Beneath a blue sky, layered clouds loomed like mountain ranges.
A gentle breeze pushed the cloud-mountains along, and the shifting light and shadow on the forest floor drew a clear dividing line between the boy and the girl.
The handsome young man stood in the light, his scarlet eyes strange and sinister, his spiky hair casting sharp shadows across the ground.
The silver-haired blind girl stood beneath the clouds, in the shade. Even in the dimmer light, her smooth skin gave off a soft, alluring glow.
It was the sort of beautiful scene that could make a bitter middle-aged man remember his youth, or send love-struck girls into a daze, spinning countless romantic stories in their heads and moving themselves to tears.
The reality, however, was this.
"Thunder Swords: Kiba are legendary blades of Kirigakure. They can amplify Lightning Release, increase casting speed, reduce chakra consumption, and even call down natural lightning in battle.
"They're nothing like Zabuza's broken slab of scrap metal. Among the Seven Ninja Swords of the Mist, Kiba absolutely deserves to compete for the title of strongest weapon. For a swordsman who specializes in Lightning Release, they're priceless."
The shadow clone in charge of researching the swords sent Konome its information and memories, and Konome, eyes closed, enthusiastically sold Sasuke on how amazing the blades were.
As she absorbed the clone's memories, scenes of experiments and research flooded her mind, and her astonishment at the Thunder Swords only deepened.
The Thunder Swords: Kiba, often shortened simply to Kiba, contained an extremely high concentration of chakra metal. On top of that, they were twin blades, so the cost of the materials alone was staggering.
The complexity and elegance of the lightning-based formulas engraved inside them were enough to earn even Konome's admiration.
Seal-less Lightning Release, faster casting, doubled power, halved chakra consumption. These things were basically twin lightning staves in sword form.
Not a word of what she said was exaggerated.
Samehada might edge them out slightly in terms of utility, but in raw offensive power, they were in a completely different league. In the hands of a true Lightning Release master, these swords absolutely had the right to compete for the title of strongest ninja blade.
As he listened to Konome's nonstop explanation, the tomoe in Sasuke's eyes kept spinning, their crimson glow growing brighter and brighter. He was obviously determined to get them.
"Being an experimental subject alone isn't nearly enough to match the value of these weapons. Unless..."
Looking at Sasuke's grave expression, Konome smiled and said, "Unless you're willing to join my organization."
"Your organization?"
Sasuke's brows drew together. They had known each other for years, and yet he had never heard that Konome belonged to any organization.
"I can't reveal the organization's name yet. But if you agree to become one of its members, carry out the tasks assigned to you, and allow your Sharingan to evolve under the arrangement of the research staff, then you can obtain the Thunder Swords."
Konome had finally stated her true objective.
There was no one in Root she truly trusted.
Ryoma, who had betrayed her, could no longer shoulder any important responsibilities.
Chihaya Tohru, Iwakuma, and the others had all been Ryoma's old friends for decades. They were also Danzo's former subordinates. Konome had always remained wary of them.
More importantly, other than herself, Root simply lacked true high-end combat power.
There were a few jonin, yes, but in a world that was steadily slipping into madness, jonin were only marginally better than cannon fodder.
Sai and Torune Aburame of the younger generation were worth nurturing, but their ceilings were obvious. They could be used, but they could not carry the organization.
Sasuke was different.
He had spent five years with her day and night. All the arrogance in his bones had long since been ground down. He had Naruto, Guy, Kakashi, and the others at his side. His personality had developed nothing like his original canon self. He was no longer so dark or isolated.
Danzo, the chief culprit behind the Uchiha massacre, was now a wanted criminal hated by everyone in Root, while Konome was the one who had driven him out of Konoha. With Sasuke's personality, betrayal was not something she had to worry about.
As for his potential, there was no need to say more.
Once he stabilized after awakening the three-tomoe Sharingan, he could go find the dying Itachi and awaken the Mangekyo. Then, with Itachi's eyes, he could evolve them into the Eternal Mangekyo. Once a complete Susanoo came out, he would soar straight into Kage-tier territory. His growth would be like riding a rocket.
That was exactly the kind of talent Root needed.
The clouds drifted in the wind, and the shadow at Konome's feet gradually crept toward Sasuke.
The conditions she offered were harsh. Sasuke's chest rose and fell as the tomoe in his eyes spun in constant calculation. He remained silent for a long while.
He trusted Konome enough to become her test subject.
But that was entirely different from joining some mysterious organization.
To carry out assignments from an unknown group while also letting himself be used to research the Sharingan was, without question, signing away his freedom.
"In the organization, I alone will be your superior. You'll only need to obey my orders."
Konome patiently explained, her hunger for talent almost identical to the old Danzo's.
Back then, she had been Root's top enforcer. Now that she had risen to become its leader, naturally she also needed to recruit people who could fight.
Sasuke's expression did not change, but the resistance in the emotion bubble above his head visibly lessened by another thirty percent.
There was hope.
Seeing his reaction, Konome's mood brightened. She continued tempting him.
"If you join the organization, I can also help you awaken a Sharingan even more advanced than the three-tomoe form."
A sharp light seemed to flash through Sasuke's eyes.
His face filled with unconcealable shock.
"A Sharingan beyond the three tomoe? Then Itachi's eyes..."
He stared at Konome and muttered to himself, recalling that miserable scene from countless nightmares. Along with endless pain, he remembered the black shuriken pattern spinning and expanding in Itachi's eyes.
If his own Sharingan could evolve to that level, then he could go find Itachi and take his revenge.
Revenge for his parents.
Revenge for the entire Uchiha clan.
The flames of vengeance ignited in Sasuke's chest. Compared to mere anger, that emotion was colder, heavier, and yet far more intense and complex than simple killing intent.
"I agree."
Faced with the generous terms Konome had offered, Sasuke could no longer refuse.
He looked her in the face and declared, word by word, "As long as you can give me the power to take my revenge, you can take anything you want."
"I want your loyalty."
Konome raised her right hand, her index and middle fingers pressed together, violet light burning at her fingertips.
The moment Sasuke saw that familiar gesture, his heart shuddered.
The pose Konome made as she lifted her hand overlapped perfectly with that other figure he knew too well.
Itachi.
The tidal wave of rage nearly shattered his reason.
The two tomoe in his left eye began spinning wildly around his pupil, linking into a black ring, while a faint third tomoe began to revolve within it.
The evolution that had been interrupted in the Land of Waves was restarting now, under this sudden stimulus.
It was happening again?
With her hand still raised, Konome arched a brow.
There was no time to marvel at how sensitive Sasuke was. She seized the crucial moment of his Sharingan's evolution and activated the Byakugan's ocular power, directly invading his brain.
At once, she saw a strand of Yin Release chakra overflowing with extreme emotion flowing within the pineal gland in the center of his forehead.
That's it.
Light shone brightly in Konome's Byakugan as she fixed her gaze on the middle of Sasuke's forehead. The moment that chakra appeared, it rushed straight toward his left eye.
And in the outer ring of his iris, the third tomoe instantly took shape.
"I... evolved?"
Burning with rage, Sasuke found that the world before him had suddenly become sharper. Even the strands of hair fluttering behind Konome's head seemed to slow down. The chakra in his body also increased under the influence of his Sharingan's evolution.
He had already experienced one Sharingan evolution before. In that instant, he understood that the three-tomoe Sharingan he had long pursued had finally awakened.
The joy of becoming stronger cut off his emotional surge.
The special energy produced in his pineal gland snapped almost at once. The spinning tomoe slowed to a halt, leaving him with three tomoe in the left eye and two in the right, the two scarlet eyes now in different states.
"Congratulations."
After watching the whole process of Sasuke's Sharingan evolution, Konome was left more puzzled than pleased.
She had not understood at all how that special chakra had been produced.
It had not followed the normal process of chakra creation through spiritual and physical energy fusion. There had been no special generative mechanism. Neither the pineal gland nor the brain had possessed any strange structure beyond what she expected.
The Sharingan's evolution seemed to require only the right emotion, and then it could create a special kind of chakra out of nothing.
That was completely un-ninja-like.
Even beings as powerful as the Otsutsuki had to rely on the God Tree devouring natural energy in order to obtain chakra. There was absolutely no way for chakra to be created from thin air.
That was one of the fundamental laws of chakra. There was no way the Sharingan alone should be able to break it.
And yet the Sharingan's evolution process was plainly challenging the very foundations of the ninja world's system.
Lowering her hand, Konome refused to give up and continued observing him, especially the pineal gland in the center of his forehead, where that chakra had been born. She scanned every last cell.
Her ocular power was being consumed at high speed. The area between her brows began to ache and throb.
Yet no matter how she looked, she could not find the source of the chakra.
There was no abnormal structure in his brain.
The chakra's emergence itself was bizarre, as though it had existed from the beginning, only hidden in some space similar to Kamui's dimension, and could only be accessed using extreme emotions as the key.
The pineal gland was like a signal transmitter connected to another dimension.
Could that special chakra filled with extreme emotion really be Indra's chakra?
The thought suddenly occurred to Konome, but upon further consideration, it also felt wrong.
The Second Hokage could not possibly have dissected an Uchiha who was also Indra's reincarnation.
And the evolution of Itachi's and Obito's Sharingan had also depended on emotional triggers, so if all of them were using Indra's chakra...
Konome's eyes flickered as information collided furiously inside her mind, throwing off sparks.
Sasuke's unexpected Sharingan evolution had exposed a secret of astonishing magnitude.
Seeing Konome fall into silence, Sasuke, though still feeling the power of his newly evolved eye, opened his own eyes wide and remained standing there obediently, letting her continue her observation.
He had only just agreed to her terms, but he had already prepared himself to become an experimental subject.
As long as she only watched him instead of dissecting or slicing him up in some bloody experiment, he felt he was already getting the better end of the deal.
The wind in the training ground grew stronger. The clouds shifted overhead, and the shadows swallowed both of them completely, while sunlight struggled through the thick cloud cover in faint strands.
Sasuke very consciously kept displaying his Sharingan, not daring to shift his gaze in the slightest.
But Konome was no longer paying attention to his cooperation. She had become completely immersed in her thoughts about the Uchiha, the Sharingan, and Indra.
Suppose.
Suppose that special Yin Release chakra truly was Indra's power.
Then one extremely troublesome question would inevitably emerge.
Who, exactly, was Indra's reincarnation?
The canon answer had already been revealed.
But Sasuke's Sharingan evolution process had made that seemingly obvious question become murky again.
There was no doubt that both Madara and Sasuke had awakened the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, and both had been acknowledged by the Sage of Six Paths as Indra's reincarnation.
Yet Konome suddenly had a bold hypothesis.
Perhaps the word reincarnation itself was misleading.
If they were instead described as inheritors of Indra's power, then everything would make much more sense.
Every Uchiha was a descendant of Indra. They all possessed the ability to draw upon Indra's power through extreme emotions. In that sense, they were all Indra's inheritors.
What made Sasuke and Madara special was that they had awakened the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. In other words, the share of Indra's power they possessed was far greater than anyone else's.
So-called Indra reincarnation was not something fated from birth.
Rather, only the strongest Uchiha of a given era, the one who had obtained the largest portion of Indra's power, could be crowned with the title of Indra's reincarnation.
The more Konome thought about it, the more convinced she became that this guess was close to the truth.
Indra had been gifted, proud, and obsessed with ultimate personal power.
If that was the case, then naturally only the strongest Uchiha could inherit the name Indra.
Sasuke and Madara were merely the strongest inheritors of different eras. Of course both could be called Indra's reincarnation.
If Itachi or Obito had awakened the Eternal Mangekyo first, then they too could have been called Indra's reincarnation.
The real question was this.
Could Indra's power evolve enough for four pairs of Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan to appear?
Or if one person took too much of Indra's power, would it prevent the others from evolving?
Could this be the true reason why, in any given era, there could only be one pair of Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan?
Most likely, the amount of Indra's power available in a single era was only enough for one Uchiha to evolve to that level.
Only after decades, perhaps centuries, of recovery could it accumulate enough to happen again.
By that time, the previous generation of Uchiha would have already died of old age, and thus the whole thing was transformed into myths about reincarnation.
Then what about Naruto, as Asura's reincarnation?
Was it the Senju and Uzumaki with the strongest life force who inherited Asura's title?
Konome slowly shook her head.
Other than the Nine-Tails' power, she had never seen any foreign chakra inside Naruto. She could not make a hasty judgment.
Perhaps Asura and Indra inherited their power in different ways, and that was why their reincarnations were always destined to clash.
"Finished your research?"
Still glaring with his scarlet Sharingan, Sasuke saw Konome shake her head in apparent regret and finally spoke up. He was not some bloodthirsty maniac. Keeping his eye open for so long was starting to dry it out.
"More or less."
Konome licked the back of her teeth. She had already found a method to evolve the Sharingan into the Mangekyo.
There was no chance of drawing out Indra's power on her own. The Sharingan required Uchiha blood, meaning the chakra seed passed down through the Uchiha clan over a thousand years.
The only method she could think of was this:
At the moment Sasuke used extreme emotion to pull forth Indra's power, she would steal that special chakra from his pineal gland and inject it into the Sharingan. That would definitely force it to evolve.
But the Mangekyo ability produced at the end would probably still be Sasuke's Amaterasu and Kagutsuchi.
Doing that was basically no different from gouging out Sasuke's eyes.
As for the Eternal Mangekyo, there was no need to even think about it. Konome had no siblings who had awakened the Mangekyo, and if Sasuke's energy was siphoned away, then he would not be able to evolve a Mangekyo himself. There was no way to force the formula to work.
"You really figured it out?"
Sasuke had no idea what Konome was thinking, but he was stunned by the way she researched and the speed at which she did it. The Sharingan was the Uchiha clan's kekkei genkai, and she had understood it just from watching the evolution process twice?
Rubbing the aching spot between her brows, Konome did not feel like explaining anything further to Sasuke, this both fortunate and unfortunate boy.
If the truth about Indra was indeed what she had guessed, then Sasuke could be considered the luckiest person alive.
By sheer coincidence, Indra's power had recovered enough in his era to evolve into the Eternal Mangekyo.
By sheer coincidence, his clan had been wiped out, leaving him with no competitors.
By sheer coincidence, Obito Uchiha, who had even greater talent, had no blood-related siblings.
And by sheer coincidence, Sasuke had a brother whose Mangekyo Sharingan had already awakened and who was now close to death.
Everything lined up with absurd precision.
That was how Sasuke, whose natural talent had actually been mediocre, ended up becoming Indra's reincarnation.
Then again, once she thought of Sasuke's miserable past, Konome no longer felt jealous.
Perhaps this was simply the monstrous fortune that came from sacrificing one's parents and clan.
Light flared once more at her fingertips.
Konome looked at Sasuke calmly.
"Offer me your loyalty, and I will tell you the correct formula for obtaining power."
Sasuke's expression turned solemn.
He removed the Konoha forehead protector from his brow and slowly stepped up in front of Konome. Seeing her raise her hand into that same familiar pose, he brushed the hair aside from his forehead and closed his eyes, waiting.
"Stick out your tongue."
"...?"
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