Reishi didn't know what he had done wrong to provoke this reaction, but Toru's eyes glow brightly, as a mystical X slowly swirls within his pupils.
"Itachi killed my mother."
Reishi opens the in shock upon hearing this last, and at this very moment Toru's voice is... a grim voice, full of spite and hatred. With a murderous look, that made Reishi want to run away from the place. Now he understood why Toru is here. That boy, even in the bottom of his heart, longs to kill Itachi, wants to see the end of the life of the man who took everything from him.
Reishi doesn't know what to do. The dagger blade is touching his neck. It is too sharp, so much so that he feels a small drop of blood slide down his neck.
"I hate him... I hate Itachi... I hate him so much that I could kill him at any moment. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him... but... I mustn't hate him, I mustn't hate him because... I promised my mother I wouldn't hate him, but... it's hard, it's too hard not to hate him."
Gripping the hilt of the dagger tightly, Toru brings his hand to his face as he covers one of his eyes.
Reishi sighs at this and tries to remain calm.
"I'm sorry, I said something I shouldn't have..."
Reishi is nervous, afraid that Toru might count his neck at any moment. But after a second, Toru puts the dagger away, puts on his hat and tries to leave the shrine, but Reishi opens his mouth again.
"You... You want to kill Itachi-san?"
Toru stands in the doorway. He turns to look at Reishi and with his eyes still glowing with the light of the Shigan, he says, "Yes... but I won't..." After that he walks out of the place, leaving Reishi with a sore neck from the small cut he received.
***
A few hours have passed since Reishi visited Toru at the shrine.
Right now, Toru is sitting on a tree branch, just behind the shrine, appreciating the radiant and beautiful moonlight. Somehow, that scene reminded him of that night seven years ago.
He thought... he thought so much that he felt a headache. He remembered that horrible event over and over again, and felt a strange pain in his chest... a horrible pain. It made him close his eyes as he clenches his fists tightly. Toru is confused. Toru fails to understand anything Reishi had told him. No, Toru knows, Toru understands what Reishi had said....
'I'M NOT YOUR BROTHER!'
Toru hits the tree trunk with his fist and then touches his head in pain. His eyes sparkled at that moment. After that, the tree branch he was sitting on broke and Toru fell backwards, being knocked out of breath by the blow that the fall and the hard ground caused him.
"I'm not... your brother..."
Hate, sadness... resentment. Toru feels so many emotions right now that he can't order his thoughts properly. Even Toru himself came to think that this is some kind of message that Itachi is leaving him. A message that says: "Hate me... and live."
Toru chuckles after thinking that. Gradually, this laughter starts to rise in volume, until it leaves him laughing out loud. He laughs so hard that his stomach starts to hurt.
His breathing was heavy because of this. Still, he continued to look at the moonlight and remembered again.
"Itachi... now that I remember... he was always kind to me and my mother. In fact... he was always... kind to everyone, no matter who it was..."
Toru reaches out trying to reach for the stars and then closes his eyes. Again his thoughts are a mess. A mess that made him remember his whole childhood all over again.
He watched inside his mind every memory where Itachi appeared and he could confirm it... he was always a good person.
No...
"Fufufufufufu... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
Toru laughs again. Every ridiculous thought that goes through his mind makes him laugh. He realized that this was all stupid, that this is all just a stupid and ridiculous waste of time... since, after all, the past can't be changed, nothing can go back to the way it was before.
"Why... such a 'nice' person would have enough courage to kill his own family...? Just thinking about it makes me want to laugh myself to death."
He smiles as he clenches his fist tightly. He understands that his mind is in chaos right now, or possibly that twisted mind he has tended to since he has been conscious was always a true Chaos. He understands that he must not give in to those feelings that have nagged him for so long. But he is about to lose that fight against himself.
Kill Itachi.
Make him suffer.
He must pay for what he did.
This alone is justice, for revenge has no place in our hearts.
A smile forms on his mouth again. He covers his eyes with his hand and thinks this is strange. He is hearing voices whispering in his ear, voices that sound angry, sad and full of hate. But after this, he removes his hand from his eyes and they return to normal. At the same time, he sighed kept that bizarre smile and said, "That's... my voice."
Who is talking to him, the voices echoing in his head... it's his own voice trying to convince him to go back to thinking like before, when he still wanted to kill Itachi, when the thirst for revenge controlled him.
He felt again that he was wasting his time. And yet, here he was still, trying to find out more about that night seven years ago. It's not that Toru can't get over what happened that night, he just forces himself to remember it, because his mind still wants to keep it alive, that feeling of revenge and anger that somehow brings him pleasure.
A bizarre, broken and chaotic mind. Even though he had recovered the memories of his past life, Toru's mind only continued to be damaged, breaking every time he remembered what happened that night. Knowing that he had wasted his whole life again, knowing that the murderer of the only mother who loved him was out there.
"I can kill him... I know I can kill him with my power, but... I don't want to... I mustn't. I wish to kill him, I wish to end this forever, but... I can't... I'm not like that... I... I never meant for this to happen..."
Toru begins to give in to the voices speaking to him. He is considering whether to take up his revenge, thinking carefully if this is what he really wants. At the end of it all, it was Konoha who used Itachi as a tool to exterminate the Uchiha and Asahi, so he doesn't really know who his real enemy is.
Itachi, Danzo, the Third Hokage, the elder advisors, they were all involved in what happened that night. It was all their fault, but it was also the fault of the Uchiha and Asahi clan for planning the coup against the village.
Toru thinks again and starts laughing uncontrollably. The answer was always in front of him. All this time, the real enemy, who took away everything he loves, who forced him to flee far away... is Konoha. So, to finally end this torment, Toru must destroy Konoha, must reduce it to rubble, must make everyone in that village feel the pain he felt that night seven years ago.
"Was the answer... always so simple?"
Toru smiles. He is satisfied with this way of thinking, and apparently the voices in his head are also satisfied by this one disastrous, murderous thought. However, as he looks up at the sky, he suddenly opens his eyes in shock.
Images of certain people come to his mind. He covers his face with his arm and smiles once again, but this time... that smile was sad.
"I... forgot them..."
Those people who appeared in his mind... they are the only people who in these past few years have been caring about him. Of course, Toru has no way of knowing this, however, he vaguely remembers that they were always by his side, worrying about him....
He asked himself: Why am I doing this?
Was that a false sense of justice? No. It was his thirst for revenge taking over, but when he remembered those people, his mind, which by this time was complete Chaos, felt at peace.
After that, Toru closed his eyes, willing to let go of all those thoughts, and sighed for the last time.
***
He opened his eyes when he heard voices and footsteps near the shrine, so he got up, realizing that he had fallen asleep on the ground on a tree branch. He had a slight pain in his back because of this.
'It's still night. How long has it been since I fell asleep? How long has it been since I last slept?'
Toru touches his head and tries to analyze the surroundings. He was definitely still in the same place, but there was something different. Voices and footsteps are heard near the shrine, this is what woke him up.
He stealthily walks around and in the darkness, he can see five hooded silhouettes. They talk to each other, and among the words they mentioned, Toru could hear something...
"Then we destroy the whole store, take the Kotarō and, if those two try anything, we kill them."
Toru narrowed his eyes and sighed. He knows this wasn't his problem, but thanks to Reishi he was able to get valuable information. If he let those two brothers die, even if Toru was a crazy killer, he was going to feel guilty.
Besides, he still feels confused about that information he got.
"You...the guys who look suspicious."
Toru comes out of the darkness with his hat and cloak on.
The four men look at him and get angry at being interrupted. On the back of their kimonos could be seen the word "Sendō[Sage]", so Toru could already tell who it was. Those people who have been harassing Kina and Reishi for a long time.
Toru smiles under the hat.
"Listen you idiot. You're getting out of here, since you haven't seen anything. If you behave yourself, you can get some of our loot."
"Hum... they talk like they're generic thieves" Toru said. "But that doesn't matter. You guys want to damage my source of information, I'm not going to let that happen. So, leave and you won't get hurt... no, leave and you won't die."
The Sendō clan thieves looked at each other and then smiled. They, from the way they saw the guy in front of him, his voice, his stature, they deduced that he was a young guy. Maybe that guy with cape and hat is between 17-19 years old, but they are completely wrong, because Toru is only fourteen years old, a few months away from turning fifteen.
"Looks like we have no other choice."
Two of the robbers pulled out katanas they had strapped to their waists, while the others held kunai and cheap daggers.
"Seriously...why doesn't anyone ever listen to my warnings?"
Shaking his head, Toru pulls the daggers out through the sleeves of his cloak and his eyes begin to glow, becoming visible through the cloth strips of his hat.
The Sendō clan thieves pause for a second and then....
"I told you..."
They all fell at the same time as blood splashes back and forth. Toru now stands behind the now deceased Sendō clan thieves, daggers dripping blood.
A smile forms on his mouth.
"I feel better now."
He shakes out the daggers, which he eventually keeps inside the sleeves of his cloak. Toru looked at the blood on the ground with Shigan's light in his eyes, this light that allowed him to so elegantly and artistically kill anyone. Deidara would be proud of this, although the latter will never be able to admit it.
'Well... what should I do with this? They're all dead, their death lines stopped moving and the ones I cut with my daggers also disappeared...'
Toru walks around the corpses. He looks at them curiously and then smiles. The cuts he made on the flesh of the thieves were perfect, so much so that the wounds took time to open. Also, his eyes told him that he had cut the lines of death near the jugular vein and collarbone. If Toru had applied a little more force, he would have decapitated them all.
"I have an idea..."
He approached the heavier looking corpse and tried to lift it. For this Toru didn't need the Shigan, so he deactivated it and lifted the thief, but....
"Huh?"
Toru drops the corpse and touches his head in pain.
"What is this...? It hurts..."
He was confused. He doesn't know what is happening. His vision became blurry the moment he deactivated Shigan. Also, like a small bouncing sphere, a strange faint pain started bouncing in different parts of his brain.
Toru rubbed his eyes a couple of times. He tried to blink again and again, but the result was the same, nothing changed. His eyes continued to look the same way, out of focus over and over again like a broken camera.
"Why...?"
Toru always had good eyesight, his eyes were always healthy, that's why he was confused. Why did his eyes now out of nowhere start to go out of focus? He kept holding his head with one hand as he tried to regain his vision.
'What's going on, why is this happening? In this world I never need to wear glasses, so... Why? I... I never did anything to damage my eyes like that... I don't understand... How did it happen? When did it happen? My vision became blurry... when I deactivated Shigan...'
He found the answer easily. All these years, ever since he got the Shigan, Toru had been using it over and over again, every time he fought with someone. In every conflict, even when he was training. Moreover, Toru increased the use of Shigan after he got Yamato's cells, because, thanks to these cells he has a large reserve of chakra, so he could use Shigan for a long time without getting exhausted... that was the answer. Using Shigan had a consequence that Toru was unaware of until this moment. It's similar to what happens with Itachi's Mangekyo Sharingan....
"Damn..."
Even with his vision unfocused, Toru picks up the corpses and walks in some direction.
_______
Wow~ they didn't reach the goal of power stones. I'm surprised. Well, I'll set myself the same goal of stones, 200 to be exact. When they get there, I'll post the next chapter.
I haven't posted chapters in p atreon. I must, as I mustn't let my patrons get bored!