#noriwritey

“This is the third time this month!” he whisper-yells, tugging at his hair in despair. “Why am I so bad at sealwork?! /Why?!/”

Shion is peering at his quick rendering of his beautiful, dysfunctional seal, because sealwork is never kind enough to just follow them into another dimension. At least this time they’re in the same spot as they were before, in their own dimension, but that’s a questionable blessing, considering it’s Tobirama’s backyard. He had barely been born when Shion brought Hashirama and Tobirama back; he has no idea if the house looming behind them is actually Tobirama’s or if he appropriated it from another Senju Clan member.

/These/ things are what he has to concern himself with, now. Gods. Kakashi’s going to laugh at him as soon as they get back.

Tobirama had been /watching them/, too, from the safety of his kitchen. Obito bets that he’s going to finish his breakfast before meandering over to the Hokage Tower to tell Minato that his /spouse and almost-child/ have landed themselves in an entirely different universe.

Shion finally leans back onto their haunches, their forearms resettling on their thighs, and look at Obito. “It’s a very nice design,” they begin, because they /always/ begin with the compliments. “Incorporating the shape of your Mangekyo into the design, while remaining conscious of the Uzumaki spirals—it’s inspired. If you can make it work, it’s going to be a pretty piece of sealwork. However…”

Obito tries very hard not to sigh as he crouches down next to them to see the flaws that they’re pointing out.

Maybe he should have asked to shadow Minato during his Hokageship. That’d probably be easier than /this/.

- - -

After Obito has copied out the corrections onto his Correction Scroll, which documents his many failures, they wander out of the Senju Clan compound. It’s been half an hour, or nearly, and no one has come to investigate the presence of two people who should definitely not be here; it’s sort of disappointing.

Though, he thinks, eyeing the overgrowth on the path that in their dimension is kept tidy, maybe that has less to do with shitty security and more to do with an empty compound.

He makes a mental note to talk to Minato about it, just in case it really /is/ shitty security. With all the time they spend criticizing alternate universe Konohas, they really need to make sure that they have room to talk.

The landscape of every Konoha is a little different, even the Hokage Mountain: most of the time, it’s the four that he is familiar with—Hashirama, Tobirama, Hiruzen, and Minato—but sometimes there are additions, like Jiraiya as the Godaime, or substitutions, like Orochimaru as the Yondaime.

(No one talks about those dimensions, much. After hearing about how /their/ Orochimaru cut open Shion’s resurrections to see how close they are to real, alive people, Obito thinks that he understands. There are some things that you don’t want your mind to dwell on—things that you thought you knew would never happen, but did.)

In this dimension, there are no surprises on the Hokage Mountain. As they walk through the streets, passing from residential to commercial, Obito can pick out the familiar structures: there’s the convenience store with Saki’s favorite pudding cups; there’s the Mokuton-flush park that Kakashi’s pack loves so much; there’s the bakery that sells Yondaime cheesecakes.

He wonders if they still sell them, here. The current Hokage might not be the Yondaime.

As if sensing his thoughts, Shion nudges his ribs with an elbow and nods their head at a mysticism shop. “They bought the property from candlemakers two months ago.”

So Minato made it past his usual time of death. Obito perks up, at that: it’s always kind of fun to see Minato a decade into his Hokageship. It was alarming, the first time, to see him so overworked and /old/, and it’s still kind of sad to look at him if he’s a widower, but the dimensions where Minato is Hokage are usually better than dimensions where Hiruzen is.

That’s not really that hard to do, though, when compared to the guy who lets someone experimenting on Konoha’s clanless orphans go and who allows his old friend to continue recruiting children into an army sealed into obedience to someone other than the military leader of Konoha.

Honestly. Minato would actually have to /try/ to be worse.

- - -

He just /had/ to jinx it, didn’t he?

They’ve entered some weird dimensions, but this one is by far the most unsettling: Minato is Hokage, and that doesn’t actually seem to be a good thing.

As per their usual protocol, Shion and Obito snooped around a bit to check on the status of Konoha before deciding whether or not to approach the current Hokage. Konoha didn’t appear terribly beleaguered, in spite of several important missing chakra signatures (Obito isn’t here, and neither are Rin or Kakashi) and in spite of Orochimaru apparently being a jounin-sensei, so they went, “Eh, looks good enough,” and went and booked a meeting with the Hokage.

Obito is really, really regretting it.

It’s not that Minato thinks they’re actually very terrible spies instead of dimensional travelers. It’s that Minato’s grief is—weird. In most dimensions, where Minato’s ability to demolish an entire army by himself only happens once and only then during a war, Minato carries his grief with him like a smothering shroud, weighing him down. This dimension’s Minato has tapped into the more active side of grief, like it’s a path that he’s digging with other people’s graves.

Minato looks at him like a ghost, like he’s something lost, like he would kill the Shinigami to bring him back. It’s the sort of expression that’s at home on Shion’s face, during their darkest moments, but Obito has only ever seen Minato wear it once, during the Third War and speaking to a gore-covered Shion.

He doesn’t know how to feel about this look being leveled at him now.

“You saved him,” Minato says, to Shion, without taking his eyes off of Obito. “How?”

Obito sneaks a glance at his shishou. It’s a difficult question to answer without sounding callous—/I went back for him/ is tough to swallow when nearly every Minato they’ve met hadn’t.

Shion’s eyes shutter, for a moment, in the barely-longer-than-a-blink way of closing their eyes that Minato does, but it’s the only real sign of their discomfort. “You want to know if there was something you could’ve done,” they say, their voice even, measured. “There wasn’t. You do the same thing, every time.”

Minato’s face does a funny thing, like he wants to make an expression but doesn’t know which, and he rubs his cheek with his palm, finally looking away from Obito. Obito lets out a breath that he didn’t know that he was holding. “And the others?” Minato asks. “Kakashi, Rin—they’re safe, in your timeline?”

“Our timelines diverged much earlier than Kannabi Bridge,” Shion replies after a small pause. “Certain events may remain constant, but the players and outcomes vary.”

Obito has never been in a dimension where all three of Minato’s students die. It’s far more likely that this dimension’s Obito is out there somewhere, plotting the end of the world under the early guidance of Madara, but when he opens his mouth to tell Minato so, something stops him. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Minato—even if this isn’t /his/ Minato, it’s still /a/ Minato—but…

But he has the feeling that if he tells Minato that his dimension’s Obito is still alive, it will be tantamount to signing that Obito’s death warrant.

Minato would never hurt him. He /knows/ that. That doesn’t stop his skin from crawling, and it doesn’t stop his danger-sense from going haywire.

He is a shinobi before he is Minato’s student. He listens to his instincts. So he shuts his mouth and lets Shion keep the lead on this one, because if anyone’s an expert on Minato, even a Minato that lets Orochimaru have a genin team, it’s them.

(He still can’t shake off his anxiety until they are allowed to leave his office.

There is something /wrong/ here, and he is afraid to name it.)

- - -

They’re not slammed into the T&I cells. They’re let go after Minato is done interrogating them, with the implicit knowledge that they will be supervised for the duration of their stay. It’s reasonably lenient; Obito tries to pretend that it isn’t a hidden noose.

In their hotel room, after clearing it to make sure there are no bugs of any variety and slapping down a silencing seal, Shion sinks onto the corner of their bed and puts their face in their hands. Very quietly, they say, “We should have remembered that anyone can be an enemy.”

Obito’s nerves, already frazzled, leap straight to fraying. “But it’s /Minato-sensei/,” he insists, pushing off the chair at the desk to pace. “He can’t—he wouldn’t—”

“Minato does not always arrive on time,” Shion reminds him, “and anyone outside of our timeline is not an ally just because our version of them is.” They run their hands through their hair, fingers meeting at the nape of their neck, and let out a breath before sitting up, hands dropping to their lap. “We’ve gotten complacent. We need to be more thorough about information-gathering. If all three of you are presumed dead in this world…”

Generally, when people are assumed dead, they /are/ dead. Madara and Obito are the only consistent exceptions to that rule. Obito doesn't know how to feel about the idea that Rin or Kakashi might be playing dead, too. "I'll find their files," he says, feeling out their game plan. "It would've had to have been when Rin became a jinchuuriki, so... find out if their bodies were recovered." He pauses, then, with a kind of perverse cheer: "Oh, man, do you think Bakashi joined the Akatsuki with me?" Shion's mouth tugs at the corner. "It's gotta happen /sometime/. Maybe we'll get lucky and that'll be all this is." "Or maybe," Obito continues, "it's Rin who survived and turned me off the track of evildom, and we're, like, wandering monks who help people wherever we go! And we just avoid Konoha because we… didn't have you to get the compulsion seals off our hearts." His enthusiasm dampens, at that, and he sags against the wall. "Oh, man. Alternate versions of myself are so fucked."

“I would assume that an Akatsuki Kakashi and a wandering monk Rin would also be fucked,” Shion remarks, gently teasing. They crook their fingers at him in invitation, and he goes, lying across their lap with a gusty sigh. Shion makes a soft noise of amusement and begins to card their fingers through his hair. “Who knows? Maybe in this dimension, /you’re/ the good guy.”

Obito closes his eyes, tilting his head toward their hand. Kakashi would make fun of him for seeking positive touch, probably, if Kakashi didn’t do the exact same thing when stressed. “Guess I’m a wandering monk with Rin, then. Bakashi would never be able to convince me to be a good person. He /litters/.”

“I don’t think not picking up dog poop is littering.”

“He doesn’t find trash cans for his water bottles.”

“Oh, is /that/ who it is? Saki’s been complaining about the trash in Senju Park. Kakashi’s going to get himself banned if Saki catches him at it.”

Obito lets out a breath and relaxes. They’re going to figure out what to do and get out of Konoha before any traps are sprung. Everything will be fine.

- - -

In this, at least, he isn’t wrong. Over the course of the next few days, he flicks through a bunch of files in several different offices, committing the contents to memory, and all it takes to escape is a Kamui portal opening into a Uchiha safehouse thirty miles outside of Konoha.

He is never going to be able to thank his long-dead ancestors enough for their relentless paranoia. Uchiha safehouses are a /godsend/.

“Bakashi’s body was the only one recovered,” Obito explains. “He was missing his Sharingan, which points to either a very opportunistic thief or, uh, you know, me taking my eye back. It was definitely me, though, ‘cause…” He grimaces. “There’s, uh, research? On Madara’s body? Which was recovered from his super secret cave after it exploded?”

Shion stares at him for a long, uncomprehending moment. “They… Orochimaru has Madara’s body?”

“It’s all sanctioned, too, as far as I can tell,” Obito affirms. “I got the idea that they’re investigating, uh, death? And how to… delay it? Or stop it altogether?”

Shion’s mouth opens, as if to say something, but they close it without speaking. Their brow creases, and they turn to Konoha’s direction.

“Orochimaru took Team Seven to the Land of Waves,” Obito adds, quieter. “They signed out of Konoha the same day we got there.”

That’s a good thing: if Minato is endorsing Orochimaru’s death-defying research, Obito wants Shion to be as far from Orochimaru as possible. Even in other dimensions, where no one would have reason to know of Shion’s kekkai genkai, it worries him that one day someone /will/. The ability to raise the dead and to mold them into any shape they like—it’s a powerful kekkai genkai, and it’s not one that he wants Orochimaru to know of.

Maybe it’s silly, to be anxious about Orochimaru and Shion in the same place, but—their own Orochimaru played with Shion’s kekkai genkai when Shion was a chuunin, younger than Obito is now, and Obito would really like it if that never happened again.

The line of Shion’s shoulders is tense. They press their lips together, hard, before turning their head away from Konoha. “We should go farther before we stop,” they say after a moment.

Obito nods, accepting the unspoken request to move on from this subject, and opens another portal.

- - -

Moving on from Konoha and Orochimaru means that they’re on to this universe’s Obito and Rin, which is—well. Getting information on them would be easy, if they could figure out where to /go/. Neither Obito nor Rin have Shion’s Hiraishin seals inked on their bodies or Minato’s Hiraishin kunai on their bodies, and they have both been outside of Konoha for over a decade.

“This would be so much easier if our Kamuis led to the same dimension,” Obito complains. “We could’ve just hopped in there and waited til he needed something.”

Shion snorts. “Because /that/ sounds like a good idea that wouldn’t get us mauled by his jinchuuriki teammate.”

“I never said it was a good idea,” Obito points out. “I just said it’d be easier.”

“For a given definition of ‘easier’, sure.” Shion rolls their shoulders back and turns back to the map laid out in front of them, the set of their mouth falling into a grimace. “If you were going to avoid Konoha, where would you go?”

“The Dead Wastes,” Obito replies promptly. As a desert and as an oasis, people can go into the Dead Wastes and never come out. It’s pretty much the best spot for a villain lair, though alternate dimension Obitos never seem to think of it. “Failing that… probably Kiri, or I guess one of the smaller nations. Ame is pretty good at taking in fleeing shinobi, isn’t it?”

Shion hums thoughtfully. “It’s known for taking in refugees, yes. Why Kiri?”

Obito can’t say that it’s because the Mizukage is apparently very susceptible to genjutsu, if the various dimensions they’ve traveled to is any indication, which would be incredibly helpful if he ever wanted to make someone of extreme political import his pawn, so he instead says, “Um, obviously if I was a villain I’d want to have a great first appearance. You met a baby Naruto on a mission to Wave, right? And people almost died?” He doesn’t trip over the name of the Land of Waves, but he does frown, a little, remembering that that’s where Orochimaru is. Still: “That’d be such a great scene for villain-me to orchestrate. It’d really hammer home the kind of life a shinobi has. They’d probably cry.”

Shion lifts their head partway through his explanation to level him with an unimpressed look. "What? You /asked/," Obito defends. "I did," Shion agrees dryly, “though I wasn’t expecting such an /effervescent/ response.”

Obito rolls his eyes. “It’s not /my/ fault that I’d make a fantastic villain.”

- - -

It /is/ his fault that they go to Wave.

They travel most of the way through warp, but they make several stops to bury a Hiraishin tag. It provides a sense of security, Shion says, and Obito gets it, sort of: in order to warp using the Hiraishin, an anchor is needed.

After having Minato as his jounin-sensei, and now a few years into his apprenticeship under Shion, Obito is mostly used to them setting down tags like they think they’ll need to warp to a remote village in the Land of Hot Springs.

Mostly.

“It’s like a trail of breadcrumbs,” Obito groans once they hit the edge of Wave and Shion, predictably, puts down another tag. “All anyone has to do to find us is follow the trail of tags.”

“Are you /sure/ you got your tracking certification?” Shion wants to know. “I don’t think putting down a tag every few villages in a vague diagonal really counts as a trail.”

“A vague diagonal is still a diagonal. It’s a pattern. It’s a trail.”

“You seem very concerned that people are going to discover a dozen tags scattered across the Land of Hot Water and immediately realize that we have gone into Wave. We are going to be out of this dimension altogether by the end of the week.”

“We could also be /dead/ by the end of the week because you /put down a trail/.”

“Maybe if /this/ universe’s Obito ever learned to appreciate trails, we wouldn’t be hoping that he will be enough of a twelve-year-old villain to want to make his grand entrance on Zabuza’s coattails.”

Obito throws his hands into the air with a frustrated /augh!/ “Fine! Whatever! I give up! Leave as many trails as you want! Twelve-year-old villain Obito will be alive because he /didn’t/!”

“That is not necessarily a point in his favor, you realize,” Shion says, amused.

Obito jabs a finger at them. “You say that now, but just wait. We’re gonna be trampling everywhere, leaving Hiraishin tags, and he’s gonna sneak up on us and then we’ll be /dead/ because he’ll assume that Orochimaru made, like, test tube clone babies of him or something! /Just wait!/”

- - -

What actually happens is this:

After ten minutes of inspecting the impoverished village, Obito and Shion come to the conclusion that killing the rich and corrupt is a fully acceptable course of action, and after three days of observation of Gato’s men, they make their move—at the same time as this dimension’s Obito and Rin.

All four of them stop several feet from the entrance of Gato’s hideout and stare at each other in surprise.

The adrenaline has to go /somewhere/, so Obito blurts out, without thinking, “Holy shit, you really /are/ wandering monks!” and claps his hands over his mouth.

He is a little horrified at himself, but he’s not /wrong/. This universe’s Obito has /two/ eyes and one of those monk staffs. This universe’s Rin has a sidecut! Some part of his brain makes a note to bring that up to his Rin when they get home, just in case that’s something she’d be into. It looks good on, like, thirty-year-old her, anyway.

“What,” two-eyed Obito says.

“Oh my god,” sidecut Rin whispers, “he’s, like, sixteen.”

“I’m /seventeen/,” Obito corrects automatically. Kakashi and Rin’s birthdays are months before his, so he endures every winter stoically weathering their teasing about being a year younger than them. He /really/ does not want /alternate selves/ to do the same. “Uh—wow. Are you /avenging/ wandering monks? Are you here to kill Gato for being a corrupt piece of shit?”

Hesitantly, sidecut Rin nods. She is wearing one red glove, and pulls at the end of it, yanking it tighter against her fingers. “I assume you were going to do the same?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Obito confirms. “Cool. Now /this/ is an Obito I can get behind.” He doesn’t /look/ like a villain who wants to destroy the world with the moon. He’s more like the vengeance of the night, sneaking into rich people’s homes to slit their throats while they sleep. Or, he guesses, bludgeoning them with his monk staff.

Shion makes a vague annoyed noise. “I could have sworn I told you not to assume everyone is an ally less than a week ago,” they say, tugging Obito’s sleeve so that he falls back behind them.

He complies, but he huffs about it. “He’s /me/! If I can’t trust myself, who /can/ I trust?”

“Your shishou?” Shion says dryly, which, okay, point.

“Was I ever that peppy in my /life/?” two-eyed Obito whispers to sidecut Rin.

Sidecut Rin leans a little towards him to reply, bemused, “Oh, you /were/. You were /absolutely/ this peppy. Maybe even /worse/.”

“You’re lying,” he accuses her. “I was never that bad. Right? … Right?”

Instead of responding to him, she straightens and, with a clearing of her throat, redirects her attention to Shion and Obito. “We wouldn’t mind your help with Gato, if you’re still interested. Afterwards, we can…” She pauses delicately, sweeping her gaze over Shion (who probably didn’t become a shinobi in this universe) and Obito (who is very recognizably Obito, if a decade younger). “... talk.”

Shion gives them a long look before nodding. “That sounds reasonable.”

Obito sends two-eyed Obito and sidecut Rin a double thumbs-up. Being an avenging wandering monk is a dream that he didn’t even know he had until today, and now he’s /fulfilling it/.

Rin is going to be /so/ jealous when she hears about this.

- - -

Three hours and two dozen dead bodies later, they relocate to two-eyed Obito and sidecut Rin’s camp. It is not especially remarkable, except for how it has a barrier seal and a silencing seal. Sidecut Rin activates both with an ease of familiarity that their Rin lacks; although she wears tags on the strings connecting her overskirt, it still comes as a surprise. Two-eyed Obito nudges the pile of wood in the center of camp with his foot and adds another few branches before blowing fire onto it.

“I /told/ you that looks cool,” Obito tells Shion, feeling strangely satisfied.

Shion rolls their eyes. “I’ll try to be more impressed with your dragon-fire.”

Sidecut Rin smiles briefly, like that exchange is something nostalgic, and gestures for them to take a seat around the fire. “So,” she says, “you look like Obito, you talk like Obito, but this never happened in our past.”

Obito glances at Shion, who shrugs a go-ahead because apparently killing twenty-odd people without turning on each other is enough of a sign that they can be trusted with this much, and shrugs back. “Yeah, our timelines diverged, like, ten years before I was born or something. Tobirama tried to narrow it down to an exact timeframe, but I think he got fed up with the variables and quit.”

“He doesn’t /quit/, he delegates,” Shion corrects. “I think Saki’s cousin is figuring it out now.”

“Right, my mistake.”

“I’m sorry,” Rin says after a pause, “did you say Tobirama?”

“Yep.” Obito nods. They’ve moved easily into Obito’s favorite part of the explanation: the other party’s incredulity, growing until they hit a stage of suspended disbelief. “Senju Tobirama, you know, the Niidaime? Wears the funky faceplate? Looks like he’d sunburn in a second?”

Sidecut Rin and two-eyed Obito exchange a /look/.

“Did… did he not die in your timeline?” two-eyed Obito asks, sounding like he’s regretting the question even as he’s saying it.

“Oh, no, he did,” Obito assures them. “We just brought him back.”

“You what now,” two-eyed Obito says.

He and sidecut Rin exchange another look, longer this time. It’s an entire conversation with only facial expressions: two-eyed Obito’s eyes demand /what the fuck is happening/ and sidecut Rin’s equally agitated stare says /I have no idea, don’t ask me, ask your sixteen-year-old self/. This is, apparently, not what two-eyed Obito wants to hear, because he lets out a breath and runs a gloved hand through his hair.

“Okay, say that we believe you,” two-eyed Obito says, even though it’s obvious that they kind of do. “Why are you /here/? Are you avenging wandering dimension-travelers?”

Obito’s eyes widen. He turns to look hopefully at Shion.

“No,” Shion denies immediately, then amends, “Not until you’re a jounin. /I’m/ not going to be an avenging dimension-traveler, but you can take Tobirama along with you when you’re a jounin.”

Obito pumps his fist into the air. “Yesss. He’s gonna /love/ kicking Madara’s ass again.”

“So you travel dimensions… regularly?” two-eyed Obito tries to clarify.

Obito pulls a card out of his pouch and hands it over. On one side it says KONOHA’S TIME-SPACE DIVISION, with the members’ names below, and on the other side it lists major events that may make it differ from other dimensions.

“No Kyuubi Attack, no Naruto,” sidecut Rin reads aloud from over two-eyed Obito’s shoulder. “All members of Team Minato are…” Her voice trails off, and she reads the rest of the card in silence.

Two-eyed Obito’s eyes flash red, for a moment, possibly checking for genjutsu but maybe memorizing the contents of the card. He looks over at Obito and Shion, mouth pulling downward in a frown. “So you’re… Iekami Shion? I’ve never heard of you.”

Shion lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m usually a civilian or a member of ROOT.”

“Of… what?” sidecut Rin asks.

Obito breathes out an “oh, /man/” and laughs. “Wow. It feels really weird, now, to talk to someone from Konoha who doesn’t know about ROOT. It’s, like, Shimura Danzo’s underground army? He steals kids from orphanages and from their clan grounds and, like, brainwashes them.”

“What,” two-eyed Obito says flatly.

Obito looks at Shion. “You explain. You’re better at it than I am.”

Shion elbows him in the ribs. “You won’t get better if you keep passing it off to me.”

“I’m still your apprentice! You’re /obligated/ to take over when I’m in over my head!”

“/Itachi/ could do this, and he’s /eight/. Do you really want to be outdone by an eight-year-old?”

“That doesn’t count! He’d be a genin if he was allowed to graduate!”

“Am I supposed to agree that a genin should be better at giving reports than a jounin hopeful?”