Art Piece

Obito had barely returned when he heard an explosion and saw an unknown shinobi get blasted into the air.

Obito instantly realized what had happened...

Kakashi and Hideki had run into an enemy. A battle had broken out, and the enemy had been dealt with, but the two of them...

"Don't scare me like this..."

The little branches in Obito's arms fell to the ground one after another. His voice carried a sob as he ran wildly with his lips trembling, arriving at the center of the explosion.

But where was anyone?

Other than the charred grass and the huge pit left by the Double Suicide Decapitation Technique of those two sneaky Shadow Clones, there was no one there.

The pit had already collapsed. An airburst powerful enough to nearly blow an adult apart was no joke.

But Obito refused to believe it. Snot and tears running together, he rushed to the pit and began digging with his bare hands!

"Hideki! Kakashi! Don't scare me like this..."

"Come out, damn it! Waaah!"

"..."

Hideki and Kakashi, watching from afar, fell silent.

Obito had clearly suffered an emotional breakdown. The explosion had been so violent, yet there was no sign of either of them. He probably believed they had met with a terrible fate.

But precisely because of that, neither of them dared to show themselves...

It was not some childish desire to mess with him. They simply wanted to save Obito some face.

Obito, who had spent his whole life refusing to lose to anyone—if he learned that this vulnerable moment had been broadcast live, they were genuinely afraid he might do something drastic...

"I never thought Obito was so... devoted to his friends," Kakashi finally said after sighing for a long time.

Hideki did not respond. Wasn't that exactly why Madara had chosen Obito?

It had to be said that Madara's eye for talent was truly vicious. The whole world saw Obito as dead last, but only Madara had seen his potential.

The facts proved everything. His Two-Tomoe Sharingan had become Kamui; on the very night he awakened it, he mastered the Wood Release innate to White Zetsu; with one Kamui eye, he launched the Shinobi World War and threw the entire Shinobi World into chaos.

Wait...

Hideki's expression abruptly changed. The Sharingan?

Five minutes later.

Hideki and Kakashi deliberately made some noise in the forest for Obito. Thinking there were more enemies, Obito immediately turned his grief and rage into strength, grabbed Kakashi's "relic," and charged over.

But when Obito saw Hideki and Kakashi supporting each other, instead of displaying the stunned confusion they had expected, he attacked them!

"Who do you think you're humiliating like this?!"

Obito roared. The scarlet in his eyes was icy cold, carrying frenzied killing intent as he raised Kakashi's short sword and slashed at them!

"Obito, calm down!" Hideki immediately stopped pretending to be weak and shouted.

That shout was full of strength. Besides having a massive chakra reserve, a Sage Body also had exceptional recovery abilities.

It had not been enough time for him to recover even half of his strength, but moving normally was no problem.

But Kakashi was genuinely weak... He did not have a Sage Body. As Obito came at him with his own sword, he did not even have the strength to dodge!

In the end, Hideki yanked Kakashi away. Obito's short sword nearly shaved off Kakashi's mask, only taking a small tuft of white hair from the front of his head.

"Calm down my ass! I'm gonna chop you to death!" Obito refused to let it go.

Hideki was anxious, but he still calmly formed a Rasengan. This was his last bit of chakra. Its power was average, and once he used it, he would be completely unable to resist.

"Look closely, Obito! It's me! I'm your Hideki!"

That Rasengan saved Hideki and Kakashi's lives. Obito froze on the spot, his mouth hanging open and his face blank. Then his eyes gradually reddened, and his lips began to tremble again.

"Obito..." Kakashi, still shaken, wore an increasingly complicated expression. Looking at Obito's face, as though he would burst into tears at any second, Kakashi was filled with guilt.

But in the next second.

"I don't believe you!" Obito shouted through tears and charged at Kakashi again!

Hideki wanted to stop him, but when he saw that Obito had already thrown away the short sword, he realized what was happening. He sighed in relief and dropped onto the ground.

"Hideki, save me!" Kakashi cried for help as Obito straddled him, but the number he had called was unavailable.

Obito pinned Kakashi down and gave him a brutal beating, as if he were venting every emotion he had felt earlier.

The process lasted for more than ten minutes.

Only when Obito was completely exhausted and Kakashi had turned into a pig-headed mess did he finally stop.

The three boys lay sprawled out on the ground.

No one knew who laughed first, but soon all three of them burst into wild laughter.

"Kakashi, you pighead... Hahahaha!"

"So you did it on purpose! Crybaby!"

"Damn it! You both saw that?"

"Hideki... Kakashi... Don't scare me like this..."

"Damn it! Hideki, you too? You bastard! Aahhh!"

The three rested for nearly half an hour before returning to the original battlefield.

There was no terrifying tale of a "vanishing corpse." The Kumogakure shinobi lay motionless on the ground, looking just like a dead man.

If Hideki had not spent time around Konoha Hospital and checked him over, discovering a faint breath, they might have truly assumed the man had been blown to death.

Even so, the three of them did not lower their guard.

First, they stripped the Kumogakure shinobi of his tattered clothes, tore them into strips with a kunai, and tied him up tightly.

Hideki was worried that the Kumogakure shinobi might wake up in the middle of it all and unleash some primordial strength to break free, so he specifically wet the cloth strips, letting water fill the gaps between the fibers to increase their toughness. He was all about the details.

Don't ask why an arts student knew so much. Nine years of compulsory education treated everyone equally.

Even then, Hideki was not reassured. He practically wanted to bind every joint on the Kumogakure shinobi's body, then stuffed an Explosive Tag into the man's crotch.

"Do we really need to be this ruthless...? I feel like he probably won't wake up anyway," Kakashi said with a puzzled expression.

Hideki looked at the Kumogakure shinobi, whom he had nearly tied into an art piece, and raised an eyebrow.

"Who cares? This guy's life isn't worth much anyway. Besides, the Interrogation Department only seems to need a head left over to extract intelligence..."

"Hideki, you really know a lot... Though I think I heard my dad say that's actually true."

"By the way..." Obito spoke hesitantly. "Are we sure this guy's brain wasn't blown up?"

"...Probably...?"

The three then caught several fish by the river. The little branches Obito had picked up earlier finally came in handy. After roasting and eating a few fish, they headed back toward Konoha.

By dusk, the sun was setting.

The shadows of the three triumphant boys stretched long behind them...