[Konoha Group Chat Realm, Fictional Date: Day of the Eighth Ranking, 11:08 AM]
The chime came at the worst possible moment, as chimes tend to.
Sasuke was halfway through hurling a chidori-charged kunai at a training post that had stopped resembling a post three hours ago and now resembled a small pile of regret. Sakura was trying to drag Naruto out of Ichiraku because he'd ordered eight bowls and "forgotten" his wallet for the fourth time this month. Kakashi had just finished re-wrapping his father's tanto in fresh silk and setting it back on its rest. Hiruzen had not slept.
The scroll sang.
[Ranking Scroll]: The top three of the Eighth Ranking shall now be revealed. Stand, sit, kneel — but do not look away.
Uchiha Madara: Dramatic.
Senju Tobirama: Says the man who monologues to mountains.
Uchiha Madara: The mountains listen. Unlike you.
Senju Hashirama: I LOVE WHEN YOU TWO FLIRT
Uchiha Madara & Senju Tobirama: WE ARE NOT FLIRTING
Senju Hashirama: SAID IN UNISON!! AGAIN!!
[Third Place]: Uzumaki Kushina. Reason — held the Kyuubi inside her body for decades and walked into the seal at the end smiling.
Uchiha Kushina: Eh? Third? I get THIRD??
Uzumaki Naruto: MOM YOU'RE THIRD DATTEBAYO
Uchiha Kushina: I CARRIED A TAILED BEAST AND BIRTHED YOU AND DIED FOR YOU AND I GET THIRD
Namikaze Minato: (quietly) You should be first, love.
Uchiha Kushina: MINATO DON'T BE SWEET TO ME I'M TRYING TO BE FURIOUS
Tsunade: Kushina you absolute red menace I'm so proud of you
Uchiha Kushina: TSUNADE-SAMA
Senju Hashirama: That's my granddaughter-in-spirit!! Look at her rage!!
The footage bloomed across the silver panel. Kushina on the operating table, the Kyuubi torn out of her, chakra chains thinning to thread, her voice — Naruto, eat your vegetables, don't pick fights with the wrong people, do pick fights with the right ones, find a girl like your father, but not too much like your father, that man is a disaster — and Naruto in his chair staring upward with his ramen forgotten and his hands shaking and Sakura beside him with a knuckle pressed to her teeth.
The whole village heard it. Every chuunin on patrol. Every academy student climbing the Hokage Monument for fun. The dango woman from this morning, who hadn't moved her cart all day, who just sat on her overturned basket with her hands folded.
A genin named Konohamaru cried in the middle of the street and didn't bother to hide it.
Sarutobi Konohamaru: boss your mom is so cool
Uzumaki Naruto: I KNOW KONOHAMARU I KNOW
[Second Place]: Senju Hashirama.
Senju Hashirama: Eh??
Senju Tobirama: Eh.
Uchiha Madara: Hashirama?
Senju Hashirama: I — I didn't even — for whom??
[Footage]: The Valley of the End. Hashirama, kneeling. Madara on the ground in front of him. Hashirama's blade raised — and lowered. Lowered. Lowered.
Senju Tobirama: Anija.
Senju Hashirama: Tobirama.
Senju Tobirama: You would have died for him. That day. If he'd asked.
Senju Hashirama: ...Yes.
Uchiha Madara: (silent)
Uchiha Madara: (typing)
Uchiha Madara: (stopped typing)
Uchiha Madara: Hashirama. You absolute fool.
Senju Hashirama: Madara —
Uchiha Madara: Shut up. Let me — let me think.
The chat went quiet again. The kind of quiet that has weight to it, the kind that presses on the back of your neck. Outside, in the real Konoha, the silver footage panel showed two boys at a riverbank pressing rocks into the current and arguing about Hokage and dreams and stupid things, and the rocks skipped or sank, and the boys laughed, and the laughing was the worst part.
Tobirama, in the chat, did something very rare. He typed a single character and left it there, unaccompanied.
Senju Tobirama: .
That was all. Just the period. Just the small hard mark of a man who had spent an entire life and afterlife being right about Uchiha Madara and watching his brother be wrong about Uchiha Madara and never being able to fix the gap between those two truths.
Senju Hashirama: Tobirama.
Senju Tobirama: Anija.
Senju Hashirama: Thank you.
Senju Tobirama: For what.
Senju Hashirama: For staying. All of it. For staying.
Senju Tobirama: ...Tch. Sentimental old log.
The scroll glowed white-hot. The first place name began to form, letter by letter, slowly enough that the entire chat held its breath.
[First Place]: Uchiha Obito.
The chat detonated.
Uchiha Obito: WHAT
Hatake Kakashi: ...
Uchiha Obito: WHAT??
Hatake Kakashi: Obito.
Uchiha Obito: KAKASHI WHY AM I FIRST I LITERALLY BECAME A WAR CRIMINAL
Hatake Kakashi: You also took a boulder for me when we were thirteen.
Uchiha Obito: (typing)
Uchiha Obito: (stopped typing)
Uchiha Obito: that was a tuesday
Hatake Kakashi: I know.
Uchiha Obito: i didn't even think about it
Hatake Kakashi: I know.
Uchiha Obito: you ABSOLUTE BASTARD I DIED FOR YOU ON A TUESDAY AND THE SCROLL REMEMBERED
Senju Tobirama: The scroll remembers everything. That's the problem.
Might Guy: OBITO!! YOUR FLAMES OF YOUTH RIVAL EVEN MINE!! I AM HONORED TO PLACE EIGHTH BENEATH YOUR FIRST!!
Uchiha Obito: GUY-SAN I'M GOING TO CRY
Might Guy: CRYING IS YOUTH
Uchiha Madara: (mutters) The boulder one. Of course it's the boulder one. I trained him. I raised him after. He becomes my pawn and the scroll gives him first place for a Tuesday.
Senju Tobirama: The scroll has taste, Madara. Cope.
Uchiha Madara: I will end you.
Senju Tobirama: I'm already dead.
Uchiha Madara: I will end you more.
Senju Hashirama: STOP FLIRTING
The footage played one last time. A boulder. A boy with goggles cracked across one lens. A hand reaching out and a hand reaching back and the wrong one getting crushed. A sharingan eye passed between them like a coin between brothers. You'll be my eye, Kakashi. See the future for me.
In a small apartment above a dango shop, Kakashi pressed the heel of his hand against his right eye — the eye that had stopped being his a long time ago and started being something else — and breathed out slow.
Hatake Kakashi: Obito.
Uchiha Obito: yeah?
Hatake Kakashi: Coffee. Tomorrow. Hokage tower.
Uchiha Obito: ...yeah. okay. yeah.
The scroll trembled — softer this time, almost gentle — and rolled itself partway closed. The silver panel above the village dimmed to a low pearl glow.
[Ranking Scroll]: The Eighth Ranking concludes. Reward for First Place — Uchiha Obito — to be delivered at dawn. Punishment for Last Place — Shimura Danzo, in absentia for cowardice — to be delivered immediately.
Shimura Danzo: (remains offline)
Senju Tobirama: Excellent.
Uchiha Madara: Agreed.
Senju Hashirama: SEE!! LOOK AT THEM AGREEING!!
Somewhere in a hidden ROOT bunker, a single sealing tag inscribed with the scroll's golden script unfurled itself across Danzo's office door, glowed once, and locked. From inside, very faintly, came the sound of an old man swearing in a register no one had heard him use in forty years.
The scroll trembled one more time — harder, harder, almost violent — and on the ninth tremor a new line of script burned itself across the air above every village simultaneously.
[Ranking Scroll]: The Ninth Ranking shall commence at dawn. Category — Shinobi Most Likely to Become a Villain.
Uchiha Madara: Finally. My category.
Senju Tobirama: Madara that's not the flex you think it is.
Uchiha Madara: It is to me.
Uchiha Sasuke: (types nothing, stares at the ceiling, does not sleep)
The silver panel above Konoha pulsed once and held its glow into the night, while in his small apartment, Kakashi set his father's tanto across his knees, picked up a whetstone, and began the slow patient work of sharpening a blade he had not drawn in a very long time.
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