Obito Uchiha never would have imagined that he would actually see Kushina Uzumaki in the Warring States Period.
Kakashi switched back and forth between his Sharingan and his own eye. The moment he confirmed that he really was seeing Kushina Uzumaki, his black-and-red mismatched eyes suddenly contracted.
"Is this really not an illusion?"
"Why would Kushina be here in the Warring States Period?"
Both of them were stunned.
Their battle with Madara Uchiha had already gone about as far as it could. They had done their best, but defeating Madara Uchiha, who possessed the Rinnegan, was impossible unless Obito Ōtsutsuki, who had helped them before, stepped in. Otherwise, the gap in strength simply could not be fully made up for with space-time Dōjutsu alone.
Obito and Kakashi dismissed their Susanoo first and leaped down in front of Mito Uzumaki.
Madara Uchiha looked impatient, but since the brats did not want to fight anymore, he had no interest in dragging things out either.
Apart from Hashirama, no one could let him dance to his heart's content.
When Kushina Uzumaki saw Obito and Kakashi, she strode over. Her long red hair, wild like the tails of the Nine-Tails, flared behind her as she immediately launched into a furious scolding.
"What the hell is going on here, dattebane?! Why are you two and I all here?! And why were you fighting that old geezer Madara Uchiha, who should've died ages ago but somehow still hasn't?!"
She grabbed Obito Uchiha by the ear and made it very clear that he had better give her an explanation right this second.
Adult Obito was completely dumbfounded.
He had no idea which parallel world this Kushina was from.
If she had recognized his childhood self at a glance, Obito and Kakashi would not have been that surprised. But she had recognized their grown-up selves instantly, and she was still acting as close to them as she had when they were children, getting angry and arguing with him like before. They simply could not figure out what was going on.
Seeing the confusion in Adult Obito's eyes, and sensing even the chakra inside him filled with sorrow, Kushina's expression gradually went cold.
"You're the 'Masked Obito' from the footage?"
"Kushina-nee, you…"
Adult Kakashi had just started to say something.
But out of the corner of his eye, he only had time to see a tightly clenched fist flash past his vision and slam straight into Adult Obito's face beside him.
Whoosh.
Boom, boom, boom, thud!!
Like a stone skipping across water, Obito Uchiha slammed into the ground several times before bouncing dozens of meters away.
Cold sweat broke out across Madara Uchiha's forehead.
Women of the Uzumaki Clan were as fierce as ever.
Dozens of meters away, Obito Uchiha lay on the ground. Whether he could not get up or was simply playing dead, he just stayed there motionless.
"Ku-Kushina-nee…"
Adult Kakashi was caught in a dilemma. He wanted to check on Obito, but he also had too many questions to ask and too much he wanted to say.
Madara Uchiha walked over and nudged Obito Uchiha on the ground with the tip of his foot.
"Don't tell me you're so pathetic that one punch was enough to kill you."
"Shut up, you rotten old man!"
"Did you forget how to use Intangibility, brat? Or were you born liking getting beaten up?"
"I told you to shut up!"
"Crying?"
"I'M NOT CRYING!!!" Obito shot upright. "Can you stop being so annoying?! I'm just wondering why Kushina is here!!"
"Oh? Not crying?"
Kushina clenched her fists until her knuckles cracked, then walked toward Obito Uchiha step by step.
Kakashi quickly followed her. "Kushina-nee, how exactly did you end up in the Warring States Period…?"
"I was cooking at home, waiting for that brat to come back from a mission with Naruto and the others so we could all have a big feast together. Then somehow, I ended up here."
With a dangerous smile, Kushina walked up to Adult Obito. From Obito's angle, her silhouette against the moonlight looked both painfully nostalgic and terrifying.
"Let me beat you up. Don't use Intangibility."
Obito stared blankly at Kushina Uzumaki, his mind still in chaos.
He thought that the Kushina in front of him probably was not the Kushina Uzumaki from the mission scroll world. After all, in that world, when he extracted the Nine-Tails from her during childbirth to carry out the Eye of the Moon Plan, there was no way Kushina could have survived.
But this Kushina did not seem surprised that he and Kakashi each had one Mangekyō Sharingan. That made no sense, and Adult Obito could not figure out where this Kushina had come from at all.
Kushina grabbed Adult Obito by the collar.
"This is for acting all deep and gloomy when you were just a little kid!"
"This is for giving up on your dream of becoming Hokage!"
Boom.
"This is for pretending to be the Masked Man!"
Boom.
"This is for learning from anyone but choosing to learn from Madara Uchiha!"
Boom.
Madara: "…"
"This is for causing the Nine-Tails Incident! This is for playing around with a clan massacre!"
Punch after punch came down. She started beating him without another word, and even Madara Uchiha, who stood nearby, was left dumbfounded.
Several Uzumaki Clan members behind her thought that since the other party was an Uchiha, maybe they should simply take advantage while he was down and kill him. But then they felt this was a matter for people from the future, and it was not their place to interfere too much.
In fewer than a few dozen punches, the face that had already been wrinkled and scarred was now swollen like a pig's head.
Obito Uchiha truly did not use Intangibility. For some reason, an inexplicable thought kept holding him back, stopping him from thinking of the Kushina in front of him as the Kushina of some other world.
He did not know where that strange thought had come from.
"Hey, that's enough."
Madara Uchiha spoke up to stop her.
No matter what, he had once been the Clan Head of the Uchiha Clan. Watching an Uzumaki woman beat up one of his own clan members without showing him the slightest respect did not sit quite right with him.
And…
Fine. Even though he would never admit it out loud, deep down, he knew the brat's miserable state had something to do with him.
Kakashi seized the chance to offer his own guess.
"Could it be that Naruto's mission scroll completed another C-rank mission and summoned Kushina-nee from another parallel world?"
"Naruto? Mission scroll? Another parallel world?"
She tossed Obito Uchiha, whom she had beaten nearly unconscious, onto the ground.
Kushina asked them, "This has something to do with Naruto?"
"Ah, yes." Kakashi successfully redirected Kushina's attention.
Because Obito had Hashirama cells inside him as well, those injuries would not take especially long to heal.
Kakashi suggested to Kushina, "Why don't we head back and meet Minato-sensei first, then explain everything clearly?"
"Minato?! Minato is here too?"
Obito quietly cut in, "It's Minato-sensei from the time of the Kannabi Bridge mission. Besides him, there's also me, Rin, and Kakashi from that era."
"Huh?!"
After thoroughly beating Obito and venting the anger she had built up while watching the footage, Kushina Uzumaki raised her spoon and tapped Adult Obito on the head again and again.
"That takes me back! These days, I can only see what the three of you looked like as kids in photos!"
"Three?!"
Obito froze.
His entire body went still.
Kakashi asked, "By three, you mean…"
"You, Obito, and Rin."
Kushina tilted her head. But then she realized that if the two people in front of her had gone through everything shown in the footage, then…
"Could it be that Rin is already gone?"
"So in Kushina-nee's world, Rin is still alive and well?"
"Yes. But after Minato became Hokage, you brats grew up too, and now you're all working hard in different places while holding on to your own dreams. Rin is currently an outstanding Medical-nin who can stand on her own, and she isn't in the village right now. She went to Kirigakure for a friendly academic exchange."
Adult Obito Uchiha and Kakashi both swallowed hard.
That gentle girl from their team back then had saved them many times with Medical Ninjutsu, yet she had never lived to adulthood.
If not for Madara Uchiha and the Masked Man, what would Rin have been like after growing up?
"Allow this old man to say something."
Ashina Uzumaki, who had been silent until now, spoke. "We still have important business and must meet Butsuma Senju of the Senju Clan. We do not have time to waste here."
Since Kushina still needed to explain the destruction of the Uzumaki Clan clearly, she did not need to accompany them.
Adult Kakashi said, "We've already met the Senju Clan Head of this world. Using Obito's Kamui Dimension, we can contact them very quickly and bring them to where we are. The First Hokage and Second Hokage of the future Konohagakure are also there. I'm sure the two Hokage would be honored to meet the Clan Head of the Uzumaki Clan."
"And…" He looked at Kushina Uzumaki and finished what he had not said earlier. "Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura from our mission scroll world are there too."
At the mention of Naruto…
In Kushina Uzumaki's memories, Naruto had grown up happily with her and Minato by his side. Although he was unbelievably mischievous and often forced Obito Uchiha, the elite Jōnin of Konoha who had watched him grow up, to open Kamui and search for him all over the world.
After Team 7 was formed, every time he came home from a mission, he would excitedly tell her and the Fourth Hokage he admired so much, his father Minato Namikaze, about his mission experiences at the dinner table. He would complain that Sasuke was like a flower that always attracted bees and butterflies.
He told her and Minato about the Land of Waves mission, saying that he and the client's grandson could not stand each other at first and even argued, but in the end, the mission was completed smoothly, and the kid even came to see Obito in a new light.
In short, in Kushina Uzumaki's memories, Naruto Uzumaki had undoubtedly been happy.
But why, after seeing the Obito and Kakashi in front of her and hearing them mention Naruto, did her heart ache so badly that she could hardly bear it?
It was as if…
Her Naruto had carried a burden he never should have had to bear, somewhere she did not know about and could not help him.
The memories she had believed without question suddenly began to fight against her instincts.
Still holding the spoon she had been using to prepare a delicious meal for her son after his mission, Kushina could not wait another second to see Naruto.
Just like back then, when she had earnestly told Minato Namikaze that the child she was carrying had to be a boy, and that he would want to become Hokage and love playing pranks.
Because she was a mother, her instincts were frighteningly accurate.
The Naruto Uzumaki that Obito and Kakashi were talking about was not some Naruto from another world. He had to be her child!
At that moment, the four teenagers who had spent the whole night troubled over why Sasuke's wishes had stopped coming true, why the new Uchiha clan members had yet to be revived, and what exactly Young Obito's wish meant, had unsurprisingly slept in.
Yawning, they finished washing up and ate breakfast.
Naruto was heading to the battlefield again. Or rather, the gambling den.
He clearly had such unbelievable luck, but he did not have the gambling addiction of the Old Man First Hokage or Grandma Tsunade.
It was completely like he was carrying out a mission. From his excited shouting at the beginning, he had now become an emotionless dice-throwing machine.
He sneezed.
Naruto muttered quietly, "Who's thinking about me?"
He clearly felt bored, so why was there a strange flutter in his heart, like something he had been waiting for was finally about to happen?
"Ah!! Little bro, your luck is way too good!!"
The dealer had finally been about to win for once, but because Naruto happened to sneeze, the dice shifted slightly, and it became Naruto Uzumaki's win again.
Even Sasuke, who was accompanying Naruto, could not help but sigh. His luck was just ridiculous.
…
Note: Kushina is the Kushina from the mission scroll world. Her memories were altered after she was revived.