I Will Become the Wind

CHAPTER 23 | Three Modes of Time

"What—" Kakashi started to ask.

"It'd take too long to explain everything," Obito said impatiently. "But I can go to Naruto's time, and yours, and mine, and take whoever I want along with me."

"I'm not surprised." Kakashi stepped back, continuing to look around at all the things inside the dimension. "Your older self figured out how to do something like that. He was even able to bring himself back briefly from the Pure World."

"What?" both Naruto and Obito said at the same time.

"That's actually why it makes me so nervous to see you two show up again. Between Orochimaru's experiments and another enemy we faced during the war, the study of dimensional travel is all but forbidden. Which, of course, makes it very valuable to anyone indifferent to the law."

"Another enemy? Who?" Naruto asked.

Kakashi glanced down at him. "We think Orochimaru might be dead—or at least, he's made it look that way. All of his labs and research have been destroyed, and even our Naruto can't sense him. But there will always be people eager to discover the things he discovered. I was afraid someone else might have brought you back again. It would be the same mess all over."

The three boys exchanged a look. Kabuto's brows scrunched worriedly. Obito shrugged. Naruto nodded.

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said. "Orochimaru is in my world now. He conned us into taking him there a couple weeks ago. He swallowed up his younger self and is going around pretending to be him."

Kakashi took a step back, eyes widening. For some reason, he looked more shocked about this than seeing them show up at his office.

"What did Orochimaru tell you?" he asked sharply.

"It's a long story, sort of, but..." Naruto looked at Obito. "I got stuck in Obito's time when he took me there, because I was the only link to my dimension he knew about. So we went to Orochimaru because he might know what to do. I didn't want to ask him," he added with a scowl.

"That explains a lot," Kakashi said. "To think he actually found a way out, and used you two to do it."

"What did Orochimaru do? We thought it was suspicious he was running away from his world," Obito said. "He just said there was nothing left for him there anymore."

"Obito..." Kakashi started slowly, as if weighing his words. "That is a long story, too. But you shouldn't have trusted him, not even a little. He went after your eye."

"He—what?"

"The one that used to be here." Kakashi tapped beside his left eye. "It's no surprise Orochimaru found a way to leave the world. After reviving the entire Uchiha clan and using them as his own personal army, he was considered one of the top causes of the war, along with your older self and Madara. Not to mention the incident with the Time-Spanning Incarnation. By the time he disappeared, Orochimaru was wanted by all Five Great lands. But that wasn't the extent of it."

"What else?" Naruto narrowed his eyes. He'd never trusted Orochimaru to begin with, but he had a bad feeling about what they hadn't been told.

"Our understanding of dimensional jutsu has grown in unexpected ways." Kakashi hesitated. "The fact that he needed you to take him from our world is a big hint that what he tried to do didn't work. But I'm afraid it could also mean... Obito, did he say anything to you about your abilities?"

"He said I needed the Mangekyou in order to reach my full potential." Obito crossed his arms with a look of disgust. "But I'm not so desperate for power that I want to try and get it."