Three months had passed. The sun hung lazily in the afternoon sky, casting dappled shadows under the wide boughs of the maple tree. I sat beneath it, my back against the rough bark, eyes half-closed, gazing out at the field. It was a moment of peace, rare and fleeting, and for a brief while, I let myself feel something close to ease.

My team was elsewhere—Tatsuya and Kaede setting up camp a few miles to the north. Our Jonin-sensei, ever watchful, kept her distance while attending to matters of her own. I had separated from them earlier to hunt, leaving me in this quiet solitude.

In the distance, a doe wandered, unaware of its fate, browsing through the undergrowth. I could have ended it a dozen other ways, but none of them felt right. I watched as it moved, one step at a time, serene in its ignorance.

Then, with a twitch of my finger, it was over. A flicker of steel wire, a moment too brief to notice, and the creature crumpled. Its head rolled to a stop in a shallow ditch. I didn’t blink. Death was as common as breath here, and neither stirred much emotion anymore. A life—any life, even mine—was just a flicker, easily snuffed out. Cheap.

I stood, more out of habit than anything, and walked over to the body. It still twitched, a grotesque dance of nerves and sinew trying to compensate for the loss of its head. Jeremy might have found a joke somewhere in the scene, that black-hearted clown, but I had humour left for such things. I bent down, summoning a storage scroll. With a puff of smoke, the carcass was gone.

I frowned. The blood on the ground wasn’t quite right. Anyone with half a brain could tell what was wrong with it. I’d have to be more careful next time. Not that it mattered now.

I returned to camp to find the usual scene: Tatsuya, sprawled out lazily on his bedroll, and Kaede, red-faced and fuming. The two of them were like oil and fire, always clashing, always burning.

"Itachi!" Kaede called, exasperation thick in her voice. "Tell this idiot to stop lounging around and help!"

I sighed, brushing a hand through my hair. “That’s asking a lot, team lead. It’s Tatsuya we’re talking about.”

“He listens to you,” she muttered, stomping off to gather more wood.

I glanced at Tatsuya, who barely seemed to notice her departure. “Why do you keep provoking her?” I asked, genuinely curious.

He shrugged. “I just want to be left alone. Is that too much to ask?”

“You know why she pushes you,” I said. “And dumping all the work on her doesn’t help. Get up before I drench you in ice water again.”

With a groan, Tatsuya dragged himself to his feet and followed after Kaede, grumbling under his breath. I shook my head. Teens.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Once alone, I pulled the doe from the scroll and set to work. The blade moved smoothly in my hand, cutting through flesh and bone with practised ease. The pile of organs and meat grew steadily as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

By the time the others returned, I had everything prepared. Tatsuya and Kaede took over the task of smoking the meat while I stirred a pot of broth over the fire. Yuna-sensei appeared from the woods, her ninken at her side, her expression approving.

"Good work, team," she said, nodding at the setup. "We may need those rations for the trip back."

Kaede beamed. “Thank you, sensei. Have you finished clearing the traps?”

“Most of them. I’ll head back out after dinner.”

I handed her a bowl of soup, watching her settle beside the fire. The warmth of the moment was brief. Kaede and Tatsuya’s bickering resumed before long, only quieted by Yuna’s sharp order for them to go to bed. They complied, leaving me with the first watch.

As they slept, I turned to Yuna-sensei. “How long is she going to keep tailing us?”

Yuna shrugged. “As long as necessary.”

I frowned. “It’s been five weeks. It’s getting tiresome.”

“Take it up with the Hokage next time we’re in the village. The ANBU answer to him only. If she’s here, it’s because she has orders.”

I bit back my response. Had I been a less perceptive person, I might have pointed out that my stalker wasn’t ANBU. But the existence of the Foundation and the fact that they answer to Danzo rather than the Hokage were both state secrets that I logically should have no access to. Revealing that, especially to a former member of the ANBU, didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do. So, I just shrugged and moved on, dropping the matter. Yuna left soon after, leaving me to the silence of the forest.

The mission was simple enough: clear the area of bandits and the traps they left behind. It had been a relief to finally get a C-rank assignment after months of mundane tasks. But even this felt hollow, unchallenging. Kaede had been excited, of course, eager to prove herself worthy of the headband she wore. Tatsuya, as usual, cared for little beyond his desire to be left alone.

As for me, I felt the weight of inevitability pressing in. My fight with Yuna-sensei had drawn more attention than I’d wanted. I was no longer just another prodigious Uchiha; I was a potential threat, and the scrutiny was growing.

I had hoped to delay that, to keep my capabilities under wraps a little longer. But no plan survives contact with reality. Now I had to adapt, to adjust my training, to stay ahead of the storm I knew was coming. The data was all I had left to rely on. Cold, hard calculations—my old friend.

In the end, it was all about the numbers. I knew this because, for a brief period before my unfortunate demise, I was one of the faceless grunts that aided the US government in making sense of that chaos. It was rare that the CIA hired anyone without at least a bachelor’s degree, but if my recruitment officer was to be believed, I had an uncanny knack for the job.

I knew, at the time, that I was making a mistake. But, as it turned out, I was too curious for my own good. I wanted to know what the whole schtick was about and, at the time, the extra cash did grease up the decision-making process for me.

Regardless of how it turned out in the end for me, I still learned a lot. Intelligence, warfare, survival—it all came down to who could gather the most, process the best, and act the fastest. And here, even in this world of kung-fu wizards and energy-based kaiju, those rules hadn’t changed.

I would need every advantage I could get, no matter how trivial.