The armistice negotiations had been temporarily paused, leaving the neutral negotiation table between the camps cloaked in an uneasy, baking stillness. Inside the Konoha delegation's private tent, Kagami sat alone, reviewing the latest clauses while enjoying a cup of green tea. Sensing a familiar chakra, he looked up with a genuine smile as a sudden ripple in the shadows materialized into a familiar, deer masked figure.
"Kenji-san!" Kagami welcomed him warmly, fully expecting triumphant news from the Takigakure front or a fresh directive from the village. "You're back early. I assume Sensi has already secured everything?"
The Anbu stood perfectly motionless, as the porcelain deer mask reflected the dim lantern light like bone. "Kagami."
"What is it?" Kagami's smile faltered slightly at the stark absence of emotion in his comrade's voice.
"Tobirama-sama passed away last night. Konoha Year 33, July 25th." *(Japanese date format)
The brush in Kagami's hand remained suspended over the scroll. He paused. A forced, tight laugh escaped his lips as he shook his head dismissively. "I'm sorry... what did you just say? The heat out there must be getting to you, Kenji. The stress of this campaign has everyone—"
"Tobirama-sama is dead, Kagami," Kenji repeated, the words dropping like lead weights into the small space. "His heart stopped last night."
"NO! That's impossible! You are lying to me!"
Clang!
With a violent, convulsive jerk, Kagami surged to his feet, toppling the low wooden table. The delicate porcelain tea set shattered against the dirt floor, splashing hot amber liquid across the maps.
"Kagami-sama!"
"Waka-dono!"
The tent flaps tore open instantly. A squad of elite Uchiha guards burst into the Tent, their unsheathed kunai and short-swords gleaming, ready to cut down whatever assassin had provoked their commander. But the moment they crossed the threshold, they froze in their tracks. A suffocating, frigid tidal wave of killing intent erupted from Kagami, so thick and malicious that the air itself felt heavy to breathe.
"Leave us," Kagami commanded. His voice was terrifyingly quiet. He kept his head lowered, supporting his weight with one hand pressed hard against the tilted edge of the ruined table, while using the other to fiercely massage his burning, stinging eyes.
"But, Kagami-sama! The Anbu—"
"I. Said. Leave. Us."
Though profoundly unsettled by the sudden, monstrous shift in their usually gentle leader's character, the Uchiha guards exchanged tense glances, bowed in rigid submission, and backed out of the tent, sealing the flap behind them.
The moment the fabric fell shut, Kagami's fingers blurred through a sequence of hand seals. A localized barrier shimmered into existence around the canvas, instantly severing all sound and chakra signatures from the outside world. He spun around, his face contorted with a mixture of raw grief and boiling fury.
"You are an Anbu Commander!" Kagami hissed, stepping directly into Kenji's space. "Do you truly think information of this magnitude can be delivered so carelessly?! To jest about the Hokage's life during an active deployment—"
Kenji reached up, slowly unclasping the porcelain mask to reveal a pale, weary smile. "I am standing here today as your brother-in-arms, Kagami. Not as an Anbu Commander."
Kagami's shoulders jolted at the remark, his breath catching as he swallowed the next word coming out of his mouth.
"Tobirama-sama was my uncle, yes," Kenji said softly, his voice tinged with a carefully manufactured layer of sorrow. "But he was also your sensei. He raised you, molded you, and trusted you above all others. I knew that you deserved to hear the truth from a friend, not from a message scroll."
Kagami's fury seemed to collapse inward, his head dropping like a child who had suddenly realized the world was much larger and crueler than he believed. Yet, even as his posture slumped, the chakra radiating from his body began to change. It grew wilder, colder, and distinctly more sinister—tainted by the unique, darkness of the Uchiha's despair.
"How?" Kagami whispered, his hands clenching into bloodless fists. "How did he die? He was perfectly fine when we parted ways. A shinobi of his caliber doesn't just fall ill overnight."
Kenji watched the transformation in detail. Slowly and deliberately, he raised the deer mask and slid it back over his face, hiding the subtle, calculating glint in his eyes. He needed the mask. He needed it to bury the guilt, the grief, and the dark, intoxicating thrill of a mission about to be perfectly executed.
"It was Sunagakure's chakra poison," Kenji whispered, his voice muffled by the porcelain facade. "The Kuchimoso clan's untraceable toxin. It had been lingering in his system since the Kinkaku Rebellion, slowly eroding his chakra pathways until his body simply gave out under the strain. Uncle didn't tell you because he wanted to protect you from this truth... at least until the war was over. He wanted your mind clear. But I thought... I thought you deserved to know the truth."
"Sunagakure..."
The name left Kagami's lips not as a word, but as a venomous growl. His aura spiked violently, the shadows inside the tent twisting as if responding to his malice. Without another word, Kagami turned on his heel and strode purposefully toward the exit.
"Where are you going?" Kenji asked, stepping into his path.
Kagami didn't even look at him, his hand already reaching for the barrier seal. "To do the only natural thing left to do. Revenge. I will paint this desert in their blood."
Kenji intercepted him, placing a heavy, restraining hand flat against Kagami's shoulder armor. "Stop this madness, Kagami! Look at the bigger picture!"
With an explosive flare of chakra, Kagami jerked his shoulder away violently, knocking Kenji's hand aside. He spun around with a growl. "Look at the bigger picture?! Are you even a Senju?! Are you truly Sensei's nephew, or just a spineless politician wearing his crest?! They murdered our Hokage! They murdered your Uncle!"
Behind the white mask, Kenji felt a bitter, tragic satisfaction bloom in his chest. 'It was working. The grand elder's advices were taking root. Outwardly, however, Kenji let his posture mimic a man torn apart by a profound moral dilemma. He stepped back and answered with a strained and hesitant voice.
"If you butcher the Suna elders now, it will destroy the peace treaty," Kenji argued as his tone started to gain confidence and desperate urgency. "The world will plunge back into an endless cycle of warfare!"
Kagami snorted coldly, a dark, arrogant sneer twisting his features. "Let it. I will take the responsibility for the slaughter. Neither you nor the vllage will have to carry that weight. I will bear the sin alone."
"And what of Hiruzen?!" Kenji shouted back, striking the final, critical chord of their shared bond. "He has just taken the mantle! He is drowning himself trying to stabilize the village! Launching a rogue war of vengeance will ruin everything he is trying to build. This does not help him, Kagami!"
"It is easier to ask for forgiveness," Kagami whispered, "than to ask for permission."
Slowly, Kagami lifted his face. When his eyelids parted, the standard three-tomoe Sharingan was gone. In its place burned a pair of crimson eyes adorned with a complex, symmetrical pinwheel design—the Mangekyō Sharingan. The sheer pressure emanting from its sinister chakra caused the dirt beneath their feet to rustle.
"Besides," Kagami promised, his voice was dripping with arrogant confidence of maddened Uchiha. "It won't bother Hiruzen at all, because it will end quickly. So quickly that Suna will be brought to its knees before Konoha notices anything."
Kenji acted flawlessly. He staggered back a step, his breath hitching as if thoroughly stunned by the Mangekyo Sharigan. He stared at the spinning crimson patterns for several seconds of silence before finally letting his shoulders drop in a gesture of forced submission.
"Fine," Kenji muttered, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper. "If your mind is made up... then I will cooperate. But we cannot let Konoha be branded as the aggressor. We must force Suna to strike the first blow."
Kagami's spinning eyes narrowed slightly. "How?"
"We return to the table with radically aggressive clauses," Kenji suggested, stepping closer, as he began to fully take on the darkness. "Demand their mines. Demand their mission quotas. Insult their legacy. If their pride doesn't break them into drawing their kunai first, use those eyes of yours. Cast a subtle genjutsu on their lesser delegates. Force a hand to slip. Force a blade to draw. Let them initiate the massacre."
The frantic, wild chakra around Kagami began to settle, replaced by a chilling calm. "An elegant solution, Anbu Commander."
With his temperament stabilized into a quiet, hidden malice, Kagami unsealed the barrier, turned, and calmly exited the tent to return to the negotiation table.
Kenji was left alone.
The silence of the tent rushed back in. It was heavy and suffocating. For a few minutes, Kenji didn't move an inch. He stood in the center of the ruined room, staring at the shattered porcelain at his feet.
Suddenly, the earth shuddered. A deafening roar echoed from the neutral zone outside—the unmistakable, catastrophic sound of a massive, Suna-style Wind Release technique colliding head-on with a roaring Uchiha Fire Release. The battle had begun.
Kenji remained exactly where he was, slowly digesting the magnitude of what he had just set into motion. He had broken Kagami's heart. He had engineered a war. He had secured a dark path for himself. A path that Tobirama once walked through. Or at least that's what he was told.
Slowly, his hands reached up and unlatched the deer mask. He collapsed backward into a surviving wooden chair, his body entirely spent. A massive, ragged sigh escaped his lips as he dry-washed his face with his bare hands, dragging his fingers hard across his skin again and again, trying to scrub away the phantom blood.
His shoulders began to hitch. A low, raspy sound bubbled up from his throat.
"Gah... haha...hahahahhaha.... AAHahahahahahhahahaha."
The sound grew, tearing out of his chest until he was laughing hysterically into the empty, trembling tent. It was a manic, breathless sound—the laughter of a man who had sacrificed his humanity to become a monster for the sake of peace.
"AhahahahAAahhahaAAAAhahahaha... hahaha... haha.. ha... ha... haaaaaaaaaagh."
But just as quickly as it had erupted, the laughter shattered. The sound broke into a few sharp, ragged chops, catching in his throat as his indifferent composure as Anbu Commander reasserted itself. The madness vanished from his eyes, replaced by a dull and vacant eyes.
Kenji stood up. He wiped his face one final time, completely expressionless. Sliding the stark porcelain deer mask back over his features, the shadow of the Senju stepped out of the tent and into the burning light of the new world.
The air outside the tent no longer tasted of quiet heat; it tasted of ash and ozone.
The neutral zone was a cratered nightmare. Great arcs of pressurized wind had sliced through the surrounding rock formations, but they were entirely swallowed by the towering sea of fire that Kagami had unleashed. The sand beneath Kenji's boots had already vitrified, turning into jagged sheets of charred glass that cracked under his weight.
Through the shimmering heat haze, Kenji saw the Suna delegation. Or rather, what was left of them.
The lesser delegates lay scattered like charred kindling, their armor melted directly into their flesh. At the center of the devastation stood Kagami with his hands resting casually at his sides, completely unbothered by the retaining wall of ink like fire swirling around him. The complex, pinwheel design of his Mangekyō Sharingan bled a slow, silent trickle of crimson down his right cheek, but his expression was entirely vacant.
He was looking down at the Sunagakure head negotiator, who was desperately trying to crawl away through the molten glass, his legs severed at the knee.
"Why...?" the dying Suna shinobi wheezed, coughing up blood. "The treaty... we were going to sign..."
Kagami didn't answer. He didn't need to. He simply stared down on him with his eyes. The black flames surged forward like serpents, swallowing the man's screams in an instant.
"Kenji."
Kagami didn't turn around, but his voice carried perfectly over the roaring of the residual fires. It was devoid of the grief from before, replaced by a terrifying chill.
"The Suna guards at the ridge will notice the chakra flare within twenty minutes," Kagami stated. "We march now. By tomorrow, there will be no Suna shinobi left to defend their borders."
Kenji adjusted the deer mask as his voice perfectly modulated back into the flat, emotionless tone of a tool. "Your guards reached the Uchiha garrison outside the neutral zone. They've started mobilizing. They believe Suna ambushed you during the signing. They are ready and eager to fight for you, Commander Kagami."
"Good," Kagami whispered. He finally turned, the crimson pinwheels locking onto the white porcelain of Kenji's mask. For a split second, a ghost of the old Kagami seemed to flicker in the depths of those cursed eyes like a silent, desperate plea for someone to wake him from this nightmare.
But the illusion shattered as Kagami turned his back on the burning negotiation tables and leapt into the rocky canyons toward the Suna border.
Kenji watched him go. The Grand Elder had been right; the Uchiha were volatile. But as Kenji leaped after him, the heavy thudding of his own heart reminded him of the laughter that had just escaped him in the tent. Kagami was cursed by his eyes, but Kenji was cursed by his compliance.
They were both monsters now. The only difference was that Kagami still believed he was fighting for a reason.