…
Mo Ke stared at the nightmare breakfast in front of him, at a loss for where to begin.
Kushina had woken him at dawn. Covering his ears had not helped; she yelled straight at his soul. He regretted granting her that soul-link between his main self and the clone in Naruto. Under her threats and coaxing he yielded control of his body so her spirit could ride it.
Then he watched her rattle pans with righteous fury and plate a "perfect" three dishes and a soup.
The braised pork was black as midnight and smelled like a funeral pyre.
The mapo tofu looked all right… until she stirred in a heaping spoon of ketchup.
The chive-and-egg scramble looked normal too… except he had watched her, unused to his hands, tip an entire spoonful of salt into the pan.
The soup was just miso, and Mo Ke had always hated miso.
Hold on. Kushina should be good at this. In the original story Rin had said her favorite lunches were Kushina's. Then Mo Ke remembered that moved, teary smile on Kushina's face. Maybe she did not hear that sort of praise very often.
He also suddenly understood why Minato always left breakfast unfinished.
"Uh, Kushina, heavy breakfasts are bad. Got any plain congee? Doctor's orders. My stomach is delicate. I should eat something soft."
"Cut the nonsense. This is my first time cooking in three years. If I were not testing whether Naruto would like it, why would you get any."
"It looks like the taste is probably not going to be great."
"What did you just say."
"Kushina, Mito told you to fill a tailed beast's heart with love."
"I will fill you with love. Secret Art of Loving. Adamantine Sealing Chains."
— — —
Resigned, he sealed off his sense of taste and finished the "feast," then trudged to the riverbank with a tragic face.
This was where Uchiha Shisui and Uchiha Itachi trained in the mornings and debated love and justice. Mo Ke had long ago brushed Shisui with a trace of crimson force, a power that sat between soul and substance; unless one looked for it, a shinobi would not notice.
Just as expected, Shisui was here, leaning against a tree, watching the current. Nearby a younger dark-haired boy squatted by the water, skipping stones between bursts of commentary.
Shisui was seventeen now, a jōnin for years. Itachi was eight, but early to grow; standing next to the tall Shisui he looked only four or five years younger. The faint tear troughs already forming on his face made him seem older.
Sensing eyes on him, Shisui snapped his head around. Itachi halted mid-speech and turned to the stranger as well.
The moment he saw that cascade of red hair, something flickered in Itachi's gaze. At the clan meeting days earlier, Uchiha Fugaku had stressed this: if you see a red-haired teen in the village, avoid him. Do not engage.
Itachi was curious. The boy's looks were unremarkable, his age young. Why would the clan head be so wary.
Death gods were odd creatures. Souls, yes, but they still aged, though the pace could be stretched. If one wished, one could hold a chosen face for a long, long time. Mo Ke disliked looking too juvenile, so he had nudged his appearance forward. He still looked like a youth, but his red hair now reached his back. He planned to halt time's brush at a clean young-man look. Not everyone enjoyed posing as a wizened turtle like old man Yamamoto.
Noting the interest in Mo Ke's eyes, Shisui's muscles tightened. That was the body's response to a superior predator. He kept his voice even.
"Lord Mo Ke, you came to this out-of-the-way place at sunrise. What do you want with me?"
He did not believe it was a stroll. From Mo Ke's words a few days ago, Shisui knew the man understood him very well. Perhaps too well.
After that meeting, Fugaku, who had guessed Shisui's Mangekyō had opened, had not asked how or what power it held. He had simply brought Shisui to see the Uchiha's greatest secret.
Thinking of that, doubt shadowed Shisui's eyes. He did not know which path to choose.
"Lost in thought already," Mo Ke said, amused. "Then Fugaku must have taken you to the stone tablet beneath Naka Shrine."
The clan's deepest secret, dropped like a pebble into a pond. Shisui's eyes flared. Was the Uzumaki–Senju mind's eye truly so monstrous.
Mo Ke chuckled. "From your face, I hit the mark. Now I am curious. How much can you read. The steps to grasp the power called All-Creation? Or the Uchiha's final mission to save the world."
He had always wanted the tablet's text spelled out. The original story was coy, speaking only vaguely of destiny. In a side tale, Fugaku showed Itachi the tablet and admitted even Mangekyō could not read it all.
Given that Itachi knew of Madara yet remained ignorant of the true aim behind collecting the beasts, he likely saw only the path toward the Rinnegan, not the Moon's Eye plan. If it had only been about Eternal Mangekyō, the village and Fugaku would not need a tablet tour; they could have explained it at home.
And Fugaku had said they lived in the wrong environment. Eternal eyes were an internal affair. The Rinnegan required Senju power, and since the Uchiha now shared a village with the Senju, they would never be allowed to obtain it openly. Hence the fear and hence the pressure that would one day explode.
The tablet, in other words, preached that Uchiha and Senju were destined to devour one another.
This world, Mo Ke thought, was full of people with cat brains. If Madara had simply asked Hashirama for a chunk of flesh, with that man's regeneration, would he really have refused. Why fight to the death.
Judging from how Madara only succeeded late in life, perhaps Senju cells resisted until their owner's will faded. Still. If nothing else, the clans could have intermarried until a throwback child appeared with the right mix. A Mangekyō wielder with Wood Release one generation, a Rinnegan the next. The world might have found peace a lot earlier.
Mo Ke's own belief was that reading the tablet depended less on eye version and more on raw ocular force. Take Obito. Why did he stake everything on the Moon's Eye. He must have checked the tablet.
He lacked Eternal eyes and only had a reinforced Mangekyō, yet he still bought the dream. He was not smart, but he was absolute. A single promise of a world where the dead might return, and he burned everything. He could not have done it on Madara's word alone.
He could not cleanse Obito's sins either. The acts were the acts.
If only he could hear the voice of all things, he would go read the stone himself.
So he asked Shisui the question he most wanted answered.
"How far did your eyes let you see?"
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