Without missing a beat, he defended as he had already done before, simply bowing his head minutely, the thick forehead protector interposing itself between my hand and his skull.
And with a smile, I did something that I had used only once in my very first match with Itachi, back when I was still under the care of Maito Gai.
...
With a single movement, I hooked my fingers between his forehead protector and his head, pulling suddenly while my right knee rose sharply.
An earth-shattering *boom* echoed when my blow landed on his nose, and with my chakra flooding through me, I imprinted the simplest seal ever written on his forehead protector.
He was far too experienced to reel back from the blow I had just managed to land, and so he simply bull-rushed me, his shoulder conveniently placed to ram into my gut and making me expel all the air from my lungs.
Even my vaunted control wasn't enough to keep me on the ground, and as we rocketed through the increasingly changing environment, I rose both my hands above my head, my back arching back minutely while chakra rose to concentrate in my clasped hands.
Once more, the impossibly dense chakra of my Sage Mode was turned into Earth Natured, and I hit him.
From the base of my shoulder blades, up to my wide shoulders and along the steely muscles wrapped around the bones of my arms, sheer power traveled in an unbroken chain, joints weaving like a whip, and I delivered a devastating hit on the back of the Toad Sage. Our momentum was turned from almost perfectly horizontal to vertical, and while I was still clutched in his arms, we were buried within the ground.
As the arms of the Toad Sage slipped from around me, I felt a frown appear on my features: this really was looking far too easy. I was S-rank, no doubt, I had a very precise idea of the Sannin's arsenal, but I wasn't sure that I should be able to dictate the fight so easily.
Then the desert ground stopped passing us by as if it had the same consistency of water and we fell into what felt like a vast cave.
With 0 natural light penetrating into the sand-covered trench, we made, I could only tell by the slight updraft that the cave was large indeed: and then something diverted Jiraya's direction at a speed that just didn't make sense: even more so when I didn't sense anything capable of such.
Still free-falling, I stilled letting the world wash over me with its usual bright lively existence: only it felt muted, and a terrible suspicion made its way into my head.
"Sorry kid." the voice of the Sannin taunted me with a broken cough while, I focused on shaping the different Nature chakra I was somewhat absorbing, "But two of us are one Sage too many."
And with those last words, I felt more than saw, the humungous Toad's mouth I was in closed, and it sealed me away from Suna, the little Nature Chakra I had been drawing in was cut off.
Well, this looks like a problem.
...
Getting into a prolonged fight with the Kyubi Jinchuriki hadn't been the plan: originally, Itachi was meant to engage Jiraya and his pupil so that Daiki's apprentice would be unknowingly pushed towards making use of the Monkey Summoning Contract in order to escape.
There couldn't be deceit when binding your blood to a Chakra Creature, and Daiki's involvement with his Uzumaki's potential Animal Summons was to be reduced to 0, least Enma tore the girl to shreds because of the mere association.
So Daiki ended up tearing through Root forces and regular ANBU in order to get at Danzo while Itachi was left with the task of buying time against an out of control Kyubi Jinchuriki and one of the oldest shinobi around.
High paced, but not overly risky, the fight had started out relatively well: the blond kid was inconsequential falling for a genjutsu that almost didn't require attention on Itachi's part, and while the white-haired Sannin's blows were powerful, they couldn't quite manage to land.
Then of course Jiraya started summoning toads and slapped some seal on the blonde kid, who went from inactive to being a random element in the fight almost faster than the Uchiha kinslayer could blink: a coat of poisonous chakra made the air sizzle and burn around the jinchuriki, while 3 bubblings tails started lashing out erratically.
The temporary distraction given by the giant toad and the three-tailed Naruto allowed Jiraya to pull out something that Itachi hadn't quite expected: Sage Mode.
Standing to Daiki's information, Jiraya hadn't mastered that particular art, and he needed a full minute in which he'd be unable to use ninjutsu, with his hands clasped together no less.
Subpar info. Itachi had barely withheld a sigh of exasperation when his Sahringan's vision was blotted out by the Toad Sage, adjusting his approach on the fly, since even his ever-encroaching blindness was not enough to hinder him.
So he started weaving through the veritable barrage of assaults that the Sage, the jinchuriki, and the toads started raining on him: one after another, Itachi returned the summons to their Plane, cutting down the numbers of the enemy often playing one against the other thanks to either genjutsu or a clever placement of his own body.
When Naruto Uzumaki sported the fifth tail, Itachi had started to wonder if the plan had completely failed on Daiki's side, and almost called forth the Mangeyko to deal with the jinchuriki.
Fortunately, the peculiar shinobi that Itachi tentatively called ally, a man that insisted with showing an amount of trust in the Uchiha kinslayer that was neither earned nor deserved, arrived in time, tackling the Toad Sage out of the picture.
That left the Akatsuki member to deal with a giant toad and an out-of-control 5 tailed jinchuriki. One whose chakra kept swelling, whose speed kept increasing, whose strength already eclipsed what Itachi would ever be able to oppose: a lesser man would be intimidated, or even cowed into planning a retreat.
The eldest Uchiha was not a lesser man.
With no need for the Sharingan, Itachi sidestepped the blisteringly powerful blows of Naruto Uzumaki, the sand shifting in an almost soothing song under his feet as he danced around his opponents. Before the Uchiha could deal with the Summoned Creature, a whipping motion of one of jinchuriki's tails took care of it almost negligently.
That also meant that Itachi was subject to the full focus of the snarling madness and hate incarnated that was the out-of-control Konoha shinobi. The fact that whatever seal Jiraya had slapped on the kid still prevented the Uchiha from ensnaring his target into a genjutsu was troubling.
Energy was gathered into the left arm of Itachi and released while he slapped aside a furious incoming blow, ducking under another two and proceeding to vanish from the creature senses, dancing just out of the corner of his eyes, his steps becoming silent, and the blistering hot air of the desert preventing the Jinchuriki from tracking by scent.
Yet, when a Kage Bunshin appeared in hasty retreat towards the position of Jiraya and Daiki, the mindless jinchuriki didn't hesitate in giving pursuit.
The blank stare of Itachi followed the Jinchuriki as he tore through dunes like they were made of paper, the very air almost catching fire with the friction of his movements.
The memory of his clone falling apart came at the same time as a sudden change in the white noise that was the overwhelmingly vast chakra signatures that had been blanketing the area: Daiki was gone.
A slow blink of surprise was the only external sign that the disappearance of Konoha's last nuke-nin wasn't an expected event, and with a barely restrained sigh, Itachi followed his target, knowing that the jinchuriki's mindlessness would bring him to crash with the Toad Sage, whose presence could still be clearly perceived.
The jinchuriki didn't even stop when Itachi's red herring popped in a small cloud of smoke, his charge continuing with renovated fury against the following opponent entering its field of vision.
Jiraya, who had just managed to climb out of a collapsed dune, had a fraction of a second to realize that the blanketing presence of the kyubi was originated by a point much closer than he'd have wanted when the mindless Naruto barreled into him, toxic chakra burning hopelessly against the Nature's one that the Sannin was constantly exuding.
Still, his reaction time was to be respected, if not outright envied: the white hair of the man billowed out in a spiky cocoon that assumed the density of steel, digging through the layer of chakra coating his sudden attacker to the point that they came away bloody.
An instant later, the jinchuriki let out an outraged wail that reverberated across the air carrying with it all the untamable fury of the nine-tailed fox, his five tails sweeping the surroundings in a large move that forced Itachi to move back, avoiding being hit by the three meters tall wall of red and black churning chakra.
...
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