The mood on the road back to Konoha was heavy as lead. The windblown sand of the Gobi still seemed to cling to everyone's robes, carrying the unsettling residue of dark energy and the almost tangible pressure Deva Path Pain had brought.
Naruto was uncharacteristically silent, walking in the middle of the group with his head lowered. Even his normally lively spikes of golden hair seemed to droop. His Tailed Beast Cloak had long since faded, but his clenched fists and tightly pressed lips showed that the turmoil inside him was far from settled. His brief clash with Sasuke, and the sight of him leaving with such finality, had lodged deep in his heart like a thorn.
Kakashi and Ling walked side by side at the front, both looking unusually grim.
"Pain intervened personally..." Kakashi said quietly, worry filling his single eye. "That means Sasuke's position within the Akatsuki, or his value to them, is far greater than we estimated. And that last thing Pain said..."
"'The rules of the game are about to change.'" Ling repeated the words, a light flickering in his azure eyes. Using his Senjutsu perception, he tried to recall and analyze the unique chakra fluctuation he had sensed when Pain appeared. "His chakra... was very strange. Vast and cold, with a kind of indifference that bordered on 'divinity.' It was utterly incompatible with natural energy, yet it seemed capable of forcibly twisting the rules around it."
"The Rinnegan..." Kakashi's voice held a trace of awe and apprehension. "The legendary eyes of the Sage, possessing the divine power of creation and destruction. If the leader of the Akatsuki really possesses the Rinnegan, then their 'Eye of the Moon Plan' may be more terrifying than any threat we've imagined."
Ling nodded, recalling his earlier discoveries while researching