Chapter 1: Uchiha Rei
The forest canopy cast jagged shadows across the forest floor as branches whipped against his face. Rei could hear his own ragged breathing echoing in his ears, punctuated by the rhythmic thud of footsteps behind him. The weight on his back—Wada Yu, unconscious and bleeding—made every step feel like his legs were filled with lead.
"Rei... you have to hold on," he whispered to himself, though he wasn't sure if the words were meant for his unconscious teammate or himself. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue. "Damn it, they're gaining on us."
The enemy chunin's presence pressed against his back like a physical weight. Rei's mind raced with tactical assessments, but they all led to the same conclusion: We're not going to make it.
"Where the hell is our backup?" The question came out as a desperate growl, swallowed by the indifferent rustling of leaves above.
Then the world exploded into pain and darkness.
---
Consciousness returned in fragments—the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the scratch of starched sheets against his skin, the dull ache that seemed to permeate every cell in his body. Rei's eyelids felt like they were made of concrete as he forced them open, squinting against the harsh fluorescent lights.
A bouquet of flowers sat on the bedside table, their bright colors seeming almost obscene against the sterile white of the room. But it was the memories that made him truly nauseous—not his own memories, but someone else's. Zhang Lie's memories, flooding through his consciousness like poison through his veins.
"I... I'm Uchiha Rei?" The words came out as a whisper, but they might as well have been screams for how they tore through his throat.
The impossibility of it crashed over him in waves. Time travel. Reincarnation. Whatever cosmic joke had landed him here, it felt like drowning in someone else's life while his own slipped away like water through his fingers.
This is the Naruto world. The thought should have been exciting—he'd watched the anime, after all—but instead it felt like a death sentence. Because this wasn't some colorful cartoon world of friendship and determination. This was a place where ten-year-olds died screaming in forests, where children were trained to kill before they could properly tie their shoes.
The body's memories came flooding back with surgical precision. Uchiha Rei, ten years old, orphaned, alone. The B-rank mission that had gone wrong in every possible way. His jonin sensei's final stand, buying time for his students to escape with his life. The enemy jonin's cold laughter as he cut down Rei's teammate like wheat before a scythe.
Wada Yu carried me back. The realization hit him like a physical blow. That kind, simple boy had hauled his broken body through kilometers of hostile terrain while enemy ninja hunted them like animals. And Rei—the original Rei—had been too proud, too typically Uchiha to properly appreciate what that meant.
Three broken ribs. Severe internal bleeding. Traumatic brain injury. The medical diagnosis read like a death certificate, which it should have been. Uchiha Rei had died in that forest, and Zhang Lie had taken his place like a scavenger picking through the wreckage.
"In my previous life, I was nobody." The words came out bitter, tasting of wasted years and squandered opportunities. "Just another face in the crowd, another disappointment to parents who deserved better."
But even as he wallowed in self-pity, something else stirred in his chest. Anger. Not just at his circumstances, but at the unfairness of it all. At the world that chewed up children and spat out corpses. At his own weakness, both past and present.
His reflection in the hospital window showed him the moment it happened—ordinary black eyes suddenly bleeding into crimson, the tomoe spinning lazily like drops of blood in water. The Sharingan. The Uchiha clan's gift and curse, awakened by trauma and nurtured by hatred.
Two tomoe. The realization should have been triumphant, but instead it felt like a mockery. He'd gained power through someone else's pain, evolution through inherited trauma. The Sharingan wasn't a gift—it was a scar, carved into his DNA by generations of loss and rage.
Sleep came eventually, but it brought no peace. Only dreams of forests and screaming, of metal through flesh and the wet sound of blood hitting leaves.
---
Three days later, the hospital discharged him with a handful of pills and a follow-up appointment he probably wouldn't live to keep. The walk home felt like a funeral procession—one person, no mourners, just the weight of a life that wasn't his own settling on his shoulders like a burial shroud.
The Uchiha compound sprawled before him, still proud and central to Konoha's heart. Not yet pushed to the margins like diseased tissue, not yet marked for excision. But Rei could see the cracks already forming, the subtle tensions that would eventually tear everything apart. The Uchiha police force's arrogance, the village's growing mistrust, the slow poison of isolation that would eventually consume them all.
His house—Rei's house—was a monument to abandonment. Dust coated every surface like gray snow, and the air tasted of neglect and old grief. This was where a ten-year-old boy had lived alone for months, where he'd learned to cook basic meals and wash his own clothes and pretend that being an orphan was just another part of being a ninja.
*Mother died when he was three. Father died in battle last year.* The timeline read like a casualty report, clinical and cold. But Rei could feel the weight of it in his chest, the way loneliness had carved itself into the original owner's bones.
As he swept dust from the floors, fragments of the anime's plot surfaced in his memory. *Autumn of Konoha's thirty-eighth year. The Third Ninja War is coming.* The knowledge sat in his stomach like a stone. He'd seen how that war played out in the anime—entire clans wiped out, villages burned, children turned into weapons and then discarded when they broke.
"I survived a car accident just to die in a war." The bitter laugh that escaped him sounded more like a sob. "With my current strength, I'm not even cannon fodder. I'm just... noise."
The future stretched before him like a minefield. The Third War. The Kyuubi attack. The Uchiha massacre. Akatsuki's rise. Madara's return. An endless parade of catastrophes, each one more apocalyptic than the last.
*I'll probably be dead before the massacre anyway.* The thought should have been comforting, but instead it just felt like another kind of failure.
A knock at the door interrupted his spiral into despair. Wada Yu's voice carried through the wood, warm and concerned and so achingly genuine that it made Rei's chest tight.
"Rei, are you back? I came to see you."
"Come in." The words came out steadier than he felt.
Wada Yu entered like a small mountain—eleven years old but already pushing six feet, broad and solid in a way that spoke of good genetics and better nutrition. The bag on his back bulged with suspicious shapes, and his face wore the expression of someone carrying good news and bad news in equal measure.
"Thank you." The words came out before Rei could stop them, heavy with gratitude that felt both foreign and familiar. "If it weren't for you, I'd be dead in that forest."
Wada Yu's expression shifted uncomfortably, like praise was a burden he didn't know how to carry. "We're teammates. That's what teammates do." Then his face hardened, and something ugly flickered behind his eyes. "Besides, it's those damn Cloud ninja who should be thanking their ancestors. If I ever see them again..."
"It's over," Rei interrupted, though he could feel the lie in the words. Nothing was ever over in this world. Violence just went underground, festering until it erupted again. "Sensei wouldn't want us consumed by revenge."
"Maybe not," Wada Yu said, but his hands were clenched into fists. "But I'm not going to let anyone else die because I was too weak to protect them."
The conversation felt like walking through a minefield. Rei could see the dangerous paths his friend's thoughts were taking, the way grief and guilt were curdling into something toxic. In the anime, this was how villains were born—good people broken by loss, their kindness twisted into cruelty.
But then Wada Yu's expression brightened, and he began pulling items from his bag with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning. Sake that had definitely been stolen from his father's collection. Ingredients for a simple meal, probably bought with his mission pay. The practiced way they arranged everything on the table spoke of countless similar evenings, two orphans playing at being adults.
They ate and drank in relative silence, the conversation flowing around safe topics like water around stones. But eventually, the alcohol did its work, and the careful walls they'd built came tumbling down.
"I keep thinking about it," Wada Yu said, staring into his cup like it might hold answers. "The way Sensei looked when... when he told us to run. Like he'd already accepted he was going to die."
"He bought us time," Rei replied, though the words felt hollow. "That's what senseis do."
"No." Wada Yu's voice was thick with something that might have been tears or rage. "That's what soldiers do. We're not ninja, Rei. We're just children playing dress-up in a war zone."
The silence that followed was deafening. They drank without speaking, two kids pretending to be men while the weight of their own mortality pressed down on them like a physical thing.
Rei found himself thinking of his previous life, of classmates who'd simply stopped showing up to school one day. He'd been young then, naive enough to think they'd just transferred. Now he understood the truth—some absences were permanent, some empty chairs would never be filled again.
This is what it means to be a ninja, he realized. Not the flashy techniques or the village politics. Just... learning to live with the knowledge that everyone you care about is probably going to die.
The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, it felt like a key turning in a lock, opening a door to something dark and necessary. If this world was determined to take everything from him, then he'd make sure the price was steep.
His reflection in the window showed crimson eyes, tomoe spinning lazily in the lamplight. The Sharingan, evolved through pain and nurtured by loss.
Two tomoe, he thought. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
But it was a start.