Chapter Text
Obito awakens with one arm hanging in the air, an arched, twisted back, and his right leg hooked under a thick pole that has a familiar, rough texture. He barely has a moment to process his mimicry of a deformed pretzel before his leg slips downwards, and he’s sent hurtling towards the ground.
But his body never meets the dirt.
Instead the twisting poles reach out to catch him hammock-style, and he finds that his mind goes blank because, and pardon his French, what the fuck?
He wonders, briefly, if he’s gone mad. Then, upon remembering who he is, decides that while yes, he probably has, there’s definitely something else at play here.
Obito exhales and activates his glorified flashlight, which reveals, through red-tinted vision, that the cave he fell asleep in had grown its own, miniature forest overnight.
“What the fuck?” he says aloud this time which, in his opinion, is entirely fair. Even in magic ninja bullshit land, he’s fairly certain that trees don’t just appear out of nowhere, unless—
Obito freezes, lowering his gaze to his right arm - uncovered after he’d ditched his tacky cloak before setting up camp. Too-pale skin stares back at him mockingly, and he closes his eyes for a long, pained second as realization settles upon him.
He almost pulls an actual Madara and screams out Hashirama’s name, but he just barely manages to restrain himself. Instead, he takes in a deep breath, closes his eyes, and decides that he’ll deal with this shit tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes and goes, and instead of dealing with his problems, he pops into a clothing store and 'buys' a sleeve to cover up his discolored arm. He feels a little bad about not being able to pay, so he leaves behind an I.O.U. from one ‘Kakashi Hatake,’ because the idea of the man arriving in some town in the middle of nowhere and learn that a shopkeeper has an I.O.U. from him - signed lovingly with a Henohenomoheji and everything - is hilarious.
But it does make him realize that he will have to get a job somehow. Obviously he can’t stick around in one place for too long - well, he probably could if he gets the henge down, but he really doesn’t feel like it - so he’ll have to take up the work of a missing nin.
Unfortunately, he has no idea what a missing nin actually does except for maybe bounty hunting sometimes, and he’s not really too eager to get into any high-powered fights anytime soon.
So , he draws on his meager knowledge of D-Ranks and goes around the next little town he comes across asking if they need any jobs done.
At first, people just stare at him oddly, but eventually, an old woman asks if he might be willing to help her pick up her groceries, because after her daughter moved out with her husband, she has no one to help and oh, some days it’s so hard, and—
Needless to say, Obito’s always been a bit of a bleeding heart, and he already knows that he’ll agree the moment she mentions her old eyes not quite working the way they used to. He even goes the extra mile and after nearly half an hour of telling her that he can take care of it, she finally agrees to stay home while he picks everything up for her.
An hour later, he comes back with far more groceries than she’d given him money for, wearing a sharp smile and having learned that he apparently has a knack for haggling.
(Or maybe the shopkeepers were intimidated by his scarred face. But that’s neither here nor there, and it’s really their own problem, anyway.)
The half-blind woman smiles at him and wrangles him into staying for tea, and proceeds to regale him with stories that he ends up getting far too invested in. Eventually, though, night falls and he moves to say his goodbyes and head off back to another cave he’d scoped out nearby. She tries to bully him into staying, and he politely tells her that he doesn’t wish to intrude, so he really must be going. The woman is stubborn, but Obito isn’t one to back down.
(Later that night, Obito stares at the ceiling of Kana-obaa-san’s guest bedroom after having taken the first genuine shower he'd had in a while, body draped in quilted blankets and head propped up with freshly-fluffed pillows, and thinks that old women are a lot scarier than he’d given them credit for.)
Obito stays in the town for far longer than he’d intended, and finds himself being giggled at by passing old women on a near-daily basis, while half of their husbands shoot him distrusting glares.
He’s a bit disturbed by it all, but quickly brushes it off. Everyone in the town is nice to him, after all, and they love reminiscing about their youth. Maybe anyone else would be embarrassed by how much they enjoyed the conversations, but Obito finds it all rather intriguing, if a little sad. The town is primarily populated by the elderly, with their children having gone off to bigger and better places, and so he always makes sure to stay around to chat after each job he completes.
Then one day he hears something… displeasing, to say the least.
“Bandits,” Kana-obaa-san tells him with a sigh. “No shinobi come around here, you see, so they tend to run around freely. Others have tried to fight back, but, well…” She trails off, wiping the sad look off her face. “Ah, but you needn’t worry about that. You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you? Your sendoff should be joyful!”
Obito smiles at her and continues chatting politely, but that night, he slips out of the town and begins scouring about. With his Sharingan, it doesn’t take long to pick up a trail, and he finds a camp of 20 bandits hiding a few kilometers out from the town.
When he sees them laugh drunkenly as they boast about their conquests, he finds that he cares little about their lives.
He doesn’t kill them, despite that. He could if he wanted to - even if he’s relying on muscle-memory, he has chakra on his side, and they’re all just civilians. But the next morning, the town’s small prison finds itself with 20 beat-up bandits filling its cells, all unwilling to say a word about the person who captured them, except that he’s a madman.
Kana-obaa-san tells Obito of the incident the next morning, sending him a knowing look all the while. She doesn’t bother pointing out the obvious, though, and instead sends him off a few hours later with a tight hug and a container of baked goods, promising that she’ll pray for him for as long as she lives.
If Obito’s eyes are a little wet when he finally steps foot out of the town, well… that’s no one's business but his own.