Ordinarily, someone like Kiyohara would never have been worth Madara Uchiha's notice.
But this was a critical moment, and Madara's body had already decayed to the point where he could not afford long deliberation. He had to choose the executor of the Eye of the Moon Plan as quickly as possible, remove the tubes keeping him alive, and return to silent sleep until the day he would be revived as the so-called savior.
In the depths of the cavern, Madara touched his chest unconsciously. Buried there was a piece of Hashirama's flesh and blood. It was because of that stolen fragment that he had awakened the Rinnegan, and because of the Rinnegan that all these schemes had been born.
"Hashirama..." Madara said into the darkness, his voice slow and hoarse. "I will prove everything I believed. I will reach... the other side."
***
While Kiyohara was pretending to sweep the surroundings with his senses, the spirit of the rogue-nin Kiyohara drifted back from the distance.
One look at his face was enough to make Kiyohara's heart tighten. The older version of himself rarely wore an expression that grim unless something had truly gone wrong.
"What happened?" Kiyohara asked at once in his mind. "Don't mess with me. Did Iwa surround us? Is it too late for me to write my will now?"
"The place where Rin was taken is just ahead," the rogue Kiyohara said. "And Obito is almost here."
Kiyohara's eyes narrowed. He immediately understood the meaning hidden under those words.
They had reached the edge of the Kannabi Bridge battlefield without even noticing it. Once Obito arrived, Kakashi would follow after that brief struggle from the original story. Kakashi would lose his left eye there. Obito would be crushed beneath the boulder there. And somewhere nearby, closer than ever, Madara's gaze was probably fixed on this patch of earth.
Kiyohara could not detect anything directly, but he had the distinct feeling that a White Zetsu was hiding in the area. White Zetsu could merge into the ground with the Mayfly Technique, drifting through earth and stone as if they were water. Against something like that, ordinary vigilance meant almost nothing.
He thought quickly. I don't have a bloodline. Madara shouldn't care about me much. At most, I'm either an obstacle to his plan or a disposable piece he can use to push Obito into darkness.
Madara's scheme had always been simple in its cruelty. Rin would be turned into a jinchuriki, driven into Kakashi's hands, and forced into death so that Obito would see the scene and collapse into absolute despair. Madara had never expected Rin to choose suicide herself, but that had only made Obito sink even deeper.
Kiyohara swallowed. Thankfully, I sparred with Obito before we left. Hopefully I'm not the one chosen to die for dramatic effect.
He would not put it past Madara, not even a little. If Obito failed to fall after Kakashi and Rin died, Kiyohara suspected Madara would simply keep piling corpses in front of him until the boy finally broke. He had no interest in becoming the target of some future "revive my beloved" speech.
After all, even when Obito's own grandmother died, the first thing on his mind was never truly to revive her. The fantasy he wanted was a dream world where he could become Hokage and live brightly beside Rin forever. It was love-sickness taken to its most terminal form.
"Don't underestimate the people inside," Kiyohara warned silently. "When it matters, possess me immediately."
He was making preparations for the worst. Oishi of Iwagakure had invisibility techniques. If that jonin attacked at the wrong instant, Kiyohara might not even have time to react.
The rogue Kiyohara frowned. "You don't have to go. You could stay here and wait for it all to end."
"If I don't go, who knows what kind of butterfly effect we'll get? And the bridge has to be destroyed. I need the merit."
The words came out without hesitation. Kiyohara had no illusion about his own motives.
He could already see the rogue Kiyohara's spirit turning thinner and thinner. Time was running out. He had no idea when the next will would arrive, or what version of himself it would bring. If the next one happened to be something useless - some harmless future like Kiyohara the Civilian or Kiyohara the Cook - then this chance to grow stronger would be wasted completely.
If he wanted to absorb the rest of the rogue Kiyohara's talent and rise to chunin as fast as possible, then he needed achievements. Real ones. The kind the village could not ignore.
Two ordinary talents added together were already frightening. And in Kiyohara's experience, that kind of addition rarely stayed as simple as one plus one. The overlap itself could trigger changes, making the result even more explosive.
"Fine," the rogue Kiyohara said at last. "When the crucial moment comes, I'll help you. I want my wish fulfilled too."
That answer steadied Kiyohara a little. He hesitated, then asked the question that had been on his mind for some time.
"When you possess me, what's the limit? How much can you really bring out?"
He had been possessed several times already, but he still didn't know the upper boundary. Even if the rogue Kiyohara had jonin-level techniques and battle sense, Kiyohara's actual body was only around chunin-class. There had to be a ceiling somewhere.
"I can force your body to release all of its potential," the rogue Kiyohara replied. "The human body is stronger than most people realize. It places limits on itself for protection. I'm essentially an outside force. I can ignore some of those restraints."
Kiyohara immediately understood. "So it's like the Eight Gates?"
"The principle is similar. The Eight Gates release the body's restrictions through overload. If I control you, I can also push your body closer to its limit."
Kiyohara's heartbeat sped up. "Then if you knew the Eight Gates, could you force me to use it too?"
"In theory, yes. Whether you know it or not doesn't matter. If I know it, I can use it through your body. Unfortunately, I don't."
The rogue Kiyohara sounded faintly regretful. The Eight Gates counted as a kind of forbidden art in its own right, and it was not the sort of thing that circulated casually. Orochimaru had never cared much for taijutsu anyway. He wanted bloodlines and immortality, not hand-to-hand discipline.
"That's still enough," Kiyohara said. And for the first time in a while, he actually meant it.
No matter who was inside the cave, they were all jonin in the end. They bled the same way anyone else did. If things turned ugly enough, he could always shout inside his own head: Future me, save me.
He turned to Kurenai and Genma. "We're going over there now. Keep your movements light and stay quiet."
With three people instead of one, the odds were at least a little better than in the original timeline. A little better was already enough reason for him to move.
***
Inside the cave, Rin Nohara looked up with relief and disbelief blazing together in her eyes.
"Kakashi! Obito!" she cried.
The moment the boys burst in, the genjutsu wrapped around her faltered. Her vision cleared for an instant, and that instant was all she needed to recognize them.
Firelight glanced at the large stone and spoke calmly. "The two brats are yours. I'll keep the illusion going."
Daishi gave a small nod from within the darkness. His presence remained hidden, almost completely erased.
"Damn it, it vanished again," Kakashi muttered. His expression darkened together with Obito's.
The enemy's concealment technique was absurdly troublesome. They could not lock onto the man at all.
"They're just two kids," Daishi thought coldly.
He drew his kunai without making a sound and circled behind Obito and Kakashi, step by step, like a blade sliding through shadow. To him, killing the pair should have been simple.
"Kakashi!" Rin shouted in alarm.
At that exact moment, a violent boom burst from outside the cave.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
A roaring gust crashed inward through the entrance. Dust and scattered debris swept across the cave floor and clung to the surface of the great stone, tracing out its outline in an instant.
Kiyohara had arrived.
He did not waste even half a breath. The moment the wind exposed the cave's terrain, his mind locked onto the battlefield before him. Rin was inside. Kakashi and Obito were inside. The invisible enemy was somewhere in that confusion. And if he made a single wrong move, someone would die before he ever got the chance to earn his promotion.
So he shouted without hesitation, voice cutting through the dust like a blade.
"I've marked the terrain! Move!"
His heart pounded hard enough to make his ribs ache. This was it - the turning point, the place where the original story broke people apart. Whether he could change anything, whether he could steal even a sliver of a better future from the jaws of fate, all of it would be decided in the next few breaths.
And behind all of that, there was one thought Kiyohara could not suppress.
Please don't let me be the one who gets crushed.