3rd Person POV
"Itsuki and Shisui are here too," Obito said, spotting the two younger Uchiha sitting at a table.
"Obito, you know them?" the girl beside him asked.
Obito straightened immediately, answering a bit too fast. "Yes! They're from clan"
Minato placed a gentle hand on Obito's shoulder and pointed toward a corner where several jōnin were gathered, eating together. "Obito, take Kakashi and Rin and go join your friends. I'll sit with the seniors."
"Yes, sensei!" Obito responded energetically, practically dragging his teammates toward the two younger Uchiha.
"Obito nii," Itsuki and Shisui greeted in unison.
That single sentence made Obito swell like a balloon. His chest puffed out so visibly that even Rin had to hide a smile
She stepped forward with a polite smile."Hello, I'm Rin Nohara, and this is Kakashi. We're Obito's teammates."
"Senior Rin. Senior Kakashi," the two juniors said, bowing their heads slightly out of courtesy.
Itsuki, of course, already knew all three of them and had a collection of nicknames for each but he maintained the façade of the respectful, well-behaved child.
As Team Minato sat down, Shisui immediately leaned forward, eyes sparkling. "have you done any A-rank missions yet?"
"Of course we—" Obito puffed up, ready to brag.
But Kakashi, ever the bucket of cold water, cut in without mercy. "It was only one. And it started as a B-rank. The difficulty increased because a jōnin from the enemy camp showed up, and Minato-sensei handled him alone."
Obito deflated instantly, shoulders sagging." Kakashi! Why do you always do that!?"
Rin giggled softly.
Shisui nodded earnestly, completely ignoring Obito's despair. "So no A-rank for you yet. I understand."
Itsuki tuned out their small talk, his eyes drifting toward the table but his mind somewhere entirely different.
So they still haven't made chūnin yet… except Kakashi, obviously. If I'm remembering right, they should all become chūnin by next year. They'll be around eleven then. Which means… the timeline is still stable. No butterfly effect yet.
A quiet sigh of relief escaped him. He had actually been paranoid for months that befriending Obito, the future war criminal, might accidentally derail something important. But no. Everything was still moving the way it should.
He had spent countless nights making mental flowcharts on how to survive the Uchiha massacre. One of the ideas, admittedly, was to befriend Obito early.
Obito future mask-wearing emo terrorist aside had a stupidly soft heart. Too soft. Soft enough that he turned into the borderline definition of a simp in the Omniverse. And yet, for all his future crimes, one thing remained consistent:
He could never truly hurt the people he cared about.
Even when Kakashi killed Rin, Obito still couldn't bring himself to kill him. And as for killing Minato…
Please. That's basically a rite of passage in the Naruto world.
Orochimaru killed Hiruzen.
Sasuke killed Orochimaru.
Nagato killed Jiraiya.
Teacher-killing is practically one of the certified ninja tradition to reach the top at this point.
Maybe he has a bisexual orientation, Itsuki mused, eyes drifting toward Obito as the boy bickered with Kakashi yet again. in Itsuki's opinion, Obito handing over one of his Mangekyō to Kakashi in the future was basically the Uchiha version of a dowry.
Then unfortunately his brain remembered the fanarts from his previous life.
Itsuki slowly turned his head, staring at the silver-haired prodigy he muttered "…I wonder who will take the backshots."
A cold shiver ran down Kakashi's spine as he suddenly felt Itsuki's stare burning into him.
"What did you say, Itsuki?" Shisui asked, clearly not having heard him properly. The other three looked over too, surprised since Itsuki hadn't spoken much until now.
Realising all eyes were on him, Itsuki coughed lightly and shifted gears instantly. "We should… use this chance to learn from the seniors. Since we're going to be genin too."
"What? Genin?"
"You're graduating!?"
Rin and Obito both reacted at the same time.
Even Kakashi, though still calm, showed visible surprise. He hadn't heard anything about other early graduations after all, the last exception had been him.
What he didn't know was that he himself had accidentally restarted this whole practice.
Back when the Konoha Academy was first founded, early graduation was completely normal.
The Sannin themselves graduated at six.
No one saw it as "special" the mindset of the Warring States era were still fresh, and children that age were already fighting.
But after the First Shinobi War, the graduation age was raised.
The new generation lacked the brutality and survival instincts their predecessors had been forged in.
To compensate, the village increased:
the academy years
the training intensity
and the age requirement
All to create a larger, more polished combat force… and provide a steady supply of cannon fodder mostly civilian-born ninja with no inheritance, no clan backing, and no special techniques.
This system worked for a while. But now a problem had appeared.
The gap between the Second and Third Shinobi Wars was too short far shorter than the gap between the First and Second. The major villages hadn't recovered properly. Their numbers were low, their elites were stretched thin, and the next generation wasn't big enough to fill the losses.
And to compensate for that shortage…they needed fresh blood.
But since they had no chickens to send to slaughter, they were now targeting the chicks.
Initially nobody thought about this but due to overwhelming attack from all other four great village certain elder of konoha who is known to be darkness of shinobi reminded everyone of Kakashi early graduation, although there was many arguments due to this, but at the end hokage agreed to send new leaf for spreading will of fire.
Shisui, noticing their surprise, quickly added, "They said we're too talented, so the village decided to let us graduate early so we can fight for the village."
Unlike his excitement, the eyes of Kakashi's trio dimmed a little. A year of being shinobi had stripped away whatever naivety they once had.
Especially Kakashi. Graduating at five meant he understood very well that the front lines were anything but glorious.
"Are we going to join the front line too…?" Rin muttered to herself. She was scared. Of course she was. She had been doing missions for a year now and, because it was wartime, there were no harmless cat-chasing missions. Every assignment carried weight. Every mistake could mean death.
But even then, none of her missions were actual war missions. At least, not for her or her teammates.
Her squad leader was the only one truly participating in the war since he was absent most of the time from training them.
Yes, Minato wasn't with them because he couldn't be. After all, he was a jōnin who had mastered the Flying Thunder God, and in the middle of a war someone like him could not be allowed to spend time training students. He was one of Konoha's greatest assets on the battlefield.
Unless he happened to return to the village for a short break, he had no chance to train them at all. Days like today were rare he had just come back from the front lines to submit a report, checked on their progress, and then brought them out to eat here.
"Don't worry, Rin! I will definitely protect you!" Obito immediately shouted the moment he saw the worry on her face.
But his words didn't seem to reach his crush. Instead, Rin turned to Kakashi, who only gave a small nod when he heard her.
"I will work hard so I won't be a burden to the team," she said.
Seeing the love triangle and knowing Obito's future Itsuki almost blurted out, "Obito, you are not James Bond. She's not suddenly going to fall for you."
But he kept his mouth shut. He wasn't interested in getting tangled with a certain ghost of the Uchiha clan.
Still, since he finally had the chance to meet Kakashi, he wanted to leave an impression for his future plans. In past, he'd even thought about trying to save the White Fang… but that idea died quickly. He was far too young to sneak out of the clan compound, and it wasn't as if Sakumo would survive just because a child said a few encouraging words. His suicide had been a compromise he made for his son after all.
And he himself didn't have any leverage, so reluctantly Itsuki could only let Kakashi get the most common tag of shinobi world, an orphan like himself.
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