Grooming was the hard part, especially as she'd started so young, or so her mother told her upon learning she'd already selected her target. Young as they were, it would be years before she could properly use him, and so slow and steady was the mantra Rin implemented.

The end game was an utter dependency on her, so much so that once his use expired he wouldn't even question the poison in his drink, the kunai whispering across his throat, or whatever other method Rin eventually decided upon to eliminate him from the shadows.

Her mother had never so much as been suspected over her father's death, after all.

Obito did not fall easily. Rin had thought the fool would be easy to wrap up in threads, but as soon as she thought she'd done it, he'd slip away again. Kind words whispered in his ear, exclamations of astonishment as he did things far beyond the abilities of someone their age group built his ego, but while they manipulated Obito into seeking to impress her further, they did nothing to tame him.

Others were starting to notice him. A katon jutsu performed in front of a panel of judges gathered admirers; after all, five year olds weren't supposed to know elemental releases. He was fast, strong and dedicated – not to mention kind. The more he revealed that despite his clumsiness he would one day stand proud as one of the elite, the more Rin detested him.

Why wouldn't he stumble? She poured kindness upon him – kindness she didn't mean but everyone felt is as genuine so what did it matter that behind the face of an angel was the heart of a devil – and he gravitated towards her, going so far as to consider her his best friend, but despite that, she never had the control she so craved.

Patience, her mother crooned the day she came home from the entrance ceremony at the academy with her mask almost broken. She'd saved his future, had made him so indebted to her that he'd never be able to pay it off for the rest of his life, and still he refused to grovel at her feet.

At five years old, a year after she'd commenced on her mission, she sat back to look at things again.

Kindness didn't work. The kinder she was, the more he shone and the more it hurt to look at him. The academy was a perfect opportunity to start to pull away, bond with new friends and leave him behind in the dust, but that would be admitting defeat, and Rin refused to do that. She had selected her target, and Uchiha Obito would dance on her threads.

It was quite by chance when she discovered the missing piece of her puzzle. A walk along the river – beside it, aware that Obito already knew how to walk on it even if he could never hold it for long – took her past the Uchiha compound.

The Uchiha were close-knit and tight-lipped. Obito would never tell her what went on within the clan, calling it clan business and sorry, I'm not allowed to say, but it appeared that one lone girl wandering along their boundary was nothing for the clan to worry about. She wasn't particularly curious, anyway. Let the clans keep their secrets, she'd always thought.

Hearing the name Obito fall from gossiping lips changed her mind.

Like the clan itself, there was really little she knew about Obito, although like a blind fool she'd missed that for the past year. The clan, the clan. Sharingan this, Sharingan that.

But nothing about family, and as she listened to the gossip she learnt that Obito had no family, just an old woman that couldn't wait until she could get him out of her house.

The clan hated Obito, just as she did, and things began to fall into place.

Rin was a smart girl. Five years old and already weaving a web that would keep a prisoner for the rest of his life, much like her mother had done, and her grandmother before that. Puzzles, she was especially good at, once she had the pieces.

Obito's bluster was an attempt to be noticed. All he wanted was to be acknowledged, and Rin had come dangerously close to completing that dream for him, by bringing him to the spotlight and lavishing all of her attention on him. She was popular, so where her attention went, so did their peers'.

Her hard work had almost ruined itself, and Rin grit her teeth at the realisation she'd come so, so close to failing, all because of one oversight.

No matter, she reassured herself as she continued walking, past the gossiping Uchiha that had just sealed the fate of one of their own. It was correctable. All she needed to do was turn everyone into her pawns. If she could get them all to notice Obito, she could get them all to ignore him, too.

Finding him in a game with their peers, demonstrating the speed and agility that would one day mark him as an elite, she mused how fortunate it was that the Uchiha were too short-sighted to see this particular uncut diamond in the rough. If his clan acknowledged him, it would be the end.

Hatake Kakashi was the perfect pawn. Son of the White Fang and an established genius, against him even Obito seemed useless. Rin didn't even need to shift anything about Kakashi to make use of him, not when he could do elemental releases that made Obito's miniature fireball look like child's play and clamber up trees all day long.

The rest of her class were already becoming enamoured with him, making her job even easier as she began to ignore Obito if Kakashi was in the vicinity, joining the throng that told Kakashi he was amazing, a prodigy to the core.

Kakashi ignored them. That didn't matter, because she saw the change in Obito's eyes – still obscured by those hideous goggles but there nonetheless – and knew she'd finally found his weakness. From then on, it was simply a case of pressuring the crack, slipping in a senbon to pry it wider, then a kunai once the gap was big enough.

Obito tried his best. Of course he did, but with Rin's manoeuvring pitting even the teachers against him – and thereby hiding his talent under the moniker dead last, convincing him that it didn't exist – there was little he could do. Training harder, pushing his body to its limits and then smashing through them, led him to making mistakes as he paced himself wrong. Shuriken that formerly flew straight started to go astray until all anyone remembered was the time Obito almost killed their teacher – and not that every other shuriken had hit perfect bullseye.

Through it all, Rin was there for him. A reassuring word when things went wrong again, false promises to always be there with him. Making a point of it to be the only one that ever spent time with him of her own free will outside of class, seeking him out in the worst of the weathers and lying through her teeth when she said she cared.

It made her skin crawl, throat wanting to constrict itself rather than say those words, but she was a kunoichi. Deception was what she did, and Obito had been a challenge, once, but now it was just so easy to make him dance to her tune.

Kakashi's early graduation was another thread in her web, Obito clawing his way after him only to fail miserably, and Rin patiently sat and watched as he sabotaged himself further and further, marvelling at how easily he fell after a single push in the right place. She almost didn't need to do anything anymore. All she had to do was maintain her faux friendship with him, encouraging him with her words while discouraging him with her actions.

Their own graduation came and went, bringing with it confirmation that her mission was succeeding. Obito preferred to receive his certificate from her, alone, than from the Hokage in front of everyone. She'd become his most important person.

Now, she just had to keep him like that. They were still children, and it would be a shame to lose him so soon.

Namikaze Minato was a problem. Uzumaki Kushina even more of one. Rin saw all of her hard work almost crumble in front of her as the sharp blue eyes noticed the potential no other adult had and started to try and draw it out of him. Kushina played favourites, picking up on the breaking Uchiha and trying to bind him back together with her too-big heart and there was nothing Rin could do to stop them without revealing herself.

If their third teammate hadn't been Hatake Kakashi, it would have all fallen apart, but Rin was skilled and the saying always went luck comes to the skilled. Or something to that effect.

Obito was fixated on surpassing Kakashi – a feat almost impossible for him because he might have one day been an elite without her meddling, but Kakashi was already an elite. Rin had instilled that desire in him long ago, and it paid as he completely missed his own potential blooming under Minato's careful tutelage, because no matter how good he got, Kakashi was always better.

As an academy student, Rin had learnt deception and manipulation. As a genin, she was forced to hone them, and hone them quickly. Minato's blue eyes were sharp, and more than once she'd received a gentle rebuke for playing favouritism – "Obito's strong, too. Don't ignore him."

She learnt iryoninjutsu, finding the ability to heal a useful cover for her manipulation. She paid Obito attention again – always having to patch him up from whatever scrape it was he'd gained. No matter how minor it was, she always made a point of healing him, drawing his attention oh so subtly to the way that Kakashi never needed healing from something so simple as a messed-up training exercise.

Not even Minato noticed that manipulation, and to Obito the message that Kakashi would always be better than him hammered itself a little further in. Rin perfected subliminal messaging and watched as Obito fell – down, down, down into her web.

Kakashi's promotion to jounin should have been the final thread to her web, ensnaring Obito for good. Her wording when she asked to meet him later was deliberate. Obito had never been loved, so he'd mistaken his feelings of gratitude for that very emotion.

Watching the bouquet of roses tumble to the ground, red petal spilling out like blood, brought Rin a sadistic delight as she carefully manoeuvred their group into multiple conversations, leaving Obito out of all of them to wallow in his crushing disappointment.

He wouldn't get Kakashi a present. She'd known that, and watched his face as disappointment coloured the tones of both Kakashi and Minato, although both would deny it. Obito missed the disappointment completely, never realising that Kakashi had, deep down, hoped for something from his teammate. That somewhere along the way, the silver-haired boy had given him the acknowledgement he'd always sought.

But then her plans, now taking up almost a decade of her life, all came crashing down amongst crushing rocks.

Clinging to his hand, her tears weren't faked. She still hated Obito – couldn't stand the idiot with his prattling about Hokage this and Sharingan that – but he was hers and she'd put too much of her life into grooming him to lose him now, before she could even start to use him.

A blood red eye looked up at her, still full of love and entirely ignorant of her deceptions. She'd wondered what would happen when he finally awoke it, feared that it would see through her and break the illusion she'd placed him under, but now faced with it she realised it wouldn't have mattered. She'd succeeded in blinding him in time.

There was no satisfaction in defeating the kekkei genkai, because he was dead and everything she'd worked so hard on was gone.