Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. This non-profit, non-copyright infringing fanfiction belongs to me under international copyright laws and taking it is plagiarism. Don't steal and don't sue. Thank you *Phantomness bows*
Chapter 9: Trust
Sasuke knew there were still at least eight months until the Chuunin Exams, but if Orochimaru was going to attack, Konoha needed all the time it could to prepare. The trouble was, he didn't know how to deliver the information to the Hokage. He wasn't exactly up to strolling up to the man and explaining how he was from the future and oh, he had almost killed Naruto. That was not going to go over well. He didn't really want to spend any time in T&I or have a Yamanaka poking around in his brain. Then, he thought of Kabuto. If Kabuto was still a spy in this timeline, he was probably working for Orochimaru, or at least the Akatsuki. But Sasuke wasn't sure he could take on Kabuto without revealing the Mangekyo Sharingan, or the Rinnegan. So that was out.
He sat on his bed, legs pulled up to his chest, coming up with scenarios and rejecting them. He could not find Jiraiya. He certainly couldn't leave the village and track down and kill Orochimaru – that would be pure suicide. Going up to the Kazekage and telling him to call off the attack was laughable. He needed help. And there was only one person Sasuke trusted to help him. As if his thought had summoned him, Itachi knocked on the door.
"Imouto, may I come in?" Itachi asked. Satsuki had been quiet at dinner, eating in a daze, although Mikoto had made her favorites. True, it had been an abrupt revelation, but she seemed to have her mind on other things. Satsuki nodded, looking up to meet his eyes, and suddenly, the world around them warped. Genjutsu, Itachi thought, but this was no illusion he had seen before. His Sharingan activated, which should have broken it immediately, but the world stayed stubbornly in shades of black and red, which shocked him.
"I'm sorry, Niisan." Satsuki said, and he found himself staring at – why was his sister a man? And what had happened to her eyes? One was somewhat familiar to a Sharingan, but twisted and warped into a six-pointed red star on a black background – Mangekyo, Itachi thought, feeling a chill run through his body. And the other eye was purple, concentric rings – the legendary Rinengan? What – how – what was going on?
Satsuki met his eyes again, and suddenly, Itachi was sucked into a whirlpool of memories not his own.
A few minutes later, Sasuke was holding a crying Mangekyo eyed Itachi who was alternating between cuddling him and lecturing him and crying some more. Fortunately, Itachi had enough presence of mind to turn his Sharingan off after a few minutes, but the crying didn't stop. Admittedly, he hadn't actually murdered most of his family members and tortured his younger sibling in this life, but he could definitely understand why Satsuki – Sasuke – had kept it a secret. The idea of gods meddling in the affairs of mortals would have been farfetched but Sharingan-encoded memories didn't lie.
Fortunately, tomorrow was a Friday. Graduation had been on a Wednesday, in the middle of the week. Itachi was certain he could take care of Yakushi Kabuto over the weekend. And then, he and Satsuki could actually see just what she needed to work on… like ninjutsu. Sasuke clearly had the elemental chakra to learn a lot of ninjutsu and the creativity to use them in all sorts of ways, and she had been holding herself back and working on helping her friends improve for a long time… and clearly, with the Mangekyo, she could polish up her genjutsu as well. She already had the Uchiha style taijutsu down and from her memories she had even picked up some of Gai's taijutsu. He smiled. She was a genin now, and he would be displeased if she didn't make Chuunin soon, with her team, of course.
The next morning, Team Eight met at the mission office. The D-rank mission they were assigned for the day was to go grocery shopping for an elderly couple. It was frightfully mundane and quickly completed. The next mission was to clear icicles off the roofs of some neighborhood houses.
"At least you can practice your wall-walking, Kiba-kun." Sasuke pointed out cheerfully as they were given buckets and scrapers attached to long poles.
Kiba's eyes lit up. "You're right!" Even if he could only make it part of the way up a wall, it was still better than nothing. Shino nodded encouragement as he and Sasuke climbed farther up the walls, disregarding the long poles as they began to scrape the icicles off the edges of the roofs and into the buckets they had been provided with. As they scraped, they saw another genin team chasing a frantic Tora through the streets. Kiba laughed and almost lost his balance, but managed to catch himself.
As they scraped, Sasuke tried to use his newly acquired Hyouton chakra to discreetly loosen the icicles he was supposed to be scraping, but it wasn't easy. They were stuck fast and he faced the same problem he had with the candle flames. Too much chakra and the icicle snapped off awkwardly, too little and it wouldn't budge… Well, he thought, glancing around at the many, many blocks of snowy houses around them, at least there were plenty of icicles to practice on…
Mikoto hummed cheerfully; glad she had made a very large pot of oden and kept it warm, because the poor dears were soaked to the skin and sniffling by the time they returned from their D-rank mission in the afternoon. She dug out some of Itachi's old clothes for Kiba and Shino to change into and let them all use the bath, separately of course, and washed their clothes in the washing machine and bundled them all up in blankets. So instead of doing more physical training in the afternoon, Itachi gave them a mission scenario and had them walk through possible solutions, because even Kiba had a brain, and he wouldn't be able to rely on Shino and Satsuki all the time.
Team Eight was dismissed for the evening, and after dinner, Itachi went to check up on Satsuki. No matter what, she was still his little sister. He found her sitting on her bed, knees pulled up to her chest, dressed in her pajamas.
"Imouto," Itachi said, gathering her into his arms. Sasuke sniffled, meeting his eyes. That proved to be a mistake, as he found himself in the familiar red and black world of Tsukuyomi. Itachi was a genius, after all. At least, Sasuke figured, he wasn't tied to a cross or being tortured. Itachi sat down next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
"So," He said. "Let's talk."
There were worse ways to spend the next seventy-two hours. As expected, Itachi still had questions, and Sasuke provided all the answers he could. It wasn't the most pleasant subject to talk about, and Itachi had a lot of comments to make about the poor decisions he had made, but at least he could get it off his chest. And then there were the technical questions about the Mangekyo Sharingan and the Rinnegan, which Sasuke answered to the best of his knowledge. Also, Itachi filled in some of the gaps, explaining that yes, Danzo had deserted the village when he and Orochimaru had been caught together performing unethical human experiments and as far as they knew both were with Akatsuki – that was news to Sasuke.
"Now," Itachi said pleasantly, "We can start your training."
Sasuke looked at his brother, puzzled. "Aren't we already doing individual training in the afternoons with you?"
"Yes, but you're keeping most of your abilities a secret from your teammates for now, aren't you, Satsuki?" Itachi asked. Sasuke nodded. "And if you truly wish to become stronger, you have a long way to go. You haven't truly sparred at your full power for years. Here, inside of a genjutsu, we can go all out and you won't have to worry about hurting me."
Itachi had a very valid point. But how would injuries and jutsu even work inside of Tsukuyomi? Sasuke hoped neither of them would accidentally cast Izanagi or Izanami – that would be even more difficult to explain than the appearance of the Mangekyo Sharingan.
"There is actually an old technique based on the Sharingan that allows for the creation of a genjutsu used for the purpose of intensive training." Itachi continued. "However, it is rarely used, due to the requirement for precise chakra control and the fact that both users must have water natured chakra." He gave Sasuke a smile. "Due to our unique circumstances, however, I believe it will be safe for us to attempt it."
"Yes, niisan," Sasuke knew when to admit defeat.
Itachi sat cross-legged across from Sasuke, and showed him the hand signs for the Garden of Paradise technique. Sasuke was a little disturbed by the name of the technique, but copied the string of hand signs, taking deep breaths to match his breathing to his older brother's and meeting his eyes. It took a few minutes, but once they were in sync, they made their hands signs at the same time. When they finished the last one, the illusion snapped into place. It was a completely barren stretch of dirt at first, but slowly, they began to build it together. The sky turned blue, with a scattering of white clouds. Light green grass sprouted beneath their feet. At the edge of the meadow, a forest sprouted in minutes. At the other edge, a lake glittered as waves lapped against the dusty shore. To Sasuke's surprise, the drain on his chakra was much less than he had expected.
"You've been consciously and subconsciously suppressing your chakra for a long time, Satsuki." Itachi told him. "And, as I'm certain you know, the better your control, the less chakra required to power a technique."
Sasuke nodded.
"Well," Itachi smiled. "Let's begin. We'll stick to taijutsu and ninjutsu only." Sasuke wasn't sure what would happen if they layered more illusions inside of the illusions already present, and he trusted Itachi's words.
He checked his appearance, added some equipment to his illusory self – he had missed having a sword – and then threw a few shuriken at Itachi to start. Not surprisingly, Itachi blocked them with shuriken of his own. He shrugged, drew his chokuto, and charged. It crackled with lightning chakra as he swung at Itachi. Itachi, no fool, dodged easily, forming the signs for a shadow clone as he went. Before Sasuke knew it, he was facing two Itachi. One was already forming the signs for some fire type attack or the other while the other hurled two windmill shuriken in his general direction. Having pinioned Deidara and trapped him with wire using the same general application, Sasuke substituted himself with a convenient rock and went on the offensive again.
He spat out a grand fireball at the nearest Itachi, which countered with a ball of water that efficiently neutralized the attack. A subtle shift in the air was all the warning he had before the other Itachi was behind him, but Sasuke's free hand crackled as the chidori sharp spear swept around and, as the Itachi did not go poof, concluded that the one in front of him was the shadow clone. A barrage of chidori senbon finished it off for good, leaving Sasuke facing a single Itachi – at least until Itachi performed the shadow clone jutsu again. This time, there were two clones.
Sasuke's eye twitched.
Several hours (or less than a minute) later, depending on whether one was counting illusion time or real time, Sasuke was panting heavily, blinking sweat out of his eyes, leaning against a convenient boulder as Itachi very slowly and deliberately walked up to him. Itachi dispelled the last of his umpteenth shadow clones as he knelt down next to his little sister, reached out towards her forehead, and…
Sasuke panicked. He had figured out quickly enough that if Itachi could do countless jutsu over and over without getting tired within the illusion, so could he, which was the whole point of training in the Garden of Paradise, after all. And it was the perfect place to try creating new techniques without accidentally blowing himself up in the real world, as well as testing out how his new Mokuton and Hyouton abilities might work in battle. But it had only been one day since Sasuke had relived his memories of the past life while showing Itachi, and he was exhausted, and not in the best control of himself, and it reminded him far too much of how Itachi had been trying to pluck out his eyes during their final battle…
Susanoo was up before he was thinking clearly, Itachi clutched in one giant fist. It was only after he had squeezed his brother to a bloody pulp before he realized what he had done, and he fell to his knees with a scream. "Niisan!"
Fortunately for Sasuke, Itachi's body disappeared into a murder of crows, and the next thing he knew, Itachi was inside his guard, holding him close, and placing a gentle kiss on his cheek. That finally snapped him out of it.
"Satsuki," Itachi said, stroking his hair. "Satsuki, I'm right here. I'm not dead. We're in an illusion, remember?"
It took more than a few minutes for Sasuke to calm down, before he finally nodded. "I thought we couldn't do genjutsu inside the Garden of Paradise."
Itachi smiled. "Of course we can. I just didn't want to build too many layers of genjutsu at once. But Sasuke, you don't have to go easy on me. I'm Anbu, I'm not sick, and I'm not an Edo Tensei zombie. Remember that."
Sasuke had the decency to blush. "I wasn't going easy on you!" He protested. "If anything, you were taking it easy on me."
"Really," Itachi tilted his head to the side. "You haven't shown me how the Rinnegan works yet."
"It burns out if I use it too much," Sasuke started to protest, but then realized that oh, they were inside the Garden of Paradise so that didn't apply, again. And it was true that maybe he was, subconsciously, not wanting Itachi to keel over and die on him.
Itachi gave him a knowing look. "That's enough for today. And tomorrow, why don't you spend some time with your friends?"
Sasuke nodded. "I love you, niisan."
"I love you too, imouto." Itachi said.
"But next time, I'm casting Tsukuyomi." Sasuke insisted. "Because Anbu or not, I don't want you going blind."
And there was no argument Itachi could make to that.
End Chapter
Started 2/26/15
Completed 2/27/15
If I accidentally stole any techniques from anyone else's fanfic I apologize, I've read so many it's hard to keep track…
Fight scenes are not my strong suit. Again, apologies…
