Konohagakure - The Elemental Nations
"Ah, damnit!"
Naruto Uzumaki kicked a stray pebble across the sun-baked cobblestones of the marketplace, his bright blue eyes narrowed in an exaggerated, highly vocal display of youthful impatience. He crossed his arms behind his head, letting out a groan that was loud enough to turn the heads of passing merchants. "He's late again! I swear, Kakashi-sensei's internal clock is completely broken!"
Standing a few paces away, leaning against the cool, shaded brickwork of a tea shop, Sasuke Uchiha let out a slow, deeply irritated sigh.
"...Naruto, can you just shut up?" Sasuke muttered, his dark eyes sliding sideways to glare at his teammate.
He was profoundly annoyed right now, and Naruto's incessant complaining was merely the abrasive surface of a much deeper, suffocating frustration. There was a massive, continental war currently raging beyond the borders of the Fire Country… a war where shinobis and anomalies like Haku were carving their names into history… and yet, Sasuke was inexplicably stuck within the peaceful, stagnant walls of the village.
It might have seemed to the ordinary civilians passing by that the daily lives of Team 7 had simply returned to a mundane, pre-war normalcy. But Sasuke's keen, analytical mind knew that was entirely a facade.
Without overtly activating his Sharingan, he could feel the dense, highly disciplined chakra signatures of multiple elite Jonin and ANBU operatives stationed discreetly around the marketplace. They were lounging on rooftops, mingling in civilian clothing near the dumpling stalls, and casting invisible sensory nets across the streets, constantly watching their every move.
The village leadership was keeping Naruto locked inside a heavily guarded, gilded cage, and by extension, Sasuke was tethered to the exact same tedious leash. Even now, while they were merely waiting for their habitually tardy sensei at a predetermined rendezvous point, they were surrounded by an invisible army.
It was an insult to his ambition.
Sasuke pushed himself off the brick wall, the rough texture scraping faintly against his high-collared shirt. He brushed a speck of dust from his dark trousers, his jaw tightening as he finally reached the absolute limit of his tolerance for the day.
"I'm not feeling well today," Sasuke declared abruptly, his voice flat and devoid of its usual competitive edge. He turned his back on the bustling street, looking toward the quieter residential districts. "I'm going home."
"Huh?" Sakura blinked, stepping forward with a look of mild surprise and immediate concern crossing her features. "But Sasuke-kun, Kakashi-sensei is expecting us here. He said we were going to go over the new formation protocols today. What if he shows up right after you leave?"
"Let him," Sasuke replied dismissively, not even bothering to look over his shoulder. "Every single day has been exactly like this, Sakura. It is entirely pointless. We just stand around discussing hypothetical strategies for a war we aren't even allowed to fight in, or doing the same repetitive training exercises. I'm just not feeling it today."
Naruto stopped kicking pebbles, turning to look at his rival. The blonde Jinchūriki's brow furrowed, ready to launch into a loud argument about teamwork and dedication, but as he took in the rigid, deeply frustrated line of Sasuke's shoulders, he surprisingly held his tongue. Naruto slowly shook his head, a rare sliver of empathy staying his usual reprimand; perhaps Sasuke was simply just as annoyed and suffocated by Kakashi's tardiness and their forced confinement as he was.
"Whatever, man," Naruto mumbled, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall Sasuke had just vacated. "Suit yourself."
Without offering a farewell, Sasuke proceeded to walk away from his team, his hands buried deep in his pockets as he took a sharp right turn, disappearing into the shadowed, narrow alleyways that bypassed the crowded main thoroughfares.
As the noise of the marketplace faded behind him, replaced by the damp, hollow drip of condensation from the overhanging eaves, the oppressive feeling of being watched gnawed at the edges of Sasuke's psyche. He couldn't shake the sensation of eyes boring into the back of his neck.
With a subtle, focused pulse of his chakra, his dark irises bled into a brilliant, geometric crimson.
The three tomoe of his mature Sharingan spun to life, instantly piercing the mundane veil of the alleyway. He turned his head slightly, sweeping his gaze across the intersecting rooftops and the shadowed balconies, fully expecting to spot the faint, glowing outlines of the Hokage's mandated Jonin tailing him.
He didn't find the Jonin guards.
Instead, his eyes widened to an impossible degree, his heart seizing violently in his chest.
He whipped his head toward the silhouette of a nearby, multi-story building. For a fraction of a millisecond, framed perfectly against the bright glare of the afternoon sun, he saw the unmistakable flutter of a black cloak adorned with red clouds. He saw the edge of a woven straw hat.
And then... he saw absolutely nothing. The roof was completely, hauntingly empty.
Sasuke gritted his teeth, a profound, suffocating fury clawing its way up his throat. It wasn't a trick of the light. His Sharingan did not hallucinate. The visceral, icy dread that had just spiked through his veins confirmed what his eyes had caught.
Itachi.
All thoughts of returning to his quiet apartment evaporated, incinerated by the sudden, volcanic eruption of a decade's worth of festering hatred.
Sasuke bent his knees and leaped. He surged upward with explosive, chakra-enhanced force, clearing the alleyway in a single bound to land heavily upon the tiled roof of the building where the phantom had appeared.
He landed in a crouch, his Sharingan spinning so rapidly it was a solid ring of red and black as he pumped a massive volume of chakra into his optic nerves, desperately extending his sensory perception to its absolute limits. He whipped his head to the north.
There. On a distant watchtower. The faintest, lingering ripple of displacement.
Sasuke didn't shout. He didn't alert the ANBU. He launched himself across the rooftops, a blur of dark blue and vengeful intent. The wind roared in his ears, tearing at his clothes as he leaped from building to building, his boots shattering terracotta tiles as he treated the village infrastructure as nothing more than stepping stones for his hunt.
He felt the presence shifting again, drawing him intentionally higher, leading him away from the populated districts and up toward the sheer, rocky incline that overlooked the entire settlement.
He vaulted over a final residential compound, scaling the steep, forested cliff face with frantic, desperate speed until he finally breached the treeline, wall-running straight up the carved stone visage of the Second Hokage.
As Sasuke crested the massive stone monument, vaulting over the edge to land on the flat, grassy plateau that crowned the mountain, he slid to a halt. His breath came in ragged, furious gasps.
The wind howled across the high altitude, pulling at the long, dark grass.
Standing a mere twenty meters away, his back turned to the village below, was the ghost that had haunted his every waking nightmare. The black cloak with its crimson clouds whipped violently in the gale, and as the man slowly turned around, the three tomoe of his own Sharingan glowed with a cold, apathetic familiarity.
"ITACHI!"
Sasuke screamed the name, his voice tearing from his throat, raw and heavy with the agony of the massacre.
He didn't demand an explanation. He didn't ask why his brother had breached the village's security or why he had lured him here. He simply reached down to his thigh holster, ripping a single, razor-sharp kunai from its sheath with a motion born of pure, unadulterated murder.
Sasuke charged. He crossed the grassy plateau in a breathless blur, launching himself into the air as he brought the heavy steel blade down in a vicious, two-handed overhead strike aimed perfectly to cleave Itachi's skull in two.
Itachi didn't draw a weapon. He merely glared at his younger brother, his expression a mask of absolute, glacial indifference.
With a movement so fluid and effortless it seemed almost bored, Itachi raised his left forearm, catching Sasuke's descending wrists just inches from his face. The sheer kinetic impact of the strike cracked the earth beneath Itachi's sandals, yet the older Uchiha's posture did not buckle a single millimeter.
Sasuke roared, violently twisting his body in mid-air to deliver a sweeping, chakra-laced kick toward Itachi's exposed ribs. Itachi simply leaned back, allowing the lethal arc to pass harmlessly over his chest, before pivoting on his heel and driving a blunt, open-palm strike directly into Sasuke's sternum.
The blow wasn't meant to kill; it was meant to repel. Sasuke was thrown backward, skidding across the grass, but he dug his heels in, his Sharingan flawlessly reading the kinetic shift. He rebounded instantly, launching a rapid-fire barrage of shuriken that shrieked through the air, curving in impossible, intersecting trajectories designed to box his brother in.
Itachi stepped through the storm of steel. He didn't block them; he merely tilted his head, shifted his shoulders, and walked forward, allowing the shuriken to slice harmlessly through the empty air around him. The grace of his evasion was insulting, a stark contrast to the frantic, sweating desperation pouring off his younger brother.
"You have grown faster, Sasuke," Itachi commented softly, his velvety voice cutting effortlessly through the clash of metal and the howling wind. "But your strikes are messy. They are blinded by emotion."
"SHUT UP!" Sasuke snarled, weaving a rapid sequence of hand seals as he backpedaled, his chest expanding as he molded a massive volume of fiery chakra.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
A colossal sphere of roaring, superheated flame erupted from Sasuke's lips, expanding to ten meters in diameter as it incinerated the grass and surged toward the older Uchiha.
Itachi did not retreat. He casually mirrored the exact same sequence of seals, completing them a fraction of a second faster.
"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu."
An identical, equally massive sphere of fire exploded from Itachi, meeting his brother's attack dead in the center of the plateau. The two infernos collided with a deafening, concussive roar, battling for supremacy. But Itachi's flames were denser, burning with a superior, refined mastery of the nature transformation. Slowly, inevitably, Itachi's fireball began to push Sasuke's back, threatening to consume the younger brother in his own element.
"I notice you haven't paused to ask me any questions, Sasuke," Itachi called out, his voice perfectly clear despite the roaring blaze separating them. "Given the recent, highly publicized narratives Konoha has been spinning through their newspapers regarding the Uchiha clan and Danzo Shimura... I assumed you would demand the truth from the source."
The flames cast flickering, demonic shadows across Sasuke's furious face. The mention of the 'Danzo Files'… the village-wide propaganda that Tsunade had released, claiming Itachi was a coerced victim acting under illegal orders to prevent a civil war… only poured gasoline onto the inferno of his rage.
"I don't have any questions for a murderer!" Sasuke shouted over the fire, breaking the jutsu clash by aggressively leaping high into the air to avoid the resulting backdraft. "I don't believe a single word of that pathetic propaganda! You slaughtered our parents! You destroyed our clan to test your own capacity! I will kill you no matter what lies the Hokage tries to sell!"
Itachi watched his brother ascend into the smoke, his dark eyes entirely devoid of pity. "You cling to your hatred because it is familiar," Itachi murmured quietly to himself. "You reject the truth because accepting it would mean the pain you endured was a tragedy, rather than a test."
As Sasuke plummeted back toward the earth, he channeled the pinnacle of Kakashi's teachings. He didn't rely on raw fire anymore. The deafening, screeching sound of a thousand birds chirping violently filled the plateau.
Brilliant, blue-white lightning erupted from Sasuke's right hand, but instead of forming the standard Chidori sphere, he forcefully guided the chaotic electrical chakra down the length of his drawn kunai. The steel weapon glowed with incandescent, high-frequency energy, vibrating so intensely it blurred the air around it.
He descended upon Itachi like a bolt of divine judgment, thrusting the lightning-coated blade forward with terrifying, blinding velocity.
Itachi's eyes widened a fraction. He shifted his weight to dodge, but the sheer speed of the Chidori-infused strike, compounded by gravity, finally managed to overwhelm his passive defense.
Sasuke closed the gap, slipping perfectly past Itachi's desperate parry.
SHLICK.
The horrific, wet sound of tearing flesh and grinding bone silenced the wind.
Sasuke drove the lightning-coated kunai deeply, irrevocably, straight into the center of Itachi's chest. The blade pierced directly through the heart, the residual electricity sparking and arcing across the black fabric of the Akatsuki cloak.
Itachi's body jerked violently, a choked gasp escaping his lips as he slumped forward, his chin resting heavily on Sasuke's shoulder.
For a single, suspended moment, the world stopped turning.
Sasuke stood there, his hand gripping the hilt of the weapon buried in his brother's chest. The adrenaline, the decade of agonizing nightmares, and the suffocating weight of his singular purpose suddenly crashed over him in a torrential wave of euphoric, absolute vindication.
He had done it. He had finally avenged them.
A low, breathy chuckle escaped Sasuke's lips. The chuckle quickly escalated, bubbling up from his chest until it broke into a loud, manic, hysterical laugh of fulfilled vengeance that echoed across the empty mountain.
"Hah... hahahaha! I killed you!" Sasuke laughed, his crimson eyes wide with manic triumph as he stared at the sky. "I finally killed you!"
But as the laughter died down, a creeping, unnatural wrongness began to seep into the periphery of his awareness.
He looked down at the body slumped against him.
There was no blood.
The devastating, gaping wound in Itachi's chest where the lightning blade had entered was completely dry. There was no warmth radiating from the dying man, no metallic scent of copper filling the air.
Slowly, terrifyingly, Itachi lifted his head from Sasuke's shoulder.
The older Uchiha's face was still a mask of absolute, ice-cold indifference. He was staring directly into Sasuke's eyes, and there was absolutely no pain, no shock, and no death in his gaze. The utter lack of reaction made Sasuke's blood run instantly freezing cold, a profound, nauseating discomfort twisting his stomach into knots.
'What... what is this?' Sasuke's mind reeled, his Sharingan spinning as panic finally breached his triumph.
Itachi slowly raised his right hand. His fingers curled inward, his hand reaching out deliberately, agonizingly slowly, aiming directly to pluck the spinning crimson eyes right out of his younger brother's sockets.
Sasuke tried to wrench himself backward, to tear his blade free and escape, but his body stubbornly refused to obey his commands. He was paralyzed, locked in a state of absolute, horrifying stillness.
Just as Itachi's fingers brushed the skin beneath Sasuke's eye, the older brother suddenly stopped.
The cold, indifferent expression shifted. Itachi smoothly altered the trajectory of his hand, moving past Sasuke's face to point a solitary, pale finger out toward the empty expanse of the grassy plateau to their right.
Unable to move his body, but compelled by the gesture, Sasuke frantically shifted his gaze, his eyes darting toward where the ghost was pointing.
The illusion shattered like fragile glass.
The impaled body of Itachi resting against his shoulder abruptly dissolved into a swarm of cawing, black crows that scattered violently into the wind, leaving Sasuke lunging forward to stab his kunai into absolutely nothing but thin air.
He stumbled, catching his balance just in time to look up.
There, standing a mere five meters away, completely untouched and completely unbothered, was the real Itachi Uchiha. He was standing near the edge of the cliff, his arms folded comfortably inside the wide sleeves of his Akatsuki cloak, the wind catching his dark hair.
He had been standing there the entire time, watching his younger brother fight shadows.
Itachi looked at the panting, utterly bewildered teenager, his Sharingan glowing softly in the twilight.
"You're still not there yet, little brother..."
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