The sun was shining. The birds were, and I quote, freaking chirping. It was, by all accounts, a disgustingly perfect morning in the Uchiha compound. The kind of morning that makes you want to throw up a little rainbows and sunshine.
I, Yūrei Uchiha, was not a morning person. My personal philosophy was that mornings were a societal construct designed to torture those of us who appreciated the finer, darker things in life—like sleeping in.
"Yūrei! Get up! You'll be late!" my mom's voice, sweet as a poisoned senbon, floated up the stairs.
I groaned, burying my face deeper into my pillow, which was decorated with a very cool, very menacing-looking crow. "Five more minutes, Kaa-san! I'm honing my chakra… through osmosis… with the mattress!"
The door slid open with a violent shhhhk. I didn't need to look. I could feel the Disappointed Mom Energy radiating from the doorway. It was a powerful jutsu, one I had no defense against.
"Yūrei. Up. Now. Your father is already dressed and he looks presentable. Try to emulate that," my mother, Hana, said. She was a beautiful woman with kind eyes and the terrifying ability to find a speck of dust from three rooms away. She wasn't a shinobi, but she could weaponize a feather duster like a Kiri ANBU.
"Tou-san always looks presentable. He's a robot programmed by the Konoha Military Police," I mumbled into the crow's face.
"I heard that," a deeper voice said from behind her. My father, Ren, stood there, already in his full Police Force armor, his face a perfect mask of Uchiha Seriousness. "And the correct term is 'efficiently and professionally attired for duty.' Now, get up. You have the academy."
I rolled over, squinting at them. "Actually," I said, a triumphant grin spreading across my face, "I don't."
My father's eyebrow twitched. It was the Uchiha equivalent of a full-blown emotional breakdown. "Elaborate."
"Instructor Iruka said I've been 'showing exceptional progress and should take a day of mental rest and recuperation to avoid burnout.' So. I'm officially on a state-sanctioned vacation." I flopped back onto the bed. "My body is a temple, and today, the temple is closed for maintenance."
My mother looked concerned. "Are you feeling ill, sweetie?"
My father just looked suspicious. "Sasuke is He attending today?"
"Dunno. Probably. You know him, Mr. Perfect Heir, probably already there doing one-handed push-ups while reciting the shinobi code backwards. Why?"
"No reason," my father said, though his face said 'every reason'. He knew, just like everyone knew, that the academy sometimes gave the Heirs kids… special treatment. Especially the ones not directly in the main family line. A day off for me, while the clan head's son attended? It reeked of politics. But hey, a day off was a day off. I wasn't about to look a gift horse-ninja in the mouth.
After a breakfast where my mother tried to feed me enough for a small platoon ("You're a growing shinobi! Grow!") and my father gave me a stern lecture on the proper care and maintenance of shuriken ("…and step seven, always polish with a microfiber cloth, Yūrei, the downfall of many a shinobi has been a poorly polished throwing star…"), I was finally released into the wild.
My 'day of mental rest' consisted of:
Trying to see if I could stick to the ceiling with chakra like a gecko. (I could not. The wall and I became intimately acquainted. Several times.)
Practicing my shurikenjutsu on a tree stump. (I mostly practiced my 'running away from the shuriken that ricocheted weirdly' jutsu.)
Annoying the local cats by attempting to befriend them with my awesome aura. (They were not impressed. One of them, a giant ginger tom, gave me a look that promised violence and left me a 'present' on my doorstep.)
It was, all in all, a perfectly average, wonderfully boring day.
Dinner was a quiet affair. My mother's miso soup was, as always, a divine experience that probably violated several laws of nature.
"So, Yūrei," my father began, in that tone that meant 'I am about to impart Serious Wisdom'. "While unstructured time is… acceptable… you must remember that idleness is the—"
The first scream cut through the night air like a kunai.
It was sharp, short, and then silenced. We all froze. My father was on his feet in an instant, his bowl forgotten. His hand went to the tantō at his side. His sharingan wasn't active, but his eyes were hard, scanning the closed shoji doors as if he could see through them.
"Ren…?" my mother whispered, her voice tight with fear.
Another scream, closer this time. Then another. And another. It wasn't just one person. It was a chorus. A horrible, dissonant chorus of panic and pain coming from within the compound.
"Get down. Under the table. Now," my father's voice was low, a command, not a suggestion. We moved. My mother pulled me close, her arms wrapping around me. I could feel her heart hammering against my back.
The sounds outside grew louder. Not just screams now. The distinct clang of metal on metal. The sizzle-pop of fire release jutsus. The guttural cries of fighting.
"Stay here. Do not come out. Do not make a sound," my father said, his eyes locking with my mother's. There was a whole conversation in that look. A history. A fear. A goodbye. He turned and slid the door open just enough to slip out into the chaos, closing it behind him.
We sat there in the dark, under the wooden table, huddled together. The world had gone mad. My perfect, boring, annoying day had been ripped apart and replaced with this… this nightmare.
"It's going to be okay, Yūrei," my mother whispered, but her voice was trembling. "Your father is strong. The police will handle it."
I wanted to believe her. I really did. But the sounds weren't stopping. They were getting closer.
Then, silence.
A heavy, oppressive silence that was somehow worse than the noise. It lasted for a full minute. Two.
Thump.
Something heavy slumped against the outside of our door.
My mother's breath hitched. We didn't move.
The door slid open.
It wasn't my father.
It was Itachi.
My cousin. The genius. The pride of the Uchiha. Sasuke's amazing big brother who everyone loved and I was mildly jealous of because he got all the cool-genius attention.
But this wasn't Itachi.
This was a demon wearing his skin.
He stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the flickering orange light of distant fires. His black cloak was dark and wet, dripping onto our clean floor. The smell hit me first—hot, metallic, the smell of the butcher's shop in the summer. In one hand, he held a long ninjatō, stained so thoroughly it seemed to drink the light. But it was his eyes…
His eyes were wrong. They weren't the kind, tired eyes I knew. They were flat. Empty. And spinning within them were three black tomoe, swirling around a blood-red pupil. The Sharingan. But it looked like a predator's eyes. A shark's eyes.
"Aunt Hana," he said. His voice was calm. Monotone. It was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard.
"Itachi…?" my mother's voice was a fragile thing. "What… what's happening? Where's Ren?"
"He is with the others," Itachi said, taking a step inside. The dripping from his cloak left a trail of dark red on the tatami mats.
My mother pushed me further behind her, her body shielding mine. "Itachi, please. Whatever it is… Yūrei is just a boy. He's your family."
"The concept of family is a temporary limitation," he replied, as if discussing the weather. He raised his sword. "This will only hurt for a moment."
"RUN, YŪREI!" my mother screamed, shoving me backwards as she launched herself at Itachi, not as a shinobi, but as a mother, a wild, desperate thing with nothing but her nails and her love.
It was over before I could even process it.
A single, fluid motion. A soft, wet sound.
She fell.
I didn't run. I couldn't. My legs were made of stone. My brain was screaming static. I just stared, my eyes wide, at the scene in front of me. At my mother, on the floor. At Itachi, pulling his sword free.
He turned those dead, spinning eyes on me.
"Do not hate me, Yūrei," he said, walking towards me. "This is necessary. This is the destiny of the Uchiha."
I found my voice. It was a small, broken thing. "Why…?"
He didn't answer. The world turned red. Then black.
I was on the floor. My cheek was pressed against the cold, sticky tatami. The coppery smell was everywhere. It was in my nose, my mouth. I was cold. So cold.
I was lying next to my mother. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. I tried to reach for her, but my arm wouldn't move. There was a deep, cold emptiness in my stomach. I looked down. There was a dark, red stain spreading across my shirt.
I couldn't breathe. Each attempt was a shallow, hiccupping thing. The world was getting darker at the edges. The sounds of the night were fading away.
mom… I thought. I'm scared…
My vision tunneled. And then… it didn't.
It exploded.
It wasn't my life flashing before my eyes. It was lives. Dozens. Hundreds. A kaleidoscope of memories that weren't mine, but they were.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the class clown, dying on the floor.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the brooding emo, dying on the floor.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the hyper-competitive rival to Sasuke, dying on the floor.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the lazy genius, dying on the floor.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the fanboy of Might Guy, dying on the floor.
I was Yūrei Uchiha, the ramen enthusiast, dying on the floor.
Each one was me. Each one had lived a slightly different seven years. Each one had different inside jokes with my mom, different lectures from my dad, a different favorite training ground. Each one had just been murdered by Itachi Uchiha.
And each and every single one of them was pissed off.
Their consciousness—my consciousness—shattered like a mirror, and then every single shard was violently, painfully sucked back into this one broken body on this one bloody floor in this one damned timeline.
The cold emptiness in my stomach… itched.
I looked down. The grievous, fatal wound was… knitting itself together. The flesh writhed and sealed, leaving behind smooth, pale skin and a nasty scar. My lungs inflated on their own, a deep, ragged gasp that tasted of blood and ozone.
My head felt like it was splitting open. The new memories, the other me's, were screaming. A cacophony of rage, grief, and pure, unadulterated fury.
A voice, shrill and vengeful: "Kill him kill him kill him kill him KILL HIM!"
A voice, cold and calculating: "Stop. Sacrifice yourself. Use your're sharingan Your survival is an anomaly. A flaw. Erase yourself to ensure his death."
A voice, bitter and hateful: "No. We survived. We're alive. And this rotten village, this virus that bred the sickness that is Itachi Uchiha and the ones who commanded him… it all needs to be purged. Scoured clean."
More voices joined in. The clown: "Hey, who ordered the mass murder? Not cool, dude. Not. Cool." The rival: "He was always better. Of course he was. We never stood a chance." The genius: "Fascinating. A convergence of temporal identities triggered by near-death trauma and chakra-based ocular evolution…"
They argued. They screamed. They overlapped. And then, as one, they all started laughing. A broken, insane, multi-layered laugh that echoed inside the prison of my own skull.
I felt my lips twist into a grin. A wide, unnatural grin that stretched my face until it hurt. I was laughing too. A dry, hacking sound that rattled in my chest.
My eyes were burning. I could feel them changing. The Sharingan that had awoken in my death throes, fueled by the love for my mother… it was mutating. The three tomoe bled together, swirled, and morphed into something else. Something that had never been seen before. A single, stark, black symbol against the red, like a twisted flower or a malicious star. The Mangekyō. But it was mine.
Tears of blood streamed down my cheeks, cutting tracks through the grime and drying blood.
The voices in my head reached a crescendo, a unified chant of madness and purpose.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me again was the ceiling of my home, and the last thing I heard was a single, clear thought that belonged to all of me at once:
This isn't a game anymore.