Chapter 12 Awakened by Darkness

Just like an honor student to have a neat answer. But …" A malicious look came over Tenma's face. "I can't stand that attitude of yours." He came close enough that Itachi could almost feel his breath and glared at the younger boy. "You sure are an eyesore for an Uchiha."

"You're really going there?" Hagiri muttered, as if amazed at Tenma. But his voice clearly contained a sneer.

Lunch break. The other students were afraid of the violent threesome, and no one came near them. All the teachers had gone back to the Teachers' Room. Boosted by a sense of superiority, knowing no one was going to get in his way, Tenma's mouth stretched out in a mean grin.

The "cheeky brat" before him was a younger student, after all. And Tenma had almost certainly decided before this encounter began that Itachi would cry and apologize if they just threatened him a bit. No doubt he had made countless classmates and younger students obey him like this. He wasn't the least bit ashamed of threatening a student five years his junior. The dim arrogance of their natures bled out onto the faces of all three students.

It wouldn't take Itachi even three minutes to beat down these fools. They called him cheeky or whatever, but really, they just wanted to make him yield. They wanted to make the supposed school prodigy cry and beg for mercy, and stroke their own vanity. So why didn't they come at him the moment they called out to stop him?

This was no ordinary school; this was a training ground for ninja. The thought of killing was no sooner had than the act was carried out. Wasn't that the way of the ninja? These older students didn't understand that the institution of school was protecting them. It was like they were open on all sides.

Itachi had kunai hidden on his back. And quite fortunately, he had three of them there. There wasn't even any need for him to take a step. He could simply reach around to grab the kunai at his waist and send them flying through the air. Holes would be dug out of the foreheads of Tenma and the other two, and all three would fall.

But he wouldn't kill them. For Itachi, who believed a ninja's decision to kill was the movement to kill, the fact that he didn't move meant he wouldn't kill them. The reason was simple: Itachi didn't like fighting. That was why he'd never once been in a fight. In a fight, you couldn't actually kill the other person. You needed to show restraint. And he was uncertain as to whether he could actually show the crucial restraint. He worried that he might actually end up killing his opponent.

So, he wouldn't kill them. Better to avoid futile fighting. But he also had no intention of letting them hit him.

"It was you guys who set the Nine-Tails on the village, right?" His heart beat faster at Tenma's words.

"All the grown-ups say so, you know—that the Uchiha clan made the Nine-Tails attack the village. You're a sneaky, cunning clan, so we'll probably never catch who did it, right? But it was definitely an Uchiha. The fact that the Hokage and them don't trust you is proof. I mean, they made you all go live together, on the edge of the village."

"I don't know anything about that."

"You think you can't just say, 'I don't know,' and be done with it?" The furrow between Tenma's brows grew deeper. "My uncle died when the Nine-Tails attacked us. His dad did, too." Tenma pointed to Katsura, standing behind him. "And how'd things go for your family again?" Tenma then asked Hagiri, as he glared at Itachi.

"Right in front of me, my mom, she was trying to protect my little sister from debris that came flying, and …" Hagiri faltered.

Itachi remembered when he had protected Sasuke and his mother. He had leapt innocently at the enormous rock sailing down toward them and mustered everything he had to smash it. Did you stand by quietly, and watch your mother die? Couldn't you do what I did? he wanted to ask Hagiri. You have to get stronger so that you can protect things, so that you can push away sadness.

"The Uchiha clan are our enemy. I mean, you're our enemy. You killed our relatives. How could we not hate you?" Tenma demanded.

First, false charges; then, a broad interpretation. It was in precisely these kinds of human feelings that the origin of war lay.

A person wants to bury, somehow, the sense of loss after losing someone they love. This feeling, a feeling they don't know how to vent, snatches away their power of judgment and runs wild. And then they hurt someone.

Each and every word out of the older boy's mouth made Itachi feel more and more weighted down.

"Apologize." Tenma leaned back. Then he pointed into the now-empty space between himself and Itachi and shouted, "Get down on your hands and knees and apologize! Say 'I'm sorry on behalf of the entire Uchiha clan'!"

"I will not," Itachi said dispassionately, stifling all emotion.

The looks on the faces of the older students changed at once. Flushed with fierce emotion up to that point, they now suddenly paled. The superficial impulse to threaten the cheeky first-year boy, and maybe vent some of the helplessness they felt at the loss of their families in the Nine-Tails incident, changed in that moment to resentment toward Itachi himself.

"Y-you …"

All three reached hands around to behind themselves. They grabbed hold of kunai hilts.

Itachi stared at the older students, his own arms hanging loosely at his sides. If it came to that, he intended to get through this with a substitution technique that made use of cloning.

His substitution technique was unconventional. Normally, the ninja switched out their own body for a log with a tag attached immediately before an attack to confuse their opponent. But rather than a log, Itachi's version used countless crows.

He had come up with the idea when he was training with Shisui and saw a flock of crows flying in the dense woods. If you used the usual log, the confusion effect on your opponent was meager. But the instant you switched out for crows, they flew off in all directions, so your opponent was surprised and bewildered, generating an opening that wasn't even on the same level as with the log.

This was the first time he had tested it in an actual fight.

Will it work … ?

He planned to do it when one of the three thrust a kunai into Itachi's body.

All four were taking shallow breaths. Both Itachi and Tenma and his gang were watching every move the other made. A tense silence rolled down the hallway.

"Stop it!" The high-pitched shout of a girl shattered the quiet.

Izumi appeared in front of Itachi. With both hands raised up high, she faced the older students. "I'm Uchiha too! But I have no intention of apologizing to you! I mean, it wasn't the Uchiha clan who summoned the Nine-Tails!"

Tenma and his gang were taken aback at the sudden development.

"The Uchiha clan lives in the village, too. People we care about died in that whole thing. That's why …" Even from behind, Itachi could tell she was moved to tears. "Whoever did it isn't Uchiha!"

Tenma's face hardened. "Out of the way."

"I'm not moving!" Izumi shouted firmly.

Then, suddenly, the look on Tenma's face changed.

"H-hey, look at that!" Katsura put a hand on Tenma's shoulder and pointed at Izumi's face with his free hand.

"I-it's the Sharingan," Hagiri muttered, his fear showing.

"L-let's get out of here," Tenma said, and the three turned and ran.

"You all right?" Izumi turned to face him, round eyes burning a bright red. In the center of them, small circles floated up, with patterns like comma-shaped magatama jewels on them.

The most powerful visual technique, passed down through the Uchiha clan—the Sharingan…

"Sorry for butting in," Izumi said, smiling, and the strength ran out of her body.

Itachi ran over and caught her by the shoulders.

Izumi passed out.

It wasn't until after school that Izumi regained consciousness in the bed in the nurse's room. No sooner had she woken up than she was smiling, somewhat embarrassed, at Itachi, who had been by her side since classes ended for the day.

"You didn't need me to butt in. I'm sorry," Izumi apologized, red all the way to the tips of her ears.

"I didn't need you to?"

"Well, I mean, you're Itachi. Someone like me's just in the way, right?"

"You actually saved me."

Maybe it was just like she said. But thanks to her eyes, the three older students had fled without doing anything.

"When I get mad, I get those eyes without even knowing it."

"How did you activate it?" Itachi still hadn't activated the Sharingan. Apparently, the trigger was in the heart somehow, but even Shisui wouldn't teach him about it. Given that he had gone beyond the average ninja to master basically every skill, the fact that he hadn't awakened the Sharingan was a hard truth to bear.

Izumi did it…

He wanted to know how.

"My dad died in the Nine-Tails' attack."

This was the first he'd heard of that. Izumi's father would have been a member of the Uchiha clan. In which case, there was a strong possibility that he had worked under Itachi's father. But Itachi hadn't heard anything about any of his father's subordinates being killed in the line of duty.

"Oh! My dad's not an Uchiha. My mom's Uchiha. After my dad died, we came back to the clan, and I became an Uchiha, too," Izumi told him, as if reading his mind.

"Is there a connection between your father's death and the Sharingan?"

"Yeah." Izumi sighed and met Itachi's eyes. Her own had returned to normal.

"I was there with my dad when he died. He died right in front of me. He was protecting me. So I…" Tears ran down her cheeks. "It was like, if I just had more power, my dad wouldn't have had to die… During the funeral, and the whole time after that, I blamed myself. 'If only I had more power,' I said."

Looking as though she couldn't stand it, Izumi lowered her face. "And then suddenly, something started throbbing inside my eyes. My chakra gradually collected there, and I fainted. When I woke up, my mom told me it was the Sharingan."

"Huh. I'm sorry to make you remember something so painful."

"No, it's all right. Don't worry about it." She smiled.

He reached out his right hand.

Confused, Izumi tilted her head to one side.

He waited wordlessly until she pulled a slender hand out from under the blanket and slowly lifted it up.

He grabbed onto her pale palm.

"Thanks."

Izumi smiled slightly.

Danzo tossed the white file onto the desk and looked at the subordinate standing before him, wearing a white tiger mask. Red shading stretched out to the sides from around the eyeholes, slanted upwards as if expressing anger.

"Uchiha Itachi, hm…"

The photo attached to the file showed the face of a still-young boy. The eyes that stared back at Danzo, however, contained a strength that belied their owner's age.

"All involved assert that the academy has never before witnessed such genius. He completed the graduation examination four months after he commenced his studies, and he is scheduled to graduate in the springtime of the next year."

His gaze still on the file, Danzo listened to the excessive formality of his subordinate, and a smile crossed his lips.

"I can just see the different departments fighting to get him."

"Yes."

Danzo lifted his weary hips from the chair. As the shadow behind the Third Hokage, he had carried the burden of the village's darkness, but recently, he had felt bitterly the weight of his own body. He wasn't so old that he knew death was upon him, but he was of an age to start thinking about his own life and the length of it.

Ten years from now, twenty years from now… he would certainly die. And there was something he had to do before that happened. Cutting out the root of the evil that had been growing since the birth of the village of Konohagakure was Danzo's life's work.

"A prodigy not yet colored by anything…"

Danzo turned his gaze to the darkness visible beyond the window. The black void had fallen deathly silent, as if devouring the fleeting peace. For men who lived in times of war, the night, with its swirling air of murder, was something yearned for.

"Well, let's meet him first, hm?"