Chapter 17 — Try Attacking Me
Aizen Sōsuke couldn't say for sure what concrete effect his words had on Uchiha Itachi.
Or rather, he had never expected to force a precise outcome. In either life, whether empowered or limited, Aizen always worked through half-truths and situational nudges rather than by blunt coercion. He guided people by shaping the visible facts, not by tearing away the freedom of their inner will. Even if he could make someone comply physically, he could never fully read the secret landscape of another mind.
So long as the overall board stayed within his control, that was enough. The truly unknowable—those slivers of randomness that couldn't be constrained—were, to him, often the most entertaining. Despite having been burned many times in previous lives by figures such as Ichigo, Kisuke, and Gin, Aizen found it hard to give up the cat-and-mouse pleasure of watching events unfold.
But for the one small set of things he could not risk, Aizen took a far more solemn approach. That was why he'd removed certain elements ahead of time—the snake-tongued danger of Orochimaru, and, more dangerously, the existence of another pair of Mangekyō Sharingan.
…
"Whoosh—"
Shadows slid through the night breeze. Under the sparse moonlight through the trees, Root's squads spread out, ghosting toward their objectives. Though Konoha had been mostly peaceful lately, after the initial ambush Root and the Uchiha watch squads had already clashed in both daylight and shadow. The Uchihas anger was not baseless, and Danzō's fear had a foundation. When it came to ruthless measures, Root and the Uchiha were not so different.
This night Root had a target: an Uchiha reconnaissance squad patrolling the northern edge of the clan grounds near the Nenga Shrine. The Uchiha were less likely to tolerate open surveillance; radicals would act rather than endure.
They closed to within a hundred meters. Only when the lead Root captain halted did the rest of the team melt into the trunks and shadows. He signaled in the dark—small, sharp gestures—and the forest fell quiet. Through the mask, his unlit eyes tracked the Uchiha patrol while his peripheral vision watched their flanks. Unlike a mere foot-soldier who follows orders blindly, the captain knew the mission had a secondary, more important prize: to bait out the fish hiding behind the curtain. For that reason, three other similarly staffed teams shadowed them at a distance. Before they set out, Danzō had given him a high-probability target: Uchiha Shisui. Catching a name like that was worth more than wiping out one small patrol.
"Who—?!"
A member of the Uchiha scout team suddenly froze as if he'd heard something subtle. He turned toward a faint insect-noise. The Root captain's eyes narrowed; his hand signaled the attack decisively, and he formed his seals.
"Mind-turning Body Technique!"
The alerting Uchiha stalled. His companion, turning to check, was met with an impossible sight: the supposed warning-man suddenly drew a blade and, with the absolute calm of someone who has decided to trade lives, lunged straight through him.
Clang—! Sparks flew. The Sharingan-fed reflexes let the stunned Uchiha parry just in time, but before he could recover the attacker flung his chest against the blade as if for final purchase—the knife drove clean through. The first man stood dumbfounded. Root's other operatives refused him time to react. Before his numbness could resolve, three assailants came at him from different angles. Hidden wires and poisonous insects crossed paths; the veteran Uchiha lost an arm in an instant as venomous purple spread across his face; numbness, blood loss, and collapse followed. He never even got the chance to cast a genjutsu.
"Enemy attack!"
Only then did the remaining two scouts scramble to action. Shuriken and kunai screamed through the air; one drew his blade for close defense. The night erupted—metal, flash, and the smell of ozone.
The Root captain's lips twitched with restrained satisfaction. The patrol had been eliminated, but the trap was not merely for slaughter. The staged chaos was bait—calculated to flush out whoever was pulling strings in the dark. If a true heavy-hitter showed, Root would have their name; if not, Root could claim that the Uchiha had acted first. Either outcome served a purpose.
It turned into a melee of lightning and shadows. In the chaos, a figure slipped through the trees at the edge of the fray—quiet, measured—watching and waiting, like a fisherman observing ripples before throwing his net.
This night the village's peace was a fragile veneer. Underneath, tides of suspicion and bloodlust moved people into actions that could not be fully predicted. Root hunted, the Uchiha simmered, and in the middle were men who would try to turn both into the ends they desired.
To the elite Root operatives who had just wiped out half a scout team in an instant, the rest was little more than a dying animal's last struggle.
Within a handful of exchanges, two Uchiha chūnin—neither of whom had even awakened their Sharingan fully—were cut down by the four Root specialists. In that brutal, compressed span, an entire Uchiha reconnaissance squad had been annihilated. Yet the four Root men displayed no triumph; they stood as cold and motionless as when they'd first appeared, not a superfluous sound escaping them.
Their captain, eyes as unreadable as the rest beneath his mask, made a subtle gesture: he had sensed something at a distance. The team moved with practiced silence and soon melted away into the trees. Only then did furious curses from the Uchiha break the night.
Oddly, those Root operatives did not disappear far from the ambush site. Instead, they lingered at the scene, prowling around as if waiting for something. Only when the sky hinted at dawn did the captain decide the operation was concluding, and he signaled a slow, quiet return toward their base.
"Are we leaving already?" one of his men murmured.
They had almost slipped clear of the woodland when a warm, genial voice spoke from behind them. The captain froze and craned his head toward the sound. Perched on a nearby branch stood a figure cloaked in a heavy black robe—so visible, and yet, until that moment, utterly undetected. The captain's heart tightened with a thrill.
This might be the target Danzō named, he thought. The build's slightly off—probe carefully.
Without further exchange, the seasoned Root team snapped into motion. Poisoned insects sprayed like mist; taut steel wires shot out like webbing; hidden blades slid from tree trunks. The captain's hands formed seals. One instant is all we need, he thought.
But then—
a crisp sound: tap, tap.
A leaf, or a small fall of debris, landing on the loam. The captain glanced down and—suddenly—saw two hands folded together in a hand seal, and beneath them… his own forearms, severed at the wrists and spurting blood.
The coordinated attacks of his squad struck only air, collapsing into a cacophony of useless noise. With a dull roar, the man who had been standing plainly ahead now materialized behind the captain.
Yet the captain betrayed no cry of pain. Even with his arms gone, the dull, unilluminated pupils in his eyes flashed with a manic excitement.
"It's you!" he cried, lunging and dropping from trunk to trunk like a swallow. "At last—got you!"
The forest, which had moments before been empty but for the skirmish, now suddenly brimmed with squads—Root after Root—closing in to complete a perfect iron ring. Every angle was sealed; the circle was impenetrable. Blades were drawn in unison.
The captain, his voice ragged from blood loss, fixed his stare on the silent figure in the middle. "With this lineup, still not going to surrender?" he rasped. "You're surrounded."
A single laugh, edged with derision, answered him. The man in the black cloak shook his head as if amused and, with a casual motion, pushed up his heavy spectacles. He looked around at the tightening cordon and said, quiet and even:
"Try attacking me."
"I'll show you how arrogant that thought truly is."