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It’s all going wrong.
Kakashi kneels in front of Obito, who is disintegrating after taking one of Kaguya’s rods through the stomach.
“You better not join me for a while,” Obito says with a sardonic grin. Kakashi firms up his resolve.
“You’re not dying yet!” He tells his clearly dying friend. Obito huffs a small laugh.
“Unless you have a time travel jutsu, I’m pretty sure I am.”
Kakashi pauses, sorting through his mind for all the jutsu he remembers. He might not have the sharingan anymore, but he spent years learning over a thousand jutsu. It can’t have been in vain, it - ah. That one.
Kakashi faces Obito, who still thinks he’s dying, to reply. “Well, actually.”
Obito blinks down at his no-longer-disintegrating body, then looks up to see Kaguya watching them incredulously.
“You know,” he commented. “It kind of feels like that was just a healing jutsu.”
“Technically,” Kakashi replied, “It was one of the time travel jutsu. It pulls your past self’s physical form 5 minutes into the future.”
Obito processes that before focusing on the important part of that sentence. “ One of the time travel jutsu? Are you implying that you know more than one time travel jutsu?”
Kakashi scoffs. “Of course.”
Obito pokes him hard in the side, relishing the way it makes the hardened shinobi kneeling in front of him recoil. “Show me.”
Kakashi sighs, as though this is a major chore to him; an inconvenience of the highest degree, and the world turns an oddly vibrant shade of indigo not a moment later.
Dramatic jerk.
Obito looks up, seeing Kaguya raise her hands to attack. He turns his head to the left and meets his own eyes, before turning to glare at the Kakashi kneeling in front of him (while trying to ignore the Kakashi to his right)
“This was less than 5 minutes ago.”
“Yes.”
“ Why would you only take us back 5 minutes? ”
“You said to show you! I didn’t think you actually wanted to do anything with it!”
“Bakashi, Obviously I want to fix something with it!”
“Maa…” Kakashi turns to watch Kaguya’s rod of doom approach them, looking as though he were on a vacation. “I suppose. You should have clarified.”
His hands flash through a few signs, and the world goes indigo again just in time to prevent Obito from strangling his friend in irritation.
When they appear on a platform behind yet another Obito, Obito decides he’s had enough of sitting on the ground and stands. Bakashi stands up with him.
“Bakashi,” Obito says, looking around at a familiar scene. “Why here ?”
Bakashi’s eyes smile in a way that speaks of pain. “This was where you fucked up the most, right?” He swings his arm forward to where a masked version of Obito is holding Sasuke over his shoulder, staring out at a room of Kage and their guards. “You did say you wanted to fix something.”
Obito rolls his eyes. “You’re not wrong , per se,” he tells him, “But this isn’t really the best time to jump to if you’re looking to make a change.”
Bakashi tilts his head, as if to say go on. Obito rolls his eyes, flipping through the hand signs he’d copied off Kakashi moments earlier.
This time, when the world goes indigo, Obito is the one in control.
Kakashi looks around, trying to place where they’re at. “I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to get at here,” he confesses. It just looks like Konoha to him.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe make sure that your Hokage doesn’t put herself in a coma and let a madman take power?”
Kakashi pauses. Ah. This must have been the day of Pein’s attack. “I’m not quite sure how you expect me to manage that,” he confesses. “Last time this all went down I spent most of my time being dead.”
Obito’s face does something complicated that Kakashi wishes he could play back with the perfect recall of the sharingan that he no longer has, and then his hands are flying again and turning the world indigo.
When the world resumes solid form again, Kakashi is in a place he recognizes far more easily. “Ah,” he remarks, staring at himself. “Rescuing the Kazekage are we?”
Obito looks around too, before seeming to come to a conclusion. “Ah, shit, we’re too late aren’t we? He’d already been taken by the time you showed up.”
Kakashi hadn’t noticed the way sound would disappear as the world turned Indigo until it sucked his laugh away with the rest of reality.
Kakashi didn’t recognize this scene, but apparently the Akatsuki members recognized him, because he found himself suddenly under attack the moment the world realigned itself.
“This was a TERRIBLE plan!” he called out.
“Oh, like you had a better one!” Obito retorted. Kakashi scoffed, then dove out of the way of another of Deidara’s explosions.
“I could absolutely do better than this!” He neglected to mention that he hadn’t yet come up with a better plan, but surely there was one.
“Yeah?” Obito countered. “Prove it!”
Kakashi flew through the hand signs, grabbing Obito and pulling him into the jutsu as time warped around them again.
Obito looked around, confused. “When are we?” he asked. Kakashi shushed him, actually shushed him, before signaling for stealth and practically ceasing to exist to human senses.
The nerve Bakashi had, to shush him. He still didn’t even know when they were!
And why the hell would Bakashi take them to the forest of death? Training ground 44 wasn’t that important to the timeline, was it? It didn’t have anything to do with the Akatsuki at any rate.
Then Obito felt the chakra flowing to their left, and Kakashi took off . Obito sprinted after him, because that chakra felt like Orochimaru. They arrived right as a wave of Kyuubi chakra followed, and Kakashi dove down with his Chidori active, forcing Orochimaru to redirect the hand that had nearly connected with Naruto.
A young Naruto. What was this kid, 12? When were they even?
Wait…
“Is this your team’s chuunin exam?”
Bakashi, still fighting a Sannin, grunted something close to an affirmation. Obito groaned at the sky, casually turning impermeable to avoid the attack Orochimaru threw his way almost as an afterthought.
“You know we just disqualified them, right? You’re not allowed help during a chuunin exam.”
“S-class threat Obito! A little help?” Kakashi demanded, acting as though Obito were the one being unreasonable here.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re acting like he’s a problem .” Obito sent a wave of Mokuton at the snake Sannin, successfully turning his attention away from the group of genin who still seemed terrified but were now confused and hopeful on top of it.
“Kakashi-sensei, who’s this?” Naruto demanded. “Hey, hey, was he right that you got us disqualified?”
“Are you an idiot?” Obito asked, letting Orochimaru run straight through him and trusting Kakashi to handle things for a moment. “You should be running! This isn’t a place for genin!”
Naruto puffed up, looking ready to argue that he could fight, but Sakura (thank goodness for sensible children) started dragging him away with Sasuke’s help. Sasuke, who was glaring at him - no, glaring at his eyes .
Sasuke turned his attention to Kakashi before they disappeared into the bushes. “You will be giving me answers later,” he decreed, and then the genin were gone and it was just Kakashi and Obito and a Sannin duking it out.
Obito chuckled as he sent another wave of Mokuton out toward Orochimaru. “Other you is going to be so confused when they ask him who I was!” he said, outright cackling and phasing out of reality a little to dodge a brace of kunai. “He’s not going to have any idea!”
Bakashi just rolled his eyes and disappeared underground. Orochimaru turned toward Obito, outright hissing in irritation. Obito had forgotten he did that.
“I’d like to know who you are too,” the Sannin commented. “I was under the impression that all the Uchiha were dead!”
“Oh, right,” Obito remarked. “We should probably change that.”
Kakashi had popped back out of the ground just in time to hear that, so Obito got to relish his groans before the world turned indigo yet again.
“Did you have to pull us out then? We hadn’t killed him yet! He’s just going to hunt Sasuke down again!” Kakashi seemed irritated. Did this jutsu leave the timelines they visited behind to continue? Obito was kind of under the impression that it would, well, he wasn’t quite sure. Have an effect on the future they’d left, presumably.
“Sasuke?” a voice asked from behind them, and Obito turned to see a definitely-less-than-sane Itachi Uchiha fully ready to shank a man. Right, the massacre. “Who is after Sasuke?”
“Orochimaru,” Obito said honestly. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true yet , it would be.
“I’m going to kill him,” Itachi said. It didn’t sound angry, just a statement of fact. This kid was disturbing. Obito was sure he didn’t used to be, at least, not so much.
“You do that,” Obito remarked. Beside him, Kakashi rolled his eyes and grabbed onto him, and the world turned indigo again.
“Did you even use hand signs this time?” Obito gaped at Bakashi, who always had been annoyingly competent. All he got in response was an eye roll, which wasn’t helpful because it didn’t answer his question at all and he’d very much like to know if Bakashi had gotten proficient enough at a time-space ninjutsu to cast it signlessly.
Frankly, he’d like to know if Kakashi could cast any jutsu signlessly, because that was bullshit either way. Probably not. He was sneaky enough Obito probably just hadn’t noticed. He squinted at Bakashi suspiciously anyway.
Kakashi just gestured toward a perfectly ordinary rock face. “This is the entrance to Root.”
Obito blinked, realizing he’d already known that. “Um. Yes.” He turned toward Kakashi. “Why are we here?”
Bakashi rolled his eyes as if Obito was making this into a chore. “Itachi wasn’t always that creepy or insane,” he remarked. “I’m mostly sure we can stop the massacre without having to fight during it if we just kill Danzo now.”
Obito nodded, sagely. “Right, right, just eliminate an extraordinarily powerful ninja with an army of ninjas at his beck and call and get out alive. Loving this plan.”
Bakashi huffed something like a laugh. “It does sound like something you’d do.” Obito winced, remembering that he had done effectively that roughly 7 years prior to their current position in the timeline.
“I should probably fix that…” he remarked, raising his hands only to find them pinned at his sides with a glaring Kakashi in front of him.
“Not. Yet.” Obito rolled his eyes.
“Oh sure, let’s just go murder Danzo first then, shall we?”
Kakashi’s eyes curved up in another very-obviously-threatening smile. “I’m glad you agree!” he remarked. Then he was blowing the rock face open, skipping subtlety altogether.
“Just because I’m an S-Class Missing Nin does not mean you can just pick fights with anyone!” Obito called down the hallway after him, before sighing and turning to take care of the army of Root ninja who had shown up at his back. “Honestly, Bakashi, this was just rude .”
Kakashi strolled out of the Root base, covered in blood and carrying Danzo’s severed head, to find Obito sitting calmly on the ground outside with his hands leisurely settled behind his head, appearing fully relaxed.
“You couldn’t have helped?” he demanded, chucking Danzo’s severed head at Obito. Unfortunately, Obito noticed it with more than enough time to use Kamui to phase away, reappearing behind Kakashi.
“You weren’t trying to be sneaky, so I assumed you had it well in hand!” he remarked. “I see I was right about that.” Kakashi rolled his eyes. “Besides!” Obito added, and with a wave of his hand several trees split open in front of them to reveal captured Shinobi. “Your dramatic entrance gave me plenty to do.”
“Clearly not enough,” Kakashi said, gesturing to where Obito had been lying on the ground. Obito grinned at him.
“That’s alright,” he remarked, hands flying through the signs. “We’ve got another stop to make.” Kakashi continued to glare at Obito even as the jutsu took effect and turned the world indigo around them.
When the world came back together, Kakashi was blinking at a surprised and hostile Yondaime Hokage and his wife, who looked to be in quite a bit of pain.
“Obito,” Kakashi remarked, turning to the man next to him. The Yondaime raised an eyebrow at the name, but didn’t relax at all. “Did you time travel us to the Kyuubi attack?”
“Kyuubi attack?” Minato demanded. “Time Travel?”
“Sorry, My bad,” Obito confessed. Kakashi wasn’t sure if he was referring to the Kyuubi attack or the time travel. “I’m Obito from the future - surprise, not dead, just kidnapped by a missing nin and being brainwashed for evil - and this is Kakashi from the future, turns out he turns into a degenerate, anyway we’re here to stop the Kyuubi attack from happening so you don’t need to worry about that!”
Minato didn’t relax at all - probably a good thing, as this was definitely quite the series of absurd claims - but he also didn’t attack. Kakashi took that as permission to whack Obito over the head.
“Idiot,” he remarked. “And you got on me for having no subtlety!”
“You do have no subtlety!” Obito protested. “You blew open the side of a mountain!”
“I knew we could handle that!” Kakashi retorted. “It was a situation where fighting made sense! You, on the other hand, dropped us right into a room with two extraordinarily powerful ninjas that we don’t want to kill, and then expected them to just be cool with that!”
“Speaking of not killing them,” Obito remarked. Naruto had apparently been born, and Kushina was grinning down at him as the air above her began to warp. “That’s our cue!”
A pale, one-eyed mask became visible in the air above Kushina, and Obito jumped right into the spiral of Kamui to tackle it back through. Kakashi blinked, finding himself alone in a room with his formerly-dead teacher and that teacher’s formerly-dead wife.
“So…” He rocked back on his heels, holding his hands visibly at his side as anything more casual would be perceived as an attempted attack. “Congratulations?”
Minato snorted, apparently amused despite himself. “If you’re really Kakashi,” he said, “Why don’t you have a sharingan?”
“Because it’s Obito’s?” Kakashi tilted his head. “Obviously I gave it back to him.”
“You have two eyes.” Kakashi nodded. That was something they would see as impossible at this point in time.
“It’s a long story,” Kakashi said. “But since I don’t have a sharingan right now I can’t exactly follow Obito into Kamui to fight himself, so I suppose we have time. It all began when I was born… but well, you know that bit, so I’ll skip to tonight in the timeline as I experienced it.”
Nobody in the room relaxed fully, but nobody was attacking him either, so Kakashi counted this as a total win.
Meanwhile, in Kamui:
“If I really am you from the past, you’ll die if you kill me! This is foolishness!”
“I never said I was going to kill you, I said I was going to destroy your heart!”
“You say that as if there is a difference!”
“There IS a difference!”
“So then the Third made the terrible decision to assign me a Genin team. The worst choice of his career, honestly, and I can say that confidently because he survived for less than a year after that and I’m not fully convinced my being assigned a Genin team wasn’t the reason he died.”
“Did you kill him?” Ah, Minato still thought he was a threat, wonderful.
“Of course not, that was Orochimaru. Anyway, Naruto was one of my Genin, and I’m sorry to tell you this but your son was a disaster when I got him as a student.”
Obito stood over himself, victorious.
He also glared up at himself petulantly.
“Was that so hard?” Future-obito asked, contemplating helping himself up and reasoning that it would be a bad plan.
“I don’t understand the purpose of any of this,” the other-him replied, and right , he wouldn’t.
“There was a seal on your heart,” Obito tells his past self. “And you were about to do some incredibly stupid things because of it. Come, listen to my tale of woe.”
He had to dodge the kunai that was flying at his face before he could tell his story, but past-him was listening, even if it was just in the most lethal way he could manage. How nostalgic.
After Kakashi finished his story, Minato still hadn’t relaxed.
“You understand, of course, that that sounds completely unbelievable.”
Kakashi sighed, as if very put upon by this information, and continued to keep his hands carefully visible. “Yeah, I know.” He paused for a moment. “Then again, once Obito is done knocking some sense into himself you’ll probably have to deal with him wanting to rejoin the village, and he’ll be able to confirm the statue and Zetsu’s existence at least.”
Minato paused. “We will, of course, investigate the threats you’ve mentioned.” His grip on his Kunai still hadn’t changed. “I just find it hard to believe how much of that rant was about Jiraiya’s porn books.”
Kakashi grinned unrepentantly.
Obito started the time travel jutsu while still in Kamui, leaning out and placing his hand on Kakashi’s back instead of heading back into the physical realm fully. Sensei still hadn’t relaxed at all, and Kushina seemed closer to snapping than before he had left (Kakashi what did you do? ) so it seemed the safer option.
He heard Kakashi say “That’s my cue!” just before sound ceased to exist and Indigo took over his vision.
Kakashi looked around. “Where have you taken me now?” It seemed familiar, but in the sense that he should know what was going on and definitely didn’t.
“That’s Kannabi bridge,” Obito pointed. “You’d think you’d recognize it.”
Kakashi paled a little. “Ah.” Obito continued to look at him, seeming perplexed at his lack of recognition. “We never actually made it over to blow it up - Sensei took care of that for us. After.”
Obito nodded, seeming to decide that made sense. “Well, we can blow it up now, and then make sure you don’t get your eye gouged out later . We’re early enough that it’ll be easy to do both.”
“I’m more concerned about you getting half your body crushed, but sure” Kakashi replied, then set to work with an almost terrifying efficiency placing explosive tags along the bridge.
Obito had forgotten that Kakashi was the only person in the Leaf village to complete 1,000 missions without being a Sannin. His efficiency was legendary for a reason.
Still, all the efficiency that Bakashi had as an adult was mimicked by how annoying he had been as a child. Obito felt kind of justified in how child-him was getting all up in child-Bakashi’s face. Bakashi himself (at least, the adult version) looked a little like he was re-living a religious experience and finding it less amazing the second time around.
Obito, remembering how much of Bakashi’s adult personality was based on his child self, realized that may be exactly what was happening.
“So… You smack some sense into your child-self, I rescue Rin?” Obito asked. Kakashi sighed.
“Can I trust you not to get yourself covered in rocks?”
“Hey! I was saving you from the rockfall! Without your deadweight I would have been fine.”
Kakashi looked skeptical. He was right to be skeptical, of course, but Obito was never going to admit it.
“And I’ll be fine now. Make sure you figure out that people are important before you lose an eye.” With that, Obito used Kamui to drop into the cave right behind Rin, shoving her into his pocket dimension without any fanfare. It didn’t take long for him to be noticed after the disappearance of their captive, but he wasn’t concerned about that. With Kamui, he couldn’t be buried under rubble if they tried .
Besides, he always had been the vengeful type. Even with Zetsu’s influence gone, he wanted to kick these guys through a wall or two.
Kakashi stood over two trussed-up teenagers, in his best disappointed-parent pose. The Hiraishin Kunai was sitting out of their reach but within line of sight, so that if Minato decided to show up he wouldn’t be caught off guard.
“Your teammate will be fine,” he said, sounding much calmer than he was. He did trust Obito now that he was reformed and an S-class threat, but he also was worried about Rin. Worrying about your comrades wasn’t something you could just turn off, after all. “I’m asking whether you’re ready to be friends, or if you’re going to continue insulting each other and spurning Konoha’s ideology of teamwork like it never mattered.”
His point was somewhat undermined by Obito popping out of Kamui behind him. “Oy, Bakashi! What’s taking you so long?” Rin seemed much calmer than the tied up and resisting younger versions of themselves, simply bowing to Obito in thanks and making her way over to her teammates.
“We were stubborn kids,” Kakashi bemoans. “And you’re not helping me teach them the importance of teamwork and friendship when you insult me every other sentence!”
Obito laughed. “When have we not insulted each other every other sentence?”
“You pretended to be mature for a while there.”
“Before or after realizing that I’d spent years trying to end the world?”
In front of them, child Kakashi looked over to Child Obito. They may be unable to move much, but their mouths were free - presumably to encourage communication skills, if the crazy man claiming to be future-him was to be believed. “I was wrong,” he admitted. Obito perked up.
“You admit that saving friends is more important than the mission?”
Kakashi shook his head. “Not that. I just meant that you’re not annoying.” He slanted a glare at the heavily-scarred Uchiha calling future-him names. “Yet.”
Obito, predictably, shouted his offense to the world. Kakashi sat back, regretting that his hands were tied in a way that prevented him from plugging his ears.
“So, anyway, I’m good to head back whenever,” Obito said, crossing his arms behind his head. “Do we use the same jutsu to go forward, or…”
Kakashi paused. “No.”
“Ah, yeah, I thought that might be the case. Well then, get on with it.” Obito gestured at Kakashi, grinning obliviously.
“Get on with what?”
“Taking us back to the future.”
“Ah.” They stared at each other for a moment. “About that.”
“Kakashi,” Obito sounded a little strained, and the younger versions of themselves weren’t arguing anymore, sitting up and paying attention instead. “Tell me you know the jutsu that takes us forward in time.”
The silence was deafening.
“Tell me you didn’t use a time travel jutsu to take us back in time without having a way back forward .”
“Well, actually…”
“ Bakashi.”
“We do have a way forward!” Kakashi remarked cheerfully, doing jazz hands. “Time is always moving forward, we just have to let it!”
“Are you telling me that we went back in time by 17 years, and have to relive all 17 of those years if we want to see how the world changes because of it?”
“Technically,” Kakashi remarked. “I only took us back 5 minutes.”
“Then you took us back to the day the fourth war was declared!”
“Per your request to go fix something.”
“I didn’t know you didn’t know how to get us back! Why would you know a time travel jutsu to go back in time and not the one that takes you forward?”
“Obviously I stole the time travel jutsu off another ninja, and then killed him before he could go back forward in time and get away by leaving me in the past. Hence why I only took us back by 5 minutes the first time. You’re the one who recklessly started jumping back years at a time.”
“You took us to your genin team’s CHUUNIN EXAMS.” Obito felt it was fair to stress this, as he’d only taken them back by maybe a year and Kakashi was the one to first make a multi-year jump.
“You took us back to the Uchiha Massacre right after. You were also the one to jump to the Kyuubi attack. And here. Oh, that reminds me.” Kakashi turned to their younger selves. “We destroyed the Kannabi bridge already.”
Young-Kakashi sighed deeply. “We’re going to have to verify that.”
Kakashi shrugged as if that didn’t matter to him at all. “Fair enough.” He turned back toward Obito (the adult. Adultbito?) just as the man groaned.
“I just realized,” he said. “Everything else we changed was in the future . Bakashi, we’re gonna have to do it all over again. ”
Kakashi nodded. “I always knew you had the worst ideas.”
“YOU!” Obito lunged, nonlethally, and Kakashi grinned as he dodged. Yeah, it was gonna be a long journey back to the future, but they’d be fine. Maybe he could use that to impress the power of friendship upon his younger self. Hmm…
There was a yellow flash, and Kakashi readied himself to explain everything another time through (making a note to leave Icha Icha out of it this time).
He turned, finding that it was in fact Minato-sensei and that Adultbito had taken that as his cue to start behaving again. Minato, meanwhile, was squinting at them, not attacking because Rin seemed to be holding him back. “Who the hell are you? Who are they?” He turned to the teenagers, asking the one who was holding him back and the one who was most likely to know. “Rin? Kakashi?”
Adult Kakashi grinned. “Well, Actually…”
~Fin~