"What do you want to know? It's not over, but I'll hear you out." Itachi leaned back on the stone chair, his stance relaxed, a faint, imperceptible smile even hanging at the corners of his mouth.
"I'll say it once more…" Sasuke's tone was growing impatient.
Thump!
Before he could finish, Itachi was pierced through once again on the screen. When everyone looked closely, they saw that Sasuke, who had been standing opposite Itachi, had transformed into a pile of white snakes scattering to the ground.
His real body had somehow moved behind Itachi, thrusting the blade straight through the stone chair and into Itachi.
"Genjutsu?" Itachi's tone was indifferent, as if the sword embedded in his chest didn't exist. Blood seeped from the wound, staining his black-and-red Akatsuki cloak, but he didn't even frown. "I have one last thing to ask..."
"That's what I said, you bastard! Answer my question! That pain in your chest won't subside until you answer."
Sasuke twisted the blade in his hand, and blood trickled down the Kusanagi blade from Itachi's chest.
---
[Konoha, Year 20. Hokage Office]
Tobirama sat behind the desk, hands crossed on the table, watching the screen with an expressionless face.
His eyes narrowed slightly, the reflections of the two brothers probing each other flickering in his pupils. Smoke curled lazily from the incense burner on the desk, drifting through the room.
"Typical Uchiha—always playing with Genjutsu." As the person in the Shinobi World who knew the Uchiha clan best, Tobirama had already seen that both Itachi and Sasuke were still testing each other through Genjutsu up to this point.
Itachi had never seemed serious about the fight from the start, while Sasuke was being led around by the nose, caught entirely in Itachi's rhythm the whole time.
The Uchiha clan always excelled at this kind of flashy, intricate nonsense, Tobirama silently grumbled to himself.
Sure, it was entertaining to watch—but ultimately useless. For a thousand years, they'd been crushed by the Senju.
No matter how you looked at it, their arsenal was always just Genjutsu, Fire Release, and the Sharingan—the same few tricks over and over. The Senju, on the other hand, were different. Left punch hits hard, and right punch hits hard too—all relying on raw chakra power.
And that Uchiha Sasuke, he probably had some intellectual issues too. He clearly wasn't good at Genjutsu, meanwhile his brother was a master of it, yet he still insisted on using his own weakness against his opponent's strength.
Still, Tobirama didn't voice these thoughts aloud. The battle on the screen was still ongoing, and he was curious to see what tricks these two Uchiha would pull out.
On the screen, the Kusanagi blade pushed in a little deeper.
Itachi's expression remained utterly calm, as if the pain meant nothing at all. He didn't even blink, and that inscrutable smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth.
"So you purposely missed a vital spot..." Itachi said, as if confirming something trivial.
"You said back then…" Sasuke continued to ask.
The scene suddenly shifted to the night of the Uchiha Clan Massacre.
In Sasuke's memory, Itachi had once said to him with confidence: "If you awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan, there will be three, including myself, who possess its powers. And then… heh… there will be meaning in letting you live."
"The third person... The other one with a Sharingan... Who in the Uchiha clan is it?" Sasuke had remembered those words for ten years, constantly wondering who that third person was.
He desperately wanted to know who that other person Itachi had spoken of was, and that person who, like Itachi, had blood of the Uchiha clan on his hands and had to die.
But for people across the various timelines of the Shinobi World, they already knew that person was Uchiha Obito—the mastermind behind the Nine-Tails incident, the puppet master of the Akatsuki, and the executor of the Eye of the Moon Plan.
Through the power of his Mangekyō, he had even been responsible for the death of his own teacher and his wife.
Clearly, however, Sasuke on the screen didn't know this yet. That's why he had to ask, to find out whether Itachi was the only one who had slaughtered the clan. And if there really was a second accomplice, that person would also become a target of his revenge.
"Why... the curiosity about such a thing?" Itachi sighed.
"I'm going to kill him after you. That's why."
Hearing that, Itachi cast a sidelong glance, seemingly somewhat incredulous:
"Kill?"
"When you killed off the entire clan, you mentioned the existence of another person. So that Uchiha member you didn't kill was a co-conspirator. Even you couldn't have wiped out the entire Police Force all by yourself," Sasuke analyzed calmly.
[Speaking of this, we still don't know where the Uchiha clan's confidence for their rebellion came from.]
[After Shisui died, just Itachi and Obito alone were enough to wipe them out completely. Konoha might as well have just let the Uchiha rebellion happen and crushed them directly—shattering their spines in the process.]
---
[Konoha, Year 52. Uchiha Clan Grounds]
The Uchiha clan members immediately erupted in indignation… What nonsense was the Sky Screen even spouting?
They hadn't planned any rebellion! That was something from another timeline; what did it have to do with them now?
The Uchiha clan were steadfast supporters of the Will of Fire! Couldn't they see how much the villagers' impression of them had already improved?
Now, complaints against the Police Force had dropped, villagers no longer walked around them when they saw them, and even the Hokage had publicly praised the Uchiha clan on several occasions.
Rebellion? Who had time for that!
---
[Konoha, Year 60. Hokage Office]
Hiruzen puffed on his pipe, feeling that the screen was joking.
Fugaku had a Mangekyō Sharingan too, for goodness' sake! Those eyes—though he'd never known it before—each Mangekyō ability was monstrous. So if Fugaku had chosen to control the Nine-Tails, could Konoha have withstood another Nine-Tails rampage?
And when his son came to kill him, Fugaku chose to stand down and accept death. But what if it had been him and Danzō instead?
Fugaku probably would have burned them both to ashes with his Mangekyō.
Did people really think Uchiha Fugaku couldn't kill?!
---
[Tazuna's House]
Kakashi sighed with emotion, "Sasuke, the future you is no ordinary guy. You actually deduced Obito's role on that night. Without the screen, we might never have uncovered that piece of information."
Sasuke snorted coldly. "That guy is my enemy too."
"Kakashi, I won't leave him to you."
Kakashi was taken aback for a moment, then let out a another sigh.
Meanwhile, on the screen:
"It's Uchiha Madara..."
When Itachi on the screen gave that answer in all seriousness, many across the Shinobi World struggled to hold back their laughter.
---
[Akatsuki Hideout]
Deidara mimicked Itachi's tone, lowering his voice: "Uchiha Madara!"
"Tobi, you guy, you really fooled Itachi good! If it weren't for the Sky Screen, the future him would still think you were Madara."
"Say—do you actually know the real Madara? Is that why you can imitate him so convincingly that no one can tell?"
Sweat trickled down beneath Obito's mask. He hadn't expected Deidara, who usually seemed so thick-headed, to be this sharp at a moment like this.
Itachi also narrowed his eyes, letting his gaze linger on Obito for a long while. At the same time, another pair of purple eyes also settled on him.
Nagato examined Obito through Tendo Pain; his Rinnegan betrayed no emotion, but the pressure of that gaze was more intense than any stare.
Before the Sky Screen exposed his identity, even Nagato hadn't realized Obito's true nature—and had, for a time, genuinely believed he was the real Madara.
Still, Deidara's words reminded Nagato of something. Perhaps Obito really was connected to Madara in some way.
If that was the case… what role did Madara play in the Eye of the Moon Plan?
He couldn't help but recall what the Sky Screen had said earlier: "Old geezer deceiving the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man deceiving the kid, and the kid having nowhere to hide his tears."
Was the Eye of the Moon Plan… even real?!
*****
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