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[NUT] Chapter : 02
🕑 Added 2025-05-26 19:29:17 +0000 UTC“Come out. There’s no need to hide.”
After leaving the village, Itachi came to a sudden stop, standing calmly on solid ground.
Compared to the swaying branches above, the earth beneath his feet felt more grounding.
Without turning his head, he spoke in a calm voice.
“Your senses are as sharp as ever, captain. But now that you’ve defected, it’s our duty as Anbu to bring you in…”
Two masked Anbu agents emerged from the trees above, crouched like shadows on the bark.
One chuckled lightly, peering down at Itachi.
“Careful. Don’t meet his eyes,” the second warned, his hand already on the hilt of the blade behind his back.
Suddenly, a gust of wind whistled through the air.
The two Anbu vanished from their positions—reappearing beside Itachi, blades stabbing forward.
Blood splattered across the ground.
“Did we get him? So much for the Uchiha prodigy…”
The first Anbu smirked, feeling the satisfying resistance of steel piercing flesh.
But before he could finish his sentence, his eyes went wide.
Pain exploded from his abdomen.
Itachi was no longer there.
He glanced down—his sword had run straight through his teammate.
“When…?” he gasped.
Only two figures remained now—both Anbu, both skewered by each other’s blades.
They had been caught in a genjutsu and killed each other, thinking it was Itachi.
Itachi descended slowly from above, his expression unreadable.
“From the moment you became my subordinates, you were already trapped in my illusion,” he said softly.
“The moment you moved to attack me, it activated.”
His voice was cold—almost pitying—but carried a hint of mocking finality.
“What a terrifying man…” the first Anbu murmured.
Then, silence.
Both bodies collapsed, one lifeless, the other still confused and dying, trying in vain to understand how it all happened.
Itachi stood over the corpses, his gaze distant.
No one could tell what he was thinking in that moment.
After a pause, he turned and leapt back into the trees, vanishing into the night.
He had sensed them earlier—two faint glimmers in the dark.
The genjutsu markers on their bodies, though dormant, had made them stand out like stars in the night sky to him. That was the giveaway.
As for the act of killing…
He had grown numb to it long ago.
The memories replayed often enough that the blood no longer shocked him.
Itachi’s gaze, once filled with curiosity and intensity, gradually cooled into calm focus.
There was no luxury of time to adjust to this world. The outside pressure left no room for hesitation.
So, he did what he had to: he embraced the memories of his predecessor, merging with them completely.
Each memory, each experience—he lived them as if they were his own. And in doing so, he sank deeper into the person he had become.
Just as Itachi detected an approaching threat and prepared to intercept, a lazy voice drifted from behind.
“You sure run fast…”
He turned, his eyes sharp, recognizing the presence before him.
The man was from Root. A trained hound of Danzo.
Itachi knew time was critical. He had to take him down swiftly.
If he delayed, reinforcements would arrive—and the battlefield would tip out of his favor.
The Root agent met Itachi’s calm eyes and felt a flicker of unease.
Those eyes... they weren’t the frantic, desperate eyes of prey. They were steady. Cold.
And that unsettled him.
But then he caught himself. Why am I looking into his eyes? he thought, panic surfacing.
He's an Uchiha…
Yet the feared genjutsu didn’t come.
His mask had shielded him—for now.
Itachi didn’t strike with illusion. Not immediately.
Beneath the sleeves of his robe, his hands were already forming signs, movements hidden from view.
The Root agent noticed Itachi’s slow, controlled breathing and scoffed inwardly.
So much for a prodigy, he thought with disdain.
To him, this boy’s reputation was just inflated—fame inherited by virtue of being the clan leader’s eldest son.
Genius or not, he was still thirteen.
He couldn’t possibly match the strength of someone who had survived the brutality of the last Ninja War.
Itachi’s fingers shifted subtly.
A moment later, a massive fireball burst from his lips—roaring through the air like a comet.
The heat cracked through the night, and the flames lit the dark canopy above.
At that instant, Itachi’s eyes spun—the three-tomoe Sharingan glinting ominously in the firelight.
But just as the flames reached the Root operative, Itachi cut off the jutsu.
A kunai flashed into his hand, and without hesitation, he stabbed behind him.
Metal clashed—a kunai met his blade. Sparks erupted in the night.
Itachi blocked a crushing kick with his left arm, bracing as the force slid him back across the ground.
There was no pause.
The two clashed again, swift and lethal.
Above, thick clouds swallowed the moon, and the dense leaves made the battlefield pitch-black.
But within that darkness, Itachi’s heart stirred.
He felt alive.
Each pulse, each movement in battle—it awakened something primal in him. A thrill.
Yet his eyes betrayed nothing. Still calm. Still sharp.
He lowered his left hand, slipping it back into his sleeve.
The breeze rustled his cloak and tousled his bangs, but he stood still—collected.
His hidden hand began forming seals once more.
There was no time to waste. Every moment risked Konoha reinforcements.
Earlier, he had acted on impulse—testing a fireball he knew wouldn’t finish the job.
That hesitation had cost him position.
Now, the enemy was hidden again, and Itachi was forced into a defensive stance.
As he completed the hand signs, he turned and began walking forward.
Deliberately, he exposed a vulnerability.
A clear bait.
One step. Two steps.
The forest remained still. The Root agent stayed hidden.
Itachi kept moving, seemingly unbothered.
Then, just as if he believed the threat had passed, he bent his knees and leapt skyward—springing onto a tree branch.
But the moment his body rose into the air—
The Root assassin struck.
No hesitation.
The anbu moved like a shadow—silent, swift. His dagger shot toward Itachi, aiming for a kill mid-air.
For a split second, the Root operative felt contact—but something was off.
He realized too late: Itachi had baited him into mid-air, a position with no leverage, no way to land safely, and no chance to defend every angle.
All he could do was curl defensively and use his blade to deflect whatever came next.
It all happened in a blink.
By the time he sensed something was wrong, he had already committed.
The “Itachi” he struck suddenly detonated in a blaze of fire.
A streak of flame lit up the sky—followed by a deafening boom.
A surge of explosive force erupted outward.
Itachi had used an exploding clone.
The blast swallowed the Root ninja in a storm of heat and pressure, while thick, unknown gases filled the air, enshrouding everything in smoke and fire.
On a slender tree branch high above, the real Itachi stood silently, watching the chaos unfold. His eyes were cold, analytical, and unreadable.
Bang.
A subtle noise echoed from within the explosion.
A sudden puff of white mist appeared—an aftershock within the already clouded scene.
Itachi’s Sharingan flickered, registering the movement. But without pausing, he turned and vanished into the trees—swift and graceful, like a dragonfly skimming over water.
This enemy was no amateur. Without activating his Mangekyō Sharingan—an ability with serious consequences—he couldn’t end this fight quickly.
And Itachi was cautious with the Mangekyō. He had no intention of overusing a power that risked irreversible damage. In the original timeline, he suffered from a debilitating blood disease—likely the price of pushing the Mangekyō too far, too often. Each use strained his body and diminished his vision.
He wasn’t going to make that mistake.
Not unless it was life or death.
Besides, this Root operative specialized in stealth and assassination. He would never act recklessly.
There was no reason to engage in a drawn-out battle, especially with enemy reinforcements likely on their way.
The jutsu he had just used was a high-level jutsu: Exploding Clone—an A-rank ninjutsu.
Its mechanics were similar to Kakashi’s Lightning Release Shadow Clone. But where Kakashi’s created a burst of electricity, Itachi’s clone ignited in a powerful, fiery explosion, releasing intense heat and thick smoke.
A brutal and highly effective tactic.
What caught him off guard, however, was that the Root ninja had used shadow clones as well—an uncommon strategy for those trained to counter Uchiha.
Shadow clones, after all, were a creation of the legendary Senju Tobirama—designed specifically to confuse the Sharingan. They left no visible flaws. No tells.
The Sharingan’s strengths lay in insight and genjutsu. But when it came to perception—sensing through obstacles, detecting hidden enemies—it was inferior to the Byakugan.
Still, what the Byakugan offered in vision, the Sharingan matched in precision and deceptive power.
Each had its role.
As the forest settled into silence, a lone figure stepped from the shadows.
The Root operative. Alive—barely.
“…I failed,” he muttered to himself, watching the direction Itachi had fled. “So his reputation wasn’t exaggerated after all.”
With a weary expression, he peeled off his vest and mask.
Quietly, he dug a shallow hole in the earth and buried his gear.
He wasn’t truly Root. He was an ANBU.
Dispatched under a different mission.
The Hokage had sent him and a few others—disguised as Root—to hunt down Itachi.
But now, with his teammates not yet in position and the battle lost, he saw no reason to continue the pursuit.
He had faced the boy directly—and knew he was outmatched.
Veterans could often sense power in just a single exchange.
Chasing him further would be suicide.
He looked at the flare in his hand, thinking. Then he lowered it.
The earlier explosion had been loud. Reinforcements—or danger—could arrive any moment.
It was time to disappear.
Back in the Hokage’s office, Sarutobi Hiruzen sat quietly, reading mission reports.
He was also rehearsing tomorrow’s public speech in his mind—while thinking deeply about the remaining member of the Uchiha clan.
His gaze drifted to the window, to the distant forests beyond the village.
He had publicly dispatched a squad of inexperienced Anbu to pursue Itachi.
But privately, he had also sent elite assassins, disguised as Root, to kill him.
If Itachi couldn’t survive their attack, then he held no value as a spy.
In that case, it would be better to eliminate both him and Sasuke, cutting the weed at its root.
But despite the cold logic of that decision, a knot tightened in the old man’s chest.
He remembered: Itachi had stood alone against his clan—not out of hatred, but to protect the village.
A child who had sacrificed everything.
And Sarutobi had promised him—just after the massacre—that he would protect Sasuke, let him live a normal life, go to the academy, and grow up far from this bloodshed.
Now, that promise felt like a chain.
Logic told him to end the Uchiha line completely.
But emotion whispered otherwise. This boy… his love for the village ran deeper than anyone’s.
The conflict tore at him.
The office was quiet.
Only the faint smell of tobacco lingered in the heavy air.
