"Elder Akio? Elder Akio?"
Uchiha Kagami called repeatedly, finally pulling Akio out of his reverie.
"Ah, Kagami. When did you get here?"
Kagami: "..."
Had he gone senile?
"Oh, right. You meant the vision problem, didn't you?"
No wonder Akio's mind had blanked. The word "curse" had made him spin off into a dozen possibilities. He thought first of Kaguya's servant Black Zetsu, imagining some curse inside him, though that was the least likely.
Second came the Indra and Ashura conflict, their mutual curse. That seemed unlikely too.
Third he considered the idea that before Kaguya was sealed she might have cast a curse that could not affect the Sage of Six Paths directly but would surface later in his descendants. That possibility seemed more plausible.
Fourth…
"A curse might be something outside the normal power system of the ninja world. Maybe when Kaguya unleashed Infinite Tsukuyomi she was hit by curses from the people." Thinking of this, Akio recalled other fragments of memory.
"They say Kaguya gave birth because she received the people's blessings. Blessings and curses. What exactly are those?"
"Fifth, and maybe the most likely. None of the above."
"Elder Akio?" Kagami looked exasperated. Akio had zoned out again for the nth time.
Akio frowned and met Kagami's eyes.
"I have a method we can try."
Kagami brightened and nodded eagerly.
"Don't resist." Akio raised a hand and pressed it to Kagami's chest.
"Lift the curse."
He had never used that technique since he first obtained it on that cursed altar. Now he unleashed it. Dense black patterns flowed out from the palm of his hand. They paused on Kagami's chest, slipped out through his collar, spread across his face, and finally poured into his eyes.
Kagami kept his eyes shut. After a long moment he opened them again.
"Elder Akio, what did you just do?"
"A special sealing technique," Akio answered. "Did you feel anything?"
Kagami slowly shook his head. "Just now I felt bound by something, like something wanted to force me to struggle free."
Akio was surprised. The curse-lifting skill had functioned as a binding technique.
"And your eyes?"
Kagami shook his head slightly. "No change."
Akio's face tightened. After all his conjectures about curses, the result was neither wholly surprising nor wholly gratifying.
"But the black patterns targeted your eyes automatically."
"Try activating your Mangekyō."
Kagami did as told. He opened his Mangekyō Sharingan. The three tomoe formed a clover-like pattern.
"Any difference?"
"Seems like… I don't feel any further drop in my vision?" Kagami answered uncertainly.
Akio's expression shifted into understanding.
"So the blindness curse was lifted, but the vision already lost cannot be restored?"
He felt a little disappointed. He had hoped removing the curse would be the same as gaining the Eternal Mangekyō.
"This is good enough."
Akio sighed and nodded to Kagami. "You should no longer lose vision from using the Mangekyō, but the damage already done is probably permanent."
Kagami breathed out, and it was hard to tell if he felt relieved or disappointed. "Thank you, Elder Akio."
After seeing Kagami off, Akio felt a small surge of excitement.
"With that solved, the Senju fertility problem should finally be fixable."
He did not rush to lift every curse immediately. The clan had just finished their tonic; the younger ones were likely engaged in various private pursuits. It would be poor timing to disturb them.
"I'll go see Dōzan and test on him first." Akio hummed a tune and walked out. A major problem had been resolved and his mood lightened.
Three days later, Akio had removed the curse from every Senju clan member.
He did not explain the curse's origin. He did not know the truth himself. He only told them this was a special sealing technique he had developed to treat infertility, and then cheerfully announced, You can stop drinking that tonic now.
The Senju were not happy to hear that.
"I like seeing you get angry while being unable to do anything about it," Akio said with a smile as he left.
"Work hard to increase the clan's numbers."
…
An hour earlier, at the Rain Country battlefield, in a dark underground chamber.
"Ah!"
A string of chilling screams echoed. Ten Iwagakure shinobi writhed bound by iron chains. Minutes later they were all dead.
"Not possible?" a voice whispered. "Whether it's Hashirama's cells or Madara Uchiha's, ordinary bodies cannot withstand it."
"Orochimaru, you hide yourself well. Konoha would never have guessed your madness."
An Iwagakure jonin who had led a twenty-man squad and been captured on the battlefield spat the words with hate.
"None would know?" Orochimaru licked his lips. "Perhaps."
A small snake crawled from the earth and brought up a syringe in its mouth. The syringe contained a deep-red vial of blood, several dozen milliliters.
Orochimaru looked at the remaining five Iwagakure shinobi. Except for the captain, the rest were unconscious. He sized up the syringe and smiled. "Do you know whose blood this is?"
"This is the blood of Uzumaki Akio. I obtained a small sample by chance. No matter how I study it, it looks like ordinary human blood."
The Iwagakure captain's face changed. He realized what Orochimaru intended and spat, "You lunatic!"
Orochimaru ignored the captain's protests and injected one milliliter into each of the four unconscious shinobi.
"No reaction?"
Ten minutes later Orochimaru's face grew grave. Akio's blood, which should have provoked rejection or complications when transfused into a stranger, seemed to integrate smoothly.
"Maybe the dose was too small?" Orochimaru decided. He overrode the captain's fighting and injected half the remaining vial into him.
After another half hour, Orochimaru looked even more serious.
"This compatibility. How did we not notice it before?"
He recalled Akio having Sakumo bite his arm to heal a wound in the past. He thought of Akio's longevity and how years of research had yielded nothing.
"Is it some special ability at work?"
Staring at the nearly empty vial, Orochimaru's expression hardened.
"There is only one way left."
---
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