Something felt wrong.
Sasuke, for all of his faults, was damnably talented. He was good at what he did, one of the most dangerous in Konoha, and he would have put himself up against just about anyone in the village with the full belief that he could win. He was almost literally bred for battle.
So when he felt that something was off, he had to chalk it up to being more than just a gut feeling, and it wasn't necessarily because of the danger of the battle he was fighting.
Sasuke's eyes were being put to the test, as Itachi seemed able to meld to with the shadows, moving about the jinchuuriki-sealing chamber as though he were a part of it himself. Between Itachi's speed, the darkness, and the crows constantly flying around the room, it was a challenge to try and keep a bead on him.
"Do you really think you've grown enough to kill me Sasuke?" Itachi's voice echoed all around, "Your eyes lack the strength that mine do."
Sasuke sneered at the slight against his Sharingan. It was true, he hadn't fallen to a low enough level to do what he had to for the Mangekyou Sharingan. After seeing the people he cared about die right in front of him once before, how could he be the one to cause such a thing himself?
"Unlike you, I don't have to kill everyone who ever trusted me to test myself Itachi," Sasuke said, forming hand-seals as he began to see a pattern moving through the crows that kept trying to swarm and surround him, "I just have to kill you! Katon: Kaen no Hatou (Fire Release: Heart of the Blaze)!"
Sasuke shot flames from his mouth as he drew his war fan and gave it a grand swing, sending fire spraying in an arc in front of him. Crows cawed their last and Sasuke rushed through them to free himself as Itachi came at him from behind, his body seeming to form from whatever was left of his summoned animals.
A kunai in his hand, Itachi slashed at the back of Sasuke's neck, only for his entire body to turn into weightless flames. His arm passed through and caught on fire, quickly engulfing the entire limb as it began to spread across his entire body.
Despite the pain of being burned alive, with a blink of his eyes, Itachi dispelled the genjutsu in time to look up and see a fire covering the entire roof, causing it to cave in on him. Once again, Itachi blinked, dispelling the second layer of Sasuke's genjutsu attack, and put up his kunai arm to cut the metal wire that was a split-second away from tightening around his throat.
Looking up, Itachi saw Sasuke standing on the ceiling, holding the now useless strands of ninja wire that he'd tried to hang and slit Itachi's throat with. Even with his Sharingan on, Sasuke barely saw Itachi's arm move to release dozens of shuriken aimed right at him. Letting himself fall down from above, Sasuke contorted his body through the dangerous metal stars, forming a Chidori in his right hand.
With a crash and the fluttering of wings amid the sound of electricity chirping, Sasuke crashed through Itachi's body only for the elder brother to break apart in a flock of crows. Sasuke's Chidori punched into the floor, discharging enough electricity in the air around him to bring down several crows. Oh, how he grew weary of all the crows.
Standing a slight distance away, Itachi watched the lightning dance around his brother's body as he stood back upright, "You've grown," He said as the interior of the hideout burned around the two of them. Sasuke's original fire attack had left little untouched by flames.
Sasuke cut Itachi off with a scoff, "You're an ass."
"-But you didn't take my advice," Itachi continued, "I told you that the next time we met, you should have come with eyes like mine."
"I don't want to think I'm dirty enough to kill my friends or family for a power boost," Sasuke said, taking a specific jab at his older brother, "I'd like to think I'm man enough to earn it the hard way."
"Is that what you think?"
"That's what I KNOW!" Sasuke snapped, "What I used to think was that you cared!" Sasuke stated firmly. All of that couldn't have been fake, or just went away out of the blue one day, "You said that the clan was weak, that they had lost sight of what was important because of us keeping and clinging to ourselves. Well what was it that was so important that you thought killing them all was the right thing to do! I think that I don't have a fucking idea of what was or is in your head Itachi!"
"I told them that clutching and clinging to the clan and only the clan, the pride of the Uchiha and nothing else, would limit them. Doom them," Itachi calmly explained, "I always hoped you wouldn't exhibit the same mindset, but in sending your friend away, you've proven my point."
That was enough to get a bitter laugh out of Sasuke. The acid in his voice could have burned through almost anything, "You think I'm fighting you all on my own because I can't put my faith in anyone else?"
"Am I wrong?"
"...You're dead wrong."
Both brothers clashed, Sasuke bringing his war fan to bear against Itachi's well-placed kunai that kept his arm braced. The way Itachi used his second arm to support his other at the wrist, gave him enough space to quickly rattle off hand-seals before Sasuke could overpower his one limb, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"
Sasuke was able to leap away, keeping himself just out of the way of the expanding blaze. His body and arms burned, but it was preferable to his entire body being immolated. Sasuke quickly prepared a jutsu of his own as he flew back through the air, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"
A giant hawk appeared from a puff of smoke beneath Sasuke and flew at Itachi, attempting to catch and tear into him with its talons only to miss. It didn't stop or dawdle within the sealing chamber however, flying outside of the burning building. Itachi watched passively as his brother's avian summon creature exited the premises.
XxX
Kisame stood a short distance away, looking at the rest of the building he'd been fighting Naruto in collapse and sink underneath the water. An eager grin sat on his face as he ignored the sandstorm around them and waited for the boy to surface. He was fully aware that Naruto was still alive. If he had died, Samehada wouldn't have been able to sense him any longer.
Besides, if leaving him trapped at the bottom of a water-filled building with no way out was enough to kill him, he'd have really regretted enjoying a fight up until that point against someone so frail.
He had high hopes for this particular jinchuuriki.
The explosion that had resulted in the building coming down had mostly been absorbed by Samehada, at least the portion of it that would have devastated the upper levels. It had already done its damage to the lower portion, thus it all came down.
Despite not being able to see Naruto, Kisame knew he wasn't dead even if he couldn't pinpoint his location. The power of the Kyuubi's chakra permeated the environment around him. As long as that was active, that meant his prey was alive and well.
Two massive chakra claws flew out of the water and grabbed separate sides of the building Kisame rested atop. The dwelling was vertically split in half by a sharp blade of wind that passed right through the center of it, done by the other two arms doing the work from underneath the water. Kisame laughed as he free-fell through the air and found himself smashed by the segments of building that fell apart upon impact.
He felt every bit of it, thinking to himself as pain ran through every part of his body, 'He's not even bothering to waste his chakra on jutsu or forcing it my way. He's just using it to beef up his regular brute force,' Kisame had been expecting some kind of crazy attack, or at least the chakra arms to stupidly reach out and grab or hit him.
It was kind of ingenious, in a crazy sort of way. Naruto had used the building like gloves or a pair of tongs, something to handle a thing that was too dangerous to touch bare-handed. Normally that would have applied to Naruto with the form that he had taken, but to Naruto that was Kisame, or more appropriately Samehada.
'Not bad kid,' Kisame thought as he landed on a slab of rock sticking out of the water, his Akatsuki cloak ripped asunder by his rough treatment. A bloody grin sat upon his face despite the fact that both of his arms were broken and he knew something internally had ruptured, "I like the premise. But-."
Naruto's chakra arms slammed what was left on top of Kisame's prone form, burying it all underwater by destroying the slab the Akatsuki member had been lying on.
The teenage jinchuuriki burst from the water below, tails spinning above him rapidly to allow him some time to hang in the air over where he had dropped Kisame. He wasn't going to give Kisame any opportunity to drain his chakra.
Which made it all the more disheartening and surprising when Naruto felt an extreme amount of his chakra's intensity vanish, dropping him back to his more common jinchuuriki cloak.
The surprise showed on his face, even as his skin started to grow back as he fell from the air without the four tails to use as a sort of makeshift propeller.
"What?" Despite its lack of concern for anything Naruto did otherwise, in battle, the Kyuubi found itself paying attention. A loss for Naruto meant death or even worse for it, and raw power was the Kyuubi's security blanket. Having its chakra just up and vanish from it in such a way was the closest thing to terror it had felt since being sealed inside of the boy, "What just happened!?"
Naruto wished he could answer that question, because he understood the feeling of panic. He had been winning. At least, he felt like he had been winning, 'I don't know! He didn't touch me! The sword didn't either!' On a more pressing note though, how high did he have to be to go splat once he hit the water? Because that was his next stop.
The water came at him faster than Naruto had been expecting, but instead of smacking off of it with his body, Naruto found himself engulfed and surrounded by it. A rather gentle alternative to how he had anticipated entering the drink.
It was then that he realized the problem with his situation. The skyscrapers around him were covered in water as well, from the ground to above their tips. That didn't seem right. Neither did the speedy, blue-skinned figure darting around him.
Naruto tried to turn to see just what it was, but his mobility underwater and without his tails to stabilize him kept him from maneuvering as well as he could have given separate circumstances. This lack of mobility bit him when he found his entire body grabbed by the blue blur. Naruto's chakra immediately began draining as though it were water from an open faucet.
A look over his shoulder revealed it to be a starkly transformed Kisame. His shark motif was even more prevalent now, as he had grown fins on his arms and head, as well as webbed hands, gills, and a tail, "Come on Nine-Tails, give me a hug!" Spikes jutted out from his body, stabbing into Naruto, forcing Konoha's jinchuuriki to let out a gasp that risked filling his lungs with water.
'Ah! Bad touch! Bad touch!' Gritting his teeth, fighting and struggling as he could feel the chakra being pulled from his body, in desperation, Naruto pushed wind-transformed chakra from every part of his body that he could. Even if Kisame wound up absorbing it, the force of it blasting out was enough to drive him off of Naruto, though by then the chakra cloak had been absorbed off of him, 'Not good.'
Kisame swam back as blood filtered into the water from Naruto's new wounds. He laughed to himself right up until Naruto moved his hands around his own head in a circle. It stopped being funny when he saw Naruto take a series of deep, lifesaving breaths despite being surrounded by water, "I didn't know you could do that."
Naruto stopped panicking and realized that he'd wound up saving himself from drowning, almost surprised by his own actions, "...Huh. You know, I kind of didn't either," His own personal air pocket, and speaking of things he didn't know, "Hey, you didn't even touch me! How could you absorb my chakra?"
"When you're throwing your biju weight around, I don't need to touch you to take any of it," Samehada could absorb chakra from him without touching him, as long as it was visible anyway, "Not that you haven't been keeping the chakra flow coming regardless."
'What?' Naruto thought as he started swimming and trying to defend himself.
He didn't understand. The only other time he'd let Kisame absorb any of his chakra with Samehada, he had done it with an ash technique, so even without the chakra it had been an effective attack.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Kisame asked with a laugh, "Samehada can absorb any sort of chakra sent its way. You've been feeding Samehada from the start, quite well I might add, every time you've used that sonar sensor crap to look around."
Naruto had taken him on with a hell of a plan, using what he knew of Samehada to avoid getting large chunks of his chakra taken away. It was just too bad that he had still been handing chakra over because of what he didn't know.
As they continued to fight, Naruto was able to keep Kisame from latching onto him again, but he lost chakra every time Kisame so much as even touched him. More than a few times, Naruto was able to use his full-body wind chakra trick to blow Kisame away, but no matter how much a headstart he gave himself with that approach, he could never swim his way to freedom.
Drowning by itself wasn't a problem for Naruto as long as he could keep taking periodic breaths the way he had discovered he could, but for the first time he could remember in his life, Naruto was beginning to feel true fatigue. So much so that he had turned off his standard chakra cloak to try and preserve as much of it as he could.
Now the times when people told him about being low on chakra were more than just idle noise to Naruto. He was starting to get the picture now.
'Shit, is this what other people feel like? All the time?' The blond chunin asked rhetorically, remembering all of the times he had goaded enemies into ninjutsu pissing contests where he got people to wear themselves down by trying to match power against him. Man, that made him feel like a dick, 'This sucks!'
Never one to turn down the chance for overkill, Kisame gleefully upped the ante, dragging his finger across his razor-sharp teeth to draw blood and allow him to call upon more of his favorite animals, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"
There was no need for him to have all of the fun.
Sharks. More sharks. Kisame had called upon more sharks to bite off chunks of Naruto in addition to Kisame himself, who had been pounding away at him and stealing his chakra.
Five sharks came at Naruto in a star formation, each prepared to eat a limb once they got close enough. Snorting underwater, Naruto held out his hands as if to present them to the top predators of the seas. Instead, once they got close enough, Naruto rehashed the little training exercise that he used to master wind chakra; splitting the waterfall.
He cut through the water and through the sharks, filling the watery entrapment with blood and guts. It was a fine way to rid himself of a problem, had Kisame not used all of that blood to summon twelve more sharks and get a cheap shot in on Naruto to boot.
Fortunately, the blood and guts caused them to go into a bit of a frenzy where they completely disregarded Naruto as he swam away, giving him enough time to put some distance between himself and them, but not Kisame though.
"You can't keep swimming and relying on your little air bubble to breathe, whelp!" The Kyuubi shouted at Naruto. He could feel the fox banging against the bars of the seal as though it would spur him into more proactive action, "Eventually you'll run out of chakra! Then you'll either drown, get eaten, or get beaten to a pulp by a man-shark!" Or some unholy combination of all three.
'No shit!' Naruto mentally replied, 'Do you have anything that's actually useful, or are you just gonna yell obvious stuff at me until I black out?'
Kyuubi went silent as Naruto continued to try and keep Kisame at bay, losing chakra every time he made contact with the man. Eventually though, the biju made itself known again, "…Do the wind burst thing again when he gets close, as hard as you can, then let me in for just a second."
'What!?'
"It will only be for a moment boy! Do you want a fighting chance at winning this battle, or would you rather have me forcibly ripped from your body!?"
The chakra beast had a point, but Naruto wasn't quite that absentminded, 'And what happened to all of that talk of you ripping me apart the minute I show you a weak point?' Because he got a lot of that back when he'd been learning how to control the Kyuubi's chakra.
"Clearly that threat by itself isn't quite valid, as you're full of weak points as it is," The Kyuubi groused before snapping at its host, "If my choices are you or the Akatsuki, I would rather take my chances with the human devil I know instead of the ones I don't!"
The enemy of my enemy and all that noise? It sounded a little too good to be true, whether the Kyuubi had a point or not. But Naruto only had a few seconds to make an informed choice.
If push came to shove he believed he could wrestle for control.
Kisame swooped through the water again, avoiding Naruto entirely and taking his back, attempting to latch on one last time to suck as much chakra as he could get, but Naruto blew him away with Wind Ripple Jutsu one last time.
The Kyuubi's desire for Naruto to let down his guard was to give him the chance to force enough chakra through to put Naruto into a version 2 chakra cloak, free of the charge-up time it normally took to do so. Naruto immediately felt the rush of energy, the four extra appendages that were his chakra tails, and turned on Kisame to immediately take advantage before he drained it all again.
The tails began spinning without missing a beat, pumping wind-affected biju chakra out immediately, 'Fuuton: Akao Shimpuu (Wind Release: Red Typhoon)!"
Naruto aimed the jet cyclone of a jutsu into the air, creating the massive wind funnel that took all of the water of Kisame's Water Shark Prison with it. The jutsu was intense enough to strip entire walls off of buildings. This was to say nothing of buildings that found themselves in the path of the newfound tornado as it traveled.
Taking on the shell of Kisame's water prison gave Naruto's jutsu more life than it otherwise would have had after leaving his chakra-enhanced tails.
It was a natural disaster, and it would not be stopped as it tore through the slums and high-rises that comprised Sora-ku. Nothing in its way stood a chance.
The two combatants actually had to stop and stare at what they'd caused for a moment before turning to exchange a glance of respect between one another. Even though moments earlier one had been drowning and about to be eaten alive, and the other had just had victory snatched out of his hands, they were both fully aware that this was as of right then the greatest thing that either of them had ever done.
It was a shame that, as far as they knew, there was literally no one around to see it. And because one of them was going to die, whichever one of them wound up walking away to tell the story later, no one would ever believe them.
"…"
"…"
This was it.
This was the point that all high-level shinobi seemed to reach. The point where they began losing some semblance of their mind.
Instead of being outright terrified of what had happened to, or what was happening to them, they were concerned with breaking down the how and why and finding themselves impressed by it.
XxX
"Sir, our teams are in danger inside of the city," The Suna ninja said, stopping as he could see that Baki didn't necessarily need the update. They could see what had happened from where they were encamped. Most of the shinobi around couldn't take their eyes off of it.
Baki could only stare in dumbfounded amazement at the sight before him, "I'm guessing it's because of that."
A water spout, a quarter of a mile wide, ripping into the artificial sandstorm… and coming their way.
It went without saying, but Baki barked the order anyway, "Get away from it!" Very few of them needed to be told twice and retreated across the sands, away from the killer tornado sucking up and throwing debris every which way.
Some of the fan-users with too much confidence in their abilities banded together to try and turn it back with their own control over wind. It didn't work as their flimsy gusts were entirely unable to stand up against a force of nature the likes of which few had ever seen.
Baki turned and watched a handful of stragglers disappear into the tornado, one of them snatched up in the jaws of a flailing shark in a bloody spectacle.
"It's a tornado with sharks in it," The turban-clad Suna elite said at the sight before him, "A... Sharknado," He finished lamely, wanting to hit himself right after he finished his thought.
"A Sharknado, sir?"
Baki had nothing else to say, "…" As foolish as it sounded, it was the best description he had, and he wanted the subject matter changed, "How many of our forces are left inside of Sora-ku?"
He knew that this entire debacle would be trouble from the moment it had been assigned to him, but even so it was still beyond his scope of preparation.
XxX
(Inside of Sora-ku)
Something was definitely rotten inside of the desert.
Neji pulled his hand away from the chest of yet another faceless ninja as the unfortunate man let out a death rattle and fell to the sandy ground.
That made the fifth one that had attacked him since entering. At first he had believed that it had been a matter of Akatsuki having brought in some freelancers to serve as muscle for them. They had come out of nowhere and attacked him on-sight, but after he began scanning for their movements with his Byakugan, it was evident that not only had they not been there from the start, they had come from the outside.
Neji paid the brand new corpse no mind as he walked away from him. This wasn't the first one he'd had to fight. Thus far, he had counted seven, "Why are they attacking us?"
He wasn't fool enough to actually believe that the treaty between Suna and Konoha was worth any more than the paper it had been signed on, but it wasn't like they were intruding into Kaze no Kuni for no reason. Apparently Suna saw Konoha as a bigger concern than a terrorist organization, which was understandable. It didn't make Neji's job any easier though.
Standing around, Neji turned his eyes in a particular direction, looking through the walls themselves before delivering a set of hand signals. Seconds later, Shikamaru emerged, holding Nii Yugito on his back, looking like she had been through hell. He had seen Shikamaru approaching and took it upon himself to clear the area before his teammate arrived. It would make finding out just what happened easier that way.
Both Neji and Shikamaru took refuge inside one of the endless abandoned buildings to get off of the streets and away from the trail of bodies Neji had dropped en route to that location. It was better to use the back doors, cellars, and windows as more clandestine entrances and exits to move around the armed force patrolling the streets.
"Glad to see someone friendly again," Shikamaru said as Neji used his Byakugan to try and navigate them through the maze of rooms and hallways, "I was pretty sure the ones I ran into weren't some kind of hospitality party."
Neji nodded without turning around to face his fellow Konoha ninja, "I can assure you, whatever choice you made to defeat them was the correct one. They most certainly are not on our side. But I do not believe that Sunagakure would do anything to side with Akatsuki."
As a jounin, Neji was well aware that what made sense to one group did not to another. Their very livelihood was for the most part based on the disagreements and misunderstandings of others.
"How were you able to fight while carrying Yugito-san?"
"Fight?" Shikamaru said, as though the idea were completely foreign to him, "I'm not going to fight while I'm carrying her. I hid and snuck past them," That made more sense than what Neji had been originally anticipating as how he had gotten there. It wasn't that hard with the massive buildings all over the place to use.
Neji stopped them and quickly directed their movements through a door that led to a small back alley, leading to another tall building. Without a doujutsu like his able to find the way for them, anyone who may have tried to pursue them would more than likely find themselves lost and left behind very quickly, "It's almost hard to believe this is happening."
"Which part?" Shikamaru wondered.
Neji wanted to open his mouth and say Suna keeping them trapped in Sora-ku, but then he realized that it wasn't that hard to consider. All they had to do was make sure that no one walked away from the abandoned city, and no one could prove that Suna had been willing to set both the Konoha and Akatsuki sides against each other just to mop up the winner, "On second thought, forget I said anything."
"It's not that weird to think about, is it?" Shikamaru asked, his logical mind percolating as he spoke, "They'll let us come in here and do our thing. Maybe we could hit Akatsuki where it hurts and take a few of them out, maybe we can't," Maybe they could even win without Suna risking anything? The desert shinobi couldn't know. What they did know was that there was an opportunity. A golden one, "But with all three jinchuuriki from the two strongest villages in the Elemental Nations here in one place... Yugito-san is already hurt, Killer B is who knows where, and where is Naruto exactly?"
"Fighting," Neji told him with no small measure of displeasure in his voice, "My jutsu is too much of a liability to pit against Hoshigaki Kisame."
Naruto said a bunch of other things as well to massage the talented Hyuuga's ego, but more than anything else, it boiled down to just how perilous it was to try and use the Gentle Fist against a person that specialized in close-combat, with a sword that ate chakra and strength that could crush boulders with a single blow.
Wait, speaking of missing team members...
"Where is Sasuke then?" Neji queried once the topic came up.
"Fighting Itachi," Shikamaru told him, prompting Neji to go wide-eyed. Shikamaru decided to leave out the part where Sasuke placed him in a genjutsu to get him to leave with Yugito, at least for now. He'd make sure that was dealt with later when it wouldn't cause more problems than they already had, "As much as it sucks, I think we need to find Killer B first and hand Yugito off to him."
Shikamaru abhorred trying to put together an approach to take while he was part of a broken squad, but that was just the way things went sometimes, and he knew this well by now.
Running back into the fray against Akatsuki while holding on to the woman who happened to be their objective was a bad idea. Shikamaru knew what Naruto was capable of, and figured that he could hold his own if not win outright. Sasuke had been preparing for a fight against Itachi for the last ten years of his life, and while no one knew if he was ready or not, even if he wasn't he would make it the most unpleasant battle Itachi would ever have.
Neji and Shikamaru had time to get Yugito somewhere safe before working to restore the rest of their team.
XxX
(Elsewhere in Sora-ku – With Sasuke)
Sasuke gasped in pain as his hawk soared through the sand-clouded skies. His right arm and a good portion of his right side had suffered the consequences for being too close to Itachi's fireball. His burns could have been worse, but they weren't exactly mere singes either.
'Damn it! None of that worked!' Sasuke thought to himself. Rage and pain were reflected on his face as he writhed in pain on his summon animal's back, 'One move and he turned the tide, just like that!'
Black flames began to spread across his face from the old Cursed Seal of Heaven over his right shoulder blade. He realized what was happening as the feeling of the burn wounds began to numb and a sense of untapped power began to filter in. It took a concerted effort of will to force the seal back behind the limits of the Evil Sealing Method that surrounded the original marking on his flesh.
He couldn't use it. He couldn't allow it to gain any ground over his state of mind, no matter how good it felt, no matter how it would magnify his power.
Since being branded with it, Sasuke had made too many promises to too many people that he wouldn't give Orochimaru's seal any hold over him, and he had been clean of it for years. It did things to him, his way of thinking. Hurting things he didn't like just because he could, throwing his strength around just because he had it to use.
But, if he did draw upon it… it would only be to beat Itachi. That might make it okay in the end, wouldn't it?
If he used it one time, just to kill Itachi, it wouldn't matter so much in the grand scheme of things. Then he would put it behind him, just like he would put Itachi behind him, never to be spoken of or brought up again. It wasn't like there would be anyone to tell the tale anyway, so he wouldn't even have to explain himself.
As if he needed to anyway. Anyone who couldn't understand using everything they had at their disposal to achieve their ultimate goal clearly never had anything worth fighting for in the first place.
He had to make his decision soon. Sasuke knew that he wasn't the only one who had a contract with a particular species of avian. Itachi would be coming soon, if he wasn't already on the way. Itachi wasn't the type to dawdle or procrastinate. Even as quick as his hawk was, it couldn't fly as fast as it was able to, lest it injure its powerful eyes with the sand blowing around. He could sympathize. Were it not for the fact that he was wearing protective goggles, Sasuke would have had to worry about the same thing.
Ugh, that meant he had something that required a thanks to Naruto later for providing the eyewear. If that wasn't the most annoying thing… that he needed to show gratitude to the former dead-last for shoring up one of his weaknesses in the desert for him.
Well since he was already getting help from unwanted sources, he may as well have kept the theme going.
Letting out a deep breath of resignation at the potential mistake he was about to make, Sasuke only reaffirmed to himself that he didn't care. Itachi had to die today, 'Alright Orochimaru,' He thought to himself, 'Let's see what this damned thing has. Just don't get used to it,' After Itachi, Orochimaru was the second highest up on his shit list.
But damn it, whatever was in that Cursed Seal worked. Giving in and letting it do its job as it covered the injured right side of his body in black flame markings, Sasuke felt completely revitalized; a second wind even. He gave his hand a few experimental flexes and found it to be useable. It just hurt like no one's business and probably would have hurt more without the seal active.
It was almost enough to make him start laughing, but he didn't. Because spontaneous, inexplicable laughter for things going your way was evil. And doing something evil while using the Cursed Seal would have proven Sasuke wrong not even thirty seconds after allowing it to activate.
Uchiha Sasuke did not admit fault so easily.
A giant crow cut through the clouds of sand swirling around them, only for Sasuke to direct his hawk downward to avoid the sneak attack.
Sasuke wondered how he had been able to direct his crow at such a speed, but it only took a moment for him to understand how. Itachi was reading the path of the wind and keeping their eyes out of the path of the sand, which would have been a problem for Sasuke since he would have been facing it. Once again, thanks to the goggles.
"You've disappointed me Sasuke," Itachi said, his voice carrying over the whipping winds. His words struck home as though he were right next to his younger brother.
"I've disappointed you?" Sasuke repeated, growing more agitated each time he did, "I've disappointed you? Do you know when you disappointed me? When you slaughtered our clan and gave me a bullshit excuse for it! That was really disappointing!" He wanted to saddle up his hawk and shove a Chidori straight through Itachi's head, and damn the consequences.
But that was a sign that he had to rein it in. The Cursed Seal messed with his temper, which had already been somewhat volatile to begin with and had only been enhanced in Itachi's presence. If he died fighting then that didn't mean he had won. Killing Itachi was meaningless if he didn't survive the aftermath to see what came after.
At the moment, his best chance to capitalize on the boost of the Cursed Seal and on the weather was to keep Itachi facing the direction that the wind was blowing in. Sasuke was quite certain that Itachi knew this as well, but in that regard Sasuke had the advantage.
Patting his hawk's neck, Sasuke directed it down lower, bringing it down to fly between the tightly packed buildings and the streets of Sora-ku. Keeping his altitude low would make it easier for him to eventually force Itachi into a situation against the wind, but until that time he couldn't push his hawk to fly all-out. Otherwise he would risk hurting its eyes. That gave Itachi the chance to push his crow to a faster speed, following the path of Sasuke's hawk and using its slipstream to avoid a good amount of the sand.
With his crow hot on Sasuke's tail, Itachi was able to take careful aim at his brother who had turned halfway around on his mount to regard him as they both flew, "You can't outrun me Sasuke."
Sasuke turned back and noticed Itachi's eyes change patterns to that damnable three-sided form. The one that haunted his dreams for years. But Sasuke was ready. Ready for the wretched, monstrous genjutsu that Itachi would attempt to ensnare him in. It was the main thing that Sasuke had prepared to fight against, and it wouldn't ever happen that way again if Sasuke had his way.
Itachi, instead of attempting the vaunted Tsukuyomi, stared down Sasuke's hawk of all things. As confusing as it was, Sasuke figured that whatever it was for couldn't have been good. He directed his hawk into a clockwise barrel roll before sending it into a narrow alley.
A black plume of fire engulfed the corner of the alley that had turned into, something that Sasuke couldn't ignore as the entire building slowly started to go up in flames, 'Black flames! But he didn't even-! All he did was just look!'
Itachi had control of black fire that he could use just by staring at something? If ever there was a jutsu that was just unfair for someone to have…
But wait. He missed, and that was surprising for more than one reason. How could he possibly miss? Itachi had a technique that could set anything on fire as long as his eyes were focused on it as far as Sasuke knew, and Itachi had definitely had a bead on him and his hawk.
Itachi let out a grunt, unheard by Sasuke, blinking his right eye painfully as they flew, dodging every corner, power line, and sudden turn in the alley. He was eventually able to recenter his vision's focal point, his aim adjusted after his first miss. It wouldn't happen again, "Amaterasu (Heavenly Illumination)."
Sasuke's hawk let out a pained cry as its back half caught on fire. Its flight trajectory went askew, bumping off of the walls of the alley polluted with floating paper trash and household linens, lighting more and more buildings on fire before Sasuke found an opening to depart, lest he find himself up in black flames as well.
Sasuke hurtled through the air as his hawk flew off, erratically hitting more buildings. Sasuke cradled himself, upsetting old, abandoned laundry, hung up on the balcony of a building as his body crashed through a flimsy, rotten door. Rolling along the floor, he came to a stop against a wall inside.
Looking himself over just in case, Sasuke felt relief that he had been able to bail out from his summoned hawk before Itachi's black flames could claim him as well.
By the time he reached his feet, Itachi stood in the doorway like a specter, with black fire burning a building in the background. Sasuke didn't waste a movement. Whether Itachi had underestimated Sasuke's speed when under the Cursed Seal or not, it didn't matter. Sasuke bashed his entire body into Itachi, sending both brothers flying outside and off of the balcony.
Despite Sasuke's best efforts to pound his brother's face in before they could land, Itachi was able to block each punch until they hit the ground. The unkempt sand covering the long-forgotten streets cushioned their fall, allowing them both to jump away and separate in opposite directions of the alleyway.
Sasuke landed and immediately charged up lightning chakra in his left hand, charging at Itachi with more speed than he had possessed before. To confuse him on his approach, Sasuke zig-zagged and bounced off of the walls, kicking up clouds of sand with his erratic movements before he finally made it close enough to jab his lethal hand out, "Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"
Itachi stepped back as far out of Sasuke's reach as he could once he finally noticed that Sasuke was coming in for the final phase of his attack, bumping his back off of a wall in the alley.
*BOOM!*
As the sand and dust from the destroyed wall slowly began to settle, Itachi and Sasuke stood within the ground level of a building, the wall having been destroyed by the force of Sasuke driving Itachi through it when the latter caught Sasuke by the forearm.
There was no expression on Itachi's face despite his quiet grunts of effort. It took both of his hands just to stop Sasuke's Chidori hand from driving straight through his throat. The chirping sound of the electricity echoed through the building as both brothers shook from the strain of their struggle.
It was only in this up-close clash that Sasuke realized that he had made a mistake when he had gotten so close. Staring into Itachi's face with hatred and malice, he made the crucial error of looking into Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan.
Now, inside of the distorted, darkened world of Itachi's Tsukuyomi, it was a battle of mental wills, imagination, and force of chakra, "You shouldn't have used that power to combat me," Itachi chided Sasuke's use of the Cursed Seal, "Now do you see how futile it is against my own?"
Sasuke punched his Chidori through Itachi's body only for his entire body to explode in blood, covering Sasuke's body and his vision. Wiping the red liquid out of his face, Sasuke no longer found himself in a ruined Sora-ku slum.
Now he found himself again at the site of his greatest tragedy. Again.
Only, he wasn't seeing it through his eyes; the eyes of a frightened, horrified seven-year-old boy. He was seeing it through the eyes of the perpetrator himself. Itachi's eyes.
"Here in the world of Tsukuyomi, this time you will experience this night through my eyes, my hands, my every feeling, for the next 72 hours."
"No..."
XxX
Naruto and Kisame had ruined an entire district of Sora-ku, basically reducing it to rubble, but it clearly hadn't been the only part of the city to find battle-induced hardship. As they fought, they found that a good size of the rest of Sora-ku burned with distinct black flames.
Both shinobi stood across from each other, separated by several tall buildings as thunder rang out above and it began to downpour. It did absolutely nothing in regards to the fire that engulfed almost every structure within eyesight.
Where the fire had come from, Naruto had no idea, "...Hope nobody else is stuck in that."
He wanted to go and see, to make sure that Shikamaru and Neji were safe, but he had to trust in their skills. Kisame would never let him leave. Neither of them were going anywhere until their little issue was decided, and that had been the entire reason that Naruto had stayed to begin with, to keep Kisame from interfering with Yugito's retrieval.
"Oh don't worry," Kisame said, tapping his hand off of Samehada as he held it up for emphasis before gesturing to the burning city around them, "You and I are the only ones anywhere near here. Itachi-san may have started cutting loose, but he clearly didn't stick around wherever this started if it got this out of control. Kind of exciting, isn't it?"
'Itachi did this?' Naruto wondered to himself with a start before wincing at his soreness and his fatigue, 'Ugh. I'm never gonna make fun of Shika for his suck-ass stamina again,' Naruto thought to himself as he stared Kisame down, 'I'm tired as hell here.'
Fortunately, Kisame stood back in his regular form, having transformed back after Naruto had destroyed his gigantic water prison. The playing field was evened out again, but wasn't quite level. Kisame's abilities still neutralized what Naruto was strongest at.
He had to have a weakness that Naruto could exploit. It didn't make any damned sense.
Naruto took a step on the building that he was on only to feel it shake underneath his feet. These really were old, dilapidated structures, and unquenchable black flames probably didn't help their stability much. That would only worsen as the fire continued to burn, 'Great. I pick the wrong building as a base to stand on and I'm falling in.'
"This is pretty exciting isn't it?" Kisame asked, grinning as a black glow from the flames reflected off of his skin like shadows, "Kinda like the rawest sort of survival of the fittest you could imagine. Not even water can douse these flames. If one of us doesn't win fast enough, we both die," At that he started to chuckle, "Well, we both wouldn't die. More like just you. Samehada can absorb the chakra feeding the fire. So don't worry. If you fall in, I might be able to get to you fast enough to put it out."
"You're just lucky I think roasted shark is gross," Naruto shot back.
Who was he kidding? The next idea he had that would work the way he wanted it to would be the first. Every strategy he had tried since the start had been a half-victory at best. Even trying to lay fuuinjutsu on Kisame while they had been fighting underwater hadn't been effective, as he had just absorbed the chakra that went into the techniques before they activated the moment they touched his skin.
Naruto was drawing a blank. He couldn't rely on using the Kyuubi's chakra to bail him out with overpowering force, as Samehada would just absorb it and make Kisame even stronger. He couldn't retreat due to the flames, and even when he could, sneaking up on Kisame was impossible as long as that sword could tell him where he was. It was maddening.
"Well..." Naruto muttered to himself, forming a cross hand-seal with his fingers, "...I thought I was too old to fight like this," Or that Jiraiya and the Guardians had beaten it out of him at least, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin No Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"
Kisame's shark-like eyes lit up at the sight of fifty Naruto clones populating the same rooftop, "Your clan really is something special. Even without your biju, you still have that much chakra left," Samehada's scales shook hungrily in anticipation, "Well if you want to waste all of it, be my guest. I could always use more."
Naruto grit his teeth in resignation of his situation. This was either going to work or be his death knell. He hadn't made any gambles thus far in the battle, so it was a bit intimidating that his first one would be with such high stakes, "Take it then!"
With that shout, Naruto's clones streaked across the tops of the burning buildings, heading right for Kisame. As they closed the distance and landed on the rooftop that Kisame resided on, they met his Samehada with their machetes, trying to cut the man himself without touching Samehada.
One cut, it was all they needed to do him crippling damage with their wind chakra. But they were all made of chakra. The moment any part of them touched the all-devouring sword, weapons included, they would dispel.
Kisame was having the time of his life. Every clone came at him with the intent to murder. This was his kind of opponent. Despite countering or otherwise avoiding all of Naruto's big moves, he still wanted a piece of him.
If the kid wanted to fight until he finally dropped, far be it from Kisame to deny him the chance to go out on his shield.
"Come on!" Kisame shouted gleefully, expertly parrying and dispelling Naruto's clones, even as they took great pains to try and touch him alone without making any sort of contact with Samehada. Even his clones made more clones, "Send the whole damn legion, why don't you!?"
"Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"
The building Kisame stood upon as he fought off hordes of clones shook wildly. It seemed to shrivel up like a plastic bottle with the air inside sucked right out of it as two Naruto clones had refrained from attacking and instead attacked the building itself.
The quivering foundation disrupted Kisame's balance for a moment, but he was too much of a veteran to allow something that simple to do him in as he kept killing off Naruto's clones, until a pair of chains wrapped around Samehada and pulled themselves tight.
Across the way, Naruto had thrown out his Chakra Chains and attached them to Kisame's weapon to hold him down.
Kisame dug his feet in and pulled back, surprised that Naruto was able to actually match strength with him all by himself. Since he hadn't really been hit by Naruto by himself, he hadn't expected it.
Naruto felt as though he were trying to drag along a bull. What a monster. Either way, things were just getting started. This by itself accomplished nothing. Quite the opposite actually.
"Keep your sword, or save your ass," Naruto said, feeling Samehada sucking his chakra through the chain. It was a risky move. The chains weren't just made of chakra. They were connected to the very tenketsu in his arms. It was a physical tug of war with Kisame, and one of focus and spirit with Samehada at the same time to keep it from taking everything from him in one mighty gulp, "...You choose."
Kisame bared his teeth threateningly as Naruto's remaining clones swarmed his body and grabbed on, "You think your damned copies can get me to let go!" He shouted as the building he was standing on started to shake and rattle dangerously, "I don't NEED Samehada to absorb chakra!" And so he did, only to feel a horrible burning on his bare skin once he did, "GAAAAAAH!"
Most of the clones attached to Kisame dispelled, but some of them seemed to lose their form and melt into sticky, scalding hot ash.
His grip on the sentient sword loosed enough for Naruto to pull back and simultaneously retract his Chakra Chains to rip it out of his hands. Naruto turned and let go of the chains' grip on it, sending it flying away with an added boost of wind chakra to toss it even farther.
The more distance he could put between Kisame and Samehada, the better.
As Kisame lunged, still covered in debilitating ash and one or two regular Kage Bunshin, the building finally collapsed underneath him, giving him no footing whatsoever as it all fell down into the black blaze below, "NINE-TAILS!"
XxX
(Meanwhile – With Sasuke)
For Sasuke, Itachi's Tsukuyomi wasn't some debilitating physical torture. It wasn't even reliving his most powerful nightmare. It was so much worse. Instead of watching as a third party, powerless to prevent Itachi from cutting down his clansmen, he was doing it himself. His hands were the ones doing the killing.
"Stop!"
Men, women, old, young... those who stood their ground and tried to fight, those who fled for their lives, those who tried to use their bodies to buy time for the others. It didn't matter. His sword cut through the flesh and bone of his family, tearing through the Uchiha Clan District, all the way to the main house where Sasuke's family resided.
It was there that he cut down both his mother and his father in cold blood. Neither of them even bothered to mount any sort of resistance, nor did they say a word to dissuade Itachi. They only said that they were proud of him, and to take care of Sasuke. And then he slew them.
"You would never have had the strength to stop me Sasuke." Itachi's voice filtered into his head, as Sasuke saw from Itachi's point of view when the younger version of Sasuke stumbled across the scene of his parents' deaths.
The failed attack of a distraught child, and then Sasuke stared into his own eyes, the moment when Itachi locked him in the nightmare of watching it all transpire the first time. Then it reset.
"Only 71 more hours to go... little brother."
"NOOOOO!" Sasuke howled at the top of his lungs. With everything his will could muster, he overpowered the writing of the genjutsu and stopped the sword. In the moonlight he could see Itachi's reflection in the shining blade and promptly turned it on himself.
The mental construct of a world broke apart with a grunt of discomfort from Itachi, who was then the victim of a savage left-handed punch from Sasuke as the building they were in burned above and around them. The only thing keeping him from being sent flying was Sasuke's grip on the collar of his cloak, but that was merely a tool for Sasuke to maintain a hold of him and keep punching.
Ten years of rage, sadness, confusion, it all came out in an unintelligible cry and a flurry of punches with less form than that of a barroom brawler. But it didn't stop them from connecting on the suddenly overwhelmed Itachi. Itachi grabbed his fist and the two grappled until they threw one another through a boarded up window and out onto a wide open main street into the wet sand.
Itachi quickly drew a kunai and cut a large segment of his Akatsuki cloak to get Sasuke off of him. He then stabbed at Sasuke only for Sasuke to counter by blocking Itachi's forearm with his. A sidekick aimed at Itachi's body from that position was stopped by Itachi raising his knee off of the ground.
The two broke away again, leaving Itachi in a black shirt and a mesh undershirt. Rain poured down onto the two of them, weary from fighting all over the city.
Sasuke's mind was buzzing trying to analyze everything that had happened, trying to find some sort of advantage that he had, or some kind of weakness that Itachi had for him to exploit. For a good portion of his life he had seen his brother as invincible. Even though he knew better now, part of that belief still dragged over, that Itachi still had some sort of killer move that would end the battle in a heartbeat.
One of which should have been Amaterasu after what Sasuke had seen it do.
It shouldn't have taken Itachi even two shots to hit Sasuke with the jutsu from what had already been displayed, no matter what the circumstances were, let alone more. Flying, on the ground, it shouldn't have mattered. The Itachi that Sasuke remembered never missed.
It was then that Sasuke realized the absolute lack of detail he could see in Itachi's eyes compared to that night back when he had been a child. The distinct, sharp pattern of Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan, it was hazier and harder to make out.
And from the close range that they'd had with one another, Sasuke swore he could see blood welling up behind Itachi's bottom right lid.
The sudden realization hit him like a blow to the gut, "You're as blind as a bat," Sasuke said.
"Which is why I wanted you to have the Mangekyou Sharingan by the time we met again," Itachi said, a smile slowly spreading across his face, "The only way to cure the blindness that the next level of the Sharingan brings is to take the eyes of another user."
"You… you," Sasuke stammered. He couldn't find the words, "That was… that was the only reason… you didn't kill me?"
"Sasuke…" Itachi said, reaching out and pointing at his younger brother, "I let you live all those years ago for one reason and one reason only. To take your eyes as my own," The sound of a building collapsing rang out in the background, "Like I said, you are a disappointment."
Sasuke growled and took a step only to stop when he heard his sandal squelch in the sand. It was raining. And from a clap of thunder he heard in the distance, it was storming.
Alright. Now this, coupled with the revelation that Itachi could hardly see his own hand in front of his face changed everything.
Sasuke's fingers cracked as he flexed them into fists. The only warning he had before Itachi attempted another Amaterasu was a faint twitch of his right eye.
Subtle, but with everything else Sasuke knew by now, it was enough of a precursor for him to move, feeling the heat of the black flames lick at his toes as he got away with a jump.
His fingers blurred through hand-seals, stopping with Sasuke placing one hand in front his mouth, aimed at Itachi, "Katon: Housenka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu)!"
Even with his vision failing, Itachi was still able to evade Sasuke's smaller-sized fireballs, even as they came in dozens. It wasn't until he dodged one and moved back in the direction that it had come from to avoid another that he realized something was gravely wrong. Sasuke had been spacing him away the entire time, and had been hiding shuriken in his fireballs.
That by itself was a fairly common Uchiha trick for that jutsu. What was an added bit of nastiness was that Sasuke had attached ninja wire to every last one, trapping Itachi in the middle of them.
Sasuke tied them around his war fan, charged with his chakra and allowing electricity to course through the lines as thunder and lightning struck, illuminating the smirk on Sasuke's face, "I see you get it now. It doesn't matter though," He said, holding his free hand up to the sky, "…I shouldn't have ever been able to dodge your jutsu. But you definitely won't dodge mine."
As lightning raged overhead, Sasuke formed a Chidori in his left hand and held it into the air before pulling it down.
"Kirin!"
Itachi's eyes went wide as the clouds seemed to split, and in slow motion he bore witness to Sasuke calling down a dragon-shaped bolt of lightning the size of a city block. It was as though Sasuke had dragged a god of thunder from the skies themselves.
The flash of light heralded the obliteration of yet another significant portion of Sora-ku. The terrifying sound of nature force itself being bent to man's will to cause destruction roared out across the open air for dozens of miles in the empty desert landscape. It was yet another last mighty cry of what had once been intended to be the mightiest city in the western countries of the Elemental Nations.
Everything the massive lightning bolt touched was reduced to absolute rubble. The grains of sand themselves were scorched black from the power of Sasuke's attack, but that great scar upon the earth would only last until the sands could blow over themselves and cover the brand new ruins of Sora-ku underneath them.
Sasuke had to pick himself out of a pile of debris, almost finding himself crushed by the pulverized remains of one of the formerly surrounding highrise buildings. One of the downsides to Kirin, other than its chakra cost, was that he had no actual control over it after warping the lightning bolt to his needs. He could simply mark where it was to strike. The reason it was unavoidable was because of the sheer area it covered once it did so.
There was no chance that Itachi dodged it, like Sasuke said. It just wasn't possible.
Sasuke forced the Cursed Seal to recede, as he could begin to feel it eating away at what was left of his chakra reserves. Apparently there was no such thing as a free lunch. Kakashi and Anko had been right to try and keep him from overusing it or ever using it at all. It was just as well. He didn't need it anymore to try and keep pace with Itachi. It had done its job, and he had already broken his word not to use it. He wouldn't break his word twice by relying on it anytime after that point.
He searched the nearby area as he took great care to avoid the black flames that were still spreading slowly around Sora-ku. Hopefully Itachi's body hadn't been burned by the fire of his own creation. Sasuke wanted to see and confirm his victory with his own eyes.
When Sasuke eventually came across Itachi's body lying in a massive wreckage-filled crater he let out a breath of relief. His brother was facedown, motionless on the ground. But once again, Sasuke realized that something felt wrong.
If Itachi had been hit by a regular bolt of lightning, not even counting the one that Sasuke had called down from the heavens, he should have been blackened and burned in a few places. Hell, from Kirin himself there should have been a few pieces of him scattered around the area.
There was blood on the ground around his mouth, but other than that, nothing to reflect that he had taken the blow.
Instead, Sasuke had to watch as Itachi got back up to his feet. It just wasn't right, "…What the hell do I have to do to kill you!?" A fair question, but Itachi seemed to be on his last legs.
"Is that… everything you have?" Itachi asked, staggering in place sluggishly, "If you have anything else at your disposal, I suggest you use it now."
Sasuke wanted to scream. He wanted to rant and rage. But the only thing his brain would allow him to say was, "...How? How the hell did you get up from that?" How was there even still a 'him' to get up from that in the first place?
"It was close," Itachi said before stopping to cough up blood, "I admit, if it weren't for Susanoo, I would be dead," And he definitely looked the part of that particular narrative. Unfortunately that was merely a small consolation to not quite getting the job done.
A large, orange outline of chakra formed around Itachi. Within it, a transparent skeleton began to form around him, and then muscle, and a humanoid being with glowing yellow eyes and an intimidating face.
Sasuke took a step back, not believing what he was seeing. After everything he had done, had endured, Itachi still had enough left for this monster of a jutsu.
'I really thought I could prepare for this...' Sasuke thought to himself as Susanoo started to develop armor resembling monsters of legend, 'I thought that with the right approach, with enough training and enough strength, I could do this.'
But even after everything he had done. All of the blood, sweat, and tears he had poured into his training, strengthening his will by fighting off the temptation of the Cursed Seal for so long. Developing his body, his chakra, and his Sharingan.
All that his friends had put into helping him, showing him that they would and could help him get ready for what he felt was his destined conflict with Itachi.
Everything, and when it came time to make it all happen, Itachi still seemed to have his number. Even after ten years, he was still chasing Itachi's back. Only now Itachi had turned around to regard him and had acknowledged him as a threat, because the biggest of his brother's big guns was out and pointed right at him.
Actually… this was what he wanted all along. His entire life he'd been trying to measure up, to get out from underneath the shadow that Itachi's brilliance cast over him. What better way to stick his middle finger up at his older brother's reputation than to force him to his absolute limit?
…Other than actually killing him, of course?
Considering this, Sasuke began to laugh, and it went more and more out of control as far as sanity seemed to go, even as Itachi began to slowly amble his way, the ghastly, seemingly divine protection of Susanoo covering for him as he did, "Why are you laughing?"
"You know," Sasuke said as what was left of the city continued to burn around him, "A part of me always thought that when the time came, I wouldn't have had a chance. In the back of my mind I thought that you would just run me through and that would be that. But here I am, this is your trump card, and I'm still standing."
"As am I Sasuke."
"Yeah, barely," Sasuke said, lifting his left hand and willing the crackle of electricity into his palm. It took a bit of effort, but he was able to dredge it up, "I'll admit, I'm running low on chakra. But remember what you said to me before, about not putting my faith in anyone else?"
Itachi nodded faintly.
"I put my faith in Kakashi when he trained me and taught me the lightning release that I took to the level I needed to force you into using Susanoo. I put my faith in Anko who did everything she could to try give me the will to fight off the Cursed Seal's temptation," He admittedly owed her some sort of half-assed apology if she ever found out that he used it today by the way, as he would acknowledge he had broken her faith in him even if the ends justified the ends in this case, "...Sakura wasted hours and hours, tormenting me with every genjutsu I could get her to use on me to try and get ready for Tsukuyomi. Chouji helped me build my body and my stamina for a fight just like this one."
At that, Sasuke's eyes turned cold and black, his Sharingan receding. Itachi merely stared at him, blood trailing from his tear ducts.
"You stood there, and you spoke down to me, to the Uchiha, about how we could only ever put any trust in our clan's power. Who did you ever put your faith in?" Sasuke continued, "Who did you ever believe in enough to put yourself out on a limb for that wasn't yourself?"
Of all things that Sasuke expected out of Itachi at that moment, it wasn't for the elder Uchiha brother to smile at him, grim though it was, "...You."
And then the world around them seemed to be engulfed in black smoke and flame.
XxX
(Moments Earlier – With Naruto)
Kisame now hated fire more than anything else. This would mark the second time that it had screwed him over and cooked him alive. But even so, it couldn't quite kill him. Not yet.
Skin burned heavily, body covered in the surprisingly slow-eating black flames, Kisame crawled across the ground. He could feel his sword, calling out to him. It wasn't over, "I'm going to cut your arms and your legs off brat!" He bellowed, pulling himself through the hot sand underneath him, "I'm going to send one of your fingers to all of your friends, and leave the middle one on your hand for your Hokage..."
Standing several stories above, looking down at his still dangerous enemy, Naruto stared down, slowly raising his right hand before extending the aforementioned finger, flipping Kisame off, "You mean this one?"
This wasn't the kind of man that was going to give up and die. Naruto didn't doubt that Kisame would crawl out of the burning rubble. He didn't doubt that Kisame would eventually find Samehada, wherever Naruto had thrown it. Even if Naruto left him, he would come back and they would dance once more, or he would get to another jinchuuriki instead. Maybe Killer B, maybe Yugito again, maybe even Fuu.
They weren't doing this dance ever again. Leaving him to burn wasn't enough, as even though he was on fire and surrounded by it, Kisame had already admitted to being able to absorb chakra by himself. There was a small chance he could just take in enough for Samehada to come back to him in time to heal him.
Naruto told himself that if he wasn't sure that it would kill him, it might not kill Kisame either. He had to make sure Kisame didn't get that kind of chance, and he couldn't just drop himself down into the black fire to do it with his own two hands to make sure. It had to be something he knew would get the job done once and for all, but he'd been pushed just about as far as his chakra would stretch for him.
...Wait. Black fire would still ignite things just as well as regular fire, wouldn't it? It was a fair prospect to test out.
"You've been stealing my chakra all day, so I'll tell you what, take as much as you want," Naruto said, a red glint in his eye as he rolled through hand-seals. He couldn't think of anything else bigger to use with what he had left chakra-wise. "Kura Taifuu no Me (Eye of the Dark Hurricane)!"
Enough of Naruto's ash flew from his mouth to coat a full street's worth of Konoha buildings in the sticky blackness, flowing forth in the pattern of a tropical storm as it descended down upon the former Kiri ninja. But Naruto had severely underestimated just how strong the winds of the sandstorm had been, as it blew more ash farther than he had intended for it to go. Far farther. From his elevated position it carried around a good portion of Sora-ku.
...Which was 70% percent on fire at that point.
On the plus side, he got the answer to his question. Yes. The black fire would still ignite. It would do it better than regular fire in fact. Fire said to be from hell itself tended to carry that kind of quality about it. Go figure.
XxX
(Konohagakure no Sato –Amaguriama)
Since Ino couldn't necessarily go ahead and ditch the people in the Guardians that her boyfriend used to work with, either in good conscience or in practice, she decided that taking them somewhere to eat in the village would be well enough. It would at least fill Kotoko's mouth long enough for her to not ask awkward questions as frequently.
For that reprieve from his normally bubbly and spiritedly homicidal teammate, Sora was grateful. Granted, Kotoko was still in a tizzy about literally everything she was seeing; about how beautiful Konoha was, how that stray cat walking along the fence would make a good pet, and also how she could write a song if she stayed in Konoha for long enough, but it was between bites and sips, so it was all broken up into blocks and thus made easier to tolerate.
As they sat on a bench outside of the sweet shop that Ino had taken them to, Sora could see why Naruto and Shikamaru would have wanted to return home despite the success they had been having at the Capital. He himself wasn't exactly the biggest fan of Konoha, but he wasn't such a grouch that he couldn't recognize that the place had a good atmosphere.
Ino was simply glad to be out for the day. Even if it was with the grumpy son of Asuma's traitorous former teammate in the Twelve Guardian Ninja and her boyfriend's crazy, killer senior in that same organization. It was company, and it was a chance to take her mind off of the absence of her two chunin teammates.
Waiting for them to come back from sticking to Akatsuki like some damsel on the homefront was for the damn birds. She had a real day-to-day job to occupy her time and mind, but even so, "Hah... did you ever get super-anxious when most of the other Guardians were out on missions and you were stuck at home?"
Sora blew at the bangs hanging in his face before responding, "The workload is so heavy that we're always rotating in and out. You were never going to catch all eight of us there at the same time. There's never really any time to really care about what mission the others are on. You've got to get your rest in and get ready for the next dust-up the Fire Daimyo wants to send you back out for."
"Yes, yes. It's a never-ending cycle of troubles Ino-chan," Kotoko added, getting a reserved nod from Sora before the ninja musician's ever-present smile widened to a slasher degree, "...I do so love my job."
"Right," Ino said, still not knowing quite how to perceive the unbalanced woman. As she moved her ceramic cup to her mouth to drink her tea, a crack appeared at the rim. She froze mid-motion upon hearing the sound and recognizing it. It hadn't had any sort of damage when the tea had been delivered. It had literally just happened.
Both Sora and Kotoko stopped and took note of the odd occurrence, both with similar expressions of anxiety on their faces.
She had never been one to believe in omens, but a seemingly random happening as in-your-face and foreboding as this just wasn't something that one could shake off.
XxX
(Outside of Sora-ku)
Without Byakugan, Neji and Shikamaru would have found themselves trapped in the middle of a city burning to the ground with odd black flames that seemed to burn any and everything they touched. It would have been hard for Neji not to see it. Either way, the priority switched from getting Yugito to Killer B to getting her outside of Sora-ku.
"What the hell?" Shikamaru wondered aloud, the pair of Konoha shinobi a safe distance from the blaze. It was the eeriest fire Shikamaru had ever seen, just from the way it stirred about, seemingly slower than regular fire's wilder movements.
Neji didn't know quite what to tell him, other than that it was man-made. The chakra coming from it was extremely potent. Some of the strongest he had ever seen with his own eyes, "With the decrepit state of the city's infrastructure and the dry environment, I can see how it spread so quickly." And with no one to put it out or contain it, there was no chance of it being stopped, "...Naruto and Sasuke."
"You saw them?" Which was much better than not being able to see them.
"Yes. To the north. Not far apart from each other all things considered," Neji confirmed, much to Shikamaru's relief.
"We got out to the southwest," Shikamaru said, remembering the position that they had entered from. He had kept track of their direction the entire time they had been there in case they got lost. "Circling around the outskirts to the north should take ten minutes at our speed... but that's not taking into account if we can avoid the Suna ninjas surrounding the area," That could and would make it a longer trek, "Do you see any openings in their encampments?"
Neji had already been scanning what he could see to try and help their progress, "One moment. Let me see," What he wound up seeing that caught his attention didn't come from the positions of the hostile Suna ninjas. It came once again from the city that burned before them, "...What in the world...?"
Shikamaru wanted to ask what it was until both he and Neji were sent flying from a deafening explosion that made everything dark. For a moment, Shikamaru thought he was dead until he realized just how much he hurt. His ears rang, his skin that had been exposed felt red from light burns, he was halfway buried in the sand, and all he hoped for at the moment was that his legs were still attached.
His mouth suddenly dry from the sudden heat of the blast that had occurred, Shikamaru sat up, his eyes shut in a grimace, "Neji, are you alright?" Upon getting no response he pushed himself up and shook off the sand to look around, finding Neji not too far away, sitting up and staring into the distance, "Neji!"
The powerful young Hyuuga was in the same situation physically as Shikamaru, only his attention was elsewhere entirely other than on his own well-being. Shikamaru followed his gaze and felt his jaw drop.
Thick black smoke covered the flaming remains of what used to be Sora-ku. They could not see through it, and they doubted there was anything left standing at all. Even from there they could hear whatever pitiful remnants of buildings that still stood crumbling.
There had been people in there, two of whom had been their friends, one of whom had been an ally and technically their employer.
Neji shook his head, his Byakugan active as he stared into the hell on earth before them, "I can't see them. Not Naruto, not Sasuke, nor the members of Akatsuki, they were fighting," A ball of tension was set in the pit of his stomach at the implications.
Gritting his teeth Shikamaru got back to his feet and ran as close to the outskirts of the city as he could before the wall of black fire repelled him. He crouched down at the limits of how close he could go before it got too hot to be safe and just stared into the abyss. What was that stuff supposed to be? And was his best friend really stuck inside of it?
Wait, he wasn't. Neji just said so.
...Ino was going to kill him.
"Shikamaru."
Even with Neji's warning, Shikamaru didn't even need to turn around to realize what he would wind up facing once he did. At least an entire platoon of Suna ninja stood at the ready, keeping their distance even more so than they were.
The lazy chunin just shook his head, never taking his eyes off of the fire, even as Baki stepped forward and shouted over at the Konoha contingent, "So this is what you Konoha ninjas do when our Kazekage allows you passage through the lands we protect?"
'You were waiting to pick us off the entire time anyway,' Shikamaru thought to himself with a roll of his eyes, remaining in his stooped position, 'I guess now would be the best time to put us out of commission.' The fighting was definitely finished, and the two of them were the last men standing. Suna's little gambit had paid off. Akatsuki was weakened, the Kyuubi jinchuuriki was gone, as was the Hachibi, and the Nibi jinchuuriki was completely unresponsive over Neji's shoulder.
Today, it looked like they were the big winners, and they hadn't had to get involved.
Neji narrowed his eyes at the surrounding ninjas. Maneuvering Yugito on his shoulder, he placed himself between her and the others, as though that would do much if and when an attack came, "You would attack ninjas of an allied village, now? We were dealing with a threat to the entire Elemental Nations. Here. For you."
"We let you in to retrieve a jinchuuriki of an unaligned village and you destroyed a entire city in Kaze no Kuni," Baki said, a bit of a smirk forming on his face, "You were not given passage for free reign of operations in this country. The daimyo would have a fit if it were to be learned that we did nothing about it."
Neji could remember the words from Shikamaru as they were traveling across the desert, speaking about what they were about to get themselves into. They rang out echoing hollow through his entire body, "Politics don't have to make sense or be fair Neji. It's circumstantial."
"It was an abandoned city!" Neji snapped, outraged at the poorly veiled treachery. Yes, this was the ninja world, but to do such a thing at a time like this, to someone who was not openly your enemy...
"Some allies, huh?" Shikamaru thought aloud, still never turning around to face what seemed more likely to be his fatal fate with every passing second.
How much could have been solved by simply working together instead of working sides against each other.
If these people had just stepped in... had just lent a hand... this might not have happened. Alliances in the ninja world just meant that villages wouldn't go out of their way to screw one another over. Sunagakure sure didn't have to go out of their way to do so today. All they had to do was sit back and watch the fireworks.
Honestly, politics were something that Shikamaru could intellectually sink his teeth into. It required no physical activity. All it took was an ear to the ground, an eye everywhere that mattered, and an understanding of what was going on around you, and the intellect to try and manipulate it to your own designs.
He would have been very, very good at it. He just despised the slimier aspects of the practice. Times like this only made him feel it that much more.
He was tired, he was hurt, his friends were more than likely dead and they couldn't even get into the ruins to check because of the black fire. On top of that, they weren't going to leave the desert alive if Sunagakure had anything to say about it, and they had a platoon that was willing to back that up.
But whether or not they were able, that remained to be seen. They should have just killed he and Neji when they were revealed. Now they had given Shikamaru time, not only to think about how to possibly fight them, but to allow him to set up an approach to do so.
"My genin team's motto..." Shikamaru asked, turning his head halfway behind him to fix Baki with a glance out of one eye, "...Says this isn't over yet."
Baki snorted as a few of his hardened troops broke their intimidating demeanor, beginning to laugh, "With you Konoha shinobi, I can only guess that it involves some form of supporting your comrades or never giving up," It was then that Baki realized what kind of young man he was looking at. Shikamaru wasn't some idealistic young ninja with a pie-in-the-sky dream to aim for.
"Not even close," While Shikamaru's face betrayed no hint of his calm, merely his eye from a side view promised nothing but the utmost retribution he could dole out in short order with the power he had at his disposal, "'Aim low.'"
He raised his hands up into the air with a snap of a movement and dozens of shadow tendrils stabbed up from the ground underneath the Suna forces. There were many who found themselves impaled without mercy. For those fortunate enough to avoid it they found a harsher surprise awaiting them. Some of the tendrils already had explosive tags attached to them.
Just before they went off, Shikamaru thought to himself that Team 10 did usually seem to solve most of their problems with the use of the most massive explosion they could create. He didn't blink, even in the face of the flashing explosions and flying body parts.
"Shikamaru!"
The only warning Shikamaru had for the whirling blade of wind flying straight at him was Neji's shout and the faint shimmer of the air as it traveled toward him. It figured he wouldn't get the one person that he definitely wanted to take down in his first move.
Baki was still alive, and pissed off to boot. That was fine. Shikamaru was still pissed off too, and since gutting the Kazekage wasn't an immediate possibility and even if it ever became one is temper would have been long since checked by then, he had to make do with the man in charge in the field.
Gritting his teeth, the Suna elite seethed in anger at Shikamaru's stubborn attack that had claimed more of his group's lives. It was just more men and women lost for a mission that he felt he shouldn't have lost a single one of them on.
"I guess it is true after all," Baki said, as everyone regrouped, "Even the most pathetic animals are dangerous when they're backed into a corner." Gesturing forward with his hands, the remnants of the platoon, still at least thirty strong, "At least your funeral pyre is already lit for you."
"When you spoke of animals-," Neji cut in, "-I'm curious. You wouldn't have happened to be referring to octopuses or bulls by any chance?"
As confusing as that statement was, what was even more confusing was the entirely inhuman cry that tore through the air with a distinct, half-sung tone to it.
"Yea~~~ooooh! The great Number Eight is so hot he's on fiyah! The flames are black and keep goin' hiyah!" An ominous shadow rose to visibility through the thick, black smoke. A massive humanoid body with thick muscular arms, a bull's head with a broken horn, and a lower body comprised of eight gigantic wiggling tentacles, "Yooooo! Where's Yugito!?"
The remainder of the platoon could not begin to run fast enough, and Shikamaru was so stunned by Killer B's stunning presence, in Tailed-Beast Form to boot, that he hadn't even thought to say something about keeping them from departing. Shikamaru thought that he, Neji, and Yugito had been the last ones standing. He had never been so happy to be wrong.
Speaking of which, he slowly turned toward Neji, a look of slight irritation on his face.
"He must have transformed to try and protect himself from the black flames and escape," Neji said matter-of-factly, never taking the focus of his Byakugan-enhanced stare off of the retreating Sunagakure force. This was even as he spoke in a superior tone that Shikamaru hadn't heard out of him in years, "I said that I couldn't see Naruto and Sasuke. I never said that I couldn't see Killer B."
Cheeky dick. Shikamaru was definitely not in the mood for that kind of thing. Not even close.
But wait. He said that he never saw either of them within the confines of Sora-ku. If he could see their dead bodies, he definitely would have said as much if the syntax of his most recent explanation was anything to go by, and if they had died, they weren't in there long enough to be incinerated into nothing.
Shikamaru looked around, wondering just what to do now, "So where the hell are they?"
XxX
(Past the Northern Border of Kaze no Kuni)
Naruto could smell his own blood, but his eyelids were too heavy to lift to find out how badly he was hurt. There wasn't much he could do about it himself anyway, especially with the low level of chakra he had. He probably didn't have enough to stick to another person if his life depended on it.
That explosion... he'd have to figure out later where it ranked on the Tsunade-scale of impact. His head was too much of a jumbled mess to do so right then.
"Whoa. Is this a person? Where's his skin?"
"Must have burned off. I guess we know where he was just now."
"He must have run from Sora-ku when the fire started."
"That's a ways away isn't it?"
"Wait a-. Look at the fucking headband."
"Konoha? All the way out here?"
Naruto didn't know who was speaking, but they weren't stabbing him yet so that was a plus. He was just so tired. So very tired. He hurt all over, from head-to-toe and he couldn't find the strength to move any part of his body. He just wanted to sleep. He could deal with whatever it was when he woke up.
"Hey! We found two more a few miles away! One of 'em's dead!"
"Ha! Well we've got a Konoha one right here! Still breathing!"
Yes. He was most certainly still breathing. Naruto would have known if he wasn't. Armed with that knowledge of his own well-being, little else mattered at the moment.
"Not bad for border patrol huh?"
"Shut up and get him stabilized long enough for us to get him to -***-!"
Mah... shut up. Blah-blah-blah. Comprehending words hurt. He was alive. In the meantime, everything else could wait until after he'd gotten some rest. He was only going to close his eyes for a moment.
Definitely. For sure. Then he was going to go look for the rest of his team. That was the first order once he woke up. Thirty minutes tops. A quick power nap.
Hopefully Shikamaru wouldn't be too terribly upset. If anyone could understand needing a nap, it would have to be Shika.