The air in the shadow of the Valley of the End was a palpable, heavy thing, thick with the ghosts of clashing titans and the perpetual, fine mist that rose from the thunderous waterfalls a few feet away.
Renjiro was a study in focused isolation. The magnificent, sweeping landscape was lost to him, his eyes—the colour of tarnished silver, clouded and unfocused—seeing nothing of the visual splendour. Yet, he perceived it all in a way that went beyond mere sight.
A shimmering, invisible field of chakra extended from his body in a perfect, twenty-meter radius. It was his world, his canvas, his map.
His hands, stained with ink and calloused from relentless work, moved with a delicate, preternatural precision over a large, half-completed fuinjutsu seal carved directly into the stone floor.
"Swish… crrrrk."
The brush dipped into a small pot of specially prepared ink, the sound a whisper against the endless roar of the falls.
The telepathic transmission hit not like a sound, but like a spike of pure, structured information driven directly into the core of his consciousness.
"To all Konohagakure shinobi. The Great War is hereby declared concluded, effective immediately. All squads are to disengage and return to the village with all due haste. These orders are issued by the Third Hokage, Lord Hiruzen Sarutobi, and the Interim Commander of the first division, Uchiha Fugaku."
Renjiro froze. His entire body went rigid. The steel brush in his hand stopped dead. The chakra field around him, usually a placid lake of perception, rippled violently with his shock.
His lips, chapped from the moist air, parted.
"This is bad."
The words were not loud, but they hung in the heavy air with the weight of a tombstone. The war was over. It should have been a moment of relief, of triumph. For him, it was a seismic shock, the first domino in a chain he had believed was years from falling.
He did not have long to dwell in the silence. A new presence registered in his chakra field—a familiar, flickering flame of chakra moving towards him at high speed. It was a signature he knew as well as his own.
A moment later, there was a soft shunshin rustle of displaced air, and a man materialised a few feet away.
"Captain—" Arata began.
"I heard it too," Renjiro cut him off.
He did not turn his head, his blind eyes still fixed on some unseen point in the middle distance, his chakra sense now firmly locked onto his subordinate.
"Inform the others. We break camp. We leave by dusk."
There was a brief hesitation from Arata, "Captain… they've been pushing hard for weeks. We've been on constant alert. Could we… could we not rest for the night? A few hours of proper sleep before we begin the journey back?"
Renjiro's head tilted a fraction of an inch.
"No." The word was flat, final. "The war is over, Arata. There are shinobi in other divisions, in the hospital, back in the village, who have families waiting. Mothers, fathers, wives, children who have spent every day in a special kind of hell, wondering if their loved one's name would be the next on the memorial stone." He paused, "For us to delay our return by even an hour would be a profound disgrace. We move at dusk. That is an order."
Arata's chakra signature stabilised, the fleeting resistance replaced by resigned acceptance.
"Hai, Captain." He made to rise.
"Arata," Renjiro's voice stopped him again.
"Captain?"
Renjiro's brow furrowed slightly. "The transmission. It named Uchiha Fugaku as Interim Commander. Why?"
The question was deceptively casual. "What happened to Daichi-sama?"
Arata's response was plain, unadorned by speculation. "Intel from the front lines, sir. Daichi-sama was severely injured in the final push against Iwa. The details are classified, but his condition was grave enough to necessitate an immediate transfer of command. Fugaku-san was the highest-ranking and most capable shinobi remaining."
Renjiro kept his face a mask of stoic calm. 'Lucky bastard… I wonder what his injury is... hopefully it is better than mine.'
Outwardly, he merely gave a slow, thoughtful nod. "I see. Carry on, Arata."
With another soft shunshin, Arata was gone.
Alone once more, Renjiro allowed the mask to slip. A long, slow breath hissed out from between his teeth. 'Thank God that bastard didn't die…' The thought was fervent, but it was a prayer offered at the altar of vengeance, not concern. Daichi's survival was a personal necessity. Renjiro had a ledger of wrongs, an account of suffering, and Daichi's name was at the top of it just after Danzo's, written in blood. For Daichi to perish on some distant battlefield would be an insult. It would be a theft. It would rob Renjiro of the retribution he had sworn to exact with his own two hands. Daichi's death belonged to him. It was his property, his future, and he would not have it stolen.
'The timeline has shifted severely.'
The thought was a cold stone in his gut. The war ending now, so abruptly, changed everything. And the central, terrifying pivot upon which this new, unstable world now turned was a single, simple fact.
'Obito is still alive.'
The cheerful, clumsy, idealistic Uchiha boy who should have been crushed under a boulder, who should have been rescued from the precipice of death by an ancient, waiting evil, was presumably whole somewhere in Konoha's ranks. The implications unfolded in his mind like a poisonous flower.
Without Obito as Madara's pawn, the chain of causality he had relied upon was shattered.
'No Nine-Tails Attack on Konoha.'
The Kyuubi would not rampage through the village, would not claim the lives of the Fourth Hokage and his wife. Minato Namikaze would live. The political landscape would be unrecognisable.
'No Uchiha Massacre.'
The isolation and suspicion that led to the clan's downfall would lack the critical, catalytic fear the Nine-Tails' attack provided. Itachi would not be forced into that unimaginable choice. Sasuke's entire path of vengeance would be erased before it began.
'No Fourth Great Ninja War.'
No Akatsuki as he knew it. No Ten-Tails. No Moon Eye Plan. The future he had been preparing for, the future he had counted on navigating with his insider knowledge, was gone. Replaced by a terrifying, formless void of possibility.
For a single, wild moment, a drastic, insane plan flickered through his mind. 'I could go rogue.'
The thought was seductive in its simplicity. He could abandon the village, trigger a new, immediate conflict between the Mist and the Leaf. It would be a controlled burn, a way to reignite the war and force the timeline back onto a semblance of its original path.
It was audacious. It was possible.
He dismissed it just as quickly. 'Too unpredictable.'
He would be trading one set of uncontrollable variables for another, far more chaotic set. He could lose all control, not gain it. The plan was the gambit of a desperate man, and while he was concerned, he was not yet desperate.
A new worry, more insidious, took its place. 'Could Madara simply find another pawn?' he wondered.
'Could he snatch some other emotionally vulnerable Uchiha youth and mould them into his new weapon?'
Renjiro gave a faint, almost imperceptible shake of his head. 'No.'
A pawn like Obito was a one-in-a-million confluence of circumstances. The innate talent, the specific kind of sentimental weakness, the proximity to a Rin Nohara figure, the perfect moment of catastrophic injury and despair—it was a recipe that could not be easily replicated.
The initial wave of panic began to recede, cooled by the frigid waters of logic and resolve. The shifting future was not a pit; it was a new battlefield. And he was still a shinobi.
He had to return to Konoha. He had to navigate the political upheaval of a village at peace, a Hokage still in power, and a Uchiha clan on the decline. He had to 'fix' his eyes. And then, with vision restored, he would begin his true work: investigating Madara's movements. The war's end would force the old ghost's hand.
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