Mission Complete! Why Is It Two Tomoe?

Time didn't allow Kakashi, Nohara Rin, and Obito to make any more choices. The mission left them no room for more choices, either.

Kakashi lay down beside Nohara Rin. She raised her hand, a faint blue glow unique to the Chakra Scalpel shimmering around it. She gently brushed it over Kakashi's eye, severing the nerves one by one before removing his ruptured eyeball.

With the nerves severed, Kakashi couldn't feel any pain. The muscles in his eye merely seeped blood, without spasming from irritation.

Then Nohara Rin used the same method to remove Obito's left eye.

The scarlet Two Tomoe Sharingan was installed. Connection complete.

Nohara Rin placed her hand over Kakashi's eye and activated the Mystical Palm Technique, healing the muscles until they joined with the eyeball, then reconnecting the nerves.

An intensely raw, uncomfortable sensation welled up from his left eye, and Kakashi couldn't help closing it.

The long wound running down his eyelid had dwindled to a faint mark—the natural shape left behind once granulation tissue had filled in and healed the injury.

Kakashi covered his head with one hand and cried out. Though he'd closed his left eye, the "slowness" brought by the Sharingan hadn't gone away. He simply couldn't see it, but its effects were still at work.

The vision in his right eye had become distinctly choppy, frame by frame, like watching a manga.

It was as if he'd stared at one page of a manga for a while, taking it all in, before turning to the next page and seeing a new image.

His head felt like it was splitting, throbbing painfully. It was as though ten thousand Obitos were surrounding him, shouting inside his mind. The din was so overwhelming he could barely think. He rasped, "So this... is the Sharingan?"

"Kakashi, how are you feeling?" Nohara Rin asked anxiously.

She knew that the eyeballs and the body had separate immune systems. In effect, the body treated an eyeball as a foreign object, but the body naturally had a mechanism to prevent rejection, so transplants were safe.

But this was her first time performing an eye transplant. The dense web of nerves was enough to drive anyone to despair.

Still, she'd managed to finish the procedure. Now she was simply nervous, afraid she might have made a mistake along the way. For a ninja, though, a nerve misalignment was a minor problem: after a little time to adjust, they could correct it.

Yakushi Kabuto was undoubtedly the best example. When Tsunade's jutsu disrupted his nerve signals, he'd tried to move his hand but moved his foot instead, his whole nervous system thrown into chaos. Yet he'd adapted and returned to normal in an instant.

Ordinary ninja were less capable, but after a month of adjustment, they could adapt and use their bodies deftly.

"I'm fine," Kakashi said. He took out a Soldier Pill and popped it into his mouth. The sweetness of honey mixed with the pungency, bitterness, and sourness of herbs, filling his mouth.

With just a few breaths, the Soldier Pill dissolved in his saliva and passed down his throat. A surge of chakra formed, but a force pulled it into the Sharingan, then carried it from the eye along the nerves and into his brain.

It spread from his visual nervous system throughout his brain.

Kakashi felt his head grow much lighter, but the chakra that had just formed was already gone.

The Soldier Pill continued to work, stimulating chakra production. More chakra formed, finally leaving him with a little to spare.

Nohara Rin treated his arm, then turned to look at the unconscious Obito. "Obito..."

Kakashi took a deep breath. "Give me a moment." After a while, he finally had enough chakra to perform a jutsu, so he got up and acted.

He used Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage, grabbed Obito, and pulled him underground, leaving only his head above the surface. Then he had Nohara Rin camouflage him with grass. "Rin, let's go. I hope he's still alive when we get back.

"Let's leave him hidden here for now. We really don't have time... The Rock Ninja's defenses must be at their weakest right now. After all, they think our team has already been wiped out!"

Nohara Rin looked at Obito once more. "Obito, wait for us to come back."

The two set off resolutely toward their target.

This time, they met no resistance.

The Rock Ninja had diverted a great deal of their forces for the ambush, leaving Kannagi Bridge almost completely undefended. On top of that, they'd lost two elite jonin, and most of the Rock Ninja were now leaderless.

Before long, Kakashi spotted the bridge at the Great Rift Valley. He and Nohara Rin worked together to cover the bridge supports with Explosive Tags.

Boom!

Pulled by chakra, the Explosive Tags detonated one after another. The blasts rang out in a steady succession.

Chunks of stone and flames flew through the air. The supports snapped one by one, and the bridge bent and broke like a noodle before collapsing with a roar. Steel cables hung forlornly from the few remaining supports, with nothing anchoring them at either end.

Deep behind enemy lines, they had destroyed Kannagi Bridge! Mission complete.

But Kakashi and Nohara Rin didn't linger for even a moment. They immediately headed back. When they returned to where they'd left Obito, however, they found:

Obito was gone.

"Obito!"

Nohara Rin crumpled to the ground and began to cry.

Kakashi simply stood there in silence. After a long while, Minato appeared beside them. Seeing that only the two of them were there, he asked, "Where's Obito?"

When Nohara Rin heard Minato's voice, she grabbed his arm and sobbed out what had happened. Minato's heart sank as he listened, but he still comforted them. "Life and death are unpredictable. It's inevitable that ninja will fall on the battlefield. Let's go back."

This was no place to linger. They could face a furious counterattack from the Rock Ninja at any moment.

But what about Obito?

As soon as the two had left, strand after strand of rootlike nerves burrowed through the grass and into Obito's eye. A thicker bundle of nerves, about as thick as a finger, followed behind, holding up an eyeball. Once the nerves pulled Obito's right eye out, they abruptly stopped moving.

Nara Tama, secretly controlling the nerves, was dumbfounded. If the eyeball held up by the nerves hadn't lacked eyelids, he would've blinked hard!

A scarlet Two Tomoe Sharingan appeared before him.

Two Tomoe?

Wasn't it supposed to be the Mangekyo?

He didn't have time to think. He immediately shoved the eye back into Obito's socket and buried some of the nerves in Obito's body. A complicated look showed in that eye... Never mind. Maybe they'd meet again, if fate allowed.

But getting Kamui next time would probably be much harder.

The nerves quickly withdrew from the ground, as if they'd never been there.

At that moment, White Zetsu crept over, merged into Obito's body, and vanished without a sound. Only some bloodstains remained to prove Obito had been there.