Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Scarlet ❯ Assassin ( Chapter 3 )

{OoO} SCARLET {OoO}

 

{OoO} {OoO} Chapter 3: Assassin {OoO} {OoO}

 

It was a bold mission. A dangerous mission. Even my father was opposed to it.

 

“I want him here to work with me,” he argued, and I could see the hands resting composedly in his lap wanted very much to clench into fists.

 

I knelt beside him in the receiving room. I'd come to hate that room; whenever I was summoned to it I was always the prodigy, the potential, the object in question. But that night I could see the worry in the lines of my father's face, and knew from what he wasn't saying that he was speaking of me and not the other. My heart thawed a little.

 

“You are the one holding him back, Cousin,” Setsuna countered. My Sensei was an austere man, thin faced and tall, with streaks of white in his close-cropped hair. He was older than my father, and more cynical. But he was a shrewd man. And he was right.

 

I tilted my head to one side, staring quizzically at Setsuna as I waited for my father to explain his reasoning.

 

“What is it you fear he will do, Cousin?” my Sensei asked when my father kept silent. “He's your son, of whom you're proud. He is being offered a great opportunity to prove himself not just to the Village, but to the Fire Country lords.”

 

And my father looked down at me kneeling beside him, just as he had looked down at me on the day of the Fourth Hokage's funeral. Only this time, there was something new in his eyes. The lines in his face deepened. What I saw there shocked me so much that I couldn't speak. I could scarcely breathe.

 

He was afraid for me. Deeply so.

 

“Itachi is only ten years old, but he has already killed,” he said, turning away from me abruptly to hide his fear. “Fairly, honorably, justly, in battle. And of that I am proud.” I knew he was referring to the Hyuuga boy I had fought in the Chuunin exam arena. He didn't sound as proud as he'd been before. “But this . . .” he went on. “To slit a man's throat in dead of night, with blood cool as steel . . .” He looked at Setsuna for a moment as if he hated him. “My son is not ready.”

 

Setsuna's retort came like a whiplash. “Why are we born, Cousin? Tell me!” Then he answered his own question. “Shinobi are born to kill. Whatever the reason---protection, offense, malice, revenge---it is still called killing. If you wish to view death as a taint, then your son is already tainted. Stop trying to bind him to the clan to keep him naïve.”

 

My father pounded the floor with his fist. The wood cracked a little. “My son's duty is to the clan! Itachi is to follow the path to leadership!” His temper had ignited. “His genius belongs to the clan! He is already strong and sharp of mind. He is already cold enough without clearing this hurtle you wish to set before him!” There my father stopped, realizing what he'd just said in front of me.

 

Setsuna's eyes flickered; even he was shocked, and for a moment he looked at me pityingly. But his next words were cruel. “That's what's holding him back, Cousin. And it has nothing to do with killing. In the Academy, I heard much about the case the instructors used to keep him from early graduation. In the Chuunin exam judging, do you know what they told me? Itachi's behavior is solitary and ruthless. He has not forged any bonds through teamwork. It is through missions, Cousin, that he will learn leadership, for to be a leader one must first know how to form bonds with others. You can't give him that by forcing him to stay in your shadow.”

 

Setsuna was not a kind man, but he was an honest one. And once again, he was right.

 

“I want to go, Chichi-ue,” I volunteered. My tone was firm, and my gaze unwavering as I looked up at him. “Setsuna-sensei will not allow harm to befall me.” A pause. “I can't lead if I remain a Genin forever.”

 

And my father folded. The reasoning against him was near to flawless, even though in his gut he sensed pending danger.

 

Plans were laid. Setsuna-sensei left. I rose to leave as well.

 

“Your eyes are an adult's,” my father said quietly. I turned. He was still kneeling on the floor. “You've become old before your time, and with what you plan to go and do you will no doubt become even older.” His gaze was grave and heavy as a hand resting atop my head. “I'm sorry, Itachi.”

 

I was well aware that he was apologizing for many things besides the mission and the cruel words he'd let slip.

 

“Don't be,” I replied, shaping my lips into a smile to make him happy. “I'm just an old soul.” I forgive you for your cruelty, Chichi-ue, but I am what I've become. If you want me to forgive you for that, you're too late.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

The night before I left, while I lay awake in my bed staring at the ceiling, I heard the soft noise of feet moving down the hall. Then there came an even softer tapping on my door. Really, he would soon enter the Academy; he ought to have been stealthier. But I whispered, “Come in, Sasuke.”

 

He slid open the wood panel and stood there in the doorway rubbing his eyes with one fist. He was five.

 

“'Nii-san, I had a bad dream,” he mumbled.

 

I sat up cross-legged in bed, flinging off the covers. It was too warm for them, anyway. “A nightmare? What do you expect me to do about it?”

 

He walked a little further into the room, looking miserable. “There was a ghost in my room,” he insisted. His eyes were huge.

 

“All right.” I sighed; it was obvious he wasn't going to leave me in peace anytime soon. “You can sleep in here. But you are not to make noise. I leave very early in the morning.”

 

He climbed in with me and immediately claimed the middle for his space. This left me with just the edge, and my back pressed against his. But Sasuke obeyed me and kept quiet, and eventually his breath evened out into the slow measure of sleep. Meanwhile, my thoughts cycled back to what I'd been pondering before he came.

 

I'm going to kill a man. But this isn't going to be a battle. It won't be `him or me,' like it was in the arena. It will just be . . . him.

 

I wondered how we would be expected to do it.

 

Poison? A knife across the throat, in the dark?

 

In front of his own children?

 

It was a horrid dichotomy of awareness, mulling over something like that while I could feel the gentle rising and falling of my brother's back against my own. I hated that feeling; it made me want to pretend Sasuke wasn't lying there---that I was alone. And it made me sick to my stomach at the same time, because I knew the small, warm person who lay dreaming beside me was my brother, who loved me even though he knew nothing of what was in my head.

 

In the dark hours before dawn, when the shadows were still lightening from indigo to blue, I slid away from that warmth and comfort. I lifted my pack full of honed kunai and shuriken, careful not to let them clink against each other lest Sasuke hear and wake. And I slipped out into the quiet streets without bidding anyone farewell.

 

Inhaling the brisk autumn chill outside sharpened my awareness. Alone, I didn't have to think about difficult things like the love I didn't feel, or about where my strength was leading me. There was only the mission ahead.

 

If you empty yourself of everything, killing is easy.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

The journey to the location of our target was not as easy as I'd expected. Lord Gyoichi was an old man whose lands bordered the northernmost part of the Fire Country. These lands were a patchwork of rice paddies where cultivated and stinking marshes where left fallow. We were forced to travel through the latter, because keeping to the roads would expose us to Gyoichi's spies.

 

Kabuto either knew more about the situation we were heading into than Setsuna-sensei did, or Setsuna was just keeping quiet to let him do all the work explaining. Regardless, I listened to my teammate expound on the mission profile with interest. Kabuto was the sort who watched everything intently and rarely opened his mouth without good reason.

 

“Like most tyrants everyone wishes would die, Gyoichi-sama is seventy years old and still in the best of health,” he told me, as we waded waist-deep through brackish water and reeds higher than our heads. “He has overstepped his bounds once too many times, `appropriating' lands that don't belong to him, squandering their resources, and then leaving their residents to starve. But do you know what I think, Itachi-kun? I think killing him isn't going to solve anything.”

 

On Kabuto's other side, Aburame Akito sloshed through the fen in silence, ignoring us both. Our teammate, whom we had not expected to be available to come with us, had returned early from his previous mission and now found himself traveling in our company. He obviously wasn't happy about being called away again so soon. He was fourteen and he had a girlfriend.

 

Emboldened by the fact that he had an audience from me if not from Akito, Kabuto went on to say, “The problem with land disputes is that this country is run by feudal lords, who are greedy. When Gyoichi is dead, one just as bad will take his place. He has a son who will soon be old enough to rule.”

 

I mulled this over for a while. What I came up with in the end was probably the worst possible thing I could've said in front of my Sensei. “The problem probably isn't that the feudal lords are corrupt; it's that they're ruling in the first place. They divide countries into even smaller parts, even though all the countries are already divided, making wars both inside and beyond their borders.” I paused, considering, and then went on, making it worse. “But even that problem comes from another. Civilians don't know how to use power like shinobi, because the only power they have lies in land and wealth. They're greedy, and they make wars to get what they want. But once they get what they want, it only solves their problems and not their peoples'. They're like children who need a keeper.”

 

“Uchiha Itachi!”

 

I shut my mouth.

 

Setsuna-sensei was glaring at me. “That is precisely the attitude that makes our kind hated and feared in some places. Arrogance like that is dangerous---dangerous to have, for it binds you with the illusion that having power makes you wise. We are not superior to those we're obligated to protect.”

 

I had no answer to that. Yet.

 

But Kabuto said softly, “Then why, when they've a dire need to be saved from themselves, do they summon us?”

 

“Shinobi are a grand mistake,” Setsuna said icily, returning his sharp gaze to the terrain ahead. “Without the focus of serving the needs of others, we would destroy each other. Ponder that, you two, whenever such stupid ideas arise in your heads. And don't waste the air I breathe by speaking of them again.”

 

We reached Gyoichi's fortress that night. I wasn't the one who killed him; Setsuna-sensei did. But I saw him do it. And I learned something very unusual about him in the process.

 

It was to be done swiftly and quietly, and no one was to know Konoha had a hand in it. This meant no mark left on the body, for as hated as this lord was the slightest evidence would point to engineered assassination. Or, rather, no mark was to be left that would indicate professionals had done it. We were meant to make it appear to be murder.

 

Committed by the lord's own son.

 

Setsuna was to infiltrate the fortress first, together with Akito. Akito was essential for that because he could use his bugs to spy, and because Setsuna needed to conserve his strength for use of the Sharingan at the key moment. Then Akito was to send me a signal, and I was to join Setsuna while Kabuto and Akito provided diversions in two separate locations.

 

The infiltration was to last until nightfall. In the meantime, Kabuto and I had to spend the day hiding in the marsh. Crouching on low tree branches while surrounded by stinking, stagnant bog was something I could bear with stoicism. Kabuto, on the other hand, always brought out the worst in me.

 

“You're pretty powerful, aren't you, Itachi?” he remarked, squatting beside me on the branch. “Even training with you, I don't think I've seen everything you can do.”

 

Mosquitoes whined around our heads, trying to find places to alight and stick their needles through the layers of mesh and cloth and bandages that we wore. I slapped at them, ignoring Kabuto.

 

But he was persistent. “Don't missions like this bore you?” he asked me.

 

This time I spared him a glance. “Missions are important. Even if they're boring, they're a means to an end. In case you didn't notice, neither of us has earned our Chuunin rank yet.”

 

“I don't care what title they call us by,” Kabuto snapped. “I'm talking about what you can do.” But I could tell he did care. He'd been acting oddly ever since he failed the Chuunin exam, losing his temper on occasion, which wasn't something he normally did.

 

“I know what I can do,” I told him curtly, to shut him up. “That's good enough.”

 

I didn't want him questioning me further, or he'd discern that I'd been wondering the same thing all along.

 

Fortunately---or perhaps unfortunately, from the vast perspective of fate---Akito's signal came at that moment. A tiny winged beetle, circling repeatedly around us.

 

“Let's go,” I told Kabuto, and together we jumped off the branch and made our way northward onto firmer ground. From there we were to follow the road to a small gate on the fortress' eastern side, where Akito's bugs had killed the guards in such a way that no attention was drawn to the attack.

 

The road led us up a hill, and would have led us directly down the other side to the gate if there hadn't been a man blocking the way. He was standing at the top of the hill, with his back to us and his hands clasped thoughtfully behind him. As soon as we saw him we took cover in the bushes alongside the road; if he saw us he might have alerted the castle. Then we moved with what must have been almost no sound or betraying glimpse.

 

But the man in the road addressed us before we could skirt round him. “You're here to join the other two within the fortress,” he said loudly, without turning around. He wore soft gray robes and sandals stained with mud, and his long black hair hung down his back in greasy strings. However, for all his humble appearances he bore the air of a man in control of his situation. His back was straight, and his speech unhurried. And his words had not been a question.

 

Kabuto and I, sensing that this was not a man to be trifled with, leaped from our concealment to stand behind him on the road.

 

“Who are you?” Kabuto asked him. One hand slid surreptitiously into his kunai pouch.

 

“Two children,” the man said, without turning around. “You're both young. Genin, I don't doubt, given the rash way you address me. But I almost didn't notice you, so you must be skilled; you must be nearing Chuunin rank. Well on your way to becoming lapdogs of Konoha.”

 

After this speech, he fell silent, waiting to see what effect his goading might have had.

 

“What Village are you from?” I asked him, laying a warning hand on Kabuto's elbow to keep him from actually drawing a kunai. I saw no need to ask if the stranger was a shinobi or not; that he had taken notice of our passage indicated that he was.

 

Finally, perhaps because my question wasn't one he deemed stupid, the man turned around. I saw that he had a pale, narrow face, a wide, sneering mouth, and eyes that regarded me with the slit-thin gaze of a snake feigning sleep. He was smiling.

 

And he wore no hitae ate.

 

“How foolish,” he said. “What Village you come from doesn't make you who you are.” The narrowed eyes slid sideways to Kabuto at my side, then back to me, dismissing my teammate. “You are an Uchiha,” he observed, looking at me more intently now. There was a hungry look in his eye that I immediately disliked---I was a boy who knew very well how people looked when they wanted something from you.

 

“You're from Konoha,” I replied. I don't know how I knew that, even to this day. It wasn't because he knew I was an Uchiha---in those days the clan was internationally famous. Possibly it was because he hadn't answered my question, and because he spoke aloud with the same air of malcontent I'd just been beginning to feel. It was the air of a man who'd cast aside all fetters chaining him to what he'd once been.

 

“I was from Konoha,” he agreed. “But now I'm here. I'm waiting for the fireworks to start.”

 

This time I drew my own weapon from its pouch. “What do you know?” I asked in a low voice. He knew something of my team's agenda; I was sure of it. And I was prepared to silence him if need be.

 

We stared each other down for a moment; myself tense and ready, he more like a man eyeing a dog he thinks may bite him.

 

“Itachi-kun . . .” Kabuto sounded, for once, as if he had no idea what to do.

 

A slow smile spread across the stranger's thin lips. One corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “Your eyes, boy,” he said. “Aren't you the eager one?”

 

I had activated the Sharingan without realizing it. I didn't relax my stance.

 

He laughed, short and harsh. “Keh. What if I were to tell you, boy, that I have no intention of stopping you from killing Gyoichi-sama? That I support the noble intentions of your mission? Will you just go around me without doing anything?” He tilted his head to one side, curiously. “Or will you kill me anyway, because you want to?”

 

Finally, I straightened, though I kept my knife in hand. “I don't want to kill you.”

 

The stranger laughed, as if at some private joke. “Oh, but your eyes say you do. I shall let you pass, anyway, of course. I want to see this pathetic excuse for a feudal lord die, as well.”

 

I nodded briskly, turning away from him and motioning for Kabuto to follow me. I was grateful that our mission required haste from us, because I didn't like the way those snake-slit eyes looked at me.

 

“Are you sure you won't regret letting me live?” the stranger asked slyly as we passed him by. “What if your mission is wrong, and killing the tyrant will make things worse in the future? What if I told you I'm glad you're the ones sullying your hands because otherwise I'd have to?”

 

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a backward glance.

 

Kabuto did, though. “We have no reason to kill you,” he countered. “Don't ask pointless questions.”

 

I could hear the grin in the stranger's voice as he answered: “Reason, boy, is a very subjective thing. In the end, it all comes down to what you really want and what you have the balls to reach out and take.”

 

We crested the hill and started downward, leaving him behind.

 

Two hours later, Aburame Akito and Uchiha Setsuna were dead, a new country had been formed, and in Kabuto the seeds of treason had been sown.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

“Sensei, your eyes---” I whispered, frowning.

 

“We'll speak of it later,” Setsuna cut me off, slicing his hand through the air in negation. “Remember your task.”

 

My task was simple enough. We were huddled in an alcove down a long stone hall from the room where Gyoichi and his son were taking the evening meal. My body was taut with nerves. One hand clenched so tight around itself the nails left white indentations in my palm. We had been concealing ourselves in shadow until nightfall, so the cover of darkness would aid in retreating undiscovered. And now we were ready to move. Somehow, Setsuna-sensei was going to force the son to kill the father. All I had to do was use the Sharingan afterward to subdue the son. We were to make it look as if there had been a fight resulting in the death of one and the injury of the other.

 

“Let's go,” Setsuna told me, averting his gaze. We started down the hall.

 

Planning to kill someone and actually doing it are two very different things. When you plan, the targets are just names on a paper, or on your tongue if your purpose requires too much secrecy to write anything down. Just names. Then you round the corner and see them: human faces. One old, one young, and a third you hadn't expected to see, because the son also has a mother and she's staring at you in white-faced alarm as you reach for your knife. Your Sensei's eyes are rust-red, filled with spirals whose edges are sharp as shuriken blades. The room wavers, and you shut your eyes to try not to look at him, because you realize he is using an illusion technique and you don't want to be drawn into it. You hear a scream. It's the woman's, because her son has just taken the knife your Sensei placed in his hand and driven it into the father's throat. Even before the target's body hits the floor your Sensei speaks your name, because you're not just a spectator are you? You are a part of this. So do what you must. You open your eyes and activate their power, grasping the son by the collar of his robes and forcing him to meet your gaze. His eyes are very wide and frightened, and his face is a boy's. He is a boy; not much older than you are. Sleep, you whisper, wanting him to stop looking at you like you're a monster, so that you can be done with this mission and go home to where red is just the color of berries and sunsets and the scab on your brother's knee where he fell running . . .

 

Mercifully, I had used the Sharingan well and Gyoichi's son sagged in my arms. He slept immediately, but thanks to the technique Setsuna had used he would remember only what we wanted him to---that he had killed his own father. I laid him carefully on the floor near the door, so that when the castle guards found him it would appear that he had fallen unconscious after the fight with Gyoichi. And I stood over him for a moment, knowing that more was expected of me but battling the nausea that twisted my stomach.

 

“ITACHI.” Setsuna wasn't looking at me, but his voice came like a whip-crack. I half-turned and saw him walk briskly to the woman, who knelt on the other side of the low table, a tea cup still clutched absurdly in one hand. Her face was so white she looked dead. Perhaps she knew she was already dead. “Itachi,” Sensei repeated as he handed her the knife, “do what you came to do.” To the woman, he bent nearer and whispered, “Kill yourself.”

 

I sucked in a deep breath, turning back to the boy lying prone in front of me. He lay with his face turned to the side. A stray lock of hair curled over one cheek. It's strange how you notice these things when you're clasping a blade between your sweaty fingers.

 

I stabbed him once. In the left arm, where he could bleed to death if left too long but he would not die immediately. I did it at that moment because I did not want to watch the boy's mother die.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

“Sensei, your eyes . . .”

 

“Now is not the time, Itachi,” he snapped.

 

We were running again. The sound of explosions and men shouting echoed through the stone halls; Akito's and Kabuto's diversions had already begun---in two separate places, to heighten the confusion they generated. I heard the sound of footsteps---light, shinobi footsteps coming toward us around a corner---and Setsuna grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out a window after him. We landed crouched on a roof below, then took off at breakneck speed along its peaked ridge, careful not to step hard on any of the tiles and break them. We had run into an unforeseen complication: Gyoichi had hired some of the Fuma Clan---an independent shinobi clan located in that part of the Fire Country. Unlike the clumsier guards, other shinobi could easily pursue us---especially shinobi who knew the terrain better than we did.

 

When we finally regrouped with our teammates, just inside the fortress walls, we found Kabuto and Akito locked in a standoff. Kabuto stood facing two shinobi opponents, one of whom held Akito with chakra wires about his throat. I knew just how quickly one could kill one's target with that technique, and I hurled four kunai as I landed on the ground, aiming to cut the wires. As Akito and his captor stumbled apart, the bugs that the Aburame Chuunin had been sending quietly along the wires now swarmed up his enemy's fingers and arms and onto his face. Setsuna dispatched with the other Fuma ninja quickly; he was in a hurry. Then the four of us scaled the high walls and dropped down on the other side. We hit the ground running.

 

We had taken precious care to see that all who recognized us for the Leaf-nin that we were ended up dead. All that remained was to get clear of the area to completely avoid discovery. This way, even though Gyoichi's son and officials would surely surmise that Konoha had sent the assassins, there would be no witnesses and therefore no legalities. Technically, a Village is not authorized to kill the feudal lords of its country. That law exists because civilians fear us even as they use us to avoid sullying their own hands. They fear shinobi acquiring positions of political power. But in the case of this mission, all the Fire Country's feudal lords agreed assassination was necessary, and so long as we left no witnesses they were willing to look the other way where the law was concerned. Brutal, but necessary.

 

At the time, however, I didn't know that the part where we forced the son to kill the father was not part of the mission. Setsuna lied---a lie that cost the boy's mother her life and the boy his mental stability. My Sensei lied because there was much he stood to gain if a weak boy inherited Gyoichi's lands.

 

There's always a price.

 

We cleared the hills that ringed the torch-lit fortress and descended into the darkened fens beyond. That was where Orochimaru lay in wait for us. Don't mistake me, though; I don't mean to say he was hiding. He's an arrogant man. He was standing in the middle of the road, facing the same direction as when we'd left him, with his arms still folded behind his back. He offered my Sensei an asp's grin.

 

“It's done, then, is it?” he remarked, as congenially as if what we'd just done was some D-ranked mission shoveling barn-dung. My whole body clenched with anger; I could not get the boy's face out of my head, and this sneering bastard was laughing.

 

But my Sensei---whom I had never in my life known to kneel before anyone---sank to one knee in a crouch, with one fist planted on the earth, in the manner of a servant before his master. “I've fulfilled the requirements you asked of me. I've earned my place among you.”

 

At the time, I had no idea what he meant by this.

 

The sneering stranger, however, did. “You're a prime candidate, to be sure,” he told my Sensei. “Uchiha Setsuna, of that prized clan. However . . . there's one thing left to do before you join.” His gaze slid sideways, to me. “Kill that boy.”

 

I saw my Sensei reach for his kunai pouch and tensed. There was no hesitation in the hand that drew the knife. None at all.

 

Setsuna rose and flew at me.

 

He was swift, but I was just as swift. Training with Shisui had made me fleeting as a shadow. I slipped between the kunai he threw easily. There were wires attached to the handles of each; he meant to trap me quickly and pull the wires tight, garroting my body until I burst. But my Sharingan eyes caught his trap early and I razed the wires apart with my shuriken.

 

I was almost on top of him when I realized the true nature of his trap. He had used the wires and the kunai as a feint, to lure me into close combat with him. I hurtled toward him, teeth gritted with the determination to end this before he could spring whatever jutsu his trap held.

 

He stopped me with his eyes.

 

The Mangekyou Sharingan was, to put it crudely, the Uchiha Clan's dirty little secret. I don't know if it still is---they may have burnt the scroll after what I did. I hope not, but it seems likely they would have while reeling from the horror. If you want to see what someone fears, mark well what he chooses to destroy. It's a saying that we---the Akatsuki---use often.

 

To this day I don't know the circumstances under which Setsuna acquired that advanced dojutsu. Looking back on it now, though, I judge his skill with it to be rather poor, or he would have used Tsukiyomi on me to incapacitate me fully. But he didn't, and it saved me.

 

I saw the world melt around me and drip out from beneath my feet into an endless void. Really, my Sensei wasn't very original. I knew immediately that the vision wasn't real, even though it felt real enough because my skin was burning where it melted. Out of sheer determination I bit back the screams, so hard my tongue bled.

 

When next I returned to myself, I had sunk to my knees. Akito stood between Setsuna and I. His bugs had swarmed in our Sensei's face, covering his eyes and breaking the contact. A kunai blade was embedded in my chest, just below the collar bone on the left side. Even with his vision was blocked, Setsuna's blade had nearly found its mark. That was why he released the jutsu and let me go---he was trying to kill me, not torture me. But I was still conscious.

 

“KABUTO!” Akito shouted, never once taking his eyes off our Sensei. “See to Itachi!” The insects were burrowing into Setsuna's flesh, seeking to damage the tenketsu lines to prevent him from using any of the formidable Uchiha ninjutsu against us, but Setsuna had somehow managed to produce another handful of kunai between the fingers of his left hand.

 

Fighting for breath against the tightness and the pain in my chest, I tilted my head forward and sideways and saw, out of the corner of my watering eye, that Kabuto had frozen. I had never seen that happen before, even though I had always known him to be one to hang back and analyze a situation before rushing in.

 

“K-Kabu---” I whispered, crawling toward him. I wanted him to take the knife out. Every time I exhaled the edges twisting fractionally inside me sent pain searing through the nerves of my stomach and neck and left shoulder. Setsuna's kunai whizzed past me, behind me, grazed one ear.

 

I craned my neck and finally saw what Kabuto was looking at. The stranger who had started all this no longer seemed content to be a bystander. Orochimaru convulsed like a man retching and fat snakes came roiling out his mouth. All of this happened so quickly I blinked twice and it was done. When his lips had closed behind the tail of the last, he stretched out his arms and the serpents coiled round and round them, slithering toward his hands. Then he lunged toward me, with greater speed than I'd expected of someone who'd seemed so complacent before. This time Kabuto moved, attempting to rush behind him to catch him off guard before he could reach me. Instead, one of the snakes torqued its body and went seething back up his arm, over his shoulder, and sank its fangs deep into Kabuto's forearm when Kabuto's knife was still inches away from Orochimaru's neck.

 

Orochimaru was nearly upon me. I saw the eyes of the snakes, like cold diamonds, fixed on my face. I was weakening fast. But my Sharingan eyes also saw the chakra gathering in the snakes' mouths, and knew that if I surrendered to this attack I would not survive. With the kind of strength that can only be born of desperation I wrenched the kunai from my own flesh and flung it at him.

 

I can hit a target in the dark. I can hit several at once, simply from perfect visual memory. And I can throw faster than an eye-blink. Between that snap of my wrist and when my enemy halted his rush, there seemed to have been no time elapsed at all. But a heartbeat's span had passed, and I saw that he had withdrawn one snake-wound arm to catch my kunai in his fist, the point literally a finger's away from the spot between his eyes.

 

Having bought myself time by stopping his charge, I scrambled backward on all fours, my mind already formulating plans of action.

 

Ten feet behind Orochimaru, Kabuto had sunk to his knees now. The snake still held him fast, though he quickly produced a knife in his left hand and was stabbing at it. The knife would not pierce the scaly hide.

 

While I had been preoccupied with Orochimaru, Setsuna caught Akito with chakra wires round the throat. My Sensei was enraged beyond reason; he was in pain and he was losing and he knew it, and he was determined not to die alone. He no longer cared who he killed. Or maybe he actually did still think he could kill me in that condition---with bugs eating away at his tenketsu---and was stupid enough to think Orochimaru would heal him afterward just as long as he did what he'd been told to do.

 

Whatever was going through Setsuna's mind in that moment, while the insects ate his eyes, while the wires he wove tightened round Akito's neck . . . it doesn't matter any more. I killed him so quickly I was hardly aware of what I'd done until it was finished. A kunai blade driven into the vertebra at the base of the skull, severing vital nerves. I had pushed myself to my feet and rushed, with a strength that only comes from that deep core of something that transcends pain and weakness. My hand moved as if of its own accord, and my heart went empty and my mind went sharp and my vision went clearer than it had ever been before. The world sharpened as I drove the knife downward, as the crack came, as he dropped like a stone---a twitching, gasping, human stone.

 

When he hit the ground, with a thud that thundered and echoed in the caverns of my brain, time slowed down again to its normal pace. His fingers clawed at the earth where he landed. I tore my gaze from him quickly and severed the wires binding Akito. Akito slumped to his knees, gasping a slower, deeper countermeasure of breath over the horrid wet gurgling that whistled between Setsuna's lips. I bent and helped my teammate to remove the last of the garrote from his neck.

 

That was when I realized Orochimaru was laughing. And that he had abandoned pursuit of me.

 

Slowly, I turned to him. A wide grin split his face. “Uchiha Itachi, wasn't it?” he said lazily. “It seems you've robbed me of a disciple. Now you must give me another.”

 

My whole body was shaking---my child's body, betraying me as I bled and swayed where I stood. I didn't give him the satisfaction of replying---couldn't have if I'd wanted to. I took one staggering step toward him, still clutching the knife I'd just used to kill my Sensei and save my comrade.

 

“Oh? You do want to kill me?” Orochimaru chuckled. “Well, you're out of your league, boy. But let me let you in on a little secret. I wanted your Sensei dead as well as Gyoichi-sama. You've actually done me a favor. So I'm going to let you go. But first . . . kill one of your teammates.”

 

My vision was wavering. I fought with sheer willpower to keep my eyes focused. “One?” I croaked. My throat had gone dry as bone.

 

With the kunai I'd thrown at him he gestured toward Akito, who knelt beside me, and then toward Kabuto, who also knelt clutching his wounded forearm. I didn't doubt there was strong venom in the snakes' fangs; Kabuto's forehead was beaded with sweat.

 

“Pick one,” Orochimaru told me, “and you and the other will go free. Here's your chance to prove your worth. Here's life and death. I lay it in your hands.”

 

I merely stood there, staring at him and hating him more than I'd ever hated anyone. My hatred was all I had left to fling at him. “Don't ask stupid things,” I said hoarsely. “I don't want to `prove myself' in anyone's eyes.” Even as I said it, I knew I was going to die there. And my mind, ever well-honed and resourceful, was offering me strategies for killing either Kabuto or Akito. Presenting reasons why I should choose each of them. Weighing human life like meat on a butcher's scale.

 

My head reeled, and briefly I saw the world at a slant. I was going to lose consciousness soon, I knew.

 

What happened next I only remember as if it were a dream. It's odd---I remember other even more terrible parts of my life so clearly I can close my eyes and watch them come to life . . . But not that night. Looking back, it's almost like seeing myself from a distance, as if it were someone else forcing himself to remain upright while whispering No, no, I won't, I WON'T. Charging. Fire jutsu burning empty air because the enemy already moved. Stumbling an about face to see him poised with my kunai at Akito's throat. He had been waiting for me to turn around and see him, so he could show me how powerless I was. He ran his tongue along the flat of the blade, lapping up my blood.

 

My useless Sharingan eyes showed me where his hand would strike even before it did.

 

Akito died swiftly, in that dream.

 

I remained standing. Barely. No words to fling at him; there weren't any.

 

Somewhere behind me, I heard Kabuto gasp, “Don't kill me! Please! I'll do what you say, just don't kill me . . .”

 

Don't kill me, he said. In that moment we'd ceased to be us.

 

I learned something from Kabuto upon hearing that: human beings are sacks of meat. In the end, they cry out for themselves and what they want and what they deserve because to them, that's all there is. Kabuto, groveling, yammering something about his abilities, holding up his stricken arm. Disgusting.

 

“I give you both a choice,” Orochimaru told Kabuto and I, tossing our dead teammate aside. Akito's body fell across Setsuna's. “I'm letting you go. But someday I want you to join me. Once you've realized that even your mighty Konoha must still lick the boots of the civilian lords. Once you realize your precious clans are nothing but names to bind you to small-minded servitude. Come to me, when you've found the courage to piss on your meaningless ideals and do something that actually means something.”

 

Something in his speech was like the darker echo of my doubts. “Not . . . worthless,” I whispered, falling to my hands and knees. My head was growing lighter and lighter, and I could scarcely feel the dirt beneath my palms. But I had to defy him. If I didn't, I was accepting that my doubts were true.

 

“Don't try to judge me, stupid brat,” Orochimaru sneered. “You don't even know what you are.”

 

“Uchiha,” I whispered. “Itachi. Son of---”

 

“Names,” he snapped. “Son, brother, student, Genin, Uchiha, boy. Labels. You won't know yourself until you know your limits. When you realize your boundaries are far bigger than four Village walls. So think about that, Uchiha Itachi. Do you know what you can do? Do you really? You don't yet. Go home, lick your wounds, comfort yourself with their lies about how the Village, the Clan is all there is.”

 

Crunch of gravel beneath his sandals. He left us there, crouched bleeding on the road. With him he took the bodies of our teammate and Sensei.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

It was nearly a week before Kabuto and I returned to Konoha. We moved very slowly at first; Kabuto's healing abilities saved us both, but I had lost a lot of blood and Kabuto a lot of chakra. When we'd recounted all that had befallen us to the Hokage himself, it was judged that we'd done well in the worst of all possible situations. I left the office after Kabuto, trying to ignore the way the Sandaime's piercing stare followed me out. I worried him, I think. But he had nothing concrete to hold against me, so he did nothing.

 

As I made my way down the old, familiar streets of the Uchiha compound, shopkeepers and friends of the family alike stopped what they were doing to call out in greeting. I nodded to some of them; others I was too weary to respond to. My clothes, despite several attempts to scrub them clean, were deep-stained with blood---my own and Setsuna's and Akito's and, in smaller, darker blots on my sandals, that of Gyoichi's son.

 

When I set foot on the threshold of my house, I saw my entire family sitting in the receiving hall, waiting for me. Sasuke sat beside my father, solemn-faced and tiny but obviously trying to imitate Chichi-ue's dignified bearing. But when he saw me come through the door his face lit up, and he practically threw himself at me. I stumbled back a step, but he'd wrapped his arms around me so firmly I didn't trip.

 

“Sasuke, Itachi is tired,” my father said sharply.

 

My brother pulled away from me and went to sit down again, biting his lip. I followed suit, purposefully sitting far away from him. It was as if the touch of his small hand on mine had burned me.

 

When you see too much red, the world goes colorless for a while, and takes a long time to brighten again.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

I spoke very little of my experiences on the mission, though my proud relatives plied me with questions. In fact, I spoke very little at all. I began avoiding everyone, especially Sasuke. Seeing him smile at me so trustingly made me see the stray lock of hair, curled down over a boy's cheek as he lay helpless on the floor.

 

And Setsuna's and Akito's deaths were problematic for Kabuto and I in more ways than one. We were a broken team. We threw ourselves into training, because despite our acclaim in Konoha requests for our services on missions weren't exactly pouring in any more. In the grand scale of things, thanks to Orochimaru's interference the mission had ended in blunder. Lord Gyoichi's assassination wasn't supposed to be traced back to Konoha, but it was. He'd somehow planted Setsuna's body on the scene, and with a dead Uchiha in the hands of the Fuma Clan Konoha was forced to barter for the corpse's return to protect the Uchiha bloodline. The cost: Gyoichi's son, who succeeded his father, ordered the secession of his fiefdom from the Fire Country.

 

The Rice Country was born.

 

And without the protection of the Leaf, the new lord naively fell prey to Orochimaru's lies. But that's another story altogether.

 

The point is, our `blunder' had cost the Fire lords a large chunk of the country.

 

Seeking to improve our positions, Kabuto and I took the next Chuunin Exam as a two-man team. I saved his life in the Forest of Death. He lost his match in the arena afterward. I was finally officially named Chuunin; Kabuto wasn't. But he actually seemed sincere when he said he didn't mind. I didn't realize at the time, but he was even quicker to see the meaninglessness of titles than I was. He had decided `Chuunin' was a name he didn't need.

 

I was not as ready to think beyond the patterns of my life. Yet.

 

But I did have one very important question for my father. I had asked it twice before, and gotten no answer.

 

“Chichi-ue, why were Setsuna-sensei's eyes different?”

 

END OF CHAPTER 3

 

Yamisui: Next chapter, Chapter 4: “ANBU”. Where it all begins to unravel.