“So this is how it’s going to be, huh?” Kakashi muttered.
Beside him, Itachi held his breath. At that moment, his team leader, the lower half of his face covered by a black mask, was already gone. Itachi jumped off the cliff after him.
The dead bodies of his comrades lay in the valley ahead. Land of Frost ninjas had killed them.
The two lands had been on the verge of forming an alliance when it happened. The alliance was to be made official ten days later, and they had been in the middle of a mission to exchange letters stating the final terms, when the ninjas from the Land of Frost suddenly bared their teeth.
The enemy had been uninterested in an alliance from the start.
Four Konoha ninjas up against ten from the Land of Frost. Outnumbered. In the blink of an eye, the Konoha ninjas tasked with the duty of receiving the letter had been killed.
If they witnessed the breakdown of negotiations, they were to exterminate the enemy: that was the mission Itachi and his team had been given. In other words, they were not to move until the situation was clear. Thus, their initial response had been delayed, leading to the annihilation of their allies.
The moment ten Land of Frost ninjas appeared—a suspiciously large force—it had felt very much like a breakdown in the process. If the Anbu had leapt out at that point in time, their comrades might not have died. However, even if Itachi had been leading the team, he couldn’t have moved until all four were wiped out.
Ahead of him, Kakashi landed in the midst of the enemy, his right hand already piercing one of the ninjas. A stream of blue lightning enveloped his arm.
Chidori … Kakashi’s best technique.
By the time his team leader was pulling his arm back out, Itachi had landed dead center among the enemy.
There were two other Anbu with them. One was Sugaru. And the other was a ninja called Tenzo. He was a little younger than Kakashi, but his career in the Anbu had already been fairly long.
“Konoha Anbu!” an enemy ninja shouted.
In the next instant, a thick tree branch tangled up around the man’s throat and tightened, like a snake. Unable to push back against the incredible force of it, the man expired, long tongue lolling from his mouth.
It was Tenzo’s jutsu. He was able to use Wood Style, a ninjutsu only the first Hokage, Hashirama, had been able to use.
“Konoha never had any intention of making an alliance with us, hm?” another enemy said to Kakashi.
“You came at us first.” Kakashi didn’t wait for the other man to argue the fact; Chidori dug into the other ninja’s stomach.
Itachi heard a shriek from behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw an enemy hurtling toward him, a long sword held up above his head.
Itachi turned around. The sword closed in on the top of his head. He quickly lifted his arm, and grabbed the wrist of the enemy’s hand on the hilt.
“Ngh!”
“Give it up,” Itachi advised, still clutching the man’s wrist.
Unable to bring the sword down on Itachi, the enemy glared at him, cold sweat popping up on his forehead.
The sharingan.
His enemy shuddered violently once, and then completely relaxed. Like a marionette with its strings cut, the man had started to droop and fall toward the ground, when his head rolled off into space before Itachi’s eyes.
A ninja blade glittered to the rear of the enemy. Sugaru.
“The mission from the Lord Hokage is the extermination of the enemy,” Sugaru murmured in a voice only loud enough for Itachi to hear. He had seen through Itachi’s secret plan to trap the man in genjutsu with the sharingan, and make him pass out.
There was no need to exterminate the enemy. Whether their envoys returned or not, the incident here would soon be known to the Land of Frost. It was vengeance enough to take out the ones who had murdered the four Konoha ninjas. Letting the others live, and return home to relate the true power of Konoha, would be a more effective check against the Land of Frost.
“I know,” he told Sugaru’s back, as the man was already turning toward a new enemy; then, Itachi set his sights on a new target.
There were four enemy ninjas left. They had already lost the will to fight.
Sugaru’s blade flew toward the neck of one on his knees, begging for his life. Beyond him, Tenzo’s Wood Style ninjutsu produced sharp branches that pierced the back of a female ninja trying to flee.
“This will make the Land of Frost and Konoha enemies!”
“Your lives will prevent that,” Kakashi said gently, as his arm ripped into the other man’s solar plexus.
“Itachi!” Tenzo.
Itachi caught sight of an enemy coming toward him with a grim look, prepared for death. Holding kunai in both hands, clenching his teeth as he raced toward Itachi, the boy was still not even ten years old.
The Land of Frost was small. Although the larger battles were no more, in a country that still had few ninjas and a national power that was immature, even a child like this had plenty of war potential.
“Gah!” His battle cry already sounded like a sob.
Itachi met the boy head-on. A sharp pain raced through his stomach. The boy’s kunai had stabbed him. The slender shoulders shook fiercely as they touched Itachi’s belly. The boy’s terror had surpassed his limits, and tears began to fill his eyes.
“Itachi!” Kakashi shouted.
“I’m all right,” he replied calmly, and Kakashi and the others watched, surrounding him from a distance.
Shaking like a leaf, the boy slowly lifted his face. Tears spilled out of the eyes that looked up at Itachi. “Ah. Aaaunh.” His fear became sound, and slipped out of him.
“You’re a proper ninja now. Be strong,” Itachi told his enemy kindly.
In his confusion and fear, the boy had no idea what was going on. He shook his head from side to side, and desperately tried to turn his eyes away from reality.
“You didn’t run away; you came right at me. So, I want to treat you with the courtesy a full-fledged ninja deserves.” Itachi grabbed his kunai from behind, so that the boy couldn’t see. He ran his blade up from below into the slender nape of his crying enemy’s neck. He gently pulled the kunai from his own stomach, and stepped back.
A spray of blood shot out from the boy’s neck. None of it splattered Itachi. This, too, was etiquette for a ninja. The young body fell onto the pile of corpses, neither enemy nor ally.
“This is also a battlefield,” Itachi murmured, not loud enough for anyone else to hear.
Am I actually getting closer to my dream? Itachi asked himself in his heart. He felt as though his body were gradually growing heavier, buried in the easy flow of time. His childhood days when he prayed with all his heart that he would become a ninja stronger than anyone else were already in the distance, and the bonds coiling about his entire body were trying to trap Itachi in the framework of “just a ninja.”
If this is how it is, I want to just walk away from the village, the clan, the Anbu, and be free …
He knew that this would never be allowed.
The boy’s eyes, devoid of light, stared endlessly at the troubled Itachi.
“Make a list of the number of expected participants at the time of action, invasion routes, attack targets, and assassination targets. I’d like to decide on the crucial day of action at the next meeting. Put together your opinions before then. If you have any ideas, you can speak them at any time. Simply make sure to be careful of the eyes of the people of the village.”
When Fugaku finished speaking, the brethren relaxed for a moment. They were loosening up at the thought of the end of the meeting. But that easy calm was shattered by the tense voice of Yashiro.
“Is Itachi here?”
Itachi felt a disgust at the voice calling his name.
When he didn’t answer, the voice called his name again in irritation. “Itachi!”
“I’m here.” Itachi raised a heavy arm.
Rather than rebuke Itachi for his attitude, Yashiro simply stared at him with cold eyes. “You were there at the breakdown of negotiations with the Land of Frost the other day, yes?”
Itachi said nothing.
“Answer me.”
“Anbu missions are not to be spoken of to outsiders.”
“Are you seriously saying that to me?” A deep groove grew between Yashiro’s eyebrows.
Itachi stared at the narrow eyes before him without responding.
“For what purpose did you join the Anbu?”
Itachi was silent again.
“To obtain a variety of information from a place close to the center of the village, and report to us,” Yashiro answered himself.
“Yashiro.” As if to toss his silent son a lifeline, his father said the name of his trusted retainer.
Yashiro made no move to answer him, but simply continued to glare at Itachi. “What have you brought to us since joining the Anbu? Not once have we heard the secrets of the village from your mouth.”
“I just don’t know any, so I can’t talk about them.”
“Is it really only that?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” The spirit of rebellion flickered in Itachi’s eyes.
Yashiro took this with a daring smile crawling across his face, while a man with long hair stood up beside him. Uchiha Inabi. He, too, was Itachi’s father’s trusted confidant. “You’re turning on us, aren—”
“Enough!” Fugaku roared.
Both Yashiro and Inabi were forced into silence at this rare display of anger from Fugaku. “You both understand exactly what this time means for the clan. We cannot follow through on these serious matters when we are at each other’s throats.”
The men were silent. Finally, Yashiro sat down; disgruntled, Inabi followed suit.
“You sit, too, Itachi.” His father glared. “Itachi.”
His father’s voice sounded weak to him as he stood there still. Almost like an entreaty.
“Excuse me.” The pain in Itachi’s chest naturally turned into words, and spilled out.
His father desperately tried to pull everyone together. Why was he being so servile, trying to reconcile everyone? Was the framework of the clan that important? To Itachi, it looked as though his father were being toyed with by the passion of the younger men.
I don’t understand …
“At any rate, the next meeting will decide our path. It will be an important meeting. Be aware that absences will not be tolerated.”
The meeting ended with turmoil still in the air.
Itachi began to walk home alone, without meeting anyone’s eyes. He didn’t even see Shisui or Izumi.