Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - My Name Is Mofang, and Uchiha Obito Is My Father
Dave's Cabin, Memory Storage
A Small Village in the Land of Water
A plainly dressed kid with a spiky mop of hair packed his few pieces of washed-out clothing. He said his goodbyes to the villagers who'd looked after him and his mother over the years, then took one last look at the small house he'd lived in for eight years. He slung his meager bag over one shoulder and walked away.
"Already said your goodbyes?"
A white-haired middle-aged man watched Mofang as he spoke.
"Yeah. I'll come back someday."
Mofang held back the urge to look over his shoulder. He kept his eyes on the tall man in front of him.
The man ruffled his spiky hair with one broad palm.
"Brat, who told you to act cool at your age? But I'd expect nothing less from a disciple of the great Jiraiya-sama. Don't worry — you'll be back!"
"Yeah."
Mofang was a transmigrator. In his previous life, he'd been elbowed by a truck while pulling a kid out of the road. As he was dying, a flash of gold swept across his vision. He'd assumed he was about to become Ultraman and go punch little monsters. Instead he wound up in Naruto, where aliens apparently came to settle their grudges.
Since he'd transmigrated from the womb and happened to have a Japanese degree, he adapted to the language and rhythms of the Shinobi World in just a few years and gradually pieced together exactly where he'd landed on the timeline.
Mofang was born in Konoha Year 48, two months older than Naruto and the same age as Sasuke. The Shinobi World was in a relatively peaceful stretch. Even in the Land of Water under the Blood Mist policy, you could still live a stable life as long as you kept your head down.
The Land of Water was surrounded by sea on all sides. Most of the villagers made their living fishing. Chinai had arrived at the village near the end of her pregnancy, and mother and son had lived here together for seven years.
For Mofang, those seven years had been happy ones. Life was hard, but he was no longer alone like he'd been in his last life. He'd grown up an orphan before. Here, he could feel the love Chinai had for him, deep and unambiguous, and somewhere along the way he'd accepted it, accepted her, fully, as his mother.
For reasons no one could explain, Chinai's health had been steadily deteriorating for years, even though she had the signature red hair of the Uzumaki Clan. Meanwhile Mofang, with his black hair, seemed to have inherited the Uzumaki constitution instead.
Whenever he brought it up, she'd tell him it was a childhood illness, something that took root early and never quite let go.
The villagers confirmed it. They said Chinai had been in bad shape when she first arrived, and that safely delivering Mofang at all had been nothing short of a miracle.
Thanks to the Uzumaki constitution, seven-year-old Mofang already had the physical stamina of a grown adult. The neighbors knew the family's situation and helped out when they could.
He hadn't even started chakra training yet. But with Uzumaki-level strength and the mental edge of a past life, Mofang had scraped together enough work to keep them both fed.
When Chinai found out, she teared up, pride and guilt tangled together. Mofang coaxed and cajoled until she finally held it in.
But good times don't last. Misfortune has a way of finding the poor. When Mofang was eight years old, Chinai's body finally gave out.
And it was right then that Mofang received the most explosive piece of news since his transmigration.
He sat at her bedside, watching her. Her once-vivid red hair had lost its luster under months of illness. Her face, once rosy and bright, had gone pale. Her eyes were as gentle as ever, but they couldn't hide the exhaustion underneath, or the reluctance.
Mofang knew. There wasn't much time left.
Chinai broke the silence first.
"Mofang, you've always been such a sensible child. Far more sensible than me, most of the time. Sometimes I wonder if I accidentally gave birth to my own little dad, haha..."
"Mom. I've told you this a hundred times. You're not funny."
He'd meant to play along, just this once. But the smile wouldn't come.
Chinai let out a soft laugh and murmured, almost to herself,
"Big brother Tobi was always so good at making people laugh. He'd have me in stitches every time. I thought you might take after him. I guess I'm just not cut out for it, huh?"
"Wait. Big brother Tobi?"
Mofang's entire body went rigid.
"Mhm. He's your father, you know~"
Chinai didn't notice the expression slowly twisting across her son's face. She kept going.
"I know, Mofang. You've never asked. But you must have wondered, at least a little, what kind of person your father was."
"I mean — I thought about it. But it's not that important, really."
"When you'd see other kids with their fathers around, you must have felt envious sometimes."
"Not really. Back then, the adults hired me to help watch the kids while they were at work. By the time they came to pick them up, the little brats were clinging to me and refusing to leave."
"Children should stay quiet when adults are talking! Do you have any idea what filial piety means?!"
"...Continue."
Mofang wisely dropped the bit. He couldn't take the weight of what he'd just walked into.
"Ahem. This was back when I was little..."
A smile touched Chinai's face as she reached back into the past.
When she was young, she lived with her parents in a small town in the Land of Water. Her father had told her that their family once came from a place called the Land of Whirlpools. Her grandparents had both been capable ninja, but after the country fell, they died holding the line so her father could escape.
Her father had been too young to learn ninjutsu before the collapse. He'd spent years on the run, eventually landing in a small town in the Land of Water and settling there. A few years later, he met her mother, who had fled there by the same desperate roads. Not long after, Chinai was born.
The townspeople had limited horizons and found their family's red hair unusual. There was occasional gossip. But life was quiet. Chinai grew up without worry, all the way to age twelve, until the day a squad of Kiri ninja arrived and ended all of it.
They were carrying out something called the Blood Mist Policy. They called her family a "filthy clan" carrying a bloodline limit. Twelve-year-old Chinai didn't understand what any of that meant. She only remembered her mother's body trembling, her arms wrapping around her, pulling her in close. Through the gap in her mother's embrace, she watched her father arguing desperately with the lead ninja.
Then a slash of red burst through the air, blood splattered onto her face. Not her father's blood. She knew because she watched the lead ninja's blade swing, watched her father's head fall. The blood had sprayed the other way.
She tilted her head up, stiff and numb. Her mother was still holding her. But the light had gone out of her eyes. It wasn't the ninja who had killed her mother. It was the neighbors and the town chief, the ones who had brought the ninja here. They stood at the edge of the blood-soaked ground, staring at Chinai, their faces open with cold and undisguised malice.
The shock of her parents' deaths, and the sudden ugliness of those familiar faces, ripped a sound out of the twelve-year-old girl that she'd never made before.
A neighbor raised a blade to finish it.
A figure blurred into existence like a ghost.
A man in a black robe, face hidden behind a white swirl-patterned mask, caught the blade barehanded. Then he threw a single punch, and the neighbor simply ceased to exist, bursting apart in a spray of red mist.
Chinai didn't see what happened after that. When she woke up, she was lying in a bed at a guesthouse, already changed into clean clothes. Her first instinct was to search for something familiar, something solid.
A door opened.
"Oh my! You're awake already? I figured you'd sleep a little longer! ^0^"
The ridiculous voice broke the quiet of the room.
The man in the white swirl-patterned mask tilted his head in a strange, exaggerated way as he spoke.
"You're probably real confused right now. Hmm! Let Lord Tobi lay it out for you. Simply put — well, both your parents are dead, and you're an orphan now. The ones who killed your parents, and those Kiri ninja? I took care of all of them. Aren't I, Tobi, absolutely amazing!"
He put both hands on his hips. Very pleased with himself.
It might have been her imagination, but when "Tobi" mentioned the Kiri ninja, something shifted in that playful voice. A cold edge, barely there and quickly gone.
The words "parents are dead" hit her like a blow to the chest. She went blank for a moment.
Then the sobs came, raw and ugly, filling every corner of that small room.
Time passed quietly. Sunset spilled orange light across the walls. Chinai studied the strange man sitting beside her, idly cracking his knuckles, apparently bored, and asked in a small voice, "You're... a very powerful ninja, aren't you? Why... why did you save me?"
"Tobi" tilted his head, making a show of deep contemplation. "Hmm~~ If I had to say — I guess it was just on a whim! I had nothing going on, and those Kiri guys were really getting on my nerves, so I just 'handled' it while I was there!" He seemed to find this perfectly satisfying and struck a pose he clearly thought looked cool.
"Taking someone's life... is it really just... that ordinary a thing to do?" Chinai's voice was confused, and soft with a sorrow she couldn't name.
"Tobi" went still for a moment. The voice behind the mask dropped. "Ah. In this Shinobi World... yeah. It really is that simple."
............
In the days that followed, the homeless Chinai begged big brother Tobi to take her with him. He never said yes. But he never said no, either. So she followed him, through many places and many things.
She saw parents in the barren deserts of the Land of Wind selling their own children for a mouthful of food. She saw the endless grinding wars between small nations, human lives spent like they were nothing. She met other Uzumaki survivors, some still running and hiding, never at rest; others used as test subjects and tools by certain ninja, surviving each day only to wait for the next.
After a year of wandering, big brother Tobi asked her a question: "Compared to this rotten world — isn't the world inside dreams... better?"
Chinai's answer: "Maybe... compared to reality, I do prefer dreams. A few nights ago I dreamed of Mom and Dad again. They asked how I was doing. I told them I was doing well — that my body was still weak, but big brother Tobi was looking after me. I wanted to stay in that dream and just keep talking to them... but I woke up."
Big brother Tobi was quiet for a long time after that. That night, he sat outside until dawn, facing the moon, motionless. Chinai watched his silhouette from behind the window. She couldn't have explained how she knew, but she felt it. The parting was close.
Their final journey brought them back to the Land of Water. Back to the small town where Chinai had grown up and buried her parents.
The town was gone. It seemed disaster had found it not long after she left. No original residents survived. The people who lived there now had come from somewhere else.
Before he left, big brother Tobi gave her money enough to live on, a book on chakra refinement, and a few basic ninjutsu scrolls. But Chinai's constitution was too fragile. She managed to refine a little chakra and tried a few ninjutsu, and before her chakra even ran dry, her body gave out first. She coughed up blood and couldn't stop.
On the last night before he was due to leave, Chinai gathered herself and hugged him from behind. Then, slowly, she reached up and took off his mask.
He didn't stop her.
"These eight years here... Mom has been very happy."
Chinai's voice grew lighter and lighter, a candle nearly spent. Mofang's sobbing had become something he couldn't hold down anymore.
"If I could... see big brother Tobi again... I'd want to tell him that." Her eyes rested on her son with a gentleness that was trying to memorize him.
"The world of dreams... it's beautiful, yes. But it loses the future... I still miss Mom and Dad, I really do... but..." Each breath was thinner than the last. Each word cost something.
"Being able to watch you grow — from the little sprout I used to nurse... to the person you are now, who takes care of me... I am so, so..." She had to stop. "Happy."
Her voice had faded to almost nothing. With everything she had left, she raised one trembling, thin hand and stroked her son's tear-wet face one last time. Her eyes held his.
"Your eyes... look just like your father's. Full of sorrow. And pain. Promise Mom, this is the last time, okay? From now on... don't let yourself look like this anymore.
Eat well. Don't neglect yourself. Take care of your body. Don't be short-lived... like Mom...
Become a strong man... like your father. And then live happily... past a hundred years old..."
Tears finally spilled from Chinai's eyes, running down her pale cheeks as she watched the boy before her, already too far gone to hold anything back.
"The chakra book, and the scrolls... I put them all in the bottom drawer... of the medicine cabinet..."
Her voice was barely breath. "Whether you become a ninja... or just a regular person... Mom will respect... whatever you choose..."
The focus left her eyes. The life in them was going fast. But the love hadn't moved.
"No matter what you become... I will always... always... love you."
The faint trace of a smile held at the corner of Chinai's mouth. Slowly, she closed her eyes. And didn't open them again.
Mofang didn't have words for what he was feeling. He stood in front of the mirror and looked at those familiar scarlet eyes staring back at him. Everything battled in his chest at once, all the grief and shock and something he couldn't name, until it compressed down into a single word.
"FUUUUUCK!"
......
Author's Note
If you read Chapter 1, you've probably figured it out already. That's right, the protagonist is Obito's biological son. Old Man Obito did the deed.
The reason I wrote it this way: it's eye-catching. Don't hit me! I love the truth, guys.
That said! As someone who started watching Naruto at six or seven years old, writing recklessly is off the table, that's the bottom line. As a fanfic writer and as a fan, I'll do everything I can to keep the characters consistent with the original, and I'll try my hardest not to let anyone go OOC.
Attentive readers have probably already noticed that I specifically set the protagonist's birth during the period when Obito was wandering the world after Rin's death. Because that stretch of Obito's life gets glossed over in like one line in canon, and I saw a lot of room to work with there.
Personally, I think a huge reason for the disconnect in Obito's character is that Kishimoto never actually put pen to paper on what that wandering period looked like. That arc, done well, could have taken Obito's characterization to a completely different level. But we all know how it turned out. Old Man Obito's Kamui can't hide the tears.
So my goal for the later story is to make Obito's evolving thoughts on peace the core thread of his character arc. And of course, once he learns about the protagonist's existence, the guilt toward Rin will be another major piece.
Mostly, I've just seen too many "Kamui can't hide the tears" stories and wanted to write something different.
The other reason I set things during this specific period: it fits.
And yes, I mean it fits the character. Don't flame me yet! I obviously know how deeply Obito loved Rin. But it's precisely because of that love that I believe Obito in any other period of his life absolutely could not have done something like this. Even if Obito were secretly polishing his sword inside the Kamui dimension, I don't think he'd ever truly betray Rin. That's my read.
But this period, right after Rin's death, while he was still operating under Madara's identity, still caught somewhere between being Uchiha Obito and becoming Uchiha Madara, this is when his heart was at its most fragile. Most escapist. He was lost, running from himself, part of him still hoping something would reach in and pull him back. The Kamui ability kind of says it all, Obito was never a person who stood firm.
So in this story, it's understandable that Obito lost the battle with himself at that moment. Suppression only lasts so long. Yes, it's OOC, and I'm sorry about that, but for the protagonist to exist, it was a necessary compromise.
That's everything I wanted to say. Please leave comments, I will reply to every single one (genuinely).
Also, for the record: the protagonist is a good person.