Once those truths had been revealed, the two resurrected Hokage had retreated from the premises, leaving Konoha's most recent missing-nin alone with the infamous Last Uchiha.
...
It was maddening, how much everything he was being told could make sense: "You said Ino is fine." Sasuke was surprisingly relieved that his voice didn't waver when he spoke her name, even with those images rising so readily into his head, "But how did you make me believe it? Genjutsu isn't..."
"Have you already forgotten the events of your Chunin Exams?" the rhetorical question landed on the shoulders of the Uchiha like a shower of iced water, and of course, his mind filled itself with the terrifying appearance that Daiki had cut back when he had first intercepted Orochimaru, "There is more to being a Sage than mere physical power."
Before he could ask for the S-rank to elaborate, Sasuke noted his own reflection into the Blue Armor of the S-rank shinobi sitting in front of him: "What is this?" he pointed to his own forehead with a sudden spark of anger in his tone.
Daiki was entirely shameless in his open, carefree smile: "Something to prevent overzealous bloodline hunters from taking your eyes." the laconic answer immediately quenched the Uchiha's rage.
He was simply overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the relief and hope intrinsic into believing that Ino was safe, that he hadn't... that he couldn't...
Sasuke shook his head, his eyes staring vacantly in front of him. He was overwhelmed by the feeling of his own rage thundering across his body: a fury that had been carefully and constantly fed for most of his life, until it had been turned into a new direction by Daiki's words and actions before and right after the Uchiha had made chunin, overwhelmed by bottled and denied feelings that perceived the chink in his armor, and that elbowed, clawed, and screamed to be let free.
Lastly, he was overwhelmed by the feeling of being utterly lost: in peace or war, he had known the lines keeping the world in a pattern that made sense.
Now Daiki appeared with Tobirama and Hashirama at his beck and call -and not for an instant had the Uchiha believed that the soul hidden behind the eyes of the First Hokage could be shackled to another's will- to deliver that one truth that shattered every belief that had brought Sasuke where he was.
Almost as an afterthought after all those impossible truths that had been delivered to him, Sasuke sat back down on the cot he had awakened on, and crossing his arms, he asked: "So there is a Caged Bird Seal on my forehead?"
"It will disappear and become invisible any day now." Konoha's last missing-nin shrugged unapologetically at Sasuke, "And it's called Gleipnir Seal, nobody is going to deep fry your brain with it, it will simply destroy the eye leaving your orbit, or if a foreign soul takes residence into your body."
"Why?" Sasuke's hands came resting on his knees as he desperately sought out something to to that could shield him from the unmerciful stabbing truths that he was continuously being stabbed with.
"There is a danger inherent in inherited power, versus any power that is earned." Daiki seemed to be delighted by his own word-play, but he maintained a serious tone as he distractedly scratched on side of his head, the short bond hair rasping loudly against his fingers.
"Maybe you'd eventually wish to leave your eyes to your progeny, and while that might work if they've been raised up properly, it'd set up a precedent that'd eventually birth an out of mind tyrant: anguish and sheer hurt are as good of a key to this kind of might as any I could conceive, as from being hurt, we might learn wisdom."
"If you are so worried for the future, why not kill me outright?" the Uchiha barely restrained himself from painfully dragging his hands through his unkempt, dark hair.
"If my bloodline is so dangerous, why would you allow me to live?" even with his newly awakened power, Sasuke felt it clearly that against Daiki, who had the open support of the hidden away Tobirama and Hashirama, he stood no chance.
"Well, frankly, I offered a free vasectomy to both you and Itachi." the S-rank med nin grinned without an ounce of shame, "But I know Itachi can be trusted not to sire a new Uchiha Clan without being extremely careful about the kind of children that are being raised, you on the other hand..."
"Me?" Sasuke replied tonelessly, keeping the flow of chakra through his body -and more importantly eyes- steady and ready, as he wasn't particularly enjoying where this conversation was going.
"If I'd made you sterile, Itachi would have killed me."
Once again Sasuke felt the jarring tilting of his world-view: how was it that it was so easy to believe Daiki, a man that he had barely any relationship with, a shinobi that had openly abandoned his village only to ally with a kinslayer.
He did what he did to save the entirety of Konoha, to prevent the Fourth Great Ninja War from being sparked by the civil war your father was blindingly aiming for, and to save your life.
Sasuke discarded the inopportune image of Ino from his mind as he tried to focus on the here and now: it wasn't like he had ever focused on anything but catching up to Itachi to avenge his clan, then why it was that he felt a stab of dread now that the mention of being unable of fathering children had so uncaringly passed him by?
And why was it that now the only thing he could feel at the mention of his brother was frustration intermixed with a hope that grew steadily brighter? Where had his hate gone? Where was his unmatched, purposeful loathing?
"Grieving for lost rage won't help you in deciding about your future."
Jarred back into the here and now, Sasuke once more dominated himself long enough to not snap back, and mustered enough control in order to organize his priorities.
While he wanted to see Ino with his own two eyes, he had more or less decided to trust Daiki: his story was too unbelievable to be a made-up one, the presence of Tobirama and the uncontrollable Hashirama impossible to fake, and most importantly, the Last Uchiha wanted everything he had been told to be true.
He longed for it, perhaps without even being aware of how much of his heart Daiki could divine simply by looking the younger shinobi in the eyes.
Still, he needed to confirm, maybe it was irrational, but he needed to see that man: "Where is that man?"
"Busy with a task while I took care of you." the S-rank missing-nin answered easily, his features shifting to allow for a knowing smile.
Sasuke fully rose to his feet then, and his expression grew thunderous as some echo of his decade-old rage awoke: "He's onto whatever you've done to let me awaken this power?"
Supremely unconcerned by the threat implicit in the Uchiha's stance, Daiki openly changed the topic as he glanced towards the distant horizon: "As you should have figured out by now, there is a precise purpose behind every action that I took since I first became a Fire Guardian, back when I was named chunin."
Brisling at being ignored, Sasuke's kept a tight rein on his impulsive need to throttle the vastly more powerful shinobi: "And that'd be?"
Something changed then: as if flipping a coin, the carefree, occasionally sorrowful but always undeniably human Daiki vanished like mist under the sun. In his place was a man that wore his features and clothes, whose chakra thrummed with the same power, but whose expression had turned into something sharp and unforgiving, eyes alight with a flame that could not be quenched.
The S-rank missing-nin rose his left fist in front of his face, and staring at the Uchiha from above his clenched knuckles, his voice sang with the faith of the zealots, with the unshakeable might of a mountain range that would not be moved.
That being that was so different from the open and bright Daiki was someone that could have donned the cloak of monster that Konoha had tried to drop on him without showing the barest hint of care, that creature was someone that was closer to Biju than to a shinobi, and it was so only because of his resolve.
After a heartbeat of silence in which Sasuke felt his eyes spin into the Sharingan and into something more to answer to the perceived threat, the idea wearing the body of Daiki spoke a single word: "Revolution."
The Uchiha felt his hear hammer against his ribs, and executed all of the exercises he knew in order to not give away just how much that sudden change had freaked him out.
At Sasuke's forcefully expressionless face, a mask that was meant to hide the shiver that Daiki's expression had caused, the S-rank missing-nin merely grinned, and just like that, the coin had been flipped once more, the revolutionary was again the shinobi, the human, that the Uchiha had known before.
"You said that... I... that man would have killed you for operating on me without my consent." Sasuke tried to retrieve some control over the conversation, even if the awareness of being more or less powerless weighted on him.
He was in front of the shinobi that had outright killed a Jinchuriki during his chunin exams, the one that had delivered Samehada back to the Mizukage, the one who freely abandoned everything he knew without an ounce of remorse. And who knows what else.
"Well, he would have certainly tried." Daiki was once more in a cheery mood, "But everyone is free to make their own choices, and so I want to make sure that you're aware of this... possibility, this opportunity."
Knowingly taking the bait, Sasuke finally managed to quench down on the power of his eyes, which lost their red and spun back into their usual dark color: "Opportunity to?"
"To leave this world better than how you found it." the words fell like they were an obvious, foregone conclusion, "To engineer a brighter future that will define the next Age."
...
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