Uchiha (Part Two)

"How did it go, Captain? Did you find anything?" the shinobi who had brought back the "cargo" asked.

The captain nodded, then shook his head and said:

"There's no need for us to continue the mission. The target is already dead."

And he had died rather stupidly at that... but the captain left that part unsaid.

Hearing that the target was dead, the other two Uchiha shinobi each breathed a sigh of relief. They really didn't want to continue carrying out this pointless mission.

"Then what's the problem? Surely you're not saying we still have to capture the culprit who killed the target?"

The captain continued shaking his head.

"There's no need for that either, because the culprit is dead as well. However..."

"Before the target died, someone claiming to be Uchiha Izuna came here and tried to rescue him. That self-proclaimed Izuna was also the one who released the shinobi imprisoned here."

"Izuna? How could that be? He's been carrying out another mission this entire time."

The young Uchiha shinobi immediately objected.

There was a reason for that. This shinobi was the younger brother of both Uchiha Izuna and Madara Uchiha... At this point in time, Madara was most likely already in a state of having "five brothers missing."

Before long, he might have only one brother left. Later, he wouldn't have any brothers left at all.

"The other person covered his face. Judging by his build and age, he does resemble Izuna, but... that definitely wasn't Izuna."

Yuzhen's impersonation of someone else hadn't been entirely baseless. He was roughly the same age as Tobirama Senju, while Tobirama Senju was roughly the same age as Uchiha Izuna. From that, it was clear that Yuzhen could impersonate Uchiha Izuna.

The remaining shinobi finally understood. He asked, "Someone is impersonating an Uchiha?"

Someone was impersonating an Uchiha. What should they do?

The answer was simple: leave it alone.

Unless that person happened to run straight into them, the Uchiha Clan simply had neither the time nor the energy to bother with such trivial matters.

The three sighed in unison, their faces filled with helplessness.

"Let's go. Our mission is over."

Yuzhen had no idea that right after he left the town, the Uchiha Clan had arrived there. Unluckily—or luckily—the two sides didn't run into each other.

At the time, he had been so focused on rescuing people that he had forgotten to collect the spoils after the battle. If he had become absorbed in "looting the bodies," he might really have encountered them.

As long as it wasn't one of a few particular shinobi, Yuzhen wasn't especially afraid of the Uchiha. Everyone knew that the Uchiha were overly proud, making them prone to being ambushed because they underestimated their opponents.

Dealing with them was simple. Once they started thinking, Hate the fate of being born without the Sharingan, and wore a disdainful smile, all he had to do was launch an ambush.

In the next shot, that Uchiha would be lying flat on his back.

Yuzhen was rather good at ambushing people by now.

It didn't matter that he hadn't encountered the Uchiha yet. Once the time was right, Yuzhen would sooner or later run into shinobi from the Uchiha Clan.

Back at the camp.

Several days later, Chihori had recovered fairly well, and Yuzhen decided to lead everyone away from the area.

But for some reason, whenever he made a decision like that, something unexpected would always happen and disrupt his plans.

This time was no exception.

On the very day they packed up and prepared to leave, everyone had finished making the necessary preparations. Yuzhen was just about to shout, "Move out," and lead everyone away when the unexpected happened.

Some strange sense of incongruity forced Yuzhen to swallow the words back down.

How should he describe this feeling?

It was as if the reality unfolding before him had suddenly been split open, with an unnecessary frame inserted in the middle.

Or as if time, which had been ticking along as usual, had suddenly gained an extra second between two moments.

The sensation of a rift in space and time put Yuzhen on high alert. He realized that someone nearby had used a special ninjutsu.

And then...

A figure suddenly appeared in midair.

"Alert—"

Bang.

Before Yuzhen could finish shouting "Alert," the figure slammed heavily into the ground with a bang.

If anyone wanted to know what a textbook face-plant looked like, Yuzhen felt that what he was seeing now would be the perfect example.

The person who had crashed to the ground struggled to get up, but after flailing several times without success, she could only raise her blood-covered face and look toward Yuzhen and the others.

"Everyone... give me a hand... save me."

Her series of movements looked somewhat comical. However, when Yuzhen got a clear look at her face, he felt a chill of shock run through him.

It wasn't because he knew her, but because...

This woman had a pair of Sharingan.

The scarlet pupils weren't even in the basic tomoe pattern.

In other words, she had a pair of Mangekyō Sharingan.

This Uchiha kunoichi had face-planted, honestly asked for help, and then passed out.

This...

An Uchiha falling from the sky?

All right. If fate wasn't going to manifest there, it would manifest here instead.

What was Yuzhen thinking at a time like this?

Of course, he had no interest in coveting someone else's organs. Instead, he thought of Tobirama Senju.

He simply felt a little sorry for Tobirama Senju.

Because the person Tobirama had been pursuing really had hidden herself in the camp.

Yuzhen signaled for everyone to move farther away, as if he were worried they might be exposed to some kind of biological contamination—as though what had just fallen from the sky were an alien rather than a shinobi.

He himself cautiously moved closer, preparing to examine the Uchiha kunoichi's condition.

The kunoichi already had numerous wounds all over her body, and blood was still flowing from them. Combined with the impact of falling from midair, she seemed to have passed out immediately after desperately calling for help.

To be safe, Yuzhen stepped on her arm again.

With a crisp crack, it was either fractured or broken. In any case, she didn't even blink, so Yuzhen finally relaxed.

"Phew, she really is unconscious."

It couldn't be helped. Yuzhen's caution wasn't entirely unreasonable. This was his first time seeing the Mangekyō Sharingan, and he felt that he really ought to be careful.

"Captain, her eyes?"

Hayasaka Ryunosuke came over and asked in a low voice.

Quite a few people had noticed that something was unusual about her eyes when she had raised her head earlier.

"The Sharingan of the Uchiha Clan. If I'm not mistaken, this should be the person Tobirama Senju was pursuing earlier," Yuzhen said.

The Uchiha and the Senju often clashed and were mortal enemies. That was practically common knowledge in the shinobi world.

"But why has she only appeared now? How long has it been?" Ryunosuke asked again.

Yuzhen found it strange as well. Several months had passed, yet the pursuer and the pursued had appeared at obviously different times.

Then he remembered the extremely clear Space-Time Ninjutsu fluctuations he had sensed just now. Could this woman use Space-Time Ninjutsu?

It was actually possible.

But the wounds on her body were clearly fresh. There was no way they had been inflicted several months ago, right?

Yuzhen opened his mouth, but in the end, he said nothing... No one could determine what the abilities of an unknown pair of Mangekyō Sharingan were.

"Then... what should we do? Are we still leaving today?"

Yuzhen cast Ryunosuke a puzzled glance.

I've captured a wild Uchiha, and instead of asking whether we should take her eyes, you're asking whether we should keep moving?

Isn't that a little too disrespectful to the Mangekyō Sharingan?