39: First Meeting with Shion

A coup!

The word struck Itachi like a blow to the head, leaving his ears ringing.

"How could this happen? How could..."

Itachi kept asking himself the same question, over and over, but he couldn't find anything in his heart to refute it.

The Uchiha's current situation was right there before him. When all the various pieces of information were put together, a coup really did seem like the most likely outcome.

"Then... is there still hope for the Uchiha?"

Itachi stood and asked, visibly agitated. At that moment, his family still held a place in his heart.

Especially when he thought of his beloved younger brother, Sasuke. His face grew even more anxious.

Baiyu waved a hand. "Don't worry. It won't happen just yet. As the Hokage Faction's power in the village declines, it's only natural for the Uchiha to grow stronger.

"Once the core members of the older generation have passed away, even if the Uchiha don't stage a coup, the village will still move against them to preserve the Hokage Faction's advantage. There's no point worrying when you don't have the strength to do anything!"

The Uchiha Clan had built the village alongside the Senju Clan under Madara's leadership. That choice had sealed the Uchiha's destruction from the start.

If the Uchiha had ruled the village, then the Senju Clan would have been doomed instead.

The feud between the two clans had begun a century ago. It couldn't simply vanish because the leaders of both clans had shaken hands and made peace.

The village was slandering the Uchiha so relentlessly now. The seeds of that hatred left behind by the Senju Clan must have played a part.

The Second's policies had all been aimed at suppressing the shinobi clans, with the Uchiha at their forefront.

Since the Uchiha were the strongest, they had obviously suffered the most damage.

They had become the village's scapegoat, and under the Hokage Faction's suppression as it carried on the Second's will, their destruction had become inevitable.

After the Third Hokage's death, without the Sannin's support, Danzo might not even be able to keep the Uchiha in check.

"As the Third Hokage grows old, he'll never allow the Uchiha to keep opposing the village. Actually, all of this can be traced back to one person: the Konoha High Command member who once ordered the Uchiha to stay behind the front lines..."

Baiyu told Itachi some of the hidden truths. During the Nine-Tails Incident four years ago, Itachi had still been a student. He hadn't been in a position to learn any of the inside details.

Uchiha Fugaku, on the other hand, had been too straightforward. When he heard Danzo's order, he had actually kept his forces in place.

Even as the other shinobi clans suffered heavy casualties, he had truly done nothing.

That was what had stirred up the hatred and resentment of everyone else in the village. Combined with the enemies they had made while enforcing the law, it had all caused the village's conflicts to converge on the Uchiha.

If Fugaku had acted back then, he could have used his Mangekyō Sharingan to control the Nine-Tailed Fox and save the Fourth Hokage. The current situation would never have come about.

At the same time, he could have gained the right to choose the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, won the villagers' affection, and secured the power to stand against the Fourth Hokage.

After all, Minato Namikaze had only just become the Fourth Hokage. He had come from an ordinary background, and the Anbu had yet to be brought under his influence. The only person he could trust was his student, Hatake Kakashi.

"Who?"

After hearing Baiyu's explanation, Itachi finally understood the truth behind the village and his clan.

He had always thought that his clansmen's arrogance and prejudice had caused the hostility between the village and the clan.

He had seen the ugly behavior of the clansmen around him every day, and it had made him believe that the Uchiha were to blame for all the evil. That had laid the groundwork for his decision to wipe out the clan in the future.

Only after listening to Baiyu's explanation did he understand the other side of the story.

The Uchiha had become a pawn sacrificed for power.

"You'll have to find that out for yourself!"

Baiyu shook his head and said no more.

For anything to leave a deep impression, you had to find it out for yourself.

Just hearing someone talk about it wasn't very convincing.

Once Itachi investigated the Uchiha's true circumstances himself, his feelings would surely change.

After all, even Shisui, who had devoted himself to easing the tension between the clan and the village, still felt deeply attached to his clan.

But Itachi had inherited Shisui's belief in peace without inheriting his bond with the clan.

At the camp, a bonfire burned outside several tents.

Miroku sat in the place of honor, murmuring passages from a scripture.

Several guards stood beside her. One of them was the captain of the guard, a man named Inoue Yuhide.

After all these days of travel, he increasingly felt that this trip had been a waste.

Just as they were about to return to the Land of Demons, he couldn't hold back any longer and asked, "Lady Miroku, why did you spend such a huge sum to invite two little children back with us?"

Inoue Yuhide was only a warrior trained in martial arts. He had heard of how powerful chakra-wielding shinobi were, but he didn't really understand.

Whenever Baiyu and Itachi cleared away obstacles, they did so out of sight of the others. So he thought they hadn't encountered a single enemy along the way, and that spending so much money had been a complete waste.

The Land of Demons lay at the edge of the world. Its land was barren and produced very little. A hundred million was probably equal to the country's tax revenue for an entire year.

The shrine's expenses weren't great, and it had some savings, but not enough to withstand such reckless spending.

Those two little children seemed completely useless to Inoue Yuhide.

Miroku stopped praying and looked at Inoue Yuhide. "The people we invite represent more than themselves. They represent their country's attitude. Our envoys to the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth both returned empty-handed. If the Land of Fire refuses us too, we'll be left without any allies."

Miroku saw things clearly. The hundred million was simply the price of securing an attitude from Konoha in the Land of Fire.

As the Shinobi World's foremost village, Konoha had earned its reputation by defeating the Three Great Shinobi Villages when they joined forces.

To her, a hundred million was a perfectly reasonable price for an escort mission.

The people of her country were simply too ignorant.

They didn't understand that once there was a first time, there could be a second. After their relationship reached a certain point, there would be no need to keep worrying about how Sunagakure and Iwagakure would react to their dealings with Konoha.

Everyone had their own little schemes.

The Third Hokage didn't want to get involved in another country's internal affairs. But after considering the balance of power within the village, he had decided to send Baiyu and the others.

If anything went wrong, he could conveniently shift the blame onto the Uchiha.

This was yet another butterfly effect caused by Baiyu's arrival. Normally, the Third Hokage would never have agreed to send shinobi from the village on a mission to the Land of Demons.

Inoue Yuhide was about to say something else when he saw Uchiha Itachi standing before him. He immediately swallowed his words.

The night passed without incident. Before dawn the next day, the group set out again.

After several more hours on the road, Baiyu led the way. When he spotted the gate of a shrine in the distance, he knew they had reached their destination.

"The Shrine of the Priestess. We've finally arrived."

Baiyu dropped from a tree trunk and landed on the red wooden beam above the shrine gate, surveying the place.

A vast open space paved with marble stretched before him. Beyond it stood a shrine, far grander than the Uchiha ancestral hall.

As Baiyu surveyed the shrine, a soft greeting suddenly sounded beside him.

"Big brother, what are you looking at?"

Baiyu turned in surprise and saw a cute little girl standing below. She looked up at him curiously.

Had his Mind's Eye... failed?

That couldn't be right!

He could clearly sense the people behind him...

But he hadn't noticed the girl standing right in front of him.

Had he relied too much on the Mind's Eye?

Had his honed reflexes grown dull?

"It's not that the Mind's Eye failed. This girl has not a single distracting thought in her heart. Even that question just now was a simple question, with no hint of doubt..."

The Mind's Eye could see through the distracting thoughts, desires, and emotions of everyone nearby. If anyone with even a single distracting thought approached, he could clearly sense them.

But the Mind's Eye wouldn't work on someone with a Seven-Orifice Exquisite Heart, whose thoughts were clear and whose heart was utterly still.

This was Shion, wasn't it?

The other half of Moryo's power...

A little girl who looked as though she couldn't hurt a fly...?