Tsukiyomi and chan

In the outskirts of Konoha, little Itachi was practicing his kunai jutsu when he found a mysterious lady with lush curly hair practicing her kata.

Itachi secretly observed her for a few days and slowly adapted her style, later learning that it belonged to the school of Shito-Ryu.

Itachi, not having awakened his Sharingan yet, tried to increase his caliber in taijutsu. In one of the sessions, the sneaky, cute Itachi was caught by this “crane of a personality,” whose concentration was like a crane hunting a fish. She didn’t mind the young lad watching her; she understood he was trying to learn a technique and was slowly inserting her style into his own. The lady, who was also a master in weapon training, suddenly threw a kunai at him out of nowhere. Itachi, being Itachi, threw a kunai back at the piercing kunai and deflected it. Impressed by the style and skill of this boy, she called him gently. Itachi went to her with a sincere and warm face.

She noticed the Uchiha logo and was assured of his strength. Now she asked him for a friendly brawl. In an exchange of shuriken between Itachi and the lady, a fierce battle ensued. She dodged a ball of fire from him and threw a wind-style attack from her kata. Itachi countered with a fire-style attack. She was extremely impressed by his skill, and so was he by hers. She extended her hand for a handshake, and while Itachi put his hand out, she caught his wrist and pushed him to the ground. He swirled his leg around and landed a hit on her shoulder. Both came to a rest and exchanged a grin.

Itachi suddenly woke up and saw himself hanging upside down from an electric pole, feeling the pain of a thousand needles piercing his eyes. He remembered the night the Kyūbi attacked Konoha—he saw his brother Sasuke being grabbed by a small version of the Kyūbi and devoured. It attacked all of the Uchiha, and the entire clan came to an end. This image kept repeating for a few minutes, which felt like hours in hell.

Then the lady announced, “Little boy, call me Chan-sama.”

He woke from this dream and suspected it might be a form of genjutsu. Completely deteriorated by the devastating image, he still kept his spirit high and asked Chan, “Chan-sama, can you show me how you did that? How is this possible? Is this any special form of genjutsu?”

She said, “Before that, you have to practice with me for a few days.”

Itachi, being a prodigy, aced all the basics of Shito-Ryu kata, like Kihon no Kata and Pinan Sandan. Chan-sama increased the intensity of the training. She challenged his shuriken jutsu abilities. Despite having mastered much of it, Chan-sama’s training put a strain on his little muscles. She ordered him to counter every shuriken move of hers with the kata he was practicing. Initially, he struggled to deviate them a bit, but soon he mastered the ability to dodge and deviate them completely.

They finished for the day, and Chan-sama vanished into thin air. Hoping to meet his new practice partner, Itachi left for the village. Back in the Uchiha quarters, little Itachi told his father he had been practicing new styles of jutsu that would increase his abilities in taijutsu and help him master some of his ninjutsu. Little Itachi, just a genin, would soon turn out to be a prodigious chūnin, but before that, he set out to master all other forms of martial arts before acquiring the Sharingan.

Itachi met his jōnin in-charge Yuki, along with his teammate Tenma, for a B-rank mission. The objective was to find a warlord’s hidden emblem from a common land, but with the condition of crossing a narrow passage at the borders of Stone—given the historic tensions between the Stone and the Leaf. The jōnin were escorted with much care by Yuki.

A thin wire string was triggered by Shinko, setting off a series of minor explosions and alerting the Stone village ninjas, who attacked them. The team of four carefully went into stealth mode but was surrounded by tens of Stone shinobi. While Yuki tried to make a move, he broke a twig, sounding an alarm in the silent forest, causing two skilled Stone shinobi to put a kunai to Yuki’s throat. To work in stealth, Itachi used his most advanced Bassai Dai and knocked out both in silence. He used a shuriken jutsu to distract all the shinobi from their side and lure them away from the rest of his team.

The team safely passed through the narrow passage, but within seconds Itachi was surrounded by a group of eight Stone shinobi—powerful earth-style users creating boulders and attacking him. He broke them with his kata and knocked most of them out with a multi-kata style close to the Hyūga style. Two out of the eight remained. When he used fire-style jutsu, a water user doused it and trapped his legs in the earth. Itachi threw a fireball combined with a shuriken, killing one Stone user, but began sinking into the earth. His teammate Tenma came to his aid, knocking out the last man and pulling him up. They escaped the path, and when Itachi turned back to look at Tenma, he vanished—only for Itachi to see him a second later, already waiting with the others. Surprised, Itachi wondered how Tenma had surpassed him but decided not to dwell on it.

The hidden emblem was apparently locked in a puzzle mechanism that opened in a tricky, step-by-step fashion.

The first step involved climbing down a ladder and removing a strong spherical ball whose surface didn’t touch anything. It floated at the center of a cube without support. With physical force, the ball only rotated 360 degrees. Tenma, a specialist in genjutsu, tried to shrink it and pull it out but could only do so visually—the material stayed the same. Shinko and Yuki searched the puzzle for clues, tracing the surface for locks or sleeves that could give an opening. They found a small sleeve that matched a meditating Buddha symbol. Shinko, using her crafting skills, shaped a stone to fit the sleeve and inserted it accurately.

It was a trap to hide the artifact—a false clue that shook the room’s foundation, causing part of the roof to fall. In a narrow escape, Itachi and Yuki pulled the other two out from under the falling debris. Itachi tried to melt the obstacle with fireballs and shuriken attacks, but nothing changed. He used his kata to punch it, finding that it moved freely but was fixed at one point. He quickly realized it could be opened only with a specific set of moves—ones Chan-sama had once demonstrated. With his razor-sharp memory, he reenacted the kata and applied it to the spherical ball. It came loose and fell into his hand, opening the first piece of the puzzle.

The first puzzle broken, it revealed a chamber where thousands of scrolls were stored. Tenma and Yuki opened the left side, while Itachi and Shinko searched the right. Most scrolls were empty, and a few had dots and cryptic symbols that seemed meaningless. Shinko gathered all the message scrolls separately and discarded the empty ones. Once they had collected a few hundred, they tried different combinations to form coherent messages. As they overlapped some scrolls, Shinko noticed a pattern and decrypted characters to form words.

A message appeared in Tenma’s combination: you, here, never, get, will, out, from. As he read the words aloud one by one, Itachi realized it was a warning or a booby trap. He jumped into the upper room just as a cloud of mysterious vapor filled the chamber. He quickly put a cloth mask on but began to feel dizzy. An instant later, he jumped back down to retrieve his collapsed teammates and Yuki-sama. The vapor was thick, and visibility was almost zero. As he struggled to carry Yuki, he nearly tripped.

A swirling figure with a mask and fan appeared in the chamber, clearing the vapor. The figure moved with such precision and speed that Itachi quickly recognized her—it was Chan-sama. She pulled everyone to safety and shook little Itachi awake.

“Chan-sama, what are you doing here?” he asked.

She put him into another dream image. He saw a battlefield where a few Uchiha warriors fought alone against thousands of highly skilled shinobi. They bravely killed hundreds, but soon the image turned into a massacre—blood pooled around the mighty warriors, their bodies lying among fallen weapons.

When Itachi awoke, he was shaken and suspicious.

“Who are you? Why did you teach me your kata? Why did you show me these images? Are you a genjutsu master? You don’t even have the Sharingan! What are you?”

She smiled gently.

“Don’t you have a mission to complete? Let’s concentrate on that.”

“Stop distracting me,” Itachi said. “I know you’re with the enemy somehow. Pretending to save us during the mission doesn’t make you my friend.”

“You’re right,” Chan replied. “I’m pretending to save you because you don’t need to be saved. You’re very capable of finishing this mission on your own, and I know you’re much more capable than that. I might not be your friend, but I’m not with the enemy.”

“I can’t believe you at all,” Itachi said.

“You don’t need to trust me or my truth,” she said. “Remember, I taught you some of my best kata that I mastered in secret. If I didn’t care for you, little Itachi, why would I do that?”

“Lady, why do you care for me? Do you have something to do with me or the Uchiha? Tell me—what the hell are you?”

The land rumbled, and a door opened behind one of the scroll trays.

“Come in,” Chan said. “You’ve solved the puzzle. You will find the emblem now. You will also find the truth about me—and yourself.”

Itachi remained cautious, determined to uncover the truth about this woman. She soon vanished into thin air as he entered the room. His teammates and Yuki-sama came from behind and congratulated him on solving the puzzle.

Back in Konoha, the Third Hokage appreciated Yuki and the team. He called Itachi aside, congratulated him, and gave him a prestigious Uchiha-crest shuriken set that had been kept in the armory since the Third Great Ninja War.

“This shall be of great use to you,” said the Hokage.

Yuki, jealous, refused to recommend the team for the upcoming chūnin exams. In the background, Danzō secretly met with Itachi and asked him to join under him, promising to make him a jōnin soon and later a member of the Foundation Root as a skilled ANBU.