The air in the Intelligence Bureau usually smelled of stale coffee and ink. Tonight, it smelled like ozone.
Habaki Uchiha sprinted across the rooftops, his high turtleneck collar pulled up over his nose to filter the wind. He was fast—not Minato fast, never Minato fast—but he moved with the efficiency of a man who had survived the Tailed Beast Bombs in the Third War.
He stopped at the edge of the district. His breath hitched.
He didn't hear an explosion. He didn't see a signal flare.
He felt it.
It wasn't a normal chakra signature. It didn't ripple like water or burn like fire. It felt like bleach being poured into a pristine pond. It was a chemical, spiritual sterilization agent spreading through the air, turning the atmosphere heavy and toxic.
Mangekyō, Habaki realized, his stomach turning over. But whose? Shisui is dead. Fugaku doesn't have this kind of... malice.
He dropped from the roof, his boots hitting the pavement of the Uchiha district.
Silence.
The Uchiha compound was never silent. Even at midnight, there were arguments, training spars, the clatter of dishes. Now, the silence was a physical weight, pressing against his eardrums.
I survived the Four-Tails, Habaki thought, his hand drifting to the hilt of his tantō. I survived the Five-Tails. But that was because I was standing behind the Yellow Flash.
He looked at his reflection in a darkened shop window. The high metal collar of his flak jacket, the habaki, reflected the moonlight.
My father named me the Habaki. The metal collar that locks the sword into the scabbard. I was supposed to be the stabilizer. The armor.
He had spent his life being the sheath for Minato's blade. But Minato was gone. And tonight, the sword was missing, leaving only the empty collar.
Sniff.
The smell hit him. It wasn't the metallic tang of fresh blood. It was the heavy, copper-and-bowel stench of slaughter that had already settled.
Habaki didn't scream. He didn't freeze. He pulled his collar tighter and ran.
He rounded a corner, his sandals skidding on stone that was slick with something dark.
He heard it—a sound so faint it would have been invisible to anyone but an Intelligence officer.
Hiccup.
Habaki kicked open the sliding door of the nearest residence.
The main room was a charnel house. He didn't look at the bodies on the floor. He stepped over them, his eyes locking onto the closet in the back.
He ripped the door open.
Five children. They were huddled together in a pile of futons, eyes wide, dark, and terrified. They smelled of sour milk and tears.
"Quiet," Habaki whispered. It wasn't a suggestion; it was a command.
The oldest, a girl no more than eight, nodded, clamping her hand over the mouth of a toddler.
"We're leaving," Habaki said. "Don't look at the floor. Look at my back. Focus on the crest on my jacket. Do you understand?"
They nodded.
Habaki ushered them out. He moved them into the alleyway, the shadows stretching long and distorted under the full moon.
"Go to the river," Habaki instructed, pointing north. "Do not stop for anyone. Not even the Police Force."
The children started to run, their small footsteps pattering like rain against the pavement.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Habaki froze.
Those weren't the children's footsteps. These were deliberate. Slow. The sound of wood hitting stone with the weight of a judge's gavel.
Habaki turned around.
At the end of the alley, a silhouette stood against the moonlight. An ANBU uniform. A katana. And eyes that glowed red—not the spinning tomoe of the Sharingan, but a geometric nightmare that spun like a kaleidoscope.
The bleach smell intensified. It burned Habaki's sinuses.
Itachi.
Habaki looked at the retreating backs of the children. They were fifty yards away. They needed ten seconds to reach the river.
Itachi took a step.
He's going to kill them, Habaki realized with icy clarity. He's cleaning the slate.
Habaki didn't waste time with words. He didn't ask why. He was a veteran of the Third War. He knew that when the reaper appeared, you didn't bargain. You fought for seconds.
He reached into his pouch.
Ping.
He pulled the pin on a smoke bomb. He didn't throw it at Itachi. He threw it at his own feet.
POOF.
Purple smoke exploded, filling the narrow alleyway.
Habaki didn't run away. He ran up.
He channeled chakra to his feet, sprinting up the wall of the bakery. He burst out of the smoke, launching himself into the night sky, high above the rooftops.
He was a silhouette against the full moon. A target.
I am the Habaki, he thought, drawing his tantō, angling his body for a downward strike. I am the shield.
He looked down.
He expected to see Itachi looking up. He expected shuriken.
Instead, Itachi hadn't moved. He was staring at the wall Habaki had just climbed. His left eye was bleeding.
"Amaterasu."
It wasn't a shout. It was a whisper that carried the weight of a funeral bell.
Habaki's vision went black.
Not from darkness. From fire.
It didn't start on his clothes. It started on his chakra.
Black flames, darker than the night sky, erupted on his chest. There was no heat at first—only a terrifying coldness, followed instantly by the sensation of his existence being erased.
The armor melted. The flesh vaporized.
Habaki didn't scream. He didn't have time.
As he disintegrated in mid-air, falling like a black meteor, his last thought wasn't of pain. It was of the footsteps of the children, fading into the distance.
Three seconds, he thought as the black fire consumed his eyes. I bought them three.
The alleyway was silent again.
Itachi lowered his head. He wiped a trail of blood from his cheek.
He looked at the spot where the man had fallen.
There was no body. There was no crater.
The cobblestones had been rendered into molten slag. The earth beneath them was gone, eaten away by flames that refused to be extinguished.
In the center of the magma, a single object remained.
A metal collar from a flak jacket. A habaki. It was glowing cherry-red, slowly melting, but for a moment, it held its shape against the fires of hell.
Itachi stared at it. His Mangekyō spun slowly, recording the image.
The children were gone. He could sense their chakra fading toward the river.
He didn't pursue.
He turned his back on the black fire, the only light in a district that had gone dark, and walked toward his parents' house. The fire continued to burn, eating the stone, eating the memory, eating the night.