It's Too Late(We're Building A Monster)

Prologue

Obito remembers dying. Skull remembers dying.

The heavy weight of rocks that press down on top of him, stealing his breath and cracking his skull... A tearing in the air, an inability to breath and something grasping at his soul.

Obito remembers war, a battlefield, a bridge. Skull remembers purple, lights that dance around him, warming him, welcoming him.

Obito remembers darkness, and distant voices, burning and screams. Skull remembers standing in defiance, the first but never the last...

Both remember breaths too short, pain too acute, and light too bright... And that's where reality shatters...

Skull remembers.

And it hurts. Waking up with newold memories in his head. Things he'd forgotten, things he never wanted to remember. RinKakashiMinato-senseiKushina-neeMikotoFugakuItachi he remembers... Skull remembers before, before he woke up with his head filled with fog, messy purple hair and eyes that burned. He remembers.

Skull remembers a time when he screamed a dream, and used something more. Chakra, not just flames.

And... he knows that he can't go back. Because he remembers dying. And not just because he'd screwed up a trick, like the many that he failed at his shows. Not just because he slipped at the top of the stairs or forgot to check for poison in his food. No he remembers dying. A rather permanent death too considering his state.

He's not Obito any more...

At least, he doesn't think that he's still Obito.

But how can he tell? How can he possibly know? His memories as Skull begin with the rustle of leaves, and the chill of snow straight to the bone. They begin with a heavy fog and a feeling of something missing, of something wrong. Purple lights that dance and glimmer, flames that flicker over his body and comfort him.

But now he's Skull either way. And he sits up in his bed purple hair splayed out over his head. Bed head, yet he merely runs a hand through it before shuffling around the apartment that he currently calls home. Shuffling to find a mirror and he stares.

Purple. Hair and eyes. Not a speck of black to be seen, and his hair has always been purple. He remembers staring at a frozen lake and wondering. He might have shorn it all off once, he might have, and it came back in the same purple, mocking him, as if asking what he'd expected. And his eyes, not dark, but bright. Purple and wide, and... they don't shift or change, even when he tries, remaining purple, not a droplet of red to be seen.

He takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. Trying to calm himself down. He's not Obito.

He's Skull.

Stuntman

Immortal

Hated by death.

And oh, he wishes that was merely his title. That he could die sometimes. Permanently. Instead of the hope that he just makes it through one show without dying temporarily, without crashing and failing the trick. Oh he knows that he can complete all the tricks, he knows how to ride, but it seems that death is out to claim him.

It's a good day when he can make it through a show without crashing...

Skull rarely has good days.

He wonders if Obito is the reason. And remembers an orange tinted world, through goggles that he adored. Remembers a dream, and wonders. Should he ad a bit of orange to his scheme. Would it even fit with the purple. A frown crosses his face and he mutters under his breath about the ridiculousness of wondering.

He'll just try it anyway. Nodding to himself he finally tears away from the mirror and walks out of the room. Only to startle when there's a man in what serves as the lounge of his apartment. A man who has already seemed to make themselves right at home, comfortably reclining over his couch.

He reaches for weapons that aren't there...

And when the man looks up at him he freezes.

A knowing smile and... He feels a weird twist, a certain paranoia due to the memories. Due to what he remembers from when he was once Obito. Yet, as the man slowly speaks... He can't help it.

"You're Skull right? I have a proposition for you..."

Later he'll look back on this moment and laugh himself sick because really he should have run, and damn the consequences. But he doesn't, instead he hesitates, and decides to hear the man out.

It's a decision that changes everything.