Elliot's genjutsu was different.
Once he started manipulating someone's chakra, he'd convert it into electrical signals and feed them directly into the nervous system — letting the body pick up more sensory information than it normally would, then using that feedback to fill in the gaps. Every detail in the illusion got patched in real time, until the whole thing was basically indistinguishable from reality.
Converting chakra into electrical signals was advanced medical ninjutsu territory. Tsunade had developed Mitotic Regeneration along similar lines — using chakra-to-electricity conversion to influence nerves. Elliot had gone a different route entirely, splicing medical ninjutsu and genjutsu together into something that didn't quite fit either category.
Here's how it worked: while the target was under, their conscious mind kept firing control signals down to the body the way it normally would. Elliot intercepted every single one, studied them, mimicked them. Once he had a complete picture of how the nervous system was running the body, he could take over — everything below the neck, driven by chakra. Breaking free wasn't an option. The target couldn't even gather chakra to try.
The end result was total control. Mind and body, at the same time.
Nobody could even understand how it worked without mastering both genjutsu and medical ninjutsu simultaneously, let alone figure out how to counter it. It killed without leaving a trace.
That said, it wasn't invincible. Using it meant getting inside someone first, which meant one target at a time — no splitting his attention. And no matter how airtight the illusion was, it was still a genjutsu. If someone disrupted their chakra flow early enough, before he'd fully locked in, it broke. Against a high-level shinobi who noticed something was off and reacted immediately, he didn't have a great answer. He could still make himself a nuisance by burning through his own body to debuff his host, but that was about it.
His total chakra reserves weren't massive either, and outside an Uchiha's body he couldn't recover at all. Time on the clock was limited.
Tradeoffs on both sides. It was a weird, niche, completely one-of-a-kind technique.
Fsssh.
Sasuke's body sat up in a position that looked deeply wrong — arms hanging limp, shoulders slumped, head lolling to one side, drool running freely down his chin.
Good. The more emotionally intense the scenario, the more nerve signals I get to work with. I've got basic motor control down.
Elliot turned it over in his head. Three to five more sessions and the technique should be complete.
Though running a body through nerve signals is genuinely annoying...
He'd practiced on corpses while developing this — borrowing bodies from the hospital storage and apparently leaving a lasting impression on at least one of Konoha Hospital's nurses — but controlling a living person was a completely different problem. A corpse didn't push back. A living body flooded him with information the moment he issued a single command: not just the muscles needed to move, but skin sensation, organ feedback, breathing, all of it firing at once. To keep Sasuke from noticing, he had to intercept every signal and run a passable imitation of the brain's entire response system. Just getting the body to sit up had been a headache.
No normal person could do this.
"Good thing I'm not a person," Elliot muttered to himself, carefully easing Sasuke's body back down. "I'm a chakra ghost."
No rush. He had time. The Uchiha Massacre happened when Sasuke was seven, his second year at the Academy — nearly two years away.
As for the drool... he was going to have to let that one go.
"This is..."
Sasuke opened his eyes slowly, taking in the clan district — moonlight cutting across the street, deep shadows pooling between the buildings. "Genjutsu?"
But it was too real.
He pushed himself up, and his palm came down in something wet. The smell hit him a half-second later — copper, thick and heavy, like breathing through a mouthful of iron. He recoiled, rolling into the moonlight and spinning around in a low crouch.
Three bodies in the shadows. Uchiha shinobi, all of them — men who'd been close to his father, who'd come by just yesterday.
It's a genjutsu, Sasuke told himself. Obviously it's a genjutsu.
...Should I go home?
He hesitated, then started walking. Slow at first, then faster, then running — and the whole way there, nothing felt wrong. Not a single seam. Even the impact of his own feet against the ground felt exactly right.
Is this actually a genjutsu? Is this actually a dream?
The thought started to wobble. More bodies along the road. Clan shinobi, civilians, the neighbors he'd known his whole life — all of them face-down in spreading pools of dark.
Crack.
Bang bang bang.
He shoved through the half-open front door and saw his brother standing in the shadows — and his parents on the floor.
Genjutsu. It's a genjutsu, it's a genjutsu, it's—
His whole body was shaking. His chest heaved. Every breath dragged in more of that smell, thicker and more real than the last.
"Hah—!"
"Sasuke?"
He opened his eyes. His mother was sitting beside him, watching him with a calm expression. He was back. He had a hundred things he wanted to say, and opened his mouth, and said none of them.
"Sasuke..."
Mikoto watched the single tomoe flicker into her son's eyes and fade just as quickly. She didn't smile.
She knew what awakening the Sharingan cost.
"Dinner's ready," she said instead, and said nothing else. She dabbed the corner of his mouth with her handkerchief, and the flustered, vaguely mortified look on his face was enough to push the shadow back a little.
Maybe I imagined it.
She kept the thought to herself.
Sasuke couldn't shake the dream. The genjutsu — whatever it was. How could it have been that real? Who had even cast it? Nobody could have slipped into the house just to pull something like that on him. And even as a joke, that wasn't something you joked about.
He pushed his food around through dinner.
Afterward, the routine said: study from the scrolls for a while, then bed. Instead he sat at his desk and stared at nothing, the illusion running on loop in the back of his head.
Should he tell his father? His mother? Wait for Itachi to get back?
If it was just a dream — if he'd scared himself over a nightmare and went running to someone about it — that was embarrassing. That was the kind of thing that got back to his father. And if he told Itachi, Itachi would definitely tell their father, and then...
More than that: he was trying to close the gap with Itachi. He was trying to earn his father's respect. The last thing he needed was to look like he couldn't handle a bad dream.
I'm an Uchiha, he told himself, squeezing his fist. A nightmare doesn't beat an Uchiha.
It doesn't.
"Haah—"
Another yawn rolled through him, heavy and sudden, the same strange pull as before. His head went foggy fast. He made the bed on autopilot, crawled in, and felt his eyelids drop — and then his thoughts just... sank. Down and down.
He opened his eyes to the smell of blood.
Tonight, it seemed, the nightmare had kept its appointment.