I hope everyone's had a great week!! I think... We're getting there.
Here we go~
*****************
Rin groaned as she saw the village gates.
"You seem a little unenthusiastic to get back, Rin," Obito commented.
"Ahh, well..." She had not told him how Kakashi and Minato had actually poked a hole into her heart. Well, almost. And she especially avoided talking about Sasori. There was no way she was jeopardizing her chances of keeping the Uchiha calm and not exploding with murderous intent.
But Obito knew about the afterlife. He knew about the Akatsuki.
"You'll keep my secret, right?"
"Of course." He assumed that her secret was everything he had witnessed in the past few days.
Obito regarded her timidly.
"If you don't even want to go back, why did you leave?"
The question surprised the medic.
Did she... not want to return to Konohagakure?
"No," Rin decided. "I do want to go back. I'm just unsure of how to feel about some things."
Her companion sighed.
"Do you want to get back into Team Minato?" he asked.
"I think that was our original plan, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Maybe."
"If they let us through the gate at all, that is." Rin leapt back as kunai rained in her direction.
"You dared to come to Konoha...?" Kakashi's steely voice growled.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obito looked up, shocked.
Kakashi was trying to kill Rin. Again.
He lost it.
A second later, the silver-haired ninja was pinned down by his old teammate, a kunai held against his neck.
"And this would be the second time you aimed to kill Rin, buddy," he growled into the Hatake's ear. "Don't you feel even a slither of remorse?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
He was strong.
He was Obito.
And he was about to kill him.
A million thoughts rushed through Kakashi's head, even as he struggled against the hopeless lock that Obito had forced him into.
Obito...?
But that could not be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rin shouted in warning to Obito as she sensed another presence. She knew he would not be able to defend himself against the new foe, so she jumped in to help.
A second later, she engaged her former teacher in battle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
They had finally figured it out. The four sat together at Ichiraku's Ramen, slurping away at a nostalgic memory.
"If you weren't the enemy, you could have just said so," Kakashi grumbled. Obito fumed.
"Not with you shooting the entire village's supply of kunai at Rin, we couldn't!"
"But that's because we saw her before... at the Akatsuki!"
Obito stopped. So did Rin. The Uchiha, however surprised, knew to keep his mouth shut as she played dumb and tilted her head.
"Sorry, what? You saw me with the Akatsuki?"
Minato shot a sheepish glance towards her.
"Yeah. Someone matching your appearance was at the Akatsuki."
"You guys... attacked the Akatsuki?" she asked. "Just the two of you?"
"We were scouting," Kakashi informed quietly.
"Then we saw a guy. He was throwing up and looked like he was about to pass out, so we took our chances. Turns out, he was as weak as he looked. However, the organization caught up to us in no time."
"Oh. Okay." Rin glanced away. "Are... Are you guys okay?"
"We're fine." Minato looked puzzled. "But I'm confused as to why they let us go alive."
"Lucky," Obito chirped, playing his part. Rin discreetly shot him a grateful glance. "I'd probably have died if I killed one of their members. They must have been in a good mood!" He laughed, faking a joke, but he knew it was true. They would not have hesitated to kill if one of their members were murdered in front of their faces.
Rin stared down at her ramen in silence, while the other two remained looking doubtful of Obito's hypothesis.
"They're a highly dangerous criminal organization. I don't think-" Minato cut Kakashi off with a smile.
"Well, let's forget about criminals and odd occurrences. We're all back together, so let's celebrate!"
Everyone cheered.
No one felt like it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rin yawned, completely at ease. Kakashi regarded her curiously.
"Did you not sleep well, Rin?" he asked.
"Good question."
Obito laughed, knowing she would never answer it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
It looked to Minato as if Obito and Rin had a special kind of understanding about one another. He saw it in the way the Uchiha laughed at things Rin said that sounded perfectly normal. He saw it in the way Rin looked at Obito sometimes, as if she were passing a glance that told him something unexplainable with words.
Blond brows furrowed in thought.
They were quieter - even Obito. They were colder - even Rin.
He settled temporarily on the compromise that they had just matured.
It seemed, amongst the three, Kakashi was the one to have changed the least.
Well, it looked like the team had also cleaned up on their tardiness, he thought as he found them all waiting for him on Training Ground Three. It was useless to worry now. Putting a smile onto his face, two bells jingling at his side, Minato approached his reformed team.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nobody was surprised when their teacher held up the bells.
"So, you all remember this, right? With the same rules, let's-"
"Three, two, one, go." Rin had interrupted him.
And everyone had followed her lead.
MInato dodged as three shinobi attacked him in a flurry, working out their old attack combinations.
"Oh, that's old stuff. I know how to counter those." He whisked away, teleporting to one of the places he had hidden his special kunai the night before.
Rin sighed, stopping on the grass soundlessly. Obito glanced at her and sat down cross legged on the clearing. Kakashi, who was about to bolt into hiding, stared at the two in horror.
"What are you two doing?" he demanded.
"Waiting," they replied simultaneously.
Kakashi gaped with disapproval.
To make matters worse for the silver-haired boy, Obito flopped backwards onto the grass and pretended to sleep.
Rin smirked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Minato jumped when someone poked him in the stomach as he landed.
Rin was there. She twirled a kunai in her finger and lunged.
Without another choice, the Fourth Hokage teleported again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kakashi almost yelped when Obito's eyes shot open and he jumped to his feet. His old teammate grinned; first at Rin, then at him.
"Oh, he got my clone," the Uchiha said. Rin nodded. His brows furrowed in confusion.
"That was the last, meaning..."
"He's back," Obito said. Rin took a stance beside him. Kakashi recognized it as a formation that they had practiced before and joined them in his old position, though remaining completely baffled.
"You didn't have to tell us," Rin said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The alarm chimed. All three students were panting after engaging in nonstop combat with their teacher for an hour, but all at different degrees.
"Good work, guys. Looks like you didn't manage to get my bells, though," Minato said.
"Or did we?" Obito asked, sending a sly grin towards him.
The Fourth Hokage tilted his head and checked the side of his pants.
"They're right here." Just to prove his point, he took them off and jingled them.
Rin pointed at him - or so he thought.
A single thread of chakra attached itself to the bell's string and untangled them from his fingers without meeting an ounce of resistance.
That was just because he was too shocked to do anything.
"Wha-"
Obito laughed.
"Not anymore, Minato-sensei!"
"Wait. The rules were that we had to get the bells before the alarm rang. This is cheating," Kakashi pointed out.
Neither of the two were fazed.
"Oh, but a rule for a rule," Rin said.
"What does that mean?" Minato inquired.
"We went easy on a rule, sensei, so you can go easy on one of them for us, too," she replied.
Kakashi looked just as confused as he was. However, Obito looked like he understood what their Medical Ninja was saying.
"I have to say... You're speaking in quite the riddles, Rin."
"Oh, you'll figure it out. Even Obito did." She winked at him. "I'm going to head home if it's okay with you, sensei."
"G-Go on ahead. Good work today."
~~~~~~~~~~~
The kunoichi tossed the bells back to him with a smile. There was something in her eyes that dimmed it, though. It had not been there before.
"Thanks for today, sensei. Let's do some missions soon."
"R-Right. Yeah, for sure."
And she disappeared in a flurry of feathers.
It reminded him of Itachi. His feathers were black, though, unlike Rin's white, silvery ones.
Opposites.
He dismissed the other two and slowly walked along Konoha's walls in contemplation.
"We went easy on a rule, sensei," Rin had said.
He had told them that the same rules applied.
What was the rule? They went easy?
It hit him.
They went easy.
They went easy on him.
He remembered now.
Come at me with the intent to kill.
He knew now.
If they had...
...Rin and Obito would have killed him.
The Fourth Hokage shuddered as he remembered how he had teleported to each of his kunai only to find either Rin or Obito waiting for him there. As he discreetly inspected himself and found no cuts, he realized that they had only ever used the blunt side of their kunai to attack him. He had found out soon enough that they were clones, but he knew that his paths were closed up. They had forced him back to the center of the training ground without any spoken communication.
They were strong.
That was an understatement.
They were killers.
It made him very uneasy...
...because that, too, was an understatement.
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Well... I hope this actually works out. It'd be bad if the storyline got stuck again.
Love you guys!!
~NarutoKura