When Raidō Namiashi and Genma Shiranui brought up a certain mission and even asked whether they needed help, young Kakashi and Obito couldn't help but think of the mission listed at the very top of the scroll, the one that had never been completed…
"SSS-rank mission: Kill the Masked Man."
The moment that mission came to mind, Adult Kakashi, young Kakashi, and Obito Uchiha all sank into silence, their moods visibly darkening.
"Sorry, that mission…"
"…can't be discussed."
The mouth beneath young Kakashi's mask moved slightly, his voice barely above a whisper.
Everyone else understood. They were all seasoned jōnin by now. High-difficulty missions almost always came with strict confidentiality.
Inside the Kamui dimension, Adult Obito raised an eyebrow.
A mission that couldn't be spoken of?
Just thinking about it made him restless. Being told to kill himself was something he simply couldn't come to terms with. And yet, the Obito Uchiha of this world truly was unforgivable…
After that, an odd silence settled over the room.
For a while, no one could think of a good way to change the subject, or even what to talk about next.
The awkwardness hung thick in the air, which only made young Obito, who had been worried someone might bring up the "Masked Man," feel even more conflicted and pained.
His gaze landed on a sake cup sitting on the table, nearly full. Without thinking it through, he grabbed it and shouted,
"I, Obito Uchiha! Will return to Konoha together with Kakashi, Rin, and Minato-sensei!"
"I'll protect them! I'll stick to my dreams!"
"I'll become the Fifth Hokage and make Kakashi my ANBU Commander!!"
Before anyone could react, he tilted his head back and poured the entire cup into his mouth…
But since he'd never had alcohol before, the sharp taste hit him like a shock. He spat it out immediately, coughing violently, tongue sticking out as he hissed and gasped for air.
His miserable state was so bad that even the "Masked Man" inside the Kamui dimension couldn't help pulling off his mask and covering his face.
Young Kakashi snapped back,
"Why should I be your ANBU Commander?!"
"You don't even want to be Hokage, and you do want to join ANBU, don't you?" young Obito shot back after finally stopping his coughing. "What's wrong with being the ANBU Commander for this future Hokage-sama?"
On this point, he was oddly stubborn.
Young Kakashi couldn't be bothered to argue anymore. He let out a cold snort, which more or less counted as tacit approval.
Might Guy was immediately moved by young Obito Uchiha's burning passion. On the spot, he pulled a bizarre green jumpsuit out of his ninja pouch.
"Come on, Obito! Take it! Let's advance together toward a youth overflowing with passion! Youth means endless struggle!!"
"What…?"
Rin walked out of the sealing room, with Minato Namikaze and Anko Mitarashi behind her.
She looked at Obito, then at the green jumpsuit in his hands, her expression impossible to put into words.
Inside the Kamui dimension, Adult Obito Uchiha nearly hurled the mask in his hand across the space.
Might Guy gave him a thumbs-up.
"Believe me! As long as you stick to your dreams, even the dead last can one day become a genius!"
Young Obito brushed his hand away, his face full of helplessness.
"I've already awakened my Sharingan. I'm not the dead last you beat during the Chūnin Exams back then."
As he spoke, he revealed his three-tomoe Sharingan to everyone.
The others all felt a faint sense of disbelief. Back then, they'd all thought that Obito Uchiha, the perpetual dead last, simply didn't have the talent to awaken the Sharingan.
Yet now, at such a young age, he had already awakened all three tomoe.
Beside him, young Kakashi formed a stark contrast with Adult Kakashi.
Whether it was his uninjured left eye or the completely different air about him, the difference was obvious at a glance.
Watching Adult Kakashi, Might Guy couldn't help feeling uneasy. Just like back then, when he had been the first to notice something deeply wrong with Kakashi in ANBU.
At the time, Kakashi had been on the verge of becoming like so many others who sank into darkness, gradually losing their humanity. That was when Guy had knelt before the Third Hokage and begged him to transfer Kakashi out of ANBU and let him become a jōnin instructor…
People often thought of Guy as a musclehead who only ever talked about youth and passion, but when it came to observing his lifelong rival Kakashi, he always noticed details others overlooked.
After several rounds of drinks, everyone was slightly tipsy, and some people had already left.
"Kakashi."
"Hm?"
"Let's go outside and talk."
"Alright."
They stepped outside. The fields were far darker than the village at night. The faint chirping of insects rose and fell, and every so often, a firefly drifted past, its weak light flickering in the darkness.
"Is there something you want to say?" Might Guy didn't ask what Kakashi had been through recently.
The fact that someone had crossed out the name on Obito Uchiha's memorial stone was already enough to prove that whatever had been happening lately wasn't just about people from another time and space appearing.
After a long silence, Kakashi finally spoke.
"Is there a way to confirm someone's death without actually killing them?"
"You mean faking death? There are plenty of ways to do that."
Adult Kakashi shook his head. He didn't believe the mission scroll could have made a mistake.
Maybe it had been his own misjudgment of Obito's death back then that allowed everything to spiral into what it was now.
"What's really going on?" Might Guy pressed. "Your mission sounds extremely difficult. If you don't want to do it, why not hand it over to someone else? Just tell Minato-sama and the Third Hokage."
"..."
"Guy, if I've done many wrong things… things that don't deserve forgiveness, what would you do?"
"I don't know what happened," Guy replied seriously, "but it sounds like something huge. If there's really no way to stop you before you make an unforgivable mistake, then I'd drag you back first, and then atone together with you."
His answer was firm and decisive, striking Adult Kakashi's wavering heart like the toll of a bell.
"Even if it's a mistake that can't be forgiven, not even by death?"
"Hey, Kakashi, that doesn't sound like you at all!" Guy frowned. "Did something serious happen to you, or to Konoha?"
"No. Nothing like that. It'll be resolved soon."
"I've heard people saying the Fourth Shinobi World War is about to break out," Guy said as Kakashi turned to head back inside. "Is that what you're worried about?"
Kakashi paused mid-step.
"It won't happen. The Fourth Shinobi World War will definitely be stopped."
With that, Kakashi went back inside. Guy followed after him.
Only Obito, who had somehow ended up following them from within the Kamui dimension, remained standing there.
He watched their backs as they disappeared one after the other, the scroll he had inexplicably obtained clutched in his hand—
SSS-rank mission: Prevent the Fourth Shinobi World War.
…
It was already past midnight. Faced with the choice between squeezing into an apartment with those missing-nin or rushing back to their own jōnin dorms before Konoha's curfew, everyone silently chose the latter…
He was just a low-ranking jōnin, after all. He really didn't want to go to sleep and wake up dead.
Hayate Gekkō's coughing was so severe it made Obito's chest tighten. More than once, Obito almost suggested letting Hayate try some White Zetsu components to help his lungs recover.
In the end, he held back.
Although they had already revealed their identities, there were still far too many secrets they were keeping. It was better to wait and see how things developed.
He'd heard that Minato-sensei was taking Sakura to meet Tsunade-sama tomorrow. Maybe they could ask her to take a look at Hayate while they were at it.
Late that night, young Obito Uchiha got up to use the bathroom, only to be suddenly dragged into a pitch-black space!
The shock nearly sent a hot rush straight through him.
He was about to scream, but someone spoke before he could.
"Go ahead and scream. You should know by now that in this space, even if you scream your lungs out, no one will hear you."
That familiar, hoarse voice made the half-asleep Obito Uchiha jolt violently, instantly wide awake.
"It's you!"
Young Obito wasn't sure what he should call him. The other version of himself from another world? The Masked Man? Or maybe "Madara" would be more appropriate?
"Call me whatever you want."
The unmasked Adult Obito revealed his ruined face, his tone equally unpleasant toward his other self.
"I have something to ask you."
Maybe because they had already met twice, young Obito wasn't as nervous as before.
"At least give me a warning before dragging me in like this, alright?!" he snapped. "What if I'd already started?! Was I supposed to come in spraying like a spiral jet or something?!"
Since he was talking to himself and already full of pent-up frustration, his words came out completely unfiltered.
"Who says I didn't warn you?!"
Adult Obito was genuinely furious.
"Did a dog eat your shinobi awareness?! When you got up to drink water, didn't you notice the water had already been taken out of the fridge?!"
"And when you passed that vase that never had flowers, didn't you see there was a Wood Release branch stuck in it?!"
"And most importantly!"
"I threw the kitchen chopsticks right next to you just now, and you still didn't react! If I were an enemy, I'd have killed you a hundred times over!"
"..."
Faced with Adult Obito's tirade, young Obito had nothing to say.
He hadn't even fully woken up yet. How was he supposed to notice all that?
Fine. If it were Minato-sensei or Kakashi, they definitely wouldn't have missed it.
"Then at least let me finish peeing first, okay?!" young Obito shot back.
"Or what, do you want me to just pee right here?!"
Young Obito quickly realized something.
There was no White Zetsu here, which meant this wasn't the space created by his own dōjutsu. Compared to him, the Obito Uchiha of this world was clearly much faster at pulling people into his space.
Adult Obito fell silent.
"If you don't say anything," young Obito added, "I'm really going to do it right here."
"Go over there." Adult Obito pointed in a direction, indicating the far end of the platform.
"Go to the edge and pee toward the abyss. As much as you like."
Now it was young Obito's turn to be speechless.
With a twisted expression and muttered curses, he walked to the corner of the platform and stared out into the endless void.
This was his first time properly seeing the interior of this space…
Dark.
Cold.
Maybe because they were the same person, even without having gone through everything the other had experienced, young Obito immediately sensed that this place felt like another version of his own inner world.
Empty. Completely empty.
"Not done yet?"
"Can I pee with you staring at me like that?!" young Obito snapped.
"My back's sensitive, you know!!"
He was shamelessly borrowing one of their ancestors' character traits. If that ancestor knew, he'd definitely complain. Thankfully, he didn't.
Adult Obito: "..."
Was he really that sensitive?
With White Zetsu components in his body, he hadn't eaten in a long time. He'd practically forgotten what normal bodily sensations even felt like.
"Nope, can't pee," young Obito said flatly. "Let me out."
Adult Obito snorted coldly. Without the slightest hesitation, a spiraling vortex formed behind young Obito, hurling him straight out of the space.
Young Obito Uchiha watched the scene before him twist and distort. About five seconds later, he reappeared exactly where he'd vanished from.
Without a moment of hesitation, young Obito opened his Mangekyō Sharingan and stared intensely at the space in front of him, forcing a vortex to form before his eyes.
If his guess was right—
His space wasn't the same as that person's space at all.
Unless someone possessed his actual eyes, even if that person was Obito Uchiha of this world, they wouldn't be able to enter his space-time dōjutsu.