God Damn It, Kyuubi!

One hell of a busy night

Rin?

She didn't respond.

Kakashi?

Complete silence.

Obito pursed his lips, eyes growing warmer with unshed tears at the unspoken rejection.

Were they mad at him?

It has been hours. Obito has been calling out for his packmates for hours and yet it was still deafening silence in his head. The strongest echo he had was in the form of fuzzy sobs that vaguely sounded like his and Kakashi's names, uttered by Rin's distorted voice.

It happened only once in these hours he has spent awake.

And that only happened when the air cracked open as Sakuto stepped into this bleak area. Once the swirling distortion that transported Sakuto into this place closed shut, Rin's fuzzy sobs were immediately silenced too.

Silence.

Obito couldn't hear or feel anything from his link.

He almost cried right there and then, fearing that his siblings have really abandoned him—that he would once again be left in loneliness—but the situation didn't permit him to wallow in his emotions. Despite the bright assuring gleam of Fuwa's eyes, Obito couldn't force himself to relax. He mustered all of his willpower to stand straight, leaning his back against the large cube to give the illusion of strength despite the pain that seared all over his body.

This injury would not make him let his guard down.

He was still in a strange place in the company of an unknown strange shinobi after all.

He would not let his guard down.

Obito didn't know how his vow to not let his guard down ended up with him being arranged to rest comfortably against a makeshift bed by one of the large cubes. Sakuto has somehow manoeuvred Obito to rest against the cube with a soft pillow cushioning his propped back and a fresh blanket thrown over his lap. The older teen was lying hunched on his belly right next to Obito's bed with his long silver hair almost touching the floor, still damp and untied.

The relaxed vibe that the silver-haired seemed to emit out eventually had an effect on Obito's nerves, drowning his anxiety and distrust with a comforting scent that Obito could only equate to trustworthy alpha.

It was weird.

Sakuto was weird.

Not even a few hours since their awkwardly disastrous introduction, Obito was already seeing the signs that his supposed saviour wasn't exactly normal.

Despite how his more instinct-oriented side of the mind seemed to determine that the silver-haired teen was an alpha, Obito's senses has countered that with logical information. Sakuto did emit the prominent scent of an alpha—carrying the musky tang of dominance in his unique personal scent—but there was something else about Sakuto that was so obnoxiously strange it made him so intriguing to Obito's natural curiosity.

Obito couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with Sakuto, but he knew that it was there.

Strange. Sakuto was strange.

And intriguing. Sakuto was so intriguing.

Sakuto has been openly honest while answering Obito's questions throughout their long healing hours. It was odd, to meet someone so truthful in this era of war, but there Sakuto was, answering Obito's prodding questions without any tattle-tale fluctuation of his heartbeats that might indicate lies. There were evasive responses and blatant refusal to answer, but there were no lies.