Chapter 11 The Seeds of Rebellion

Listening to Sasuke breathing softly in his sleep beside him, Itachi laid down on his futon. It had been just over a year since they moved to the new compound, and he had gotten very used to the look of the ceiling above his bed.

Beyond the bedroom where the two children slept was the family's dinner table, where Fugaku and Mikoto were sitting.

"Itachi's grades are amazing, hm?" He heard his mother's voice from the other side of the closed sliding doors. She apparently thought the children were already asleep. Without trying to listen, Itachi stared absently up at the ceiling.

"He is my son, after all."

"I suppose so."

His father was praising him. And his mother was happy about it. There was nothing to feel bad about.

"How is he at school?" his father asked.

"What do you mean? Look at these excellent grades—"

"I'm not talking about that," his father said, cutting his mother off. "Does he have any friends?"

"He doesn't really talk about his friends."

"That boy doesn't know how to take it easy."

"That's not such a bad thing."

"But he goes too far. It's like he's rushing, like he's hurrying to become a full-fledged ninja."

Dad sees right through me… The slightest heat colored Itachi's face.

"The way he's so earnest about ninjahood, sometimes I feel like I should take lessons from him, even though I'm his father. But a thread stretched too taut is fragile. I'm worried he needs to let loose somehow."

"He's a gentle boy. You just have to watch Itachi cuddling Sasuke to know that. He'll be fine. And lately, he really looks up to Shisui like a big brother. They train together; they're quite close."

"Shisui of the Body Flicker, hm?"

Itachi was also aware that Shisui had been drawing attention as a ninja lately, garnering the nickname "Body Flicker."

"It's all well and good to have an older friend too, but it'd be nice if he could talk with friends his own age and learn at least a little of what fun feels like."

"I'm sure he will."

A friend the same age… The face of the girl who spoke to him suddenly after school floated up in the back of his mind.

"Uchiha Izumi." Murmuring the girl's name, Itachi quietly closed his eyes.

The Rising Star

Six months after starting at the academy, Itachi's fame spread throughout the school. He excelled to such an extent that some teachers and students said his level of talent had never before been seen at the school. Given the fact that the first-year classes had nothing to teach Itachi, his teachers gave him special homework and tests. But Itachi easily mastered it all, and his teachers threw up their hands in defeat.

He was more than advanced enough for the genin level, and so, just over four months after he started school, his teachers unanimously agreed on his graduation after his first year.

The village of Konohagakure, exhausted from the Great War and the attack by the Nine-Tails, urgently needed ninja. Because of this, a select number of students judged by their teachers to be particularly gifted could take the graduation exam without waiting for their full term to be up. If they passed the exam, they would then attend the graduation ceremony with the older students and be assigned duties as a genin.

Naturally, Itachi passed the graduation exam. It was on clone techniques, something he had mastered with the instruction he got from Shisui before starting at the academy.

"You'll be a ninja and out there in no time," Shisui had said, knowing Itachi's fervent desire to become a ninja as soon as possible, and then joined him in clone training.

Six months of school left… His graduation had already been settled.

***

"Hey! You!"

Itachi heard someone call out and stopped walking.

"You him? Uchiha Itachi?"

Three older students, probably from the school's senior class, stood in the hallway behind him.

Itachi had spent his whole life training as a ninja; he didn't have an ounce of energy to pour into anything else. He just barely remembered the names and faces of the students in his own class. He didn't know anything about students in other classes or grades. So he was assuming, based on their height, that these students were in the most senior grade.

The average age of graduation from the academy was twelve. The physique of seven-year-old Itachi was completely different. He was so short, he had to look up at the students standing before him.

"You know who we are?"

"No."

At Itachi's blunt response, the student standing in the middle, the one who had done all the talking, furrowed his brow. "Cheeky brat, just like everyone says, huh?" He was a scary older boy with a small nose and narrow eyes.

"I'm Izumo Tenma. Fleet Foot Tenma, they call me. Ain't nobody at school who don't know me."

I don't know you made it as far as Itachi's throat, but he swallowed the words and looked up at this Tenma.

"You wanna go?" said the student with droopy eyes standing on Tenma's right. He was nervous, maybe concerned about what Tenma would think.

"Slow it down, Katsura," Tenma instructed, and Katsura threw him an ingratiating smile.

"You know why we stopped you?" the boy on Tenma's left asked, his right eyebrow shooting up. He was the tallest of the three.

"No idea."

"What's with this kid?"

"Hold up, Hagiri," Tenma held the tallest boy back. "We're gonna make sure we teach this kid about school manners. Just don't rush it."

Tenma slowly took a step forward to stand before Itachi. "You know hierarchy's important in the ninja world, right?"

"With the four-person cell as the basis for ninja duties, the orders of superior jonin and chunin ninja are absolute. Thus, decorum and seniority