Act 1: The Calm before the Storm
Chapter 7: Uchiha Sasuke

xxx

Six years ago, 1984

It was the first day of school for Sasuke and the other six years old children enrolling into the academy.

"Now, stay here, will you do that?" Itachi asked, and received a nod from his little brother. Before taking one more step out of the classroom, Itachi turned to make sure the little Sasuke was not going to misbehave. "Be nice, Sasuke, I will pick you up at five," Itachi reminded as his footsteps slowly faded off into the distance, down the corridor of the academy.

Sasuke looked around, the classroom was huge for his size, and because they had arrived early, there were only one other person in the room other than him. A young girl was quietly browsing through a book with pictures of flowers, when she noticed his presence, she quickly ran up to him and introduced herself to him.

"I'm Ino," she said as she smiled radiantly.

Sasuke ignored her.

x

1985

His friends were laughing at him, it was Ino again, she was following him everywhere, and they were saying that he should hang out with the girls instead, since the girls like him so much.

Sasuke stopped hanging out with those kids, but neither did he go over to the girls, regardless, he could never find a moment when the girls were not looking in his direction. "What is wrong with them?!"

One night, while having their dinner, his older brother jokingly said that he was a 'chick-magnet', he could not get the joke, but apparently, everyone else did, as his family laughed along. His mother started mentioning that she could not wait to meet all the in-laws he was going to get one day when he grew up. Little Sasuke did not understand that as well, so he just quietly ate his dinner.

There was even a time when Sasuke started hating school just because of the girls who would talk behind his back, or drop pink envelops with heart-shaped stickers on it into his bags. He only read the first one, but found it too confusing, so he dumped the rest out.

One day, his mother told him that his brother would not be able to send him to school that day, he wondered why. Sasuke wished that everything would return to normal by the time he returned home.

At school, Ino gathered up her courage, and asked him whether he wanted to visit her house. He said no. Ino then suggested that it was a good season to see the flowers in her shop. He replied that he did not really like flowers, and ran out of the classroom while the class was still going on.

It was a bad day, Sasuke decided to return home early, he wondered if his mother would be at home, what if she was? What reason was he going to tell his mom for skipping school? It was then Sasuke remembered that it was his first time skipping school.

When he finally arrived back to the Uchiha compound, he found the main gates to be unlocked. He did not think much about it as he passed through the gates into the garden, it was disturbingly quiet. Upon reaching the main mansion, he kicked aside his sandals, and entered the building barefooted.

The moment he stepped into the house, his feet came into contact with warm red liquid. It was all over – the walls, the floors, the bodies, and his older brother. Uchiha Itachi stood over the bodies of their parents with a katana in one hand, his Sharingan eyes shone brightly in the dimmed room, he looked at his younger brother and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out as if deciding otherwise. Maybe he did say something, just that younger Uchiha just did not watch to hear it.

Itachi activated his Mangekyou Sharingan, and a new form of Sharingan took shape within his eyes' irises, and with them, he captured Sasuke in his mind. In a prison that lasted for days and weeks, Sasuke would die a hundred deaths, a death for each person he would kill today, a death for each stab he took in his heart for the sins he had or would commit. At the end of each death, Itachi would stand over the body of his little brother, peering down into his broken soul, and saying the same line over and over.

"The path I am on now is made by breaking the dreams and hopes of others, but I walked this path without regret, because this is what I truly desired, Sasuke. When it is time for you to choose, do not let others influence your objective. The end justifies the means."

By the time someone freed him from Itachi's prison, Sasuke had no idea how much time had passed. The ANBU in an animal mask asked him, "Are you okay?" But what was he to answer? He already felt numb to the pain in his heart, he looked beyond the ANBU kneeling in front of him and confirmed to himself the death of his parents. He turned around and looked out onto the street, and it was littered with body parts and more blood.

An older man hurriedly hustled passed him, following another ANBU into a room deeper within the compound, there rested Kakashi, whose physical wounds were not as bad as it looked. The Hokage sighed, wondering how these could this have happened.

"Are you all right, boy?" the ANBU asked again. With his brother's words still ringing in his mind, Sasuke collapsed and allowed himself to be carried away.

x

1990

Sasuke changed after that, for the short while after the incident, he was adopted into the Hokage family, but he could not stand the gossips that were going on behind his back, he requested to live alone back at the Uchiha compound. The Hokage respected his decision, and arranged people to clean it up before allowing him back in.

The first time he arrived back to the main mansion, he saw that all were as he remembered, the bodies and blood might be missing, but they remained in his memories. Sasuke moved from the main mansion into a smaller building within the same compound, originally built for the servants, he did not want to go back there ever again.

School resumed for him after a while and nothing changed, the people were now discussing about the massacre right in front of him, the boys still avoided him, the girls still went gaga over him, and Ino was still there.

"Get lost! You're irritating!" Sasuke would tell Ino countless times, but Ino would always recover with a smile.

x

The school bell rang, and the class settled down, anxious to learn about their examination results from yesterday Genin test. It did not take long for the students to realise that neither Iruka nor Mizuki would be coming anytime soon. Which was queer as Iruka was not someone who would be late, some of the students even went over to Mizuki's class next door, and learned that Mizuki did not come by to their class as well.

While the class president tried to return order to the chaotic class, the door slammed open, entering someone none of the students had seen before.

"Geez, why do I have to do the dirty jobs?" Taking the cigarette out of his mouth, and realised there was no ashtray around, Asuma put the cigarette butt into his pocket. "Ahem, I will be your stand-in teacher for today, you may call me Asuma-sensei. In addition, I will be heading one of the teams in this class. The first matter of today are the test results… Everyone passed."

The students were confused with what was going on: all of the sudden, a stand-in teacher walked in and announced that everyone passed. There were some cheering, some leaping in joy, and this Asuma did not appear to really care with the mess the students were making.

"Now, you will soon be assigned duties by the village. So today, we will be splitting all of you up into teams of three, and each team will have a Jounin instructor. You will follow his or her instructions as you complete the assigned duties."

"A new teacher? Where's Iruka-sensei? And three-man teams? That just means more people in my way…"

Sasuke gave a quick survey across the classroom, starting with the stand-in teacher of theirs, moving towards the back of the room, something was not right, but he could not put a finger on it. Despite not really paying attention to what's going on, he could not help noticing that the teacher skipped 'seven', and went on from Team 6 to Team 8. Then it came to Team 10, where he heard her name, Yamanaka Ino.

"Yamanaka Ino? Hello? Any Yamanaka Ino around here?" Seeing no response, the puzzled teacher waited for a while, before a girl raised her hand.

"Sensei! Ino didn't come to school today."

"Oh? Oh, okay, listen up, Akimichi Chouji and Nara Shikamaru, as her teammates, be sure to inform her of her team and her instructor, who will be me…"

There was no response from Shikarmaru, while Chouji looked up for a split second to see what their new instructor was like before focusing his eyes back into the bag of snacks again.

All voices and commotions started to fade away from his conscious, as Sasuke realised what was missing, the irritating voice of Ino.