Rin sighed as she looked back at the cave they had left the remains of their third teammate in, and then stopped. Kakashi got a few more paces ahead of her before he noticed that Rin wasn't following him, and turned back to her. They were both still exhausted, sore, depleted, even, thanks to the brutal fight that had led to them sheltering in the cave, that their enemies had made collapse in on them, crushing Obito underneath a falling rock. The eye that had been hastily-messily-thrust inside the void left by the one he'd lost to those very same Rock ninja burned, the sacrifice and the surgery still agonizingly fresh.

"Kakashi. Give me your paper bombs. I know you have some left," Rin said, voice as exhausted as she looked, but there was determination there, as well, that made the young jonin hesitate for only a moment before he pulled out the last of his supply.

"What are you planning on doing?" he asked, even as she started back towards the mouth of the cave that had been the site of their last battle.

"I'm going to rig Obito's body with them. Neither of us has the energy to follow proper battlefield protocol, but if..." her voice hitched before she continued. "If we put enough explosives on him, then we can deny our enemies the secrets his body holds. Rig them to go off if his body's disturbed..."

"Ah," Kakashi agreed, turning on his heel to fall in besides Rin once more. "Of course, if we...if we survive this, we can come back here later, disarm the trap, give him a proper sendoff. We'll have to be careful about it, though. Set it up so that our allies know that he's boobytrapped, and in a way that only one of us can disarm the bombs."

"Right. Don't want any opportunistic scavengers coming to steal our friend and disturb his rest." Back inside the cave, Rin and Kakashi worked quickly, priming and placing the tags. They didn't want to make it obvious that there were live bombs stuck to their teammate, and they didn't want to simply incinerate the body, either. Kakashi favored fire tags, but he had a few regular bombs as well, all of which were applied to Obito's corpse. Rin clapped her hands and said a short prayer once their grim task was finished, asking for the Uchiha's forgiveness from the afterlife, and at last they fled the cave for the second and hopefully final time, until the war would end. Until then, they had a base to return to, a commander to debrief on the result of their mission. Enemy ninja dogged their heels the whole way, harassing the exhausted shinobi, and only the timely intervention of their teacher saved them from a certain fate.

Deep underground, Zetsu heeded Madara's will, following the decrepit old man's directions to the letter. Attuned with the earth and the chakra flowing through every plant and animal, and guided by a design much older than Madara's ambitions, the artificial humanoid sought out the prize that Madara desired. In short order the chlorosapien found what he was looking for, a recently-fallen Uchiha shinobi, close to where the fighting in the latest war was the fiercest...a war orchestrated by Zetsu, with some input on Madara's part. The creature didn't collect the body himself, no; instead he reported the location to Madara directly, aware that the aging Uchiha liked to do things himself whenever it was possible.

Unfortunately for both of them, the boy's teammates had planned for such an occasion, and as Madara used the power of the Rinnegan to move the rocks pinning Obito to the floor of the cave, the tags detected the attempt at tampering with his fallen form and activated. The resulting blast was quite powerful, vaporizing Obito's body and wresting Madara from his tenuous grasp on the world of the living, as well. From one small act, the world was changed. It would take time for the effects to be seen, of course, but they were seen all the same, over the course of weeks and months and years.

Without Madara pulling the strings behind the shadows, a girl was saved from an untimely death. Absent Madara's machinations, reason prevailed upon a patriot, and a group of young revolutionaries were spared the pain of betrayal in a land where rain fell like sunlight. Without that pain, a legend remained asleep, and the old salamander met his end not on the tip of a sword but on his death bed, those very same revolutionaries named as his successors. Akatsuki remained, as did their mission of peace, but no longer would it be the peace of the grave, the peace of conquest.

Of course, most importantly, with the would-be chessmaster out of the picture, and Obito enjoying his afterlife undisturbed, Kurama remained safely caged inside Kushina. Minato remained the Hokage for many long years, and in his own due time engaged in many pragmatic actions of his own, which changed things further still. All from one little act.

notes: if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, feel free. The most important change of course is Obito and possibly Madara being removed from the picture, scuttling much of Zetsu's plans up to that point. After that? It's anyone's guess.