Boom!
Silver lightning tore across the sky. The rain thickened.
A curtain of water poured down from the heavens, flooding the trenches carved into the mountaintop and spilling over the edges like winding channels.
Two against six.
Eight blazing chakra cores answered each other across the summit.
Two Kage level fighters versus one Kage level opponent, two elite jōnin, and three standard jōnin.
By the shinobi world's basic logic, three well coordinated jōnin could handle an elite jōnin. Three elite jōnin could barely contend with Kage level.
On paper, the mountaintop's strength added up to roughly four Kage level combatants.
A dead even match.
"Looks like they're not leaving," Kisame Hoshigaki said, tipping his head back to savor the wet air. His eyes narrowed in pure enjoyment.
For a Water Release specialist, this was paradise.
"This is your home field," Uchiha Itachi said calmly, assigning roles as if he were arranging pieces on a board. "Orochimaru is yours. I'll hold off the Root shinobi with the sunglasses."
"No problem."
Thinking of the secret mission Uchiha Madara had given him, to retrieve the Sage of Six Paths' treasure, Kisame agreed without hesitation.
He'd been worrying about how to kill Orochimaru and then slip the treasure away without Itachi noticing.
This plan was perfect.
Both sides selected their opponents. The air tightened, heavy and scorching with tension.
Flash!
Deep blue fingers moved in front of Kisame's chest. Vast chakra surged inside him, rolling like tides.
"They're coming!" Chō warned at once.
Ran and Iwabear instantly tensed. A chainsaw like gale wrapped Ran's blade, while thick earth armor crawled over Iwabear's body.
As the weakest trio on the field, they'd already been running at full alert.
Konome Taketori watched Kisame's chakra with her Byakugan. That strange familiarity gnawed at her.
That deep blue chakra flood was like the sea itself.
Why did it feel like the Three Tails, Isobu?
A tailed beast without a tail?
She remembered the chunk of Three Tails flesh sealed into the Blood Hound, then looked at Kisame's sharklike build and the massive blade on his back, Samehada.
Something felt wrong.
Human experimentation was not Konoha and Orochimaru's private craft. Kumogakure's Black Lightning research had used bloodline shinobi like tools for years.
If Kirigakure had its own brand of experimentation, then the near tailed beast level chakra inside Kisame probably had everything to do with the Three Tails.
Rumble!
Thunder and lightning ripped the sky. Kisame finished his long string of hand seals. His cheeks bulged, then he spat.
Water Release: Great Exploding Water Colliding Wave!
The surge was violent enough to yank falling rain upward. A monstrous tsunami erupted on the summit like a breached river turned into an ocean.
A killing move, right out of the gate.
"You've got to be kidding me," Ran breathed.
He gripped his short blade, the Wind Release on it not even a meter long, and looked around in a daze.
He had never fought like this.
A normal shinobi battle started with tools and feints, then dangerous taijutsu exchanges, then each side's signature technique to decide the outcome.
But this?
One man created a tsunami at the top of a mountain, a wave over a hundred meters high, swallowing the world.
How were you supposed to resist that?
Chō and Iwabear stared in the same despair.
At this point, attributes, counters, and matchups didn't matter anymore. In the face of sheer volume, everything became meaningless.
A Konoha jōnin who stood near the top of the shinobi pyramid was, in this moment, no different from an ordinary person facing a natural disaster.
This was a shinobi who could ignore numbers.
Only shinobi like that had the right to become a village's one and only Kage.
Mud yellow Earth Release chakra coated the pale owl mask. Konome was ready to take it head on.
There was nowhere to hide on the summit. This Water Release couldn't break her defense anyway.
As for Ran and Chō, who had almost no defensive ability, she wasn't qualified to protect them right now.
The original body was only elite jōnin tier.
As a clone, she could crush ordinary elite jōnin with overall performance, but if she tried to trade head on with a Kage level opponent, she could only rely on taijutsu.
Once the enemy started throwing wide area calamity techniques, even she could only run for her life.
Fortunately, Konome wasn't alone.
The wave blotted out the sky. Tens of thousands of tons of force crashed down.
Orochimaru stepped to the front of the group and left them a back that felt, annoyingly, reliable.
He slapped both hands onto the ground.
Summoning Technique: Triple Rashōmon!
The earth shook. Three massive gates rose from the soil, each with a blue green demonic face and jagged fangs. They loomed like mountains, their height not losing to the tsunami at all.
Boom!
Water hammered steel. The sound alone nearly ruptured Chō's eardrums. Lightning flashed overhead, yet the thunder seemed to vanish, drowned out by the collision.
Rumble!
The wave pounded again and again.
The first gate toppled. Then the second.
After smashing through two, the water finally lost its punch and died against the third.
Rivers surged out from both sides of the last gate, forming two roaring currents. Everyone stood ankle deep in water and looked around.
The once dry summit had become a swampy sea.
"I'm starting to regret agreeing to help you," Aburame Ryūma said, pushing his sunglasses up as kikaichū crawled over his face.
"If you can just hold Uchiha Itachi, I won't even take the Sharingan," Orochimaru said at once, raising the price.
He understood Ryūma's meaning.
He knew Itachi was dangerous, but he hadn't expected the shark faced one to be this monstrous too. Expecting someone to risk their life for that trade was unrealistic.
If he didn't show sincerity, Ryūma would simply leave.
Ryūma fell silent for a moment, then nodded slightly.
In that brief gap, Konome looked up at the towering Rashōmon.
Her Byakugan pierced the iron gate and clearly saw two figures standing on the wave's crest.
"They're coming again!" Chō warned.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Two figures, left and right, hands behind their backs, sprinted straight down the face of the huge gate toward them.
"I'll take left, you take right," Orochimaru said instantly, spotting the scarlet Sharingan on the right. He kicked up water and charged toward Kisame.
Ryūma raised his hand in a signal.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Ran, Chō, and Iwabear formed a triangle and dashed across the water toward Itachi.
As long as they didn't let Itachi join the blue skinned monster, fighting an Uchiha was at least survivable.
Even if they died, they wouldn't die as helplessly.
Konome moved to intercept Itachi but Ryūma blocked her.
"Don't go."
"This side is ours. You go left and watch Orochimaru. His character isn't trustworthy."
"Interrupt Reverse Summoning if he tries it."
"Don't let him sell us out."
Konome's eyes shifted. She understood his thinking immediately.
Itachi was Konoha's undercover agent. Ryūma was Root's second in command. There was a good chance he knew that.
With Iwabear and the other two, he had enough to stall a holding back Itachi. Adding Konome wouldn't change the outcome.
But if Orochimaru used Reverse Summoning to flee, the rest of them would be facing two Kage level fighters.
If they wanted to live, they'd have to pray Itachi turned on Akatsuki for real.
Danzō's right hand man really did think ahead.
"Understood."
Crackle!
Konome became a streak of lightning and shot toward the battlefield where Orochimaru and Kisame were about to collide.
Watching her small figure vanish, Ryūma extended both hands. A sky covering swarm of kikaichū hatched and surged outward, forming a black ring around Ran's team and Itachi.
The swarm blotted the world like a storm cloud.
Itachi and the trio became blurred shapes, swallowed by insects.
Ryūma pushed his sunglasses up with one finger.
Normally he fought from afar, harassing with insect tides.
This time, he clasped his hands behind his back and stepped straight into the dark swarm.
"Demonic Illusion: Darkness Technique!" Chō roared.
The sky became a black curtain.
Even with the Sharingan, Itachi couldn't find a single source of light in that boundless darkness.
Buzz.
A sound drifted beside his ear, impossible to tell whether it was Wind Release or insect wings.
The Sharingan spun into a brilliant Mangekyō. The black shuriken like pattern whirled in his eyes.
Demonic Illusion: Mirror Heaven and Earth Change!
The Darkness Technique shattered instantly and rebounded back along its path.
The world still didn't become bright.
The kikaichū swarm blocked the light too thoroughly.
A screeching chainsaw grind came from the left. A silent rock fist punched from the right.
Fwoosh!
The black cloak snapped in the wind.
Mangekyō eyes swept left and right.
The faster the pattern spun, the slower Ran and Iwabear seemed to move.
Itachi read both attacks cleanly.
He twisted, jumped, slipped past the left blade, then planted his foot on the right side's incoming strike to borrow momentum.
He spun and snapped a vicious roundhouse kick.
Bang!
Ran took the hit square in the chest. Blood spilled at his lips as he flew backward.
Iwabear's eyes sharpened. He grabbed Itachi's leg where it had stepped off his arm. Stone hardened around his elbow and he smashed down hard.
Crack!
The shin broke.
But there was no flesh, no blood.
Only crows.
Flap flap flap!
Itachi's form warped and exploded into countless crows with scarlet eyes, scattering into the swarm.
"Release!"
A palm pressed suddenly to Iwabear's back.
A familiar chakra invaded his body and disrupted his chakra flow, snapping him out of the illusion.
The crows still filled the air, but Itachi stood in front of him, perfectly unharmed, watching coldly.
Nearby, Chō held his hands out, wavering in place like a blind man. Ran crawled up clutching his chest, his blade trembling. He was badly hurt.
"Fall back."
Once he confirmed Iwabear was free, Ryūma withdrew his hand.
Still shaken, Iwabear retreated behind Ryūma, hauled Ran up, then moved behind Chō and injected chakra to disrupt the corrupted flow in Chō's meridians.
Chō finally came back to himself.
All three stared at Itachi, who stood as if he had never moved at all.
They swallowed hard and lowered their heads, refusing to meet that terrifying gaze.
Too scary.
This was not the same tier as the Uchiha they'd killed back at the clan compound.
If Ryūma hadn't intervened, they would already be dead.
"We've been running into a lot of monsters lately," Chō muttered, bitterness in his voice.
He thought Konome, who was immune to genjutsu and could kill two people with taijutsu in a blink, was already absurd.
Now there was Itachi, who reflected genjutsu back and nearly erased three people instantly.
Sometimes Chō honestly wondered if choosing genjutsu as his main path had been a mistake.
Boom!
A waterfall like roar rose from the left. The water level visibly climbed.
Even from here, they could see flashes of brightly colored venomous snakes swimming beneath the surface.
"Tch. That side's worse," Ran spat out blood, eyes red at the corners.
He didn't dare look up at Itachi.
Instead, he watched the water's reflection to track his position.
"Agreed," Iwabear said quietly, even he unable to stay silent.
Compared to this danger, the battlefield with Konome, Orochimaru, and the blue skinned monster was far more violent.
Even trapped inside the insect swarm where they couldn't see, he could imagine the chaos.
This was never a fight they were meant to participate in.
The three whispered among themselves.
They did not notice that Itachi and Ryūma's bodies had already gone rigid, as if time itself had frozen.
A limitless black space.
A crimson moon hung overhead, casting eerie red light on the two figures floating in midair.
Ryūma looked down at the darkness beneath his feet, then up at the boy in the black cloak with red clouds.
"Where are we?"
"A world that belongs only to me," Itachi said.
He stepped forward.
A winding path appeared in empty space, bridging the distance under their feet.
"Time, space, everything changes according to my will."
Sky, earth, ocean, seasons.
Under the blood moon, the scene shifted rapidly, transforming again and again, until it returned to pure void.
"Incredible," Ryūma murmured, genuinely impressed by the Mangekyō's mystery.
The Sharingan could create something so close to a creator's power.
No wonder Lord Danzō was obsessed with the Mangekyō.
"Time here doesn't synchronize with the outside. You can observe as long as you want."
"No need. The real business comes first."
Ryūma withdrew his exploratory gaze, stepped along the path, and stopped before Itachi.
"Tell me."
"Everything about Akatsuki."
"No problem," Itachi said, a cold smile creeping onto his lips.
"But before that, you'll tell me what you know."
Ryūma nodded and pulled out a stack of photographs.
The texture felt real in his hands. This didn't feel like a dream illusion at all.
It felt like an actual world.
"Lord Danzō told me you wanted to know how your little brother has been."
"These are recent photos, just as we promised."
"He's doing very well."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to add this story to your Library, drop a review, and leave a Power Stone if you enjoyed it!
Craving more chapters? Join my Patron to unlock advance releases and dive deeper into the story!
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"