"Maybe we should just go ahead and assassinate that brat Itachi ahead of schedule..."
Uchiha Rēn clenched his jaw, thinking dark thoughts.
After all, Danzo would take the blame. With him as the scapegoat, no one in the clan would suspect Rēn. As for killing Uchiha Itachi would possibly prevent Sasuke from ever awakening the Eternal Mangekyō... that was a problem for another day. If they couldn't even get through the looming Uchiha Massacre, then the future wouldn't matter anyway.
Walking along the streets of the Uchiha district, Rēn let out a silent sigh.
Assassinating Uchiha Itachi—it was just talk.
Despite being a shinobi, assassination wasn't his strongest. Taking down Itachi, who had already awakened the two-tomoe Sharingan, and pinning it all on Danzo… there were just too many unpredictable factors. Let alone whether he could even kill someone as freakishly blessed as Itachi—if his involvement were ever exposed…
"Rēn!"
A voice called down from above.
Rēn stopped walking.
His unreliable train of thought was interrupted. He looked up in the direction of the voice and saw a man with a rare button nose for a member of the Uchiha clan.
"...Shisui. You're back, huh?"
"Just got back today!"
Uchiha Shisui jumped down from the roof of the pancake shop. The griddle master sitting on a small stool out front didn't even lift an eyelid. Ninjas—they were always skipping the road in favour of rooftops and balconies. In a place as big as Konoha, there probably wasn't a single roof tile that hadn't been stepped on by a shinobi.
"Rēn, you look worried. Something happen?"
Shisui walked over naturally, falling into a step beside Rēn.
They had fought together in the Third Shinobi War—good friends who had battled side by side on the Eastern Front against Kirigakure's shinobi. But…
"What else? You know what things are like in the clan."
At those words, the smile on Shisui's face vanished instantly. A gloomy shadow fell over his eyes and brow.
"You weren't at the clan meeting two nights ago. Let me be honest—resentment among the clan members is getting worse. Many neutrals have shifted to the radicals. The number of people supporting an armed coup is rising fast. The worst part is... even the clan head didn't try to mediate this time. Even the two elders in the opposition seemed less firm than before…"
Rēn quietly relayed all the details of the meeting to Shisui.
He too was against a coup. No, to be more accurate, he believed an armed uprising should be an absolute last resort—used only when there was truly no other way out. Such a move would hurt both enemy and self—like drinking poison to quench their thirst. Even if the coup succeeded, the price would be enormous. And then what? How would they fend off the wolves lurking beyond the Land of Fire's borders?
Besides, there was no guarantee a coup would even succeed in the first place.
The Uchiha clan might not be weak, but they weren't as powerful as they once were. Their former prestige was long gone. Though still known as Konoha's "first noble clan," how much of that was sincere, and how much was mockery—that depended on the beholder.
They had a decent number of Jōnin, sure—but nowhere near as many as the rest of the village's clans and civilian shinobi.
Worse still, the only confirmed Mangekyō Sharingan user in the clan was Shisui—who had long moved past narrow clan thinking and inherited the Will of Fire from his predecessors. He would never betray the village. At best, he was better than Obito and Itachi; he'd rather take his own life than raise a hand against his kin.
Even Uchiha Fugaku, the clan head and suspected Mangekyō user, couldn't bring himself to fight back when his son raised a blade against him. He may have accepted it, but the rest of the clan… they were the ones left to suffer.
With a clan this divided in heart and mind—how could they possibly stage a successful coup?
Rēn saw no hope for it.
**"Sigh… in the end, I'm just too weak. If only I were stronger…"**
Rēn clenched his fists.
Then let them fall again, powerless.
Getting stronger wasn't something that happened overnight. During the Third War, just surviving the battlefield had drained everything he had. When the war finally ended, the Nine-Tail's rampage broke out not long after—and dragged the Uchiha clan to the edge of the abyss.
In this storm of chaos, just staying alive was exhausting and took all his energy.
"It's gotten that bad already…" Shisui frowned in pain. He cherished his clan, but also loved the village. When the two stood in opposition, heading toward mutual destruction—he bore the weight of it all.
Later, when he drowned himself in the river, his suicide note read:
**"I'm tired of missions. I am tired of killing. If things continue like this, the Uchiha clan has no future. I don't want to keep going anymore."**
By that time, Shisui had likely been crushed under the weight of hopeless despair.
Suicide—it was something only the utterly hopeless would choose.
Especially for someone like Shisui, who had always been gentle and cheerful. For him to take such a tragic step—he must have truly reached his limit.
"Isn't there really… no way to stop the clan from going through with this?" Shisui asked.
"There is. If the village leadership stopped treating us as a threat, the radicals wouldn't have so much ground to stand on. Plenty within the clan oppose the coup—but the constant surveillance, the whispered accusations, the open suspicion… it's pressure without end. And pressure creates fracture."
"Even the Hokage…"
Shisui started to speak, instinctively trying to defend Hiruzen.
"I know," Rēn said. "It's the aftermath of the Nine-Tails attack. If I were Hokage, I'd be cautious too. The Uchiha are powerful, and history makes people superstitious. But the truth is, we had nothing to do with that incident. The timelines don't match. You're the only one with the Mangekyō, and it awakened well after the attack."
"It's impossible for the so-called "Professor" to not know this and be so blind."
"But... from our side, the clan doesn't see how hard the Hokage is working for peace. All we feel is the village's endless hostility. Even though you're in the ANBU, you must know how bad the police force's reputation is among the villagers, right?"
Ignoring Shisui's attempt to speak, Rēn glanced around, then pointed toward a small three-story building nearby.
"Shisui, let's head over there. You just got back from a mission. If you've got time... let's talk properly."
"Alright."
Shisui nodded.
There was no reason to refuse.
He was frustrated too, and needed someone to talk to. It was sad, really—one of the clan's top elites, yet he had so few true friends. Too many people saw him as an idol rather than an equal.
If not for Uchiha Rēn, the only one in the clan he could really talk to would've been the much younger Itachi.
But Itachi was just a kid—not someone he could vent to. In the original timeline, with no like-minded friends to confide in, he had bottled everything up, always forcing a smile around Itachi. That's probably how all that pressure and despair built up over time.
Thankfully,
History had changed a little. Rēn existed now—a friend he could confide in.
Even if they didn't agree on everything.