"How far did you read?"
Shisui touched his eyes. Since Mo Ke knew of the stone tablet, it no longer felt strange that he might also know what the tablet said.
"I saw the Uchiha ancestor's ultimate plan to 'save' the shinobi world. But how to carry it out… with my eyes as they are now, I can't see that far."
"The Moon's Eye Plan," Mo Ke said plainly, cutting him off.
Just as he had guessed: Shisui could read more than Itachi had back when his Mangekyō first awakened. Whether Fugaku could read that much, Mo Ke could not be sure, but he doubted Fugaku would have taken it to heart either way.
To Fugaku, the stone tablet served a single purpose: proof that the village and the Uchiha had reached an irreconcilable state. No matter what the clan did, the leadership would never truly trust them.
So, unwilling to wage war on Konoha yet yearning to be accepted by it, Fugaku's answer had been a "bloodless revolution" against the top. In practice, he achieved the most textbook "bloodless" outcome imaginable: without the leadership shedding a single drop, the Uchiha were erased.
With the scope of Shisui's reading clear, Mo Ke went straight to the point.
"What do you think of the Moon's Eye. The so-called only path of salvation for the Uchiha."
Shisui stood there thinking. He had been wrestling with this for days, which explained his distraction today. At last he murmured, face clouded with doubt, "I don't know. The plan is too grand. I have no idea how to enact it, and when I cannot reconcile even the rift between clan and village, how could I realize something like that.
And Infinite Tsukuyomi, no matter how convincing, is still genjutsu, a false peace. Dragging everyone into illusion and rewriting their will without consent… it feels tyrannical. It is not justice."
Mo Ke clapped lightly. "Worthy of the Shisui who would rather die than use Kotoamatsukami. Your heart is steady enough for those eyes."
Kotoamatsukami… to the very end… He really knows everything, Shisui thought, fingers grazing the lids that hid his pain. If he had a choice, he would rather have been born without them.
"Umm…" Itachi, who barely kept up, raised a hand. He felt like he had just overheard state secrets and might be executed. "Is it really okay to discuss all this in front of an eight-year-old…"
"What does it matter," Mo Ke laughed. "Uchiha Itachi, you are the kid who, at eight, already thinks like a Hokage."
It was praise, yet Itachi could hear the sting in it. He shut his mouth, but at least it seemed he would live.
"Since you already sense what is wrong with the Moon's Eye, here is a gift. The tablet is indeed from the Sage of Six Paths, but starting around the method for obtaining Eternal Mangekyō, the latter sections were most likely tampered with.
The Sage's true intent was to record the origins of the Uchiha and Senju and to urge hot-blooded Uchiha descendants not to repeat their ancestor's hatred, but to treat the other side with forbearance."
Mo Ke studied Shisui with open approval. Even with Mangekyō, this one's thinking had not been consumed by extremism.
Then he remembered Shisui's later choices that no one could quite understand—ambushed by Danzō, yet instead of revenge, choosing his own death to buy a few more fragile years of calm between clan and village. Perhaps his "extremism" was a faith in peace without blood.
Shisui still hesitated. The tablet had always been guarded by the clan, its wards ingenious. His mind balked at the idea of it being altered.
"Don't rush to shout 'impossible.' You have opened Mangekyō, but you are still chained to a human's frame. There are strata above ours in this world. Some beings are not mighty in battle, yet meddling with a thing like a tablet is easy."
Mo Ke thought of Black Zetsu, that strange creature who, with a feeble arm, fooled the Sage's legacy for a thousand years and kept a comic running for a decade. Weak in a fight, perhaps, but in the hierarchy of life he was born of Kaguya and stood at the apex.
Shisui's doubt did not vanish, but the knot loosened. It made sense. From the Mangekyō section on, the tablet's voice had turned skewed, unlike the founder of Ninshū.
He gathered courage and asked, "Then, Lord Mo Ke… since you seem to see through my confusion, how do I make the Uchiha and the village truly coexist."
Mo Ke smiled. Children of Konoha were simple in one way: if you struck the chord in their hearts, they would spend a life living that note.
"First, both of you Shisui and you as well, Itachi are rare Uchiha who keep your heads. But being too precocious has trapped your thinking inside your narrow view. Your childhood inside the clan and your warm bonds with kids in the village make you assume Konoha equals the good you long for, and the Uchiha equals the self-centered side. Your starting stance is tilted. You frame this as the clan's small righteousness versus the village's higher righteousness."
He watched them both thinking, then pressed on. "If we step outside that frame and judge with no stake in either side, is the Uchiha as evil by nature as the Second Hokage said. Look only at what the clan actually did after Konoha was founded and ask your own hearts."
They searched their memories. After the founding, the only "evil" act that came to mind was the rebellion of Uchiha Madara dragging the Nine-Tails into a duel with the First. But when Madara left, most of the clan stood with the village.
They even stripped him of the title of head. Madara's evil was his, not proof of a cursed bloodline.
Seeing them straining for examples, Mo Ke smiled inwardly. When power speaks, the world listens, whether or not the logic is airtight. Naruto's fabled persuasion usually came after he knocked someone flat too. Suddenly it all felt consistent.
He cut back in before the silence grew heavy.
"Not evil, right. The fact that your clan produces hearts like yours, and like Obito's when he was a boy who truly loved Konoha is enough to shatter the 'born evil' slur."
"But many in our clan keep talking about splitting from Konoha, about a coup, even if innocent people would die…" Shisui was still working through it, reevaluating his stance. Itachi, who tended to wedge himself into a single angle, could not help protesting.
Mo Ke lifted a hand to calm him. "You cannot cling to appearances and never ask why. Have you asked yourself why the Uchiha keep pushing toward revolt."
Itachi almost said "because of power." In his mind, everything the clan wanted led back to the Hokage's chair. But when he met Mo Ke's amused eyes, he swallowed the easy answer.
Mo Ke spared him. Looking at the boy who had not yet fallen into the dark, he softened.
"Yes, there are those who inherit Madara's creed and believe they should rule. But you cannot deny that many Uchiha care nothing for rank and truly love peace."
Both Shisui and Itachi nodded.
"You two are the few Uchiha whom the village treats with unusual warmth. You cannot feel what the elders and ordinary clansfolk have gone through." Mo Ke's gaze fixed on Itachi. In the original tale, the boy often sounded like that old, cruel jest: 'Let them eat cake.'
He himself had never been crushed. So when others were pressed flat and finally thought to resist, he popped out to ask, Why are you doing this. Why not endure a while longer.
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