After the Clan Extermination

"I, Uchiha Fugaku, am a sinner of the Uchiha. It was I who foolishly trusted you, the Third Hokage, and Danzō..."

Uchiha Fugaku knelt amidst the ruins of his ancestral home, drenched in blood. His kunai was snapped in two, his left hand still dripping crimson. All around him lay corpses—some of his clansmen, some from Root, and others from the Anbu.

His Sharingan had already evolved into the Mangekyō, yet he did not use it. He knew that the moment he saw the multiple Sharingan embedded in Danzō's arm, using it would be futile.

"Danzō, you are unworthy of possessing the Wood Release of Senju and the Sharingan of my Uchiha..."

Fugaku raised his head, glaring at the one-eyed old man hiding behind his Root guards in the distance—

Shimura Danzō, whose arm had been grafted with the cells of the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama, and was embedded with several Sharingan...

Those were Uchiha Sharingan.

They had been gouged out from the bodies of his own kin.

"Dead Demon Consuming Seal!" Fugaku formed the hand seals and slammed his palms onto the ground.

A colossal, spectral figure of the Shinigami emerged behind him, pitch-black and terrifying, a short blade clenched between its teeth. It reached out, its hands piercing through the void to seize Danzō.

"What?!" Danzō gasped in shock, trying to retreat, but his body was frozen in place.

The Shinigami's phantom ignored all distance and defenses, grabbing Danzō directly and stripping away the power of his hands and eyes.

"Aaaah—!" Danzō let out a wretched scream as he collapsed to the ground.

The Sharingan on his right arm lost all their luster, and the Mangekyō of Uchiha Shisui in his right eye turned a dull, ashen gray. Yet, due to the unique properties of the Mangekyō, a faint, flickering sliver of vision remained; he was not rendered completely blind.

"This is the Dead Demon Consuming Seal of the Uzumaki clan?!" Danzō struggled to form seals, but his hands remained unresponsive, as if they no longer belonged to him. "How could you possibly know this!"

"You have the Fourth Hokage, whom you backstabbed, to thank for that." Fugaku sneered. "His wife, Kushina, gave this to my wife as a betrothal gift for our children. And yet..."

Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth, his voice growing weaker. "You possess the Sharingan, and I cannot be certain if you have mastered Izanagi to resurrect yourself. So, I have sealed your hands and eyes, ensuring you can neither use the Sharingan nor perform ninjutsu. Danzō, live out the rest of your days with those crippled hands and blind eyes."

With those final words, Fugaku's body began to disintegrate, dissolving into specks of light that vanished into the air as the Shinigami's phantom faded away.

Danzō lay sprawled on the ground, feeling his lifeless hands and the endless darkness consuming his left eye, his face twisted in agony.

"Uchiha Fugaku!"

But his roar could change nothing.

The sky began to weep.

First a drop, then two, then more, growing denser and heavier until a torrential downpour descended, as if the heavens themselves were mourning the Uchiha clan. The rain washed over the blood-soaked earth, gathering into crimson streams that flowed into the roadside gutters.

Uchiha Itachi stood in the rain, soaked to the bone.

He was searching for Mikoto and Sasuke.

His mother and his younger brother.

He scoured place after place, pushing open door after door, but they were nowhere to be found.

There were only corpses—everywhere he looked. Some he recognized, some he did not; old men, children, men, and women; some he had killed, others slaughtered by Root...

Each one lay in a pool of blood, their eyes forever closed.

"Mother... Sasuke..." Itachi called out, his voice raspy and broken.

No one answered.

Only the sound of the rain remained.

A deafening roar erupted in the distance, followed by a violent explosion.

The shockwave from the explosive tags swept over him. Itachi had no time to dodge; he was sent flying, slamming into a wall and coughing up blood.

The thunderous blasts did not cease, and moments later, Itachi was struck again by the force of another explosion.

"Itachi!" An Anbu operative rushed over. "You're wounded! We need to get you to the Konoha Hospital!"

"I'm fine... I still have to find..."

"Find what? There are suicide bombers over there! Do you want to die?" The Anbu hoisted him up, dragging him away.

Itachi tried to resist, but his body had no strength left. Between the blood loss and the impact of the explosions, his consciousness began to blur.

"Sasuke... Mother..." he murmured, as he was carried away from the Uchiha district.

Inside the Konoha Hospital, Itachi was rushed into a ward, where several medical ninja scrambled to treat his wounds.

"Abdominal puncture wound, three broken ribs, fractured left arm..." the medical ninja reported as they examined him.

"Prepare for surgery!"

"Notify the Hokage!"

Itachi lay on the hospital bed, his eyes half-closed, his mind drifting, yet he continued to mutter, "Sasuke... Mother..."

No one answered him.

Meanwhile, deep within the Root base, Danzō was carried into the underground facility by his subordinates and placed upon an operating table.

"Lord Danzō, your injuries..." The Root medical ninja turned pale after the examination. "The nerves in both your hands are completely necrotic, and the optic nerves in your eyes are destroyed. It is beyond healing."

"I know." Danzō's face was grim. "It is the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, the most forbidden of all forbidden arts. Whatever it seals, it traps the soul within the belly of the Shinigami, never to be released."

"Then... is there any way to undo it?"

"Undo it?" Danzo let out a cold laugh. "It requires the caster's soul to cooperate in order to undo it. Since the caster is already dead, how could it possibly be undone?"

The room fell into a heavy silence.

Danzo lay on the bed, feeling the endless darkness before his left eye and the extremely blurred vision of his right, his face twisted with malice.

"Uchiha Fugaku... you are ruthless..."

He closed his eyes and said no more.

The members of Root looked at one another, at a loss for what to do.

Outside, the rain grew heavier and heavier.

The Uchiha compound.

No, it could no longer be called a compound.

Hundreds of explosive tags had detonated in a chain reaction, blasting out one deep crater after another. The two largest ones—one in the heart of the Uchiha compound and the other at the Police Force headquarters—had been transformed into massive pits after a full night of explosions.

The crater walls were steep, and the bottoms were filled with a mixture of pulverized soil, flesh, and building debris, so thoroughly churned together that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other.

The torrential rain poured down, collecting in the two craters. The soil at the bottom became saturated and turned to sludge, while the underground water system, ruptured by the blasts, began to seep out and mix with the rainwater.

The two craters were gradually turning into lakes.

Coincidentally, there had originally been an underground passage between the Police Force and the Uchiha compound; this passage had collapsed during the explosions, forming a deep trench.

The rainwater poured into the trench, connecting the two lakes together.

The Anbu members endured the downpour, soaked to the bone, standing at the edge of the craters and staring at the murky water, unsure of how to proceed.

"Clean up the battlefield? How are we supposed to clean this up?" one Anbu asked with a bitter smile. "The people and the dirt are all mixed together; you can't tell which is which."

"Lord Hokage's orders are that we must clean it up," another Anbu replied. "Find whatever you can."

"Find what? Uchiha relics? Or their corpses?"

The two exchanged a look and fell silent.

In the end, they jumped into the pits and began to grope through the mud and water, but all they could find were scraps of cloth, broken ninja tools, and charred wood.

As for corpses?

There wasn't a single intact one.

Everyone had been pulverized by the explosive tags; not even bone fragments remained.

An Anbu fished a charred kunai out of the mud, a bit of flesh still clinging to it. He glanced at it and tossed it into a collection bag.

"This is 'cleaning up the battlefield,'" he said self-deprecatingly. "Collecting this trash to go back and report."

Another Anbu felt a forehead protector in the mud; the engravings on it had been blasted into illegibility, but the Konoha symbol was still recognizable.

He placed the protector into the bag and continued to search.

The rain intensified, and the water in the two craters continued to rise. In a few more hours, they would likely become full-fledged lakes, and by then, every trace would be submerged.

The Hokage Building.

Sarutobi Hiruzen sat in his office, several Anbu standing before him.

"Report the situation."

"Lord Hokage, the Uchiha compound and the Police Force have been completely destroyed, leaving only deep craters. We are currently cleaning the battlefield, but because the explosions from the tags were so violent, combined with the heavy rain, there is very little left to find."

"How many survivors are there?"

The Anbu remained silent for a few seconds before speaking: "So far, no other survivors have been found. The Uchiha clansmen... most were pulverized in the self-detonations, and the bodies from earlier were also caught in the blast, leaving nothing behind. Our preliminary count is that the entire Uchiha clan... except for Uchiha Itachi, should... should all be dead..."

"What about Uchiha Itachi?"

"He is injured and hospitalized, but his life is not in danger."

Sarutobi Hiruzen closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"And Danzo?"

"Lord Danzo was injured and has been taken back to the Root base for treatment. Uchiha Fugaku... used a forbidden technique before he died, sealing Lord Danzo's hands and eyes."

"What forbidden technique?!"

"The Dead Demon Consuming Seal. It seals the target at the cost of the caster's life. Since the caster is dead, the seal cannot be undone."

Sarutobi Hiruzen's face turned ashen.

He remained silent for a long time before speaking: "Go, bring Danzo to me. Also, summon Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu for a meeting."

"Yes."

Half an hour later, Danzo was carried into the conference room.

His hands were a deathly gray, hanging limply before his chest. His left eye was covered in gauze, his face was terrifyingly pale, and his right eye was clouded with a large patch of gray-white, though he could at least see a little, enough to avoid being completely blind.

Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu were already seated, their expressions grim.

Sarutobi Hiruzen sat at the head of the table, puffing on his pipe as he looked at Danzo.

"Danzo, your arm and your eye..."

"Sealed by Uchiha Fugaku," Danzo said coldly. "The Dead Demon Consuming Seal. It cannot be undone."

The room fell silent for several seconds.

Sarutobi Hiruzen took a deep drag from his pipe and exhaled slowly. "Now, let us discuss the aftermath. The entire Konoha heard what Uchiha Setsuna said. Konoha is in an uproar."

"Those words were nothing but nonsense," Danzo said.

"But some people will believe them," Utatane Koharu interjected. "We have received inquiries from many clans. Especially the Hyuga; the clan head, Hyuga Hiashi, came personally to ask what Uchiha Setsuna meant by 'the Hyuga are next'."

"And the Ino-Shika-Cho trio," Mitokado Homura added. "Yamanaka Inoichi, Akimichi Choza, and Nara Shikaku have submitted a joint petition demanding an explanation from the Hokage."

"An explanation?" Sarutobi Hiruzen gave a bitter smile. "How do I explain this?"

"Just stick to what you said before: the Uchiha clan attempted a coup, failed, and committed mass suicide under the instigation of spies," Danzo said.

"That would have been easy to say before Uchiha Setsuna's stunt, but now... do you think anyone will believe it?" Sarutobi Hiruzen countered. "A failed coup and mass suicide? Then what about Uchiha Setsuna? What about those self-destructions? And what did he mean by 'colluding with outsiders to exterminate the clan'?"

Danzo remained silent.

"And the Nine-Tails Incident," Utatane Koharu said. "Uchiha Setsuna claimed the Fourth Hokage was plotted against by us. I cannot shoulder that accusation; you two can figure out who is responsible for that yourselves."

"That old man is already dead. There is no proof," Danzo said.

"But it is now common knowledge that Uzumaki Naruto is the Fourth Hokage's son. Uchiha Setsuna claimed he was being abused, and many villagers are gossiping about it. My subordinates just reported that they heard people saying, 'No wonder that demon fox brat drinks expired milk and wears rags every day'."

The atmosphere in the room grew increasingly heavy.

"And the matter of the Senju clan," Mitokado Homura said. "Uchiha Setsuna said we were the ones who wiped out the Senju. This also requires an explanation."

"The Senju clan withered away gradually; they were not wiped out," Sarutobi Hiruzen said.

"But that old man spoke with such conviction that some people believe him."

"Who believes him?"

"The Hyuga," Mitokado Homura said. "Hyuga Hiashi just had his main house elders beat around the bush asking me how the Senju clan really disappeared. He said the Hyuga clan has no ambition and only wishes to survive."

Sarutobi Hiruzen's expression darkened further.

He turned to look at Danzo. "Danzo, this is all your doing."

"Me?" Danzo sneered. "Hiruzen, you were the one who approved the order to exterminate the clan."

"But I didn't tell you to cause such a massive scene! The signal flare went up, Uchiha Setsuna started shouting, and now the whole village knows!"

"Then why didn't you make up your mind sooner? If you had wiped them out three years ago, would there be all these problems?"

"Three years ago? The Uchiha hadn't shown signs of a coup three years ago. How was I supposed to wipe them out?"

"So now that there's a problem, you blame me?"

"If not you, then who? Your Root couldn't even keep an eye on one old man!"

"And what about your Anbu? Weren't they responsible for the perimeter? How did you let Uchiha Setsuna shout for so long?"

The two argued incessantly. Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura exchanged glances but did not intervene. They had seen this kind of bickering many times before; whenever something went wrong, it was always like this.

The Hokage blamed Danzo, Danzo blamed the Hokage, and neither was willing to take responsibility.

"Enough!" Sarutobi Hiruzen slammed his hand on the table. "This is not the time for finger-pointing! I need solutions!"

"You are the Hokage. How do you propose we solve this?" Danzo asked.

"First, seal the information. Regarding last night, tell the public that the Uchiha clan attempted a coup, failed, and committed mass suicide. Uchiha Itachi had a disagreement with the Uchiha leadership, and under the influence of the clan's Sharingan, he lost control of his emotions and killed his own kin."

"Will anyone believe that?" Danzo asked again.

"Whether they believe it or not is irrelevant; what matters is the official narrative," Sarutobi Hiruzen said. "As long as the official stance remains firm, people will eventually accept it."

"And what about the things Uchiha Setsuna said?"

"Just say he was senile and spouting nonsense."

"And the Nine-Tails Incident?"

"That was the work of the Uchiha clan; we have already verified it. Uchiha Setsuna had long harbored rebellious intentions, so he secretly controlled the Nine-Tails to attack Konoha, and the Fourth Hokage sacrificed himself to seal it. That is the truth."

"And the abuse of Uzumaki Naruto?"

"Purely a rumor," Sarutobi Hiruzen said. "Although Naruto... lives a bit modestly, we did not abuse him. We kept his identity hidden to protect him, so that the enemies of Namikaze Minato wouldn't come seeking revenge."

"How will you explain things to the Hyuga and the other clans?"

"I will speak with them personally," Sarutobi Hiruzen rubbed his temples. "Give them some reassurances and tell them not to spread rumors."

"And the Senju clan matter?"

"Say the Senju disbanded voluntarily and integrated into Konoha. As for the death of the Second Hokage, that was a death in battle, not some conspiracy."

Danzo was silent for a moment, then asked, "What about the Uchiha clan's assets? Their ocular techniques, scrolls, forbidden jutsu..."

"Most were destroyed," Sarutobi Hiruzen said. "Uchiha Setsuna's self-destruction blew up the Uchiha's secret archives. As for what remains, hasn't the Root already collected it?"

"We collected it, but not much," Danzo said. "Many important items are gone."

"Let them be gone, then," Sarutobi Hiruzen sighed. "The extermination of the Uchiha is already enough of a headache. Consider those things buried along with them."

"There is one more thing," Mitokado Homura said. "How shall we handle Uchiha Itachi?"

"Leave him to my Root," Danzo said. "I can certainly train him into a qualified ninja."

"No," Sarutobi Hiruzen frowned. "I have other mission arrangements for Uchiha Itachi."

"You trust him?" Utatane Koharu asked.

"I do not," Sarutobi Hiruzen said. "But he is the only one suitable for this mission at the moment. There will be no issues for the time being."

The room fell silent again. Sarutobi Hiruzen puffed on his pipe, watching the rain outside the window; it was coming down harder and harder, as if the sky itself were collapsing.

"There is one more thing," he suddenly spoke up. "Send people to search for Uchiha Sasuke in secret!"

"Uchiha Sasuke?" Danzo said. "Didn't Uchiha Itachi say he wanted to teach his younger brother a lesson himself? Why search for him?"

"Uchiha Sasuke has gone missing. Ever since Uchiha Mikoto picked him up from the Ninja Academy after school yesterday, the two of them have vanished." Sarutobi Hiruzen informed Danzo of what the Anbu had uncovered. "I suspect Uchiha Mikoto discovered something and took Uchiha Sasuke into hiding. However, the guards at the village gates did not see them leave, so they should still be in Konoha."

"Fine, I will send men to search for them in secret," Danzo snorted coldly.

"That is all for now," Sarutobi Hiruzen stood up. "Go and handle the matters we just discussed. I will be convening a Jonin meeting shortly. Remember, keep your people in check and do not let word of this leak out. Especially you, Danzo—keep your Root quiet for the time being."

"My affairs are no concern of yours," Danzo stood up, being supported by members of the Root as he walked out.

Reaching the doorway, he suddenly turned back. "Hiruzen, you bear responsibility for this incident as well. Don't think you can dump all the blame on me."

With that, he turned and left.

Sarutobi Hiruzen stood before the window, watching Danzo's retreating figure with a complex look in his eyes.

"I know," he whispered. "That is why I am letting you live."

Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura also stood up, preparing to leave.

"Koharu," Sarutobi Hiruzen called out to her. "Tell me... were we truly wrong?"

Utatane Koharu remained silent for a moment before speaking. "Hiruzen, the things we do are neither right nor wrong; they are merely necessary."

"Necessary..." Sarutobi Hiruzen gave a bitter smile. "The Uchiha believed their coup was necessary, too. Then what difference is there between us and them?"

Utatane Koharu did not answer and turned to leave.

Only Sarutobi Hiruzen remained in the room. He stood by the window, watching the rain outside, the embers in his pipe flickering in the dim light.

"Someone come in. Send word: in one hour, convene a Jonin meeting. All Jonin must be in attendance. Furthermore, have Uchiha Itachi come to see me immediately..."