The Uchiha district was a place of long shadows and even longer memories. Kisame Hoshigaki shifted his weight on the branch of the gnarled oak, his shark-like eyes darting toward Itachi Uchiha. The plan had been simple: infiltrate, observe the "Merchant," and vanish before the Leaf's sensory team could make sense of their presence. The abandoned district was supposed to be the perfect blind spot.
But the sound of footsteps shattered the silence.
Itachi remained motionless, his cloak blending into the darkness. He had assumed that in a village so obsessed with the "Will of Fire," this graveyard of a clan would be a forbidden zone, a place the living shunned out of guilt or fear.
Then, the figure emerged into the pale, silver moonlight.
The boy wore the high-collared blue shirt of the Uchiha, a long, straight-edged blade strapped to his back. His movements were fluid, disciplined, yet there was a frantic energy to him that felt out of place.
It was Sasuke.
Kisame's grip on the hilt of Samehada tightened. He didn't need a briefing to know who this was. The boy was a smaller, angrier carbon copy of the man standing next to him. He shot a questioning look at Itachi. Do we eliminate the witness, or do we run?
"Ignore him," Itachi whispered, his voice so low it barely stirred the leaves. "Our priority is the Merchant. We cannot afford a skirmish that alerts the Anbu or the Sannin. Stay hidden."
"If you say so," Kisame grunted. He was surprisingly loyal to Itachi's judgment, mostly because Itachi was rarely wrong.
The two S-rank criminals watched in surreal silence as the "Last Uchiha" began a most peculiar ritual. Sasuke didn't go to the main shrine to pray, nor did he head to the training grounds to brood. Instead, he slipped into a derelict house—one that had been sealed since the night of the massacre—and the sounds of frantic rummaging echoed out.
A minute later, Sasuke emerged, his face twisted in a scowl of disappointment. He moved to the next house. And the next.
Itachi's brow furrowed beneath his forehead protector. He hadn't seen his brother in years. Sasuke was taller, his shoulders broader, and the sword on his back suggested he had moved beyond the basic academy curriculum. But his current behavior was baffling.
In the third house, Sasuke's rummaging finally met with success. He stepped out into the moonlight with a small, triumphant smile. In his hand, he held a tarnished gold necklace and a few stray silver coins. He wiped the six years of dust off them with the hem of his shirt and tucked them into a worn pouch that looked suspiciously like a wallet.
"Still not enough," Sasuke sighed, his voice carry clearly in the still night air. "At this rate, I'll never afford the Level 4 set."
He turned and bolted toward the fifth house in the row.
Kisame couldn't help it. He bared his jagged, triangular teeth in a silent laugh. "Itachi-san... it looks like the pride of your clan has fallen on hard times. Your little brother is grave-robbing his own relatives for spare change. Is Konoha really that stingy with their orphans? He's wearing a forehead protector; he should be earning mission pay."
Itachi's eyes remained hooded, but his heart felt a sharp, icy prick. He had sacrificed everything—his parents, his lover, his soul—to ensure Sasuke's safety. He had made the Third Hokage promise to provide for the boy, to ensure he grew up without want. And yet, here was the heir of the Uchiha, scouring ruins for "broken silver" in the middle of the night.
"Kisame," Itachi said, his voice flat but carrying a strange weight. "Do you have any currency on you?"
"Huh?" Kisame blinked, his shark-like eyes widening. "You're serious? You want to give him a handout?"
"If he continues this house-by-house search, he will be here until sunrise," Itachi said, his tone devoid of any brotherly warmth, masking his true intent. "We have an investigation tomorrow. If he finds a 'hoard' now, he will leave quickly. It's a tactical necessity."
"Right. Tactical. Sure," Kisame smirked, reaching into the folds of his cloak. "I don't carry paper—it gets soggy when I use Water Style. I've just got some raw gold coins I took from a bounty in the Land of Frost. Kakuzu would kill me if he saw me throwing this away."
He handed a heavy handful of gold to Itachi. In a blur of movement that even Kisame struggled to track, Itachi descended from the tree, placed the gold near a root that caught the direct glare of the moon, and scattered a few handfuls of dirt over it to make it look like a forgotten stash. He was back on the branch before the dust had even settled.
As Sasuke stepped out from the fifth house, frustrated once more, a glint of yellow light caught his eye.
"Gold?"
Sasuke scrambled toward the base of the tree. He knelt, digging into the dirt with his bare hands, pulling out the heavy, cold coins. His eyes widened. This was more than he had found in the last three houses combined.
But then, he stopped. His fingers froze on the metal.
Why is there unweathered gold sitting on top of a tree root in the middle of a courtyard?
The realization hit him like a physical blow. Sasuke's instincts, sharpened by the life-and-death stakes of Shen Mo's "Stage of Destiny," screamed a warning. This wasn't a lucky find. This was a lure.
"I finally found you," Sasuke whispered, but it wasn't about the money.
He didn't stand up slowly. He exploded into motion, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword. As he rose, his eyes didn't just open—they burned. The two-tomoe Sharingan whirled with a frantic, crimson light, his vision cutting through the darkness and the foliage.
"Who's there!?"
His gaze locked onto the two massive chakra signatures perched in the branches. Thanks to Kakashi's grueling training sessions and the mental fortitude he'd gained from the jars, his perception had evolved. He could see the swirling, cold blue of the shark-man's chakra and the dense, terrifyingly familiar obsidian-red of the other.
"Those eyes are such a nuisance," a deep, raspy voice drifted down. "Present company excluded, of course, Itachi-san."
Itachi-san.
The name felt like a lightning strike to Sasuke's soul. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard it was painful. The gold coins fell from his hands, forgotten in the dirt.
Whoosh—!
A figure flickered from the tree, landing ten paces away. He stood with his back to the moon, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the courtyard. The red clouds on his black cloak looked like pools of fresh blood in the silver light. He looked up, and for Sasuke, the world narrowed down to those three-tomoe eyes.
Itachi Uchiha.
The nightmare was no longer a memory. It was standing right in front of him, breathing the same air.
Sasuke's body trembled—not with fear, but with a volcanic, all-consuming rage that threatened to crack his very bones. His eyebrows furrowed, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. Every drop of blood in his veins seemed to boil.
"Itachi... Uchiha!" Sasuke unsheathed his sword, the steel singing as it cleared the scabbard. "How... how dare you show your face in this place? How dare you step foot on the ground you soaked in our family's blood?"
His hand tightened on the hilt. He wanted to unleash every skill he had bought—every ounce of power he had scraped together. He wanted to scream.
But something stopped him.
The Sasuke of a month ago would have charged blindly and been broken in seconds. But this Sasuke had stood on the "Stage of Destiny." He had seen the vastness of the world through Shen Mo's jars. He took a jagged breath, his Sharingan darting to the shadow behind Itachi.
The man with the sword. The shark-man.
One against two, Sasuke thought, his mind racing through the tactical assessments Kakashi had drilled into him. Kakashi said Itachi is a monster. And his partner has enough chakra to rival a Tailed Beast. If I rush now, I die without landing a single hit.
"Hmm?" Itachi tilted his head slightly, his expression a mask of cold indifference.
He had expected the reckless charge. He had expected the blind, screaming hatred he had spent years cultivating in his brother. But Sasuke was standing his ground, analyzing the situation even while his eyes radiated a killing intent so strong it felt like a physical weight.
He's changed, Itachi realized. The hatred is there, but so is... restraint? Where did he find the discipline to stay his hand?
"Why wouldn't I return?" Itachi asked, his voice a cool breeze over a graveyard. "Does a hunter not return to the woods where he caught his finest prey? Just because I killed everyone here doesn't mean the air isn't pleasant."