(6th of July, year 55 AK)
Yuta was compiling and calculating the ideas and plans for his new genjutsu inside his mindscape for a long time, and when he was finally done with the general concept and the plan for his new jutsu, he felt his mental state being very exhausted at that moment and he left the mindscape.
As he opened his eyes, still sitting facing the lake and leaning his back on a tree, the sun was still about in the same position in the sky, in Yuta's estimate, no more than twenty minutes had passed.
'Agh... My head...' Yuta frowned as he massaged his temples with his hand, 'I feel like my head is about to split... I should probably be more careful with how much time I spend in my mindscape... If only there was an option for measuring time in that place...'
'And when I get going while working on something, I tend to lose all sense of time. Even my mental exhaustion, I only had noticed it in the end when I finished...'
'I need to take a nap, but going home will take time, might as well sleep right here, I'm sure no one will mind...' Yuta's last thought was as he closed his eyes and his hand fell down to his lap as he fell asleep in a moment.
...
About two hours after, two boys walked casually and unhurriedly into the area, one was nine years old and the other was five.
"It seems this place is already occupied." The older one said calmly.
"Hey, is someone there sitting with his eyes closed? Is that guy sleeping, big brother?" The younger asked with a childish curiosity in his voice.
They walked closer to the still sleeping Yuta.
By now, after a year of going on missions, and after a lot more than just a year of constant training, with his sharpened senses even while being asleep, Yuta's chakra senses had already picked up two chakra signatures approaching him.
In any other circumstances Yuta would be woken up by that, when being approached by someone while he was asleep.
But this time he didn't wake up right away, because he subconsciously recognized one of the chakra signatures. It was the one of the only three chakra signatures that was firmly categorized as an "Ally" in his mind, and since the other chakra signature was physically very close to the "Ally" one, it didn't fall into the category of a threat right away either, so Yuta still remained asleep, since there is still no threat being detected by his subconscious.
"Hey, big brother, do you know him?" The younger boy asked as both of them walked closer.
The older didn't reply right away and just stepped closer to Yuta and said a bit louder "This is how you train for the finals, Yuta?"
This time, being spoken to, loudly and by name, Yuta finally woke up and opened his eyes. His eyes carried a shade of exhaustion in them, apparently just two hours wasn't enough for Yuta to regain his energy, but still, he was in a much better shape now than two hours before.
Yuta looked up and met Itachi's gaze. Itachi looked back at him with calm indifference on a blank face, but somehow, Yuta felt as if he was being judged.
"Itachi?" Yuta said with a bit of a raspy voice, still sitting while leaning on a tree, "What are you doing here? And who is that behind you?" Yuta looked at the five-years-old boy beside Itachi.
'He looks similar to Itachi, he must be Sasuke...' Yuta's mind finally caught up with reality and started working properly, 'What are they doing here? Aren't we supposed to keep a distance since Fugaku established the surveillance over Itachi in hopes of finding out what is his source of the intel on Orochimaru was? Well, years had passed since then, and we are now in the same squad for the past year, so I guess it is not as relevant now, and him approaching me like it was a coincidence, for the first time in forever, it is not that suspicious and it should be fine...'
Itachi glanced back at Sasuke still standing beside him and said with a bit softer tone, "Sasuke, meet my teammate Yuta."
"Your teammate? Big brother, are you sure? This guy doesn't look like much, sleeping during the day on the ground instead of training..." Sasuke said loudly, and with a childish suspicion.
'I have a strong sense of a discrepancy between what I see and what I remember...' Yuta thought as he looked at Sasuke, 'This young version of Sasuke is nothing like the one in the original story... Childish, cheerful, enthusiastic, naive and innocent... Well, I guess this is who Sasuke was before the massacre...'
Yuta quickly understood the current Sasuke's cheerful and childish character at a glance after just hearing him speaking for a few seconds.
"Don't be fooled, Sasuke. Yuta is very strong. On our last A-rank mission he was the one who had defeated the enemy Jonin." Itachi said calmly with a bit softer tone than usual as he was looking at Sasuke.
'Hey, don't lie to your brother, Itachi! I just happened to be the one who delivered the finishing blow...' Yuta argued in his mind but didn't say it out loud, 'And the word "defeated" is a nice way to call a shuriken plunging deep into that Jonin's throat, tearing apart everything that was important for being alive... But well, who even need those little details...'
"Whoa?! No way!" Sasuke's eyes widened as he exclaimed in disbelief.
"So, why are you sleeping here?" Itachi looked back at Yuta and asked, his tone returned to his usual calm one.
And although Yuta couldn't detect any emotions or accusations in Itachi's tone, he still felt like he was being questioned after being caught red-handed doing something he shouldn't.
Yuta slowly stood up and stretched a bit as he felt his back a bit stiff after sitting without any movement for hours, as he calmly replied, "Just some new and still not perfected technique had slightly backfired, but I'm fine, it only caused some overstrain on my mind, nothing a good rest couldn't fix."
Itachi's brows furrowed just a tiny bit. Someone else might not even notice that, but for Yuta, who spent a lot of time with Itachi during missions, he knew that this meant a seriously intense frowning in Itachi's facial expressions language.
"You should be more careful with dangerous techniques like that." Itachi said with the same plain voice, but Yuta felt like he was being scolded.
"Yes, I know. Now I know my limits and it won't happen again." Yuta said dismissively to Itachi and then he looked at Sasuke again, who was watching everything with childish and naive curiosity, "So this is your younger brother, huh..."
"Hm" Itachi nodded blankly, but Yuta felt like there was some pride in that simple nod of his.
"So, Sasuke is your name, right? How old are you?" Yuta calmly asked without showing much emotions, but his voice wasn't cold either.
"I'm five!" Sasuke replied loudly and proudly.
"He is four." Itachi said right away and Sasuke immediately pouted and looked away with 'humph' noise.
"It's just two weeks 'til my birthday, what's the big deal..." Sasuke said pouty while looking away.
'Why do I have a sudden urge to facepalm myself while looking at this scene?' Yuta thought, 'I just can't associate this Sasuke with the Sasuke I know, there is just no way, two completely different personalities... Well, that's what the massacre of everyone you loved - do to you, I guess. With a Tsukuyemi as the cherry on top...'
But Sasuke didn't pout for longer than just a second or two, as he dropped the act and looked back with the renewed enthusiasm as he hurriedly asked, "Is it true that you had defeated the enemy Jonin on an A-rank mission, like big brother says?"
"Well, it's more like I had delivered the finishing blow. Defeating that tough guy was more of a team effort." Yuta replied.
"Wow! This is so cool!" Sasuke exclaimed as he was looking at Yuta with wide and excited eyes.
'Sigh, why am I feeling so uncomfortable right now?' Yuta complained in his mind, 'I need to forget that version of Sasuke from the original story. This is not him. This is just some five-years-old kid that has nothing to do with that guy.'
"Big brother! Why didn't you tell me about this before? This is so awesome! Is that Jonin you had defeated with Yuta was very strong? Tell me how the fight went? I want to know!" Sasuke looked back at Itachi and excitedly rapid-fired one sentence after another without stopping.
Itachi stretched his hand and flicked Sasuke's forehead with his stretched index and middle fingers.
'Ah, so that's how that iconic Itachi's gesture looked like...' Yuta thought as he watched the scene unfold, 'I always felt like that was just a light tap on the forehead with two fingers, but a ninja could really put as much force into that tap as he wanted, so it did heart Sasuke a bit and wasn't just a light tap.'
"Auch, what was that for?!" Sasuke exclaimed in a pained voice as he rubbed his forehead with both hands.
"Come now, we have to go, let's not bother Yuta here. I'll tell you about that fight some other time." Itachi said with a bit softer voice than usual.
"It is always 'some other time'..." Sasuke replied pouty, and both of them soon left the training grounds, while Yuta sat back by the tree and thought a bit more about young Sasuke, who was anything like his future self from the original story.
'Did Itachi just bring Sasuke here to show him to me? For what reason? Or am I overthinking it, and it was just a casual thing? Whatever... Although it was interesting to see Itachi being a bit softer around his younger brother...'
'And Sasuke... Looking at him now, I can't imagine him reaching a Super-Kage level of strength in just a bit over a decade. The level of Hashirama and Madara, huh. The level of strength that only those two had supposedly ever possessed in this world since Indra and Ashura to this day...'
...
'Will I be able to ever reach such level?'
...
'Shadow Mirage, that would be the name of my new genjutsu...' Yuta suddenly thought after a while longer of sitting without any thought going on in his mind.
--- AN ---
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