I blinked. Once. Twice. The ache behind my eyelids made each blink feel like I was dragging sand across a wound, and my head felt heavy. I rubbed my forehead, fingertips grazing the stinging skin, and raised my gaze slowly, disoriented. A piece of chalk was sitting on a table in front of me. The hard surface upon which I was sitting placed me in an odd place, considering my lecture halls were comprised of those folding cushioned chairs that normally collapsed into themselves.
All around me, the classroom murmured with surprise and amusement: dozens of young faces staring at me, then dissolving into snickers and laughter as they suppressed their mouths with their tiny hands, trying to hide. The voice that tore through the haze was harsh and low: "Wake up, Obito. What the hell are you doing sleeping in class again?"
The speaker stood towering in front of a blackboard—the scarred man with a stern crease between his brows, his Leaf Village headband slung around his neck like a badge of authority. I stared at the headband. The disorientation was surely the result of my being in a dream, but as my head felt lighter and clearer, my stomach started churning. 'Leaf Village headband?' My heart thudded. This was a bizarre dream, though not unlike many of the fanfictions I had read.
I opened my mouth, the excuse forming on my tongue instinctively—"I'm sorry, sensei, I—" but I froze. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The world felt off-rhythm, like I was hearing a slowed record, my voice wasn't my own, and my head throbbed in time with my pulse. Short, jagged images flashed: me walking home, the moon low in the sky, then nothing. The last clear memory I had was coming late and going to sleep.
The silence stretched as I let my words hang in the air, and another thought occurred to me that I was speaking a different language just now. And even had understood what I was saying, but how the scarred man had scolded me earlier in a foreign tongue.
I looked back up at the scarred man. His eyes bore into me, expectant. He folded his arms, toes tapping the floor's woodgrain. Around the room, laughter bubbled again. I forced a crooked smile, sat up straighter, and tried to shake the fog that was enveloping my mind. 'Clearly this was a dream, but why am I conscious of that?' My senses sharpened as my thoughts began to flow easily— the scent of chalk dust, the faint metallic tang of the headband's clasp, the creak of the floorboards as other students shifted.
But underneath that, I felt a quiet hum. Something in me ticked: a small awareness of survival, screaming at me, "you are here and you must never tell the truth" — nothing of this wretched circumstance should I ever reveal. Not now. Not ever.
"Right," I muttered, voice low enough that only I could hear the quiver as my words had slipped back into the foreign tongue that seemed to be ingrained with this body. "I'm just feeling a bit off, sensei," I made up an excuse, the words flowing through my mouth as the fog inside my brain wrestled and new memories began to emerge.
"Just sit down and focus," The scarred man muttered as he went back to the board and started talking about calculating the trajectory for an optimal kunai throw.
I listened barely as the sensei, likely a chunin, droned on and on about how to get a feel for the arc of a kunai's path, the parabola traced in chalk across the blackboard. My gaze flicked between the diagram and the scarred man's stern face—but the words felt distant, like whispers behind glass. The memory‑thick fog in my mind stirred again, threads of a life I didn't recognise weaving themselves into my consciousness.
I remembered… running around a slightly rundown house in the half‑moon's glow, my grandmother's laughter echoing. I remembered helping elderly villagers carry firewood or groceries, the soft slope of our house casting shadows against the twilight. The village shouldn't exist, yet the memories of growing up in it existed in my mind, so vivid and lifelike. I shouldn't be here—but the memories reminded me where and in whose body I was anyway. Life was pitiful, yet tinged with a strange balance. A boy raised by his grandmother. Me now in his body: the orphan Uchiha whose three‑syllable name weighed more than I realised.
'Uchiha Obito, the 4th step in the Shinobi world manipulation hierarchy...' I thought, a life that I had no intention of repeating, yet did I even have a choice?
And then—my vision glitched. The world split into fragments: pixels flickering around my vision, a burst of white‑blue static, just a heartbeat long. For after that instant, I saw the classroom differently: silhouettes of students now had an additional marker, their names hovering above their heads, describing their name and strength like an NPC in a VR game... A very, very advanced, theorized full-dive VR game. I blinked. Reality snapped back. My heart did a flip as I looked around. No one else reacted, as though nothing had happened. Yet a few gazes met mine, their eyes lacking the same instinct to read the floating box above everyone's head.
I controlled my gaze and looked back toward the front. I forced my eyes downward. Fingers curling under the desk, I hid the tremor of my pulse. The chalk dust scattered on my desk from the throw earlier caught in a stray beam of sunlight through the window—motes drifting slowly and silently. The scent of chalk, the metallic whisper of the headband's clasp around the instructor's neck, the creak of floorboards as students shifted. I counted to steady myself.
'My senses are so much sharper, there is no way I should be able to feel and hear everything so clearly.' I thought as my thoughts converged on the reason for this. Chakra, the mystical energy everyone was infused with in this world, was likely the reason for my enhanced senses, a power that was now floating beneath my skin, even though I didn't have as much control over it.
A surge of excitement was quickly suppressed as I didn't want to gather any attention. How do I even escape my fate? When did Zetsu and Madara decide that Obito was the one? Surely I could change this destiny with my time. I was lost in thought as I scanned the names hovering above my classmate's head.
[Might Guy - Academy Student]
[Kurenai Yūhi – Lv. Academy Student]
[Asuma Sarutobi – Lv. Academy Student]
[Ibiki Morino – Lv. Academy Student]
[Shizune – Lv. Academy Student]
[Rin Nohara – Lv. Academy Student]
The names were so familiar and yet so distant from the timeline I remember. These names should be respected shinobi protecting the shinobi world, and not stuck in a classroom learning how to throw a kunai.
'This is going to be difficult.'
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AN: Here it is, an Obito SI story. How much havoc could a single soul create in the timeline? Let's find out.