The battle began not with the explosive clash of steel on steel, but with words that cut deeper than any blade.
"Do you want to know how they made me?" the impostor asked, his corrupted Sharingan spinning in patterns that made reality seem to shift and waver. "The process started with your blood, Sasuke. Samples collected during your time with Orochimaru-sama, preserved in crystalline matrices designed to maintain genetic integrity."
I felt my grip tighten on my sword, but I didn't attack. Something in his voice—beneath the artificial harmonics and unnatural resonance—carried notes of genuine pain that made me hesitate.
"They tried direct transfusion first," he continued, beginning to pace around the edge of the clearing while keeping his eyes locked on mine. "Injecting Uchiha blood into volunteer subjects. The results were... spectacular failures. Blood rejection on a scale that defied medical understanding. Most subjects died within hours."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, though part of me suspected I already knew.
"Because you need to understand what your legacy has become," he said, his voice carrying a mixture of admiration and resentment that was deeply unsettling. "The next phase involved bone marrow transplantation, replacing the subjects' hematopoietic systems with reconstructed Uchiha stem cells. Better results, but still catastrophic failure rates."
As he spoke, I found myself studying his movements more carefully. There was something wrong with his motor control—subtle tremors in his hands, occasional stumbles that suggested neurological damage. Whatever process had created him had exacted a terrible cost.
"The breakthrough came when they realized that consciousness itself was the limiting factor," he said, his expression growing distant as if remembering something from very far away. "Human minds aren't designed to process the enhanced sensory input that comes with Sharingan activation. The neural pathways simply can't adapt fast enough."
"So they modified the mind as well as the body," I said, pieces of the puzzle beginning to fit together.
"Exactly!" His face lit up with an enthusiasm that was clearly artificial, programmed rather than genuine. "Partial lobotomy to remove inconvenient emotional responses. Cerebral implants to regulate chemical balance. Direct neural pathway modification to support enhanced visual processing."
The casual way he described his own mutilation made my stomach turn. This wasn't just genetic manipulation—it was the systematic destruction of human consciousness in service of creating a weapon.
"I was the seventh attempt," he continued proudly. "The first to survive the full integration process. The first to successfully activate the transplanted Sharingan without immediate brain death."
"And the first to retain enough cognitive function to hold a conversation," I observed grimly.
"Precisely! Though 'retention' might be overstating things," he said with that disturbing laugh. "My memories of the time before the procedures are... fragmentary. I remember being someone else, having different desires and fears and dreams. But those seem like artifacts from another person's life."
I looked at him—really looked at him—and saw not just a failed experiment, but a victim. Whoever he had been before Orochimaru's followers got their hands on him was gone, replaced by this artificial construct that wore my face and wielded a perverted version of my bloodline's power.
"What was your name?" I asked quietly. "Before they changed you."
For a moment, his artificial confidence faltered, and I caught a glimpse of something genuine beneath the programming. "I... I think it started with 'K.' Kenji, maybe? Or Kazuki?" He shook his head, frustrated. "The neural modifications make it difficult to access pre-procedure memories."
Kenji. The name hit me like a physical blow, reminding me of Yuki's father, of all the innocent people whose lives had been destroyed by the legacy of Orochimaru's experiments. This young man had been someone's son, someone's brother, someone's friend. Now he was a weapon aimed at my heart, designed to embody everything evil about the Uchiha bloodline.
"They chose you specifically, didn't they?" I realized. "Not at random. They picked someone who resembled me physically before beginning the modifications."
"Very good," he said, his programmed personality reasserting itself. "Subject selection was crucial to the success of the project. Height, build, bone structure, even chakra signature—all carefully matched to existing Uchiha parameters."
"How many others were there? How many people did they kill trying to create you?"
"Hundreds," he said without apparent emotion. "The preliminary genetic compatibility screenings alone eliminated thousands of potential subjects. Of those who showed promise, most died during the initial modification procedures."
The scope of the atrocity was staggering. Hundreds of people had been murdered in service of creating a single weapon designed to psychologically torture me. Each death was another weight added to the already crushing burden of my clan's legacy.
"Why?" I asked, though I suspected the answer would only make things worse.
"Because Orochimaru-sama understood something fundamental about the Uchiha bloodline," he said, settling into a combat stance that was a perfect mirror of my own traditional style. "You can't be redeemed. You can't be reformed. You can only be controlled or destroyed."
"And you're here to prove that."
"I'm here to demonstrate that your journey toward redemption is nothing but self-deception," he corrected. "Every village I burn, every innocent I kill, every act of terrorism I commit will be attributed to the Uchiha name. Your name."