This might have been the easiest chapter to write so far, which I was definitely not expecting. I am so excited about all the ideas I have for this story, and I really appreciate all the support I have gotten so far! Your comments are definitely helping me thrive throughout this whole quarantine business. This honestly might be my favorite story I have ever written, and I don't know if it's because of all the extra time I have in between teaching my high school classes online now. In this chapter Itachi unexpectedly meets an old teammate and he miiiight accidentally... Well. You'll see.
Though his sharingan was knocked down a few pegs compared to the one he used to have, Itachi was thankful for its convenience. He thought he would have to use it against Mitsuki when asking where Orochimaru was residing these days, but Mitsuki opened up so matter-of-factly about his whereabouts without ever questioning why Boruto would want to know such a thing. Itachi definitely missed having that total trust within comrades.
Luckily Orochimaru was now close in the Land of Fire, and it would be an easy overnight trip. Itachi could get to him, ask a few questions, and be back home without the Uzumakis ever knowing he was missing.
He still couldn't even believe he had the sharingan though. Boruto Uzumaki definitely wasn't an Uchiha, yet he couldn't deny the red eyes and one tomoe staring back at him in the dim light of the dango shop bathroom. He had bought a dango to calm his nerves and spent the rest of the morning walking around the village, reeling from its existence. And, he guessed, his own existence. It was as though his soul had completely leached into Boruto's body now and the body was acting on his soul's DNA and not his own. But did souls have DNA? That seemed so...science fiction, he thought, like something in a book he would have read during his limited downtime. His own stresses and memory and pain imprinted on his new body and pop! The sharingan appeared. That was the only conclusion he could deduce anyway.
He was still juggling all this information when he finally arrived outside Orochimaru's hideout in the middle of the forest. However, Itachi quickly realized, there was one problem. How do I get in? He walked around the edges of what appeared to be just a regular, nature-created rock structure sticking out of the ground and felt around to find something, anything that could be considered a door or a lever to lead to one. It was midnight and the thick leaves hid most of the silver sliver of moon, so he was left to scramble around blindly on his hands and knees. Fuck, why didn't Mitsuki tell me it'd be impossible to find the goddamn door? He felt ridiculous and exposed as leaves and vines shuffled loudly underneath him.
As he stood up to try the other side of the structure, he felt something wrap around his wrist and pull him backwards to the ground. For a few seconds he struggled on his back to release himself from what looked like a spindly wooden branch cuffing his wrist. Suddenly a face loomed large in front of him and a disembodied hand pulled him up from the dirt.
"Boruto Uzumaki?" the voice boomed.
Itachi fought to make out the figure hidden in the shadows but his sight stopped short at noticing that the branch that held him was coming out of the figure's hand. A wood style user…
The person's upper body zoomed into view, and though the face now had aged with thin lines climbing the sides of his eyes like vines, he would have recognized his former Anbu teammate anywhere.
"Tenzo?!" Itachi choked out without thinking.
But instead of recognizing the person he held, Yamato gripped Itachi's wrist tighter and his eyes narrowed on the small, blonde child who called him by a name he hadn't used in over two decades. "Who the fuck are you," he hissed.
"Wait, wait, stop, ow, let me explain-" Itachi cried.
"Tell me or I'll kill you!" Yamato squeezed tighter. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the night. What do you want. How do you know who I am." His questions sounded more like demands.
Itachi flailed on the ground as he could feel his wrist begin to splinter under the wood's pressure and tried to choke out a response. "It's me, it's me!" was all he could sputter.
"Who is me-" But as Yamato moved closer to his victim, he suddenly backtracked and tripped over himself. "Y-your eyes…!" he exclaimed.
"It's me!" Itachi cried out. "Itachi Uchiha!"
"Okay, explain to me one more time…" Yamato repeated for the fiftieth time.
Itachi sat now in front of Yamato and Orochimaru, his head hanging like he was a school boy in trouble, while both of his old teammates stood in front of him with their arms crossed and eyes narrowed. He had spent the last hour relegating answers to Yamato's incessant questions that only Itachi and Kakashi would know the answer to, and even repeated stories about his time working with Orochimaru in the Akatsuki, as a way to prove he was Itachi.
"Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me…" Suigetsu laughed loudly in the background. He stopped to look at Itachi for a second before promptly bursting into laughter again upon seeing his face. "This is good, this is really really good."
"Suigetsu, please," Orochimaru hissed.
"I don't know why I'm here," Itachi repeated blandly. "All I know is that it happened. I can't tell you any more than that." He could feel his eyes well up with tears at the overwhelming absurdity of it all. "I woke up, on the ground, on that mission, and it's twenty years later and I'm Naruto Uzumaki's kid-" He couldn't stop the words that had been running through his head for the last three days from spilling out now that someone knew the truth. "- and Sasuke has a daughter and she's on my team and-"
Yamato cut off his ravings. "You're a scientist," he said, turning to Orochumaru, "you must have some idea."
Orochimaru shook his head. "I deal with the physical," he mused. "I don't deal with paranormal nonsense. I can reincarnate using jutsu but I don't know how to just place a soul into another's body so easily-"
"Yeah, if you could you wouldn't have needed all those people," Suigetsu laughed. Orochimaru shot him a look and Suigetsu's face fell. "...Sorry."
Orochimaru turned back to Itachi and shrugged his shoulders. "We can discuss the mechanics later," he said. "There doesn't seem to be a real rhyme or reason; just as you said, here you are, and there's no use wasting so much time on wondering why, not when you're clearly here for something else." He sat back and stared squarely into Itachi's eyes. "So why exactly are you here? The last time I saw you…"
"I took you out of my brother's body, yeah" Itachi deadpanned.
"What a reunion," Suigetsu whispered sarcastically in the background. They ignored him.
"Trust me, you're the last person I'd go to seek out," Itachi admitted. He dug into his pockets for the documents he found at the Uchiha household and held them out to Orochimaru. "But I needed to see if you knew anything about these."
Orochimaru took the papers and flipped through them. His eyebrows raised when his eyes ran over the picture of Mitsuki. He tsk-ed his tongue approvingly. "Mmm, looks like he's found himself something new to do."
"Do you know what that is?" Itachi asked excitedly.
Orochimaru shook his head. "Hm, this may be more of your territory," he said, handing over the organizational map of the village to Yamato.
He, too, looked surprised as he took it in. "Root? The Akatsuki? No, I haven't heard anything about this." He glanced up at Orochimaru. "Do you think this is official Leaf business? Or something underground?" He then looked back to Itachi. "Where did you find these?"
"My old home," he admitted. "I was just walking through...reminiscing...or something…" He realized now he hadn't seen Yamato since he slaughtered his clan and left the village; he wondered if he ever discovered the truth about that night.
"Looks like somebody wanted to hide them but didn't do so great of a job," Orochimaru said definitively. "I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to restart the foundation or the Akatsuki, especially right in the middle of the Leaf Village under Naruto Uzumaki's eye." He took the papers back from Yamato and glanced over it again before saying, "...But that is what this looks like."
"Have you told anyone?" Yamato asked.
Itachi shook his head vigorously. "God, no. How could I explain that? 'Yeah, sorry, everyone, I lost my memory and then decided to go for a walk in the Uchiha village and ended up in Sasuke's old house. And, hey, if that's not weird enough for you, look what I found!'"
"Fair," Yamato replied.
"So nobody knows you're you?" Suigetsu asked. "Not even Sasuke?"
"Especially not Sasuke!" Itachi cried.
Suigetsu smirked and started laughing again. "Oh, god, can you just imagine his face? He'd be fucking out of his mind! I was with him when he found you then killed you and-" He caught sight of Orochimaru's face again and went quiet. "Sorry," he muttered. "I just don't think this is going to go very well."
"Exactly," Itachi said. "I just...I can't. I just can't right now."
"And what's this about Danzo?" Yamato piped in. He pointed to Danzo's name on the map.
"That was another question I had. Is he still alive? If you're alive, Orochimaru, I just thought maybe he is too."
Orochimaru and Yamato exchanged glances. "You didn't hear did you…" Orochimaru said. "Sasuke killed him. He found out that he and the village elders put you up to killing the clan and he killed Danzo to avenge your death."
Now Itachi was the one to go quiet. His brother killed for him. Danzo was done terrorizing the Uchihas under the guise of bettering the village. "I...Okay, but that doesn't explain why his name is on here," he continued.
Orochimaru nodded. "True...I mean he could be alive. Anything is possible at this rate, I'd venture to say. I did give him a curse mark at one point… He could be living through that somewhere, but I don't know how he could have transferred himself." He stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "He did have access to a lot of my research though."
"So it's possible," Yamato pushed.
"Again, I'd say anything is possible, but nothing is conclusive."
"And these kids? Sasuke Uchiha's child and your...kid?"
"So someone is targeting my dear Mitsuki if that is the case," Orochimaru continued matter-of-factly. "Someone is doing something and Mitsuki and your niece may be a part of it."
"You know Mitsuki better than I do. Do you think he'd join something so dangerous? They couldn't possibly know, do you think?"
Orochimaru shrugged. "He is his own person, he has his own free will- I don't own him anymore. He can choose what he wants to do." Itachi thought back to how Sarada asked if he was going to join and knew he had a choice to make too.
Orochimaru spoke as though he could read Itachi's mind. "You have free will too, this time. Take this as a second chance of sorts. If this is what it looks like, you could be the one to bring down the foundation and the Akatsuki. It'd certainly make up for a lot, wouldn't it?" He grinned, his sharp teeth gleaming like blades.
"You're exactly right, Orochimaru- it could be what it looks like," Yamato warned. "I think we need to tell Lord Seventh."
"No," Itachi barked. He quieted a moment as the thoughts separated in his mind. "...No. There would be too much to explain. I have Anbu experience; I have Akatsuki experience. No one else. I'm the perfect person for the job." And this is my chance for redemption, he wanted to scream.
"What a strange thing to be hearing out of the clone of Naruto Uzumaki," Yamato sighed. "All right, fine, it makes sense. But if you're going to be doing this without tipping off the Hokage, you will need a little bit of help, so I have two propositions."
"What are they?"
"Number one," Yamato said. "I help you. I understand the inner workings of the Anbu even more than you do; if someone is recreating something I will know it, and if Danzo is still around, I will also know it."
"And your second proposition?"
Yamato leaned back and sighed loudly as though he already knew how Itachi would feel about his next statement. "We tell Kakashi."