I'M BACK! To be honest this ended up being a much more difficult chapter to write than I thought. Naruto finally receives the bombshell of a secret that will change his family.

Back in the village, far from where Sarada and Mitsuki lay hidden and waiting for someone to help, Itachi and Sasuke struggled in the Uchiha compound.

"There's nothing else here!" Sasuke kicked the door open to his old room. Itachi noticed how smoothly he glided in without even a flinch; he was getting better at facing his past than he was even the previous day.

"That could be a good thing."

"Why would that be a good thing?"

He stood in the doorway while his little brother dropped to his knees and began to observe any loose floorboards. The room was almost completely bare and he didn't have the heart to ask Sasuke who helped him move his bed and bookshelves when he moved after the massacre. Even still, a few things still stood, but the overall emptiness made looking for any disturbances easier.

"Well, think about it," Itachi offered. "If there's nothing here it may mean that we're all caught up and they may not have anything else for us to find."

Sasuke stood up and tapped the wall as though listening for something hollow. "Or it could mean they got smarter and hid better."

"That too." Itachi crossed his arms and backed out of the room so Sasuke could storm past him; he could tell his impatience was growing higher.

"You can check my room next."

"I intend to."

Sasuke crossed the house to Itachi's room but he couldn't bear to follow him at first, scared of what his own memories might drudge up. So he dragged his feet and listened as Sasuke once again slammed back drawers and knocked on the walls.

"Can't you do something with that rinnegan of yours to find things? Or doesn't Boruto have the byakugan? I mean his mom is a Hyuga."

"Boruto has something else going on with his eye… Oh wow, did you always have these?"

Itachi rushed in expecting something wrong, but Sasuke just held up a small photo album. "I found this in the back," he said gesturing to a small cabinet he was kneeling next to.

His eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh my gosh, I forgot about this…" He reached for the photo album and began to flip through. Inside were dozens of pictures of him and Sasuke throughout their childhood; Itachi proudly holding up a newborn Sasuke for the camera, a candid shot of Sasuke climbing on Itachi's back, a blurry picture of the two of them with their arms around each other. This was exactly the type of thing he was looking for when he first decided to come to their home to find anything that could break Sasuke out of what he thought was a hardened state, but he forgot this specific album even existed.

"You left all this behind?" Sasuke's surprisingly small voice brought him back to the present.

"Of course," he breathed, "I couldn't take any of this with me- it had to be a clean break. All I could do was come back to watch you from the shadows, but I couldn't let myself keep anything like this. It would have been too much." Emotionally, he finished in his head.

"Someone came through and pretty much cleared out the house to erase everything, but they must have missed some stuff. Geez, how many photo albums did you have? I didn't realize you were this sentimental." Sasuke picked up another handmade album pushed further back in the cabinet.

"I only had this one I think," Itachi started but stopped talking when he noticed Sasuke's brow furrow.

"These aren't us…"

"What do you mean?"

He held up the album for Itachi to see. "These are Akatsuki members."

Itachi ripped the booklet out of his hand and rapidly flipped through. Sasuke was right: there were bingo book pictures of him and each member of the Akatsuki, along with a picture of Shisui, Danzo, dead members of the Anbu, and even his parents.

"What the fuck?"

"I don't suppose you put this here," Sasuke responded sourly and got to his feet.

"You know that." Itachi continued to flip through, mind whirling as he stared at his own picture that had been taken well over two decades ago. A picture of himself. The real him. "D-do you think this has anything to do with the reanimation jutsu?" he asked suddenly.

Sasuke paused from rummaging fervently in a cabinet above him. "What are you saying?"

"Do you think this was planned? Do you think that maybe I was supposed to come back all along?" He scrambled to his feet and shoved the pictures back into Sasuke's face. "Think about it: the night I came back as Boruto, you said you were after documents linked to the Akatsuki, but you found nothing because maybe they were moved. Then I find the rumored documents on the Akatsuki and in the same exact location as research on the reanimation jutsu? We figured all along those could be linked, but what if someone was doing something related to this that night and that's why I came back? This could have been planned. Dattebasa, I could have been planned!"

Sasuke swallowed and stared at his parents on the last page. "But who...who would want this?" His voice wavered just slightly. "Does this mean they might be out here right now…? How did someone even get their DNA?"

"There was more added to the reanimation, remember?" Itachi cried. "We have to figure out what that is!"

His little brother shook his head in disbelief, eyes not pulling away from the pictures. "We may have to tell Naruto…"

"Agreed."

"No, we may have to tell Naruto." Finally his eyes rose to meet Itachi's, and he could see what his brother was suggesting. "You even said it yourself yesterday, you don't think you can hide forever. And how much longer can this go on? They could be out there right now, any one of these people. And we still don't know what the hell someone is doing it for!"

Itachi grit his teeth. "I am going to go talk to Kakashi and see what he thinks. We may need to buy just a little more time if possible. Continue looking and after I talk to Kakashi you can bring this to Naruto and anything else you find. Okay?"

"Okay." Sasuke nodded once, his jaw locked in the same manner as Itachi's.

"I'll send for you." He turned and hurried from the Uchiha house, feet following the same steps they used to take so many years before as his mind echoed with questions.

Itachi rounded the first corner out of the Uchiha side of town, not bothering to pay much attention to his surroundings, when he almost smacked headfirst into another person.

"I'm so sorry-" he started to say when the person in front of him just laughed. He knew that laugh. He cherished that laugh...

"Sarada?"

"Boruto! What are you doing out all the way out here?" His niece was in front of him, smiling wide. "What's with the face?" she teased. "It's like you've seen a ghost."

"I just wasn't expecting… Wait, what are you doing out here?"

"Just taking a walk!"

Sarada continued to smile widely at him, her eyes giving no indication of their interactions of the last few days. Was she always so forgiving?

"I haven't seen you in a few days," he said slowly. "Is everything all right?"

"Of course! Why wouldn't they be?"

Itachi had to keep himself from narrowing his eyes at her- something wasn't quite right. "Because the last time we talked you were mad at me..." he reminded her.

"Oh? I was?" She waved a hand in the air dismissively. "Oh, well that's over and done with. Consider all forgiven!"

For a moment Itachi forgot all about his mission to find Kakashi and focused on the bright smile plastered to her face; Sarada had never smiled at him like that before. "We should still talk… Do you have time right now?"

"Well, actually, I'd like to be alone right now. Is there any way we can meet up later? Maybe at my house in, hm, how about an hour?" she asked sweetly.

"Sure." He knew he needed to get to Kakashi and have him go with him since he knew Sasuke had asked him to train Sarada. "An hour is perfect."

"Great, see you then!" Sarada turned on her heel and began to walk quickly away.

Under normal circumstances Itachi would have trailed her, but he needed to get to Kakashi. By making her meet up with him later, he figured that he could trap her then to figure out what the hell was going on. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was off.

He hurried through the village toward Kakashi's apartment and was just passing the Hokage's office when another voice called out to him.

"Boruto!" He huffed in frustration then spun around to see Naruto waving his arm at him. "Where are you hurrying off to? I thought you were with Sasuke."

Sasuke? "Oh, uh, yeah. But I thought I'd go home for a little bit," he lied.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yep!"

"Well, do you have a second then?" Naruto gestured to the building behind him. "I actually wanted to talk to you about something if you're not busy."

Itachi wanted to say that he was busy, that he had somewhere to be, but he didn't want Naruto to pry any deeper. "Sure," he said, and followed Naruto to his office.

"So you've been with Sasuke, huh?" Naruto was clearly trying to relate to his son by the almost nervous lace running through his voice. "How's your training going?"

"Good...good. Definitely good."

"Nothing else to report on that front?" Naruto pushed as he closed the office doors behind them.

"Nope. Nothing at all."

"Well, that's good news." He took a deep breath. "So, I wanted to talk to you about why I didn't make you a chunin. I feel like I owed you an explanation since I'm sure you know by now that Sarada and Mitsuki are." They are? He had so much going on in the last two days that he didn't even consider their promotions.

"Oh. That's great for them!" he cried.

Naruto probed his son's eyes for any underlying emotions. "I just thought that maybe this time around wasn't the best for you. You're still not one hundred percent and I don't want you to push yourself in a way that will end up hurting you more in the long run. I don't want you to have to lead a team if your memory isn't completely back up, does that make sense?"

"Absolutely."

"And you're okay with that?" he pushed again.

"Yeah."

"Great!" He breathed a sigh of relief and sat down behind his desk. "I didn't want any tension between you and your teammates because of this."

Itachi thought back to Sarada's big smile from minutes before. "No," he admitted, "everything is fine. I just saw Sarada actually and she acted like everything was okay-"

Naruto's eyes suddenly narrowed at him. "Wait, you just saw Sarada? Where?"

"The corner of the village… Why…"

"Did she say what she was doing?" he demanded.

"She said she was taking a walk…" he clarified. "Why? What's going on?"

Naruto shook his head but Itachi leaned closer to the desk. Now he knew something wasn't right. "No, tell me. Is something wrong?"

"I sent her and Mitsuki off on a mission to Orochimaru's this morning," he sighed. "I know they left. They shouldn't be back yet and I don't know why she wouldn't stop here."

Orochimaru. "For what? Why?"

Again, Naruto just shook his head. "Just some research."

Itachi's mind was flying a mile a minute again as he started to piece together his interaction with Sarada. Was she going for the reanimation jutsu? Did something happen? "I think there's something wrong with Sarada. I don't think who I saw was her…"

"What are you talking about?"

It was actually making so much sense, too much sense. "I don't think that was her…" he started. "She would have remembered us fighting. She acted like she had no recollection of the past." Did he dare say? "I think… I think that might be a white zetsu."

Naruto immediately stood. "What?!" he cried, beating his hands on his desk.

"We need to get Sasuke just in case it-"

"No, we don't have time to waste." Naruto swung around his desk to head for the door. "I will know if it's a zetsu. Let's go."

Itachi chased after him. "We're supposed to meet at her house in about an hour-"

"Great. That will give us enough time to get ready." A poof! sounded as he created a shadow clone to stay at the office and rushed out the door, Itachi on his heels.

He continued to bark out orders to Itachi as they ran down the steps and out into the blinding sunlight again. "Actually, you go get Sasuke. I want you to stay with him. If you two make it back in time, great, but if you don't don't worry. I have this handled." Itachi watched Naruto's eyes darken as he blazed ahead toward the park.

He blinked and paused in his tracks. What just happened? He was supposed to be looking for Kakashi, but now he was on another mission back to Sasuke. In only a few minutes his trajectory once again changed, the danger closer than it had been. Could this Sarada be a zetsu? That would make some sense if they had already seen some in the village- afterall, two zetsus tried to attack them in the exams. But if a zetsu was Sarada, then did that mean the real Sarada was…?

He pushed ahead into a full sprint back to Sasuke. "SASUKE!" he screamed as he burst inside the house, desperate to find his brother as quickly as he could.

"What?" Sasuke came rushing out of the kitchen. "What is it, what's wrong?!"

"It's Sarada!" His own heart began to ache and he felt like he was going to pass out. Once again he wondered if it was Boruto or himself.

"Sarada?!" Sasuke cried, his eyes widening. "What are you talking about?"

"I saw Sarada but she wasn't herself and then I ran into Naruto and mentioned I saw her but he said he sent her on a mission to Orochimaru's this morning so there was no way she could be in the village-"

Sasuke didn't bother to listen to the rest of his sentence and pushed past him to bust back outside. Once again Itachi had to scurry to keep up. "I think she might be a-"

"White zetsu, yeah."

Of course Sasuke already reached that conclusion. "I think Naruto was sending her for research on the reanimation jutsu-"

"-And she might have run into some trouble on the way."

"Exactly! We have to get to your house."

Sasuke didn't ask any more questions as they both hurried across the perimeter of the village in the hopes of remaining unseen. From the street Itachi could see lights on in the apartment, and he felt a pit in his stomach open up, threatening to swallow him whole. He prayed that it would be a misunderstanding and he would be wrong, that everything was fine, that he was just paranoid and Sarada was okay. The brothers leapt over the stairs and railings to save time and Sasuke took the lead in pushing ahead and knocking down the door to the apartment.

"Oh god."

Itachi ran in behind him and knocked into his back as he stopped in the doorway.

"Fuck."

"Sasuke-"

"What the fuck is going on?"

In the middle of the living room Naruto, eyes blazing in sage mode, stood over the curled remains of a zetsu. Itachi's stomach contracted and he had to swallow down the vomit and grab onto the door frame to keep from falling over. So that Sarada was a-

"It was a white zetsu."

"Where the hell is my child?!" Sasuke barked.

"I sent her on a mission to Orochimaru's-"

"So did someone get a hold of her? Did she not make it?! What the hell happened?"

A rush of nausea ran over Itachi. No. No no no. Not Sarada. Not his niece. Not when he was just getting his family back-

"I think I know what happened."

Sasuke and Naruto turned back to Itachi, surprised. "What are you talking about?" Sasuke asked, more as a warning.

"We need to tell him," he cried out to Sasuke. Why did he think he could ever do this on his own. Is this what he got for not telling Naruto sooner? Inside he could feel pieces of Boruto fight against himself- Boruto lost a comrade while he lost his niece.

"Tell me what?" Naruto asked, genuinely confused.

Sasuke and Itachi locked eyes knowing they were teetering on the edge of a cliff; they couldn't go back now.

"It's the Akatsuki and I'm positive they are related to the white zetsu," Itachi admitted. Over the cliff he went.

"The Akatsuki?" Naruto asked darkly. "What do you know about the Akatsuki, Boruto?"

Itachi gulped under Naruto's stare and could feel Boruto's stomach tighten in fear of his dad, but the real part of him steadied his breath to continue rationally. He straightened against the door and tried to stand as tall as he could against his little brother and the Hokage.

"Mitsuki and Sarada are in the Akatsuki, but they think they are in the Anbu."

Naruto blinked between Sasuke and Itachi before saying, "But they are in the Anbu. They work for me now."

"Since when?!" Sasuke cried.

"Since yesterday. This was the first mission I gave them because Mitsuki is Orochimaru's son. So what the hell do you mean they are in the Akatsuki but they think they work for the Anbu?"

"I found documents on the Akatsuki. They had my face, Sarada's face, and Mitsuki's face on it. They told us it worked like the Anbu, Root actually, but I found the documents so I knew it was something more. They told us they would watch us during the exams to see if we were 'material', but then we were attacked by the white zetsu in the second exams and didn't hear from them again during the third exam- that's when I knew for sure white zetsu and the Akatsuki were somehow related. Mitsuki and Sarada had no idea though. They thought they were working for the village."

Naruto just stared reproachfully at him, trying to connect all the dots of this new information with what he knew. "How do you evenknow what the Akatsuki is?" he asked after a moment, but before Itachi could answer he suddenly turned to Sasuke as though just remembering he was there. "And you. Did you know about this? And you didn't tell me? I'm the Hokage!"

"I know."

"No I don't think you do know if you hid something like this from me!" Naruto was fuming, his sage mode not receding. "Why the hell didn't you tell me you knew more about the Akatsuki, Sasuke?! And you know what zetsus are connected to! We were both looking for information on this yet you deliberately went behind my back- both of you! Why?!" He turned back to Itachi. "This is dangerous, Boruto! You clearly knew something was wrong because you knew to go to Sasuke. But why didn't you come to me?!"

Itachi looked up at Sasuke again for help. Why? Why hadn't they gone to Naruto? Sasuke nodded once as permission, feeling the pressure as well. Was there even a way to continue to hide? They were at the edge of the cliff again, and the only way to get Sarada back was to give him all the information he had...all of it. Naruto was the Hokage after all and they needed him more than ever if they were to keep their family intact.

Itachi's eyesight sharpened as he came to this realization, and he stared pleadingly up at Naruto whose own face twisted into confusion and horror as he took in the sharingan set into the face of his son.

"I didn't come to you," he said slowly, "because I'm not Boruto."