"Orochimaru-sama!!"
By the time Kimimaro reacted, half of Orochimaru's arm, along with the scroll in his hand, had already vanished.
Orochimaru could only watch as the spiral-shaped distortion swallowed his arm and disappeared. He had no way to stop it. He didn't even know who the attacker was.
Blood dripped onto the floor, pattering steadily as the pain forced a low groan from Orochimaru.
Losing an arm itself wasn't the real problem. Before long, he would undergo Living Corpse Reincarnation and obtain a new body anyway. The real issue was this. Who had taken that scroll, and for what purpose?
Obviously, that person wasn't interested in his severed arm. If they had wanted to kill him, taking his head would have been easy.
Yet Orochimaru couldn't imagine who in the ninja world possessed such an ability.
At that moment, the spiral distortion reappeared in the empty space near the corner of the wall.
"Pfft—"
The severed arm was expelled from the vortex, spat out as if it were nothing more than something to be discarded.
But this time, Kimimaro wouldn't allow the intruder to escape right in front of him.
"Don't think you can run! Dance of the Camellia!"
From Kimimaro's wrist, white bone burst through flesh and skin, forming a sharp blade in his grasp. In a flash, he thrust it straight toward the lingering trace of the spiral in the void.
For an instant, Kimimaro felt his attack connect.
But as the vortex rapidly contracted, even his supposedly indestructible bone was twisted apart and snapped, vanishing beyond the spiral.
Silence returned to the snake lair.
Aside from Orochimaru's arm still bleeding and the severed limb lying on the floor, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
Since becoming one of the Sannin, Orochimaru had never suffered such a loss. He didn't even know who had attacked him. All he could do was infer, from that eerie technique, that the enemy was using space-time ninjutsu similar to Minato Namikaze's.
"Orochimaru-sama!" Kimimaro felt the same unease, but the immediate priority was treating Orochimaru's injury.
"Bring Kabuto Yakushi here," Orochimaru ordered coldly.
The reply he received was that Kabuto Yakushi was not currently present.
The pain made Orochimaru irritable. "Forget it. Even if he came, it probably wouldn't help." With Kabuto Yakushi's level of medical ninjutsu, reconnecting an arm like this was likely impossible.
"Only Tsunade could definitely do it."
Veins bulged on Orochimaru's forehead as his anger flared. He couldn't tell whether the person behind this had severed his arm by accident, or whether it was a deliberate move to force him into renegotiating his terms with Tsunade.
A ninja's arms were the foundation of forming hand seals.
Without an arm, Orochimaru would be severely constrained when trying to interfere with Naruto completing the two remaining tasks on the scroll.
"Was it Minato Namikaze?!"
"No. If he were capable of this, he wouldn't have come to negotiate with me before."
Kimimaro silently wondered who else could have injured Orochimaru-sama to this extent. Since Orochimaru-sama himself seemed uncertain, he chose not to press the matter.
Kimimaro went out to search for a medical ninja. Left behind, Orochimaru's expression grew even more twisted. His intact left hand clenched the armrest of his chair, veins standing out sharply as he struggled to suppress his fury.
...
Meanwhile, within Kamui's Dimension, Adult Obito Uchiha had also been struck by Kimimaro's bone spike, piercing his right arm.
But to him, something like that didn't matter at all. He pulled the bone fragment out of his arm and casually tossed it aside.
White vapor rose from the wound. Thanks to Hashirama's cells and White Zetsu components, the injury on his arm healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, returning to normal in moments.
He had heard the conversation between Minato Namikaze and Jiraiya. The information about Shikotsumyaku and Kaguya Ōtsutsuki stirred a faint interest in him.
But his real purpose…
He looked down at the scroll in his hand. It was Naruto Uzumaki's mission scroll.
There was one thing he wanted to confirm with his own eyes.
He opened the scroll. The very first task listed made his gaze sharpen.
[Mission Rank: SSS]
[Mission Objective: Rescue the Masked Man.]
It was real.
Corresponding to the other scroll's mission to kill the Masked Man, Naruto Uzumaki's SSS-rank mission was actually to save him.
Back in his youth, Obito Uchiha had wanted to kill himself. And now Naruto Uzumaki, whose parents had died because of him, was supposed to save him instead?
How ridiculous.
How stupid did Naruto have to be to take on and complete such an SSS-rank mission?
Besides, Adult Obito Uchiha couldn't imagine anyone in this world who could actually kill him.
A smile with no clear meaning curved his lips. There weren't many ways to kill him, yet fate always seemed to choose the most cruel one.
To let him learn the truth behind Rin Nohara's death…
Inside Kamui's Dimension, Obito continued opening the scroll.
D-rank mission: Make Kakashi read Icha Icha Paradise out loud.
"..." Disgusting. Fake. Trash.
B-rank mission: Help Haku and Zabuza fake their deaths.
A-rank mission: Paint the Hokage Rock.
B+ rank mission: Form contracts with the Three Great Sage Regions.
S-rank mission: Lead the other examinees through the first stage of the Chūnin Exams.
C-rank mission: Treat Gaara to ramen.
C-rank mission: Repel Orochimaru.
"Repelling Orochimaru and treating someone to ramen are the same rank?" Even the Akatsuki wouldn't define missions this casually.
S-rank mission: Force Gaara to use the False Sleep Technique.
A+ rank mission: Defeat Gaara.
All of these had already been completed.
Obito compared it with his own mission scroll. Naruto's scroll clearly had more tasks, and the missions seemed to appear far more frequently.
The remaining ones were still pending. Obito continued reading.
SS-rank mission: Prevent Orochimaru from placing a Curse Seal on Sasuke Uchiha.
A-rank mission: Prevent Orochimaru from killing his master.
"Orochimaru's master was the Third Hokage. A Hokage, and yet the mission rank is far lower than that of a single Uchiha Sasuke?"
Even as he thought that, his eyes involuntarily lingered on the words "killing his master."
If Infinite Tsukuyomi was a lie, and he couldn't find a new method to replace it, then what he was doing wasn't really any different from what Orochimaru was about to do.
He skipped those two missions and looked at the last one.
C-rank mission: Learn the Rasengan.
…
That night, Young Obito Uchiha was once again dragged into Kamui's Dimension by his counterpart from another world.
"Is this ever going to end?!" Young Obito snapped, completely bristling. "Did you deliberately pick this moment to pull me in here?!"
He wasn't angry for no reason. He was supposed to be hugging a wooden basin, towel in hand, charging into the bathhouse first. He and Naruto had already planned a prank to mess with dumb Kakashi and that smug Sasuke.
And now?
Now he had nothing on him but a wooden basin.
…Alright, fine. He was also holding a towel.
"..."
He didn't even have his goggles or his Konoha forehead protector.
If the gap between their strength wasn't so absurd, he, Young Obito Uchiha, would have already carried out divine justice and completed that SSS-rank mission himself.
Even so, he still followed what Minato-sensei had said earlier. Even if he could complete the mission, he absolutely couldn't do it this early. Once that SSS-rank mission was completed, they might leave Naruto's world permanently and never come back.
All the unanswered questions about the future would remain unresolved.
And he knew that if they left like that, Minato-sensei and Naruto would both be left with regrets they could never let go of.
Young Obito glared fiercely at the man standing before him, someone even taller than Minato-sensei.
"What is wrong with you?! Couldn't you wait until we finished bathing—after Naruto and I finished pranking Kakashi and Sasuke—before calling me in?! At least let me put some clothes on!" Young Obito ranted angrily.
Adult Obito Uchiha looked him up and down with a scrutinizing gaze, then let out a faint, mocking chuckle.
"What do you have that I don't? And besides, I'm bigger than you."
"..."
"......"
The towel in Young Obito's hand flew straight at his older self.
Naturally, it was dodged with ease.
At the same time, Adult Obito Uchiha tossed a miniature scroll toward him.
"Let's make a deal. Decode this scroll."
Young Obito caught it and spread it open in his palm.
"This is… an intelligence scroll!"
"So you do recognize it." Adult Obito's thoughts raced as he recalled both his own and Naruto Uzumaki's mission scrolls. B-rank missions had appeared in them more than once.
He deliberately probed his younger self. "Don't worry about who completed the B-rank mission. Just decode this intelligence."
Young Obito examined the contents. It was identical to the intelligence scrolls they had received before.
[Obito Uchiha**]
"This string of numbers…" Young Obito frowned. "It feels like I've seen it somewhere."
"That's impossible," Adult Obito replied flatly. "If you could decipher this code, there's no way I wouldn't recognize it."
Thinking it over, Young Obito agreed. He folded the miniature scroll and kept it firmly in hand.
"So what's your condition?"
"Naruto's mission scroll is currently with me," Adult Obito said. "Once you crack this scroll, I'll hand it over to you."
"What?!" Young Obito was genuinely shocked. That condition was far too generous.
"Don't overthink it," Adult Obito said calmly. "I happened to run into Orochimaru and got this scroll from him. Keeping it is useless to me. What I'm curious about is what this cipher, one that bears our name, actually means."
Based on his reasoning, this miniature scroll had originated from his own mission scroll and was the reward for completing a B-rank mission. Logically speaking, the information inside likely had something to do with his future, or perhaps even with Infinite Tsukuyomi and Black Zetsu's true objective.
Even if it was nothing more than a hint, it would still be of some use.
Young Obito immediately agreed. "Alright. Once I crack it, you'll keep your promise and hand over Naruto's mission scroll, right?" It was a pretty sweet deal.
In response, the vortex of Kamui's Dimension churned.
Without saying another word, Adult Obito abruptly tossed his younger self from another world straight out of Kamui. Out of sight, out of mind.
He even confiscated a pristine white towel. It was the one Young Obito had casually thrown like a shuriken. Adult Obito dodged it easily, and the towel ended up landing on one of the square platforms inside Kamui.
As a result, when Young Obito returned to the bathhouse, he didn't even have a towel left.
They hadn't talked for long anyway. Naruto was still waiting inside the bath, ready to prank Kakashi and Sasuke together.
"Where did you run off to? Hurry up! If you're any slower, even idiot Sasuke will be here!" Naruto shouted.
"Oh, oh! Wait, I'm coming!" Obito blocked himself with a wooden basin. Just as he was about to jump in, two figures even paler than him and Naruto walked in from behind.
"Sigh…" Young Kakashi let out a long breath. "Obito, do you seriously not know you're supposed to wrap a towel around yourself?"
He honestly didn't know how to even complain anymore. This guy was supposed to be some future villain boss?
Sasuke couldn't stand the sight and turned away, looking instead at Naruto, who was about to get caught in the middle of his half-baked prank.
"What are you trying to do, dead last?"
Naruto shook his head like a rattle.
"Ah, stupid Kakashi!" Obito turned around, still holding the basin in front of himself. But the moment he moved, his foot slipped, landing squarely on the soap Naruto had prepared for Sasuke and Kakashi.
"......"
Inside Kamui's Dimension, Obito Uchiha muttered coldly.
"An idiot. Completely unwatchable."
…
After leaving the bath, everyone waited a bit longer. Sakura and Rin soon came out as well, along with the group from the neighboring bath: Jiraiya, Adult Kakashi, and Minato Namikaze.
The moment Young Obito spotted Minato, he immediately opened the mini scroll and asked him about the cipher written on it.
"When did you complete another B-rank mission?" Naruto leaned in curiously.
Minato thought to himself that Obito had been with him the whole time. If there had been any Space-Time Ninjutsu fluctuations from a new mission nearby, he should have sensed it right away. He seemed to notice something was off, but didn't say it aloud.
As he looked at the mini scroll Obito had opened, he hesitated, as if unsure how to respond.
Young Obito guessed that Minato-sensei had already figured it out. He must have realized that Obito had just met another version of himself.
"Obito…" Minato began.
Rin, too, gently poked Young Obito with her finger, wearing the same hesitant, conflicted expression.