As the orange-red flames engulfed the tent, an enormous orange Susanoo appeared, drawing the shocked gazes of the surviving Konoha shinobi nearby.
When over three hundred reanimated Uchiha suddenly manifested, both Itachi and Mitokado Homura were struck dumb with disbelief. Even the other Konoha ninja were completely baffled.
They had been fleeing for nearly two days, barely managing to catch their breath and set up camp for a brief rest.
Not far away, in front of the tent that housed the jinchūriki—
Might Guy stared at the reanimated shinobi who had appeared out of nowhere, his attention caught by a white-haired ninja among them.
That face… he knew that face.
At the same moment, Kakashi's eyes locked onto a reanimated man in a green jumpsuit.
"Kakashi, isn't that Uncle White Fang?"
"Guy… that man in green… isn't that your father?"
The two of them turned toward each other, eyes wide in mutual shock, exclaiming in unison.
Yamato, standing between them, could hardly believe what he was seeing as he glanced at his dumbstruck teammates.
He studied the crowd of reanimated shinobi carefully—sure enough, one looked just like Kakashi, and another bore an uncanny resemblance to Guy.
"Is this… really just a coincidence?"
Yamato shook his head, blinked a few times, then rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.
"These are reanimated Uchiha… Itachi, did you summon them to take revenge?" Mitokado Homura asked in astonishment.
Turning stiffly toward Itachi, he was shocked to find that the young man's face was just as blank with confusion.
"No… this isn't my jutsu."
Itachi took two steps back, his expression tense as he raised his Susanoo's Totsuka Blade before him, utterly bewildered.
He had no idea that during the month he'd spent pretending to be injured, Uchiha Yu had elevated Susanoo's power to an entirely new level.
No one had told him about Yu's latest exploits, but remembering how Yu had taken his Mangekyō Sharingan, Itachi immediately suspected that Yu must have sealed something inside the Totsuka Blade.
"So… Yu sealed the reanimated clansmen inside my Totsuka Blade—just to target me?" Itachi's expression hardened as he convinced himself of this conclusion.
In truth, Yu hadn't planned it that way at all. Someone like Itachi wasn't even worth using such a method on anymore.
Yu had merely wanted to trap those reanimated Uchiha inside the blade to calm them down—he hadn't expected the situation to spiral like this.
"Not you?"
Homura's pupils contracted sharply as a chilling thought crept into his mind. His scalp tingled in dread.
And then—
"ITACHI!!!"
The reanimated Uchiha, expelled from the Totsuka Blade, regained consciousness—and roared furiously at the sight before them.
The moment they saw Itachi, none of them cared how or why they had been revived.
Especially those whom Itachi himself had slain—their rage burned hotter than ever.
When facing Yu earlier, the reanimated Uchiha had still held onto a sliver of reason.
But now, standing before the man who had slaughtered their own kin, they lost all restraint. Their fury exploded like a beast unleashed.
To a shinobi, killing an armed enemy on the battlefield was one thing.
Killing helpless clansmen—was something else entirely.
Now, over three hundred reanimated Uchiha bellowed in unison, their wrath shaking the very air—striking fear into the exhausted Konoha survivors.
It was said that the Kaguya clan fought like madmen, fearless and reckless to the end.
But compared to the Uchiha, that was child's play.
When an Uchiha lost all restraint and their Sharingan bled scarlet, they became not mindless berserkers—but calculating, deadly maniacs armed with terrifying jutsu and combat mastery.
Madmen weren't dangerous because they were insane.
They were dangerous because they were still thinking while they raged.
"You, together with Yu and that masked man, destroyed the Uchiha clan—and now you team up with Yu again to reanimate us, to torment us even after death? Bastard!"
The Great Elder of the Uchiha roared, his fury boiling over as he lunged forward, hands flashing through seals:
"Fire Style: Great Fire Dragon Technique!"
The others followed his lead, unleashing a storm of fire-style jutsu—
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"
"Fire Style: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet!"
In an instant, fireballs and dragons of flame roared across the camp. The entire area was swallowed by a blazing inferno, the surrounding trees igniting as the temperature spiked sharply.
In mere moments—
The sky itself seemed to burn.
Mitokado Homura's face turned pale as he leapt back, dodging frantically, yet the heat singed his hair and eyebrows.
"Ahh—!"
He slapped at the flames, but half his hair was already gone, his eyebrows charred black.
As he turned around in horror, he saw the reanimated Uchiha charging straight toward them.
He knew full well that reanimated shinobi couldn't be killed—counterattacking would only slow them down for a few seconds at best.
Without thinking, Homura abandoned Itachi and fled for his life.
The exhausted Konoha shinobi nearby had no strength left to run.
"No—please! Don't—!"
Many could only stare in despair as they were consumed by the raging sea of fire.
"..."
Itachi hurriedly planted his Third-Stage Susanoo between the inferno and everyone else, using its body to shield them from the searing heat. The raging flames slammed against the Susanoo's surface and spread along its sides.
"You betrayed the Uchiha and colluded with Konoha, Itachi—today I avenge Fugaku and take your life, you bastard!"
The three Uchiha elders attacked Itachi in unison, paying no heed to the orange-red Susanoo's might.
Compared to the full-form orange Susanoo they had seen borne by Uchiha Yu earlier, Itachi's Susanoo was lacking. Itachi clenched his teeth and, with Mangekyō composure, calculated the elders' attack vectors.
The orange-red Susanoo gripped the Totsuka Blade in one hand and swept toward the three of them. Flames surged—but as the blade's sea of fire passed over the elders, Itachi realized the Totsuka's sealing ability was temporarily nullified.
He didn't panic. He reacted instantly, making his Susanoo form a fist and driving it into the three elders.
Boom—
The three elders' upper bodies exploded in mid-air, yet their torsos slowly began to regenerate as they hung aloft.
Itachi scanned the battlefield and, to his shock, saw the other reanimated Uchiha already charging into the camp, attacking the exhausted Konoha shinobi.
Elsewhere in the camp—
In one tent, a woman who had just drifted off—Tsubone Koharu—dreamed that the reanimated forms of Hiruzen and Danzo were beckoning her, urging her to become one of the reanimated corpses.
Boom—
As the commotion grew louder outside, Koharu jerked awake from the nightmare, her head splitting with pain and fatigue overwhelming her. When cries of terror and frantic footsteps reached her ears, she stumbled outside, still groggy.
At the sight of the charging reanimated Uchiha, her fear spiked to an unbearable height. Back on the night of the massacre, Danzo had conspired with Itachi; she and Mitokado Homura had been complicit behind the scenes—the indirect killers.
That night the Uchiha—old men, women, children—had all perished. At the time she hadn't felt much, but after Konoha's destruction and her relatives' slaughter by the Great Nations, the more she thought of that night the more terrified she became. People's suffering didn't automatically translate into shared empathy; only when the same disaster befalls everyone can one truly empathize.
"Uchiha?!" Koharu's aged eyes widened in terror as she forced herself to shout, "Run! Scatter! Save yourselves!"
Screams echoed through the forest. The reanimated Uchiha had gone mad—though not at their best strength, their Sharingan and unkillable bodies made up for it. After the first clash, the weary Konoha remnants were forced to fight while retreating.
"Father…" Kakashi dodged an Uchiha's strike and, together with Guy, reached White Fang and Might D.
"Are you… Kakashi?" White Fang studied him carefully. The silver hair and the trademark mask clinched it—his son stood before him.
"Yes, Father. You… you were reanimated too?" Kakashi's eyes leaked tears. He had so many questions he'd wanted to ask his father for years.
White Fang nodded, glancing over the battlefield, and murmured, "What on earth has happened?"
Clearly, the situation exceeded White Fang's expectations; even with some clues, the truth remained obscure. Kakashi steadied himself and quickly explained the current state of the shinobi world to his father.
"Wahhh—"
"Father!"
"Guy!!"
Might Dai and Might Guy clung to one another and wept to the sky. Neither had imagined they'd see each other again in this lifetime. Uchiha Yu probably hadn't intended to play dream-maker—but that was the result.
On the front lines, even as Itachi battered the incoming reanimated Uchiha with his Susanoo, he couldn't stop the others from launching desperate attacks on the remaining Konoha forces. That was the last thread of their battle sense: though they hated Itachi and longed to tear him apart, they also knew they couldn't break his Susanoo. Better to go and slaughter the Konoha shinobi they'd always wanted to kill than remain restrained by Itachi.
When Itachi thought all was lost, he suddenly sensed the Totsuka Blade returning to normal. The aftereffects from lifting the earlier seal had faded. With everything restored, Itachi poured everything into swinging the Totsuka through his Susanoo and began sealing the reanimated Uchiha one by one.
With the Totsuka's power recovered, the tide of victory started to turn in Itachi's favor.
"Itachi, you will pay for your crimes sooner or later!!"
Before the three Uchiha elders were sealed away by the Totsuka Blade, they roared in fury, and the other Uchiha cursed endlessly.
"I did nothing wrong! It's the Uchiha who were wrong! It's this whole world that's wrong!!"
Those bitter words pierced Itachi's heart like countless blades, yet he held firm, answering their hatred with words of his own while wielding the Totsuka Blade, patiently sealing each of the reanimated Uchiha one by one.
It was the fastest way to deal with the reanimated corpses for now—Konoha's exhausted forces could no longer organize sealing squads to handle them.
By the end, Itachi had begun to lose control, attacking indiscriminately. He sealed every reanimated shinobi he could find, including the once-great warriors of Konoha—White Fang and Might Dai among them.
"Guy! Take care of yourself! I'll find you again, I promise!"
Might Dai shouted in tears as flames from the Totsuka engulfed him before he was sealed.
"Father!!"
Guy tried to reach into the blade to pull him out, but he couldn't even touch the strange sword.
"Father, why… why did you leave me behind back then?"
Kakashi managed to ask one final question before White Fang, too, vanished into the Totsuka's seal, without ever being able to answer.
And thus, the sudden chaos ended amid burning flames.
The remaining shinobi of Konoha's once-great clans had grown fewer still, forced to continue their migration.
At the front of the caravan, everyone was covered in ash. Naruto walked under the protection of Mitokado Homura and Koharu.
Every now and then, he turned his head back, countless thoughts swirling inside him—he missed home.
After confirming the surroundings were safe, Itachi dispelled his Susanoo. But when he tried to rejoin the group, he found all the surviving Konoha ninja instinctively stepping away from him, afraid he might cause another catastrophe.
Even Homura and Koharu were colder toward him now.
Itachi's heart sank—it felt like swallowing raw bitterness.
°°°
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