The Forests - Land of Rivers
"..."
"..."
The heavy silence that followed Itachi's recounting of the massacre was not awkward, nor was it judgmental. It was the solemn, ringing quiet that follows a devastating storm, settling over the ruined, waterlogged crater that had once been a forest.
After Itachi finished explaining the brutal mechanics of his survival and the deaths of his two comrades, Alaric stayed perfectly silent, offering a slow, measured nod of understanding. He didn't offer hollow platitudes or shallow sympathies; a man like Itachi Uchiha did not need to be coddled. Instead, Alaric simply took a long, savory drag from his cigar, letting the rich smoke curl into the damp night air before he turned his attention toward the fallen swordsman.
He walked over to the mud-soaked body of Kisame Hoshigaki. Resting heavily beside the dead missing-nin was Samehada, the legendary sentient blade, wrapped tightly in its white bandages.
Alaric crouched down, his boots squelching in the mud, and reached out to pick up the massive weapon.
The very microsecond Alaric's fingers brushed the hilt, Samehada reacted with violent, predatory instinct. The bandages ripped open as the sword's dark, jagged scales flared outward, ready to lash out and greedily shred the chakra of the unfamiliar intruder. But the moment the sentient blade actually tasted the energy radiating from Alaric's skin… the vast, oceanic density of his system-buffed reserves mixed with the pure, incandescent vitality of the Phoenix Sage… its hostility evaporated entirely.
The jagged scales instantly smoothed down. The massive, terrifying sword began to wiggle in Alaric's grip, vibrating with a bizarre, almost dog-like excitement as it gorged itself on the microscopic, passive leakage of his golden chakra.
"Heh," Alaric chuckled, gripping the heavy hilt firmly to stop it from squirming out of his hand. "You like my chakra, huh? I guess even demon swords have a palate for the good stuff."
Without a second thought, Alaric channeled a small, concentrated pulse of space-time chakra and pressed the massive blade against the intricate storage tattoo inked into his shoulder. In a puff of white smoke, Samehada vanished into the dimensional void.
'Too bad,' Alaric mused internally, adjusting his coat. 'You'll fetch a very, very expensive price in the System Shop when I return to Philadelphia...'
With the legendary sword secured, Alaric stood back up, his towering frame casting a long shadow under the moonlight. He turned his gaze back to where Itachi remained seated against the damp log.
The Uchiha prodigy was just looking at him, his dark onyx eyes completely silent, absorbing the effortless way the blonde anomaly interacted with the world.
Alaric could only raise a platinum brow.
"You're too silent, man," Alaric shook his head, walking at a leisurely pace back toward the exhausted rogue. "It's like talking to a very sharp brick wall. Anyways..."
Alaric stopped a few feet away, crossing his arms as he looked down at the broken genius, instantly shifting his mind from casual looting to tactical deduction.
"You have nowhere to go now," Alaric stated, laying out the unvarnished reality of the board. "You can't go back to the Akatsuki to collect intel or disrupt their plans from the inside. They know there's a mole. They know you spoke to me. With Kisame and Hidan dead by your hand, your cover is completely blown."
"..."
Itachi stayed silent, looking directly into Alaric's blue eyes. He knew that already. In fact, he knew it more intimately than anyone else could. The tightrope he had walked for a decade had finally snapped.
"I'll have to do things alone for now," Itachi replied softly, his voice raspy but resolute. "Hunt the other members of that organization from the shadows. Ensure they cannot complete the extraction of the remaining Tailed Beasts."
Alaric let out a long, long-suffering sigh. He took another drag from his cigar, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke that drifted between them.
"You could just go back to Konoha, you know," Alaric offered smoothly, proposing the impossible with the casual tone of suggesting a dinner spot. "I can easily tell Hiruzen and Tsunade to brand you back as an active shinobi. I can frame it so that you were an undercover victim of Danzo's extremist schemes all along. You could testify against the Root foundation. Clear your name."
Itachi's eyes shined for a fleeting, microscopic fraction of a second... a deeply buried, desperate yearning for his home briefly piercing through the darkness. But he quickly looked down, breaking eye contact as he shook his head.
"No," Itachi denied quietly, the weight of his sins anchoring him to his self-imposed exile. "I still have things to do. Atonement cannot be granted by a Hokage's decree."
"Yes, you have things to do," Alaric countered instantly, stepping closer, refusing to let the Uchiha retreat into his martyrdom. He took another deliberate drag from his cigar. "But is any of it more important than your brother?"
Itachi froze.
"You're a killer and a criminal, yes," Alaric continued, his voice dropping into a register of absolute, unyielding pragmatism. "You slaughtered your bloodline to save a village. But I think it's infinitely better that you come clean now, look Sasuke in the eye, and work properly with Konoha to dismantle the Akatsuki. If you die a villain out here in the mud, you leave Sasuke with nothing but a legacy of hatred."
"..." Itachi did not reply. The flawless logic of the argument warred violently with the ingrained conditioning of his sacrifice.
"Look," Alaric sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around the devastated, watery clearing that served as the tomb for two immortals. "Just come with me, alright? You've got nowhere else to go anyways, and quite frankly, you look like you're about to fall over and die of pneumonia."
"..."
Itachi still didn't reply immediately. He sat there, bleeding and exhausted, looking up at the towering man. He saw the sheer, unbothered confidence radiating from Alaric's smile… a man who bent reality to his whims and offered salvation as casually as one might offer a cup of tea.
The absurdity of it all finally cracked the Uchiha's impenetrable facade.
Itachi couldn't help it. His shoulders shook slightly, and a faint, incredibly rare chuckle escaped his lips.
"...Fine," Itachi murmured, a small, genuine smile touching the corners of his mouth.
Alaric beamed as he saw the amused chuckle. He couldn't help but be genuinely surprised; throughout his entire time watching Naruto Shippuden in his past life, he had never once seen Itachi display this kind of light, unburdened emotion. It was entirely new, a profound crack in the tragic shell, and Alaric welcomed the sight immensely.
"Before we go on about bringing you back into the fold and register you to anything, I have to fix that disease of yours," Alaric started, earning him a highly confused, skeptical look from the Uchiha. "And before you say, 'This disease doesn't have any cure and my organs are liquefying,' I want you to know that I am, without a doubt, the greatest healer in the world. No amount of terminal illness or catastrophic injury can say otherwise."
"..." Itachi looked at Alaric weirdly, taking in the absolute, bordering-on-arrogant certainty in the man's voice. Slowly, the Uchiha shook his head in quiet amusement. "I never said anything otherwise."
Alaric stared at Itachi awkwardly for a second, caught slightly off guard by the lack of pushback, before nodding his head in satisfaction.
He stepped forward, reaching down to grab the half-naked, shivering Uchiha firmly by the bare shoulder.
"This ain't gay, okay?" Alaric stated flatly, his expression deadpan.
Before Itachi could even process the bizarre, foreign slang, let alone formulate a confused response, Alaric pulsed his spatial chakra.
FLASH.
The ruined forest was left entirely empty, the golden light of the displacement echoing silently over the still waters.
Konoha - Hokage Tower - The Office
The witching hour had long since passed, dragging the village into the deepest, quietest part of the night.
Inside the Hokage's office, however, the war against bureaucracy raged on. Tsunade Senju sat slumped behind her massive desk, the picture of stressed, sleep-deprived misery. A half-empty bottle of premium sake sat dangerously close to a stack of critical infrastructure budgets, while a small, porcelain cup rested loosely in her free hand. Her blonde hair was a mess, falling out of its usual twin tails, and dark, exhausted circles underscored her amber eyes as she aggressively stamped her signature onto a requisition form.
'I am going to strangle the Fire Daimyo the next time I see him,' Tsunade thought viciously, her teeth grinding as she read a complaint regarding the recent allocation of border patrol funds. 'And after that, I'm going to find Jiraiya and beat him for making me take this miserable job.'
She reached for the sake bottle, fully intending to drown her sorrows before tackling the next stack of reports.
Suddenly, the ambient shadows of the office were violently obliterated.
A blinding, crackling flash of pure, golden-platinum light erupted directly in the center of the room, carrying the sharp scent of ozone.
"What!?" Tsunade barked, squeezing her eyes shut tightly and throwing her forearm up to block the searing source of light from burning her retinas. Her chakra flared instantly, the sluggishness of the alcohol vaporizing as her combat instincts hijacked her nervous system.
As the harsh light died down, Tsunade lowered her arm, her eyes snapping open to assess the threat that had bypassed the village's absolute highest security wards.
She widened her eyes.
Standing on her expensive rug was Alaric Jonathan Kenway, looking entirely too cheerful for the hour. But it was the man standing beside him, shivering slightly and covered in dried blood and mud, that made her blood run cold.
Tsunade gritted her teeth, her jaw locking as she glared at the anomaly. She pushed her chair back violently, dropping into a defensive, coiled stance behind her desk, fully readying herself to shatter the floorboards if she had to.
"Alaric!" Tsunade's chakra flared, a visible, terrifying aura of green energy radiating from her skin. "How dare you bring Itachi Uchiha into this place!"
The reaction was instantaneous.
Rustle. Rustle. Rustle.
Four ANBU operatives dropped seamlessly from the shadowed ceiling rafters, landing in a perfect, lethal perimeter around the two intruders. Without a single word, they drew their standard-issue tantōs, pointing the razor-sharp blades directly at Itachi Uchiha's throat, their porcelain masks betraying zero emotion.
Alaric looked around the circle of drawn steel, deeply amused by the display. He knew exactly what the ANBU were thinking. They were fully aware that pointing a blade at Alaric was a spectacular waste of time, especially since three years ago, before the invasion, he had literally walked through a barrage of their swords like a ghost. So, they smartly focused their killing intent entirely on the S-rank missing-nin.
"Calm down, Hokage-sama," Alaric chuckled, raising his hands in a lazy, placating gesture. "I'm sure it's best that you bring out Sandaime-sama immediately. I know it's the middle of the night, but this is incredibly important. Plus... I even brought good news. Too good of a news for Konoha."
Tsunade's amber eyes darted from the calm, infuriating smile of the anomaly to the stoic, exhausted face of the clan killer. She knew Alaric well enough by now. He wasn't one to bullshit when it came to the absolute safety of the village, nor was he the type to orchestrate a coup for the sake of drama. If he brought the most wanted man in Fire Country directly into her office, there was a paradigm-shifting reason for it.
Keeping her intense glare locked on Itachi, Tsunade raised two fingers, signaling the ANBU captain wearing the Bear mask.
"Go fetch Hiruzen Sarutobi. Immediately," Tsunade ordered, her voice tight with restrained fury.
The ANBU captain did not react verbally. He simply nodded his masked head and disappeared utilizing a high-speed Body Flicker, leaving behind only a few swirling leaves.
The tension in the office was thick enough to drown in. Tsunade didn't lower her guard, and the remaining ANBU didn't move their blades an inch. Itachi stood perfectly still, his eyes respectfully cast downward, accepting the hostility as his absolute due.
Not even a full minute passed before the air displaced near the doorway.
The ANBU captain reappeared, and stepping into the office right beside him was Hiruzen Sarutobi. The Third Hokage was dressed in his simple night robes, his face lined with the deep grogginess of a man violently awoken from his scarce slumber.
"Tsunade? Alaric?" Hiruzen's drowsy eyes swept the room, taking in the drawn blades and the flared chakra. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the sleep. "What is the meaning of—"
His gaze finally landed on the half-naked, bloodied man standing in the center of the ANBU ring.
Hiruzen froze. The remnants of sleep vanished instantly, replaced by a profound, heart-wrenching shock.
"...Itachi?"
Itachi remained silent the whole time, given that stoic quietude was simply how he navigated the world most of the time. Hearing his former leader's voice, Itachi slowly raised his head. He looked at Tsunade, acknowledging her authority, then turned his dark eyes to Hiruzen before bowing slightly, a gesture of deep, enduring respect.
"It's been a long time, Hokage-sama..." Itachi greeted, his raspy voice carrying a heavy, sorrowful weight.
When Itachi spoke, Tsunade instinctively shifted her amber eyes from the criminal to her predecessor. She was genuinely surprised to see the transformation on the old man's face. The stern, groggy irritation of the God of Shinobi melted away, leaving behind an expression of profound, crushing sadness.
"...Itachi," Hiruzen could only repeat the name, his voice barely a whisper.
Hiruzen's heart ached as he looked at the young man. He, more than anyone else in the village, knew the true tragedy of the boy's life. He knew of the gentle child who had wished desperately for peace, the prodigy who had been forced by the village's own darkness to slaughter his family and his clan just to protect that fragile peace. It was a burden so heavy, so inherently unfair, that it brought tears to the old man's eyes.
Hiruzen took a slow, trembling step forward, waving a hand to order the ANBU to lower their blades.
"...How have you been... young man?"
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