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It was a complete massacre.
Shouta felt sick. There were dozens of bodies strewn around and blood splatters everywhere. This was worse than anything he had seen from a villain. Had he not witnessed it with his own eyes, he could never have imagined that it was perpetrated by Itachi. Little Itachi who, despite the stress lines under his solemn eyes, was only thirteen. Quiet, gentle Itachi who had never once shown any inclination for violence in the weeks that he had been following Shouta around.
Shouta remembered the sword they had confiscated when they first found him and thought of the strange body armour he had been wearing. He had told them he was a ninja, but he was thirteen. Of course they hadn’t believed it. Especially since he had told them that he had graduated at six and had been working for the past seven years as a reason for why he shouldn’t have to go to school. They had tried to question him further but he stuck to his story and since, for the most part, he had otherwise docilely cooperated at every turn they had let it drop. What an enormous miscalculation, Shouta thought.
Itachi stood calmly in front of Shouta, his expression faintly confused. He reminded Shouta of a cat who had brought him a dead mouse and could not understand why he was not being praised. His sword was sheathed on his back and Shouta wondered how and when he had gotten it back and where he had hidden it up until now.
“Fucking hell,” Shouta sighed, rubbing a trembling hand over his face. He could still feel the cold sweat on his temples from the murderous aura Itachi had been exuding not even a minute ago. Now he had his usual presence again, which was about as threatening as a small shrub.
“Aizawa-san?” Itachi questioned in the exact same tone he had used this morning when he found Shouta staring blearily at the coffee machine long after it was finished making his cup.
Shoring himself up, Shouta held out his hand expectantly. “Give me the sword,” he said, careful to keep his tone confident. If Itachi didn’t comply Shouta was well aware that there was little he could do about it. Luckily Itachi seemed to have no compunctions about giving up the sword, not that it gave Shouta much comfort seeing as how they had done this already and it had evidently not slowed him down at all. “I’m keeping this,” he told the kid. It was hard to say what Itachi was thinking given his quiet nature and impassive body language but he seemed calm enough. Then again he had seemed calm enough before too, right up until he slaughtered his way through what Shouta estimated to be somewhere between fifty and a hundred villains. “Come on, let’s find out what happened to Thirteen and the class. Then we need to talk to the police.”
Shouta headed for the entrance to the U.S.J. and Itachi trailed after him as if nothing had changed since this morning when he trailed after Shouta to U.A.
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“We’ve finished gathering statements from all the witnesses,” Officer Tamakawa told Shouta as he started brewing himself a cup of tea after joining the teacher in the precinct break room.
Despite not being Itachi’s legal guardian—that was his case worker from Child Safety Services until they could find him a foster family—since Itachi had been staying with him, Shouta was waiting there to hear what would happen to the kid. Considering the situation, Shouta expected he’d be sent to a reformatory, but from what he understood there was some question about that due to his young age.
“The crime scene investigators are still working, and likely will be for a while considering the size of the crime scene,” the cat-headed police officer continued. He paused and looked over at Shouta, “The total body count is eighty-four.”
“Eighty-four dead at the hands of a thirteen-year-old,” Shouta said. He was still struggling to wrap his mind around it. He was the one who had seen it, the only one who had seen it, and yet he could scarcely believe it himself. Especially since it was Itachi, who was polite, kind, and more self-possessed than most people twice his age. It was no surprise that the officer who had taken Shouta's statement had repeatedly expressed his scepticism before bringing him in for further questioning on the suspicion that he was trying to pin his own actions on the boy. Even the corroborating statement from Itachi hadn’t helped. It had taken calling in a detective with a truth quirk before Shouta had been released. “And it took him, what, no more than fifteen minutes?”
“You'd know better than me,” Tamakawa shrugged. “From Thirteen’s account it started with the one with the warp quirk. Uchiha killed him when he tried to use his quirk on the students. After that Thirteen was able to evacuate the students. By all accounts Uchiha went with them. No one is quite sure when he left which might be related to his quirk. I've heard he tends to fade into the background in most settings, but they had just witnessed him kill someone so it seems unlikely that he would be able to leave without anyone noticing unless he used his quirk to get himself out of there. In any case the next one to see him was you.”
Shouta nodded. “He didn’t step in straight away,” he explained. “I don’t know when he got there but I caught a glimpse of him perched up on the gate to the plaza, just watching me fight the villains. There were a couple close calls but he didn’t act until I was immobilised. That creature had me on the ground. It’s strength was inhuman. I was completely at its mercy but not even a second later Itachi-kun cut its arms off and knocked it off me. Then he killed it and any villain that attacked or tried to follow the students out the main entrance. This wasn't some kid with an out of control quirk. He was experienced. I went over the whole thing in detail in my statement if you want to read it but that’s the gist of it.”
The kid had been monstrous, spitting fire balls, calling down flocks of crows, and raining deadly accurate shuriken on the villains even as he cut through them with his sword like a hot knife through butter. At one point Shouta could have sworn he saw one of the villains stab Itachi through the chest but then the kid had exploded—not metaphorically, he had literally exploded like Bakugou on a kamikaze run—in the villain’s face. Shouta had nearly had a heart attack but not a moment later he had spotted Itachi sweeping away villains with a water dragon of all things. And all the while his terrible murderous intent had pressed down on them all like death itself was hovering over their shoulders with a smiling face.
“I did what I could but he was so fast I could barely keep my eyes on him,” Shouta said, rubbing his temples tiredly.
“I guess we can safely say he wasn’t lying when he said he was a ninja then,” Tamakawa said drolly, his professional demeanour slipping away in favour of letting himself enjoying Shouta's suffering. “Does this mean we also need to re-evaluate his claim that he’s from another dimension?”
Shouta groaned and dropped his head down onto the table. “I hate to admit it but at this point I’d believe it. It’d explain all the things he can do. Whatever his quirk is, if he even has a quirk and not some strange other-worldly power, it's nothing so harmless as not being noticed, I can promise you that.”
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“Remind me why you are sending the murder child home with me, again,” Shouta said to Tamakawa, his expression and tone completely dead.
The police officer looked unrepentant. “A judge decided he was unlikely to kill again now that we’ve made it clear to him that he shouldn’t do so. In fact, Itachi-kun was quite pleased with that order. It was also decided he wasn’t a flight risk, as long as we let him follow you around. It worked before,” He shrugged, his smirk containing a level of asshole that only a cat could pull off, “Besides, when we put him in handcuffs he turned into a flock of crows that flew away. We found him back in the station waiting at my desk.”
What the actual fuck. “I will never complain about my students again,” Shouta bargained with any deity that might be listening, “Just please make Itachi someone else’s problem.”
Tamakawa laughed in his face. “The kid made himself your problem weeks ago when you tried to ditch him with Child Safety Services and he followed you home like a lost puppy.”
“He goes wherever he wants with no regard to what anyone else says. If that kid is any animal he’s definitely a cat,” Shouta said accusingly, “It’s no wonder you like him so much.”
“He’s a good kid,” Tamakawa said shamelessly.
“Why don’t you take him home then,” Shouta said resentfully, despite the fact that he did agree. “What am I supposed to do with him?”
“My advice? Get him a therapist,” Tamakawa suggested.
“I think that’s a given,” Shouta said drily.
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“Kid,” Shouta said, suppressing a sigh. “Do you understand that killing is wrong?”
Itachi cocked his head, “They were villains. Villains are the enemy.”
The enemy. Fucking child soldiers. “They were villains,” Shouta agreed. “But it’s not up to you to decide that they deserve to die.”
“You wanted me to capture them alive?” Itachi asked. “I apologise. I should have tried harder to restrain the leader so that he could be interrogated.”
I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. “I wanted you to evacuate with the rest of the children,” Shouta corrected.
“You would have died if I had left,” Itachi pointed out. “The children would have been captured or killed.”
“My life is not your responsibility, and we can never know for certain what would have happened,” Shouta said gently. “The other pros didn’t take long to arrive once the alarm was raised. It is entirely possible that I would have been able to buy enough time for them to come to the rescue even without your intervention.”
Itachi nodded seriously. “You are correct. However at the time I did not know how long it would take for reinforcements to come, and it was only the two of us against over a hundred enemies to cover the students’ escape. Furthermore I did not know their level of ability so I was not confident that we could hold them off for long enough for the students to escape without using lethal force.”
Shouta rubbed at his temples. “I’m not explaining this very well. Look, I understand that you just wanted to help, and it is okay to defend yourself, and to defend others when they can’t defend themselves. And sometimes the only way to do that results in the attacker’s death. But that should only happen if there is no other way to protect yourself. Otherwise you’re using excessive force and you can be convicted of murder which is one of the most serious crimes you can be found guilty of, not to mention the moral implications of the act. Currently your case is being taken to court even though you are below the age of liability because of the severity of the charges that are being brought up against you. It’s not a straightforward case by any means but the fact that you came out unscathed after killing eighty-four people makes it look a lot like excessive force.”
Itachi regarded him with a solemn expression. “It is my role in life to take on the world’s evils so that others may live in peace.”
I am not equipped to deal with this.
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“My therapist said that I should be honest with you in order to build trust between us,” Itachi said while they were having breakfast one morning.
Shouta looked up at him and gestured for him to go on, too tired to actually speak aloud. He could only pray that it wasn’t another bombshell on the level of, I am thirteen and I have been a professional killer for seven years.
“Remember when we first met and you asked me why I was following you around?” Itachi asked rhetorically.
As if Shouta could forget. At first the only sign of his little stalker was a hair-raising feeling at the back of his neck. After a week of that, the little gremlin started appearing a flash of movement in the corner of his eye and Shouta had stopped being able to sleep altogether. Even when he had finally introduced himself and Shouta had tried to wash his hands of the kid by taking him to the police who called the Office for Child Safety Services, Itachi would simply appear somewhere in his vicinity an hour or two after he had been taken away.
Eventually, after a lot of paperwork on Shouta’s behalf, they simply left Itachi with him out of a lack of ability to make the kid stay anywhere he didn’t want to and a concern that he would go back to living on the streets if they pushed too hard. Trying to make him go to school, or frankly go anywhere that Shouta wasn’t, was met with a similar level of success which is why he had been at U.S.J. in the first place, despite not being a U.A. student. They had been working on it at the time but that had been put on hold while his trial was ongoing and he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unsupervised anyway. Again, not that they could stop him if he wanted to leave.
“I didn’t answer you then, but it was actually because I thought you might be part of my family,” Itachi said, gesturing at his eyes which briefly flashed red. Shouta had approximately half a moment to feel warmed by the sentiment before Itachi continued, “I don't have much family left. My last mission before I ended up here was to assassinate every member of my clan.”
Shouta choked on the mouthful of coffee he had just taken. What?
Itachi eyed him for a moment before continuing, “I thought this might be my second chance. So I wanted to protect that chance, to protect you.”
“Itachi-kun, you’re a child. You don’t need to protect me. It’s the other way around,” Shouta said, prioritising that message over diving into the ‘mission to kill my family’ thing that was so casually dropped into the conversation. Is that sort of thing normal where he’s from?
“I’m not a child,” Itachi said, expression vaguely bemused. It wasn’t the usual insistence of someone his age but more as though he were stating a fact so obvious he didn’t understand why it needed to be said.
“You’re thirteen,” Shouta retorted, “Try that one again when you turn twenty.”
“I don't understand,” Itachi admitted, “What does my age have to do with it?”
Shouta felt a headache coming on. “When does a person become an adult where you’re from?” he asked.
“When they graduate from the Academy,” Itachi said, “How does it work here?”
“Here a person becomes an adult when they reach the age of twenty,” Shouta said pointedly.
Itachi blinked. “I see.”
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“Well?” Hizashi demanded loudly as soon as Shouta and Itachi found him outside of the courthouse.
“Not guilty,” Itachi said with an expression on his face that Shouta had come to understand meant that he thought the people of this dimension were being particularly incomprehensible. “The judge said I was just acting the way I had been raised to act, and the responsibility was with the people who had raised me.” He let out a light huff of amusement, “As though I’m not an ANBU captain, able to make decisions not only for myself but also for my team on missions that affect the security of the village.”
And hadn't that been an unpleasant revelation, learning that Itachi was not only a child soldier for his ninja village, but a captain in their black ops division.
“You’re not an ANBU captain anymore,” Shouta reminded him.
Itachi abruptly sobered. “Yes, I am a missing-nin now. I no longer deserve to wear this,” he said, tracing his fingers over the leaf symbol etched on his metal forehead protector.
“When did you put that back on?” Shouta demanded irritably. “I told you not to wear that to the trial so that the judge wouldn’t think that you were trying to hold on to your past as a trained killer.”
“What’s a missing-nin?” Hizashi asked.
“A missing-nin is a ninja who has abandoned their village,” Itachi said. “It is the most serious crime a ninja can commit. Much worse than murder.”
“I don’t think getting stuck in another dimension counts as abandoning your village,” Shouta pointed out.
“That is not the reason I am a missing-nin,” Itachi said solemnly. “It is because I murdered my entire clan.”
“You told me that was a mission,” Shouta said warily, keeping an eye on Hizashi who was not so quietly freaking out behind Itachi. Because of Itachi’s age it was a sealed trial so he hadn’t heard any of this before. We just finished convincing the judge that Itachi only killed all those villains because it was normal in the culture he was raised in. Am I going to have to ask them to appeal that decision already?
“It was,” Itachi said, “But for the stability of the village the Uchiha’s treachery was kept secret so it was necessary to have a scapegoat for their downfall. They said I went mad and killed everyone in my clan. It also served the purpose of setting me up to infiltrate a dangerous international criminal organisation that posed a threat to Konoha.”
Of course. Just when I think he can’t possibly have any more horrifying stories from his past.
“They ordered a thirteen-year-old to infiltrate a criminal group,” Hizashi said faintly. “An international criminal group. After kicking you out of your village. Because they made you kill your entire family and then take the blame for it.”
“Weren’t there any adult ninja they could send?” Shouta asked, the barest hint of belligerence in his tone.
“This was a mission I chose to take on myself,” Itachi said blithely, apparently quite happy with that state of affairs. “I am still a loyal Konoha-nin—”
“Why?” Hizashi wailed in the background.
“—But I have manoeuvred myself into a position where neither Hokage-sama nor Danzo-sama can easily order me around.”
Kid. You just keep making this worse.
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Two months later...
“What is all this?” Shouta asked flatly, looking at the strange symbols pained all over the floor, walls and roof of the abandoned warehouse he had tailed Itachi to. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if demonic rituals were a tradition in his original dimension.
“These are seals. They’re my way home,” Itachi said.
“This is your home now,” Shouta said blankly, totally taken aback. Not once had Itachi indicated that he did not intend to stay. Well, other than continuing to refuse to go to school, but frankly at this point Shouta was more concerned with his moral education and mental health than academics. Itachi had so much potential that Shouta didn't doubt he could excel at anything he set his mind to no matter when he started.
“I have to go back,” Itachi said evenly. “I have responsibilities.”
“Those people forced you to kill your own family. You don’t owe them anything,” Shouta said fiercely.
“It is not so simple. I chose to walk that path so that I could achieve my goals. It is true that I had no real understanding of what the consequences would be but... Even now, knowing where it has lead me, I cannot regret my decisions. I believe that if I wasn’t involved, the situation would have ended much worse than it did,” Itachi said peaceably.
“You made the best of an impossible situation,” Shouta corrected. “And that’s fine. You did what you needed to do to survive and get out. But you don’t need to go back to that. You can stay here, you can have the life of peace that you always wanted.”
“How could I ever be at peace knowing I have abandoned my comrades when I could have helped them?” Itachi asked.
“You have done enough for them. If your comrades wouldn’t want you to stay and be happy then they don’t deserve to be called that,” Shouta retorted.
“Mm. Perhaps you are right. I wonder what Kakashi-sempai would say if he could see me now?” Itachi trailed off pensively, looking away. For a moment Shouta hoped he’d change his mind but then Itachi turned to face Shouta again, his face set in determination. “Aizawa-san, I never told you this before but I left my little brother behind, and without me there he is the only one in that world who has the powerful Sharingan eyes,” Itachi said, gently tracing a finger under one of his own eyes. “There are many who would target him for them. As long as I was there, the threat of my retaliation kept them at bay. But while I am gone, he is vulnerable.”
“Then you should find a way to bring your brother here,” Shouta said. “It is the rational choice.”
Itachi didn't smile, but his solemn look eased somewhat. “You’re a kind man, Aizawa-san. You have done so much for me already, but I have one last thing to ask of you.”
“What is it?” Shouta asked.
“I can’t abandon Konoha. Danzo-sama, Hokage-sama, the council of elders, it is true that they manipulated me for their own ends and gave me nothing in return, and it is true that I was forced to sacrifice almost everything that mattered to me in order to deal with the consequences of their bad decisions. But Konoha is more than its leaders. The people of Konoha, the children, the civilians, the elderly, and even the genin, it is so that they can live a life free of fear that us senior shinobi willingly live in the shadows. I have given too much in order to pursue that dream of peace to let go of it now,” Itachi said, clenching a fist. “But if I can get my brother here, promise me that you will look after him? Unlike me he never chose the sacrifices I made on both our behalves. More than anyone, he deserves a life of peace.”
“Your brother, huh?” Shouta looked down at Itachi. He really was a remarkable kid, more so for all the things he had had to endure. “Yeah. I think I could look after a guy like that.”
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“My name is Uchiha Sasuke. My dream... no, it is my ambition to kill the man who destroyed my clan.”
Shouta sighed. I really should have seen this coming. Goddammit Itachi. “I guess you better come in, kid.”
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Fin.