"Gulp!"
Thick smoke filled the sky, swaying endlessly alongside tattered battle flags. Itachi suddenly woke with a start, only to see the haze from his memories. Google search reading.
It felt unreal. His vision was blurred, like an old television screen filled with drifting static, with white lines of crackling electricity flashing across his sight from time to time.
This was...
The Third Shinobi World War?
Why did this battlefield feel so familiar?
But why had he returned to his memories? Where was his body? Why could he remember nothing at all?
He saw a young child in black clothes and ninja gear in the distance. He should never have been in this place.
"What is the meaning of life?"
He could even clearly sense the child murmuring to himself. Corpses covered the ground, weapons lay broken, and the flames of war relentlessly scorched both bodies and steel, giving off a murky, foul stench.
"So what is the meaning of life? Is everything really so fragile?"
The young Itachi Uchiha continued pursuing the question Orochimaru had spent his entire life seeking an answer to. Looking at his past self, Itachi could not help but feel a sorrow of shared fate.
A desolation like an ancient wasteland seemed to choke his heart, filling it to the brim while somehow making it feel even emptier.
"So you don't know either, do you?"
The child noticed Itachi. He looked disappointed, then glared at him fiercely.
He walked straight over and viciously plunged a kunai into Itachi's throat!!
--
"What are you doing?!"
Itachi jolted awake and grabbed the thing reaching toward him, then pinned her firmly to the ground with a backhanded motion.
The soft sensation beneath his hand, especially that jade-like warmth as smooth as icy silk, made Itachi shudder. Then he