"Judging from the vision, the other version of you relied heavily on this cursed mark's power."
Mito Uzumaki prepared to seal the mark Orochimaru had left on Sasuke Uchiha.
"I don't need that other ending." Sasuke's voice was flat, but something burned beneath it. That future where Itachi had arranged everything so neatly, so smugly convinced it was all for his little brother's sake? He wanted no part of it.
Sharingan. Mangekyou Sharingan. Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan. Rinnegan.
Right now, he'd only just awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan.
And the enemy already possessed the Rinnegan.
To protect everything he had now and everything he'd have in the future, he needed to reach that level too. As fast as possible.
But not the way the other ending showed.
Never down the path Itachi had paved for him.
"What do I need to do?" he asked, resolve hardening.
"Sit right here. That's all." Mito considered the unusual nature of the sealing method she was about to use. Better to give the boy some context first. "I've been studying the cursed mark on your shoulder. It appears to be a newly engineered seal, developed through extensive research and modification. The creator was clever. I wouldn't have expected to find someone in the shinobi world with the same talent for developing new techniques as Tobirama."
She paused, then added her judgment. "But you can see it in the technique itself. Its creator has strayed from the proper path of the shinobi. He lacks Tobirama's capacity for self-reflection. When someone becomes consumed by the pursuit of new jutsu without that restraint, they lose themselves. They lose the lines they should never have crossed."
"Lose themselves... and the lines they should never cross?"
Mito tapped the cursed mark on Sasuke's shoulder. "First: to develop something like this, the one called Orochimaru would have needed countless live experiments. And it's hard to imagine the test subjects being anything other than human."
"Human." Sasuke's eyes widened. "He used living ninja for his experiments?!"
"Yes. And only ninja would suffice. Ordinary people couldn't survive the power this mark channels. Even among ninja, without exceptional bloodline talent and iron willpower, the mark's power would devour them whole."
Sasuke remembered the vision. The thing he'd become. Neither human nor monster, something grotesque caught between the two.
"Becoming that creature was actually a success," Mito said. "By my estimate, ninety-nine percent of the test subjects died before they could even reach that stage."
Silence.
So that was why. That was why Itachi had fought to the very end to draw Orochimaru out of the cursed mark and seal him inside the Totsuka Blade.
This ending, Itachi's ending, he would rewrite it.
"Could you explain the principles behind this cursed mark to me?"
Mito smiled faintly. Polite when he needs something, isn't he? The boy's chakra, even his stubborn temperament, reminded her of a young Uchiha Madara.
It struck her then that perhaps the vision, forcing these children to confront their imperfect futures, was its own kind of salvation.
If this boy lost his brother, it wasn't hard to imagine the result. Another Madara, born from the loss of a sibling...
"Before I explain the cursed mark, I should tell you about Hashirama's Sage Transformation."
"Hashirama... you mean the First Hokage?!"
"Correct. Sage Transformation, also called Sage Mode, isn't a ninjutsu. It's a highly dangerous, incredibly difficult state to master, where one transcends human limitations to become one with nature itself."
"Why would you share this with me..."
The Uchiha clan's reputation was probably worse than he'd ever imagined by now. Only the handful of people closest to him hadn't started treating him differently.
Kakashi had asked the First Hokage's wife to personally seal his mark, and she'd agreed without hesitation. But as for why... Sasuke couldn't parse her motives anymore.
"It's nothing complicated," Mito said. "Whether it's you, your brother, or the Uchiha clan, you're all Konoha's ninja, aren't you? What harm is there in bolstering the village's strength?"
Sasuke looked away. Minutes ago, he'd declared he would become a rogue ninja like Itachi.
Mito probably knew what he was thinking, but she didn't call him on it. Instead she said, "You project calm and maturity, but your chakra natures are Fire and Lightning..."
"??" Sasuke hadn't studied chakra nature transformation yet. He didn't follow.
"You seem composed, while Naruto seems like a scatterbrain," Mito continued. "But the truth is the opposite. When it matters most, that boy is the calm one. You're the one who can't hold back the impulse."
Her voice carried a hint of amusement, but Sasuke bristled. How was he supposed to accept being outdone by the dead-last?
"Then what's Naruto's chakra nature?" he asked before he could stop himself.
"Wind. That boy's nature is Wind."
Sasuke's jaw tightened. "Wind beats Lightning." His future self had specialized in Lightning Release. That technique called Kirin was probably A-rank or higher.
If he truly became a rogue ninja...
Then Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi... they'd all be enemies.
"Is that how you see it?" Mito's tone carried a note of disapproval. "I haven't known him long, but from what I can sense of his chakra, Naruto would never think that way."
"??"
"If it were that boy, he'd be far more likely to say, 'Wind doesn't beat Fire. Wind makes Fire burn brighter.'"
The words hit like a fist to the sternum.
Mito let the silence do its work, then steered them back. "Let's return to Sage Mode and the cursed mark."
"As I said, through Sage training one can merge with the forces of nature. In Sage Mode, Hashirama could wield nature energy itself. But nature energy is extraordinarily difficult to control. If the balance between one's own chakra and nature energy tilts even slightly, the natural force consumes you."
"Consumes you how?"
"In mild cases, your personality warps. Your appearance begins to drift away from anything human." She paused. "In severe cases, you're transformed into part of nature itself in an instant. Stone, or something else entirely."
"Then what does Sage jutsu have to do with the cursed mark?"
"Orochimaru found a way to transplant a specialized form of sage energy into other people's bodies, boosting their combat ability. After refinement, the cursed mark doesn't just enhance the host. It controls them. And embedded within it is a fragment of Orochimaru's own essence."
Sasuke remembered the vision. The fleshy growth that had erupted from his body, transforming into a great white serpent carrying Orochimaru's consciousness. His stomach turned.
"Through this method," Mito said, "Orochimaru achieves a form of reincarnation through every cursed mark. Functionally, it grants him something close to immortality."
"Immortality?!" Sasuke was still weeks short of thirteen, and the concept staggered him. "There are enemies in the shinobi world that can't be killed?!"
Something sad flickered across Mito's eyes, but she didn't hide the truth. "No. Even against an immortal body, there are methods in this world to end them."
"The sealing arts of the Uzumaki clan."
"The Uzumaki... sealing arts?!"
"The Hyuga's Gentle Fist can shut down chakra pathways. But Uzumaki sealing techniques can seal the soul of anything that exists. Once the soul is extinguished, what good is an immortal body?" Mito exhaled slowly.
"And it was precisely because of this power that the other shinobi clans came to fear the Uzumaki. That fear escalated until it became a coordinated massacre across the entire shinobi world. The whole Uzumaki clan... no, the entire Uzushiogakure, the Land of Whirlpools itself, was wiped out by a joint alliance."
Sasuke went rigid.
"A shinobi-world massacre? That's how the Uzumaki were destroyed?"
Mito nodded and placed her hand over his Cursed Seal, beginning the seal.
"If we hadn't been revived, Naruto and Karin might have been the last Uzumaki children left. If you include Fusō's son Nagato, assuming he's still alive, there would be three at most."
"Naruto is... the same as me...?"
Thinking of Kushina, Mito's smile carried an old grief. "No, Sasuke. Not the same."
"At the very least, you've tasted what a mother's love and a father's love feel like."
"Naruto Uzumaki could only try to imagine them from nothing. You might think that growing up alone, he couldn't possibly understand your pain. But what I want you to understand is this..."
"Growing up surrounded by love as you were, you can't understand his sorrow either."
"The suffering between the two of you was never comparable to begin with."
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Ya'll review this, I will give it another chance this reset.