265-I Hope I ddin't destroy the Eyes
'What… are these memories?' he thought, his brow furrowing in confusion.
The pain in his head pulsed like a heartbeat, slow and steady but unbearable. These images—these experiences—were so vivid, so real, that he could feel them coursing through his very being. And yet, they weren't his memories. Or were they?
Renjiro's eyes shifted to the lifeless body of Kawana Chinoike sprawled in front of him, the bloodstained ground surrounding them like a grim battlefield.
The minute Kawana had tried to use genjutsu on him, something inside Renjiro had switched. He hadn't thought; he had simply reacted, driven by instincts he hadn't known were there.
His body had moved on its own, the urgency to kill Kawana as quickly as possible overriding every other thought. Renjiro always liked control and now losing control of his body more so, terrified him
Now that the fight was over, Renjiro was left to deal with the aftermath. And it wasn't just the bodies littering the room or the blood that had painted the walls—it was the barrage of memories flooding his mind. Memories that didn't belong to him. Or at least, that's what he had thought at first.
"Is this genjutsu? No... that's not possible," Renjiro muttered to himself, still trying to piece everything together.
His Sharingan had been active the entire time, and with his chakra purification ability—his chakra seinou—he was immune to genjutsu. There was no way Kawana's Ketsuryūgan could have trapped him in an illusion.
The silence in the room was suffocating. His clones had already evacuated the children and taken Kakashi to safety, leaving Renjiro alone amidst the carnage.
Kakashi had been caught in a genjutsu, a subtle one that had seeped into his chakra and momentarily turned him against the shadow clones. It was only thanks to one of Renjiro's clones that Kakashi had been knocked out before he could do any real harm.
Now, with the room eerily quiet, Renjiro was left with his thoughts. And the memories.
What he had seen in those memories had shaken him to his core. It was him—Renjiro—but it wasn't the Renjiro he had always known, or the Renjiro he had come to be. It was the original Renjiro. The one whose body he took when he arrived in this world.
These memories stretched far back, back to Uzushiogakure, before its destruction. No, it was during its destruction. Renjiro could see it so clearly, as though he were reliving it. The chaos, the screams, the burning of the village.
Renjiro, or rather, the original Renjiro, had been running for his life with his parents and a small group of survivors. The enemy shinobi were everywhere, slaughtering anyone who stood in their way. Among their pursuers was a Chinoike clan member, their Ketsuryūgan glowing ominously as they cut down one villager after another and empowering themselves with their victims' blood.
He had seen his parents fall in those memories—had felt the raw, agonizing grief of watching them die. And yet, somehow, he had survived.
Renjiro's chest tightened as he forced himself to confront what these memories meant.
'What do these memories mean?' he wondered, his mind spinning with the implications.
His earliest memory had always been of leaving Uzushiogakure with Miwa, escaping the destruction and settling in Konoha. But now... now he wasn't sure. Was that memory real? Or had it been something else entirely?
'Were those my true memories?' he questioned.
Renjiro's thoughts tumbled over one another, like pieces of a puzzle that didn't fit. He couldn't ignore the possibility that what he had believed about his past might not be true.
A cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck as Renjiro exhaled sharply, trying to steady himself. His entire sense of identity had been shaken, and now he was left grappling with questions that had no easy answers.
"I don't know what just happened," Renjiro muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, "but the only person who might have answers is Miwa."
She was the only one still alive who had been there when Renjiro first arrived in this world. She had been there when he started his new life. She might know something—anything—that could explain what was happening to him.
With a deep breath, Renjiro pushed himself to his feet, his legs trembling slightly from both exhaustion and the lingering shock of the fight. His twin swords were still in his hands, slick with the blood of Kawana and the others he had cut down.
With a quick flick of his wrists, he shook the blood off the blades, though they were badly damaged from the battle.
As he examined them, Renjiro frowned. The once pristine metal of the swords was now scorched and cracked, the result of channelling lightning chakra through them during his final attack on Kawana.
He should have known better. These blades weren't made from chakra metal, and the strain had been too much for them to handle.
"I shouldn't have used lightning chakra through them," he muttered bitterly to himself.
"Now they're practically destroyed." The edges were jagged, uneven, and one of the hilts had started to split under the pressure. If the swords had been crafted from chakra metal, they might have withstood the strain. But now, they were little more than damaged weapons, barely usable.
Renjiro's gaze drifted to Kawana's corpse. The body was still smoking slightly from the intense surge of lightning that had ripped through it.
His clothes were charred, and his skin was burned beyond recognition in several places. Renjiro's attack had been brutal, but it had been necessary. He couldn't afford to leave Kawana alive, not with the threat of the Ketsuryūgan.
As Renjiro took a few steps closer to the body, he crouched down, his eyes narrowing as he examined the damage. "I hope I didn't destroy his eyes," he murmured, a hint of concern in his voice.
The Ketsuryūgan was a powerful dōjutsu, and while Renjiro had no interest in it personally, he knew how valuable it could be for studying back in Konoha. If the eyes were too damaged, they might be useless.
Before he could inspect further, Renjiro sensed a familiar presence approaching. His body tensed slightly, though he knew it wasn't an enemy.
The faint sound of footsteps echoed in the distance, growing louder with each passing second. Renjiro straightened up, turning his head toward the entrance just as Yano Shimura appeared in the doorway.
Yano stopped in his tracks, his sharp eyes sweeping across the room, taking in the gruesome scene before him. The walls were painted with blood, the bodies of Kawana and the other spectators lying in twisted heaps around the room. The air was thick with the stench of death, and the flickering light from the few surviving lamps cast eerie shadows over the carnage.
"What the hell happened here?" Yano's voice was laced with shock, though he quickly masked it with his usual cold demeanour. His eyes locked onto Renjiro, who stood in the middle of the room.