Chapter 5
The tallest hunter crouched, fingers brushing his tanto's hilt. "You're supposed to be dead," he said, voice flat. Itama exhaled through his nose, tasting gunpowder and lightning-scorched earth. The boy—Tajima's whelp—was still bleeding sluggishly against the tree. A perfect bargaining chip. A perfect meal. "Funny," Itama murmured, rolling his shoulders. "I was just thinking the same thing." The hunters tensed as his chakra spiked, thick as spoiled honey.
Behind them, leaves rustled without wind. The third hunter whirled—too late. The copied Senju flank melted out of the treeline, their borrowed faces slack. Itama hadn't bothered with personalities. Just corpses wearing familiar skin like ill-fitting armor. The lead hunter's breath hitched. "Kin..." Itama didn't let him finish. His fingers twitched. The copies moved in eerie unison, hands flashing through seals their originals would've recognized.
Dragonfire roared between the trees. Itama caught the boy's collar as he bolted, dragging him backward into the inferno's glow. The screams were almost musical. His new skin itched where stolen chakra burned beneath it, hungry and hot. The boy thrashed, sobbing. Itama clicked his tongue. "Hush," he murmured, watching the copies burn. "You're next."
The lead hunter's corpse hit the mud mid-strike, bisected by his own stolen jutsu. Itama exhaled through the taste of charred flesh, flexing his fingers. Something warm dribbled down his wrist. Blood—his or theirs, it didn't matter. The last hunter staggered, half-blind from smoke and missing an arm. Itama smiled. "Devour," he whispered. The hunter's scream curdled as his flesh peeled away in ribbons, dissolving into Itama's palm like sugar in tea.
The boy retched. Itama wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, savoring the electric tang of stolen lightning-release dancing under his tongue. The forest smelled like wet charcoal now. He nudged the boy's chin up with his boot. "Tell Madara," he said pleasantly, "his brother tastes like vinegar."
Somewhere beyond the burning trees, an owl shrieked. Itama tilted his head, listening. More wolves would come now—hungrier ones. He licked his teeth. Good.
The boy gagged again, trembling fingers clutching at his ruined kimono. "You—" His voice cracked wetly. "That was *our* jutsu."
Itama crouched, gripping the boy's jaw hard enough to bruise. Blood smeared between his fingers, warm as fresh ink. "Not anymore," he murmured. The boy's pupils dilated—not with fear, but recognition. Ah. So Tajima had warned his brood about things that wore dead men's smiles.
Behind them, the copied corpses twitched in the embers, their stolen faces blackening like old parchment. Itama exhaled, tasting lightning and something brighter beneath it—the crisp ozone-scent of time-space ninjutsu, still clinging to the hunters' cloaks. His stomach growled.
The boy's breath hitched as Itama's grip shifted, fingers pressing into the hollow of his throat. "Wait—" he choked, but Itama wasn't listening. Not to him. The forest sighed, branches creaking under the weight of unseen footsteps. Too many. Too fast.
A kunai embedded itself in the tree above them with a dull thunk, vibrating with residual chakra. Itama grinned, teeth gleaming in the firelight. "Company," he whispered, just as the shadows between the trees *moved*, resolving into lean, wolfish shapes—Uchiha red gleaming beneath their hitai-ate. The boy sobbed.
Itama's tongue darted out, catching a stray drop of blood at the corner of his mouth. The taste of Tajima's lineage burned like good whiskey down his throat. He tightened his grip, relishing the boy's whimper. "Let's give them a show," he murmured, and the forest screamed.
The first Uchiha lunged—fireball already blooming between his palms—only for Itama to vanish in a burst of stolen chakra. He reappeared behind the attacker, fingers sinking into the man's shoulder like claws into wet clay. Devour took hold with a wet crackle, tendons unraveling beneath Itama's nails as the Uchiha's Sharingan spun wildly, then dulled
.
Smoke curled from Itama's lips when he laughed. Behind him, the boy scrambled backward, bare feet slipping in gore. "T-that's Shisui's teleportation!" he stammered
.
"Was," Itama corrected, rolling the stolen technique across his tongue like hard candy. The remaining Uchiha hesitated—just long enough for the trees to whisper their betrayal. A dozen copied Senju corpses dropped from the canopy, each one wearing Itama's grin like a death mask.
Shuriken clattered uselessly against their decaying flesh as the copies moved in perfect sync, hands weaving Tajima's own fire dragon jutsu back at his clansmen. The forest groaned under the heat, bark blistering where flames licked upward. Itama exhaled through his teeth, tasting the panic in their sweat—sharp as lemon zest beneath the char.
The boy made a broken noise when Itama's fingers twitched, sending the copies surging forward in a wave of rotting limbs and stolen chakra. One Uchiha managed to activate his Mangekyō—only to scream when Itama's Devour slithered through the ocular veins like liquid shadow, drinking the crimson patterns straight from his corneas.
"Run home, little wolf," Itama murmured as the last hunter fell, his voice carrying over the wet symphony of tearing meat. He didn't turn when the boy finally bolted—just smiled at the bloody fingerprints staining his palm, each whorl now threaded with Uchiha fire. The forest held its breath. Somewhere distant, a crow laughed.
The copies collapsed into putrid slurry as Itama's control snapped, their borrowed chakra seeping back into his pores like ink into rice paper. He flexed his fingers, watching stolen lightning dance between them—Shisui's technique humming beneath his skin alongside Tajima's dragonfire. The Mangekyō's afterimage still burned behind his eyelids, its patterns whispering secrets only a dead man should know.
Beneath the stench of burning hair and spilled intestines, something sweeter teased his nose—ozone and iron, the particular cocktail of an Uchiha's desperation. Itama tilted his head as twigs snapped in the distance. Not fleeing. Advancing. He exhaled slowly, savoring the way his new eyes ached with borrowed power. The clan head's scent preceded him—ink and old blood, just like in that final war-torn winter.
Itama's tongue traced the split in his lip where the boy's elbow had caught him. "Tajima," he sighed, watching shadows congeal between the blackened trees. The man stepped into the firelight, Sharingan whirling, hands empty. Itama grinned wider. "Your sons taste like regret."