The world dissolved in a whirl of spiralling, seal-script geometry, the familiar tug behind the navel, and the deafening silence of compressed space.
Renjiro stumbled forward half a step as his feet met the familiar, worn-smooth flagstones of the Uchiha compound's central pathway. The teleportation was flawless, as always with Minato, but the disorientation was more than spatial.
Renjiro steadied himself, breathing in deeply. Sight was a primary sense, but for a shinobi—and especially for one who had danced too close to the sun of his own power—it was not the only one. Closing his eyes was a redundant action, but he did it anyway, focusing inward. With a soft, controlled exhale, he pushed his chakra outward from his core.
"Fwoom."
A subtle, invisible field expanded from him, a radius of pure sensory perception. His chakra brushed against the world and echoed back, painting a ghostly, luminous map in his mind. And there, etched in the returning echo of his own energy, was the shape of his home. He felt the single step up to the sliding door slightly ajar as he'd left it, the empty stillness within.
Without hesitation, his hand not reaching out but simply knowing the space, he began to walk. His steps were sure, avoiding stones he sensed were uneven, his path a straight line toward the comforting, silent outline of his dwelling. He didn't need to see the path; he felt it, a riverbed of worn stone in a landscape of grass and gravel.
Minato stood a few paces behind. He did not move to help, did not speak. His eyes were now sharp, analytical, and deeply troubled. He watched the red-haired boy navigate the world without light, the chakra emanating from him in almost visible waves to Minato's refined senses.
The proficiency was astounding, a testament to Renjiro's brutal adaptability. This was not a training exercise. This was the cost of doing business with the Mangekyō. This boy lived in a cycle of self-imposed blindness, a price paid for moments of reality-shattering power.
And what power it was. The memory of the spar's end was a cold stone in Minato's gut. The genjutsu hadn't just trapped Kushina; it had, according to Renjiro's own explanation and Kushina's hollow confirmation, ensnared Kurama.
The implications unravelled in Minato's mind with terrifying speed. 'If it worked on them, it could work on anyone. On me.'
His mind began running counters, defences, protocols. And it kept coming up short. The genjutsu was seamless, symptomless until it was too late. The only countermeasure his lightning-fast thoughts could conjure was evasion.
'The moment I sense the unique chakra fluctuation of his Mangekyō activating, before the thought even fully forms in his mind, I must already be gone.'
The thought was profoundly disturbing. His greatest strength, his Hiraishin, reduced to a fleeing tactic. He was the Yellow Flash, the man who stood his ground against armies. The idea that his primary defence against a sixteen-year-old ally was to run was a seismic shift in his understanding of threat assessment.
His fear was not of the power itself, but of its direction. He believed in Renjiro's heart, in the loyalty he'd shown.
'No truly powerful shinobi has ever betrayed the Leaf,' he thought, but the history books, the whispers of the Second Hokage's distrust, murmured a counterpoint in his mind.
'I hope he will not be the first.'
Then a deeper, more political dread surfaced. The Uchiha were already isolated, a proud clan chafing under the village's suspicion, their police duties both a badge of honour and a gilded cage. Renjiro was an anomaly within them, but he was still one of theirs.
'If the village forces Renjiro to choose a side… the side without him will suffer terribly.'
It was a grim equation. Renjiro's power could be a bridge or a bomb, and the fuse was lit by the very tension simmering in these silent, dark streets.
Renjiro's hand found the door, sliding it open with a soft click.
"Get some rest, Renjiro," Minato said, "We will speak again. After you've… recovered."
"Yeah. Sure thing, Minato," Renjiro responded. He gave a slight, weary nod and stepped inside.
Minato did not wait. In a silent displacement of air, he was gone. The compound courtyard was empty once more.
The door slid shut. Renjiro leaned his full weight against it, his forehead pressing into the cool, smooth wood.
"Haaaaaah..."
A long, shuddering exhale, one he hadn't realised he'd been holding, tore itself from his lungs.
He collapsed onto his futon, the mattress giving a soft whump as it absorbed his weight. A shaky, almost hysterical laugh bubbled in his throat.
"I can't believe I just did that."
His mind replayed the event, not in visuals, but in sensations: the volcanic surge of Kurama's will, like trying to hold a collapsing star; the terrifying moment his control slipped and the genjutsu's net flung wide, ensnaring Minato and Sama; the horrific, intimate feedback of their deepest regrets settling into his soul like black snow.
Then a different emotion began to uncoil.
'Exhilaration.'
He had trapped Kurama. Not just Kushina, but the Nine-Tails itself. A being of pure malice, centuries of hatred, a consciousness forged in the hellscape of primal chakra. His genjutsu had reached into that maelstrom and subdued it.
'If I can do that to the Nine-Tails… I can do it to any of them.'
The thought was intoxicating. It was terrifying. It was, above all, empowering. The tailed beasts, the ultimate strategic weapons of the shinobi world, the creatures that defined nations and could level mountains in a rage… were no longer an existential threat to him. They were potential assets. Or at the very least, neutralised dangers.
'This means I no longer have to fear any jinchūriki.'
The entire landscape of future conflicts shifted. The Akatsuki's goals, Madara's plans, the very balance of power—it all had to be recalibrated around this newfound truth.
His thoughts leapt to Shisui's legendary Kotoamatsukami.
'Was it similar?'
From the fragments he remembered of how Itachi had used it, it was far more subtle, surgical. It didn't drown you in your trauma; it gently, irrevocably changed your mind. His own power, by comparison, felt brutal, overwhelming—a sledgehammer to Shisui's scalpel.
And that was the problem. The control. He had accidentally used it on Minato and Sama. The spillover was unacceptable. A weapon you couldn't aim was as dangerous to your allies as to your enemies.
A new goal crystallised in his mind, sharp and clear.
'I must improve control. Not more power—finer control.'
Better control meant subtlety. It meant being able to target one person in a crowd without affecting the others. It meant minimising the collateral psychic damage, the horrific feedback he'd been forced to absorb.
And ultimately, it meant precision manipulation—the difference between bludgeoning a target with their own nightmares and carefully, surgically, extracting information or implanting a single, crucial suggestion.
With a groan, he pushed himself up. He moved to a low desk, his hands finding a small, sterile scroll and a specially prepared preservation jar filled with a clear, chakra-infused fluid. Sitting in seiza, he took a centring breath. Channelling chakra to his hands, he removed the blind pair of Mangekyō.
He had a small collection of spare Sharingan, taken from his unique… harvests. He could transplant one in minutes. But he wouldn't. Not this time.
These eyes were different. They held a versatility and depth of power that the other set lacked. They were more dangerous, more potent, and better suited for the delicate, high-stakes mission outside the village with Hiruzen that loomed on his horizon. He had chosen to risk the very dissolution of his soul to regenerate them. That alone proved their irreplaceable value. He would wait.
Shifting into a lotus position on the futon, he closed his empty sockets and began to meditate.
"I have the whole week free," he muttered to the silent, dark room. "I better heal my eyes."
======
A thousand miles away, the air was not still, but thick with a perpetual, damp mist that clung to the skin like a cold sweat. The scent here was of salt, decay, and iron. This was Kirigakure, the Village Hidden in the Mist, where the silence was not watchful, but oppressive, broken only by the distant drip of water and the occasional, muffled cry that was quickly silenced.
In a cavern deep beneath the bloody politics of the surface, a different kind of darkness stirred. The wall of twisted, wooden roots pulsed, and from it, as if stepping through a curtain of slime, White Zetsu emerged.
He stretched with an exaggerated groan.
"Ohhh, that was a trip!"
From the deeper shadows of the cavern, a pool of inky blackness rose with piercing yellow eyes.
Black Zetsu's voice was a dry rasp, "You are late. Your surveillance of the Land of Waves was to conclude hours ago. Where were you?"
White Zetsu chuckled, a wet, gurgling sound. "Got sidetracked! Saw something way more interesting than some petty bridge builder and a drunkard missing-nin."
Black Zetsu's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Our special Uzumaki friend," White Zetsu said, his tone singsong. "The one with the Sharingan. He was playing nice with the Yellow Flash and his red-haired jinchūriki. A little sparring match." He leaned closer, his grin widening.
"Things got spicy. He used his new toys."
"The Mangekyō?" Black Zetsu's voice was a whisper.
"Uh-huh! And get this," White Zetsu continued, savouring the reveal. "He didn't just use it. He trapped the fox and its container both in a little dream. The Flash and his sister got caught in the splash zone too. It was… messy. And beautiful."
Black Zetsu did not move for a long moment. Then, slowly, a smirk stretched across his featureless face, a gesture of pure, ancient cunning.
"That," he rasped, the word dripping with millennia of calculated interest, "is… interesting."