Naruto: Uchiha’s Blood Curse

The sun hung low in the sky, casting an orange glow over Konoha village. Itachi and Mahito lay on their backs on a grassy hill. From their point of view, they could see the whole village in this warm atmosphere.

Itachi turned to his sister, who was calmer than usual. Although they would occasionally have those quiet moments, he felt that she was acting weirdly this time. He knew that his sister wasn't like everyone else. Though she was, her personality was different.

After hesitating for a while, Itachi called out for his sister, "Mahito?"

She hummed in response, her golden irises shining under the fading sunlight.

"Itachi… do you think Father will be angry? We were supposed to train longer," Itachi fidgeted slightly. "But you just grabbed me and ran. He's going to be furious, isn't he?"

Mahito smiled. "Dad is calm these days. You know, cuz mom is pregnant, and he can't be too rough around her."

"You sure?"

Instead of answering, Mahito tilted her head, her serene gaze fixing on Itachi. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she asked lightly, "Itachi, if I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?"

Her tone was gentle—but there was something deep hidden there—making Itachi uneasy.

"What is it?" he asked cautiously.

Mahito leaned back, supporting herself with her forearms as she looked up at the darkening sky. "If you were to choose, would you choose peace or chaos and destruction?"

For other children, such a question would have been very easy to answer and wouldn't have affected them at all. But when Itachi was asked, he felt as if his sister had punched him in the gut.

Images of the battlefield he'd seen during the Third Shinobi War with his sister and father resurfaced, making his stomach churn. The blood, the screams, the lifeless eyes of fallen shinobi all assaulted his mind. He swallowed hard while burying these memories back in the deepest part of his mind.

"I want peace," he said firmly, but he couldn't hide the slightest tremble in his voice from his sister. "I would do anything for it. Anything."

Mahito's gaze lingered on him, her golden eyes seeming to pierce through him as she considered his answer.

"Anything, huh?"

Itachi nodded resolutely. "Yes. I want peace more than anything in this world." After affirming that to himself, he seemed to calm down. Subconsciously, he decided to ask his sister back. "What about you, Mahito?"

Instead of responding, Mahito grabbed her brother and sprang to her feet. "Come on, it's getting late," she giggled, "Dad really is gonna be furious if we stay out this late. Mom is also gonna get worried."

Itachi pouted, his eyes widening as he realized that his sister just avoided another question of his.

"Mahito, you are always doing this?"

"Doing what~?"

His small cheeks puffed as he grumbled, "I'm always the only one who's answering, and you keep escaping it all."

Mahito only smiled at him as they headed to their home without saying anything to that.

Later that night, she sat alone in her room while staring at the ceiling. The soft sound of the night surrounded her household; she knew she was the only one awake at that late hour.

Because of that, she didn't bother keeping a smile on her face. Mahito stared at her hands while seemingly reaching toward the ceiling.

"Peace or destruction, huh?"

A shallow giggle came out of her mouth, void of any joy or humor. Those words had been echoing through her head a lot since the end of the war.

Without anyone's knowledge, Mahito would sneak around the village during the war. She knew the battlefield was dangerous for a child like her, but she wanted to see as much as she could of everything.

The Uchihas put expectations on her and her brother as potential next clan heads, which always pushed her to want to know more.

For a child like her, Mahito felt this was the only form of protection she could afford to have.

In addition to the weight of being the future clan head, she also had something else to ponder about: shinobi duties.

That's what it all boiled down to. A shinobi was a weapon—a tool for their village, their clan, their leaders. They were trained to fight, to kill, to obey. Fugaku explained the harsh reality to his two children during the war with evidence.

She didn't find Itachi's desire for peace to be silly; she respected it. But she sympathized with her kind and gentle brother. Mahito had a feeling that to reach true peace, her brother would need to do anything and everything he couldn't even imagine.

'By that time, I'm sure he would be half-broken.'

If you wanted peace, you could never allow yourself to be someone else's weapon. If you were a tool for someone else, your own actions would cause destruction and chaos.

However, if you wanted to survive in this world, you needed to be strong.

Mahito pondered upon this a lot and came to realize the solution: you needed to be strong, too strong—the strongest even. Only then could you afford to uphold the peace you wanted.

Without overwhelming strength, no matter what kind of peace you'd want to achieve, it would always be a never-ending cycle of violence and vengeance.

Why couldn't people solve things through words and only through wars? That was because they were evenly matched in strength, which gave them the possibility to compete.

But that only ended in bloodshed.

Mahito clenched her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palms. She then released her fists, staring at the faint marks her nails had left on her skin. She was still too weak; thus, she couldn't expose her worth to anyone yet.

Strength was an urgent need for Mahito Uchiha.

Mahito's golden irises began to shift, their warm glow replaced by a blood-red hue, and a pair of black tomoe spun lazily within her eyes.

"But once you are the strongest being, would you still care about peace?"