Rating: T
Summary: Shit hits the fan.

It had all happened in a matter of minutes. Kakashi stared blankly at the spot that Rin had been standing, the medical kit she had given him weighing heavy at his side. She had been there, a kunai held to her neck by the enemy shinobi that he had not seen coming – and just as quickly, they had taken her away.

She could be anywhere, he told himself furiously. It was an obvious trap – kidnap the medic nin, the supposed weak link of any team, and hope that the medic's teammates would be idiotic enough to throw away every protocol in the shinobi handbook. Hope that the teammates would be stupid enough to come after them, like mice into a trap.

The enemy nin had done this, hoping that Kakashi would make the same mistake as his father.

"No," he said bluntly, even as Obito turned toward him, eyes hard. "No. We are continuing on this mission without her."

Kakashi expected Obito to yell at him angrily, maybe even attack him physically. He braced himself for a punch that never comes. For a moment, he dared to hope that Obito had common sense, that Kakashi wouldn't have to –

"We're not continuing on this mission without Rin," Obito said, as if it was a fact. Maybe to him, it was one.

"Obito, we can't. Don't you understand?" He snapped, brandishing a hand at the idiot – the idiot who was too oblivious to accept the shinobi world as it was. "If we go after Rin, we will die. We will fail our mission. They want us to go after her. "

"Kakashi, Rin has been with us through life and death!" Obito retorted. "She treated our wounds when we were injured, and even risked her life for ours!"

"Yes," Kakashi growled, taking a step forward. "And it was her duty to do so. Just like it is our duty to continue on our mission. Look, Obito – they will keep Rin alive. They can't have a trap when the bait is dead. She is a medic nin as well – as long as she treats their wounded, she will live."

"B-But that's just an assumption. You are betting Rin's life on an assumption!"

"An assumption that every piece of evidence points to," Kakashi returned frostily. Enough. He couldn't waste more time trying to convince the idiot. Obito would follow him – he was too much of a coward to go after the Iwa nin alone, even if it was for the girl he had a crush on.

He turned his back. "I'm going to complete the mission. If you are a true shinobi, you will come after me."

Kakashi heard a sigh, a muffled, 'Well, so much for that.'

Before he can even begin to wonder at the significance of the phrase, a heavy weight slammed him onto the ground. Before he could react, Obito had already pulled him up by the straps of his uniform.

"What the hell are you doing, Obito!" He shouted furiously. "You are attacking your superior officer!

"Maa, Kakashi," Obito said calmly, looking at him with half-lidded eyes. His grip was like iron. "…Calm down."

"C-Calm down!" He spluttered. "Obito, you're telling me to calm down when you –"

"In the shinobi world, those who break the rules are trash," the other boy interrupted him. He said the words almost as if reciting it from memory, eyes looking at something just above Kakashi's head. "But those who abandon their friends…" His gaze snaps back to Kakashi, suddenly hard. "…are worse than trash. That is something that a friend of mine said to me, when I once considered doing something stupid. I've lived by his words for a long time."

Kakashi blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of Obito's words. What friend was he talking about? 'A long time'? "But Obito, you –"

"Now this friend of mine… said to me something else. He said that in this world, all shinobi are trash. It's a bit harsh, and I think he regretted saying it in the end, but," Obito shrugged. "It's true. Shinobi are hired killers, in the end. As much as people can talk about friendship and honor, in the end, that is what shinobi are. So, if I am already going to be trash…"

He let go of Kakashi, who couldn't help but stumble back a few steps – but then, Kakashi stands rooted to his spot.

"I would rather be trash who will save their comrades," Obito said, his eyes curving into crescents as he smiled.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kakashi demanded, before he could stop himself. No, actually, it wasn't important why Obito was saying these… these things. He was just trying to -

"Maa… alright, I'll tell you why. The reason is… when I was a kid, the White Fang of Konoha was my role model."

Kakashi's thoughts grind to a halt. "Y-You –"

"I looked up to him a lot," Obito said conversationally. "I trained because I wanted to be strong like him. And even after his last mission…" He smiled. "I still felt the same. Even though so many people called him a traitor to the village because he had started a war by saving his comrades, I still saw him as a great man."

Kakashi didn't move. "My fa – The White Fang killed himself," he said blankly. His voice still cracked.

"Yeah, he did. That… was when I began to hate the White Fang," Obito admitted. "He was a great war hero, the pride of the village – but in the end, he took the easy way out, and left m – his son alone. I decided that the fact that he committed seppuku… was evidence that he had realized how wrong he had been. So, if even someone like the White Fang would bow before them… then the rules of shinobi must be truly absolute."

His smile twisted, as if remembering a horrible event. "But in the end, it turned out that I was wrong about everything."

With a start, Kakashi realized that what Obito was saying… was incredibly familiar. Almost too familiar, in fact, but he cannot make himself wonder more about it when… when – "You – How were you wrong?" He asked, without making an attempt to hide the desperation in his voice.

"The White Fang of Konoha never regretted putting his comrades' lives over the mission, not even in the end," Obito revealed. "What he regretted… was how his son would suffer for his transgressions – his ideals. That was something he could not allow."

"T- Then…"

The Uchiha turned around, an unreadable expression on what little Kakashi could see of his face. "I'm going to rescue Rin," he said, and there is such confidence in his voice that Kakashi does not doubt it one bit. "...But… y'know, Kakashi? In the end… I really do believe that the White Fang was a true hero."

Kakashi stumbled back a step, face ashen. "…Obito," he managed, after a long moment. "H-How do you know all of that about the Whi – about my father? How do you know for sure?"

Obito stopped, for the briefest of moments. "…How else?" He replied, voice airy. "I talked to him, of course." And then, as if he had said something completely normal, he kept walking.

Kakashi stared in stunned disbelief at his teammate's retreating back. What the hell? Had all of that been something that Obito had made up? There was no way that he could have talked to Kakashi's father, not when –

He cut off that train of thought.

But Obito hadn't been lying – that, Kakashi knew for sure, though he couldn't explain his certainty. That had been sincerity in his teammate's voice, a kind of brutal honesty that really drove in how strangely the Uchiha had been acting the entire mission.

Kakashi feels a twinge of suspicion, but… that was something he would pursue later. There was something much more important at stake now.

"Obito," Kakashi said. "…Wait for me."

"Eh, Kushina-nee," Obito said, staring dolefully at his cup of ramen. "…Is it done, yet?"

"It's only been a minute!" Kushina shouted, pointing at the clock angrily. "Look, I'm hungry too! But unless we want gross crunchy ramen, we're going to need to wait the other two minutes for it to be done. So shut it!"

"I haven't eaten the whole day!" The Uchiha wailed, bringing both hands to his face. "Ugh, why can't you let us out, already? I bet Minato-sensei and everyone else already left the village. Can't we just, I dunno, Henge and get barbeque?"

"Because half the shinobi in the village can see through Henge with a glance, you moron! If anyone sees the two of you out there, the whole plan's going to get messed up!"

"Um… About that plan, Kushina-san…" Rin said, from where she sat cross-legged, hands cupped around her own small cup of ramen. "I know that you said that Obito and I can't go on the mission because of something that the older Kakashi and Obito said would happen there, but…"

"Yeah?"

"Who's replacing us on the team? Did Minato-sensei request some other jounin to take our place? And, um…" Rin squinted. "I guess I'm not really sure why you won't let us go outside. We've been cleared from the mission, right? So everyone knows that we'll be in the village."

Kushina grinned weakly. "Um, about that…"

"Where are the girl's teammates, anyways?" Kakkō muttered, a look of annoyance on his face. "Is it possible that they really left her behind?"

Taiseki snorted. "Don't worry about that. Konoha shinobi are soft. It was because of them that the war started, remember?"

"Yeah… That's true." He sighed. "Either way, the girl will crack pretty soon. That's a jounin level genjutsu that we have her under. You might as well check the perimeters again. See if they've showed up."

Kakkō's teammate replied with a deep grunt, which was something he had gotten used to over the years. The man wasn't much of a talker, but he made up for that with his combat strength. Kakkō watches Taiseki walk into the shadows of the cave, and sighed.

"Geez, this is really fucking boring," he said to himself. Kakkō hadn't even heard any screams or whimpers, which was usually pretty entertaining to –

He froze. "That little –" Kakkō jumped to his feet and ran to the corner where they had stashed their hostage for the time being.

The girl was waking up, pretty brown eyes blinking rapidly to adjust to the darkness of the cave. "Look, kid, I don't know how you got out of a jounin level genjutsu, but –"

"Kakashi," the girl muttered to herself. "That fucking bastard. 'I got it', my ass. Icha Icha?" The non-sequitur was so unexpected that Kakkō blinked, momentarily startled from his threat.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

The girl peered up at him with narrowed eyes. A second later, a cruel grin appeared on her face, exposing every one of those pearly white teeth.

"I'm going to enjoy this," she said, with such vehemence that Kakkō almost backed away, before he remembered that she was a tied-up, chakra-exhausted Konoha chunin.

"I'll give you one more chance to be a good little hostage," he threatened, deciding for some mercy. It wouldn't do any good if Kakkō killed her here, before her teammates showed up, or even before she gave any useful information.

The girl stood up, the ropes falling from her form as if they had passed right through her. Her right eye burned crimson red, a black pinwheel pattern within. She stepped forward confidently, and despite himself, Kakkō stumbled back.

"You forfeited your life the moment you decided to lay a finger on Nohara Rin," she said, her single Sharingan spinning.

[A/N: ...Again, more serious than I planned. Hope this chapter cleared up some stuff. (What can I say, Obito did say that he was an amazing actor.) If it didn't... say so in a review or PM and I'll explain!

There be some of my White Fang headcanon here. No idea if it's common or even right - the Naruto wiki was pretty vague on the 'why's - but I hope it fit. I thought having 'Obito' act his way through the talk with Kakashi was a bit 'ergh' considering the circumstances, so he went a bit awry from the plan there.

So, I have the fic planned up to the end of the Kannabi Bridge mission, and uh... the fic should end around then. I can't believe that the end is in sight, after years of writing this!

Last thing: I am now dubsdeedubs on tumblr. I have some occasional personal updates on there, along with some pieces of fic too short or incomplete to be posted here. You can also request random scenarios/prompts!]