Three days later, in the Uchiha district.
"?"
The moment Itachi stepped back into the district, he felt that something was off. He turned his head to look, but it seemed as though there was nothing there after all, only a not-so-familiar clansman standing at the entrance of a shop across the street, smiling at him.
Was it just his imagination?
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, but in the end, he still did not activate the Sharingan.
Inside the village, inside his own clan, opening the Sharingan to scrutinize a fellow clansman over nothing more than a vague feeling would have been strange.
He made his way home at an unhurried pace. The odd sensation did not return. By the time he arrived, Itachi had already smoothed away the emotions he had brought back from outside the village and calmly pushed open the door.
"I'm home."
As he spoke, he could already picture the smile that would spread across his little brother's face when he came running over.
"Itachi." Mikoto leaned out from the living room and called her son's name. Then she said, "Sasuke's out training."
"Mm."
Outwardly, Itachi answered in the same calm, unreadable tone as always, but in reality he had already turned to go look for his brother.
"Itachi." Mikoto suddenly called out again, stopping him. After hesitating for several seconds, she said, "Sasuke awakened his eyes."
It was not the sort of thing she could have mistaken. The tomoe in the Sharingan and the accompanying chakra were unmistakable.
Itachi stopped in his tracks.
How could any Uchiha not know what had to be endured for the Sharingan to awaken?
For a ninja, paying a price in pursuit of power was nothing unusual.
But Sasuke was only five.
A nameless anger rose up inside him all at once.
"I haven't told your father yet." Mikoto looked at the side of her elder son's face, calm as a still, bottomless pond. "Itachi, if you're his big brother... I'm leaving Sasuke to you."
If Father knew, he'd be overjoyed. Then he'd start expecting from Sasuke what he expects from me. Mother...
Itachi did not look her in the eye. He only gave a quiet "Mm" and walked out the door.
Without realizing it, he quickened his pace. When he reached the forest where they usually trained, he spotted Sasuke from a distance. The boy was darting from point to point, twisting through the air, the ninja tools in his hands shrieking as they struck one marked target after another.
"Sasuke."
"..."
Sasuke stopped.
The moment he saw his brother, every muscle in his body tightened for an instant. His gaze flickered, but he stood his ground on the tree trunk, looking down at his brother from above.
The two brothers met each other's eyes, and each seemed to be carrying thoughts he could not voice.
"Brother." Sasuke tried to imitate the way he used to act around Itachi every day, but it was clumsy, painfully so.
After seeing that prophetic nightmare over and over again, there was no way he could still face his brother with the same easy heart as before.
That was not something a child could do.
But a clever child could realize that much.
With his face stiff, he looked away. "I'm going home first." The moment the words fell, he vanished from the spot.
He did not even take his ninja tools with him.
Silently, Itachi stepped forward and began gathering up the tools Sasuke had left behind. Then he suddenly stopped, flicked out a kunai, and sent it flying. With a heavy thunk, it punched through the tree trunk, but did not strike the person hidden behind it.
Shisui caught the kunai and tossed it back. "About Sasuke, I'll..."
"No need." Itachi cut him off, his expression calm.
"Ninja are born to live inside the hatred of others."
Shisui looked at the tree trunk, nearly blown apart by the force of the throw, and said nothing.
If you say so.
---
Driving a wedge between two brothers... man.
Arata sighed at his own handiwork.
It could not be helped. If Sasuke stayed as close to Itachi as he had been before, then Arata's plan would become a real headache.
He would have to keep figuring out, day after day, how to work around Itachi.
But for now, everything seemed to be going smoothly.
The Night of the Massacre had planted distance between little Sasuke and his brother, and it had also allowed Arata to bring Sasuke completely under control.
In just a few short days, more than ten Uchiha had already fallen fully under his control and been branded with summoning contracts. If he wanted, he could reverse-summon part of his own body over to any of them at any time and manipulate the target directly.
More than ten Uchiha ninja was already a sizable number. Naka Shrine, where the Uchiha held their secret meetings, was not that large. At most, cram it full and you might fit a hundred people.
Just now, Sasuke's body had actually still been working away, diligently collecting physical data from fellow clansmen, while his mind trained inside an illusion.
When Itachi returned, Arata temporarily redirected Sasuke over and staged this little scene.
Of course, calling it a performance was not how Sasuke would experience it at all. Illusion and reality overlapped so perfectly that the controlled person could not detect the truth. But the genjutsu itself had already been lifted, and every trace of chakra it had left behind had been erased. Itachi was not going to discover anything.
Still, just from that one glance earlier, without even activating the Sharingan, Itachi had looked twice at the clansman under genjutsu.
His talent was honestly a little absurd.
Arata tailed Shisui and Itachi all the way to the riverbank near the Naka River. After listening to their pointless talk for a while, he reverse-summoned himself back into Sasuke's body.
The two of them were both incredibly gifted, and their strength was undeniable, but their political instincts and judgment were not just mediocre. They were poor.
The hardline faction inside the Uchiha clan was spreading rapidly, and those two were still discussing "the direction of opinion" within the clan, as though that meant anything. It was a complete waste of breath.
After the Nine-Tails' attack and the long stretch of war that followed, Konoha might finally have been at peace, but it was also unquestionably at its weakest. The Uchiha clan had declined as well, yes, but it still had Shisui with the Mangekyo and the prodigy Itachi. Under those circumstances, ambition was only natural.
Ordinarily, the two of them, being the very source of the clan's pride and ambition and possessing such overwhelming strength, should have been able to lead their clansmen.
Instead, both of them seemed to have no self-awareness at all, always treating themselves as though they were merely being swept along, as though they were only two more Uchiha among many.
Shisui in particular enjoyed tremendous prestige within the clan. He had built a reputation as the man who would throw himself to the front of any mission for the sake of the clan. With a pair of Mangekyo Sharingan, he was unquestionably Kage-level. And yet, in a world built on supernatural strength like this one, he still kept compromising with the clan again and again.
Hopelessly naive.
If only I could control him too...
Arata indulged the greedy thought for a moment. Then, while controlling another Uchiha to patrol near the Naka River as a lookout, he simultaneously directed Sasuke and the other Uchiha already under his control to help capture those who had not yet been taken.
Back when he had only Sasuke, the pace of hypnotizing the Uchiha had been painfully slow. But once he had enough hands to work with, they could call in help, cover for one another, and the efficiency shot through the roof.
At this rate, half a month at most, and I'll finish step two.
In his plan, completely controlling Sasuke had only ever been the most basic first step. Step two was bringing everyone except Shisui and Itachi under control. Once that second step was complete, he would almost lose the ability to leave Sasuke's body at all, because out in the open world he had no way to recover chakra. Other Uchiha restored too little, and they all came with time limits.
By that point, reverse-summoning chakra into over a hundred people and controlling them would already be close to the absolute limit of what he could do.
And once the Uchiha were under control, it would be time to begin the truly important third step.
He was going to build an Uchiha Network.