Itachi plunged his blade into the chest of the still-smiling Mezu, without so much as flinching.
It had already been an hour since he put Izumi to sleep. He had murdered too many of his brethren to count, but Itachi still kept running.
His heart had long since frozen over. He had also forgotten to keep in mind that it was all for the sake of the village. He simply continued to single-mindedly swing his sword.
The target’s father and mother, and then his wife. When the boy, old enough to have just started at the academy, stopped moving, he heard a shriek behind him. The voice was familiar.
The man fled down the hallway, the sound of his feet almost exaggeratedly loud. He jumped down into the entryway, and ripped open the door.
Itachi went after him. He came out onto the road.
The man looked awkward in flight. His throat stiff with fear, perhaps, he didn’t even scream. Although there was already no one else left in the area. He could cry out all he wanted, but no one would hear him.
The man slipped through a stone gate on the edge of the road. Beyond it was a park. Playground equipment was set out on the square site. The man pushed past the swings so desperately, it was almost pitiable; he had made it to the center of the open space, when he fell headfirst.
Itachi stood a sword-length ahead of him, looking down on the man as he tried to find his feet. “Give up.”
The man’s white hair shook at Itachi’s cool words. Yashiro.
“K-killing me won’t solve anything, you know. There’s another leader. Even Lord Fugaku doesn’t know about him. I was being controlled.”
“Even now, at this late stage, you’re still trying to hide in someone else’s shadow?”
“You have to believe me. I was just trying to do what he wanted. He’s the one who—” Yashiro’s eyes grew wide and froze on a spot behind Itachi. “Y-you …”
“Been a while, hm? Although I guess I did just see you two days ago.”
Yashiro began trembling, eyes still fixed on Madara. “Why?”
Madara laughed, exasperated at the childish question. “Don’t call me for this sort of trivial thing, Itachi.”
They had decided in advance on a way to join up in an emergency. If Itachi kept an image of Madara in mind and emitted chakra, Madara would use his space-time ninjutsu, and appear before him.
“Sorry, but I chose Itachi. That’s all,” Madara said smoothly, and it appeared that Yashiro, still gaping up at him, had lost the will to say anything further. “Well, it’s probably no use, but you should try to resist as best you can.”
“H-hold on a—”
“I’ll leave the rest to you. I’m going to keep working,” Madara said to Itachi, and disappeared once more into thin air.
“The feeling when something you believed was absolute is made to crumble. Do you understand it a little too, now?”
“Hngh!”
Because of these men, Shisui had despaired for the clan, lost everything, and died. I hope this at least can be comfort to you, Itachi said to his friend.
“So, what are you going to do?” he asked, thinking it was pointless to ask, even as he waited for Yashiro’s answer. If Yashiro were the kind of man who would acknowledge his own crimes, he wouldn’t struggle so vainly like this.
“I-I really do understand how you feel. We’ll call off the coup d’état. S-so please …”
“Begging for your life?”
“Please! Itachi! Uchiha Itachi!”
Yashiro was beyond pathetic. He was conceited enough to think he could stop the coup at his own discretion. If he hadn’t been spurred on by Madara, the clan might have been able to go down a different path. When Itachi thought about this, a desire to kill so powerful it was strange even to him rose up in his heart.
“Stand up.” Itachi’s voice was emotionless, and Yashiro looked up at him, opening his narrow eyes as wide as possible. “You’re a ninja. How about standing up and fighting?”
Yashiro said nothing.
“Have you forgotten your pride?”
Trying to somehow rein in his fear, Yashiro yanked himself to his feet, shaking his head all the while. “Don’t underestimate me.”
“Show, don’t tell. How about you just come at me already?” Itachi said flatly, while before him, Yashiro’s eyes shone red.
Not moving to defend himself, Itachi looked straight at the sharingan.
Yashiro’s chakra became a spider’s thread called “visual jutsu,” and raced into Itachi’s body.
“Fire Style!” Yashiro shouted, took a very deep breath, and puffed out his cheeks. He panicked when nothing but air came out.
“What happened to the fire?”
“Huh?!” Yashiro cried out in honest surprise.
Itachi watched coolly. “You make my movements dull with the sharingan, and release Great Fireball Technique. Because you probably anticipate that I’ll leap out of the way, you bring me down in that defenseless moment with a kunai or something. Once you get the drop on me, now it’s time for close combat, so you use your sharingan one more time, and get one step ahead. That’s about it, right?”
He took a step toward Yashiro, who was rooted to the spot.
“Being good at getting along in the world and being good at being a ninja are two totally different things.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Unable to produce words, Yashiro simply stood still, and waited for the approaching Itachi.
“Your brain was so controlled by fear that you didn’t even realize you were caught in my visual jutsu when you fell.”
Hearing this, Yashiro became aware for the first time that Itachi’s eyes were colored crimson.
“I told you to fight so you could truly feel your own powerlessness.”
“Ah, aah.” Saliva drooled out of Yashiro’s open mouth.
“You misjudged me to the bone.” Itachi’s sharingan changed. Mangekyo. “Tsukuyomi.”
The second Mangekyo sharingan of that night invited Yashiro into an unnatural darkness. Crucified on a cross standing in the center of a dark ocean, he whirled his head around in confusion.
The surface of the dark water rose up at points all over, and these gradually took on human form. Infinite Itachis. In their hands, they gripped ninja swords.
“This is a world I control,” Itachi murmured, his hand stretching out toward Yashiro.
“Ngaaah!”
His blade plunged into Yashiro’s stomach. The Itachi who thrust it disappeared into the dark ocean.
“I won’t let you die so easily.”
One blade after the next pierced Yashiro’s body. He became a silver hedgehog, and went limp, motionless. As Itachi returned to the ocean, the swords disappeared from Yashiro’s body. A look of relief rose up onto his face, until a herd of Itachis once more blanketed his field of view.
“The real pain starts now.”
Yashiro’s stiff face was transformed into a smile that was already beyond terror.
Over a span of time that wasn’t even a few seconds in the real world, the two faced each other silently. That moment would have seemed like several days to Yashiro. In the genjutsu space produced by the Mangekyo sharingan, swords were endlessly plunged into his body, over and over. By the time he was released to the real world, Yashiro’s mind was destroyed.
“D-death … D-d-d …” Yashiro trembled and grinned.
Itachi looked down on him, as he slowly drew his sword.
Yashiro was already beyond the capacity to hear his voice. And Itachi had nothing he could say to him at this stage.
His sword flashed mercilessly, and the pitiful man’s head flew up into the moonlit sky.
Itachi returned to the area near the entrance to the compound. There was just one family in the Uchiha compound left alive. Only Uchiha Fugaku’s family …