"Obito..."
Kakashi and Nohara Rin screamed as Obito flung them aside.
"Obito, is this how you treat your comrades?"
"Is that your ninja way?"
Kakashi tried to move, but strength bled from his limbs. The boulder was seconds from crushing Obito.
Hidden in the dark, Uchiha Senya narrowed his eyes. A faint, peculiar chakra flickered at the edge of his senses, tugging at the falling stone.
That chakra was steering the collapse.
Even as carefully as he moved, Chiya's sensing swept across the presence in hiding and startled it. Zetsu's two-toned body shuddered.
Run. That was his first thought.
Anyone who could sniff him out in this state was someone he could not handle. His scouting and escape were top tier, but fighting was not his field. Madara was half-dead and had little strength to spare.
Zetsu shot for the underground palace to move Madara. He would abandon Obito before he abandoned that hope. Mother's revival depended on it. He was confident he could relocate Madara before the interloper found them, and down there he still had counters prepared.
Chiya carved distance with Space-Flicker, leap by silent leap.
Obito stared upward. The boulder swelled in his pupils. Death pressed close. Sound bled away.
"At least I stayed true to my ninja way."
"Sorry, Granny..."
"Sorry, Chiya-nii."
"Sorry I never became Hokage..."
In the blur, he felt something in his pocket, a storm of chakra blooming from nothing.
A dying hallucination?
No. His double-tomoe Sharingan saw the violent surge clearly.
Obito's heart jolted. Real.
Kakashi and Rin noticed too. Lightning was gathering between the folds of Obito's flak vest, crackling brighter and brighter.
ZZZZT ZZZZT...
Thunder wove into a screaming spear. It sounded like a thousand birds.
"Is that... Chidori?"
Kakashi stood stunned.
Lightning Release: Raikiri.
The current knotted into a brutal lance and slammed upward.
RUMBLE!
KRAK-KRAK-KRAK!
The boulder shattered to powder under white-hot force. The bolt did not stop, punched through, and ripped into the collapsing ceiling. When the light died, half the roof was gone. Sunlight poured in. Dust-snow fell over the three stunned faces.
"Obito, just now... that was..."
Kakashi finally found his voice. The move mirrored his own Chidori, yet its power stood far beyond.
Obito did not answer. He was still shaking. After a breath, he pulled a scorched, ruined scroll from his pocket and choked on the words.
"Chiya-nii, was that you..."
So that was why Chiya had insisted he keep it on him at all times. A life-saving seal for the moment that mattered.
Understanding hit, and Obito sagged, boneless. Rin rushed in, thinking he was injured, and checked him over.
Kakashi's mind flashed with the image of that cool, unruffled man. That man.
His eyes hardened. He sheathed his tanto, sprinted for the cave mouth, and started forming signs. The Iwa nin was not yet dead. Danger had not passed. Obito's selfless throw had struck him to the core. Now it was his turn to protect his comrades.
Outside, Kakkou smirked as smoke and grit belched from the cave.
"Shame to lose such ripe sources of intel, but it cannot be helped."
A heartbeat later, a savage lightning column bored through the roof. Chidori wailed.
"This level of technique..."
"Impossible. Those brats could not manage that."
Fear crawled through him. He was already turning to run when a second Chidori shrieked from within.
He broke. If that was another of the same, he would not survive.
He pivoted to flee and was a step too slow. Kakashi burst through the smoke on a line of lightning and drove his hand through Kakkou's heart.
"How..."
Kakkou stared at the arm jutting from his chest and toppled, life gone.
Kakashi did not relax. Reinforcements would be here fast. They had to move.
He gave Kakkou one more cut for certainty, then sprinted back into the cave. The three of them withdrew at once.
Meanwhile, beyond the ridge, Chiya streaked after Zetsu's vanishing trace, the gap shrinking by the breath.