The Sharingan's First Cry

Tiger Mask's shuriken arrived first.

Three of them, infused with wind-nature chakra. Their trajectories were not straight lines but arcs—a minute inward twist of his wrist as he threw gave the shuriken sidespin, letting them curve around the steel beam's cover and attack from both sides at once. This was a technique absent from Feng Jian's memories, a jōnin-level throwing technique. Shinichi did not take them head-on. He leaned back and flipped off the steel beam, the three shuriken grazing past his nose and ears before embedding themselves in the wall behind him, sinking three inches into the brick. Their tails still buzzed.

He caught the edge of the steel beam one-handed, swung through the air once, and used the momentum to flip onto another crossbeam. Before he could steady his footing, Tiger Mask was already there—Gale Body Flicker, accelerated by wind-nature chakra, had almost no delay over short distances. A kunai slashed horizontally, its blade drawing a silver arc beneath the moonlight. Shinichi leaned back to evade the edge. The tip brushed his bangs, and several strands of black hair drifted down. Tiger Mask's left hand came up from below at the same time, fingers pressed together in a hand blade thrust straight at his throat—not a feint, but a killing blow.

Shinichi's pupils abruptly contracted.

Not from fear. It was a stress response. The Sharingan bloodline within him, which had only fused less than an hour ago, was fully awakened by the life-or-death threat in that instant. Chakra surged from his lower abdomen to his eyes. His chakra pathways felt as though they had been washed by warm water, and the surface of his eyeballs grew faintly hot—then the world changed. In his eyes, Tiger Mask's hand blade went from a blurred streak of light to a clear line. The angles of his finger joints, the direction of his wrist's rotation, the degree to which chakra had gathered at his fingertips—everything was perfectly clear.

He could even see the faint ripples created three centimeters ahead of the hand blade, where wind-nature chakra sliced through the air.

Two-Tomoe Sharingan.

Shinichi tilted his head to the left. The hand blade stabbed past the right side of his neck, and the wind from it severed loose threads on his collar. A flash of astonishment showed through Tiger Mask's eyeholes—every movement he made was laid bare before the Sharingan. He changed moves with startling speed. Without withdrawing the hand blade, he turned it into a horizontal slash while driving his right knee upward, completing the three-hit combination in one fluid motion. Shinichi leaped from the crossbeam, braced one hand on Tiger Mask's shoulder, and used the force to somersault over him. As he turned in midair, he swung his kunai in a reverse grip. Tiger Mask hastily leaned back to avoid the blade, but the tip carved a crack across his mask.

They landed at the same time. The steel beam trembled slightly beneath their feet, rust raining down in soft patters.

Tiger Mask touched the crack in his mask and reassessed his opponent through it. A six-year-old child had exchanged several rounds with him without being hurt and had even cracked his mask. Even considering that the boy had ambushed Feng Jian, a Root chūnin, before this, such a record was enough for Danzo to personally issue a recruitment order. He suddenly spoke. "Who is your teacher?"

Shinichi did not answer. He swept a glance around with the corner of his eye—sacks, scrap-metal frames, and rusted chains were scattered throughout the warehouse. There were plenty of miscellaneous objects he could use as weapons. At the same time, his mind raced. This fight had gone on too long. Before long, the patrol would pass through the outskirts of the storage district. If the commotion drew ANBU here, things would become very troublesome. Although ANBU answered to the Hokage, Root had people infiltrated within it as well—The Third knew that he and Danzo would clash sooner or later, but that did not mean he was ready to reveal his hand now. He had to end this quickly.

Tiger Mask seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He did not intend to drag this out any longer—his hands formed seals, and wind-nature chakra formed visible whirlwinds around him. The whirlwinds swept up rust and splinters from the floor, condensing them into more than a dozen wind blades in the air. This was not the ordinary Wind Release: Wind Cutter, but a more advanced technique—Wind Release: Vacuum Blade. Each blade was thinner and sharper than a kunai, faster as well, and their directions could be controlled remotely with chakra.

Then he heard a voice.

Very soft. It came from behind him. Like someone whispering into his ear, yet also like it had sounded directly inside his mind.

"That question you just asked—you can have it back now."

Tiger Mask whirled around. At some point, another Shinichi had appeared behind him—his Sharingan just as red, a kunai in his hand, the same faint upward curve on his lips. He immediately glanced toward the front—where the original Shinichi was still standing. Without a second thought, he fired wind blades in both directions at once. But the Sharingan had already caught the minute deviations in his chakra flow—controlling Vacuum Blade required focus, and the moment his attention was divided, its trajectory would deviate. That was exactly what Shinichi had calculated. The real body rushed in from the side. Every wind blade skimmed past the sacks behind him, while his kunai sliced across Tiger Mask's right arm. Blood bloomed beneath the moonlight. Having lost control, the wind blades all flew wild and embedded themselves in the walls and ceiling, cutting several long, narrow gashes into the sheet metal.

Tiger Mask gave a muffled grunt, planted one hand on the ground, flipped backward, and retreated. The wound on his right arm was not deep, but its placement was precise—it had severed the key chakra pathways he used to control wind-nature chakra. He stared at Shinichi, his breathing beneath the mask finally no longer steady. "You're from the Uchiha Clan?"

Shinichi did not answer. Behind his back, his left hand formed two seals—Transformation Technique plus Shadow Clone. It could not have been a more basic combination, but with the Sharingan's support, even basic ninjutsu could be used to create a killing opportunity. The truly terrifying part of the Sharingan was not its ability to copy ninjutsu, but its ability to let you see an opponent's openings before they made their move. Back when he watched anime in his past life, Shinichi had thought the Sharingan was simply a one-click copy cheat. Only after using it himself did he understand—its true value was insight. The angles of the wind blades, the direction of Body Flicker, the most likely path of the opponent's next attack—all became clear lines of trajectory in his sight.

Tiger Mask did not attack again. The chakra pathways in his right arm were damaged, and he could not use Vacuum Blade again anytime soon. He leaned against the wall, pressing his left hand over the wound on his right arm, his breathing heavy yet restrained. Then he suddenly laughed softly. The sound leaked out from behind the mask, dry and brief. "Don't waste your talent on the Hokage's side."

Shinichi looked at Tiger Mask and fell silent for a moment. Then he slowly walked toward him, the tip of his kunai gleaming coldly in the moonlight. He stopped two steps away and looked at this jōnin, covered in blood but still standing. He did not say anything impassioned. He merely committed the scene to memory. Then, before the blade fell, he spoke in a low voice.

"I won't join anyone's ANBU. Not the Hokage's. Not Danzo's."

As his words fell, he reached out and pressed his hand against Tiger Mask's chest. The system activated. A torrent of chakra far more powerful than when he had fused with Feng Jian surged into his body. This was no longer warm water, but a scalding current—not hot in temperature, but overwhelming in intensity. The amount of wind-nature chakra was at least several times greater than Feng Jian's, but Shinichi's chakra pathways had been strengthened by Hashirama Cells and could already withstand such an influx. A system prompt sounded at the edge of his consciousness, blurred by the lingering rush of battle—"Devouring complete. Nature: Wind. Bloodline Limit: Sharingan. Skills acquired: Wind Release: Vacuum Blade, Gale Body Flicker. Sharingan ocular power increased."

Shinichi withdrew his hand and lowered his head to look at his right palm. A green line of chakra extended from the inside of his wrist to the tip of his middle finger. It was the trace of wind-nature chakra flowing through his body. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The two tomoe in his eyes slowly rotated once before fading—but not completely. The two tomoe seemed engraved upon his irises, refusing to disappear no matter what. He blinked, then blinked again. The two little red comma marks in his pupils did not move at all.

"...I'm screwed."

He covered his eyes, crouched down, and rubbed his brow. He could not turn off the Sharingan for now. It was like buying a new phone with the screen brightness cranked to maximum by default, searching forever without finding the adjustment button—and the phone was welded directly into his eye sockets. How was he supposed to explain this to the matron tomorrow? Say he had dreamed about Madara Uchiha last night and woke up with red eyes? Or say he had been bitten by mosquitoes and had an allergic reaction that happened to affect both eyes? He rapidly flipped through several pages of his mental archive of excuses, but none of them could hold up. In the end, he came to one conclusion—he would deal with it as it came. If all else failed, he would pretend to have an eye disease. He could also make another trip to the library and see whether there was any material on basic Sharingan control. The Uchiha Clan's secret teachings might not be available for loan, but the library should at least have books on the basic theory of ocular bloodline techniques.

He first hid Tiger Mask's corpse properly, then roughly cleaned up the traces of the fight in the warehouse. It was already dawn when he left. The moon still shone bright, and Konoha's streets were especially quiet. He climbed over the orphanage wall, pushed open the kitchen's back window, stepped over the third stair that creaked, took off his outer coat, hid his kunai, and lay down. Every movement was lighter than before, every action faster—Gale Body Flicker's muscle memory had already begun merging into his basic taijutsu.

After lying down, he stared at the ceiling and discovered a very serious problem. The cracks in the ceiling were clear in the darkness, like lines drawn on white paper. It was not the moonlight—the moon was indeed brighter tonight than it had been in recent days—but his eyes. Moonlight poured in through the broken window, leaving only a faint glow indoors. Before, he would have only been able to make out the rough outline of this crack. Now, he could clearly see even the tiny fissures along its edges, stretching all the way to the point where the light fixture was fixed. He could even see a patch of wall paint at the end of the crack curling slightly upward, with a little gray spider perched on it, spinning a web. Its silk drifted gently in the air, and he could catch the gleam of every single strand. The Sharingan could not be turned off, his night vision had increased dramatically, and he could even see the pattern of a spiderweb this clearly.

How was he supposed to sleep from now on? He stared blankly at the little spider on the ceiling for a while. Should I give it a name? Forget it. Keeping it on the wall still counted as having a roommate.