Konohagakure - The Hokage Monument
"You're still not there yet, little brother."
The words drifted through the howling wind, soft and utterly devoid of exertion, landing against Sasuke's ears with the destructive force of a physical blow.
Sasuke stood paralyzed at the edge of the carved stone plateau, his arm extended, his hand gripping a kunai that had just plunged into empty, mocking air. His breath hitched violently in his throat. He looked down at the space where he had firmly, undeniably felt the flesh and bone of his older brother yield to his lightning-infused blade just seconds ago. There was nothing. No blood. No body. Not even a scorch mark on the grass.
He slowly turned his head, his neck popping with the rigid tension of a coiled spring.
Standing a mere five meters away, framed perfectly against the bruised, violet sky of the descending twilight, was Itachi Uchiha. The older brother was completely untouched, his hands resting comfortably within the wide sleeves of his Akatsuki cloak, his dark eyes observing Sasuke with an expression of profound, glacial indifference.
The reality of the situation crashed over Sasuke, fracturing his fragile triumph into a thousand jagged pieces.
"H-How...?" Sasuke stammered, his voice cracking as his eyes widened so drastically they threatened to bulge from his very sockets. His mind, usually a fortress of cold logic, scrambled frantically for a rational anchor. "No... you were... I felt it! My Sharingan was active... I was looking right at you! What... what is this!?"
He had trained for years. He had honed his visual prowess to pierce through the most intricate illusions, relying on the legendary visual acuity of his bloodline. Yet, Itachi had effortlessly slipped a genjutsu past his fully matured, three-tomoe Sharingan without weaving a single hand seal, without even a subtle shift in the ambient chakra. It was a violation of everything Sasuke understood about his own power.
Itachi watched the frantic, desperate calculation burning behind his younger brother's eyes. He did not smile, nor did he gloat.
"Are you willing to talk now?" Itachi asked, his voice a smooth, velvet cadence that cut cleanly through the howling wind.
The calm, almost polite inquiry was the absolute worst thing Itachi could have said. To Sasuke, it was an insult of the highest magnitude… a dismissal of his decade-long agony, treating his murderous crusade as nothing more than a childish tantrum that required a brief timeout.
"Talk!?" Sasuke roared, the sheer, unadulterated fury finally overriding his momentary paralysis.
He violently discarded the kunai, his hands flying together in a rapid, blurring sequence of seals. The air around him ionized instantly, the scent of ozone flooding the plateau as violent, blue-white lightning erupted from his right palm. The deafening, screeching sound of a thousand birds chirping drowned out the wind.
"I have absolutely nothing to say to a murderer!" Sasuke screamed, his face contorting into a mask of pure, vengeful hatred.
He channeled a massive, reckless volume of chakra down into his legs. The stone beneath his sandals cracked and gave way as he launched himself forward. He was a streak of blinding lightning, crossing the five-meter gap in a fraction of a millisecond, thrusting the Raikiri directly toward the center of Itachi's chest with every ounce of physical strength and desperation he possessed.
He closed the distance perfectly. The crackling lightning illuminated Itachi's impassive features.
But as the lethal thrust neared its target, Itachi didn't retreat. He didn't activate his Mangekyō Sharingan to warp space, nor did he mold a counter-jutsu.
With a movement so economical it bordered on the absurd, Itachi casually slipped his left hand from his cloak. He didn't catch the strike; he merely swatted at it. Using the back of his hand, Itachi precisely struck the outside of Sasuke's wrist, effortlessly hijacking the violent forward momentum of the Raikiri and parrying the assassination attempt cleanly to the side.
Before Sasuke's brain could even register that his ultimate technique had been casually brushed away, Itachi's right hand moved.
SMACK.
The sound of the open-palm slap was shockingly loud, echoing crisply across the monument.
Itachi's hand connected brutally with Sasuke's cheek and jawline. It wasn't a gentle reprimand; it was a devastating, perfectly leveraged strike designed to rattle the brain inside the skull.
"UGH...!"
Sasuke's vision flashed white. His equilibrium shattered instantly as the sheer kinetic force of the slap lifted his feet entirely off the ground. He lost all control of his trajectory, his body spinning wildly as Itachi calmly stepped aside, allowing the younger Uchiha's own misdirected momentum to carry him forward.
Sasuke crashed heavily into the earth, his lightning-coated hand plunging deeply into the solid stone of the Hokage Monument, carving a jagged, smoking trench before he finally skidded to a painful, unceremonious halt.
He lay there for a second, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine, the metallic taste of blood pooling in his mouth from where he had bitten the inside of his cheek. The physical humiliation burned hotter than the lightning dissipating from his hand.
"Now," Itachi's voice drifted over, perfectly level and completely unstrained. "Are you willing to talk?"
Sasuke groaned, forcing his trembling arms to push his battered body up from the dirt. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the carved stone, his crimson eyes glaring up at his brother with an intensity that bordered on madness.
Itachi stared down at the broken, panting teenager, his expression remaining an impenetrable mask.
"Even if you use the cursed seal that Orochimaru placed on you," Itachi stated, analyzing the dark, dormant chakra coiling at the base of his brother's neck, "nothing you do today will ever work."
The cold, clinical dismissal of his power was the final catalyst. Sasuke's pride, already fractured, shattered completely, giving way to the dark, corrosive desperation lurking within his seal.
"SHUT UP!" Sasuke snarled, his voice distorting into a harsh, demonic register.
He didn't hold back. He commanded the Heaven Cursed Seal to release its absolute maximum output.
The three tomoe markings on his neck flared with a sickly, purple light. Thick, ink-like patterns spread aggressively across his pale skin, crawling up his face and down his arms. But it didn't stop at the first stage. With a sickening, tearing sound, Sasuke's biology forcefully mutated. His skin darkened into a deep, bruised gray. His hair lengthened and flared wildly, while a stark, dark star-shaped mark expanded across the bridge of his nose. Finally, from his shoulder blades, two massive, grotesque, webbed wings erupted, unfurling like the leathery hands of a fallen demon.
Curse Mark: State Two.
The ambient air around him grew heavy, saturated with a toxic, malevolent chakra that smelled of rot and raw ozone.
Sasuke didn't waste breath on another threat. He ignited the Raikiri once more, the lightning now tinged with a dark, purplish hue, and lunged into the air. With a powerful, synchronized beat of his monstrous wings, he accelerated to a speed that vastly eclipsed his previous charge, becoming a literal blur of dark lightning descending upon his target.
Itachi merely released a soft, almost imperceptible sigh.
He didn't draw a kunai. He didn't weave a single hand seal to counter with Ninjutsu. He simply shifted his weight, dropping his center of gravity by an inch, and finally went serious.
What followed was a terrifying, systematic deconstruction of an arrogant avenger.
Sasuke arrived with a deafening screech, thrusting his dark Raikiri toward Itachi's throat. Itachi swayed backward, moving just enough to let the lethal chakra graze the air before him. As Sasuke overextended, Itachi stepped into the guard, delivering a compact, bone-rattling elbow directly into the center of Sasuke's chest.
The air left Sasuke's lungs in a violent rush. He staggered, but his demonic wings flapped, stabilizing him mid-air as he unleashed a rapid-fire sequence of high-kicks aimed at his brother's head.
Itachi met the assault with pure, unadulterated Taijutsu perfection. He weaved through the blinding flurry of kicks with impossible grace, his hands moving in tight, economical deflections that redirected Sasuke's brute force harmlessly away. When Sasuke attempted to use his wings as bludgeoning weapons, sweeping them forward in a crushing arc, Itachi simply ducked underneath, pivoting on his heel to deliver a sweeping leg kick that swept Sasuke's right leg completely out from under him.
As Sasuke fell, he desperately blew a massive, compressed Great Fireball from his lips at point-blank range.
Itachi didn't even blink. He merely sidestepped the roaring inferno with a fractional shift in his posture, the flames washing harmlessly past his shoulder. Before the jutsu even dissipated, Itachi reached through the smoke, grabbing a handful of Sasuke's extended hair and viciously yanking his head down to meet an ascending knee strike.
CRACK.
Sasuke's head snapped back, a fresh spray of blood erupting from his nose as he was launched backward. He hit the stone heavily but immediately rolled, his pride refusing to let him stay down. He hurled a barrage of shuriken, manipulating them mid-flight with thin, invisible ninja wire.
Itachi caught the first shuriken out of the air between his index and middle fingers, using it as a makeshift blade to flawlessly parry the rest of the incoming projectiles in a rapid, metallic symphony of sparks, without ever breaking his serene, forward march.
The gap in their skill was not a hurdle; it was a bottomless canyon.
Sasuke screamed, his demonic form radiating chaotic energy as he threw everything he had into a relentless, hyper-aggressive melee assault. He struck with fists, claws, wings, and lightning.
But Itachi was a ghost. He was an immovable object that simply refused to be where Sasuke needed him to be. He didn't just dodge; he punished every single missed strike. A blocked punch was answered with a rigid knuckle strike to a nerve cluster in Sasuke's bicep, deadening the arm. A missed kick resulted in a sweeping counter that sent Sasuke crashing into the dirt.
It was pure, humiliating aura farming. Itachi dismantled the demonic form using nothing but speed, spatial awareness, and a terrifying mastery of leverage. He stripped away the illusion of Sasuke's strength, proving that no amount of cursed chakra could bridge the gap against true, refined genius.
Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of being systematically beaten into submission, the inevitable occurred.
Sasuke launched a final, desperate, spinning backhand, completely ignoring his defense in a suicidal bid to land just one, single hit.
Itachi ducked the wild swing effortlessly. He stepped smoothly behind his brother, wrapping one arm around Sasuke's neck in a loose chokehold while his other hand sharply struck the precise cluster of tenketsu at the base of Sasuke's spine.
The dark, oppressive chakra of the Curse Mark stuttered, violently disrupted by the precise strike.
"Gah...!"
Sasuke's demonic form shuddered and broke. The monstrous wings dissolved into gray sludge, retracting painfully back into his shoulder blades. The dark pigmentation washed away, leaving him pale, bruised, and utterly exhausted. The purplish glow of the seal faded completely, returning to the dormant, three-tomoe mark on his neck.
His knees finally buckled.
Itachi released his grip, allowing his younger brother to collapse onto the cold, hard stone of the Hokage Monument.
Sasuke hit the ground, his chest heaving with desperate, ragged gasps for air. He was entirely spent. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest, his chakra reserves completely drained. He lay there, his face pressed against the dirt, trembling with exhaustion and the crushing, unbearable weight of absolute defeat. He had sacrificed everything, embraced Orochimaru's purified curse, and trained until he bled... and it meant absolutely nothing.
Itachi stood over him, his breathing completely even, not a single hair out of place.
"Are you willing to talk?" Itachi asked, for the third and final time, his voice lacking any triumphant malice.
Sasuke lay panting on the ground, staring blankly at the dirt. He didn't scream. He didn't curse. The feral rage had been physically beaten out of him, leaving behind only a hollow, bitter emptiness. He remained entirely silent.
Seeing that the violent tantrum had finally run its course, Itachi slowly raised his right hand, forming a single, simple hand seal.
Poof.
A small cloud of white smoke enveloped Itachi's form.
When the smoke cleared, the ominous, flowing black cloak adorned with crimson clouds... the terrifying symbol of the Akatsuki... was completely gone.
Sasuke blinked, weakly lifting his head to stare at his brother.
Itachi wasn't wearing his terrorist garb. In fact, he was dressed in remarkably ordinary, unassuming civilian clothes: a simple black, high-collared shirt and dark, comfortable trousers. The iconic, terrifying silhouette of the clan killer had been an illusion the entire time.
Sasuke glared at the man, his mind struggling to process the visual shift. He was too exhausted to lash out physically, but his tactical mind, recovering slowly from the adrenaline crash, finally began to question the absurdity of their environment.
They had just engaged in a massive, high-level shinobi battle atop the most prominent landmark in the village. There had been explosions, shrieking lightning, and a demonic transformation. Yet, not a single ANBU operative had descended upon them. The village below remained completely undisturbed, ignorant of the war that had just raged above their heads.
How was that possible?
As if reading the very thoughts scrolling across his brother's bewildered face, Itachi offered a mild, clarifying response.
"If you are wondering why no one has arrived to investigate the noise of our dispute," Itachi said quietly, looking around the empty plateau, "you need not worry. Alaric informed me that he placed a highly advanced, localized Fuinjutsu array across this specific section of the monument when he engaged and killed Danzo here three years ago. The barrier absorbs all sound and obscures visual disturbances from the outside."
Sasuke's eyes widened drastically, the last remnants of his exhaustion momentarily eclipsed by profound shock.
Alaric.
The name echoed in his mind. Alaric Jonathan Kenway. The man who had casually occupied the Uchiha compound. The man his sensei, Kakashi, spoke of with a quiet, terrified reverence. The man who had trained Haku, the seemingly untouchable prodigy who had just casually dismantled two Akatsuki members in the blink of an eye.
The man who was supposed to be a loyal, albeit eccentric, asset to Konoha.
'Alaric... had something to do with Itachi?' Sasuke's thoughts raced, the geopolitical puzzle pieces clicking violently into place. 'He knew about Danzo. He placed the barrier. And he's communicating with my brother... an S-rank missing-nin.'
The sheer, overwhelming scale of the shadows operating behind the scenes of the village suddenly made Sasuke feel incredibly, insignificantly small. If someone as impossibly powerful as Alaric was actively working in tandem with Itachi... then nothing Sasuke had believed for the past decade was reliable. The narrative was fundamentally broken.
The fight was over. He had no power left to exert, and the mysteries surrounding him had just deepened into an abyssal trench.
Sasuke pushed himself up onto his elbows, his bruised face contorting in a grimace of pain and begrudging surrender.
"Fine..." Sasuke muttered, his voice hoarse, staring up at his older brother with a mixture of lingering resentment and desperate curiosity. "...let's talk."
"..."
Itachi looked down at his younger brother for a long, quiet moment. He noted the defeat, the exhaustion, and finally, the willingness to listen. He gave a single, slow nod of his head.
He then turned his gaze away, looking past the edge of the monument toward the deep, sprawling forests that bordered the Fire Country.
"Yes," Itachi agreed, his voice soft, carrying the weight of a decade's worth of unspoken truths. "But not here. Follow me."
Without waiting for a response, Itachi turned and began walking toward the tree line, his steps silent and measured.
Sasuke raised a brow, an intense wave of annoyance washing over him at being commanded like a child. He wanted to argue, to demand the answers right here on the stone where their ancestors watched. But he had absolutely no choice. His revenge had categorically failed, his body was broken, and his brother was clearly not here to kill him.
He let out a heavy, resentful sigh, forcing his aching legs to carry him forward.
"Hn... fine."
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