Waking up shouldn't feel like being hit by a cart full of angry badgers. Yūrei Uchiha's eyelids weighed roughly the same as two of the Hokage Monument's stone heads. The first thing that registered wasn't the sterile smell of antiseptic or the scratchy hospital sheets. It was the noise. A cacophony of whispers, arguments, and laughter that wasn't his own, all crammed into his skull like too many people trying to fit into a tiny, shitty apartment.
— The old man's vitals are stabilizing. Third Hokage and Danzō were arguing outside. Seems they were debating whether to kill us or just turn us into another one of his emotionless Root puppets.
That was the new voice. The one that cut through the chaos like a scalpel. Yūrei, the real, terrified seven-year-old Yūrei, was just trying to process the fact that he wasn't dead. But this voice—cold, clinical, analytical—was already doing a threat assessment of the hospital room's shadow puppets.
Who the hell are you? Yūrei thought, his mental voice a small squeak in a stadium full of screaming fans.
Call me the Analyst. I'm the one who keeps us alive while you're busy having an existential crisis. And you've got bigger problems than introductions.
Another voice, rougher and angrier, like gravel being dragged across a wound, cut in. The geezer with the pipe and the bandaged-up weasel weren't just 'debating.' They were deciding if your body is more useful as a corpse or a weapon. Root. Trust me, kid. There's no difference.
Root? The word was a foreign, jagged piece of glass in Yūrei's mind. What the hell is Root?
A new voice, this one sounding like it belonged to a guy who read too many forbidden scrolls and had a stick up his ass. Root is a clandestine division of Konoha's Anbu, founded and led by Danzō Shimura, one of the village elders. Their ideology is that of a tree whose roots support the village from the shadows, but in reality, they are a pack of slavishly loyal dogs who carry out Danzō's unsanctioned, often immoral, missions.
And that Danzō bastard is the reason our clan is in the shitter! the gravel-voice growled. After the Nine-Tails attacked, he spread rumors that the Uchiha were behind it. Said our Sharingan controlled the beast. The truth? He ordered the Uchiha Police Force to stay back and focus on civilian evacuation while the rest of the village fought and died! He set us up to take the fall!
The Analyst's voice returned, smooth and emotionless. Danzō is a master of manipulation. He also leaked Naruto Uzumaki's status as the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki to turn the village's hatred toward a child. He is not to be trusted. Trust no one in this village. The Third Hokage is complicit in his own inaction, a weak man playing at being a leader. They are all traitors to the ideals they claim to protect.
The voices in his head—the Anbu, the Rogue, the Fanatic, the Healer, and a dozen others—all murmured in grim agreement. They were a jury, and the verdict was in: Konoha was guilty.
And they stole our father's eyes, the Analyst added, as if mentioning a bad bout of weather. While we were unconscious, they harvested them.
Yūrei's heart, which had just remembered how to beat, felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. Dad's... eyes?
I handled it, the Analyst stated. Before your body fully regained control, I... borrowed the wheel, so to speak. I went back to the house and secured them. Your father's Sharingan are safe. We may be able to use them to stabilize our Mangekyo if the compatibility is right. It's unlikely to grant us the Eternal Mangekyo without a sibling's eyes, but even a parent's Sharingan is a powerful asset. It won't hurt us.
Mange...kyo? The word was a confusing tangle of sounds in Yūrei's fractured mind.
The Scholar-voice sighed, a sound of great and weary patience. The Mangekyo Sharingan. It is the evolved form of the Sharingan, awakened by the trauma of witnessing the death of the person you love most. Like you just did with your mother. It is the pinnacle of the Sharingan's power... at least, as far as most Uchiha know.
Before Yūrei could even begin to unpack that existential nightmare, the door slid open. The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, walked in, his face a carefully constructed mask of grandfatherly concern. The smell of his pipe tobacco, usually a comforting scent of old books and wisdom, now smelled like burning lies.
"Yūrei-kun," Hiruzen said, his voice soft. "I am relieved you are awake. What happened was... a terrible tragedy. Itachi Uchiha, driven by his own twisted ambition, slaughtered the clan. He sought to test his power. You are one of only two survivors."
Look at his lips. The micro-tremors. Watch his eyes—they flicked to the left. He's lying through his teeth, the Analyst whispered. Even I acted better than this when I was faking sick to skip training as a kid. This old fossil is a terrible actor.
A wave of cold, collective rage washed over Yūrei. Every single voice in his head, from the gentle Healer to the psychotic Monster, united in a single, silent scream. LIAR.
He'll be the first one we kill, the Analyst stated, the words a simple, chilling fact. When we have the power to burn this rotten village to the ground. He dies first.
The other voices all hummed in agreement, a chorus of vengeance. Yūrei just stared at the Hokage with a blank expression, his own voice lost in the storm.
A week passed. A blur of white walls, tasteless food, and the Analyst slowly, methodically, organizing the chaos in Yūrei's head like a deranged librarian. He was discharged with a clean bill of physical health. His mind, of course, was a dumpster fire.
He walked towards the Uchiha district, his feet carrying him on autopilot. Home. He wanted to see his home. The broken door. The soy sauce stain. Anything that was real.
An Anbu agent in a porcelain animal mask appeared before him in a silent flicker of leaves. "Your residence is not in that direction, Uchiha. The Third Hokage has arranged alternative accommodations for you. You will receive a monthly stipend for living expenses. Follow me."
The "alternative accommodations" were a one-room apartment in a building that smelled like boiled cabbage and regret. It was smaller than his old bedroom. The walls were stained, the floorboards creaked a mournful tune, and the single window offered a breathtaking view of a brick wall. The Anbu agent handed him a small envelope of ryō. It felt pathetically light.
This is our inheritance, the Rogue's voice said, flat and dead. A shoebox and pocket change. The Uchiha, one of the founding noble clans of this cesspool, reduced to this.
Yūrei clutched the flimsy envelope, his knuckles white. The Anbu agent, clearly considering his job done, turned his back. "My duty here is complete."
A cold, alien feeling washed over Yūrei. It wasn't his own. It was the Analyst. And it was pure, uncut, ice-cold certainty.
"Your duty," Yūrei heard his own mouth say, his voice flat and emotionless.
Let me out! a new voice roared from the deepest, darkest pit of Yūrei's mind. It was the Monster, and its presence was a suffocating wave of pure, psychotic glee. Let me have the body! I'll paint this entire rotten world in his blood! Let me show them what true hatred looks like!
Be silent. The Analyst's command was a psychic whip-crack. The Monster's presence receded, but its laughter echoed in the dark corners of Yūrei's mind.
Yūrei was in the Academy classroom. The familiar chatter of his classmates was a distant hum. He looked for Sasuke's usual seat, the one with the perfect view of the training grounds. Empty. Right, he thought. He's still in the hospital.
The Tsukuyomi, the Analyst supplied. Itachi's ultimate genjutsu. It traps the victim in an illusion where the user controls all perception of time, making seconds feel like days of torture. *I've analyzed the residual chakra signature in our neural pathways. He hit us with a micro-dose. We experienced a full, 93-year lifetime in that illusion. That's why there are so many of 'us' in here. The other voices, the other personalities... they're all versions of you from those fabricated lives. As for the duck-butt kid, Itachi likely used a more... aggressive application on him. He'll be mentally crippled for a while. Only someone like Tsunade could heal that kind of psychological damage.*
Yūrei felt the stares of his classmates. Pity. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of pity. They knew. They all knew he was the "other" survivor.
Iruka-sensei walked in, his kind face a mask of gentle concern. He gave Yūrei a small, sad smile. And then Yūrei remembered. Yesterday morning. The "free day." The note from the Academy.
It wasn't politics, the Analyst stated, the words as cold and sharp as the kitchen knife. It was a hit. Iruka was sent to get you out of the way. He knew what was going to happen. He was complicit in our murder. I've observed this village since the day I could talk. It's a system designed to consume its own people and spit out the bones. Every famous ninja's death, every tragedy, can be traced back to the village's own corruption.
The Analyst then began listing names, pulling information from the fractured memories of a dozen lifetimes.
Sakumo Hatake. A hero known as the 'White Fang of the Leaf.' He chose his comrades over a mission and was disgraced by the very village he served. He was driven to suicide by the shame.
Naruto Uzumaki. The son of the Fourth Hokage, the hero who saved this village. He is treated as a pariah, beaten and ostracized because he holds the demon that his own father sealed to protect them all. They don't even know his lineage.
The Uchiha. Herded into a corner of the village, treated as suspects for a crime we didn't commit, and then slaughtered like animals for daring to be unhappy about it.
You may not know these names now. The full download of all our memories would shatter your seven-year-old psyche. But you will learn. You will see the rot in the core of this tree. This village is corrupt. Even the children you see looking at you with pity—they are products of this system. They'll grow up to be just as complicit. They already shun Naruto because of a rumor. They are all infected with the same virus.
The Analyst's voice fell silent, letting the weight of the words settle in the small, fractured mind of a seven-year-old boy who had lost everything.
Yūrei Uchiha, staring at Iruka's kind, lying face, understood. He wasn't just a survivor. He was a prisoner. And the only way out was through the wall.