Of course it was only a distraction, and it wasn’t long before the real Kakashi tried to sneak up behind me. I body flickered away from his paralysis jutsu, leaving behind a violent little whirlwind of sand that dispelled his clone, and came to a stop on the opposite side of the clearing.
“You’re better than I expected,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to take this seriously.”
He started to form seals, and I copied them on impulse. It was a lighting jutsu, something that should have been nearly impossible for me to use, but with my stolen Sharingan it was effortless. My Chidori lit up with an electric crackle at the same moment his did, and we rushed towards each other at incredible speed. It was hard to keep the unstable ball of lighting in my hand from veering off course, but I could see how he was doing it and it was so easy to copy…
I realized this wasn’t such a bright idea just as he made a minute error, which I blindly copied, and we both went tumbling off course. I released my Chidori, not wanting to burn myself with it by accident, but that turned out to be another mistake. Instead of dissipating harmlessly the electrical energy of the jutsu grounded itself out through my body, and I slammed into a tree as my muscles spasmed uncontrollably. It was all I could do to keep my heart from stopping, and then a blow to the back of my head sent me spiraling down into oblivion.
“Well, that was dumb of me,” I grumbled to myself as I climbed out of bed. “What on earth made me think it was a good idea to copy a jutsu I barely know anything about instead of using my own?”
Maybe having a Sharingan makes you stupid, my other self joked. Are you sure there’s no one else out there who has it? It looks like figuring it out on our own could take a long time, and I really don’t want to spend years cutting Sasuke’s eyes out every loop.
I winced. “Yeah, that does kind of violate our ‘don’t act like a psycho’ rule, doesn’t it? Well, there are all those Uchiha filed as ‘Missing, Presumed Dead’. I doubt we’re going to find Madara wandering the countryside training genin in his old age, but I suppose someone in that list might still be alive. Ninja certainly fake their own deaths for all kinds of reasons. But how would we find them?”
Who says we need to? We just need a name, and a little background info…
Itachi eyed me intently, radiating a barely-leashed killing intent that would have sent any normal genin fleeing in terror. I brushed a strand of long, black hair away from my face, and gazed back anxiously with my own Sharingan eyes. Well, technically they were Sasuke’s eyes, but he wasn’t using them at the moment.
I’d carefully sculpted myself until I looked Uchiha from head to toe, with a strong resemblance to a distant cousin of Itachi’s who’d been lost on a mission years ago. Since my transformations were real there was no illusion for his eyes to penetrate, no disguise for him to see through. With a little practice I’d even managed to perfect the transplant process, so that I could turn my stolen Sharingan on and off. It ought to be enough to fool even Itachi, and my cover identity…
“My mother was Rei Uchiha,” I explained, “Or at least that’s what father always said. She died when I was four, so I don’t remember her very well. But when my eyes activated we knew I couldn’t stay in Mist any longer, not with the blood purists executing anyone with the faintest hint of nonhuman ancestry. I know you must have your own problems, but I didn’t know where else to turn.”
My cover wouldn’t know anything about secret clan codes or recognition signs, so there wasn’t anything to trip me up on. He might be suspicious at first, but the mere fact that I had the Sharingan ought to convince him. Right?
He created a shadow clone without so much as a gesture, and it immediately vanished in a swirl of leaves. Then he cast an unobtrusive little signaling jutsu, and a moment later I felt another presence approaching.
“Let me introduce you to my partner, Kisame,” Itachi said evenly. “I’m sure he can verify your story about being a chuunin of the Mist. By the time he’s satisfied my clone should be in Konoha, so I can assure myself that Sasuke is well. If I find that he is dead, or simply missing his eyes, your remaining time on Earth will not be pleasant.”
Well, crap.
Itachi was by far the hardest target I’d ever tried to crack, but he did have one fatal flaw. Whenever one of my plans failed he’d tell me what went wrong before he killed me. Maybe it was arrogance, or maybe he just wanted to give me a chance to offer an explanation if I had one, but either way it was enough.
Fortunately I was quite proficient with suicide techniques.
It took me a bit of work to adapt my transformation jutsu for regenerating lost eyes, but in some ways it was actually easier than the full-body rebuild I’d grown used to doing on myself each loop. Passing as a Mist nin would be much harder, but fortunately that wasn’t an essential part of the story.
“I was raised in Hidden Earth”, I explained, “I honestly don’t know if I was kidnapped as a child, or created using some forbidden gene splicing technique. But when my Sharingan activated…well, I don’t know how to use it properly, and once they realized that they decided I was useless to them. I’m just lucky they underestimated me, or I wouldn’t have made it out alive.”
Itachi raised one eyebrow minutely. “So you decided to ask me for help?”
“In the ninja world I think it’s safe to assume that any public account of an event like the…fall of the Uchiha…is simply a lie concocted for political purposes. I don’t know what the truth is, and I’m not going to ask. What I do know is that you’re the senior surviving member of the clan, and the only one who can help me. I’d like to return to the clan, if you’ll have me.”
He studied me a moment longer, and nodded to himself. “When my brother comes to kill me, you will not interfere,” he ordered.
As if the old Sasuke could even make Itachi break a sweat. I suppose he might have eventually gotten good enough to be a threat, but it almost sounded like Itachi wanted Sasuke to kill him. Was that why he’d spared Sasuke, the night of the massacre?
Yeah, that sounds like the way these nutcases think, my other self commented.
“Yes, sir,” I agreed. “That matter is none of my concern.”
“Then follow me. If you can keep up, I’ll teach you what you need to know. Perhaps one day you can help him revive the clan…”
My elation at finally convincing Itachi was just enough to counter the nausea triggered by the thought of bearing Sasuke’s children.
Oddly enough, Itachi was an excellent teacher. Oh, he’d go from sensei to interrogator in a heartbeat if I let slip anything that contradicted my initial story, and he was too busy to spend more than a few odd minutes here and there on instruction. But he had an amazing talent for conveying key insights with just a few well-chosen words, and I learned more than I’d thought there was to know about the Sharingan in that first loop as his apprentice.
I also learned that having Sharingan eyes was an incredible power trip. I’d spent years sweating blood to polish my taijutsu skills to jounin level, but when Itachi showed me parts of the Uchiha family style it was trivial. Moves that should have taken weeks to learn became second nature in moments. Jutsu, even complex ones involving elemental manipulations, were obvious tricks I could easily duplicate. Predicting an opponent’s moves became effortless, and I could see through even the best genjutsu with ease. For a few weeks there I thought I was on the verge of becoming as invincible as Orochimaru had always seemed.