Hatake-style sword technique?!
The young ninja, about the same age as Haku and Kimimaro, revealed a hint of silver-gray hair, proving that he too was a ninja of the Hatake Clan.
"Kakashi-sensei's ancestor?!"
Naruto stared at him in surprise.
Young Kakashi had not expected to run into a clansman from the Warring States Period here either.
"This trip was really worth it," teenage Obito Uchiha sighed. "Even dumb Kakashi's ancestor likes covering his face. But the heroic White Fang was so open and honest."
"Are you asking for a beating? Who isn't open and honest?!"
Young Obito raised his hands in surrender. "I'm just saying, can't the two of us get along a little more like our grown-up selves? We're comrades. Who knows, maybe someday we'll even open a Susanoo together or something."
Just thinking about that blue Susanoo made Young Obito so envious his mouth nearly watered.
"Get lost. Who wants to get along with you like that? Take care of your own eyes. The Hatake Clan's chakra reserves aren't suited to having the Sharingan at all."
"Tch..."
Sakura said, "Then what do we do with this person?" She pointed at the wealthy merchant twitching on the ground.
"We shouldn't interfere with this matter. Leave it to Kakashi's ancestor to carry out his own mission." Minato had actually arrived here early on, but he had been hiding on the rafters, watching how the children would handle the problem.
He said, "In the Warring States Period, the status of ninja was even lower than in our era. That's why there were rules saying missions came before life and dignity. It's better that we don't disrupt this young man's mission. Otherwise, it's possible that the future Kakashi of this worldline might not be born smoothly."
"Huh?!" The children from Team Kakashi and Team Minato froze.
Naruto said, "Could this person be Kakashi-sensei's..."
"Direct ancestor, idiot," Sasuke said, finishing the phrase for Naruto.
"Right, right, that's what I meant."
The young Hatake from the Warring States Period was startled by Minato Namikaze's appearance.
"Don't worry. We won't interfere with your mission. Just pretend we were never here."
"Thank you."
The moment Minato Namikaze finished speaking, the young ninja of the Hatake Clan raised his blade and brought it down, killing his mission target on the spot. His movement was clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation. It looked as if killing was already routine to him.
Obito muttered quietly, "He really is the same type of execution-focused person as Kakashi."
"No, no, no, no. The Kakashi-sensei we know is the king of being late, and he's always slacking off with inappropriate books. He's definitely not an execution-focused type, dattebayo. Well, he is pretty cool when he's protecting his comrades."
Adult Kakashi, whom Naruto and the others had just mentioned, was currently teaming up with Obito Uchiha to fight the big boss, Madara Uchiha.
Madara was overwhelmingly powerful, with an entire lifetime of battle experience forged in the blood and tears of the Warring States Period.
Obito Uchiha's advantages were the space-time nature of his Mangekyō Sharingan and Kakashi's exceptional analytical ability.
To put it plainly, it was like the enemy had already reached max level, but their side had a system that could analyze the enemy's weaknesses for him and tell him how to exploit them.
The two of them used the Mangekyō Sharingan at the same time, and the attacks from Double Kamui came one after another.
The blue Susanoo immediately used Kamui Shuriken to cut off the two extra arms of the dark-blue Susanoo, while the dark-blue Susanoo drew its blade and sliced away half of the wing behind the blue Susanoo.
"Calm down, Obito." Kakashi kept reminding Obito Uchiha, who was standing in the Susanoo cockpit with him. "Against an enemy as strong as Madara Uchiha, charging in recklessly won't win."
Madara Uchiha was amused when he heard that. "Do you really think you have a chance of defeating me? The only one worthy of fighting me is Hashirama Senju."
Neither Obito Uchiha nor Hatake Kakashi replied.
To be honest, they really did not think they could defeat Madara Uchiha.
But there was absolutely no way they would simply admit defeat.
"If not for you, maybe I really would have died during the Kannabi Bridge mission."
Obito Uchiha suddenly spoke.
Madara Uchiha raised an eyebrow. The sword in Susanoo's hand blocked the black Raikiri in the blue Susanoo's hand.
The entire blue Susanoo turned intangible, passed through the dark-blue Susanoo, and only used Kamui Raikiri for real once it reached the other Susanoo's back.
That single strike dealt a heavy blow to Madara Uchiha's dark-blue Susanoo.
Of course, with Madara Uchiha's chakra reserves, it only took a few seconds for chakra to rapidly fill the damaged area of the dark-blue Susanoo, restoring it completely.
"Is this your attitude when thanking someone, brat?"
Madara Uchiha stood above them with his arms crossed. He was not wearing battle armor, but the Warring States Period clothes Hashirama Senju had bought when he dragged him off to gamble. Even so, nothing could hide the commanding presence of that figure with his wild, spiky black hair, looking down on everyone just as he had during the Fourth Shinobi World War.
Obito Uchiha said, "It's true that you saved me. But if I had a choice, I would rather my name stayed forever on Konoha's Memorial Stone as a Konoha hero who upheld the Will of Fire."
"Hmph. That only proves how weak you were back then. You couldn't defeat me, and you couldn't see through my schemes. When you heard that little girl and Kakashi were in trouble, you lost your head and ran straight out, didn't you?"
Obito was not good with words, and being choked off by Madara Uchiha only made him angrier.
"If you hadn't chosen Obito, Rin wouldn't have died, would she?" Kakashi, standing beside Obito, suddenly spoke.
Madara Uchiha seemed to look down on Kakashi's combat ability. He only raised an eyebrow at his words and did not answer directly.
Kakashi said, "I once heard Obito say that in your memories, when you were killed by the First Hokage, you said the First Hokage had changed. You said he had put the cart before the horse, and if he continued on like that, sooner or later he would become the village's darkness."
Back then, before Madara Uchiha entrusted everything to Obito Uchiha, he had selectively given Obito Uchiha part of his memories in order to let him quickly gain more battle experience and knowledge of the Warring States Period, and to successfully maintain his disguise.
"Heh." Madara Uchiha sneered. "That brat from our Uchiha Clan really doesn't treat you like an outsider. He even told you that."
Kakashi nodded and followed his own train of thought as he asked Madara Uchiha, "You believed that the First Hokage, who was willing to eliminate dissidents for the sake of the village, even if that meant killing his own friends, brothers, or children, had betrayed the original purpose you shared, which was to protect the people precious to you in the midst of war."
He looked at Madara Uchiha, who never believed he was wrong. Even if he had truly made one wrong move, Madara would only call it the arrangement of fate.
"But..."
There was a sudden turn.
Adult Kakashi recalled both Konoha's darkness and Konoha's light. Having once struggled between submitting to Danzō Shimura and remaining loyal to the Third Hokage, perhaps he did have the most right to speak about this.
"Someone who cannot walk out of their pain, someone who cannot form new bonds with the outside world..."
"For the sake of your own ambition, you turned Obito, who deeply loved Konoha, into someone like you, someone who hated the entire world."
"The one who truly forgot his original purpose is actually you, isn't it?"
Madara Uchiha frowned sharply.
Adult Obito froze. He had not expected Kakashi to say something like this for his sake.
He had been chosen by Madara Uchiha, caused Rin's death, and made Kakashi bear the deaths of both of them, blaming himself day after day for more than ten years.
Based on his understanding of Kakashi, Kakashi should have hated him for this.
"Kakashi..." Obito murmured his name.
Madara Uchiha said, "What are you trying to say?"
Kakashi said, "Back then, because of Rin and Obito's deaths, I was also trapped in darkness for a very long time. After Minato-sensei died too, I fell into a state as an ANBU that worried everyone."
It had made Might Guy so anxious that he went straight to the Third Hokage and insisted no matter what on getting Kakashi transferred out of the ANBU. Thinking back, things must have gotten so bad that even his rival from the same generation could no longer look away.
"I even almost entered Danzō Shimura's Root and lived as an assassin."
Adult Obito's brows furrowed hard when he heard that.
He had heard that even Orochimaru began acting in strange ways no one could understand after drawing closer and closer to Danzō Shimura. There were also Root's training methods and the way they carried out missions. If Kakashi had really joined Root, then perhaps Obito would have believed this world was even more hopeless, so disgusting that it had to be destroyed right now, immediately, without delay.
"But my friend believed I couldn't continue on like that. He got me transferred out of the ANBU and made me an ordinary Jōnin instructor."
"Being able to become the Jōnin instructor of Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura was probably because I used up all the luck I had overdrawn before in one go."
Obito Uchiha saw that Kakashi's eye, the one carrying his Mangekyō Sharingan, was filled with gentleness. It was an expression that, when they were children, Obito had thought he would never see on Kakashi's face no matter what.
"Naruto's courage, Sasuke's sense of responsibility, and Sakura's love. The three of them are like a love triangle, none of them able to let go of the others. It made it impossible for me not to think of the old Team Minato," Kakashi said. "And precisely because of that, I was able to smoothly return from the darkness into the sunlight, and rely once again on the words and strength Obito gave me to keep living."
Madara Uchiha had no reaction.
But Obito Uchiha's heart turned painfully soft because of Kakashi's words.
He even felt the sting of tears in his eyes, something he had not felt in many years. Only now, without his goggles, he was determined to force those tears back no matter what!
Those words did not say that Hatake Kakashi had forgiven Obito Uchiha, but they suddenly gave Adult Obito Uchiha the courage to overcome every obstacle and start over.
Even if the road ahead was covered in thorns, even if the "debts" he had to repay were as heavy as a mountain and left him unable to breathe, he would start again.
He would continue being Konoha's Obito Uchiha, the one who dreamed of becoming Hokage!
The anger that had filled him before, the fury that only wanted to kill Madara Uchiha, was extinguished. What burned in its place was pure fighting spirit and battle intent.
"Hmph." Madara Uchiha's lips curved up ever so slightly.
The two Susanoo, each nearly a hundred meters tall, used Lightning Release and Fire Release. Even when it was only Susanoo arms crashing together, the earth shook with the impact.
Fortunately, this was already the border of the Land of Fire, and there was only rock and sand nearby. Otherwise, with the spark of fire living on and fire burning wherever Konoha leaves danced, a forest fire would have been guaranteed.
"What on earth is that?!! Who is fighting whom?!!"
The Uzumaki clansmen, who had come all the way from the Land of Whirlpools and just crossed the Land of Fire's border, were utterly shocked.
"A giant monster comparable to a Tailed Beast! Clan Head, should we go around it?!"
Ashina Uzumaki fell into thought.
Kushina stared at the blue Susanoo, several "十" marks pulsing on her forehead.
"No big deal. It's a small scene."
It was only a Tailed Beast-sized thing. Her Adamantine Sealing Chains could handle it.
Nine-Tails: That's absurd!