Someone had been standing in the shadows of the trees outside the Old Training Ground for a long time.
He wore a dark cloak and a spiral-patterned mask over his face.
Konoha's night breeze swept past, stirring the fallen leaves on the ground.
The lone eye behind the mask watched the distant Uchiha Clan Compound, unmoving for a long time.
Things had gone off course.
That was his most immediate assessment.
He had once known exactly how the Uchiha would collapse.
First came suspicion.
Then isolation.
Then they would be pushed until nothing remained within the clan but rage and fear.
Finally, all it took was the right blade, a genius in enough pain, to erase the entire clan in a single night.
But now, someone was slowing every step.
Shisui Uchiha had not died.
That eye had not fallen into Danzo's hands.
Nor had Uchiha Itachi been squeezed between the village and his clan until he became a solitary blade, as expected.
More troubling still, Uchiha Fugaku had not lost control of order within the clan.
Together, those three facts were enough to open up new possibilities in a situation that should have ended in collapse.
The Masked Man did not like those possibilities.
The Uchiha's fate should have rotted in hatred.
They should have been driven into a corner by the village's suspicions.
They should have been cut down by their own genius in an act of self-sacrifice.
But now, someone kept dragging those hidden strings into the light.
Uchiha Gen.
He had heard that name many times already.
The Masked Man was in no hurry to dismiss this variable.
He had lived long enough and seen enough people who thought they could rewrite fate.
Most merely struggled a little longer before a greater tide swallowed them all