A/N: This chapter marks the end of part one. Next week will be an interlude. It didn't feel right as the end of one part or the beginning of another. I might end up missing a regular update soon as the end of the semester nears, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

"Hey, hey, Itachi-kun," a flippant voice called out, "What's with the super-secret meetings?"

Itachi sighed. No matter how dire the situation, Shisui would always find a way to act an ass. Despite that, the dour teen greatly appreciated his older cousin's upbeat attitude. With the clan planning a coup, Itachi had found a like mind in his friend.

"Has Tou-san set a date?" Itachi got right to the point. Fugaku had been growing suspicious of him, so Itachi had been gleaning information from his cousin.

Shisui's easy smile fell from his face, and he nodded grimly, "He wants to strike in the next few days. I tried to point out that even if we succeed, Konoha will likely be attacked by another village."

Itachi ran a hand through his dark hair, "Thank you, Shisui-san, but I believe it is too late."

"What are you going to do?" his cousin asked with a bit of trepidation.

"What I must," he replied simply, "I will cripple the clan. Destroy it if I have to."

Shisui stared at the younger teen with a grim look, "Can you really do it?"

Itachi nodded and turned to leave.

"Do you need my help?" he heard his cousin ask.

He was about to respond in the negative when he felt an odd sensation run through his body. The image of a flame decorated mask floated before him.

'Your cousin will need to die first,'a voice buried in his memories said, 'That will give you the power you need.'

He shook his head as if to dislodge the dark thought. He raised his hands to his temples. A pressure seemed to be building in his skull.

"You okay?"

The pressure disappeared suddenly, and he could think clearly again. He knew what had to be done.

"You actually can help me, Shisui," a part of him shivered at the coldness in his voice.

"How's that?" Shisui seemed to be on guard. That was good. This wouldn't be any fun if he just died.

XxXxXxX

Itachi came to with his hands tangled in his cousin's hair. It took him a moment to gain his bearings, but when he did, he fell back in disgusted surprise. Shisui was face down in the stream they had been meeting near. He wasn't moving either. The memory of the short fight came to him in pieces.

Shisui barely dodged the slicing kunai, coming away with a torn shirt.

"What the hell, Itachi!?"

Itachi remained silent. Words were pointless now...

Itachi shook the images from his head and lunged forward. He turned Shisui over, but one look at the blue lips and bulging panicked eyes and he knew his cousin was gone.

Shisui shunshined behind him. He was the fastest in the clan, maybe even the village, but he was still trying to reason with his crazed cousin.

"What are you doing, Itachi?" he pleaded as he struck out with a subduing blow to the neck.

Itachi ducked under the indecisive strike and grabbed his cousin's wrist as it sailed over his head.

He felt a warm wetness rolling down his cheeks. Crying. He was crying.

Itachi lifted a leaden hand and wiped the tears from his face. When he brought the appendage away, he saw that it was bloodied. He was crying blood?

Shisui struggled to raise his head above the water. It was a terrible way to go, drowning. His thrashing was pointless, though. Soon he began to jerk violently as water was reflexively sucked into his lungs. He stopped moving after that.

For reasons he couldn't fathom, Itachi took his cousin's body back to the stream. He allowed it to sink to the bottom, then left.

XxXxXxX

Fugaku sat in his office. He was extremely worried. Twenty-four hours ago, clansmen had found his nephew Shisui dead in a stream. The autopsy had revealed he had drowned, but the teen was a strong swimmer. A lack of weight to pull him down ruled out suicide. That left murder.

That didn't worry Fugaku so much. What worried him was his dissident of a son had been a ghost for over a day. The Uchiha leader knew for a fact that his eldest didn't have any missions, and was extremely suspect that he was gone right now.

As the day wore into evening his clansmen continued to report no signs of his son. Worry was slowly turning into a gnawing fear. Fugaku was by no means an unskilled shinobi, and one did not get as old as him without a healthy dose of paranoia. His eldest son had spoken out often against the plan, and now Fugaku wondered if he would come for him, end his reign.

Something, perhaps a danger sense honed over years of being a shinobi, made him stand from his desk. He pulled a kunai and activated his sharingan, the tomoe spinning fast in his agitated state. That's when he saw it, the genjutsu around him.

"Kai," he intoned, shattering the illusion.

It took him a moment to find what it had changed, but he soon realized that it was later than he had first thought. His study had no windows, but the clock and his own internal time-keeping kept him on schedule. He had somehow lost three hours of time. That was an eternity to a shinobi.

He tore out of his study and down the hall of his home. The sight that met him chilled him to the bone. His son stood there, the still dripping head of his grandfather in one hand, the sword of a Konoha ANBU in the other. The thing that scared him the most, were his sons eyes.

Itachi's eyes didn't have the tomoe of a basic sharingan, but three curved blades radiating from the center.

"You did kill Shisui," Fugaku said, astounded.

"Yes, Tou-san," he said tonelessly, "It is your turn now."

Fugaku backed up as his son stalked forward, "You think this will stand? The rest of the clan will..."

"The rest of the clan is dead," Itachi interrupted flatly, "All that remains is you, Kaa-san, and Sasuke-kun."

"B-b-but, why?" Fugaku's natural calm was beginning to crack.

"You were given a task," his eldest son explained in that same calm, cold voice, "You failed."

With those words, Itachi rushed forward with such blinding speed that even his father's sharingan couldn't keep up. He was suddenly face to face with his son. A pain was blooming in his gut, and he knew that Itachi's sword was now buried there. The pain doubled as his killer twisted the blade, then removed it.

"You should have listened to me, Tou-san," Itachi's seemed almost regretful, "The Hokage could have protected us."

Fugaku shook his head, "He is too powerful. I told them to kill the boy to remove his greatest weapon, but they wouldn't listen."

The elder Uchiha slid off the blade and fell to the floor, his lifeblood pooling about him. A scream drew Itachi's attention. Farther down the hall, his sleeping mother had awakened. His father must have destroyed the genjutsu he had placed over the house, then.

"Hello, kaa-san," he greeted, "I'm sorry you saw this. I had intended to end you in your sleep."

He stalked forward. She pressed up against the wall as he neared. Despite years of active service to the leaf, she felt terrified by her son. She was unable to move as he slipped his already bloody sword into her heart. He watched as the light left her eyes.

The sound of a sliding door called his attention behind him.

"Aniki?" a bleary Sasuke asked, "Whasat smell?"

For the first time that night, Itachi's heart clenched at what he was doing. His mind flat out rebelled at the idea of his brother dead.

"Why's Tou-san layin' in the floor?" the still clueless boy inquired, "And why is kaa-san so still?"

"Because they are dead, otouto," Itachi told him, releasing his hold on their mother's body to let it fall to the floor, "Because I killed them."

"W...what?" the word sounded strangled, "Aniki. Stop playing around. Get up Kaa-san... get up."

Itachi turned and looked at his brother. He seemed oddly calm. Perhaps he thought this was all a terrible dream.

"They can't get up, Sasuke-kun," Itachi said, "They are dead."

Itachi's hand tightened on the hilt of his blade. He could feel himself moving forward. He felt disconnected from what was going on. He suddenly stopped and shook his head.

'He has to die,' a voice sounded in his head.

'I can't... not Sasuke,' he countered.

A war was waged in Itachi's mind. A wave of disgust for what he had done that night rose in him. Yes he had planned something like this, but he had hoped to kill only key members of the clan. All the adults in a worst case scenario. His hands were covered in the blood of innocent children. Now only his brother stood. The only Uchiha left.

The boy was shivering under the crazed look of his elder brother. Itachi, beginning to understand the terrible urges in his mind took action.

"Look at you," he said with cold cruelty, "Your family dead, and all you can do is shake with fear. A weakling like the rest of them."

"The... the rest of them?"

"That's right," Itachi confirmed, "The whole clan is gone. We are all that remains."

The cruelty of his words were like knives in his own heart, but the corruption in his mind had to be sated. It was that or simply kill his brother. To save his last kin he would do something far worse than kill him.

"Would you like to see, otouto?" he asked, his sharingan spinning faster.

He activated the new power in his eyes for the first time. The pain was terrible, but he had been through worse. His instincts guided him in shaping a horrifying genjutsu; a view from his eyes of all the murder that he had committed that night, looping over and over.

Sasuke fell over, spittle foaming from his mouth as he twitched pitifully on the floor.

Itachi stepped over his brother, not daring to look for fear of what he might do. He stepped out into the night and fled.

XxXxXxX

It was happening again. Another place, another time, another massacre.

Hiroto peered around. He had joined the other high ranking shinobi in looking for survivors. The lower ranked ninja were acting as a cordon for the bloody Uchiha district.

He had to constantly remind himself that he had no hand in this bloody mess. It was difficult, though. Everywhere he looked he saw the mutilated corpses of Sakibou clansmen. Unlike that distant horrible night, there were no sounds of suffering, no cries from the dying. Because unlike that night, the perpetrator had been brutally efficient. Heads removed, throats cut, hearts pierced. There was no gleeful torture, just quick death.

Hiroto paused as he experienced another flashback. He saw again the man whose eyes had been carefully pulled from their sockets to dangle from their optic nerves. The fresh jonin swallowed the vomit that had risen to his mouth. He would not lose his composure here. He checked the body that had triggered his memory and found his throat torn out. He sighed as he arranged the body lying down with arms crossed to show it had been checked.

He heard the cry that had been so horribly absent all night, "MEDIC!"

Someone had finally found a survivor.

Before he could turn to go investigate, he caught something in his peripheral vision. Turning to it, he saw a man wearing a black cloak and a strange white mask bearing a single eye hole. The rest was decorated with flames. Hiroto swore he saw a flash of red from that hole, and in that moment the man was gone. It was as if he had never been there at all.

He wondered for a moment if he had been hallucinating again. He had spent a good portion of the night seeing visions from his past, but where did that man fit in. He shook the thoughts away and headed for where the cry had come from.

He arrived at a large house and found Kakashi inside crouched over a young boy.

"What's his status?" Hiroto asked, his hands already beginning to glow with healing energy. He was no medic, but he did have a better knowledge of the art than most other jonin.

"I haven't found a single injury on him," Kakashi said, a bit bewildered, "But he won't respond."

A real medic arrived moments later and examined the boy. His greater knowledge of medicine and the various horrible things shinobi could do to a person allowed him to find the problem.

"He's been subjected to a very powerful genjutsu," the man said, "I'll get him to the hospital and send for a Yamanaka. They're experts in mental trauma."

After the medic left with the catatonic child, Hiroto took a good look around, "Isn't that Fugaku?"

Kakashi nodded grimly, "His wife is dead too."

"What about the other son?" the junior jonin asked, "The one that made ANBU."

"No signs of him," the silver haired cyclops said, "Word is he's been missing all day."

"You don't think..."

Kakashi shook his head, "No clue. An ANBU team is investigating reports of someone hopping the wall near here. Likely one of the people responsible for this."

"It's just like before," Hiroto said, mostly to himself.

"You talking about the massacre of that cat-user clan in the Land of Lightning?"

Hiroto nodded grimly, "The kills were cleaner here... but it feels the same to me."

"How so?" Kakashi prodded. He only knew bits and pieces of Hiroto's story. A drunken comment from Hiroto here. An offhand remark by Asuma there. He understood why the bland looking jonin kept it to himself, but if his past experience could somehow shed light on this tragedy...

"It's hard to explain," Hiroto said after gathering his thoughts, "Maybe I'm just transposing my memories. I've been having flashbacks all night."

"Go get some rest, Hiroto-san," Kakashi offered with sympathy, "The rest of us can finish up here."

Hiroto nodded numbly, and left the Uchiha compound. He tried very hard not to look at any of the bodies. He managed to get home before the damn of his emotions finally burst. He sat huddled against his door as the guilt he had managed to bury for years resurfaced to assail him anew.

Hours later found him at the small table where he and Naruto shared meals. A stack of sketch paper was steadily growing next to him as he poured the disturbing images of the night onto the pages. As the sun rose, he hid away the new sketches with the old ones in his closet.

He hoped sincerely that Naruto would never see them, or anything like them in his lifetime.

XxXxXxX

Ren hurried down the halls of the hospital, her yawning brother in tow. She was immensely nervous, but hid it from Osamu to keep his questions to a minimum. She prayed he wouldn't turn his reikimokushi on her.

Even with her akumamokushi muted she felt them. Hundreds of demons were gathered in Konoha tonight, drawn by the collected fear and the carnage that had taken place.

The Hokage had contacted her to ask a very large favor. He had kept details sketchy, but Ren knew what had happened that night. She had found more than one imp more than willing to gush about the slaughter. A single survivor had been found amongst the bodies of the Uchiha clan, but he was in a state of catatonia. Even Yamanaka hijutsu were proving unfruitful in attempting to treat the boy.

They finally found the room, guarded by a pair of ANBU. She said nothing to them, just handing over the scroll the Hokage had given her. They both looked it over and nodded, allowing the Sakibou to pass through. Ren stopped short, feeling a large presence in the room. She brushed it off. The demon was still well behind the veil that separated real from spiritual. She would send it away after her brother was gone.

"You are my help?" an older man asked, slightly incredulous, "A civilian and an academy student?"

She eyed him. He was tall and dressed in blue/gray pants and button-up shirt. He wore a long black overcoat and combat boots. His hitai-ate kept his unruly blonde hair at bay in the front and it was tied in a pony tail in the back. His blue-green eyes met her yellow-green ones. She noted a ring he wore that bore the leaf of Konoha. She looked closer and smiled.

"Inoichi-sama," Ren said respectfully, flashing the brooch that she normally kept in her pocket, "I assure you the Hokage would not have sent us if he did not believe we could help."

Inoichi's eyes widened the slightest amount on seeing her mark. He nodded and stepped to the side, revealing the form of the survivor.

"That's Sasuke-san," Osamu said with a start, "What's wrong with him?"

"He was attacked," Inoichi said, explaining in only the broadest terms, "A genjutsu I believe, but one unlike any I have ever seen before."

"The Hokage mentioned you were unable to mind dive him," Ren prompted.

He nodded gravely, "There is a mass of powerful emotions swirling in his mind. It would shred my own to pieces if I were to go in there."

"Fear," Osamu said, looking on with his aura sight unsupressed, "Confusion, grief, anger... hatred," he said that last with a bit of trepidation, "There is a lot of hate in his aura, Nee-san."

Ren nodded, "Thank you, Osa-kun. Go outside and go back home with Zuki," she ordered. He was still unskilled with his abilities, and had a good chance of making things worse. She had another idea, "Do not leave his side."

Osamu nodded and left.

"He can read emotions?" Inoichi asked with interest.

Ren nodded, "He can feel auras," she explained, "I don't want him fiddling with that boy's emotions if you won't even brave them, though."

Inoichi raised an eyebrow, "This doesn't help me much..."

"I have another method," Ren told him, "but it will be rather... unusual. I would ask you not to mention what you see here tonight to anyone."

The Yamanaka nodded to her, "Do what you need to."

Ren went through a series of hand seals she had learned long ago from her father when he had discovered she could see demons. He had alluded to the fact that the technique would work on kami as well when she had developed that sight, but warned her not to attempt it. At the end she directed her chakra to the entity who had been content to sit in the corner of the room. It started with surprise when the chakra enveloped it, bringing it partially through the veil.

She knew she was successful when she saw Inoichi assume a battle stance, "What is a demon doing here!?" he asked in a tight voice.

"It was attracted by the carnage," Ren answered, holding out her arm to try and stay the agitated shinobi.

It had reddish brown skin, akin to rust in color, and a single jaundice-yellow eye above a flat, almost nonexistent, nose. There were no lips to speak of, instead showing a set of yellowish fangs that formed a permanent mockery of a smile. The monster's head had no hair, instead hosting a field of stubby black spikes.

Its body was massive in all directions. It was forced to duck down to fit in the room; fully extended the demon would stand nearly ten feet in height. The span of its shoulders was greater than the tallest shinobi in Konoha. Massive arms extended down farther than proportion would normally allow and were heavily muscled. Its legs were similar, looking more like small trees than the limbs of a mobile being. It was wearing naught but the skin of some unknown beast over its crotch.

"Can smell you fear, human," It growled out, sounding like rocks scraping together. Ren was honestly surprised it could talk right without lips, "Come give Hitoare good battle."

"There will be no fighting," she told it, "You know what I am."

The demon eyed her with its single huge orb, "Spirit Talker," it scoffed, "Hitoare not fear you."

Ren scowled and flashed through another set of hand seals, "Korameshime no Jutsu," The creature fell to its knees and its eye rolled back into its skull. Its mouth hung open in a silent scream. Ren let it suffer for a few seconds before ending the jutsu.

The beast heaved back to its feet, a look of pure hate directed at the little woman, "What you want, Spirit Talker?" it spat out.

"Why are you following the boy?" she asked it.

"Is good food," it explained as if it were obvious.

"Food?" Inoichi asked, inching closer to the supine boy.

"He means his emotions," Ren explained, "Oni, like Hitoare here, feed on negative emotions."

The demon nodded, "Give strength to Hitoare."

"He will feed on them until he is powerful enough to kill an older oni and consume its essence," she told the older man.

"You not stop!" the oni said vehemently.

"Actually," Ren said with a smile, "I want you to gorge."

"What?" the demon and Inoichi said at the same time.

"I want you to take in as much of his fear, hate, and anger as you can," she told it, "That should calm his mind enough for you, Inoichi-sama."

"Will slow Hitoare," the demon stated, contemplating her request, "Make fat."

"I will protect you from your kin until you are fast again," Ren offered, "Do especially well and I may call you to battle."

The demon leaned forward eagerly, "Hitoare not battle in human world since great fox," it said excitedly, "Agree."

"This was one of the demons that attacked Konoha with the fox?" Inoichi asked in surprise.

Ren shrugged, "I couldn't tell you. I wasn't here."

"If it had not been for these creatures," the clan leader explained, "We wouldn't have lost half the people we did. The fox was dangerous, but it was only one being."

"We find hole. We go through to fight," Hitoare explained.

Ren turned to the older man, "He cannot harm anyone without help through the veil. I can let him through, but he will be bound to my will."

Inoichi nodded his understanding, "Very well. Do what you must."

She pulled forth one of the kunai she always kept on her and sliced her thumb. Charging the blood with chakra, she went through some hand signs, "Musubu no Jutsu. Taste my blood and know me, Hitoare. You are now my warrior."

The blood flew from her thumb to the demon's waiting maw. He shivered as it touched his tongue, "Hitoare has taste. Will come when call."

"Now consume," she ordered.

Inoichi had seen many strange things in his time diving into the minds of others. He allowed that few could top the sight of an oni drawing in the dark miasma of Sasuke's negative feelings. It opened its mouth and a dark swirling vapor came off of the child. It quickly flowed into Hitoare, disappearing into his waiting gullet. This went on for nearly a minute before the now bloated demon stopped.

"Not take more," it ground out.

Ren nodded to it, "Stay close," she turned to Inoichi as the oni faded from sight, "I hope that is enough."

"You have some rather interesting hijutsu. You did just bind a demon by promising to call it to battle, right?" he asked in slight amazement.

"Oni live for battle," she explained with a shrug, "Shinobi are the strongest warriors of our realm. He wants to test himself against them, but has no way through the veil. I can provide that."

"You are farmore than you seem, Ren-san," he told her. What he had seen had blown many of his notions about the world away. He turned to Sasuke and attempted to again enter his mind. He found it much calmer than before.

"Thank you," he told her, "I can work with this. You may go."

Ren bowed slightly and left the mentalist to his work.

XxXxXxX

"How is he?" Sarutobi asked wearily.

"Better now," Inoichi told him, "I managed to enter his mind and repair some of the damage from the genjutsu. Without Ren-san, though, I would never have gotten in there."

"I am glad she was able to aid you," the Hokage said.

"Her method worries me somewhat..."

"How so?"

"She..." Inoichi felt a slight twinge of guilt tattling on the young women, "She got a demon to eat his emotions to calm his mind."

The old man's brows went up, "Did she now? I knew she could see the spirits, but I didn't think she could order them about."

"You knew about this?" Inoichi asked incredulously, "She bound the oni to her will by promising it battle, Hokage-sama. Those things nearly overran the village."

"I trust her," the leader said simply.

"So I saw," Inoichi stated, recalling her watcher's mark, "In any case, I found confirmation of your suspicions."

"So Itachi-kun did do this..."

"It seems that way," the Yamanaka replied, "The boy walked in just as Itachi slew their mother. The bastard then used some strange power from his eyes to cast a genjutsu on Sasuke. It... it showed him the deaths of all his kinsmen over and over again."

"What happened to you Itachi-kun?" the Hokage asked rhetorically, "You may go, Inoichi-san. Thank you for your help tonight."

With a nod, the Yamanaka patron was gone.

XxXxXxX

Itachi came to a halt. He could hear the ocean in the distance, waves crashing ashore. He felt odd, like he was two different people with two different sets of goals. His current goal was to evade the ANBU team after him. No wait... that wasn't it. He was avoiding the masked man, wasn't he? Why was he outside of Konoha anyway?

The memories flooded back to him. It hadn't been the first time he had forgotten, but they still tore at his heart just as badly. Like the other times, he considered simply throwing himself on his sword, but something, the other him, kept him from that course.

"My, my," he heard from behind him, "You truly are talented, I've been looking for you for days."

He turned to see the man that he had been trying to avoid. He tried to draw his blade and strike out at the devil-spawn, but again, some compulsion stayed his hand.

"Difficult isn't it," he could hear the smile, even if that damnable mask hid it, "Can't even take revenge on me for forcing you to do what you had planned for in the first place."

"I had intended for the youngest to live," Itachi spat, the circumstances forcing emotion out of the normally implacable teen, "I at least left Sasuke-kun alive."

"That you did," the masked man agreed, "But your little rebellion leaves me with a ready spare."

"Don't you dare go near him," Itachi growled. His hand twitched toward the hilt of his sword.

"Oh my," he said in mock astonishment, "I do believe little Sasuke-chan is a soft spot for you. Funny... it didn't seem that way when you cast that little Tsukiyomi on him."

It was true, and Itachi had hated himself for it, "What have you done to me?"

"Planted a seed in your mind," he explained, "One that has grown into quite the brutal killer. I honestly expected explosives or a mass poisoning, but you cut them all down with that blade. Quite the show."

The urge to kill himself rose again, "What do you want from me?"

"Hmm..." the masked man made a show of thinking, "I suppose you could be useful to me still. Tell you what. You work for me, and I'll leave precious Sasuke-chan alone. How does that sound?"

It didn't sound at all like the truth to Itachi, but what choice did he have? Perhaps with time he could find a way to undo whatever terrible thing had been done to him.

"Very well," he agreed.

"Good!" the masked man exclaimed, "There is a small hidden base west of here where an associate of mine is residing. Tell him Madara sent you."