Chapter 136: I Don't Want To
"Kakashi, do you really think prophecies are possible?"
"If Aizen's theory is right, then yes, they can exist."
In the empty corridor, the two of them stood back to back, one watching the sealed steel gate behind them, the other watching the distant hall wrapped in faint black mist. They exchanged quiet words as they waited, muscles tense but minds forced to stay clear.
The more critical the situation, the less room there was for panic or distraction.
They had not forgotten their academy training.
Feeling the warmth of each other's presence at their backs, they narrowed their eyes at the darkness around them and deliberately kept talking, their voices serving as an anchor to keep their thoughts from spiraling.
If you stay wound too tight for too long, your nerves lock up. When the real danger comes, you freeze. That was why, on prolonged alert, shinobi chewed gum, rolled senbon between their fingers, or, when nothing else was available, kept up a thin thread of conversation.
"Black swans and gray rhinos," Kakashi said quietly, resting his palm on his sword hilt as his gaze swept over the doors lining the corridor. "If things unfold in a normal way, some events are simply likely to happen. Once you filter and organize information, you can make judgments that are close to prophecy.
"Prediction is just using what we can observe now to sketch the future. Some high probability events really can be forecast accurately. For example, with the right data, we can predict the weather for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But stretch that out for a week, or months, and everything gets fuzzy."
"What about someone like Obito?" Rin asked behind him, her voice soft but steady. "He saw a scene in detail, with all three of us in it. That is no simple weather forecast."
"I think that is something someone deliberately made him see."
Kakashi loosened his grip on the hilt, then tightened it again, eyes fixed on the black fog that obscured the hall.
"If a so called prediction is that precise, aimed at specific people, and it is not based on a preset plan and data, then the odds are high it is an artificial prophecy.
"My guess is that someone implanted some kind of special stimulus into Obito's brain, then set up this space as a trap and waited until he brought us here. The problem is, this set of techniques is beyond anything we should be able to build. I have no idea what the person behind this is really after..."
And most of all, Inize.
Kakashi thought back to Aizen's meaningful words before he had left home earlier that day. Now that he was standing here, he could finally sense the weight behind them, and he understood again why so many people hated that man.
It was a blind spot no one would ever think to guard.
Who would suspect that a childhood friend, someone who looked like a boy blessed by heaven with a talent for touching time itself, could be unconsciously doing something like this at a level no one could predict or measure?
Who could endure that?
Just as their thoughts began to drift deeper down that path, a sharp sound cut through the corridor, followed by a dull thump.
Obito fell out of thin air.
Soaked in sweat, he hit the floor hard, stumbled, and ended up on his knees in front of Kakashi. His face was streaked with tears.
Kakashi did not need to confirm his identity. The familiar chakra signature, the strange resonance of his movement technique, the way space itself had rippled around him, all of it screamed Uchiha Obito.
But his state was another matter entirely.
Obito clutched his head with both hands, as if something inside was tearing his skull apart.
"I... I cannot get out..."
"Obito, what happened?" Kakashi demanded.
"They are all the same."
Obito stared into the distance, his pupils shrinking and widening in frantic rhythm, like he had just returned from some impossible landscape.
"I jumped hundreds of times," he whispered. "I used Resonance over and over. But every time I went through the door, I saw the same structure, the same corridor. I could not feel the outside at all. Whatever is outside this place, it is definitely not my house..."
"Everyone came down from my home. The distance should not be that far. The next chamber should have been the one we entered from. But no matter how I tried, every signal I sensed was focused here, not above. There is no outside signal, nothing to lock on to, I cannot even tell how far away anything is.
"I have jumped so many times. I have not found anything. I have not accomplished anything..."
"All the corridors and tunnels are exactly the same, except for this room," he said hoarsely. "No matter where I jump, no matter how I use Instant Step, the result never changes. I cannot get out. I cannot reach the surface. Even deeper down, everything is sealed. I cannot feel anything, I cannot do anything..."
"So the outside is not your home at all," Kakashi murmured. "I see. The entire entrance was moved here in the first place."
Listening to Obito's broken report, Kakashi stared at his kneeling figure and let his mind reconstruct the space around them.
"In a one sided ring world, gravity can be simulated with techniques that alter weight and pull. If you manipulate the environment correctly, you can create a closed loop that traps us in a repeating path.
"If that is what happened, then the first descent we made was really the connection point. That hall at the end is not the final goal. It might actually be the starting node for the entire facility."
"Then what do we do now, Kakashi?" Rin asked quietly.
She watched him from the corner of her eye. Kakashi stood there with a calm expression, but she knew his mind was spinning.
"If we cannot get out, should we go forward and investigate?"
"It looks like that is our only option," Kakashi said.
"No, we cannot!"
Obito's shout tore through the corridor. Lying on the ground, he pushed himself up, eyes wild.
"I already saw what happens inside. The moment all three of us go in, you go ahead to check the trap, Kakashi, then Rin is attacked, and I am controlled to kill Rin. That is what I saw!"
"Then we simply make sure what you saw never happens," Kakashi said at once. "In that dream, you must have been acting alone at some point. If the three of us stay together back to back, no trap can separate us quietly and pick us off one by one."
"All three of us together?"
"Of course all three," he answered. "We are a team."
Rin looked at Obito's tense face and offered him a gentle smile. She reached out and wrapped her hand around his.
"What you saw was probably the ending that only happens after the three of us are split apart," she said softly. "If we stay together from the start, and link ourselves with chakra and awareness, then that ending will not happen."
"Rin is right," Kakashi added. "If everything you described is accurate, then it must have happened after I went ahead alone and we scattered.
"But if we stay connected and guard each other, we can stop that from ever forming. A prophecy is nothing but one possible state someone is trying to force onto us. All we have to do is break their script. If anything about you starts to match what you saw, we knock you out on the spot and reset. That is simple enough, right?"
"So stop worrying, Obito," Rin said. "We are not that easy to take down."
"Yeah. I am a member of Las Noches now," Kakashi added lightly. "I am not going to fall over that quickly."
"Everyone..."
Obito stared at their outstretched fists, at Rin's steady eyes and Kakashi's faint, familiar smile. He shook his head hard, forcing the tears back, and then pressed his fist forward, touching the other two.
They were right.
If it was just a dream, then he only had to smash the pattern that led to that ending.
If separation led to disaster, they would simply never separate. They would stay together from the start, move as one, and clear the way forward.
They did not know how to braid spiritual pressure or natural energy the way Aizen did, but chakra was more than enough. Chakra connected people. As long as their chakra was linked, as long as their hearts were tied together, their three man cell had nothing to fear.
In front of bonds like that, even prophecy was worthless.
"So," Kakashi asked quietly, "are you ready to go?"
"Yeah!" Obito answered.
"Ready," Rin said, nodding.
Chakra chains flared into being around their waists, three lines of pale light that linked them together and pulsed with their shared power.
Kakashi turned toward the hall and set his hand against the heavy door of the underground palace.
With a long, drawn out creak, the dark gateway opened.
Bound together by glowing chakra, the three of them wove a light jutsu and stepped forward as one, crossing the threshold into the black mist filled hall.
None of them noticed what had changed.
No one felt how that gaze, the one that used to watch from the shadows, now sat openly in Obito's eyes, calmly observing everything he saw.
Crimson shadows overlapped in his pupils and settled there, silent and patient, as if quietly counting down to the moment a certain scene would repeat itself.
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