บท 3: Dalmatian
The two turned at the same time to look at the boy strangely.
What's wrong with this weird kid?
The man raises his head haughtily, using the strange weapon still in his hand to point at Ren, and while the red in his eyes glows more intensely, the boy in the blue shirt seems to almost choke on air.
"Explain yourself," he demands, and the boy blinks innocently, breaking out of the act of admiring the way the black dots seem to dance around the red sea.
"Explain?" He looks confused. "Explain what?"
The man in red armor looks annoyed at being given a silly question instead of an answer, but what could the boy do?
What should be explained? Why his name is Ren?
"It was you who brought me back to life, am I correct?"
"Bring it back to life?" The boy repeats, and then continues, curiously: "To be honest, no. But then... were you dead before too?"
The man looked even angrier, but continued on, not answering the unfortunate question, "What is this place?"
"Well... this is Japan, at least that's what I think, as we all speak Japanese, but I don't know the exact city."
"W-wait!" The boy in the blue blouse finally speaks, interrupting the other question that was about to be asked. "You... you're an Uchiha too, but... how?"
Ren looks between the two. Uchiha? Too?
The man lets out a brief sneer, his voice dripping with confidence and arrogance as he says, "I'm Uchiha Madara, brat."
Ren doesn't understand why it seems so important, in fact, he doesn't understand at all what's going on.
He's interested anyway.
"Madara?" The one in the blue shirt repeated. "The legendary shinobi, Uchiha Madara?! Do you want to make a fool of me? That's completely impossible! He's been dead a long time!"
Madara narrows his eyes. "I just talked about being brought back to life, so I was dead. Has fear made you deaf?"
Ren momentarily stops listening to the conversation that continues in front of him, thinking to himself: Uchiha? Madara? Isn't this one of the files he had copied and pasted earlier?
The boy opens the panel, looking for the name in the characters folder and...
"My name is Sasuke Uchiha." His attention is captured by the presentation and... yes, that's the second name, he forgot to delete them...
"I'm not sure what's going on, but are we... dead? Is this... some kind of afterlife?"
"No, of course not!" Ren exclaims, and the two, who almost forgot he's there, turn to look at him. "The afterlife is terrible, believe me! It's nothing like this lovely place... tell me, are you a main character or a minor character?"
"... What?"
"Well... I'm not sure what the afterlife would be like for a main character, but for the secondary characters it's something to avoid, I don't know if that place, the void, would be the same fate for other people or..." The boy shakes his head. "Ah, yes, I almost forgot about the important subject for you. There was a big mistake! I moved some of your files to this world folder to test something and forgot to delete them, and that must have brought them here. I'm really sorry about that."
The boy shows his regret by bowing forward in apology.
The silence between the three of them is deafening, it lasts for almost a minute.
Did he say something wrong?
"What you mean is..." Madara breaks the silence, "that you brought us back to life... brought us to a supposedly different world, by accident?"
"Hm, yes, that's a simple way of putting it." Ren says, blinking innocently as he smiles. "You came from a world called Naruto, and we're in a world called Boku no Hero Academia, or My Hero Academia, you name it, it doesn't make much difference."
Another long moment of silence.
Oh, what did he do wrong this time?
• • •
Things are a little... chaotic.
Even after Sasuke's sudden and violent outburst of rage, and Madara's piercing, icy gaze, things continue like this, chaotic, as if they were under the smoke of the last battle.
The two follow him through the city streets — it wasn't like they had any other choice, for when the boy started to walk, they got pulled after him like two balloons — and Ren is pretty sure he can hear their anger still bubbling up inside them.
And that's kind of weird if you must know — this whole listening to people's anger thing.
Weird, but he won't complain.
"That is a car." Ren answers the Uchihas' unspoken question, and Sasuke stops watching the car out of the corner of his eye to stare at the boy. "What?"
"You don't seem impressed by that," he says, and points to the corner where the car disappeared, "they are like... like carriages, but they move without horses. And you don't look impressed by that. Hm...maybe it's chakra-powered?"
Madara clicks his tongue, speaking for the first time in nearly an hour: "There are no signs of chakra coming from these... things."
"Cars," Ren reminds him with a smile, suddenly very competent.
"How do they work, then?" Sasuke questions, folding his arms and watching the other cars passing by on the street.
And why do they glow in some places?
"Well... I'm not sure, the engine makes the car go? Hm... maybe make the wheels turn, and then make the car go? Uh... I don't think I would be able to explain how an engine works...but maybe the internet can!"
"Internet?" The eldest repeats the name, it seems strange in his tongue.
Ren sighs dramatically. "Isn't there that in your world too? It's just the best information and entertainment network in the entire world!
Almost all your questions can have answers found there, just like all the music and movies and videos and games and—"
"Ren." Madara interrupts. "Enough."
"Oh, if you say so."
• • •
"This file was reset 2 days, 3 hours and 48 minutes ago."
Ren lets out a long, tired sigh.
The System is something really interesting, isn't it? It can work on its own and keep the worlds running, even prioritizing where the admin is hosted...
It doesn't change the fact that Ren is having a hard time finding a way to fix things and send Sasuke and Madara back home, but still, interesting.
And problematic. Very problematic.
Anyway...
This world is amazing, and manages to get enough attention to keep the Uchihas busy while the boy suffers with the Control Panel settings and programming.
It is a world where knowledge is vast and everyone can reach it. Geography, science, physics, history... everyone can learn. It's not like the world before, where knowledge is kept a secret, where only a select list of people can learn, for knowledge is power, and power can decide the fate of a battle that will leave thousands of dead bodies and families destroyed.
Here... all the information is just a click away, and that fascinates them.
But of course, they won't say it out loud.
This world is also peaceful, at least when compared to the shinobi world.
There are no wars going on and no ANBUs lurking in the shadows, there are no children receiving kunais and being forced to kill their teammates nor the fear of a Bijuu attack...
There are no corpses of a younger brother being left behind as it burns, with no chance of a decent burial, there is no need to pull Izuna during the retreat as he notices that the enemy tries to advance and is struck by the fireballs on the battlefield. There is no massacre against an ancient clan, causing rivers of blood as a child cries the next day, with Danzou and members of Root in his house threatening to take him to T&I to be tortured for giving answers he didn't have.
This world is peaceful compared to the shinobi world, and that fascinates them.
Ren tries to focus on his work, he really does, but there are times where he gets distracted by admiring this place. The world where he lived before was similar to this one, he saw these immense glass constructions that tried to touch the sky on TV, on the internet, in his books...
His city was older and smaller, there were no tall buildings, only simple houses, the biggest construction being the church, located in the center of the city. But this world is colorful and magical in a way the old one wasn't, and he feels... well, he feels sad at some point because his world was so beautiful when it had the lovely colors and Josh still took care of him and...
Ren watches the world around him, and he sighs, delighted, as he tries to forget about the gray reality.
Hunger is also one of the things that shakes his concentration, making him nauseous and wanting to lie down. The boy found pieces of stale bread in the back of a dubious cafeteria, where the walls dripped with moisture, and the mold showed even behind the cheap and poorly placed paint.
It was hard to eat knowing the state of where the bread came from, but again, Ren was starving.
At some point, a hero found him muttering to himself (to Madara and Sasuke) about being hungry, and gave him a snack. He was talking about the poverty and hunger in the city with some reporters, but when the rookie hero turned to point to Ren as an example, the boy was no longer there.
Ren is quite forgettable for the cameras.
That, however, was the day before, and now the hunger mixes with exhaustion and the pain in his feet.
After a perfect day, things are going wrong.
"You could try moving those files again." Suggests Madara, staring at the man across the street who has horns sticking out of his cheeks.
"It's not going to work." Was the boy's reply, yawning before continuing in a sleepy voice: "Files cannot be moved if they are still working... for me to be able to send them to another folder, I must turn them off first."
Their eyes turn dark when they hear "turn off".
And with that, Ren goes back to looking for another way.
• • •
Sasuke is the first to ask the question that has plagued them for the time they've been here. He takes a step to the side, giving space for the centaur woman to pass, and when he realizes that it is not necessary, for he is now a ghost and ghosts do not need to dodge things, he feels uncomfortable.
"I thought you were never going to ask!" Ren straightens up in his seat, keeping his spine straight as his eyes sparkle beautifully. It's an odd contrast to the dark circles under his eyes and sleep-confused voice. "That's called a quirk, almost every person in this world has one, all with their own differences and uses! But... well, there are still some people, twenty percent of the population, who were born without a quirk and are ordinary humans, like me..."
"Hm..." Madara touches his chin thoughtfully, his hands covered by the fire-resistant gloves. "So this is what replaces our chakra in this world, am I correct?"
"Yeah, well... I think so? I don't know about the chakra of your world, so..."
• • •
Ren has been going through rough days.
At first, he just saw System programming as something confusing and interesting to watch, and his research was just work with some degree of importance.
But now... he loves it all.
He loves how the System seems to work, how it works in silence and takes care of countless worlds, countless actions and characters and stories...
Yes, he loves it all, he wants to learn and talk about it all the time, and it's only when Madara swears that not even the barrier between "physical world" and "ghost world" will be enough to save him from a few broken ribs if he doesn't stop talking, that there is a bit of silence and peace between them.
The last threat was 5 minutes ago, it was the fifth of the day.
Ren feels that Madara won't break him even if he stops being a ghost after all.
• • •
This was once an ordinary world, a place without quirks.
It was in Qing Qing city where it all began, a child was born, and from her body, light shone.
The first quirks were not well received, prejudice, fear, and crimes were happening everywhere, and chaos was quickly setting in. The child, the first to be recorded with a meta-ability, has lived his entire life under cameras, research, and theories.
It had been so long before things stabilized, until meta-abilities came to be called quirks and the era of vigilantes came. Another long time until it reached the present day, with the use of quirks being moderated by the government and the need for a hero's license to use them freely.
Ren is a silly little boy, and he finds himself amazed by the quirks around him. He thinks "if I had a quirk, I would use it, with or without the license".
Let me tell you a secret: That's what silly little boys do, they just wish without thinking too much, and that's the beauty of it.
He dreams, and there are no wars tormenting him, only divine images.
• • •
"Hey! You! Dalmatian skin!"
He's sitting on the sidewalk, his back against the wall as his head lolls to the side, sleep won't go away, not entirely, and as his blurry vision tries to search for the source of the voice, he only finds colorful and confusing blurs that make him wonder if the voice is just part of another nightmare, one that comes from a past life...
But it is not.
It's a man with red wings holding his wrist and pulling him to his feet which brings him closer to reality, Ren blinks, stumbling as he lets himself be pulled, trying to push sleep away.
Wings... Ren discovered that, in this world, they don't mean much. This man is not an angel, and that boy with the quirk that gives him horns is not a devil.
Maybe it was like that in his past life too, unimportant for appearances...
"Oi!" Madara snaps his fingers in front of Ren's face, and it ends up being what takes him out of the place where he was, between dreams, confused thoughts and reality. "Don't just stand there, just staring without doing anything, tks, I hate weakness..."
"The car thing," the winged man continues in a low growl, already away from the crowd, "you told some hero, didn't you? It was just you there, and didn't try-"
"Hm... I think I heard you wrong," he interrupted, ignoring the man's words, "I was kind of sleepy, you know?"
The winged stranger blinked, staring at the boy. "What?"
"The way you called me earlier," he explains briefly, "I think I heard it wrong."
"..." Sasuke needs some time to process the human awkwardness.
"..." Same for Madara.
"..." Same for the winged thief, apparently. "I called you Dalmatian skin. What's wrong with you?"
Ren took a deep breath. "Don't say something like that!"
"And then what are you going to do about it?"
What was he going to do about it? Well, Ren had a lot of answers in mind, really, but at first, he grabbed the first thing his hands could reach.
"You hateful and abominable thief!"
It turned out that the thing that was taken was a wooden board. It broke beautifully against the thief's head.
Yes, that's what he did about it.
"Ah!" Sasuke gasped for air. How sudden!
' You look like a dalmatian with those spots on your skin, ' the whispers chased him at home, on the streets, at school...
Mom looks at him with disgust, and with a shred of meaningless hope, she rubs the sponge with all her might against those spots on his skin, rubs it until it turns red, until it bruises and the still small boy in his arms whimpers for the soap that burns against his grated skin.
It doesn't come off, the stains are still there.
Mom never tries again after the death of her oldest son.
' Your hair looks awful, and oh, God, those dark circles under your eyes... how can you look at yourself in the mirror? '
"Hah, I see!" Madara's short, sadistic laugh is what takes his mind off the anger and sadness and a mixture of memories that make him shiver.
Madara looks very amused at the sight of the blood dripping from the thief's head.
Strange tastes for strange people.
"Hey," Sasuke calls, one eyebrow raised in doubt, "do you know how to fight?"
"Er... no."
Ren has no regrets. But he is fucked now.
Before the younger Uchiha even got to mid-sentence, Ren turned around and ran with all his speed towards the streets that still had some movement at dawn. The few people who had witnessed the events were gaping: A little boy had broken a wooden board over a man's head!
Okay that board looked old, kind of rotten, almost falling apart on its own... still, a wooden board, come on!
"Thief?" One of the people asks quietly.
"He's a thief!?" Another question louder.
A child sneaks out of the alley, he was short, very short, about four or five years old, judging by his size; he was thin and pale, had honey-colored hair and eyes, and had red wings that looked dirty but still fluffy to squeeze.
Ren almost jumped out of his skin.
What's with the resemblance? For a second he thought it was the man walking out of the alley!
As he passed by, the child was also startled, almost falling backwards and squeezing the stuffed toy tighter in his arms.
"Dad!" He yelled, both surprised and scared to see the thief, which must have been accidental from the way he covered his mouth right away.
"Stop right there, villain!"
A man with clothes very similar to the strange fantasy woman Ren saw on his first day in this world, but his feet looked ordinary, wearing baggy boots, and the exaggeratedly large red bow that also made it impossible not to fall off was on his neck, not his head.
And then things became complete chaos.
The thief cursed his luck, turned around and ran away, flapping his wings and entering the second alley, which the child was not hidden, and the hero runs after him, taking large leaps that made his run even faster.
Weirdness, drama, and a chase... ah, yes, everything we need for a comic book.
"People who have bows in their costumes are very kind, aren't they? When I meet someone kind, I will present them with a bow! Oh oh! There's a nice square near this place, I'll show it to you two!" He lets out a short laugh, still running.
Just behind, Madara and Sasuke shared the same thought: "You look pretty happy for someone who was almost attacked seconds ago."
• • •
In the square, Ren sits on one of the benches under the shade of the trees. He bends forward and tries to catch his breath, his lungs, weak by nature, burns as if it were inside hell, and the heartbeats until it hurts inside his chest.
The privileged view of children playing is just a blur for the first ten minutes, while his head appears to be in the ocean and being crushed by the force of the water. When he manages to return minimally to normal, he rests his elbows against his legs, resting his head on his palm, muttering under his breath: "He was right."
This earns him some weird looks from the Uchihas. At the time of the quarrel, one of them was laughing in sadistic pleasure at seeing a grown man bleeding after being beaten by a troubled child who didn't know how to fight, the other was choking on air for the same reason.
It's hard to remember the reason for the argument itself when you were in any of these situations, you know?
Even if they remembered, neither of them was willing to comfort anyone.
In the end, the result is almost the same.
"I wish I had beautiful skin like yours..." The boy laments.
"I don't see why", comments Madara bluntly, a serious expression on the face, "the skin... it doesn't matter, you can still fight."
Ren just sighs, saddened by the man not understanding his pain, and watches the same child he saw the first day falling in exactly the same place.
There must be some hole or rock there.
"I think if I tried to fight, I wouldn't be able to breathe and I'd end up suffocating to death, it's very complicated to be sick, you know?" Madara crosses his arms, frowning as he thinks about how many health problems the strange child in front of him could have in total. "But maybe I can improve my condition if I reset my file..."
"This is dangerous", Sasuke says with his hands in his pockets, watching another child who fell in that same place. There must really be some hole or rock there. "You could die because of this, and then?"
"I don't know if anything bad will happen to me or not, I just want my skin to be beautiful..."
He explains, remembering the thief calling him a Dalmatian skin...
Has he been arrested?
"Stop acting weird." The two speak at the same time.
Ren straightens up in the seat, letting out another long breath. "I'll try."
"Hm."
And the disaster is done!
Ren wasn't talking about trying to be less awkward, he was talking about resetting his files, and took this "hm" as a support for his idea!
With renewed hope and motivation, he opened the dashboard and searched for his file, looking for the "restart" option while the Uchihas next door remained ignorant of the impending catastrophe.
The lack of communication is terrible. The lack of communication will bring the end of humanity.
Madara looked up at the sky, narrowed his eyes and scratched his cheek with his fingertip.
"Something bad is going to happen, I can feel it in the air..."
Sasuke frowned, looking up at the sky too, but apart from the pale blue and the fluffy white clouds, the only thing he found was a leaf that came off the tree and landed right on his forehead.
"The sky is clear and sunny, how could that be a bad s-"
"File restarted successfully!"
The whole world has turned white, in the next moment, it became black, flashed between the two colors a dozen times in rapid succession, then came the horizons blinking in black, with white squares and basic shapes gaining textures and the world remaking itself and...
They're in the center of the square now, no closer to the bank.
The sound threatens to come back, crashes, and a second later returns to normal as if nothing had happened. And just then, the Uchihas dare to breathe.
"... What... what was...?" Sasuke tries to speak, but the words won't come out, and it's not like he has the words for… this.
Did the world just remake itself? Was he... was he going crazy? Even crazier?
How did Madara predict the tragedy by looking at the sky? It was perfectly clean and no signs of a storm! Was it some special power or something? Wait... did something bad really happen? Did something happen, by the way? What the hell is happening?!
"That's a baby!?!" A woman screams, jumping so high she almost took flight as she avoided accidentally stepping on the child on the ground.
"Holy Christ! There wasn't anything there a second ago!" Someone else screams too, nearly dropping the shopping bag.
And just then the Uchihas came out of the trance. It took some time like that, actually, completely blank, not knowing whether they should move or not, or rather, whether they should confirm their suspicions or not...
After all, it couldn't be true, right? The kid wouldn't be stupid enough to...
They turn, very slowly, to look and... there it is, a baby wrapped in a beige cloth on the floor, brown hair very similar to Ren's, the spots on his face also very similar...
The file has been restarted.
Ren didn't die. The diseases didn't die either, apparently.
The two stare, in absolute silence, the little baby for a few seconds. They don't even move a muscle, just... trying to get the brain to work and... no, it's not possible.
"Tell me this isn't the troubled kid..." Madara asks, expressionless.
"I wish it wasn't, but... I think it's him." Sasuke responds, also expressionless.
The little baby starts to cry.
Rikudou, yes! It's possible!
They're stuck with an idiot!
The people around are approaching and forming an ever-increasing group. Someone carefully holds the tiny baby, another person picks up the phone and starts calling the police, while another is looking around to see if he can find who left the child there...
If they only knew that the child had put himself there on his own...
Madara and Sasuke move a little away from the crowd, just enough to not have their images inside anyone, and there, on the floor, they sit, crossing their legs and resting their cheeks in their hands.
In this position, they think and think about the sins committed in their lives while staring straight ahead.
What did they do to deserve this, Rikudou Sennin?
Sasuke's mind is blank and it's hard to remember anything... in fact, he's so stunned it's hard to even think!
Madara, meanwhile, can think, and he can find a handful of sins from his past in just a few seconds. He thinks of the war, of how he failed to save his siblings, of how he treated Obito when the boy was still a kid...
He thinks about this and much more, and begins to think that being trapped as a spirit alongside a stupid child who turned into a baby in a failed attempt to have "pretty skin" may be, by far, one of the lightest punishments he deserved in this life.
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XiaoA_Meng
XiaoA_Meng I hope you enjoyed it! Thank u for reading <3
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