yes
Obito wanted this to be his moment.
He had imagined it over and over again while the battle raged around them: him stepping in at just the right instant, Rin looking over in surprise, and the two of them standing side by side like a real team. He would cut down the enemy with style, say something cool without even trying, and maybe—just maybe—Rin would look at him differently.
Reality, as usual, was far crueler.
The enemy in front of him was stronger than Obito had expected, and the one beside him was already breathing hard. The battlefield had become a messy tangle of dirt, shattered branches, smoke, and the metallic smell of blood. Every step felt heavier than the last. Every dodge came a little too late. Every exchange was slowly grinding them down.
Obito still tried to act confident.
"Come on," he snapped, forcing a grin even as his arms burned. "Is that all you've got?"
The scarred Sunagakure ninja gave a low, ugly laugh. "You're still pretending? Fine. Let's see how long that attitude lasts."
He slammed his hands together.
The ground erupted.
Stone thrust upward in jagged spikes, tearing through the earth where Obito and Rin had been standing a heartbeat earlier. Obito jumped back with a curse, barely avoiding the sudden strike, and Rin spun away in the opposite direction. Before they could recover, a burst of shuriken sliced through the air toward them.
Obito moved on instinct. He shoved Rin out of the line of fire and rolled hard across the dirt, narrowly avoiding the blades as they hissed past his shoulder. One nicked his sleeve. Another bit into the bark of a nearby tree with a sharp, cruel crack.
Rin landed awkwardly but stayed on her feet. Her breathing was uneven now, and her face had lost some of its color.
"We need to pull back," Obito said, sounding braver than he felt. "Go find Minato-sensei."
Rin hesitated.
That hesitation nearly killed them both.
The scarred ninja surged forward with terrifying speed, kunai raised. At the same time, the female ninja on the other side snapped her wrist, sending poisoned shuriken spinning straight toward Rin. Obito saw too much at once—too fast, too late. The enemy's blade flashed toward his chest, and Rin cried out his name in panic.
"Obito!"
For one suspended instant, the world narrowed to a single point of fear.
The sound of Rin's voice hit him like a physical blow. The blade coming for him, the poison cutting into Rin's skin, the ache in his own limbs, the certainty that if he moved wrong now, everything would end—his mind simply cracked under the pressure.
And then something inside him broke open.
A sharp pain exploded behind his eyes.
"Ghh—ahh!"
Obito stumbled, one hand flying to his face. The agony was so sudden and intense that his vision went white for a fraction of a second. Then, as if a curtain had been ripped away, a new kind of clarity flooded through him.
He opened his eyes.
Red.
His vision had changed. The world sharpened, slowed, and became unnervingly clear.
In the scarred ninja's face, he could see the tension of each muscle before the strike landed. He could read the tiny shift in weight, the angle of the wrist, the exact line of the kunai's path. It was like the battlefield had suddenly stopped lying to him.
"Sharingan..." Rin breathed, stunned.
Obito barely heard her.
His own heartbeat thundered in his ears. The shock of the awakening mixed with exhilaration so strong it almost made him dizzy. He could feel it now—power flowing through him in a way it never had before, as if some locked gate had finally given way.
But he was still too late to stop the blade.
The kunai came down.
Obito's body tensed, but exhaustion dragged at his limbs, and he knew with bitter clarity that he could see the attack and still not stop it in time.
Then a white blur flashed between them.
Clang.
The sound of steel striking steel rang out sharply, cutting through the chaos.
Obito's eyes widened.
A figure stood in front of him, blocking the killing blow at the last possible instant. For one stunned second, he thought it was Ren.
"Ren—?"
The figure vanished in a puff of smoke.
A clone.
Obito blinked, still reeling, just in time to see the real Ren come flying in from the side with perfect timing. He landed in a low stance and snapped out a spinning kick that crashed into the scarred ninja's ribs with a heavy thud, sending the man staggering backward.
"Spacing out in the middle of a fight?" Ren said, his voice calm but edged with warning. "That's a bad habit."
Obito stared at him, then at the smoke where the clone had disappeared, then back at the enemy who had just been knocked off balance.
"You didn't die?"
Ren shot him a flat look. "Was that your plan for me?"
Obito let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The relief came first, then embarrassment, and after that a rush of adrenaline so strong it almost made him laugh.
Ren didn't give him time to recover.
He moved immediately, fast and efficient, never wasting motion. One glance was enough for him to take in Rin's condition, the enemy's footing, the open patch of ground behind the tree line, the poison on the shuriken, the blood on the dirt. He had arrived late enough to matter, and early enough to keep the whole fight from collapsing.
Obito's new eyes flicked to the scarred ninja, and for the first time he understood what the Sharingan was giving him. The man's next move was already visible to him before it happened. The enemy's shoulders tightened, his left foot dragged back, and his chakra gathered low in his body.
"He's trying to escape underground!" Obito shouted.
Ren's gaze sharpened.
The ninja had begun weaving hand signs, desperate now that the battle had shifted. He was clearly trying to vanish beneath the earth before the fight could turn any worse.
Obito sprang forward before anyone could stop him.
The confidence in his voice returned all at once, now backed by something real. "Not happening!"
He crossed the gap in a blur of newfound speed, feeling the battle respond differently to him now. The enemy raised a kunai to intercept him, but Obito saw it coming and slipped under the strike by a fraction of an inch. His right fist slammed hard into the man's ribs.
A shockwave of pain rippled through the enemy's body.
The scarred ninja gasped, his eyes flaring wide as the breath left him.
Obito didn't hesitate. He stepped in, formed the hand seals, and unleashed a burst of fire.
"Great Fireball Technique!"
The blazing sphere roared out of his mouth, orange light exploding across the battlefield. Heat washed over Rin's face. The enemy was thrown back hard, slammed into a tree, and then dropped to the ground amid a spray of singed leaves and cracked bark. Smoke curled up around him in greasy black threads.
Obito followed through with several kunai, pinning the man in place long enough to make sure he wasn't getting up again.
When the smoke thinned, the scarred ninja lay still.
Obito stared at him for a moment, chest heaving, then slowly turned toward Rin and Ren as if he were only now realizing what had happened.
Rin was still standing, though barely. Her arm hung stiffly at her side, and poison had already started to spread through her system. Ren was beside her in an instant, pulling out an antidote and assessing the wound with a trained eye.
"You got hit," he said quietly.
"I'm fine," Rin answered automatically, even though both of them knew she was not.
Ren ignored the lie. He injected the antidote and then placed a hand over her shoulder, channeling healing chakra with focused precision. Rin's breathing steadied a little, and the worst of the spreading toxin began to slow.
Obito watched the whole thing with a strange mix of awe and pride.
He glanced down at his own reflection in the curve of a kunai blade and then froze.
His eyes.
His chakra felt different. Sharper. Hotter.
He grinned before he could stop himself. "Hey. Tell me what I look like right now."
Rin looked at him, still pale but visibly relieved that he was alive. Even in her exhausted state, she gave him a soft, tired smile.
Ren answered first. "Two tomoe."
Obito nearly jumped. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
He stared at his own hand, then back at the enemy lying unconscious near the tree, and then suddenly laughed in pure disbelief. "So this is the Sharingan? I feel incredible."
Ren didn't say anything for a moment. His expression was thoughtful, and if Obito had been less distracted by his own excitement, he might have noticed the faint edge of tension in his eyes.
This wasn't how things were supposed to happen.
Ren had expected Obito to awaken his power later. Much later. Not now, not under these conditions, and certainly not in a battle that had still been hanging in the balance. The timing was wrong, which meant the pattern was changing.
That worried him.
Not enough to show on his face, but enough to settle like a stone in his chest.
For now, though, he pushed that thought away.
"We regroup," Ren said. "Then we move."
Obito was still walking in circles like he wanted to test whether his body had actually become stronger or if he was dreaming. Rin, exhausted, leaned against a tree for a moment while the antidote worked. Ren moved through the battlefield methodically, checking the fallen enemy, collecting usable tools, and making sure nothing vital was left behind.
Obito watched him and muttered, "You always loot like that?"
Ren glanced at him. "You want to run out of kunai later?"
Obito scratched the back of his head, then laughed sheepishly. "Fair point."
Rin's lips curved faintly despite everything. The tension had not fully gone away, but the worst of the danger had passed. For a brief moment, all three of them were simply standing there in the aftermath, breathing the same air, alive by a thin and violent margin.
Aboveground, the battlefield remained uneasy.
Far away, the sounds of the larger clash still echoed through the forest, distant but not gone. Minato's side had already settled the worst of its struggle. Chiyo had escaped, but the immediate danger had been broken. Ren had come here as soon as he could, and now there was only cleanup left before they rejoined the others.
Yet even as the group began to recover, the story did not let the silence last.
Deep underground, where no one on the battlefield noticed a thing, a pale figure slipped quietly through the shadows.
The cave was buried in stillness, a silent chamber hidden far from the main fight. Above it, a few narrow cracks in the stone let in thin lines of light, just enough to reveal the massive, oppressive shape of the Gedo Statue standing in the darkness like some ancient thing that had never belonged to the living world.
In the shadow of that grotesque monument sat an old man.
He was gaunt, aged beyond normal endurance, his long hair white as ash, his face cut by deep lines of time and pain. Tubes ran into his back, keeping his body alive through unnatural means. He looked less like a man than something preserved out of stubborn will alone.
And yet the eyes opened in that face were still frightening.
Sharp. Cold. Measured.
The presence behind them was heavy enough to make the cave feel smaller.
Then, from the darkness near the entrance, there came a sound like soft crawling.
A pale, half-formed figure emerged with a jerky, almost absurd motion, white skin catching the faint light in strips. It moved like something born wrong and still learning how to speak.
"Madara-sama!" the figure said, sounding almost eager. "Madara-sama, I found something important!"
The old man did not move.
But the atmosphere in the cave changed immediately.
The pale figure leaned forward as if carrying a secret too exciting to hold back.
"This one," it said, "is going to change everything."
And far above, unaware that a new shadow had just begun to stir beneath the earth, Obito was still staring at his own eyes, smiling like a boy who had just discovered he could reach the sun—without realizing that the next battle had already started moving toward him.
----------------------------------------------
Extra chapters available in Patreon
[Www.patreon.com/Samurai492 ]"
__________________________________