Naruto, The Chase - 6
OH THIS BIT IS FUN, I PROMISE. :D
Contains: action, a lecture by someone who doesn't really have a leg to stand on but we were all thinking it, canon-typical violence/injuries. ... yes, the chapter title is a lie.
First chapter.
Previous chapter.
no one gets hurt
In an instant Itachi and Shisui were on their feet and back to back with Sasuke's body between them and weapons in their hands, both focused on the man in the long black coat and spiral-carved mask who was lounging on a tree branch above them.
The man waved. "Hi! Hope I'm not interrupting," he said, and something behind Itachi's eyes ached to lash out and burn and wipe the man out of existence.
"Oh, hey there!" Shisui said. "Welcome back to the party - I was starting to worry you'd left for good, and that'd be such a shame, you know?" His voice was bright and cheerful, but Itachi could hear the hard edge beneath it that meant he was no longer joking around.
"No, no way," the masked man said, flailing his arms wildly and nearly falling out of the tree, "I just had to go look some things up! It's been a really confusing night and all, haha, but now -" He bounced up and his movements changed, shifting into a deadly fluidity. "- I'm afraid I need to take Sasuke back."
Kunai flashed through the air as he vanished. Itachi knocked them away with shuriken as Shisui summoned a wall of earth around them that cracked under the force of a concentrated stream of fire; the masked man leaped over the wall, and Itachi drew his short sword and slashed through the man's neck in a single movement.
The sword passed through without resistance and the man crashed into Itachi, laughing in his face. "Oops, missed me!"
He was gone before Itachi could grab him. Itachi caught his balance and turned, sheathing the sword to free his hand for seals. Shisui had engaged the masked man, driving him away from Sasuke with his own sword, but the stranger was laughing again as if it were a game and spinning around with Shisui's strikes.
Itachi formed a seal and Shisui's cracked wall collapsed onto the masked man; the man appeared balancing at the top of the heaped earth and blew a fountain of fire down at the three of them. Shisui covered Sasuke as Itachi's fingers flickered and water arched above them, breaking the fire's attack. "You know," Shisui shouted over the hiss of steam, "this would be way easier if one of us were a Hyuuga! Or if we'd taken the kid to the hospital like I said we should do."
"Then we would be fighting in the hospital," Itachi said, turning the water barrier into a dragon that forced the masked man back up into the trees. "I believe the medics don't look very kindly on that."
"Oh, ruin every good idea I have with your logic, why don't you?" Two giant shuriken hurtled out of the woods and Shisui caught them and sent them back, one with an exploding tag attached. "I guess we'll just have to do things the hard way." He stepped back from Sasuke and made two seals as Itachi deflected a hail of smaller shuriken, and an earthen dome covered Sasuke's still form. Without exchanging more than a glance the two split up: Itachi went directly after the masked man's chakra, concealed among the tree-tops, and Shisui faded into the shadows among the trunks.
Itachi found the masked man fussing with a string of tagged kunai, apparently preoccupied. A thrown shuriken drew his attention to one side and Itachi attacked from the other, then vanished in a cloud of shrieking crows when the tagged kunai exploded. Safe in another tree, Itachi watched the masked man return to the mound of earth over Sasuke - and begin to dig into the air next into it.
No one in Konoha was better than Shisui at illusions.
Itachi jumped to the ground and Shisui reappeared beside him; they moved in silent unison to flank the oblivious masked man, and Itachi noted that Shisui's sharingan had squared and sharpened into the pattern of his mangekyou. Shisui stepped around the masked man to look into the single eyehole and a coughing fit tore into Itachi, sending him to his knees and gasping for breath between each hoarse cough.
(ought to take better care of yourself, Itachi-san)
"Hey, are you okay?" Shisui reached over to rub his back. "You'd better -"
"You really were talented, huh," the masked man said, and Itachi looked up to see the sharingan eye behind the mask a moment before the man's foot lashed out and kicked him in the stomach, knocking what little air he had left out of him.
For a minute Itachi fought just to breathe; when the coughing weakened sufficiently he made it to his feet and saw Shisui and the masked man fighting in the trees, exchanging fireballs and kunai. Itachi breathed shallowly between coughs, letting the fit die naturally, and when it was done he drew his short sword again to rejoin the fight.
Steel slid into his back, and he looked down to see the bloody tip of a katana emerging from his side.
"Got you," Sasuke hissed.
---
Don't pull it out, Itachi thought with dim desperation, the bleeding... But Sasuke drew the sword out and Itachi fell forward onto the ground, his own sword dropping from his grip. He tried to cover the wound with his hands, summoning his chakra, but he only knew the simplest medical techniques, nothing adequate for healing a serious injury.
"You shouldn't have wasted your time on this illusion," Sasuke said, eerily calm. "It just gave me another chance to defeat you."
Itachi had watched medics at work; he should be able to duplicate their skills, at least enough to slow the bleeding. He managed to turn over and saw Sasuke standing over him with a strangely peaceful expression and the sword hovering above Itachi's neck. "- not an illusion," Itachi said, his voice faint and rough, "Sasuke, listen to me -"
(forgive me)
(hate me)
Something exploded high in the trees, but Sasuke's focus didn't waver. "No," he said. "I'm through listening to you. After this - after this, I can finally -"
Shisui jumped out of the ground behind Sasuke and yanked the sword out of his hand. "You ungrateful son of a bitch! I should - oh fuck, Itachi, don't move, okay?"
"But I just saved you," Sasuke said, "I'm saving you, and Mother and Father, and the whole clan - you'll understand when -"
"Saved me from what, my best friend helping me?" Shisui grabbed Sasuke's shoulder and shoved him to the ground, then crouched by Itachi and reached for his first aid kit. "Hang in there, I'm gonna get that masked bastard and then we're going straight to the hospital, so don't even think about passing out on me, Ita-chan, got it?"
"Please - stop calling me that."
"I don't understand, Itachi," Sasuke said, his voice beginning to crack. "Why can't I break this? Why would he help you? Why would Naruto take your side? Why would you make an illusion like this, acting like you don't know me - pretending that you're not - I don't understand."
"Well, maybe if you'd stop trying to kill him one of us could explain!" Shisui hastily wrapped a bandage around the two wads of cloth he had slapped over the holes in Itachi's side and back, then tied it off. "Both of you stay put, I'll be right -"
The masked man appeared behind Sasuke with a kunai in his hand and Itachi moved without thought. He knocked Shisui aside with one arm and took hold of Sasuke and threw him out of the way as the masked man's kunai stabbed through the air and into Itachi's left shoulder. Shisui leaped over Itachi, but his kick passed through the masked man's head and he landed on the man's other side, then vanished out of Itachi's line of sight along with the masked man.
Itachi looked for Sasuke and saw him sitting awkwardly sprawled against a tree trunk, staring wild-eyed at Itachi. "What are you doing?" Sasuke said. "Trying to protect me, acting like you're still - which one of you is real? Why won't you just give up and die?"
Itachi got to his feet again with some effort, ignoring the blood beginning to soak through Shisui's makeshift bandage (have to explain). "Listen to me," he said, "what happened - what I did -" Another fit of coughing racked him and he bent over, covering his mouth with one hand.
(including the innocent children)
(testing my capacity)
(I can let your younger brother live)
"I made my own decisions," Itachi said, taking a step towards Sasuke. "It was my choice - don't listen to that man, to anyone else - you have to -" Another harsh cough, and he nearly fell over. "- to choose your own path. Don't let him -"
A heavy weight slammed into Itachi's back and knocked him down. Blackness covered his vision for a moment; when it cleared Shisui's feet were dangling in front of his eyes, swinging as he struggled to break the masked man's grip on his throat. "I've always wanted one of your eyes," the man said casually, "but you wouldn't believe what I'd have to do to get one at home. This is going to make my life so much easier."
"Shisui," Itachi breathed, struggling to get up, and Sasuke said, "Whoever the hell you are, leave him - stop it! Stop! Shisui!"
The man's gloved fingers dug into Shisui's left eye, and Shisui snarled a curse. The masked man removed his fingers, trailing drops of blood, and tossed Shisui aside as he pulled a clear tube out of his sleeve. "I wonder just what I can do with this," he said, slipping a dripping red ball into the tube. "Something fun, I'm sure - maybe I'll -"
"You bastard!" Sasuke scrambled up and launched himself at the masked man, but the man warped and disappeared as Sasuke reached him, and Sasuke crashed into Itachi instead with an audible crack from Itachi's ribs.
The masked man reappeared above them, the tube with Shisui's eye nowhere in sight. "Such a troublesome brat," he said; he shrugged, holding his hands out, and two kunai wrapped in multiple exploding tags appeared in his palms. "With this eye, I wonder - I might not even need him anymore."
He flipped the kunai point-down and drove them into the ground next to Itachi and Sasuke.
"Let's see, shall we?" he said.
He vanished as Itachi threw himself over Sasuke, and the tags went off.
---
Itachi woke in darkness, curled up on his side with a massive dull pain spreading across his back and Sasuke's face staring blankly across the ground at him.
(no, he can't be)
Sasuke blinked, and Itachi could breathe. "You did it again," Sasuke said. His voice was soft and tired and somehow broken. "You protected me again, even when I - after everything you did - I don't understand, Itachi."
It took more effort than Itachi would have thought to raise his left hand and bring it up to Sasuke's forehead, resting the first two fingers against the ash-smeared skin there. There was something he needed to say; it was just on the tip of his tongue.
(maybe next time)
"Forgive me," Itachi said, smiling. "This is it."
"Niisan," Sasuke said. "I don't understand..." His eyes slipped shut, but Itachi could see him breathing. It would be all right. Sasuke was safe. He could rest, and someone would find them soon and take care of Sasuke...
"You know," the masked man said from somewhere behind Itachi, "you've always made me sick."
Itachi tried to roll away and found he couldn't move; a heavy weight on his side had him pinned down.
"Well, maybe not when you were little," the man continued. "I was busy with my own problems back then, I wasn't really paying much attention to anything else. But later? Wow. Murdering for peace, that's just the shinobi way, but what kind of monster would torture their own brother and think that they were protecting him? Who would turn a nice, normal kid into an obsessive hate-filled little monster willing to throw away anyone who got close to him just for a chance at revenge and call that love? I mean, I've killed lots of people and I'm going to start a war to put the whole world under my control that will kill thousands more, but I'm not doing it because I love any of them."
A gloved hand reached past Itachi and patted Sasuke on the cheek. "Poor kid," the masked man said. "You never even gave him a chance. Neither will I, but then, I've never made him any promises otherwise, either."
"I didn't," Itachi said, "I never meant - that wasn't -"
(foolish little brother)
(- will be my new light!)
(run, and cling to life)
"- I'm not the one who did those things - wasn't real -"
"Oh, I know that," the man said. Something hard dug into the wound in Itachi's side and Itachi couldn't stop himself from crying out. "I can see that things turned out differently here and you're as innocent as the newly fallen snow or whatever. I just wanted you to know what kind of person you really are, when you get right down to it - though it looks like you've got a pretty good idea already. A present from your other self, I guess, since he didn't make it over in person."
The weight on Itachi's side lifted, and the masked man stepped over him, crouched, and hefted Sasuke onto one shoulder. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure I figured out how we got here," he said brightly, "so now I'm going to take us back - for the record, if you live through this, never use Kamui to jump into a fight with someone else's Susano'o. You could end up anywhere. Oh, I was just kidding earlier - I've got big plans for your precious baby brother, you know, and I can't wait to see how this little trip is going to affect them. Plus one of Shisui's eyes for my very own - talk about great souvenirs! Too bad I didn't have time to go find myself and see what I'm up to here, but man, I bet it's going to be really exciting when you meet me again... Maybe I'll have to figure out a way to come back, just to watch the fireworks. Ah, I'd better hurry, though - I don't want anyone interfering too much or getting any bright ideas at home, after all."
He stood up and turned away, and Itachi reached out and caught hold of his long coat. "Please -"
"Eh?" The man half-turned and looked back over his empty shoulder.
"Don't take Sasuke..." Itachi struggled to breathe as a fresh coughing fit seized his lungs. "Let him stay - please - I'll take care of him this time, I won't - don't take him..."
The man paused for a moment, considering; then he kicked Itachi's hand away. "Seriously," he said, "I'm going to be sick," and as he stepped forward he disappeared into the air with Sasuke.
(forgive me)
Itachi blacked out.
Next chapter.
Naruto, characters, etc. © Kishimoto who really is an evil bastard when you think about it.
Contains: action, a lecture by someone who doesn't really have a leg to stand on but we were all thinking it, canon-typical violence/injuries. ... yes, the chapter title is a lie.
First chapter.
Previous chapter.
no one gets hurt
In an instant Itachi and Shisui were on their feet and back to back with Sasuke's body between them and weapons in their hands, both focused on the man in the long black coat and spiral-carved mask who was lounging on a tree branch above them.
The man waved. "Hi! Hope I'm not interrupting," he said, and something behind Itachi's eyes ached to lash out and burn and wipe the man out of existence.
"Oh, hey there!" Shisui said. "Welcome back to the party - I was starting to worry you'd left for good, and that'd be such a shame, you know?" His voice was bright and cheerful, but Itachi could hear the hard edge beneath it that meant he was no longer joking around.
"No, no way," the masked man said, flailing his arms wildly and nearly falling out of the tree, "I just had to go look some things up! It's been a really confusing night and all, haha, but now -" He bounced up and his movements changed, shifting into a deadly fluidity. "- I'm afraid I need to take Sasuke back."
Kunai flashed through the air as he vanished. Itachi knocked them away with shuriken as Shisui summoned a wall of earth around them that cracked under the force of a concentrated stream of fire; the masked man leaped over the wall, and Itachi drew his short sword and slashed through the man's neck in a single movement.
The sword passed through without resistance and the man crashed into Itachi, laughing in his face. "Oops, missed me!"
He was gone before Itachi could grab him. Itachi caught his balance and turned, sheathing the sword to free his hand for seals. Shisui had engaged the masked man, driving him away from Sasuke with his own sword, but the stranger was laughing again as if it were a game and spinning around with Shisui's strikes.
Itachi formed a seal and Shisui's cracked wall collapsed onto the masked man; the man appeared balancing at the top of the heaped earth and blew a fountain of fire down at the three of them. Shisui covered Sasuke as Itachi's fingers flickered and water arched above them, breaking the fire's attack. "You know," Shisui shouted over the hiss of steam, "this would be way easier if one of us were a Hyuuga! Or if we'd taken the kid to the hospital like I said we should do."
"Then we would be fighting in the hospital," Itachi said, turning the water barrier into a dragon that forced the masked man back up into the trees. "I believe the medics don't look very kindly on that."
"Oh, ruin every good idea I have with your logic, why don't you?" Two giant shuriken hurtled out of the woods and Shisui caught them and sent them back, one with an exploding tag attached. "I guess we'll just have to do things the hard way." He stepped back from Sasuke and made two seals as Itachi deflected a hail of smaller shuriken, and an earthen dome covered Sasuke's still form. Without exchanging more than a glance the two split up: Itachi went directly after the masked man's chakra, concealed among the tree-tops, and Shisui faded into the shadows among the trunks.
Itachi found the masked man fussing with a string of tagged kunai, apparently preoccupied. A thrown shuriken drew his attention to one side and Itachi attacked from the other, then vanished in a cloud of shrieking crows when the tagged kunai exploded. Safe in another tree, Itachi watched the masked man return to the mound of earth over Sasuke - and begin to dig into the air next into it.
No one in Konoha was better than Shisui at illusions.
Itachi jumped to the ground and Shisui reappeared beside him; they moved in silent unison to flank the oblivious masked man, and Itachi noted that Shisui's sharingan had squared and sharpened into the pattern of his mangekyou. Shisui stepped around the masked man to look into the single eyehole and a coughing fit tore into Itachi, sending him to his knees and gasping for breath between each hoarse cough.
(ought to take better care of yourself, Itachi-san)
"Hey, are you okay?" Shisui reached over to rub his back. "You'd better -"
"You really were talented, huh," the masked man said, and Itachi looked up to see the sharingan eye behind the mask a moment before the man's foot lashed out and kicked him in the stomach, knocking what little air he had left out of him.
For a minute Itachi fought just to breathe; when the coughing weakened sufficiently he made it to his feet and saw Shisui and the masked man fighting in the trees, exchanging fireballs and kunai. Itachi breathed shallowly between coughs, letting the fit die naturally, and when it was done he drew his short sword again to rejoin the fight.
Steel slid into his back, and he looked down to see the bloody tip of a katana emerging from his side.
"Got you," Sasuke hissed.
---
Don't pull it out, Itachi thought with dim desperation, the bleeding... But Sasuke drew the sword out and Itachi fell forward onto the ground, his own sword dropping from his grip. He tried to cover the wound with his hands, summoning his chakra, but he only knew the simplest medical techniques, nothing adequate for healing a serious injury.
"You shouldn't have wasted your time on this illusion," Sasuke said, eerily calm. "It just gave me another chance to defeat you."
Itachi had watched medics at work; he should be able to duplicate their skills, at least enough to slow the bleeding. He managed to turn over and saw Sasuke standing over him with a strangely peaceful expression and the sword hovering above Itachi's neck. "- not an illusion," Itachi said, his voice faint and rough, "Sasuke, listen to me -"
(forgive me)
(hate me)
Something exploded high in the trees, but Sasuke's focus didn't waver. "No," he said. "I'm through listening to you. After this - after this, I can finally -"
Shisui jumped out of the ground behind Sasuke and yanked the sword out of his hand. "You ungrateful son of a bitch! I should - oh fuck, Itachi, don't move, okay?"
"But I just saved you," Sasuke said, "I'm saving you, and Mother and Father, and the whole clan - you'll understand when -"
"Saved me from what, my best friend helping me?" Shisui grabbed Sasuke's shoulder and shoved him to the ground, then crouched by Itachi and reached for his first aid kit. "Hang in there, I'm gonna get that masked bastard and then we're going straight to the hospital, so don't even think about passing out on me, Ita-chan, got it?"
"Please - stop calling me that."
"I don't understand, Itachi," Sasuke said, his voice beginning to crack. "Why can't I break this? Why would he help you? Why would Naruto take your side? Why would you make an illusion like this, acting like you don't know me - pretending that you're not - I don't understand."
"Well, maybe if you'd stop trying to kill him one of us could explain!" Shisui hastily wrapped a bandage around the two wads of cloth he had slapped over the holes in Itachi's side and back, then tied it off. "Both of you stay put, I'll be right -"
The masked man appeared behind Sasuke with a kunai in his hand and Itachi moved without thought. He knocked Shisui aside with one arm and took hold of Sasuke and threw him out of the way as the masked man's kunai stabbed through the air and into Itachi's left shoulder. Shisui leaped over Itachi, but his kick passed through the masked man's head and he landed on the man's other side, then vanished out of Itachi's line of sight along with the masked man.
Itachi looked for Sasuke and saw him sitting awkwardly sprawled against a tree trunk, staring wild-eyed at Itachi. "What are you doing?" Sasuke said. "Trying to protect me, acting like you're still - which one of you is real? Why won't you just give up and die?"
Itachi got to his feet again with some effort, ignoring the blood beginning to soak through Shisui's makeshift bandage (have to explain). "Listen to me," he said, "what happened - what I did -" Another fit of coughing racked him and he bent over, covering his mouth with one hand.
(including the innocent children)
(testing my capacity)
(I can let your younger brother live)
"I made my own decisions," Itachi said, taking a step towards Sasuke. "It was my choice - don't listen to that man, to anyone else - you have to -" Another harsh cough, and he nearly fell over. "- to choose your own path. Don't let him -"
A heavy weight slammed into Itachi's back and knocked him down. Blackness covered his vision for a moment; when it cleared Shisui's feet were dangling in front of his eyes, swinging as he struggled to break the masked man's grip on his throat. "I've always wanted one of your eyes," the man said casually, "but you wouldn't believe what I'd have to do to get one at home. This is going to make my life so much easier."
"Shisui," Itachi breathed, struggling to get up, and Sasuke said, "Whoever the hell you are, leave him - stop it! Stop! Shisui!"
The man's gloved fingers dug into Shisui's left eye, and Shisui snarled a curse. The masked man removed his fingers, trailing drops of blood, and tossed Shisui aside as he pulled a clear tube out of his sleeve. "I wonder just what I can do with this," he said, slipping a dripping red ball into the tube. "Something fun, I'm sure - maybe I'll -"
"You bastard!" Sasuke scrambled up and launched himself at the masked man, but the man warped and disappeared as Sasuke reached him, and Sasuke crashed into Itachi instead with an audible crack from Itachi's ribs.
The masked man reappeared above them, the tube with Shisui's eye nowhere in sight. "Such a troublesome brat," he said; he shrugged, holding his hands out, and two kunai wrapped in multiple exploding tags appeared in his palms. "With this eye, I wonder - I might not even need him anymore."
He flipped the kunai point-down and drove them into the ground next to Itachi and Sasuke.
"Let's see, shall we?" he said.
He vanished as Itachi threw himself over Sasuke, and the tags went off.
---
Itachi woke in darkness, curled up on his side with a massive dull pain spreading across his back and Sasuke's face staring blankly across the ground at him.
(no, he can't be)
Sasuke blinked, and Itachi could breathe. "You did it again," Sasuke said. His voice was soft and tired and somehow broken. "You protected me again, even when I - after everything you did - I don't understand, Itachi."
It took more effort than Itachi would have thought to raise his left hand and bring it up to Sasuke's forehead, resting the first two fingers against the ash-smeared skin there. There was something he needed to say; it was just on the tip of his tongue.
(maybe next time)
"Forgive me," Itachi said, smiling. "This is it."
"Niisan," Sasuke said. "I don't understand..." His eyes slipped shut, but Itachi could see him breathing. It would be all right. Sasuke was safe. He could rest, and someone would find them soon and take care of Sasuke...
"You know," the masked man said from somewhere behind Itachi, "you've always made me sick."
Itachi tried to roll away and found he couldn't move; a heavy weight on his side had him pinned down.
"Well, maybe not when you were little," the man continued. "I was busy with my own problems back then, I wasn't really paying much attention to anything else. But later? Wow. Murdering for peace, that's just the shinobi way, but what kind of monster would torture their own brother and think that they were protecting him? Who would turn a nice, normal kid into an obsessive hate-filled little monster willing to throw away anyone who got close to him just for a chance at revenge and call that love? I mean, I've killed lots of people and I'm going to start a war to put the whole world under my control that will kill thousands more, but I'm not doing it because I love any of them."
A gloved hand reached past Itachi and patted Sasuke on the cheek. "Poor kid," the masked man said. "You never even gave him a chance. Neither will I, but then, I've never made him any promises otherwise, either."
"I didn't," Itachi said, "I never meant - that wasn't -"
(foolish little brother)
(- will be my new light!)
(run, and cling to life)
"- I'm not the one who did those things - wasn't real -"
"Oh, I know that," the man said. Something hard dug into the wound in Itachi's side and Itachi couldn't stop himself from crying out. "I can see that things turned out differently here and you're as innocent as the newly fallen snow or whatever. I just wanted you to know what kind of person you really are, when you get right down to it - though it looks like you've got a pretty good idea already. A present from your other self, I guess, since he didn't make it over in person."
The weight on Itachi's side lifted, and the masked man stepped over him, crouched, and hefted Sasuke onto one shoulder. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure I figured out how we got here," he said brightly, "so now I'm going to take us back - for the record, if you live through this, never use Kamui to jump into a fight with someone else's Susano'o. You could end up anywhere. Oh, I was just kidding earlier - I've got big plans for your precious baby brother, you know, and I can't wait to see how this little trip is going to affect them. Plus one of Shisui's eyes for my very own - talk about great souvenirs! Too bad I didn't have time to go find myself and see what I'm up to here, but man, I bet it's going to be really exciting when you meet me again... Maybe I'll have to figure out a way to come back, just to watch the fireworks. Ah, I'd better hurry, though - I don't want anyone interfering too much or getting any bright ideas at home, after all."
He stood up and turned away, and Itachi reached out and caught hold of his long coat. "Please -"
"Eh?" The man half-turned and looked back over his empty shoulder.
"Don't take Sasuke..." Itachi struggled to breathe as a fresh coughing fit seized his lungs. "Let him stay - please - I'll take care of him this time, I won't - don't take him..."
The man paused for a moment, considering; then he kicked Itachi's hand away. "Seriously," he said, "I'm going to be sick," and as he stepped forward he disappeared into the air with Sasuke.
(forgive me)
Itachi blacked out.
Next chapter.
Naruto, characters, etc. © Kishimoto who really is an evil bastard when you think about it.