Chapter – 65: Itachi is born

[Rei POV]

"Congratulations, Fugaku-sama!"

"Congratulations, Fugaku-sama!"

I could hear numerous people congratulating Fugaku. This morning, one of the greatest talents in Uchiha history, Uchiha Itachi was born! and to celebrate having a successor, Fugaku has organized a big birthday party; even I was invited to it.

As usual, I sent my clone to attend it. Of course, I am just a minor character here; like a clump of leaves on the roadside. I am not saying that it's a bad thing; no, just that there are many other important people present here who have gathered all the attention onto themselves. Even the Clan heads from all major clans such as the Hyugas, Ino-Shika-Cho, etc. all came in-person to congratulate Fugaku.

As for myself, I am quite happy to be on the sidelines. As I didn't want to just stand here alone, not that I care but I should still follow some of the social conventions, so I started looking around for anyone I can recognize. As usual, that idiot Obito is nowhere to be found. But I did spot someone interesting… a three or four year old kid to be exact…

'Uchiha Shisui!' I murmur under my breath and start walking towards him.

"Hello!" I say with a smile, "I am Uchiha Rei, who might you be? why is it that I don't recall ever seeing you in the clan before…"

"Ah, Rei-senpai. But I have seen you before when you were treating that uncle! You are training to be a medical ninja, right? that's awesome!" he says, "Oh sorry senpai, I am Uchiha Shisui!"

"Shisui, ha? Nice to meet you... are you also here by yourself?" I ask curiously.

"No, I came with my dad. There he is…" he shakes his head and points towards a man in his twenties who looks just like an older Shisui.

"I should have guessed it without you saying anything… you are a spitting image of him…" I smile.

"Right, many people said I look just like my dad did when he was a kid…" he nods gleefully.

"So, Shisui when are you planning on starting at the academy?"

"I don't know, my dad said that I am already good enough to join… but he still wants me to wait till I am at least five years old. I wanted to go there next year when I turn four but dad said he won't agree to it at all…" he sighs sadly, but given that he was just a kid, it looks a bit cute, to be honest.

"Ya, but your dad is right… it's better you wait till you are five…" I nod, "Not because you aren't good enough, but because once you graduate from the academy, you will have to go on missions which can be very dangerous…"

"Oh…"

I spoke with him for quite some time before his dad came to fetch him and they left together. With Shisui gone, I too lost interest in the birthday party and left soon afterward.

…

Back in the Origin space.

It's been four months since my ninth birthday. After the first couple of months, the explosive growth I was seeing because of the awakening of my mangekyo gradually settled down, and about a month ago, I used the Seal of Ouroboros again to activate the nineteenth gene.

Also in these four months, I have received deliveries from Iwa and Kumo twice. Among the four Kekkei Genkai that were my targets, I was able to acquire a few samples of Storm Release and Explosion Release. My strategy is neither more effective nor faster than what I did in Kiri as it is a lot more covert. Hence, the reason for not seeing many results which I had already expected and I am okay with it being slower too. I have not even had a chance to look into these samples yet as I have my hands full recently.

I am currently looking at what seems to be the tenth clone I made in the last few months. Because of my numerous experiments, the other nine were either destroyed or became something that I would not want to recall.

Like for example, one of the milder experiments I did was, I tested out the theory of transplanting eyes to achieve EMS. But the A.I chip's prediction seems to be accurate. If the donor and the receiver of the eyes don't have mutually exclusive active genes which result in the activation of all twenty-seven genes, there will be no change to the eyes! To verify this, I tested by transplanting eyes from one of my clones to the other or from mine to Fugaku's and vice-versa. Not one of them succeeded in achieving EMS!

Also, I tested out some difficult theories too. For example, I had already known that grafting tissue of someone else will cause damage as my clone cannot inherit active genes from someone else. But what would happen if I graft tissue with only inactive genes? That is, culture a tissue with all inactive genes from another bloodline like Senju and graft it onto the clone. The short answer is… complicated… with this kind of tissue grafting, the clone didn't suffer immediate damage which caused me to be happy until I found that, after the new inactive genes were added to the clone, I am no longer able to activate any Uchiha genes! So, The best possible time to do this is to wait until all Uchiha genes are active or in other words only after getting EMS.

At this point I thanked the heavens, I haven't tried it on myself yet. If I had done that, I would have probably forever lost my chance at gaining EMS!

Even more complex research was creating a clone with two Kekkei Genkais like Sharingan and Ice Release or Ice Release and Boil Release, etc. Not one clone came out clean after these experiments!

Although none of my experiments has yielded any significant results so far, the failures themselves are my rewards as with each failure I am learning new stuff and getting more and more close to the truth! Talking about truth, I have found one more amazing use for my Eye of Truth, which is its use during my experiments. I found out that my mangekyo can not only analyze jutsus, it can also work on many different things like it can give me insights into why something abnormal happened during the experiment that was way too much different than my calculations. This allows me to quickly analyze flaws in my experiments and fix them!

Like this, with all of my plans proceeding smoothly, there is nothing I can complain about. On another note, 'I probably have about a month or so for my graduation exam… I can hardly wait anymore…'

========= END of Volume 1 ========