had begun to rain down and coat the village in white.

"Mass incursion," Obito breathed out, his chest hollow.

"An attack," Asuma snarled in the same breath. He was wearing a radio earpiece, and reached up towards it. "Barrier corp says there's shinobi movement coming in from the west and south. Obito-!"

Obito stared at the falling snow. It was April. It didn't snow in Konoha in April. Hell, it had only snowed in Konoha twice by his memory. This much snow had to be a chakra technique, but making snow with ninjutsu was extremely challenging, let alone this much so quickly. You had to combine Water and Earth natured chakra in precise ratios, and aside from Sakura managing to figure it out for her Flowing Hail Blade, the only ninja he knew of who could manage that was…

"It's Rain," he said, and Asuma stared at him. "Fuck. The summit… it was a trap."

Obito bit his thumb, running through the signs for the summoning jutsu and slamming his palms down, but while there was a puff of smoke nothing emerged.

"They have counter-summoners," Asuma said, cursing under his breath. "Main force reaching the walls now; initial estimate is a full battalion." Obito could hear the whine of multiple radio frequencies in Asuma's ear. "All ninja are to defend the village at all costs. Evacuation orders are going out for everyone else."

Not being able to summon wasn't the end of the world, Obito thought: the Hokage's bodyguards had a modification of the Hiraishin they could use to fetch him. It would work despite the distance to Myoboku. Once they noticed the invasion-

There was a sudden and thunderous SMASH that echoed across the whole village, and a shadow briefly eclipsed Obito. Without his Sharingan, he couldn't see it in the normal perfect detail that he was used to, but by the distinctive red color and shape, Obito was quite sure that one of the massive main gates at the southern entrance to the village had just gone flying over their head.

"Obito, can you-?" Asuma started to ask, already unsheathing both his trench knives. As usual, he was in his full jonin gear. Obito had worn his vest and carried the White Fang's blade, but hadn't bothered to get into full combat gear otherwise.

"I can fight," Obito said. "Let's go."

There wasn't any time to stop and think about the implications of the situation, only analyze the reality of what was happening and respond. Obito and Asuma leapt up to the rooftops of the market district together and took in the situation at a glance. Shinobi were pouring into the village from the west and south from over the walls and through the main gate, which was indeed completely gone, blown off its massive hinges. Small battles and explosions already spread across the village; there had to be infiltrators, Obito thought, and Haku had to be one of them. Where was his team? Sasuke, he had no idea, but at least with Hinata and Kurenai. Naruto had gone back home, to the east, away from the immediate fighting. Sakura, shopping with Ino? She'd been heading north last he remembered.

There was no way he had time to link up with any of them. The battle had already begun, and in a war between shinobi every second counted. The fight was in the wrong direction.

Obito and Asuma began making their way south across the rooftops, picking up a couple scattered shinobi as they went, none who Obito knew well. With many missions being restricted, the bulk of Konoha's shinobi were home; last Obito had checked, that was around fourteen-thousand ninja, not counting genin in training. The village being almost fully populated was a double-edged sword, he thought, and Rain had to know it. With so much of Konoha's strength present, the defense would be fierce… but by the same token, if Rain had sent a sufficient force and had the right plan, they could destroy much of the Leaf's battle strength in a single strike.

There had to be a plan, he thought, unsheathing the White Fang. The Amekage weren't idiots; if they'd decided to use this opportunity to stab Konoha in the back during negotiations, they had to be confident this would be a first and final attack. They couldn't afford it otherwise. Rain had three Bijuu now; at least one of them had to be here. It would be pure idiocy otherwise.

Not that it wasn't already-

Obito's rapid train of thought was just as quickly interrupted when the building in front of him exploded. Farther south, there was obviously a deadly battle being fought by the gates: he could see members of the Akimichi clan swelling up over the skyline swatting at invisible targets, and shinobi battled all along and across the walls.

But the explosion in front of him seemed unrelated, and out of the gutted restaurant burst a half dozen ninja and a huge swarm of large black beatles: an Aburame jutsu. Two of the ninja landed amongst Obito's swelling group, while the other four scattered among the wreckage or leapt to nearby roofs. As Obito tried to determine friend from foe, he found himself locking eyes with a young woman with long golden hair who'd landed on a nearby telephone pole.

Her forehead protector had three lines. As she came to the same realization, she started hurriedly speaking into a radio she had strapped to her shoulder.

"I gotta get me one of those," Obito muttered, belatedly realizing the shinobi around him, even Asuma, had paused. The younger ones were looking at him, fear and shock plain on their faces. Konoha had not been attacked in living memory; this sort of thing was beyond any of their experience.

It was beyond Obito's too, but he had a simple solution to this betrayal. "Run them down and kill them all," he declared, keeping eye contact with the golden-haired woman.

The rooftops exploded into violence, a dozen ninja throwing themselves after four in the blink of an eye. The woman fled, but Obito was right on her tail: she looked back, her eyes wide with shock as he overtook her with the White Fang brightly shining in her hands. She started to make hand signs, but even without the Sharingan Obito could tell they were too slow.

"Obito Uchiha!" she screamed, not at him but into her radio. "Section 6! Obito Uchiha!"

Her scream cut off quite abruptly as Obito rammed his blade through her spine and tore it out the side of her body, nearly cutting her in half. The Rain ninja's body bounced off an ice-coated water tower and plummeted into the street, but not before Obito ripped the radio from her shoulder with a rough tug. When she hit the ground, her corpse half-vanished under the downpour of snow in moments.

There was a moment of hesitation, of regret. He hadn't killed someone in some time. Obito shook it off without much effort. He'd killed before, and he'd have to kill again. Rain was the aggressor here; he didn't have time to worry about his own blood-soaked hands.

He thumbed the radio on, holding it up to his mouth. He had an inkling as to why the woman had spent her last moments speaking into it.

"This is Obito Uchiha," he said. "Yeah, I'm in sector six, whatever that is. Come over here and die, would you?"

He clipped the radio onto his own vest, looking around. The other fleeing ninja had been cleaned up, brought down by ninjutsu, weapons, and insects. There was a brief pocket of peace.

"Asuma!" he called out, and his fellow jonin turned towards him, flicking blood off his knives. "I think they've got a kill-team for me. They should be headed this way. Wanna help me out?"

"Oh, fantastic," Asuma said, looking to the south where the main battle continued to rage before he raised his voice. "All of you, spread out and lie low! We're gonna hold here for a moment!"

There were a dozen Konoha ninja around, including Obito and Asuma, though others were rushing around in the periphery. As the others scattered, Obito took inventory. The Aburame, and a Hyuuga too, part of the branch clan. Lucky catches, and they seemed to be friends, sticking close to one another. The rest didn't seem to be from any of the major clans, but at least none of them were too young. Obito hoped that the genin in the village at least had the sense to run away from the action: in a battle like this, most of them would barely function as a speedbump.

"Hyuuga!" he called out from his roof, staying nice and visible, and the young man spun with a nervous look on his face. "Name and range!"

"Lord Uchiha!" He got his surprise under control admirably quickly, not shifting from behind his cover in the exploded building. "Nisshoku, seventy meters!"

Seventy meters, so basically a half-second of warning at best if Obito's hunch was right. It was better than nothing. He could hear crackling voices from his radio; many of the enemy had probably already switched frequencies, but some hadn't had the time or hadn't noticed Obito's declaration.

"The enemy should be coming here, and probably in strength," he said, speaking directly to Nisshoku. "We'll give it thirty seconds before we go looking for them. When they're in range, give a signal. We'll go on your word."

Nisshoku swallowed and nodded, and Obito nodded back. He settled in, staying visible on the rooftop as he stared south, waiting for his killers to appear. The battle was beginning to spread out: Rain had broken through the initial defense at the gates, but were being fiercely opposed at their beachhead. The fighting was still thickest around the Akimichi, but Obito could see that a couple of the giants had fallen. Just who were those flying ninja who swarmed around them? There were dozens of them, and if Rain had that many ninja who could fly, he would have known about it.

He waited for ten seconds in silence as the snow fell and began to coat him, an eternity. Obito itched to join the fight, but knew that moving ahead right now could be suicide. He was weaker than the enemy expected, and they would be sending shinobi with the expectation of taking him down at full strength.

If he was to win, he would have to rely on his reputation to break their morale. Obito tore off his medical eyepatch, squeezing the eye shut. He couldn't show any sign of weakness, or he'd be swarmed and killed.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Nisshoku's hand jerk up.

Obito launched forward, leading the impromptu squad as eleven other ninja followed him. He blew across the street, leaving a hole in the falling snow, and vaulted the balcony of the opposing building. It was there, at the apex of his leap, that he first saw his opposition.

Without his Sharingan, he couldn't pick out everything in perfect detail like he was used to. He'd grown too used to the Eternal Mangekyo's power and clarity, so in a way this was a due comeuppance. Still, what he saw was more than enough for him to go on. Nine ninja, all obviously elite, three women and six men. They moved in a logical wedge formation spread out across two city blocks, likely with the long-range power in the back. One of the men had an extra head, and another six arms. They had a full variety of weapons, some carrying none at all, and when Obito crested the building there was a moment of unmistakable recognition and for some, hesitation.

Without waiting to think about it, Obito threw himself right at them.

For any other shinobi, it would have been suicide; he would have been cut to pieces in the air, unable to meaningfully maneuver in the face of so many enemies, and that would have been the end of Obito Uchiha. But the moment of hesitation stretched. The Kamui was a known quality to these ninja; they'd been sent to kill the only man in the world who could use it. Attacking when he wasn't, Obito knew they'd been told, would be pointless. They had to wait for the moment of Obito attacking, or they'd be wasting their equipment or their chakra.

His bluff lasted long enough for him to clear the street and get into the first ninja's face, unsheathing the White Fang and channeling enough chakra through the blade that every falling piece of snow for a hundred feet around began reflecting its radiance. The Rain ninja, most of his face covered by a balaclava, flinched back as he ran through the hand-signs for some sort of Wind jutsu.

Obito didn't strike out, instead leaping past him. Still, no attack came; they understood that it would be pointless.

Well, on any other day it would be pointless. Today it would kill him.

"Asuma!" he roared, hearing the other Konoha shinobi rush in behind him, the clash of steel on steel and cries of pain. "I've got the backline!"

Obito rushed forward, intent on the three ninja who had stayed farthest back: the six-armed man, who seemed to be spitting into his hands, a short woman so bundled up he could barely see her face, and a red-haired woman with a flute. He pegged them in a moment: archer, generalist, Wind or sound jutsu.

First, he had to scatter them. As he'd been rushing forward, Obito had been tying some wire around the White Fang; he hurled it forward, the wire secured around his wrist. It was a feint with insufficient range, but the generalist leaped back, making hand signs and biting through her gloves. A summoner then, and about to deploy. Maybe one of the counter-summoners as well then? He would have to test once she was dead.

The flute was coming up, the archer nocking an arrow made of his own hardened saliva. Bloodline; fascinating. Obito hadn't heard of that one before. With a burst of smoke, a two-story panda appeared, fire pouring from its mouth. A summon of some repute, then.

He ran through the signs for a jutsu in an instant; too heavy a technique for the situation, but shock and awe was still his main strength.

"Katon: Gōenka!" Obito spat a half dozen balls of flame up, instead of at his targets; they arced, slow at first, and began to fall with increasing speed as the flutist started to play. The archer shot a moment later, timing his attack with the waves of sound. Obito yanked his blade back.

The arrow was fast, and attached to the shooter by some sort of string. Obito had an overwhelming premonition that if he dodged it, it would redirect and hit him anyway. His luck with archers wasn't exactly stellar. The flute was a sonic attack, not Wind. Probably genjutsu, like Jiraiya's Toad Song then.

As Obito lunged forward, he acted only on instinct. The gentle melody of the flute reached his ears, and the arrow was set right for his chest, the archer sneering. They were confident in their setup: Obito got the feeling this combo had killed a lot of people.

In the same beat of his heart, Obito broke his left pinky and struck out with the White Fang, cleaving the arrow in half and sending the tip spiraling off into the falling snow. The genjutsu, which had begun to melt his extremities off, failed for a moment, and as the fireballs began to rain down and the shinobi scattered, his injured hand flashed forward and grasped the string connecting the arrow to the archer.

It was sticky, and his hand painfully and instantly stuck fast, but Obito didn't care. He pulled as hard as he could, channeling all the chakra he could to his arms and core.

Trying to yank a ninja off their feet was usually less a question of strength or balance and more a matter of surface tension. Having the edge in strength or balance helped, of course, but if a shinobi planted their feet to the ground with chakra, especially on a flat, solid surface like a concrete roof, then you were fighting not just their own strength, but also the strength of the surface they were anchored to. That was what made grappling between ninja so dangerous, and what made getting into a glorified tug-of-war contest with a man with six arms and solid footing a rooftop away an unpredictable but terrible idea.

It being a terrible idea didn't stop Obito from letting out a roar and pulling with every ounce of terrible strength his body contained. He ripped the Rain ninja off the rooftop, a chunk of concrete roofing still stuck to the enemy's feet as he soared over the gap. The man threw six kunai as he came, a panicked counterattack, and Obito danced between two and struck three out of the air. The last pierced into his already injured hand and stuck fast, just as sticky as the thread.

None of that kept Obito from slamming the White Fang into the ninja's abdomen and ripping it upwards, completely bisecting the man's torso. His fireballs impacted at the same time, blowing away the entire building ahead of him.

Both the other backliners escaped the blast, naturally; unless you had cover, a jutsu like the Gōenka was more intended as a siege weapon. But the blast disoriented them and badly burned the panda summon, giving Obito the time necessary to disentangle his hand from the thread. With its owner dead, the chakra that made it so sticky was rapidly fading, and he tore his hand away with only a lost strip of skin to show for it.

As the man fell, Obito seized his head, feeling in his ears as the flute's jutsu washed over him again. The music made him feel sick, and his fingers started to melt away again. However, it was just as he'd thought; earplugs. He ripped them both out and stuffed them in his own ears, ignoring the feeling of his own blood staining them. The music cut off, and his own pain cleared the genjutsu once again. The battle behind him fell silent; the panda thundered towards him with a silent roar, spitting out Grand Fireball-sized blasts with every breath and demolishing most of the building Obito stood upon. The summoner fell back, more, smaller pandas accompanying it by the second. The flutist had stopped, her face twisted in fear.

Harmless to him now, but dangerous to everyone else. Obito launched at her next, dropping down into the snow-covered street as he flourished his blade and breathed dancing red flames across it. The panda leapt forward, interspersing itself and trying to swipe him out of the air, and Obito parried the blow, smashing into the snow and rolling between the tremendous beast's legs. As he went, he made a series of one-handed hand signs.

The jutsu was weaker than it would have been otherwise, but the Earth Collapse technique was still sufficient: the street broke apart into a small crater, and the panda collapsed into it, off-balance for long enough for Obito to leap up and away from it. As he cleared the roof, he was surprised to see that the flutist hadn't run; she stood her ground with her flute in one hand and a chain of explosive tags in the other, ready to light them and hurl them forward the second Obito was visible. Maybe his bleeding had emboldened her.

It was the wrong move, though. Obito whipped his blade out, making a Ram sign with his other hand. The flames flew off his sword, crossing the twenty or so feet between him and the enemy in an instant and striking the chain of tags. The redhead barely had time to look surprised before they all detonated; she vanished in a wash of fire and pressure, and Obito tumbled along the roof, searching for the summoner.

Before he could locate her, there was a roar loud enough to penetrate his new earplugs; he staggered and ripped one out, off-balance for what could have been a fatal second, but no attack came. As he whirled, expecting an even larger panda to be after him, his heart missed a beat.

He had been right. A Tailed Beast was here: a gargantuan turtle had materialized right next to the Hokage's tower, stomping forward and crushing buildings underfoot. Rain had unleashed one of their new Bijuu on the Hidden Leaf.

Obito's heart started going again, fury pulsing through his veins. The summoner was fleeing and leaving the pandas behind to fight, but the rest of the kill-team seemed to be evenly matched with the other Konoha ninja. Asuma was still fighting, but several of his allies were down. Alive or dead, Obito couldn't tell, but while the survivors fought on, Asuma was up against two Rain ninja, one of which spewed crystals everywhere while the other hurled bolts of lightning from a distance.

Obito threw a Grand Fireball at the fracas, hoping to give Asuma an opening, and took off after the fleeing summoner. As he ran, he thumbed the radio on once more.

"So many of you are already gone," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Did you geniuses know I haven't even used my Sharingan yet?"

The summoner glanced back; his words had reached her. Beneath her scarf and beanie combo her eyes were wide and terrified. There was a gauntlet of pandas between her and Obito, and he leapt, slashed, dove, and slid between all of them, a half-dozen vanishing in puffs of smoke as he dealt them near fatal wounds and they were reverse-summoned. The woman stopped fleeing, turning and unleashing a series of Earth jutsu; pillars burst from the ground, too many to avoid, and Obito responded with an Earth jutsu of his own, stomping down and sending a solid wall of rock forward.

The woman's jutsu won the exchange, smashing his earth wall to dust and throwing up a huge cloud of debris and snow. She stopped, obviously fearing for just a second if he would come charging through with his Kamui like he had in so many stories.

That second of fear meant that she didn't detect Obito coming from behind, having dived beneath the debris and swum through the earth in a very undignified manner, until his blade burst through her chest. She looked down at it in shock, and Obito kicked her off the sword and into the mess their jutsu clash had created. He leveled the bloody blade up at the giant panda looming over the debris cloud. Its fur was burning, seared by his jutsu, but it didn't seem to notice.

"She died fighting!" he declared, and the burned bear glared at him with bloodshot eyes. "Leave, before the same happens to the rest of your clan!"

"Obito Uchiha…" the beast growled, and Obito could feel the heat of its breath from thirty feet away. "We were warned you were a monster."

He shrugged, and the bear growled one last time before vanishing. The Rain ninja's body disappeared in a burst of smoke as well, leaving her lifesblood staining the snow.

Panting with the effort of so many jutsu in such a short time and feeling his hand growing wetter by the second, Obito spun without taking a second to enjoy his victory and ran back towards the fight. He shouted into the radio once more.

"Another dead! It's that or running!" he said, hoping beyond hope someone would just do the smart thing and flee. The kill-squad was still fighting; it was down to three Leaf ninja, including Asuma, to five Rain ninja.

If he'd had his Mangekyo, Obito thought as he raced to join the fight, he could have taken these ninja alone, though it would have taken some time. So what was the deal? Even if they were dangerous, their skills seemed more suited for tying him up than finishing him off. Was the intention just to delay him until the Sanbi could get the job done? Its rampage had already crushed several neighborhoods in the distance; the damage was catastrophic and getting worse by the second. Or was he missing another factor?

He rained down a couple more fireballs and broke up a fight between the Aburame and the crystal ninja, who had switched targets from Asuma. As the man turned towards Obito and hurled crystal bullets through the air, his skin glittered in the snow. He was coated in crystal armor, and he tore chunks of it off as glittering shrapnel for his own attacks. The Aburame's insects ate away at it, but they couldn't devour the crystal's chakra fast enough to break through before they were smashed or swatted away.

Fire jutsu might pop him, but the man was fast, darting around at street level and using the snow to cover his movement as the insects chased him. The Aburame was flagging, and so Obito made a direct charge, zigzagging across the street and drawing closer as he avoided volley after volley of crystal projectiles.

Obito flung his bleeding hand out, splattering the crystal covering the man's face in blood and blinding him for just a moment. He twisted, anticipating that Obito would attack from his blind spot and bringing up his crossed arms to defend his chest; instead, Obito charged straight ahead with a suicidally confident Rasengan screaming into existence in his injured hand.

A blast of crystal shards buried themselves in his vest and drew blood from punctures across his arms, but Obito didn't deviate and slammed the jutsu right into the man's side. The crystal armor shattered and the Rain ninja vomited blood across the inside of his helmet, cartwheeling backwards and slamming through a concrete bench.

Obito left him where he lay, giving the Aburame a nod and trusting her to finish him off as he leapt up to the rooftops to join Asuma's fight. Three enemies left now: as he arrived Asuma struck out, and though his knife fell short the Rain ninja's throat split open nonetheless. He collapsed, choking on his blood as Obito hurled his blade end over end and took the ninja charging Asuma from behind in the shoulder. It was the ninja with two heads, and though he staggered an arm emerged from his torso and pulled the blade out, wielding it in a reverse-grip.

Bizarre; with the extra head and limbs, it was like the man had two bodies overlapping. Obito would have loved to take a look with the Sharingan, but that wasn't possible today.

"Asuma!" he called out. The Sandaime's son bled from a dozen wounds across his body but still stood strong, and he understood Obito's intent the moment he spoke, launching himself upward and blowing out a spread of ash below him.

Obito blew a small fireball into the ash, and the whole roof detonated, tossing away one of the surviving Rain ninja into a swarm of Aburame ninja below. Ash-stained snow gusted furiously around them, and in the distance the Sanbi bellowed again; it sounded closer. The two-headed ninja had avoided most of the blast but his skin was still scorched, his hair aflame, and he stumbled back as Obito charged.

But Obito was starting to slow down. The other Rain ninja was already there, coming in from his blind spot, and as Obito turned he only barely managed to divert the kunai the man tried to drive into his chest. They struggled for a moment, Obito grasping the man's arms and wrestling the knife away from his body, but after everything he had grown tired and couldn't overpower the other ninja.

No, it wasn't just that, Obito realized. Every second they touched his chakra was being drained away, sucked up by the man's very skin and empowering his opponent further. They shifted, both trying to toss the other to the ground, but Obito's strength melted like a shadow in the sun. The man grimaced at him, the expression barely visible behind his dark glasses and the covering he wore over his mouth.

"To think, Obito Uchiha," he said in a sonorous voice. "Dying in such an undignified-"

Obito snarled and lunged forward with his teeth bared, latching onto the man's throat and biting down in a desperation-fueled last stand. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and the Rain ninja let out a gargled scream, trying to pull back or regain control of his knife. But despite his weakness Obito had a firm grasp on both his opponent's arms, and when the man threw two bone-crushing knees into his gut, it only made him bite down harder.

With a loud crunch and a flood of blood, he crushed the enemy's windpipe between his teeth.

The draining sensation didn't vanish, but the ninja's grip weakened and Obito was able to kick him off, staggering back and spitting a chunk of flesh out. It felt like he had been fighting for hours instead of mere minutes, and he almost fell before steadying himself and breathing heavily, fighting his exhaustion with pure stubbornness.

He heard a grunt, and turned to find Asuma wrenching his knife out of the double-ninja's chest. A full torso had emerged from the Rain shinobi's back, still wielding Obito's sword; as Asuma stabbed the main body, the White Fang dug deeply into his shoulder, penetrating his vest and drawing a gout of blood.

"Don't think it will be that easy to kill us!" the shinobi shouted, obviously enraged. Obito, feeling light on his feet and woozy, almost threw himself off the roof by accident as he dashed to the ninja's back.

"Could I have that back?" he asked, and as the secondary body's head spun towards him with a look of hatred he seized it and twisted as hard as he could.

The ninja's neck broke with a muffled crack, and as it did Asuma growled and channeled chakra through his knife: a wind blade burst through the main body's chest, piercing its heart, and the double-ninja crumpled into the snow.

It wasn't silent, not even close to it, but Obito fell onto his butt nonetheless, panting and trying to assess the damage. He had a lot of small cuts, many of them bleeding freely: deeper than he'd like. No major injuries, but he was already edging towards chakra exhaustion. As he looked around, Asuma fell to one knee clutching his shoulder, and they shared a glance.

The man was just as exhausted as him; the kill-team hadn't been a joke, even if they triumphed. As far as Obito could tell, it was just the two of them and the Aburame who had come through in one piece. The woman leapt up to the roof to join them, her long black hair shielding her face.

"Anyone else up?" Obito asked, and she shook her head. He frowned, remembering who she'd been with. "Nisshoku?"

"No," she said quietly, and Obito saw a tear drip from her chin and vanish amidst the snow.

"Shit," he muttered. He didn't have time to console her; all of their attention was drawn to another crash as the Sanbi's rampage drew closer. It was only a couple hundred feet away now, and though Obito could see small groups of ninja engaging it and trying to distract it, it scattered them with every movement it made, creating tidal waves with shakes of its head and blowing the snow up into blizzards that knocked down weaker structures.

As far as Obito knew, there was no one in the village who could kill a Tailed Beast: they needed to seal it. But for some reason, Minato still wasn't here.

The Hokage's guards must have been assassinated, or at least tied up. How had Rain known about the summoning technique though? It was anything but common knowledge. Right now, that was a distant concern.

As his palm was already smeared with blood, it only took Obito a moment to perform the summoning jutsu. As he'd thought, it went through this time, and Gamaden appeared in a puff of smoke.

"Brr!" the toad declared. "Where the heck-?" It looked around, its mouth falling open. "Hold on, isn't this the Hidden-?"

"Gamaden, you have to get the Hokage now," Obito said, his voice sounding even more exhausted than he felt. "Konoha is under attack, and-"

There was a boom, and Obito's head was wrenched to the east. A barrier had formed, he saw, nearly a hundred feet tall and vibrant orange.

It rapidly filled up with a storm of blood red chakra.

The color sparked a memory, and he went pale.

'Kushina?'

He nearly died in his moment of distraction. The discarded body of the ninja whose neck he'd broken lunged forward, a knife in its hands. Obito turned, too slow, cursing himself. The man had a body that made no sense: why had he assumed a broken neck would be enough? He tried to lurch out of the way, but it was far too slow. The man was going to cut his throat.

"Whoa!" Gamaden leapt in the way and cried out in pain as the blade scored a deep gash along his back, blood spilling everywhere. As the Rain ninja gurgled and lunged again, trying to finish Obito or the toad off, Asuma snarled and buried his trench knife up to the hilt in the shinobi's head.

He twitched, glaring hatefully at Obito, and then fell again, this time for good. Obito panted, looking back and forth between the body, Gamaden, and the intensifying storm of the Kyuubi's chakra.

That was what he'd been missing, he realized. Rain's plan wasn't just to unleash one Tailed Beast on Konoha, but two. While the main battle had been raging to the south and Obito had been fighting here, more Rain ninja had gone east to shatter Kushina's seal.

They were intending to completely flatten Konoha: this was an attack that promised total annihilation.

"The village is under attack!" he barked at Gamaden, who weakly saluted him. "And the Hokage's wife is in danger! Go!"

The toad vanished without a word, and Obito was left with Asuma and the Aburame whose name he hadn't learned. Minato would come, he was sure, but his part in this wasn't over. The Sanbi, or Kushina, or the main battlefield? Where was he needed most?!

As Obito threatened to crumble under the weight of his sudden dilemma, he caught a flash of pink in the corner of his eye. It was heading east, but by the time he turned his head, it was long gone.

He breathed in, and trusted his gut.

"Asuma," he said, pulling himself to his feet, and Asuma grunted and did the same, finally pulling the White Fang from his shoulder. His left arm limp, he tossed the blade to Obito. "You wanna fight a Tailed Beast?"

"Not really," Asuma said, fishing for a cigarette and looking unreasonably pissed when he realized that the pack had been cut open at some point during the battle; everything in it had spilled out. "But someone's gotta. Lead the way, Obito."

Obito nodded, trying to project strength that wasn't there. "Gather the bodies," he told the Aburame, who gave him a stiff nod. "Good luck."

"You're the one who'll need it," she said flatly, and Obito couldn't help but chuckle.

"Yeah," he said, turning to face the Beast. In his current condition, drained, without his Sharingan, and bleeding from multiple wounds, fighting a Tailed Beast head on would be suicide. Asuma wasn't much better off.

But they didn't have to win. They only had to buy time until Minato arrived. Seconds.

They could survive for a couple seconds.

Obito leapt off the roof into the inferno of battle, Asuma right behind him.