I Will Become the Wind

CHAPTER 28 | The House of Uchiha

They sat in Naruto's kitchen as the silence stretched on.

Kakashi had pulled the one kitchen chair back from the table, and he stared outside as the sky gradually shifted color. Naruto was sitting on the counter, swinging his legs now and then to keep them from falling asleep.

Naruto caught Kakashi up on everything with Obito, including the adventures he and the younger Obito had already been on since returning home.

He left out almost nothing. Only the details of his interactions with Team Minato, including their conversation about the White Fang. Judging by the younger Kakashi's reaction, it probably wouldn't help to bring that up along with everything else.

The longer Naruto talked, the quieter Kakashi became. It wasn't yet daybreak when Kakashi finally broke the awkward silence.

"So that's the real reason you thought Orochimaru might come after me. Because my eye grants access to a pocket dimension."

"Yeah."

"And the future me thinks Orochimaru could replicate the younger Obito's abilities by putting together a set of eyes from two different times."

"Something like that, I guess. If you want to ask your older self, we could probably—"

"No, thanks."

"Ehh? Why? I met my older self, and it was weird, but I still learned a lot of stuff."

Kakashi shuddered. "You told me I became Hokage. Even after I said I didn't want to find out something terrible had happened."

Naruto shook his head. "Avoid it if you want, but that's not the—"

"I think I understand the gist of it. Even now, there's no guarantee I won't become a target."

"Exactly. So I don't get why Orochimaru didn't come after you today. It would've been the perfect chance."

"If this kamui technique is really what he's after, his top choice would be Madara... Obito in this time," Kakashi said slowly. "If Orochimaru has my future self's left eye, maybe he needs the right eye to go with it."

"What do you mean?"

"With advanced Sharingan abilities, sometimes the left and right eyes work differently. For the whole thing to work best, you'd want one of each. Maybe it won't work otherwise."

Naruto thought about that for a moment. "Like when you put a battery in backward and it doesn't work."

"Those are two completely different situations."

"But if he didn't even try going after you, why did Orochimaru come here in the first place?" Naruto swung his feet higher, not caring that his heels bumped repeatedly on the cabinet doors.

Kakashi furrowed his brow. "You would know better than I would. They did say a lot of things were stolen from Root. Their leader was more than just assassinated. His body was mutilated in a way that suggests the theft of physical augmentations. Unfortunately, we don't know for sure what those were. When they tried to remove him from the site for an autopsy, it triggered a seal that destroyed all the evidence."

Naruto stopped his swinging abruptly. "What?"

"How Orochimaru managed to get around that trap is another unknown. Root's insularity worked against them this time. The regular ANBU weren't even aware of the breach until it was too late to stop him."

"I wish they'd told me more about Root in the future," Naruto said. "Maybe I'd be able to figure out what Orochimaru wanted."

"It isn't clear this attack had anything to do with Obito. I know that means nothing, but we can't assume he's Orochimaru's true target, either."