Being an Uchiha, it was obvious that his enemies would one day force him to fight without his most powerful tool: and he was ready for that. After all, the perfect recall of his immediate surroundings was enough for quick retaliation. But I'm not alone.
"Ino!" he called while his body moved based on what he remembered thanks to his perfect eyesight, "I'm momentarily blind!"
...
In the fraction of second between the moment in which the shield deflected the jian's stab and the instant in which the kunoichi's elegant use of the chakra flashed an absent sun into the Sharingan, Sasuke's foot that had kicked the blond shinobi's knee had yet to touch the ground, and from his perfectly balanced position, it was a joke to kick the base of his unwilling prisoner's back, throwing him against the incoming woman.
With her shield to one side and her whole weight behind the slash quickly approaching Sasuke, she was bowled over by the body of her companion, breath leaving her lungs forcefully at the impact.
A hail of kunai immediately followed, and the Uchiha heard the satisfying bite of steel on unprotected flesh. Given the lack of grunts of pain, he suspected that at least one of the two Iwa shinobi was dead: likely the woman.
An instant later, Sasuke felt the familiar touch of Ino's chakra over his pathways, and he let her in: the sight of the battlefield was returned to him, albeit at an angle that forced him to adjust as if he was seeing through an impartial observer. Still, his brain was coded to deal with the massive amount of information delivered by the Sharingan, so he was quickly back at 100%.
He felt a full smile tug at his lips now: this was the warmth that he had started to recognize only thanks to Ino. He could trust her, and she had his back.
As if he had just pushed off from a stable rock, Sasuke used his last kick to reorient himself, and his heel impacted hard against the vambrace of another incoming ninja that he had yet to face, redirecting his attack just enough to avoid his neck being grazed by what looked like a spiked mace, and putting himself in a perfect position for his hand to close around the shaft of the weapon.
What kind of team goes around with these kinds of weapons? Sasuke wanted to laugh in disbelief at Iwa's politics, only for the memory of Tenten to blossom at the forefront of his mind. That shut up his brief bout of hilarity, and an instant later, he was again fully focused.
As Sasuke started to pull on the innocuous part of the weapon, the ninja wielding it gave proof of his intelligence by immediately letting go of the weapon, turning his incoming swing into a shoulder check that should crash just under his ribs of Sasuke.
Pathetic. Sasuke was just too nimble for this kind of attack, and he somersaulted over his attacker while bringing around his spiked mace, burying it into the man's temple.
At this distance, he felt the feeble flame of the man's chakra gutter out like a candle in a hurricane, and he left a feral smille cover his features, finally falling fully into the rhythm of a fight for his life.
The Uchiha darted once more as he followed the sight of the battlefield provided by Ino, chakra surged across his eyes while he worked off the blinding technique of the just killed kunoichi.
In a matter of fractions of a second, he released the half-ram seal that he had used to keep the med-nin in place, and he skewered him with a Chidori just in time to turn on himself and kill the man with the dislocated shoulder.
His Sharingan flashed across the area while Ino's chakra slowly abandoned his pathways: "I awoke the two with us, we need to move, but they're weak, and they're more useful protecting me while I use my Bloodline on the enemy."
"Agreed." Sasuke spoke out loud, knowing that she could hear him, and he let go of the almost religious control he kept upon his own chakra. With the Sharingan blazing once more through the rain, he picked the direction he had planned with Ino the day before, and ran.
After the clash with the group of Iwa nin, he'd bet his eyes that the main force had found their hiding place, so it was useless to waste focus on a cloaking technique. Besides, if the enemy focused on him, Ino could do her job much better.
With no hesitation, he moved.
...
Soon after those events, far away from that place, a raven popped after delivering a message, and Itachi Uchiha walked to his companion with a heavy frown on his features: "Sasuke is near Kumo, your Yamanaka is with him... apparently they are in a relationship."
Daiki rose from his cross-legged position with a deep breath, a grimace flashing briefly over his usually placid expression while he turned fully towards Itachi: "Are you ready then?"
The Sharingan in the eyes of the kinslayer morphed slowly into the terrifying shape of his signature Mangeyko, and he answered with a tone that would have chilled the dead: "I'll do what I must."
...
( February 5th, 15 years After the Kyubi Attack )
The forests had long since yielded to the unforgiving, steep, rocky hills that were the beginning of the mountain range that characterized Kaminari no Kuni: the rising atmospherical pressure that coalesced over the sea because of the waters heated by the sun was joined by the dry wind from Suna's desert, which called the cold air from the mountaintops that stood as kunai attempting to stab the sky itself.
In this season, moving towards Kumo meant having a cold, biting wind constantly needling against your skin: it carried with it the memory of the glaciers and the snows of the deeper north, and a much more typical, if faint, smell of ozone: after all, the country of Lightning had rightfully earned its name by the sheer amount of thunderstorms that on and off traveled from peak to peak.
I was running at a speed that any competent jonin could keep up with, but where their expenditure of chakra could make them appear on the radar of a skilled sensor, my chakra was controlled, my presence invisible: I had learned how to do so back when I forced myself against the reincarnation of Tobirama Senju, learning from one of the most deadly Suiton users to ever grace the Elemental Nations.
The lithe silhouette of Itachi opened the way as he moved without hesitation: despite his increasingly fading eyesight, which had been worsened by the forced confrontation with Naruto and Jiraya, he was still as precise and efficient as always.
The black cloak with red clouds that we shared had been discarded in favor of a more reasonable combination of cargo pants and a mesh shirt under a baggy shirt and a nondescript traveling cloak, and there wasn't a sound being made by our movements.
Knowing that he was on high alert for any trouble, I let myself consider what had transpired in the previous month: my induction to Akatsuki had been a surprisingly quiet, mundane affair. There had been no strange, sudden challenges, no traps, no interrogation carried out by the objectively terrifying King of Hell that 'leader-sama' was capable of summoning.
Itachi made his report, I handed over the head of Jiraya to Kakuzu, and Naruto was quickly disappeared in one of the holding cells that Sasori himself had readied to keep the jinchuriki unconscious and alive until it came its turn to be gobbled up by the Gedo Mazo.
While I had been pretty sure that the Biju had to be consumed in order, it was nice to receive a confirmation: and the success of Sasori restraining method meant that there was a radical change to Akatsuki's canon modus-operandi: where before they had to go from Gaara to Yugito Nii to the Sanbi, now the organization that I joined with the express intention of foiling was somewhat able to grab any of its intended targets.
As we moved, I lightly thumbed the strange ring that was resting on my right thumb: it was necessary for the projection technique that allowed the members of the Akatsuki to collaborate at even great distances in order to perform the Biju-eating ritual. Thankfully, I haven't been forced to participate in that just yet.
We moved with the certainty of the S-rank shinobi we were, and following Itachi, which had somehow turned his minor summons into a spy network nobody knew about we sneaked through the girdle of Kumo nin carefully patrolling the quiet sections of their border, avoiding the Konoha troops that were barrelling full speed towards the Village Hidden in the Clouds.
Soon enough, the full attack on the village would begin: but where an army's stealth was obviously limited by their size, in the shinobi world that also implied that the worst ninja at concealing his own chakra was the one that unwittingly warned the enemy of his presence, and through him, of his entire company.
...
If you like the story so far, please throw some power stones.
======================
If you want to support me, Or just read ahead of the public release, you can check my patreon :
p atreon.com/sybife
|● sybife