Chapter 145: Itachi's Defection

Tadashi attacked when Itachi entered the courtyard.

Shuriken crossed from three heights while wire closed the retreat. Tadashi had practiced the sequence for Academy assessment, not against an ANBU captain. Itachi passed through the only opening, struck his wrist, and turned him away before the boy could see his grandmother move.

She raised the cane with both hands.

"What have you done?"

Itachi's blade entered before age or courage could make the attack effective. He caught her weight as she fell and lowered her instead of letting the body strike stone.

"I'm sorry."

Tadashi's one-tomoe Sharingan changed beneath grief and rage. A second tomoe formed. He attacked the Itachi before him until shuriken pierced chest and throat. The illusion collapsed. Itachi stood behind him.

The sword ended a life still organized around graduation, service, and an insignificant promise of revenge. Tadashi fell beside the grandmother who had survived wars long enough to die inside the village built to end them.

The masked man watched from the roof. "You preserve apologies as though the dead can use them." Itachi cleaned the blade and continued.

In another house, a mother hid two children beneath floorboards while their father fought in the hall. The masked man passed through the wall and found them from the movement of air. At the police station, officers formed a defensive circle only after discovering their radios carried false orders. Itachi broke the formation with genjutsu. The masked man killed those who turned toward threats that were not there.

The district did not fall without resistance. Fire crossed rooftops. Steel rang in courtyards. A wounded officer reached an alarm seal and found Root's suppression barrier already placed beyond it. Every attempt to warn the village died inside a boundary Konoha shinobi had helped create.

Outside the district, Root maintained the cordon. Danzō did not enter. He waited for eyes that could be recovered after the killing and for a political problem to become a collection of bodies. Sasuke crossed streets filled with people he knew.

Some wore uniforms. Others had fallen while opening doors or reaching for children. Tools remained embedded in walls where defenders had understood the attack too late. The absence of fighting elsewhere in Konoha made every sound of Sasuke's footsteps obscene. He reached home.

His parents lay inside. Itachi stood beyond them with the Sharingan active.

Sasuke begged because no other response remained. Itachi answered with Tsukuyomi, forcing him to witness the massacre through his brother's eyes. Time expanded around each death. Love, terror, and explanation collapsed into one command: hate me, survive, become strong enough to kill me.

Itachi told Sasuke that hatred could awaken power and that their next meeting should happen only when Sasuke possessed eyes like his. He turned survival into a test and grief into a route he controlled. Whatever private intention lay beneath the cruelty, the effect upon the child was deliberate.

When the illusion released him, Sasuke ran until his chakra and body failed.

Itachi left Konoha beside the masked man before dawn. He carried the crime publicly alone and the truth in a form almost no one could safely hear. No pursuit team intercepted them at the border.

Root entered the district after both were gone. Operatives collected Sharingan from the dead before medical teams received access. Danzō treated the bodies as resources promised by a crisis he had helped arrange. Official investigators would later encounter gaps they were not permitted to name.

ANBU found Sasuke collapsed beyond his home and transported him to the hospital. Iruka learned only that the boy was alive. He stayed until a medic confirmed Naruto's class had no other students inside the district, then went to the Academy to prepare what could be said without spreading unverified detail.

Sasuke woke in the hospital. A nurse checked his pupils before allowing him to sit. Chakra depletion, shock, and the genjutsu had left his body weak. She answered his first confused questions gently and the next one without inventing comfort.

"Itachi Uchiha killed the clan and defected. Search teams are active. Other survivors have not been confirmed."

Sasuke drew his knees against his chest. Memory returned in fragments that all ended with Itachi's face. His parents. The streets. The sword. The repeated vision inside Tsukuyomi. He asked why until language stopped carrying the question.

The nurse remained nearby without touching him. She had no answer and did not tell him to calm down.

A medic assessed whether Tsukuyomi had left continuing sensory distortions. Sasuke reacted to Itachi's name, sudden metal sounds, and the opening of the door, but he remained oriented to the hospital. The staff dimmed the room, limited visitors, and documented every recurrence instead of asking him to recount the massacre for multiple departments.

Hiruzen visited while Sasuke slept. The Hokage stood outside the room, read the preliminary report, and ordered living arrangements, financial protection, Academy leave, and a guardian review. None of those measures addressed the truth he would not tell. Administration could prevent secondary harm. It could not restore the clan or make secrecy compassionate.

His school bag rested inside a cabinet. Someone had recovered it from the Academy and placed it with his clothing. Sasuke opened the bag because ordinary objects might prove the previous day had existed. The Itachi figure lay inside.

Tenyu and Maki had commissioned it through Tonbo's workshop after Sasuke paid them. Tonbo had shaped the likeness from reinforced Living Weave and embedded a locator because objects connected to children sometimes became the only signal available during danger.

Sasuke closed both hands around the figure. He wanted Itachi's face to break. The material did not deform. Chakra strengthened his grip until his arms shook. The figure remained whole.

He took a kunai from the bag. The nurse stepped closer but did not seize it while the blade remained pointed away from flesh. Sasuke drove the tip into the figure's chest. It slid aside, leaving only a pale mark.

Anger displaced helplessness for one clean moment. Sasuke threw the figure against the wall. It struck, bounced, and landed upright against the cabinet as though even this small image had chosen to outlast him.

A locator seal inside the figure activated under repeated force. It did not transmit words or images, only identity, direction, and a threshold indicating distress. Tonbo had included the feature after learning how easily barriers and schedules failed around major events. The signal waited within the construct for his next deliberate check.

"I can't destroy a copy," Sasuke whispered.

The nurse moved the kunai beyond reach and set medicine on the table. "You are injured. Strength measured today will tell you nothing about tomorrow." He looked at her, then at the figure.

Itachi had left him alive deliberately. That knowledge carried terror, shame, and a purpose designed by the person he hated. Sasuke could not yet separate his own choice from the command planted through Tsukuyomi.

"I will kill him," he said.

The Sharingan appeared with one tomoe in each eye. His hands stopped trembling long enough to accept the medicine. He drank because recovery had become the first step toward revenge.

Far beyond Konoha, Tonbo's locator registered repeated force against the figure and stored the direction. He did not yet know what had happened.