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The world is still spinning after using Kamui to transport himself back into the midst of the fourth great shinobi war. Focusing on one object is difficult, but Kakashi doesn’t worry about seeing his target.
He knows where he is because of the connection they share through the Sharingan and the body pressed under his legs.
His target is dead ahead. All he has to do is strike.
Pulling his arm back he bared his Kunai, ready to put an end to all of this.
To save the Obito he remembers from the Obito he’s faced with today.
The spinning begins to slow and finally he can see where he needs to strike.
“This ends now,” he growls out, his fingers gripping the Kunai in the white-knuckle hold.
“Kakashi-Sensei!” He hears Naruto call out to him, but he ignores. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hear what his student had to say to him, but that he couldn’t.
He’d made up his mind. Obito had to die, or the entire world would burn because of his anger. Being the one to end Obito’s life might break him even more than he already was, but that didn’t matter.
The world was in danger. His feelings couldn’t interfere.
Sitting there, he stared down at the man who’d been brave enough to smack him when he was eleven and remind him of everything that his father had tried to teach him before his passing. For twenty years he’d treated Obito’s memory as that of a hero, someone who had done great things and saved countless lives, and the entire time Obito was out there in the world. He’d been alive the entire time, mercilessly killing others and working towards a dream that would put every living human into an infinite, inescapable genjutsu.
Aiming for the neck, he held the Kunai steady.
He’d spent his time in the Kamui dimension thinking about how to finally put an end to this horrendous version of the man he’s once called a teammate. There was only one answer he could come up with.
Stabbing him through the heart hadn’t worked, but perhaps separating his head from the rest of his body would.
Even Lord First’s cells couldn’t heal an injury like that.
“Kakashi!” Minato appeared at his side, his hand reaching out toward Kakashi, but before he could a fist connected with his cheek. In an instant Kakashi had seen his dead sensei arrive and then watched from the corner of his eye as his best friend punched him in the face.
Any other day He would be shocked, perhaps even upset with Gai, for striking the man who he called sensei and who the village looked up to as a hero.
Today, though, he was thankful for the interruption to his Sensei’s plans. He’d have to make sure he thanked Gai properly after everything was said and done. For now, he needed to deal with more important matters.
“What are you waiting for?” Obito sneered, taunting him to go through with his plans.
The problem was, this wasn’t the Obito he’d fought just a little while ago in the Kamui dimension. His taunt felt emptier than anything he’d said to Kakashi before, and although he looked like a man who wanted to pick a fight Kakashi couldn’t help but notice a hopelessness hiding away in his eyes.
It was as if everything Obito had been fighting so hard for when they faced off had disappeared.
Kakashi shook away the thought. It didn’t matter if Obito had changed his mind, the damage was done.
Minato-Sensei, Kushina, Neji, and so many others. All of them were dead because of Obito. All of their lives had been cut short while Kakashi had been busy looking back on his memories of obito and treating him as a hero when in reality he was prancing around the world making everything worse in hopes of achieving a selfish dream.
“You,” his fingers ached but he only tightened his grip on the Kunai. “You were supposed to be better than me. Then everyone!”
“I didn’t ask you to put me on a pedestal,” Obito spat. “The only thing I ever asked of you was too pro- “
Slamming the Kunai down into the ground beside Obito’s head, he watched as Hashirama’s cells got to work healing the cut on his cheek that had been put there when the Kunai grazed against his face. “I did more than you!” He spat back. “I did more for Rin, for Konoha, for this world, than you ever have or ever will! I put everyone ahead of myself, including you, and you turned around and put yourself first!”
“I am trying to save the world!”
“You’re trying to save your own heart”! pulling his arm back, Kakashi closed his fist and struck. The crack of his fist connecting with Obito’s face echoed through the air. “If you wanted to save people you wouldn’t kill the innocent! You wouldn’t have attacked a village full of civilians who have never done you any wrong! You wouldn’t have taunted Naruto with Neji’s death! Nothing you have done has ever been for anyone but yourself and I am sick of acting like it was!”
“Rival…” A hand settled on his shoulder, offering a silent support while he stared down at the man he’d once mourned.
“I lived those words,” he whispered. “They became my entire being. ‘Those who abandoned their friends are worse than scum’. I said them to my students and teammates trying to get them to understand them, and I got them from you. If I’d known…”
He’s not sure anything would have changed.
He still would have clung to those words because they had become his belief not just because of Obito, but because of his father.
Even now, staring down at the man he’d copied those words from, he couldn’t bring himself to let go of them. They were no longer Obito’s words, but his own. He’d been the one living them and trying to pass them onto others so that the world they lived in could be better than the one he’d grown up in, and while he was doing that Obito was doing the opposite.
He’d turned his back on his own words in pursuit of a plan that would strip everyone in the world of their free will and force them into a ‘perfect dream’. A dream that none of them had asked for.
A dream that Kakashi didn’t want.
“This world is imperfect,” he whispered. “It’s just as broken and disgusting as you said. Children are forced to fight, shinobi manipulated into murdering their own clans, and endless wars being fought by pawns of a system that doesn’t care about them. All of what you said was right.”
“Rival,”
“But” he continued before Gai could stop him. “This imperfect world is far better than a lie. A dream that will never be a reality. I would rather live in a world where I’m forced to see Rin’s blood on my hands every day of my life, than being put into a world that will never be more than a lie. I can do more for this crummy, broken world alive than I ever can stuck in a dream.”
As he spoke Obito watched him. The sneer had vanished from his face as soon as he’d punched him, but nothing had replaced it. He simply stared up at Kakashi with a blank expression, listening to him speak.
“You want to change this world?” he asked. “Then fight with me and help me change it for the better, because nothing is going to change by putting the world under an infinite genjutsu. Nothing will get better. Rin won’t come back from the dead and tell you that everything you remember is just a terrible dream you had,” grabbing his Kunai once again he pulled it free from the ground and gathered himself back to his feet. “Here’s your chance to choose,” holding his free hand out to Obito, he waited. “Do you want to help me put an end to this and make some real changes to this shitty world, or do you want to continue laying there crying over everything you have lost while the world burns around you?”
Staring at the offered hand, Obito frowned. After a moment though, he sighed and lifted his left hand to meet Kakashi’s. “I want to stab Madara at least once,” he grumbled under his breath as Kakashi pulled him to his feet.
“You can stab him twice for all I care,” Kakashi shrugged. “As long as we put an end to him and this stupid plan.”
“It’s not- “
“It is,” Gai interrupted, stepping up to Kakashi’s side and resting his arm on his shoulder. “But we’re going to fix that. Right Rival?”
“Right,” Kakashi nodded. “Now, I have a plan.”
Motioning for the other two to come closer, he leaned in and began explaining. He wasn’t sure how well they would do in a battle against Madara, given how easily he’d been able to defeat the five Kage, but with his best friend and his old teammate at his side Kakashi was certain they could face anything.
Even a god tier shinobi like Uchiha Madara.