Chương 30: Actions

The sun was still high when class let out. Every student limped home. Kiba Inuzuka had it the worst. He was flat on the practice field's packed earth, arms spread, staring up at the sky like it owed him an explanation.

"I'm dying," he announced.

"Tell my family I died bravely." Shin was doing better than most—the pain was manageable. He'd had worse. Sasuke wasn't showing anything on his face, but his jaw was tight and he hadn't moved from where he'd landed when his legs gave out. Then there was Naruto. Shin watched him. During drills, Naruto had been in just as rough a shape as Kiba—stumbling, wincing, the same raw patches on both legs. But after sitting still for a few minutes, he'd stood up like nothing had happened.

Shin crouched and rolled up Naruto's pant leg. The skin underneath was barely pink. He stared at it. Interesting. The field had emptied around them. Five of them remained: Shin, Kiba, Shino, Naruto, and Sasuke. Shino had been spared the punishment—his form had been passable—so he sat off to one side and watched the rest of them with his usual quiet.

"You two," Shin said. He looked at Kiba, then across the field at Sasuke.

"Can you walk?"

"If I could walk," Kiba said without opening his eyes, "I'd be walking." He kept going after that. Shin caught the words sadistic and psycho teacher before he stopped listening. Sasuke had tried to stand. He'd gotten halfway up before his legs gave out, caught himself with one hand just before he hit the ground. Shin looked at Naruto.

"Help them."

"Shin—let me help you first—""I'm fine." He stood, got his feet under him. Naruto drifted over anyway, hands hovering, and Shin shook his head once. He reached down for his pant leg and let it drop slowly. The fabric caught on raw skin. He breathed through it.

"Go help one of them." Naruto looked at him—really looked, the way he did sometimes—then glanced between Kiba flat on his back and Sasuke braced against one knee. He went to Kiba.

"Here—" Naruto grabbed his shoulder, hauling upward. Kiba made a sound like he'd been stabbed." Naruto."

"What? You were fine two minutes ago—""I was dying two minutes ago and I'm still dying, you complete idiot —""Can you be a man about this?" Naruto let go long enough to gesture broadly at himself.

"Look at me. Look at Shin. Neither of us is making noise about it."

"Shin is a freak," Kiba said, with genuine feeling. Shin had reached Sasuke by then. He stopped in front of him and held out his hand. Sasuke looked up at him. Then at the hand. He didn't take it. He set his teeth and pushed himself upward—got halfway up, same as before—and this time Shin caught his arm before he went down again.

"Stop that," Shin said. Sasuke's weight settled against him, just enough to stay upright. He tried to pull back and mostly didn't succeed.

"... Why," Sasuke said, quietly, "can you stand?" Shin steadied him. Waited while he found his footing.

"If I couldn't," he said, "who would help you?" A pause. Sasuke turned his head away. The tips of his ears had gone pink." Tch." By the still lake on the village's eastern edge, a white-haired old man sat with his fishing rod and his eyes closed. Hiruzen Sarutobi had walked halfway across Konoha before he found him.

"Nothing better to do than fish?" Homura Mitokado didn't open his eyes.

"You came to watch. What does that say about you?" Hiruzen stood at his back, hands clasped behind him, looking out over the water. The surface was mirror-flat. A heron moved somewhere in the reeds along the far bank.

"Torifu used to like fishing," he said.

"Mm." A small sound from Homura.

"Torifu liked everything except fighting." A pause.

"Nothing like us. Nothing like us at all." Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"Kagami was the same," Homura said.

"..."

"As students of our teacher—they had it rough." The light was shifting. Hiruzen watched the sun's reflection stretch and flatten on the water.

"What's the situation with the Uchiha?" Homura asked.

"I thought you'd changed. The clan meeting is a smokescreen." Homura's tone didn't waver.

"Some things can't be discussed openly in a formal assembly. You know that."

"Whose eyes are they trying to cover, then?" Hiruzen sighed.

"That's a fair question." Homura's eyes opened. He looked at the water the same way Hiruzen did—with the same stillness, the same weight of decades behind it.

"What," he said slowly, "is Fugaku Uchiha trying to obscure?" If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The unease had been building in Itachi all morning. The meeting's agenda: asset management, distribution of clan holdings, revenue from family-operated businesses. Dry and practical. The kind of matters that had never required his presence before—he was too young, too far outside these particular decisions, regardless of rank.

And yet his father had told him last night that he needed to be here. Why. Shisui wasn't here. And then there was the other thing—his father's Mangekyō, and what Itachi hadn't quite let himself think through, and the growing sense that he needed to speak with Shisui before something moved without him. He leaned forward slightly.

"Father." Fugaku's gaze stayed on the courtyard.

"Mm."

"I just remembered—there's something urgent at ANBU that needs my attention—""I've already cleared your schedule for the day." Mild.

"Your team will handle it."

"Some of it requires the squad captain's clearance—" Fugaku's eyes moved toward him for just a moment. Itachi thought he saw something that might have been contempt.

"Kaoma." The man speaking in the center of the courtyard—mid-forties, currently in the middle of an explanation about the eastern trade holdings—paused.

"Clan Head."

"My son still has much to learn about these matters." Something warm moved across Fugaku's face. It looked, from the outside, exactly like paternal affection.

"Would you walk him through the particulars? He'll need to understand all of this eventually."

"Of course. Itachi, please—" Father, Itachi thought. You're doing this on purpose. He breathed. Let his face settle. He stood. In his black kimono, there was something in the cut of it, something that made him seem almost soft. His expression said otherwise.

"I have one question," he said. Every face in the courtyard turned to him.

"Why," he said, "is Shisui Uchiha not here?" Silence.

"As the strongest member of our clan, he has more than enough standing to attend." His gaze moved across the assembled faces, unhurried.

"The Shisui line descends from Kagami-sama. Considerable holdings. A voice in family affairs." A pause.

"If this meeting concerns clan business and assets—why isn't he here?" No one answered. Every eye in the courtyard shifted toward Fugaku.

"These younger generations," Hiruzen muttered, "never stopping to think about the trouble they cause their elders." He'd found a flat rock near Homura's spot and settled onto it. His pipe was out—he packed it, breathed on the leaves until they caught, and exhaled a slow ring that dissolved in the evening air. Homura ignored him. His float bobbed. Then the rod dipped hard. He hauled back, arm extending, and a fat koi came up swinging on the line.

He worked the hook free without ceremony and dropped the fish into the bucket at his side. Hiruzen leaned over to look.

"Not bad. Give me two when you're done."

"Can you cook?"

"My housekeeper can." Homura glanced back at him.

"You hired someone?"

"Konohamaru needs someone there when I'm not home. Can't leave a child that age alone."

"... Fair enough." A pause. Homura rebaited the hook, cast again, and let the float settle on the water.

"Asuma still not coming back?"

"Nothing yet."

"What's the appeal of bodyguard work?" Homura's voice was even, but there was something underneath it.

"What is he thinking?"

"... He can walk his own road."

"Konohamaru and Asuma." Homura looked at the water.

"Both of them have had it rough." Hiruzen felt that settle into his chest. He was about to say something when Homura added, without inflection:"Having you as a grandfather and a father." He inhaled wrong. The smoke hit the back of his throat and he spent the next several seconds coughing into his sleeve. Homura gave no indication of hearing this.

"If Biwako were still here," he said quietly, to no one in particular.

"..." Hiruzen tapped the ash out of his pipe against his boot. He was sixty-some years old—he'd stopped counting exactly. His teacher was gone. The people he'd grown up training alongside. His own students. His wife. And he was still here, still signing papers, still presiding over a village of ten thousand, still watching the Uchiha inch toward something he didn't know how to stop. He didn't know how he'd made it this far. Some days he wasn't sure he had.

"Any leads?" Homura asked.

"On the old business." Hiruzen shook his head, though Homura's back was to him.

"The Fourth died badly."

"..."

"Tsukasa, too."

"..."

"If either of them were still here—Minato or Tsukasa—things with the Uchiha would never have reached this point. Not under either of them." Hiruzen said nothing. It was true. Minato had Fugaku's respect in a way that hadn't required any particular negotiation. And Tsukasa—"You should think about a Fifth," Homura said.

"..."

"You can't hold the seat forever. You need a few years to rest first." The sun was setting. Shisui walked without hurrying. He'd left Danzō's office an hour ago. The path toward the Uchiha compound wound through the dense forest at Konoha's western edge—away from foot traffic, rarely used by civilians, quiet. He knew it well. The birds went up all at once. One sharp flutter, then a dozen, then the treeline erupting—dark wings cutting across the fading orange sky, a sound like something tearing apart.

Shisui stopped. Figures emerged from the shadows ahead. More from both sides, staying in the undergrowth, barely visible in the failing light. But their chakra wasn't subtle. He could feel it spreading through the forest in a loose net—trained, patient, practiced at stillness. ROOT. At the center, unhurried, was Danzō Shimura. Plain kimono. Right arm tucked away somewhere Shisui couldn't see. Left eye at its usual half-mast.

He stopped at a distance that was neither close enough for conversation nor far enough for comfort. Shisui's Sharingan had activated on its own—he hadn't decided to do it, it had simply happened—three tomoe turning slow in each eye.

"Lord Danzō." His voice came out even. Good.

"Heading home?" Danzō said.

"To the compound?" Shisui said nothing. Watched. The chakra in the trees didn't move. Waiting. He's going to move against me. The thought arrived clean and cold, without panic.

"The clan is in the middle of a meeting," Danzō said pleasantly.

"You weren't notified, Shisui?" The light was nearly gone. The forest had gone gray and blue around them, the path nothing more than a pale line underfoot. Shisui's Sharingan gave everything a red tint. He knew about the meeting. Fugaku hadn't invited him—he'd found out through other channels, the way he found out most things these days. He'd planned to go to the compound afterward, hear what had been decided. He didn't say any of that.

"What are you, really," Danzō said, "to the Uchiha?"

"..."

"You think you can change them. Change the village." A pause—not dramatic, just the ordinary pause of someone stating a fact.

"At most, you'll ever change a single person." That's not— Shisui felt it land somewhere in his chest, cold and exact.

"Lord Danzō, do you mean to stop me?" Wind moved through the trees. The undergrowth shivered. Shisui's hair stirred at his face. Danzō's left eye opened. Slowly. The eye he always held half-shut—the one that had always struck Shisui as slightly off, somehow duller than the other—opened all the way. What looked back at him through the dimming light wasn't dull at all. It was the look of a hunter who'd just sighted something worth catching. Every hair on Shisui's arms stood up.

"An illusion," Danzō said, "that can enter an opponent's mind and create an experience indistinguishable from reality." A beat." Kotoamatsukami." Shisui went completely still. The clouds had thickened. The last of the evening light was disappearing—shadow stretched from where Danzō stood toward Shisui's feet, swallowing the distance between them. In the dimness, something vast and fanged seemed to press forward from behind Danzō's stillness, close and patient and utterly unafraid. How. His mind raced.

This was his greatest secret. The only person who knew it was Itachi— ——unless, in the moment he broke Shin free from the genjutsu, his abilities had already been exposed to Fugaku. And if Fugaku had watched carefully enough, if he'd understood what he was seeing— And if Fugaku now knew the mechanics of Kotoamatsukami—would it even land? Shisui's stomach dropped.

"This intelligence," Danzō said, almost pleasantly, "came from your esteemed clan head." Of course. He threw me away. Something moved in Danzō's voice—not amusement, but close.

"You have such tremendous power. A Sharingan that can reach into a man's will and reshape it without him ever knowing." His eyes tracked Shisui's face like he was reading something there.

"And you're using it to stop a coup."

"..." The wind picked up hard. The trees shifted and groaned overhead. The last sliver of sun reappeared briefly at the horizon—gold flooding back into the world for just a moment—then vanished." A mere coup," Shisui said, barely a voice. Cold in his chest. Cold everywhere.

"What do you think the Uchiha and Konoha have ever been to each other?" Danzō's tone was as even as the surface of still water.

"Say you suppress them once with your eye. It holds for a while, maybe. But as long as the Uchiha exist—the possibility of a second coup never disappears. Konoha never stops watching. Never stops fearing. And they—" a pause— "never stop resenting Konoha for it."

"There is only one solution to a problem with no other solution."

"This clan—" and here, for the length of a single breath, something moved in his voice, something that wasn't quite passion but wasn't nothing— "needs to be wiped out. Every last one of them. Permanently." The trees erupted.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh— ROOT members dropped from every direction at once—black masks, drawn blades, pouring from the undergrowth and the branches and the shadows between them, converging overhead until they filled the sky above Shisui with dark shapes that blotted out what was left of the light.