Chapter 6
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."
The dead Uchiha scout's fingers twitched in the mud beside him, still warm. Itama flexed his own hand—already forgetting which calluses were borrowed—and inhaled the iron stench clinging to his sleeves. The copy thrummed under his skin, fresh and restless. A stolen body remembered its
killer.
Behind Tajima, branches snapped under cautious footsteps. Too many. Itama exhaled through his nose, counting. Three, maybe four. He rolled the scout's stolen kunai between his knuckles, not bothering to hide it. The weapon still carried the oily residue of Uchiha poisons.
Tajima's gaze dropped to the kunai. His jaw worked once before going still. "You're not Hashirama."
Itama licked blood from his teeth—half his own, half memory. "No," he agreed, and flicked the kunai into the dark. A choked gasp answered from the trees. One less
.
The remaining footsteps froze. Tajima's eyes blazed crimson, tomoe spinning faster, but Itama was already moving. His fingers brushed the dead scout's wrist—just a graze—and suddenly he knew the exact weight of three shuriken hidden in the man's left sleeve. They flew before Tajima could blink, finding throats with the dead man's muscle memory.
Warmth flooded Itama's veins as the new deaths settled into him. He could feel Tajima's killing intent now, thick as smoke, but beneath it—something better. Fear. The kind that made men hesitate. Itama smiled. "Your turn."
The forest exhaled Uchiha. Three figures materialized from the gloom, kunai gleaming with the same poison he'd tasted earlier. Itama's stolen muscles remembered their stance—wide, aggressive, leaving the ribs exposed. He ducked under the first strike and drove his elbow up into soft cartilage. The crunch sang in his bones.
Tajima moved like ink in water. One heartbeat his hands were empty, the next—a blade kissed Itama's throat. "You fight like them," the Uchiha murmured, "but your eyes are wrong." Cold steel pressed deeper. "Who taught you to wear our dead?"
Itama exhaled against the knife's edge. His skin tingled where Tajima's chakra brushed it, hungry and familiar. "No one," he lied, and let the scout's memories rise like floodwater. The Sharingan bloomed crimson in his own eyes. Tajima's breath hitched—just enough—and Itama tasted victory.
The forest erupted in a whirl of stolen techniques. Three Uchiha fireballs spiraled from Itama's palms—each angled precisely where Tajima's children would dodge. Flames illuminated panic twisting familiar faces as bodies hit the ground. The oldest boy screamed. Itama drank that sound like
wine.
Tajima's blade bit deeper, but Itama's blood was already singing with fresh devoured chakra. He smiled as his neck knitted itself shut around steel. "Teach me?" he whispered, and sank teeth into Tajima's wrist—not to wound, but to savor the rush of forbidden clan secrets flooding his tongue
.
Somewhere beyond the burning trees, Hashirama's voice roared Itama's name. Too late. The taste of Uchiha blood dissolved into something darker, sweeter. Itama exhaled smoke. "Oh," he murmured against Tajima's paling skin, "that's new." The forest swayed. Somewhere, a child sobbed.
Tajima's knees hit the mud first. His fingers scrabbled at the gaping hole in his chest where his own fire-style technique now smoldered—copied, perfected, reversed. Itama crouched beside him, tilting his head as the man's Sharingan spun slower, slower. "You shouldn't have looked," he whispered, plucking the dying eyes with bare fingers.