Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any intellectual property.

New Dawn

Chapter 1: The Break of Dawn

The light of dawn emerged from the apartment window. Bouncing and meandering around the room until the beams hit their mark: the face of a young boy with black hair.

Obito slept comfortably on his bed with his clothes a mess and his blanket pushed mostly aside. For the moment, everything was calm but his serenity would soon end as the irritant reached his eyes.

Obito woke to a start, quickly pushing his torso up with his arms. He looked around the room in utter disbelief and laid back down with his hands on his stomach. Expecting something, literally anything to happen, he resigned himself in that position and waited for his breathing and heart to calm.

He could still see it:

From Kakashi's hand through Rin's body in a field to himself fighting against the United Shinobi Army.

Memories of what may be from another life.

A life where he was both a pawn and a conspirator that brought the world near its end.

But he knows who he is: Obito Uchiha. Eleven year old, newly promoted chunin of Konohagakure no Sato. Just an average shinobi, nothing like an exceptionally powerful megalomaniac.

Obito wanted to believe that what he saw was impossible, that he would never, could never do such terrible things, and believe such terrible things. But he saw everything that happened. He saw a lifetime that was more than twice as long as his current one.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that it was more than just some strange dream.

It's like he could still see the Ten Tails' red eye staring at him.

Tales of people living long periods of time and even entire lifetimes during a single dream is nothing new. Though becoming the enemy of the world is not the usual for such tales.

He wondered if he was really capable of all of it.

And, for some reason, he couldn't quite recall what happened at the end. It's just a blank. Just like many of his normal dreams, so that's a point in the direction.

Minutes passed by and it was becoming clear to him that precisely nothing was going to happen in the near future. Resolved to get up off the bed, he succeeds despite some resistance in his body and trudges over to the bathroom to look at the mirror.

Staring back at him was a familiar face: round cheeks with baby fat, a notable lack of major scarring and blemishes, and large, childish eyes. This was the face of Obito Uchiha. This was his own face, Obito knew. Same as it ever was. His hand now on the mirror somehow offered even more confirmation than previously, as if he would find something other than the smooth, cold glass stained with residual water marks.

Nothing made sense. The image in the mirror shook its head.

He poured chakra through his eyes and sees the expected, and yet unexpected, Sharingan. He did so as if he had been doing it his whole life. He was surprised but also quickly disappointed to find that his eyes had a total of four tomoe: two in his right eye, and two in his left.

Despite more effort, he could not conjure the Mangekyo Sharingan. As if he hadn't done this for a whole lifetime, for so often. No matter what he did, his red eyes would not evolve to its higher state.

His mind warred over the meaning of his "dreams'' and their implications. Kekeigenkai were technically a science, and maybe it's possible for them to awaken for such a strange reason. But the fact that he had a Sharingan right now gave credence to the idea that they were more than just dreams. And he could feel it too: something about his body and chakra felt different than it had before. It felt heavier: both stronger but also burdened.

The minutes passed by when a loud knock could be heard at the front door. With some sensing abilities he didn't have before, he could feel some chaos and distress taking place outside his house and in the emotions of the people in his neighborhood.

Obito answers the door to see an Uchiha officer in a flak jacket.

"Hey, kid." The officer addressed him. Obito wondered for a moment what he should do and chose to act as natural as possible.

"Uhh, can I help you?" Obito asked with an obnoxious twitch on his eye.

Sighing with some exhaustion, the officer said, "Yes, because of the storm last night we were called to check with residents in affected areas." He looks behind Obito for a bit and continues, "Are you alone?"

Obito took a look long past the officer and could see some trees and electric power poles knocked down. With a slight delay, "Yes sir, just me."

With a delay of his own, he responds, "I see. If there are no problems with the storm, do you have anything to report about last night?"

Obito frowned ostentatiously. "Last night?"

As if accepting that he's not going to get much more, he grinned and said with a chuckle, "Oh you must've slept right through it, huh don't worry about it, then."

"What? But I wanna know what you're talking about." Obito was annoyed at the obvious incitement.

With a laugh the officer walks off towards the neighbors. The officer jokes him but he's the one doing such mundane work for a likely formidable shinobi.

Obito considered the officer's concern but decided he'd figure it out eventually. He looked out into the street and saw that there was some structural damage to buildings on the street. Some signs were thrown far from their post, trees broken and bent, glass strewn across houses, streetlights knocked down, debris piles, and some houses had some other breakage and tears on them. Obito's remained unscathed, to his relief.

After thinking for a few seconds, Obito decided he'd try to get more answers about his own situation. Without Kamui, he would need to find a private place to test his own abilities.

Obito finds a spot a few ways away from a secluded training ground in a wooded area. He considers his stock of skills and attempts some taijutsu. This seemed like a good spot but without sensor abilities, he'll never really know. Sharingan does have sensing abilities but only based on direct sight or physical traces of chakra, compared to the Byakugan and other forms of sensing. It is unsurprising that the First Hokage would create a landscape that effectively hobbled the Sharingan in such a way.

After a few swings of his normal style, he finds that his martial abilities seem to be no better than before. He then tried to fight like his future iterations and performed the attacks with some success. It seems he could swing in styles his body clearly had no prior experience with before, which means that his memories do have an effect on his body's abilities. Going back to his normal kata and realized he could swing more efficiently, and gracefully, fixing some previous mistakes.

Satisfied with those results, Obito moves on to ninjutsu, since he did not use genjutsu at all. He forms the six hand seals to mold his chakra and attempts to launch a Great Fireball at a tree about 9 meters away.

The fireball gets thrown pathetically, small and languid in shape, not even reaching the target tree falling flat on the ground about 3 meters away. This was surprising because any Uchiha, even a lower class one like Obito could do a decent Great Fireball.

He tried again and this one was even more pathetic than the previous. This was startling because this has never happened to Obito before and he's never heard much about jutsu failure on abilities that he had already mastered beforehand. He could only conclude that there was a problem with his mix of spiritual and physical energies, the two energies that composed chakra. While Obito was never one for studies of this type, in his other life he became far more knowledgeable of the mysteries of chakra than even the best of this time period.

Taking a few leaves, Obito would place one leaf between his thumb and pointing finger and attempt to set it on fire by channeling his chakra. This exercise was a basic one exercise for learning fire nature transformation. But it's also a basic chakra control technique.

While doing so, Obito considered his gameplan. He could sit around for two years and attempt to do everything as if he knew nothing and was the same as he was, but things have likely already changed. There have been major storms before but he does not recall one at this time nor the Uchiha police visiting him at this point in time. It is possible that he just did not remember this period of time all that well, minus memories of his team and especially Rin but he doubts that. Even so, Obito believed he was just not capable of maintaining a facade for such a period of time. While he did a good job at deceiving everyone when taking the mantle of Madara and Tobi, at the moment he was just eleven year old Obito. A dunce who could hardly act or even lie convincingly.

His best bet, he believed, was to just try in earnest. He could hide the truth about his memories but he doesn't have to ignore them and attempt to "maintain" the timeline. This means that he probably won't get stuck under a rock and lose the right half of his body but Obito really doesn't think he can go through that again. Besides, there's no guarantee it will happen again because there is no real confirmation that his memories are true in the first place, even if they seem to affect him somehow.

There's also the matter of revealing his Sharingan. He'll be much weaker off without using it consistently but that will open a whole issue with the Uchiha clan. The clan elders always disparaged Obito because he was a clear and obvious example of Uchiha mediocrity. Despite earning the rank of chunin at a young age, Obito could not activate his Sharingan when there are plenty of cases of Uchiha doing so even before achieving genin rank. Even more so, when the number of "defective" Uchiha rises over decades.

If Obito shows off his Sharingan, Minato would have to report it to the Hokage and he would then have to inform the Uchiha clan. Neither sensei nor Hokage are required to do so but it would only be proper, and neither wants to gain unnecessary ire from the clan for failing to report it.

After they know, the elders will expect him to take representing the clan more seriously whatever the hell that means. Obito is not quite sure, all things considered, both as a missing nin in another life and as Uchiha black sheep currently.

There are some benefits, of course, like access to an exclusive Uchiha Library only available to Sharingan-enabled Uchiha. Obito didn't exactly agree with this sort of attitude but the Uchiha clan had always been reclusive and exclusive in nature, and since the founding of the Leaf Village it became exclusive unto itself as well as others.

Hiding in the shadows and keeping to himself was what the other Obito did, the one who had been dead for almost 20 years since Rin. Obito believed it would be better to do his best in the same way Naruto always did, as Obito had done before Rin's death.

Is what he would like to say.

It's too soon, he decided, to take such a hard-headed approach. He's sure even Naruto had to go through some struggles before he had the strength to convince the likes of Nagato. And while Obito isn't dissimilar to Naruto, he's not exactly Naruto. Which means he can't expect to be like Naruto and just get the same results. Not everyone has a tailed beast in their stomach, after all.

Revealing the Sharingan now could open himself to unnecessary suspicion which might open a can of worms and win him a trip to T&I. And despite himself, he can't dispel his resentment towards the clan so easily so he's in no rush to be ingratiated by them at this point. He'll have to find a good time to use the Sharingan and reveal it to his team, especially if he finds himself in danger alone.

With that decided, Obito finally thought it was time to join his team at the training grounds. He's already late but that was par for course. He had a whole pile of burnt leaves at this point, so he would do one more great fireball before he departs.

Taking his time and with great care, Obito made sure his chakra properly molds the fire nature and exhaled a decent fireball hitting its mark. The tree was a powerful one and did not burn down despite the fireball but Obito was satisfied for now. His team was waiting for him after all.

And he was only about an hour late this time so they better be grateful.

A/N: I'll be taking plenty of liberties with this story due to its nature and the lack of clear information of the time period for topics like life in a clan, so try not to be too stingy about some details. The genres that apply to this fic will be: general, action, adventure, light politics, light drama. Romance is undecided, could be gen or even harem.

Resolved a narrative writing issue I've had which means I'll have to redo all the chapters because of it. Things are mostly going to be the same otherwise.

Hopefully I'll be able to work faster now with it out of the way.