KONOHA

We tore through the tri-layered Genjutsu the weasel weaved with contemptuous ease. In mere milliseconds we were standing before him stabbing towards his guts with a kunai. We formed a one-handed sign, our already halved chakra pool splitting four ways as two more shadow clones peeled off from our back. Halfway formed, with only their upper halves sticking out of our waist, one clone raised a kunai to intercept the massive blade cleaving towards our back while the other formed a series of hand signs. The weasel caught our blade with a kunai of his own as he stared down at us.

“Hello, Itachi,” we said. Behind us, the weasel’s accomplice stood in a deadlock with our still half-formed clone. The gilled fellow looked down in surprise at his feet where a mass of shadows anchored both him and the weasel firmly in place.

“Sorry about dragging you into this,” we told him, his identity surfacing in our mind. “Kisame, right? I hope you don’t mind if I and my brother catch up a little.”

“...Yes,” The missing-nin chuckled as he strained against our binds, staring straight into the eyes of our clone like a proper fool. “Itachi, you never told me you had a little brother. I thought you killed off your entire―”

“Kisame! Close your―” the weasel ordered. We smiled fondly.

It was already too late.

“Sōzōamatsukami: Yomi’s Garden!”

Our right eye bled as reality sloughed away, a domain of deathly energies appearing in its place. Our celestial sharingan reappeared in the darkening sky above, glaring down at us. A heavy mist rose from the ground, weighing down our chakra. All around us, a forest of skeletal trees sprouted. The ground beneath our feet grew slick and crystalline, and the shadows lingering about swelled until they reached greatly exaggerated proportions.

Behind us, the missing-nin collapsed to the ground, limp. We ignored him, as we focused our attention on the weasel before us. “You resist,” we said staring at the Mangekyō that spun placidly in his eyes. Tendrils of shadows slithered around Itachi’s eyeball, holding it in place and preventing his eyelids from closing as we did with his partner prior.

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Our smile returned. “Not for long though,” we said. As long as we held eye contact our will would continue to grind away at his until eventually he too succumbed to his―

“Amaterasu!”

We flickered out of the way. The backlash from losing eye contact and forcibly dispelling Sōzōamatsukami struck us with the force of a descending asteroid. We gasped as we suppressed our lurching chakra, and it was only by the soundness of our mind that we noticed the infernal heat creeping up the length of our right arm. We looked down to see a mass of black flames burning away at the appendage. Our chakra cycled in a bid to dispel the flames, but that only sped up its combustion. We raised our left hand, moulding a blade of chakra in our palm before bringing it down on the burning arm.

It fell to the ground with a muted thud.

A shame…

With that temporarily dealt with we looked up at the weasel with our good eye, half-blind in the other. Itachi, again, tried to weave Genjutsu, and again, we slapped it away with contemptuous ease. His exhaustion was apparent.

So was ours. More so than his. But it wasn’t over yet… we hoped.

*BOOM!*

The tree behind the weasel exploded into a cloud of smouldering sawdust from where Kakashi’s attack struck. The Jonin was thrown off target by an illusion, his lightning-coated palm striking just mere inches from the weasel’s head.

Itachi stared at him in the eye with contempt.

We sighed. It was foolish to expect otherwise.

“Tsukuyomi!” declared the kin-slayer. In front of him, Kakashi shuddered, falling to his knees seconds later, panting as he tried to resist the effects of the Jutsu afflicted upon him. A familiar curse. We remember how poorly we fared against it years prior. The Jonin was a lost cause; we could already feel his chakra waning.

“W-what do you want?” Kakashi asked.

The weasel gave no reply. Carefully, he lifted his stricken colleague onto his shoulder before turning to leave.

“...Next time I find,” we rasped before he could flee again like the pathetic creature he was, “I will kill you.”

The weasel paused but again said nothing as he walked away, melting into the forest shadows.

Gone.

We didn’t try to stop him. Rather, we couldn’t. Our muscles were locked up from overexertion and our chakra coils burned in pain. Any more, and we would be unable to defend ourself should the need arise. Our shortsightedness cost us dearly, we would not dare let it do so again. By our feet, what remained of our right arm was slowly consumed by the fire.

The flames showed no signs of abating, our living flesh turned into tinder. Fuel.

“...Well. That was impulsive,” we sighed, berating ourself.