( DAIKI POV )
( 26th May, year 14 AK )
The forest blurred around us as we ran. The imposing trees, the vibrant green leaves, full of life because of the summer and the ever increasing number of corpses that were unavoidably left to rot because of the War, nothing of it truly managed to get the attention it deserved.
I was busy trying to find a way around the less than wonderful task I had been assigned to. It was lucky that Itachi was sent as 'supervisor'. I admitted to myself, my eyes briefly darting to the black-clad shinobi at my side.
It wasn't that I needed either Naruto or Jiraya alive for my plans, since I was about to be in a good enough position to make the Black Zetsu disappear, and in any case the Biju couldn't be trusted into the hands of mankind, not if I had any hope for the change that I had begun to gain traction. There is only so much fighting spirit that can withstand a hopeless battle after all.
"Danzo, Jiraya, and the Kyubi Jinchuriki." I subvocalized while I bounced from one tree to another, already starting to see the forest becoming less thick, the trees unable to withstand the desertic environment that we would find further south.
Itachi didn't answer, limiting himself to raise an eyebrow in my direction in the lull between jumps.
"Well, that's awfully convenient, isn't it?" I went on, keeping in mind the several steps I had still to complete before feeling safe enough with targeting the Akatsuki more or less openly.
I needed to find a way to heal Itachi, and Danzo presented one. In particular, my mind slotted together the situation I was in with one of the things I somewhat needed to accomplish down the line: "How much have you kept of the stuff you raided from Orochimaru?"
A flat gaze was answer enough, and it stole a faint grin from me. Kabuto had done some mumbo jumbo to rebuild the hole in Sasuke's chest in the manga, had he not? And I knew that Itachi's had a problem with his lungs. Oh, I had considered transplant, it wouldn't be such a hassle to find a shinobi that matched the blood type and build of the Uchiha.
I would simply need to wring out almost all the chakra from the donor, least it conflicted Itachi's, cut where I needed to cut, and heal where I needed to heal.
A case of chakra poisoning was more or less obligatory, at least in my opinion as a med-nin, there was just no way around it, but since I would be already messing with my comrade's lungs, how difficult would it be to include some of Hashirama's cells in the process? I had access to both the Edo Tensei of the Shodaime and soon to the strange fuckery that Danzo had employed to turn his arm into a deadly-bullshittery related weapon.
"What are you thinking about?" Itachi apparently couldn't read my mind even with his sharingan lazily spinning in my direction, so I simply smiled as an answer, ducking under a low hanging branch before returning my attention to the environment.
"Your genjutsu is pretty good, is it not?" I spoke to change topic, "And there is that strange technique of body possession that allows you to puppeteer from a distance dead bodies, isn't there?"
At the Uchiha faint nod, I went ahead, thinking of yet another power up that would benefit my plans: "Well, your original dumbass plan was to let Sasuke kill you, and eventually to take your eyes, yes?"
I kept whispering, knowing that Itachi was barely close enough to listen, and only after having checked with an istant of stillness that we were, in fact, alone. "How hard would it be to convince Sasuke of your death by his hand?"
The perfectly blank expression of Itachi momentarly staggered at the mention of his brother, only to be rebuilt almost faster than I could percieve.
"It... wouldn't be impossible." he reluctantly admitted, sliding off a trunk and running across an empty clearing.
"Super eyes for the both of you then." I nodded thoughtfully, thinking about how I would need to basically kidnap Sasuke after his 'killing' of Itachi in order to perform surgery without his consent upon his eyes.
Those were plans for the future, as soon as I was somewhat settled within the Akatsuki, I could proceed to actually healing Itachi, then we would take care of his eyes, and I hoped that he would naturally develop the Rinnegan, even if I wasn't sure about the bullshittery of the Sage's sons resurrections.
In theory, if my derailing of Canon hadn't changed it all, Sasuke and Naruto were the two big pieces on the board, but, always in theory, Sasuke's eyes would be transplanted into Itachi, solving half of the puzzle.
Would using Hashirama's cells be enough to trigger the change from Eternal Mangeyko to Rinnegan? Well, worst comes to worst I'll steal some DNA from Naruto once he's in custody of the Akatsuki. After all the Biju need to be extracted in order if memory serves me well.
I blinked, stopping at the edge of the forest once I realized that Itachi had stopped running at my side. I turned, spotting him staring hollowly ahead of himself, apparently blind to the happenings of the rest of the world.
I sighed, walking back to the thoughtful Uchiha: "Once we're done, I'll help you fake your death." I blurted out the first idiotic thing that came to my mind.
But hey, at least I got his attention: "There will be a lot of shit to do, and your suicidal tendencies have gone on long enough."
I landed a hand on his shoulder, "C'mon, we've got a clear objective: once we're close enough, I'll take Danzo and the goons he'll have around, I'll leave you up to tussle with Jiraya and mind-fuck the Jinchuriki. One glance, and he's your mad dog on a leash."
"The point isn't disappearing." he whispered, his voice almost too faint for me to hear, "I just... can't keep going. I don't want to, I'm the wrong man for..."
"The right man in the worng place can change the world, Itachi." I turned towards him fully then, focusing all of my attention on the kinslayer, "Force answers force, war breeds war, and death only brings death. To break this cycle, one must do more than just act without any thought or doubt." I landed my hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.
"I cannot punish someone for the way they think, not when I'm so acutely aware of how this world's culture shapes the mind of its people, to stop this cycle, I must break the chain, but I cannot do this alone, Itachi."
I thought that I saw some measure of hope moving behind the Uchiha's red irises, but it micht have been simple wishful thinking on my part.
"Very well." with those unsympathetic words, Itachi became once more the unfeeling blade that he had been for so long, and we returned to our run.
After a while, I stilled myself, my sensing blossoming to truly outrageous distances once the natural chakra trickled into my system, and I smiled: "Found them."
I channeled chakra into the underside of a plate of my armour, unsealing a rather large Summoning Scroll that I kept on my person since Konoha's Crush. With a quick application of chakra, I summoned a Kage Bunshin, and handed it over, before turning towards Itachi: "Karin is almost colliding with Jiraya and Naruto, can you push her until she stumbles on this?"
"Why?" the unreadable gaze of Itachi pinned me where I was while my clone started running, masking his presence as he went.
"Because I can only offer opportunities to Karin, she is the one that has to chose to either take them or ignore them."
"That was Sarutobi's Summoning Scroll." the flat voice of my companion made me smile widely, "And you don't want to meet Enma as a potential summoner, since he may know stuff about you from the Sandaime, and you cannot risk that information to reach the two dead Kage you have drafted."
I blinked in surprise for a second, astounded by Itachi's far too efficient mind: "Well, that and Elephants and Snakes are ill suited to Karin."
"And you want to keep your faction's skills diversified."
I nodded at the Uchiha, that had openly saw right through me, and wondered briefly how the world would have turned if he hadn't been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
"I'll do it." he confirmed, and once I heard those words, I flung myself ahead, my senses zeroing in on the faint tracks of a rather large team of shinobi that surrounded a muted presence, as if a part of it was sealed away.
...
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