Bonus Chapters every 100 Power Stones
"Normal Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
[Year X790]
~ With Shisui ~
Haruki smiled then, a weak but genuine expression of relief. "Good. That's good."
The boy's head fell to one side, his breathing stopping with a final exhale. The silence that followed was broken only by the endless drumming of rain against the forest floor.
Shisui tried to reach for him, tried to touch Haruki's face one more ti. His hand passed through the vision like it was made of smoke, but the phantom pain in his chest was real enough. He collapsed to his knees in the void, clutching at empty air where his teammate's body should have been.
Before he could process the full weight of that failure, the scene shifted again.
He was standing in his childhood ho, but it looked different than he rembered. Smaller, sohow. More fragile. The wooden floors creaked under his feet, and the walls showed their age in ways that his mory had glossed over.
His aunt Miyuki Uchiha stood in the kitchen, humming softly as she prepared for her trip to the market. She was smaller than he rembered too, her hair streaked with more grey than his idealized mories had preserved. But her smile was exactly as warm as he'd carried with him all these years.
"I'll be back before nightfall," she said, holding up a small pouch of coins. "That spice that little Shisui likes, the rchant finally has it in stock this week."
Shisui's past self was nowhere to be seen in this mory. He was away on a mission, leaving his aunt alone to handle the simple errands of daily life. The sight of her preparing to leave filled him with a dread that had nothing to do with the vision itself.
'Don't go. Please, just stay ho today.' He prayed, knowing she couldn't hear him.
But Miyuki was already wrapping her sash around her waist, checking the contents of her small purse. She paused at the door, looking back at the empty house with a fondness that made Shisui's heart ache.
"I'll make your favourite tonight when you get back from your first mission." She said to the empty air, as if her absent nephew could hear her.
The door closed behind her with a soft click, and Shisui was left alone in the house that had been his only real ho. The silence was oppressive, now more than ever, filled with the weight of knowledge he couldn't share with his past.
The scene shifted again, but this ti it was rcifully brief. Miyuki's funeral was held three days after her body was found en route back ho from the market district outside of Konoha. The coffin was closed, the damage too severe for viewing. Her personal effects were laid out beside it. The small purse, the sash, a single packet of expensive spice that had never made it ho.
Shisui stood at the back of the small gathering, his face a mask of controlled grief. He'd returned from his mission to find his aunt already dead, killed in cold blood. The investigation had turned up nothing useful. No witnesses, no suspects, no justice.
The villagers who'd known Miyuki spoke kind words about her generosity and gentle nature. They talked about how she'd taken in her orphaned nephew, how she'd sacrificed her own comfort to ensure he had opportunities she'd never known. But their words felt hollow to Shisui, aningless in the face of the void her absence had created.
'You said you'd co back,' he thought, staring at the closed coffin. But just like with his genin team, he'd been too far away to protect her when it mattered.
The vision ended. Shisui found himself back in the void, but this ti he didn't try to maintain his composure. The tears ca freely, hot and bitter as they tracked down his face. He'd held them back during the actual funeral, determined to be strong, to honour her mory with dignity. But here in the darkness, surrounded by his failures, he finally let himself grieve.
'Was that real.. Is that why she died... Was I the reason... FOR A SIMPLE PIECE OF SPICE?!'
His fist connected with the shadowy ground, again and again, until his knuckles split and bled. The pain was real, but it made no sound in the silence of the void. He struck the ground until his strength gave out, until he was left gasping and shaking with the force of his grief.
Yet the void gave him no ti to recover from his grief. Even as his knuckles still bled from striking the shadowy ground, another vision began to form around him.
Smoke filled his lungs, thick and acrid. The sll of burning wood and sothing else, sothing that made his stomach turn. Shisui found himself standing before a small hut, flas consuming its wooden walls with hungry intensity. Orange light spread across his ANBU mask, his armour doing nothing to shield him from what he was about to witness.
This had been a perfect mission, tactically speaking. He'd been sent to eliminate a rogue ninja who'd been selling village secrets to enemy forces. The target had been alone, isolated, vulnerable. Shisui had approached with his usual efficiency, striking from the shadows.
But intelligence had been wrong. They were always wrong about sothing.
His past self stood motionless as the flas grew higher, watching his perfectly executed plan turn into a nightmare. The target had been eliminated quickly, cleanly, without raising an alarm. The explosive tags Shisui had used to destroy the evidence were the final piece of work he had to do.
But then, as the hut was falling apart, Shisui's sharingan caught sight of sothing, no, soone, who was not supposed to have been there. The eyes of Shisui's younger self widened as he saw a body lying in the rubble of the burning hut.
The body was small, barely visible through the smoke. A child. An innocent hostage that intelligence had never ntioned, hidden in a back room that Shisui had never checked. The boy couldn't have been more than six years old, left tied up while his captor conducted business.
The child had died from smoke inhalation before the flas reached him. A small rcy, but one that did nothing to ease the weight of responsibility that settled on Shisui's shoulders.
His past self had filed a complete report, noting the presence of an unknown hostage and the circumstances of the child's death. The mission was classified as a success with acceptable collateral damage. The boy's death was listed as an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of necessary action.
Shisui stared at the vision without tears this ti. The grief had been burned out of him, replaced by sothing much more dangerous.
A hollow emptiness that felt like drowning in reverse.
'I told myself it was logical, that it was necessary.' he thought emotionlessly.
'I lied.'
He'd chosen to eliminate the target first because it was tactically sound. But if he'd taken the ti to scout properly, if he'd prioritized potential hostages over operational efficiency, the child would still be alive. Another life lost because Shisui had been too focused on the mission to see the bigger picture.
Then, the burning hut faded, replaced by a scene that made his blood freeze in his veins.
~ End of Chapter 64 ~
You can read advanced chapter on [email protected]/The_Editor982
If you're wondering how Shisui can see the mory of his aunt without actually being there, it gets explained in upcoming chapters. But basically. Rember that ROB at the beginning??????????? Every author's cop out. Realistically it's also for audience context, but at the sa ti, plot hole .-. and i acknowledge it. But i also need it .-. so let's just enjoy the scene and not think too much about it :D
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