Chapter 7
Warmth burst between his ribs—Senju spears pinning him to a tree. Hashirama's face loomed, contorted with horror. "What did you do?" The question smelled like damp earth and crushed herbs. Itama grinned around a mouthful of stolen eyes, swallowing hard. The world sharpened, edges painted crimson with Tajima's final sight.
Behind Hashirama, Tobirama's hands flashed through seals—too fast, too desperate. Itama sighed as the paralysis jutsu took hold. "Brother," he slurred, drunk on stolen visions, "you should see what their eyes show me." The forest pulsed Uchiha-red. Somewhere, Madara screamed.
Blood dripped from the spear shafts. Itama flexed his fingers—the stolen Sharingan spun lazily in his palm. A whisper of movement: Hashirama's wooden tendrils sprouted from the bark, wrapping around Itama's throat. "That's not him anymore," Tobirama spat, blade drawn. "That thing ate Tajima whole."
Itama laughed until his ribs creaked. He'd been dead before—this was nothing. With a wet crunch, his neck snapped sideways, tendons stretching like taffy as his jaw unhinged. Tajima's fireball technique erupted from his gullet, forcing them back. Bark charred black where Hashirama's sandals skidded.
"Interesting," Itama mused, watching his own arm regrow from devoured Uchiha flesh. The copied eyes along his forearm blinked in unison. He licked fresh blood off his knuckles—iron and lightning, the aftertaste of Hatake techniques. "Let's trade more jutsu, brothers."
Hashirama's Mokuton surged forward, but the branches withered mid-air as Itama exhaled stolen Nara shadows. Tobirama's water dragon evaporated into mist when it touched his skin—three generations of Hozuki liquefying under stolen kekkei genkai. The clearing reeked of ozone and desperation.
From the treeline, a rustle—Madara's remaining eye reflected in the dusk, pupil spiraling wildly. Itama's grin widened. "Come mourn with me," he crooned, fingers elongating into Hyuga joints. "I'll show you how Tajima's bones taste when—
"
The ground ruptured. Not wood, not stone—but something older. Hashirama's hands bled into the soil as the forest itself groaned awake. Roots thicker than war banners erupted, each one studded with grinning Senju teeth from graves untended. Tobirama's seals flickered gold between them. "Last chance," he whispered. Itama's stolen heart stuttered—recognizing the forbidden script from Father's scrolls.
Madara moved first. A scream, a blur—his remaining Sharingan hemorrhaging black flames. They licked up Itama's stolen Hyuga fingers, burning stolen nerves he hadn't fully assimilated. The pain was glorious. "Yes," Itama gasped, his voice fracturing into Tajima's baritone, then a child's giggle. His ribcage split open like an overripe fruit, disgorging a writhing mass of copied Sharingan eyes, all trained on Madara. "Tell me which one was his."
Hashirama's Mokuton struck—not to impale, but to embrace. The wood softened into weeping flesh, warm as a mother's arms. For half a breath, Itama remembered pressing his cheek against Hashirama's back during monsoons. Then the eldest Senju's fingers sank through his sternum like wet paper. "Sleep," Hashirama begged, blood welling between his
teeth.
Itama laughed. His body dissolved into a thousand skittering insects—Aburame larvae from a clan he'd consumed at dawn. They poured into Hashirama's mouth, his ears, the spaces between his ribs. The oldest Senju brother tasted like sunlight and grief. Delicious. Tobirama's scream was almost as sweet.
The copied blades of seven mist-nin jutted from Itama's spine as he reformed. Their stolen memories pulsed behind his teeth. One had kissed his mother's forehead before dawn patrol. Now her touch was just another flavor in his marrow. He exhaled and the clearing filled with the scent of her blood
.
Hashirama's mokuton roots twitched—too slow. Itama's stolen Hyuga veins saw the chakra spikes forming underground before they erupted. He let them spear through his thighs. The pain was crisp, bright, clarifying. A perfect counterpoint to the way Tobirama's hands shook while weaving water dragons. Fear made people predictable.
When Madara's fireball lit the treeline, Itama caught it in his teeth. The Uchiha's fire tasted like childhood summers and scorched earth. He swallowed, felt it melt into something older and darker in his gut. "Again," he murmured, licking char from his knuckles. The war wasn't going to end. Not for him. Never for him.
Tobirama's water dragon shattered against Itama's ribs—or would have, if he hadn't dissolved halfway through the impact, letting the jutsu pass through the hollow where his heart should be. He reformed with his fingers buried in his brother's sternum. He could feel the frantic rabbit-thump beneath his nails. "You're shaking," he observed. "Cold
?"
Someone's kunai found his kidney. Itama turned his head slowly—some Uzumaki cousin with pink hair and a missing eye. He recognized her from yesterday's massacre. Or was it the day before? Time blurred when you stopped counting meals and started counting heartbeats stolen. She gasped when he smiled with her mother's lips
.
Then Tajima Uchiha's spear took them both through the throat. The wood splintered as Itama laughed around the shaft, tasting iron and vengeance. The old man really should have known better—last week's feast had been an entire Uchiha patrol. Their sharingan patterns still flickered behind his eyelids when he blinked. "Again," he whispered, and the forest screamed with him.
Madara's fist closed around air where Itama's spine had been. The copied Byakugan showed every twitch of his former friend's tendons, the exact moment Madara's rage overpowered his tactical sense. It was almost nostalgic—the familiar scent of sweat and scorched cloth, the way Madara's chakra spiked right before he made terrible decisions. Itama let the Amaterasu flames graze his cheek just to watch Izuna flinch.
Somewhere behind the burning trees, Hashirama was crying. The sound dripped down Itama's ribs like honey. He pressed his palm to the weeping hole in his abdomen where an Uzumaki sealing tag should have been working—would have been working, if he hadn't digested their fuinjutsu master three sunrises ago. His fingers came away sticky with half-formed runes that squirmed like tadpoles before dissolving.
Tobirama's hiraishin kunai trembled mid-air when Itama exhaled Hoshigaki's mist. The stolen memories of Kiri fishermen filled his lungs with brine and desperation. "Little brother," he sighed through the fog, tasting Tobirama's pulse in the humidity, "you always did move too slowly for this war." The first senbon found its home between his brother's vertebrae before the last syllable faded.
Hashirama's mokuton erupted in jagged splinters—too frantic, too raw. Itama caught one between his teeth and let it sprout through his palate, drinking the grief in its sap. The pollen made his vision blur with stolen summers—two boys laughing by the riverbank, a third watching from the shadows. He spat bark and blood into Izuna's charging path. "Remember this?" he asked as the Uchiha's sandals slipped on childhood memories made manifest.
Madara's mangekyou spun wildly when Itama unfolded the Nara clan's shadow from his ribcage. The darkness swallowed three allied shinobi whole before their screams even registered. He felt their personalities dissolve like sugar in tea—a medic's steady hands, a strategist's sharp tongue, all just fleeting textures now. "Stop holding back," he whispered directly into Madara's optic nerve, borrowing Shisui's lilt. "Or is your love for them stronger than your hate for
me?"
Dawn broke through the smoke as Tajima's corpse hit the mud. Itama knelt to lick the pattern from his cooling retina, savoring the way Izuna's chakra curdled. The Uchiha's fireball hit his open mouth—charcoal and saltpeter richness bloomed behind his eyes as he swallowed the technique whole. "Thank you," he sighed with Tajima's vocal cords, feeling the dead man's memories of baby Izuna squirm like minnows in his belly. The forest held its breath.