Itachi can only stare as his teammate—his friend—falls to the ground, lifeless.

The masked man stares at him for a moment, before turning and disappearing.

—Dammit. He tries to stay detached, objective—he shouldn't be this hurt, but—it's so sudden. One moment they were escorting the daimyo, the next, his friend was charging their attacker, then… gone.

Itachi can feel the thrum of blood through his veins, and a pain in his eyes. He knows, already, what this must be. How horribly fitting that his bloodline should activate from a moment like this. A ninja, again taking power from the death of another.

As his gaze sharpens, he begins see the faint wisps of their masked assailant's fading chakra in the air, see the similarly fading chakra dregs escaping Tenma's body, and… feel something—a small pressure in the back of his head, slowly growing and—

...This is not oneness with the Force.

What in the stars' name is going on here?  What happened to this child?

<Ahem.>

<...If you are going to hide away from this, and, in all honesty, I would not force you to face it - you are a child, you would still be a student at the Academy that taught me and that Academy did not deserve to bear the name - I will nonetheless need you to tell me how to pass for yourself to a casual inspection.>

Wait, what?

He did not expect to suddenly be a passenger in his own mind, nor for whatever was controlling his body to… ask him how to pretend to be him?? If this is some sort of bloodline test he wasn't told about, it's a strange one.

<…I would very much prefer that you did not pretend to be me, actually. Please give me back control of my body, now.>

It's probably not as easy as just asking, but diplomacy is always a good first step.

<Well, it is yours.  By all means.  Let me see if...>

It is a motion curiously similar to reaching out to the Force, but directed inward, that allows her to pull the body's original inhabitant outwards - and then she is curled up in the back of his mind.

…And suddenly, he's back in control of his body again!

Huh. He adjusts his mental counter for the likelihood that this is some form of test or adversary down by several notches.

…Well, asking worked before…

<So, what are you, what do you want, and what are you doing in my mind?>

As he speaks internally, he picks himself up and begins to clean up the scene and dispose of the bodies. Having a problem to solve helps him deal with strong emotions, and he's finding himself grateful for this one right now.

<Well.  In order: I don't yet know beyond 'disembodied', I don't know enough about your situation to have reasonable goals beyond 'Why are children being thrust into life-or-death situations, that should stop', and I have absolutely no idea!>  She seems inordinately fascinated by the lattermost answer, for some reason.  <If I had to guess...  And I would be guessing, because none of this was what I expected of an afterlife, and I was not gifted further insight prior to my arrival here...  I would guess that there might be something you need help with, that I am well-placed to advise in or teach.>

<That is, if I am honest, rather concerning, because if I consider myself notable amongst those who thought themselves people like me,> she cannot think without some disgust, <then I must consider myself notable for my work in diplomacy and counterintelligence in a fundamentally hostile working environment - though I suppose I did also have hobbies.  Technical crafts, material alchemy - not to be confused with bioalchemy - and a bit of archaeological dabbling.>  Said 'archaeological dabbling' seems to have had rather a lot of booby-traps involved, judging by the fragmentary associations that pass between them.

Huh. So it's implying that it used to be a person of some form, rather than originating as some type of demon or kami. It could be trying to mislead him with that implication, but it's at least outside of his expectations.

It's not as though he didn't volunteer to be put into these situations: most clan aren't able to become ninja nearly as young as him, and he's glad to be able to help keep his village safe.
Still, he's sympathetic to the goal: it would be better if there were no need for him to face danger.

He smiles at the mention of diplomacy and counterintelligence. If it's lying, it's been reading his mind for what sorts of things he'd appreciate. If not, he expects to get along quite well with it.

<Material alchemy and technical crafts sound interesting and potentially useful, but if you're most notable for diplomacy and counterintelligence, that makes me very happy: violence is, after all, what we resort to when we're out of better options.>

<…And it would not be wrong to call this a "fundamentally hostile working environment", no.>

He pauses again. If this is a person, he should probably ask—most people care about that sort of thing.

<Should I be referring to you in my thoughts as "he" or "she"?>

<'She', if you would.  And while I have held other names,> and that thought, those memories, carry with them a potent admixture of emotions that range from disgust and a cold sort of rage, to an equal amount of relief and felt empowerment, <I would prefer to leave most of them behind where my body...  hm, isn't, actually, but nonetheless.  Where I left behind the symbols tied to them.  So, then.  My name is Ophelia, though I have held other titles.  Might I know yours?  And, likewise, your preference in gendered pronouns, if you have one.>

Huh. Yeah, that seems like a fine thing for him to tell her. It's not as though his name is a difficult piece of information to obtain, anyway.

<I'm Itachi Uchiha, of the Uchiha clan in Earth country. "He" is fine for me.>

He finishes cleaning away evidence of the deaths, and collects the bodies into storage seals. Can't have somebody stealing his companion and learning any of Leaf's secrets from his body.

<...Oh, --> she barely manages to claw back the expletive before it passes outside of her private thoughts, <you're pre-spaceflight.  On the other hand, that scroll, or rather, the capability it represents, are something that even the most esoteric Force adepts of my prior life rarely touched except through the work-product of several dozen millennia of technological advances, and here it is, being used for something as - questionably routine - as recovering a body for transport.  Do you have any idea how revolutionary that scroll could be if it worked for bulk goods?  Or even at just the observed ratio of compression necessary for this to be reliable for field issue, disregarding averages for nonhumanoid sapiences as they are not yet in evidence on your planet, that's a factor of - estimated slightly generously, cylinder of ~2m height and r = ~0.5m, V=πr²h= ~1.6m³ to the scroll (when compact) requiring, say, a volume of 0.2m x 0.05m x 0.1m = 0.001m^3 ...  That's - Three orders of magnitude less volume, to say nothing of the weight - and you're using them to recover dead bodies?>

<...I am both appalled and impressed.>

Alright, some of those concepts aren't translating to him, but from what he can understand… yes, yes this world is horrible and poorly-run and if she came from one that wasn't then he's very sorry for her loss.

<…I have thought about how useful storage seals would be for transportation, but unfortunately, only ninja are able to use them, and ninja are needed elsewhere to protect the village.>

He winces a bit, though. As much as that's true, he really wishes they could get out of a conflict for long enough to actually improve things like that. It feels like every time one conflict ends, another pops up to keep them busy.

<Why is it that only ninja can use them?  What distinguishes a ninja from a civilian?  And what distinguishes a ninja capable of using one of these, from a ninja who is not?  The most prominent Force traditions of my prior life had a habit of saying that only people with a certain baseline level of sensitivity to the Force could use it at all, but that was quite demonstrably false, as the Matukai adepts proved...>

<Well, of course ninja are only trained if they have sufficient chakra capacity and control to wield… ninjutsu.>

He pauses.

Right. Seals are dangerous to use without proper training, and you'd still need adequate control, but chakra capacity doesn't matter. If you could somehow convince enough experienced ninja to train civilians with any capacity and enough control, the village could have civilians able to use seals.

…He suddenly has a lot to think about.

Hmm… it would take a lot of work, but if he can somehow convince the clan to back it, they might be able to bring in enough retired ninja to test and train some civilians to use seals…

…Though seals are expensive, so it'll be a hard sell to the village…

—Oh, but he should be hurrying home now. He may be talented for his age, but he's still alone now, with dangerous ninja about.

He hurriedly packs up the last of their belongings, then jogs up a tree to begin treewalking back to the village. At least with the daimyo dead, he can move at real speed.

<What makes seals expensive?>

This bottleneck, he's more confident in his understanding of.

<Firstly, only specially-trained ninja can make them, so their skills are valuable and thereby expensive. Then, they require specially-treated paper and ink, which are also expensive. Alongside that, sealing is powerful, so the clans with seal-masters are unlikely to let them train ninja from outside the clan. Finally, seal-creation is dangerous, so even if we could train more seal-masters, it would be difficult to convince more ninja to learn.>

<Hm.>

<I wonder if we could learn.  And if the principles of ritual alchemy are close enough that I could learn to translate...>

<Which might, if I could set up something specific to the sorts of transformation we'd need, make the cost of paper and ink merely the cost of paper and ink, or even their precursors, rather than the specially treated sort.  I suppose it depends on if the necessary condition is, itself, a matter of ritual or of baser physics...>

<But I fear I am pursuing similarities between your chakra and the Force where it may be none exist.>

<I suppose there is one other pertinent question, though one I do not expect that you can answer now: Do you need to know the entire art of sealing, to replicate a single example by rote?  It would hardly be mass production,> fleeting thoughts of massive factories operating entirely automatically, and of a seal that could hypothetically make another seal, leak out - <but it's still a step up from artisanry on a logistical scale.>

…

<Well, I'm not a seal-master, but I'm under the impression that it takes a minimum degree of competence in the art to replicate seals safely—but the main issues are still the clans' reticence to allow their seal-masters to train too many ninja in sealing, and most ninja's reluctance to learn the art, given its danger.>

Similarities between her arts and theirs seems like a potentially useful topic, but that can wait for when they can actually test such things. For now, he simply continues his run back to the village in relative silence.

When they arrive outside the clan compound, Itachi pauses.

<…This is going to be difficult. My teammate and our charge—the daimyo—are dead, and I'm going to need to give a full report. Do you have any advice, and… what do I say about you? If you're not some aspect of the Sharingan, then you're something unusual, and that means I probably need to tell them about you.>

<...I must admit, I do not trust anyone with my existence, yet.  Especially in circumstances you have described as 'hostile'.  It is not technically incorrect to say that I turned up after mission failure, for some values of 'mission failure', and therefore maybe needn't be part of your report on the mission.>

<That does not mean that I think you should listen to me about that.  But given your reaction...  There is an ancient story, and a much less ancient tactic, where someone disguises their troops inside an innocent-seeming target/object, and springs an ambush from within the walls they could breach no other way.>

<I know I have no [expletive redacted] clue what's going on, but even so, I wouldn't trust me further than I could throw me.  I could be a sleeper agent.  Except that I doubt someone could invent my entire universe, and indeed my entire species, for the purpose of a cover persona.  But you shouldn't believe me, I don't think.  We don't know it can't be done.  Or that I couldn't have been pulled from my world by some technique of yours.>

<And as much as I think that probably means I shouldn't be trusted, I would not want the weight of those protocols to fall on you.  Especially if, given how bad everything else is, that I'm correct in assuming your society thinks torture is productive.>

<As far as advice...>

<...The question remains: Why were you left alive, where the others were not?>

<I think your attacker, or whosoever might be lurking behind them, must have some grander plan, but I cannot...>

<The only hypothesis I have, is that the attacker wanted you to activate this Sharingan for some reason - assuming, that is, that you were not already possessed of the capability, but there must have been some reason for my arrival.>

<...The real question, though, if that's the case, is why he wanted to do that.  How could he possibly benefit?  And why would he let you go?>

<Why does he want Itachi Uchiha to be in this situation?  Being permitted allies, even dubious ones, makes you harder to exploit by an external force such as he.  ...Unless he thinks he can somehow turn that around on you...  No, surely not, the sheer contrivance rivals some of the worst offenders in having reasonable plans that I've ever known, but yet -->

<I hate that I can actually believe someone would literally kill your people in front of you, and then try to convince you he's your friend.  But I've seen someone try - or close enough - and worse, seen them succeed.  So you must be careful.  ...At least I can be reasonably confident that you're not a sleeper agent.>

<...Backing up a step.  There's something else that's screwy, here.  If your attacker wanted to awaken your Sharingan, how did he know how to make that happen?  I simply can't imagine that you tell people.  I certainly wouldn't.  And if he'd had to figure it out empirically, he'd have had to leave enough evidence of trying - even if it was only suspicious disappearances - that this would not be the first you'd heard of him.  And yet it is.  So how could it possibly be?>

<Is there a missing Uchiha somewhere?  One that would have known that, and could have told others?  Possibly one with only one eye; I can't imagine that you'd break up your depth perception unless you either desperately needed to conceal something about your eyes, or you had already lost one anyway.>

<I… think, on principles, I should not trust you here, no.>

Wow, she seems really prone to falling down mental rabbitholes. Someone should teach her about breadth-first searches and brainstorming.

<…So… it could have been to activate the Sharingan, but there are other, simpler hypotheses. First, we don't know that the masked man was specifically sparing me: He could have just wanted a survivor, so the clan knew what happened—to send a message. Second, it's possible he has some loyalty or ties to my clan, and didn't want to harm his own interests by killing one of us.>

<Your hypothesis is interesting, but it depends on too many unlikely events to be privileged above the others. It's possible that he meant for specifically me to survive, knew that my Sharingan would activate, and wanted exactly this outcome, but it's also possible that he knew less and had less specific goals.>