Ninjas × Eyeballs

Tobirama Senju and Hashirama Senju watched the two brothers through the veranda from a distant rooftop.

After Madara said those words, he stared intently at "Izuna," trying to catch any unusual expression on his face.

Izuna, however, only paused for a moment before smiling faintly. "Big Brother, what's gotten into you? Aren't I right here, safe and sound? As for the burglar who broke into the house... it's no big deal. We can just buy another batch of furniture and supplies in a while~"

Hearing that, Madara couldn't help calling out, "Izuna..."

But before he could finish, Izuna suddenly stepped toward him.

He stopped beside Madara, his bangs blocking Madara's view and keeping him from seeing Izuna's face clearly.

He said softly to Madara, "I'm a little tired. I want to go back to my room and rest for a while. If you have other things to take care of, Big Brother, go on and get to them."

With that, he left without waiting for Madara's response.

Madara stood motionless, silently watching the direction Izuna had gone, saying nothing for a long time.

After a long while, he slowly turned and walked toward the door.

Hashirama and Tobirama had already been waiting outside for quite some time.

"Well?" Hashirama asked, his expression somewhat cold. "Madara, do you think that Izuna is real or an impostor?"

Madara hesitated. He wanted to believe that was his younger brother, Uchiha Izuna, but the fact remained that Izuna's remains were still buried underground.

"I just told him that he was already dead."

"Huh? How did you put it?"

"Just, Izuna is already dead."

Tobirama tried to hold back, but still ended up pressing a hand to his head.

Hashirama broke into a sweat. "Madara, you... that was way too direct... What if he really is your brother?"

"His reaction was wrong." Madara continued his analysis coldly. "He said, 'Aren't I right here, safe and sound?' He didn't deny it."

Hashirama and Tobirama exchanged a look, each seeing the gravity in the other's eyes.

Hashirama rubbed his chin. "He wasn't surprised at all to hear he'd died... but he didn't deny it..."

"Generally speaking, anyone who suddenly learns they've died would have some kind of stress reaction," Tobirama said bluntly, unconcerned with whether Madara disliked him. "We need to restrain him. Ideally, we should lock him up and have someone from the Yamanaka Clan examine his brain."

Madara didn't even look at him. "There's more to this. I'll take responsibility for investigating Izuna."

Tobirama folded his arms. I knew you'd pull this.

Hashirama smiled and made the decision. "We're counting on you, Madara. We won't disturb you any longer."

With that, Hashirama prepared to leave.

"Don't worry."

Hashirama paused.

"If there's something wrong with him..." Madara said softly, "I'll send him on his way myself."

Hashirama's expression changed, but in the end, he could only smile and leave the Uchiha Clan Compound with Tobirama.

Once they were outside the compound, Hashirama's expression disappeared. "Tell me, was that really Uchiha Izuna?"

"Who knows?" Tobirama looked away. "Either way, it's none of our business anymore."

"...Tobirama, you really didn't do anything?"

"No." After answering, Tobirama turned and left without another word.

Hashirama stood there for a while, then sighed. "I really hope that person is Izuna..."

Meanwhile, after seeing Hashirama and Tobirama off, Madara turned back into the house and headed straight in the direction Izuna had gone.

The house had been newly built after they came to Konoha. Though it wasn't an exact replica, the layout of the rooms was the same.

If that person really was Izuna, he should be in his old room now.

If he wasn't...

"Brother?"

Madara came to his senses and looked toward the voice.

Izuna was walking out of his room with a bundle of bedding in his arms.

He looked confused. "Brother, why are you still here? Konoha was only established recently. There should be a lot for you to do, right?"

"I'm spending today with you."

"You can't do that!" The young man frowned and put the bedding in the room that had always been empty, the room that should have belonged to Uchiha Izuna.

Then he grabbed Madara's arm, spun him around 180 degrees, and firmly pushed him forward.

"Get to work! You have to set an example, Brother! Otherwise, Brother Hashirama really will snatch the Hokage position away!"

Madara let himself be pushed a few steps and put on a helpless expression. "All right, I know. I just wanted to talk with you and hear what happened while you were away..."

"What could have happened?" Unable to push him any farther, Izuna planted his hands on his hips in a huff. "I traveled, surveyed the terrain, and came home. That's all. There's nothing to talk about."

Madara opened his mouth to say more, only for Izuna to interrupt him again. "You're not planning to let Brother Hashirama have the Hokage position, are you?"

"No..." I never had much chance of becoming Hokage in the first place...

"I do think Brother Hashirama would be better at it, but it'll be a problem if the other clans think our own family is calling all the shots!"

Madara stared at him in surprise. He hadn't expected Izuna to agree to Hashirama becoming Hokage, and moreover, "...Our own family?"

"We have to at least put on a show, right?" Izuna continued. "I know you don't want to deal with that crap, Brother, but you can't just give up now! Hurry up and go canvass for votes. In exchange, I'll go with you when you catch the Tailed Beasts later. How's that?"

Izuna's confident manner left Madara somewhat stunned.

"All right! Get going!"

Izuna pushed Madara out the door.

Standing outside, Madara had mixed feelings.

He looked at the Izuna before him, both familiar and strange. Izuna's thoughts about Konoha's future and his expectations of Madara had all been so genuine that Madara had begun to doubt his earlier judgment.

On his way to the Hokage Building, Madara thought over their conversation, and then he understood.

He really wasn't Madara's younger brother, but he really was Uchiha Izuna. He had his own "Big Brother," "Brother Hashirama," and "Tobirama."

And for some reason, unlike their mutually hostile relationships in this world, they were close enough for him to refer to them as "our own family."

That also explained why Izuna hadn't hesitated even once, and why his actions had been so smooth and free of anything suspicious.

But why had Izuna reacted so strangely when death was mentioned?

It was as though... his brother had once said something similar.

Could he really have "died" before?

An inexplicable intuition sent a chill through Madara. He immediately turned around and took a shortcut, racing toward home.

Meanwhile.

"Phew... I finally got him to leave." "Izuna" rubbed his eyes and turned toward the room the system had marked as "Izuna's room."

I wonder if I managed to fool him...

As Izuna absentmindedly arranged the bed and bedding, he pondered how well he had performed just now.

In truth, he had no confidence whatsoever in his acting skills.

After all, nearly every acting technique he had ever managed to employ in his life had gone into deceiving his mother into thinking he had a girlfriend and fooling the three big shots, Hashirama, Madara, and Tobirama.

Now he couldn't help worrying whether it would have the desired effect.

Especially when Madara said, "He's already dead." He had frozen completely, unable to react in time.

He could only keep a stiff expression and hurriedly change the subject, hoping to bluff his way through...

But could that really fool him? Sigh...

At that thought, Izuna couldn't help sighing.

Forget it. I'll sleep first and patch up the rest later.

With that thought, he climbed under the covers and plucked out his left eye.

That was right. He plucked it out.

Another reason he had been in such a hurry to send Madara away was that his eye felt particularly uncomfortable—or rather, wearing his "Artificial Eye" felt particularly uncomfortable.

That was right. Our innocent college student actually had only one eye. He had lost the other at an early age due to an accident.

He had long grown used to living with an Artificial Eye. Aside from losing half his vision, it had no effect on him.

And Artificial Eyes could be made to look really cool: blue eyes, green eyes, the Sharingan, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. If you had money, you could even have diamonds set in one. In short, anything could be custom-made!

The one he had worn to the Comic Convention was a custom-made Mangekyō Sharingan.

It was normally black, but after exposure to ultraviolet light, it glowed blood-red in the dark!

Hehe~ You have no idea how cool it looked when I wore it out~

After coming to this world, he hadn't had time to take a close look, because he had already been standing at the Konoha Gate.

The excuse he had found to go back and rest while he was busy dealing with the three big shots hadn't been a lie, either.

After spending the whole day at the Comic Convention and then transmigrating, he really was sleepy. All he wanted now was a good night's sleep; he would figure out what to do next tomorrow.

A little medical tip: take your Artificial Eye out before going to sleep, or your eyelid will loosen.

Years of habit made the college student act without hesitation, and he paid no attention to the foreign-body sensation. He simply reached up and took out his eyeball.

"...Holy shit, it's real." Izuna stared dumbfounded at the eyeball in his hand, nerves still attached, his mind full of holy shit.

"Ah, wait, can you really take an eye out that easily? Wait." Izuna held the eye between his fingers, somewhat panicked, and muttered, "How, how do I put this back in?"

Just then, Madara, who had hurried back under the prompting of an ominous premonition, yanked open his bedroom door.

Madara's eyes widened as he stared fixedly at the scene before him. His mind went numb, utterly unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

His younger brother sat quietly amid the snow-white bedding, dressed in thin underclothes. Between his fingers he gently held a bloody eyeball, while the place where his left eye should have been was now nothing but an empty membrane of flesh, an exceptionally eerie and horrifying sight.

Izuna was just as badly frightened. Holding the terrifying eye, he met Madara's gaze. For a moment, neither spoke, and a deathly silence filled the room.

"Ah... this is..."

"Izuna!"

Madara rushed to Izuna's side in a single stride.

He looked as though he desperately wanted to pull him into a tight embrace, but for some reason his body had gone completely rigid. He only raised his hands hesitantly, leaving them suspended in the air, at a loss.

His face was full of anguish, and his eyes were red, as though he were about to cry.

Belatedly, Izuna remembered that in Naruto, there seemed to be a plot point where Izuna gave Madara his eyes after dying.

In the world of Naruto, injuries like Izuna's shouldn't have been fatal, but Izuna had still resolutely chosen to sacrifice his own life, giving Madara eternal power.

That resolve was precisely why he liked Izuna, and the original inspiration for his fantasies about that parallel world.

But the problem now was that this would trigger Madara!

Holy shit, I'm screwed, Izuna thought blankly. Won't this trigger Madara's PTSD?

So why can an eyeball be taken out as easily as an Artificial Eye?! What the hell is going on with this bizarre world?!

"Izuna... Izuna..."

Madara's voice was utterly broken.

He gently grasped the hand his brother wasn't using to hold the eyeball, his knuckles whitening with the force of his grip, as though he wanted to force his own life into him through their joined fingers.

He bowed his head, resting his forehead against their entwined hands. Scalding liquid struck the back of Izuna's cold hand.

"I don't want your eyes..." he repeated, every word sounding as though it had been torn from deep in his throat, trembling raw and bloody. "I'll put it back... We'll find a way... There's always a way... Don't give it to me... You're not allowed to give it to me!"

He tried to take the eyeball, but his fingers spasmed, and he could only clutch his brother's fingers tightly, immobilized by overwhelming panic.

"Let's put it back, all right...? I'm begging you... Don't leave me..."

"W-wait!" Izuna panicked. His eye widened, and he pulled his hand free with a jerk, then seized Madara's hand in turn. "Brother! Calm down!"

Izuna's mind raced.

He knew there was no way he could call this thing an Artificial Eye. Although there was no bleeding and he didn't feel anything, this was definitely a real eye, the kind found in a human.

So the question now was how to explain why he had gouged his eye out.

That's it!

Izuna came up with an explanation in 0.03 seconds and hurriedly blurted it out.

"Brother, did you forget? This is the new eye Tobirama cultivated for me!"

Madara's crying stopped abruptly.

He jerked his head up, his scarlet Sharingan spinning wildly through the lingering moisture in his eyes as he stared at Izuna's empty left eye socket, then slowly shifted his gaze to the eyeball cradled carefully in his palm.

"New...?" His voice was terribly hoarse and trembled with disbelief. "Tobirama... cultivated it?"

"Y-yeah!" Izuna nodded hurriedly, taking advantage of the moment Madara was stunned by the news to weave a lie at top speed. "Look, isn't it fine? There's no blood, right? And I don't feel any pain at all!"

He worked to make his voice sound relaxed and certain while praying frantically in his heart: Please, don't let the medical rules in the Naruto world be too logical! Cloning, Cell Cultivation, whatever—give me a break and exist!

Madara was still breathing heavily, but his desperate frenzy, on the verge of erupting, seemed to have been put on pause.

His reason struggled to return after the enormous emotional shock, and he began to examine the incredible sight before him.

Indeed, there was no blood. The membrane around the edge of the socket was smooth and oddly slick.

What he had mistaken for blood was only a little moist tissue fluid on the eyeball itself. And Izuna's expression showed only panic, not pain.

It was utterly different from the brutal scene deep in his memory, drenched in blood, with life rapidly slipping away.

"But..." Madara's voice was dry. He reached out, but his fingertips recoiled fearfully just before touching the eyeball. "How could an eye possibly be... cultivated? And by Tobirama, of all people..."

He simply couldn't imagine that Tobirama Senju, who had always regarded the Uchiha as enemies and had even developed Ninjutsu specifically to counter the Sharingan, would cultivate an eye for Izuna.

"Why not? You know Tobirama's always tinkering with those strange things!" Izuna seized the lifeline and continued, "Tobirama's a little odd-tempered, but he cares about me a lot. When he found out I'd given you my eyes, he was furious and said I'd been too reckless..."

As he spoke, he watched Madara's reaction closely and carefully adjusted his story. "Then he said the Sharingan is a unique bloodline power, and it would be very difficult to cultivate a complete copy, but he could try using my cells to cultivate a basic eyeball... At least, at least it would make me look whole. This is... a work in progress, I guess? My sight hasn't actually returned; it just looks the part. And for some reason, it falls out on its own sometimes... I was just trying to figure out how to put it back in."

The story was full of holes, and even Izuna himself felt uneasy about it.

But perhaps he had described it too naturally, or perhaps the concept of "Cell Cultivation" was so far ahead of its time that it seemed mysterious and credible to Madara, or perhaps Madara simply wanted it to be true too desperately, deep down—

The red slowly faded from Madara's eyes, leaving his pupils black again.

He continued to stare at the eye, but his tense shoulders relaxed slightly.

"A work in progress... it falls out..." he repeated. Reaching out, he steadily and gently took the eyeball from Izuna's palm.

Its warm, soft touch was full of vitality. It really was an eyeball, miraculously retaining its vitality after leaving the body rather than rapidly deteriorating.

The extraordinary phenomenon actually lent credibility to the outlandish claim that it had been "cultivated."

"So you weren't going to give it to me," Madara said quietly, as though confirming it, or perhaps convincing himself. "You were just... adjusting it?"

"Yes, yes, yes! Adjusting it! Installing it!" Izuna nodded frantically. Watching Madara hold the eyeball between his fingers and examine it closely made his skin crawl, though he didn't dare show it. "Brother, can you help me put it back? I... I don't really remember exactly how to secure it."

That was the honest truth. He really didn't know how to install this natural eyeball.

So, once again, why can this eye be taken out as casually as an Artificial Eye?!

Madara was silent for a moment, then looked at Izuna's empty eye socket with a complicated expression.

At last, he gave the slightest nod.

"Lie down." His voice returned to its usual low register.

Izuna immediately lay flat as he was told, his heart pounding like a drum.

Madara sat down beside the bed and leaned over him.

He moved with the utmost care. The fingers holding the eyeball were perfectly steady, while his other hand gently held Izuna's left eyelids apart.

His breath brushed Izuna's face, warm and restrained.

The instant the cold sphere touched the inside of his eye socket, Izuna shuddered involuntarily.

"Don't move," Madara said in a low voice. A very faint glow of Chakra welled up at his fingertips—it was a method of removing eyes that he had worked out after Izuna's death. Although he had never used it on anyone else, his experiments on himself had prepared him well enough for the task at hand.

The eyeball was slowly pushed into Izuna's socket.

A strange sense of it fitting into place came over him as nerves and blood vessels connected of their own accord, guided by Chakra.

There was no pain, only a slight, numb pressure.

A moment later, Madara let go.

Izuna blinked.

In the field of vision he had been missing from his left eye, there were unexpectedly hazy shapes of light and shadow. Then, to his surprise, the left eye that had seen nothing all this time could see clearly, and Madara's face, full of worry and deep scrutiny, came into sharp focus.

The vision in both eyes synchronized perfectly, without the slightest hitch.

Izuna froze at the realization. He had thought that even with his left eye put back, it still wouldn't be able to see, just as before. He hadn't expected that he really would be able to see through it.

Ninja were amazing.

"How is it?" Madara asked softly.

"I can see clearly! There's no problem!" Izuna quickly came to his senses and sat up. To prove it, he blinked hard several times and put on as bright a smile as he could. "See? It's fine!"

He didn't know that he had inadvertently activated his Three-Tomoe Sharingan when the eye was put back in.

Madara didn't smile. He simply looked deeply at Izuna, at his intact eyes, and at the guilty, ingratiating smile on his face.

Silence fell over the room, broken only by the faint sound of wind outside the window.

After a long while, Madara stood up.

"Get some rest today." His tone was calm and even, betraying no emotion. "Don't go 'adjusting' your eyes on your own again. If there's a problem... tell me, or..." He paused and uttered the name with great difficulty. "...go find Tobirama."

With that, he turned and walked toward the door, his back straight yet somehow tinged with loneliness.

Before opening the door, he stopped without turning around.

"Izuna."

"Hmm?"

"...Welcome back."

The door closed softly.

Izuna sat dazed in the bedding, touched his left eye, which could suddenly see, and looked at the closed door.

The crisis seemed to have passed for the time being.

Izuna knew Madara hadn't fully believed him. Or rather, anyone who learned that a loved one had returned in a different form would find it hard to believe, or even be creeped out.

He really had this body to thank for Madara being able to act as he had.

But the eyeball! The claim that Tobirama had made the eyeball—!

It would be fine if Tobirama really had made one before, but what if he hadn't managed it yet?!

Izuna wailed and buried himself in the covers.

I'm done for, I'm done for, I'm done for... The more patches I put on, the bigger the holes get! Lord Tobirama, I was wrong! I shouldn't have gone around using your name! Your biotechnology had better come through!