Chapter 3: The Taste of Ash and Sugar
The morning sun in Musutafu was different from the sun in Konoha. It felt sharper, filtered through layers of smog and glass reflection rather than leaves and timber. For Obito, waking up was the hardest part of the day because, for the first few seconds of consciousness, his brain reset to the old reality.
He would wake up expecting the smell of tatami mats and the sound of his grandmother boiling water. He would reach out with a right hand that no longer existed to rub an eye that was no longer there.
Then, the cold reality would crash down. The plastic limb strapped to his chest would clatter against the metal bed frame. The half-darkness of his vision would remind him of the void.
"You're making that noise again," a voice mumbled from the bunk below.
Obito froze, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He looked over the edge of the top bunk. Kenji was awake, his long, spider-like fingers scrolling through a glowing rectangular device he held in his hands.
"What noise?" Obito asked, his voice thick with sleep.
"That clicking sound. Your arm," Kenji said, not looking up. "You twitch in your sleep. It sounds like a broken toy."
Obito pulled the prosthetic closer to his chest, feeling a flush of shame heat his neck. "Shut up. I was... practicing."
"In your sleep? Sure." Kenji swung his legs out of bed. His limbs were unnaturally long, giving him the appearance of a stretched-out scarecrow. "Breakfast is in ten minutes. If you're late, the big kids eat all the good cereal."
Obito didn't know what "cereal" was, but he knew that missing a meal was unacceptable for a shinobi. He sat up, the room spinning slightly until his inner ear adjusted to the lack of depth perception.
Getting dressed was a mission of S-Rank difficulty.
Obito sat on the floor, his uniform—a simple white polo shirt and blue shorts provided by the orphanage—laid out before him. In the academy, he could gear up in thirty seconds flat. Kunai pouch, shuriken holster, forehead protector, sandals.
Here, he spent five minutes fighting with a single button.
His left hand, his only hand, fumbled with the fabric. The plastic arm hung uselessly at his side. He hadn't figured out how to make the nerve sensors trigger the gripping mechanism reliably yet. Every time he tried to use it to hold the shirt, the plastic fingers would either snap shut too hard or remain frozen open.
"Damn it," he whispered, gritting his teeth.
He managed to pull the shirt over his head, but the buttons were his enemy. He eventually gave up, leaving the top two undone. He looked in the small mirror on the wall. The eye patch was secure. His hair was a mess. He looked less like a proud Uchiha and more like a survivor of a shipwreck.
"I need to cut this hair," he muttered, pushing the black locks out of his single eye.
He walked out into the hallway, the floorboards creaking under his feet. The orphanage was waking up. Doors opened, and children of all shapes and sizes poured out.
Obito pressed himself against the wall to let a girl with rocks growing out of her shoulders pass. She didn't even look at him. To them, he was just the new cripple. To him, they were potential threats, unknown variables with powers he couldn't comprehend.
The cafeteria was a large room with long wooden tables. The noise was deafening. Clattering trays, shouting children, and the drone of a television mounted high on the wall.
Obito got in line, mimicking the boy in front of him. He took a plastic tray. When he reached the serving counter, a woman with a tired smile plopped a ladle of something yellow and lumpy onto his plate, followed by a small carton of milk and a bowl of colorful, crunchy loops.
"Eat up, Uchiha-kun," she said.
Obito stared at the food. Where was the rice? Where was the grilled fish? Where was the miso soup?
He found a spot at the end of a table, far away from the noisy groups. Kenji slid into the seat across from him a moment later.
"You look like you're staring at a bomb," Kenji observed, spooning the colorful loops into his mouth.
"What is this?" Obito poked the loops with his spoon. "It smells like... candy."
"It's Fruit Loops. It's sugar," Kenji said with a shrug. "Just eat it. You need the energy if you're gonna try to fight trees again."
Obito glared at him. So, Kenji had seen him yesterday. "I wasn't fighting the tree. I was training."
"looked like you were throwing rocks and missing," Kenji said bluntly.
Obito felt his temper flare. "I was injured! My coordination is off. Once I recover, I'll show you. I can hit a target from fifty meters blindly."
Kenji rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Listen, new guy. Nobody cares if you can throw rocks. What's your Quirk? You still haven't said."
Obito paused. He looked around the cafeteria. A boy two tables away was levitating his spoon. Another girl was changing the color of her hair at will.
"I told you," Obito said, lowering his voice. "I don't have one."
Kenji stopped chewing. He looked at Obito, really looked at him, with a mixture of pity and confusion. "Seriously? You're Quirkless? In this day and age?"
"Is that a problem?" Obito challenged, his grip on the spoon tightening.
"It's not a problem," Kenji said, leaning back. "It's just... rare. And unlucky. Basically, you're playing the game on 'Hard Mode' with a broken controller." He pointed his spoon at Obito's plastic arm. "Literally."
Obito looked down at his arm. Hard Mode. He liked the sound of that. It sounded like something Guy would say.
"I don't need a Quirk," Obito said, taking a bite of the sugary cereal. It was shockingly sweet, exploding in his mouth. He almost gagged but forced himself to swallow. "I have willpower."
"Willpower doesn't stop a villain from melting your face off," Kenji noted dryly. He gestured to the TV screen. "Look."
Obito looked up. The screen showed a chaotic scene. A building was burning. A man in a blue suit made of water was dousing the flames, while another hero, dressed like a giant wooden samurai, was carrying civilians out of the debris.
"That's Kamui Woods," Kenji explained. "He's new, but he's rising in the charts. And Backdraft is on disaster relief."
Obito watched with narrowed eyes. "They are saving people. That is good. But why are they wearing those bright colors? They are targets. A ninja should be unseen."
"A ninja?" Kenji laughed, spraying a bit of milk. "Dude, are you from a comic book? Heroes aren't assassins. They are celebrities. They have sponsors. Merchandising. If you can't be seen, you can't get paid."
Obito stopped eating. "Paid? They save lives for money?"
"Well, yeah. It's a job. Like being a doctor or a policeman."
Obito felt a strange distaste settle in his stomach, heavier than the sugary cereal. In his world, shinobi were paid for missions, yes. But being a hero... protecting the village... that was a duty. A sacrifice. Minato-sensei didn't wear a bright orange cape to sell toys. He fought to protect the future.
"It's... shallow," Obito muttered.
"Welcome to the real world," Kenji said, standing up and taking his tray. "Hurry up. We have mandatory schooling in ten minutes. Unless you want Matron Satako to lecture you on punctuality."
The "schooling" was a small classroom inside the orphanage. There were about fifteen kids, ranging from six to fourteen years old. A teacher came in from the outside to tutor them.
Obito sat in the back. He had a notebook and a pencil.
The subject was History.
"Today, we will review the advent of the Glowing Baby and the collapse of traditional governments," the teacher, a balding man with glasses, droned on.
Obito listened, trying to piece together the history of this world. Apparently, a long time ago, people started developing powers. Chaos ensued. Governments fell. Then, "Heroes" rose up to establish order.
It sounded like the Warring States Period his grandmother told him about, before the Hidden Villages were formed. But instead of clans uniting, it was individuals with licenses.
He looked at the kanji on the blackboard. He could read them, thankfully. The language was the same, though the context was different. But when the teacher started writing equations for "Quirk singularity theory," Obito was lost.
He looked out the window. The yard was empty.
His hand itched. Not the plastic one, but the phantom limb. He could feel the chakra pathways in his stump pulsing, trying to complete a circuit that wasn't there.
I need to regain control, he thought. If I can't use my hands for signs, I need to master internal molding. I need to be able to walk on walls again. To run faster than these cars.
He glanced at his notebook. He hadn't written a single word of history. Instead, he had drawn a crude map of the Fire Country, with a small stick figure representing himself, standing alone in the blank space of the paper.
Later that afternoon, during free time, Obito found himself back at the oak tree.
He was alone this time. Kenji was inside playing video games.
Obito stood at the base of the tree. He looked up. It was a sturdy tree, about twenty feet high.
"Tree climbing practice," he whispered. "Focus chakra to the soles of the feet. Constant flow. Not too much, not too little."
He closed his single eye. He visualized the blue energy in his stomach. It was sluggish, responding slowly to his command. He pushed it down to his feet. It felt slippery, unstable.
He opened his eye and stepped onto the trunk.
For a second, his foot stuck.
Yes!
He took another step, shifting his weight.
POP.
The chakra burst too violently from his left sole. The bark exploded outward, and Obito was thrown backward. He flailed, his plastic arm dead weight, and landed hard on his back.
"Ouch..."
He lay there, looking up at the leaves. The wind rustled them gently.
"Used too much," he analyzed, his voice strained. "My control is garbage. It's like trying to thread a needle with a hammer."
He sat up, rubbing his lower back. He looked at the mark on the tree. He had left a footprint-shaped crater in the bark.
"At least the power is there," he muttered. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I haven't lost the fire. I just need to learn how to bottle it again."
"Talking to trees is the first sign of madness, you know."
Obito snapped his head around. It was a girl. She looked about his age, maybe a year younger. She had short, dark purple hair and earphone jacks dangling from her earlobes. She was leaning against the fence, watching him with bored, half-lidded eyes.
"I wasn't talking to the tree," Obito said defensively, dusting off his shorts. "I was... analyzing the structural integrity of the bark."
The girl raised an eyebrow. "Right. By falling on your butt? That's a unique scientific method."
She walked over, her movements casual, cool. She looked at the crater in the tree. Her eyes widened slightly.
"You did that?" she asked, pointing at the damaged bark. "With a kick?"
"Something like that," Obito said. He didn't want to explain chakra. Not yet.
"I thought Kenji said you were Quirkless," the girl said, looking at him with renewed interest. "That didn't look like a normal kick. That looked like an impact quirk."
"I'm Kyoka," she said, extending a hand. Then she noticed his missing arm and awkwardly pulled her hand back, shoving it into her pocket. "Uh, Jiro. Kyoka Jiro."
Obito looked at her. She seemed different from the others. Less flashy. More grounded.
"Obito," he said.
"Well, Obito," Jiro said, looking at the tree again. "Whatever you're doing, you're doing it loud. I could hear the wood splintering from the porch."
"You have good ears?"
"The best," she tapped her earlobes. "I hear everything. Even the stuff I don't want to hear. Like you crying last night."
Obito froze. His face went hot.
Jiro shrugged, kicking at a pebble. "It's okay. I cried every night for a month when I got here. My parents aren't dead, just... busy. Musicians. Traveling the world. Left me here 'cause they couldn't handle a kid on tour."
She looked at him, her expression unreadable but not unkind.
"We're all a bit broken here, Obito. You don't have to hide it."
She turned and started walking back to the building. "By the way, dinner is curry. It's the only thing the cook doesn't burn. Don't be late."
Obito watched her go. He touched his eye patch.
He hadn't realized how loud his silence was until someone listened.
He looked back at the tree. The footprint was there, proof of his existence. Proof of his power.
He walked up to the trunk again. He placed his left foot on the wood.
"One more time," he whispered. "For Rin. For Kakashi. For the Hokage dream."
He focused. The chakra flowed. A little smoother this time. A little quieter.
He took one step. Two steps.
He fell on the third.
But as he hit the ground, Obito Uchiha laughed. It was a short, dry laugh, but it was real.
He was failing. But he was trying. And in this strange, loud world of heroes and quirks, trying was the only thing that felt familiar.
"Tomorrow," he promised the tree. "Tomorrow, I make it to the first branch."