Chapter 9 – Uchiha Itachi Takes Action
For an entire day, Uchiha Itachi was lost in a daze.
After finishing the files on Sakumo Hatake, he refused to believe what he had read and dug deeper—pulling out historical records he had once been too indifferent to even glance at, searching for every scrap of information tied to those long-past events.
The Third Hokage. Shimura Danzō. Mitokado Homura. Koharu Utatane.
The clans of Ino–Shika–Chō, Hyūga, and even the Uchiha themselves.
All the Konoha leadership, all their schemes, all the ugly politics hidden beneath a surface of peace he once thought so absolute.
The harmony he used to believe in now seemed like a fragile illusion.
One by one, the "little incidents" buried in history—fleeting events that lasted mere moments yet shifted the entire balance of power—began to stand out in stark clarity:
The current whereabouts of the Fourth Hokage's personal guard.
The movements of the Three Legendary Sannin.
The council's suppression and manipulation of the shinobi clans.
The secret human experiments carried out in the shadows.
The "stability measures" enacted after the Third Hokage reclaimed power…
Each seemed small on its own—many were even riddled with Uchiha clan speculation and bias.
But just as battle reports can lie while the front lines never do, there were always shards of undeniable truth buried between the lines.
And it was precisely by stringing together those shards of truth that Uchiha Itachi suddenly found himself lost, helpless.
To his shock, the man he once considered the most ruthless and vile—Orochimaru—turned out to be the last of the Sannin to leave the village.
Orochimaru had even been one of the strongest candidates for the Fourth Hokage's seat.
He commanded troops during the war, won numerous critical victories, and was once adored by countless Konoha shinobi.
And yet, only a few short years after the war's end, such a figure had simply… vanished.
As for Shimura Danzō and his Root—names that kept surfacing in the archives—they were like bombs planted by his bedside, waiting to go off.
Each time that man's name appeared, a storm would erupt, and who knew how many lives were sacrificed for a single one of his decisions.
And this man… was the Third Hokage's most trusted right hand.
Itachi could no longer comprehend how such a person still held power.
Even the Third Hokage himself—the man he had once trusted without reservation—was no longer the same in his eyes. His image warped, distorted.
Itachi suddenly found himself wondering:
Was this world he saw… nothing more than one vast genjutsu?
For the first time, the radical defiance of his clansmen—their rage and resistance, which he had once failed to understand—began to make sense.
After all, what kind of world was this, where those distant from him treated him with sincerity and trust, yet those closest to him turned away one by one, leaving behind only disappointment?
So then—what did this man's true face really look like?
Itachi had no answer.
What he could see, clearly and painfully, from the endless records before him was this: the trust between the village and the clan had already been shattered—completely, irreparably—sometime during the fifty long years since Konoha's founding.
It wasn't a sudden collapse. It was a long, drawn-out process, advancing step by step, until there was nothing left but dust.
By the time he reached this conclusion, Itachi hadn't even noticed that the file in his hand had been crushed into a wrinkled ball.
Anger.
Frustration.
Betrayal.
Deception.
Countless emotions surged within him, but he forced them down, burying them as deep as he could.
As a member of the ANBU, Itachi knew better than most that a village's growth was inseparable from its shadows. He had personally carried out missions that proved it.
But those missions had always been aimed at outsiders—traitors, criminals.
Never had he imagined that when the village's blade fell upon its own heroes, it would be just as quick, just as merciless.
Itachi, whether he realized it or not, was an extremely absolute person. To him, things were often black or white—one or the other, nothing in between.
It was how he judged the world…
Or perhaps, it was simply how most children his age did.
He was twelve, thirteen—right at the peak of that age when young hearts burn with intensity.
Not even an overly precocious child could escape it.
And now, the father he could never understand before—his quiet choices, his frustrating hesitation—suddenly became clearer.
Fugaku Uchiha had been a classic fence-sitter.
When the clan's dissent grew loud, he neither endorsed it nor silenced it.
When pressure came from the Third Hokage's council, he sent his gifted eldest son to serve under them—yet never openly pledged loyalty to the Hokage's faction.
Until today, Itachi had believed his father simply wanted him to use his position in the ANBU to gather intelligence, to give the clan more leverage. And Itachi had done just that.
But after reading the lives of Kakashi and Sakumo, Itachi suddenly understood—
The clan that controlled the Konoha Military Police likely had no need for the scraps of intelligence he brought back.
Sending him to the Hokage's side was not just for information.
It was also to place a valuable "hostage" in the Hokage's hands—and to keep a path open, for him and Sasuke both.
Perhaps that was why he, like Kakashi, had been made part of the Hokage's personal guard so soon after joining ANBU.
If the coup were to fail…
Itachi could almost see it: his father would choose the same end as Sakumo Hatake—surrendering, and taking his own life, so that his children might live on.
Only then could they have a chance to fully integrate into the Hokage's circle, to inherit that legacy and live.
It was, perhaps, the only way to carve out a future for the Uchiha.
After all, even if the coup failed, surely the Third Hokage wouldn't wipe out the entire clan…
…Would he?
Itachi's lips pressed into a thin line. It took him a long time to calm himself.
At last he exhaled a long breath and murmured softly to himself:
"Information from only one side can't be trusted. Intelligence gathered from the Uchiha perspective alone could be completely misleading."
"I need a control group. Only then can I be sure."
With that thought, his boiling heart began to cool.
His gaze settled on a name in the archive:
Shimura Danzō – Root Division
If there was any place where the truth of the village's darkness was recorded most completely… it would be here.
In that case—
Itachi slowly set down the crumpled document and picked up his blade.
---
Under the Moonlit Night
Tree shadows swayed gently under the pale moon.
Passing clouds drew a veil of darkness across the earth, painting the ground in heavy shadow.
Four masked figures stood watch at different points, motionless as stone.
Their expressions hidden, their breathing silent, they blended into the night as if they were part of it.
When the clouds and moonlight parted for the briefest instant—just enough for light and darkness to trade places—two of the guards faltered for a single heartbeat.
In that heartbeat, a small figure flowed along the edge of their sight and the shadow's border like water, slipping past them and vanishing straight into the compound they were guarding.