Chapter Text
Obito opens his eye.
A slitted, golden gaze meets his; much to his chagrin, Orochimaru appears to have not succumbed to a spontaneous and fatal disease while he’d been out of commission.
Obito closes his eye.
“You’re awake,” Orochimaru observes, a touch dry.
He wants, more than anything, to sink into the ground. Or, at the very least, flop over and pretend that he doesn’t exist. “Deja vu,” he mutters instead.
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence. He hopes that this won’t become a pattern; if he ever awakens to an unwelcome greeting from Jiraiya, he’s going to lose his shit.
Almost absently, Orochimaru hums. “This is how you escaped before, I imagine.”
Obito squints, then remembers that he and Karin had been thrown into some dingy cell in a location he probably should’ve bothered to scope out. He opens his mouth to reply, only to take pause when he realizes that Orochimaru is sitting on his couch, idly fiddling with—
He rips Doug from the Sannin’s hands, ignoring his elegantly-raised brow. “No touch,” he hisses, then pats the plush down. Thankfully, it appears that no damage was suffered.
Orochimaru eyes him like he’s a particularly-interesting specimen with a hefty amount of brain damage. Which is… almost certainly the case, considering he’d been half-buried beneath a rockfall and was promptly stuffed with copious amounts of the Shodaime’s cells, but he doesn’t know that.
Also, it’s then that Obito notices, with no small amount of satisfaction, that the man’s usually-perfect hair is standing up at the ends, thanks to the sparks from Kakashi’s chidori. It also looks like he’d attempted to comb it down, before realizing that it was a lost cause for as long as he was stuck here.
Get fucked, he thinks smugly, then winces when he remembers that he’d left his former teammate alone, several hours out from the village, relying on a single genin to bring help. And, considering that he’s the only witness to the incident and is—again—alone, he’ll have a lot of explaining to do.
…He feels a lot worse about those I.O.U.s, now.
“I’d express my surprise that you’re still standing,” Orochimaru eventually says with an almost regal air, “But I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve spliced your DNA with a cockroach.”
Quite honestly, Obito wouldn’t be surprised.
Unfortunately, that does remind him that he’s not exactly in top form, and after carefully placing Doug onto a nearby bookcase, his legs buckle from beneath him.
“I meant to do that,” he tells Orochimaru with a wheeze, half-splayed across the ground.
“Of course,” the Sannin agrees.
He makes a face, then slowly twitches into a sitting position. His vision briefly blurs due to the pain, but that’s probably fine.
Orochimaru begins to drum his fingers on the coffee table. “I do believe,” he says, eyeing his Sharingan, “That you claimed you were the only one who could remove others from this plane.”
Obito blinks, lips slowly curling into a smirk. “Yep.”
The Sannin hums. “My, you sure are cocky,” the man says, wearing a more reserved version of Obito’s expression. “I assure you, I can leave anytime I please— it’ll simply be more inconvenient.”
His smirk drops. He’s abruptly reminded of the fact that Orochimaru is a crafty bastard, and Obito’s not the only one with blatantly-overpowered abilities. He’s also fairly certain he knows exactly which technique the Sannin would use, too.
“So you want me to let you out?” Obito asks flatly.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he agrees. “Otherwise, I’ll just kill you and deal with the issue from there.”
“Don’t sound too torn up about it,” Obito replies, trying not to sound as lightheaded as he feels. Judging by Orochimaru’s growing smirk, he doesn’t think he succeeds.
Realistically, he could just leave. Which would be a fantastic option, except that without Itachi’s bullshit Susanoo sword, he has no permanent way to get rid of Orochimaru. And if he just let him sit around in kamui, Obito wouldn’t be able to access it without worrying about the threat of imminent death.
Plus, he’d probably fuck the place up out of spite, and Obito has spent way too much effort—and ryo—trying to decorate the place for it to go to waste.
So, he’s left with a gamble. Which is incredibly ironic, considering his half-baked plan.
“...Okay,” he replies slowly. “I’ll let you out.”
Orochimaru narrows his eyes. Clearly, he recognizes that Obito is thinking of doing something incredibly stupid. Which is kind of his brand, at this point.
“...In a little while.”
Before the snake Sannin can say another word, he slips out of kamui and appears in the middle of a hotel room.
“Hello,” Obito greets, ducking the bottle that’s thrown straight at his head, “Tobi here.”
His attacker stares. He looks down, and promptly remembers that he’s covered in blood.
“Um,” he says.
Tsunade exhales and, in an odd twist of fate, proceeds to pass out.