A little over a week later, one day, in the Hokage's office.
"My mission is taking me outside the village too? To search for rare medicinal herbs..."
Itachi Uchiha looked at the mission slip he had just received, feeling that something was off.
Yesterday, Shisui had been assigned to the Land of Hot Water to track down a missing noblewoman. Today, the squad Itachi belonged to had immediately been assigned a mission to the Land of Rivers to search for rare herbs.
Could there be a problem?
Was it the village?
Thoughts raced through Itachi's mind. There had been too many strange things lately. For some reason, the people in the clan had suddenly stopped talking about their dissatisfaction with the village. Even the secret meeting three days ago had been canceled.
The biggest anomaly of all was the way his younger brother Sasuke had started looking at him, with that mixture of confusion and unease. Even now, Itachi could not stop worrying about it.
The squad leader, a fellow Uchiha clansman, turned and looked over at him, puzzled to find Itachi still standing there.
"Itachi?"
Itachi stared at the captain, unsure what he ought to say.
Even a genius could not escape Konoha's rules. Any mission squad had to have four people.
"What is it?" the Third Hokage asked, giving Itachi a curious look.
This child, who at such a young age already possessed the maturity and judgment of an adult, usually accepted missions in silence and left without a word. Why was his attitude so unusual today?
Itachi gave a slight shake of the head. "It's nothing, Lord Third. Please excuse me." He bowed faintly and left with his teammates.
What could possibly happen inside the village?
That was what he told himself, and yet everything still felt wrong. His instincts were warning him that something was brewing inside the clan.
And yet he could not find a single concrete sign of it.
---
That night, on a street near the Konoha Military Police headquarters.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Uchiha Yashiro suddenly stopped walking. "Doesn't it feel a little too quiet?"
"Yeah," Uchiha Tekka agreed. "Too quiet."
Uchiha Inabi simply fell silent and stopped as well.
A bad feeling surged through Yashiro's chest. But before he could do anything, everything in front of him seemed normal again.
"What are you thinking? What could possibly happen inside the village?" Inabi walked past him, sounding casual. "Come on. Let's get back."
Yeah. What could happen inside the village?
Yashiro could once again hear footsteps nearby, could once again see pedestrians walking toward them. He shook his head and gave a wry smile at his own suspicion, then kept heading toward the clan district.
Tonight was the meeting, after all.
He needed to get back quickly.
In reality...
Yashiro stood there with a blank expression. Tekka and Inabi were pressing a hand against each of his shoulders, one on either side.
A few seconds later, all three of them walked off together, their steps unnaturally in sync.
The shadows shifted slightly. An ANBU operative in a mask was just about to follow when his body suddenly froze. A moment later, clarity returned to his eyes, and he turned and headed off in the opposite direction.
---
Inside the Uchiha clan head's house.
"Mom." Sasuke slid open the door, rubbing at his sleepy eyes with one hand as he walked closer. "Where's Dad?"
He very naturally took his mother's hand.
"Your father, he..."
Mikoto's voice cut off abruptly. The light faded from her eyes.
Just as I thought, there's still a bit of a problem.
Looking at the motionless wife of the Uchiha clan head through Sasuke's eyes, Arata shook his head helplessly. He only had one consciousness, but too many people to control.
Even with the degree to which he could split his attention, at most he could keep three or four people behaving exactly as they normally would. Once he controlled too many, the rest all turned into puppets with no reaction at all.
He had taken control of everyone except Shisui and Itachi even faster than he had expected. Many Uchiha ninja never realized their own families had already been controlled. With just a little guidance, they fell one after another. Only a handful remained untouched, all of them Uchiha who had relatively frequent contact with Shisui or Itachi.
He had deliberately sent those two away on long-range missions, and today he had acted without hesitation, taking complete control of the entire Uchiha clan.
The next phase of the plan had officially begun.
"Everything's ready. Time to begin."
Arata controlled Sasuke's body, leading Mikoto, who was still immersed in genjutsu, out the door.
In the courtyard, expressionless Uchiha stood in silence, like a crowd of living corpses.
If he wanted to build the Uchiha Network, he had to assume total control over their bodies. And with his current control capacity, this kind of result was unavoidable.
At the front, Fugaku Uchiha sat cross-legged on the ground with his head lowered. The last Uchiha jonin to arrive stepped into the crowd.
Arata slapped Sasuke's palm against the ground. His chakra surged out, and great swaths of curse-like markings spread across the floor, forming a circular barrier of moderate size that neatly enclosed the estate.
At best, I can probably hide this from Konoha's great barrier for five minutes...
He made a rough estimate and knew he had to move fast. Without the slightest hesitation, he immediately began controlling the Uchiha to start refining chakra.
Large quantities of chakra, belonging to different people, were drawn out and released under his control.
Synchronized.
Resonating.
Crack... crackle...
The ground split open, and clumps of earth trembled as they began to float into the air.
The Uchiha clan generally possessed large chakra reserves, especially the ninja who had awakened their eyes. For any one person, releasing chakra directly to influence outside objects like this would have been extremely difficult.
But resonating chakra was different.
Arata had taken inspiration from the classic example in the manga during the Fourth Great Ninja War, when Naruto distributed his chakra, created resonance, and linked everyone together. According to the Second Hokage's explanation, it was "similar to shadow clones." At that very moment, each of these Uchiha had a portion of Arata's chakra inside them.
That made it easy for his own chakra to resonate.
Using it as a lead to draw the controlled individuals' chakra into harmony as well was more difficult, but for a chakra spirit like Arata, whose chakra control was maxed out, it was still manageable.
Several Uchiha ninja who were barely more than genin turned pale almost at once.
They were consuming too much chakra in the process of releasing it, synchronizing it, and forcing it into resonance. If this continued, their bodies might be harmed.
Arata did not rush.
Instead, he became even more careful, slowly guiding the immense mass of chakra as he directed the special chakra in the Uchiha brain and Sharingan.
"The next step... is ocular power."
Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz!
Ocular power, the special chakra produced within the Uchiha brain and the Sharingan, was drawn out under his guidance and linked together through the already resonating sea of chakra.
Uchiha without the Sharingan awakened it.
One-tomoe eyes became two.
Two-tomoe became three...
Drip. Drip.
This kind of forced acceleration was obviously causing some degree of damage to their bodies. The sound of blood falling from the corners of their eyes rang out again and again.
So this confirms it. I recover chakra by using the ocular power inside their heads as a medium... but what's the actual mechanism?
For the first time since his transmigration, Arata could feel his own chakra increasing.
Until now, no matter what he did, it had remained fixed.
"Ugh..." A low groan of pain suddenly came from Fugaku's mouth.
That's a problem.
Arata focused and looked over.