Disclaimer: See previous chapter.
Just to clear up any confusion this story takes place a year before the Shippuden story line begins. So Itachi is 20 here and the story started a full year before he faced Sasuke in his final battle. Keep in mind that there will be some time skips like the one after Minato's run-in with the Akatsuki. Hopefully whenever they occur I'll be able to let you know in the story. As usual comments, criticisms and questions are welcome. Enjoy.
Chapter Eight
Hungry Eyes
Orochimaru was watching the Uchiha from a safe distance, safe being about six hundred yards from where the raven stood. The child's skill was rapidly improving and Orochimaru knew that it wouldn't be long until he could finally fulfill his life's purpose and acquire the Sharingan. Just the thought of it made him moisten his lips in anticipation. His eyes stared hungrily at the lithe, sweat-soaked body moving gracefully through a series of taijutsu moves. Even now sweating and covered in dirt and other forest filth the Snake Sannin found the raven completely irresistible. At the cost of his sanity he had held himself back all these years from pouncing on the fledgling Uchiha and ravaging him.
Of course he desired his powers and valuable ocular keke genkai, however, Orochimaru was becoming vaguely aware of his other desires that surfaced whenever the boy was near. As a man he had submitted to his sexual urgings long ago. On missions he had turned to whores and prostitutes to satisfy his fleshly needs. Although he had considered himself fully heterosexual, one incident many years ago had alerted him of his other preferences. Returning to Konoha from a lengthy and arduous mission, the Snake Sannin had passed through a small non-shinobi village torn apart by crime and poverty.
He was in no mood at the time for sex so he ignored the catcalls and grabbing hands of the many whores lining the streets. Despite his obvious show of disinterest, the low lives continued their pestering and Orochimaru felt his patience running out. By the time he was almost out of the village he was at his rope's end and had already made up his mind to flay the next person who laid hands on him. Almost as soon as he had reached his decision a pair of weak hands grabbed him at the hem of his robes causing the Snake Sannin to halt in his tracks. He had been mentally selecting the most painful way to slay the filthy mongrel who dared lay hands on him when he heard a weak gasp from the child clutching to him desperately.
Orochimaru gasped in shock at the beautiful child at his feet. He was young, no older than thirteen with a mass of glorious raven locks that framed a delicate face with girly features. His large, light blue eyes had stunned the Snake Sannin into silence convincing him further that he was under a very powerful genjutsu. The child lay in a puddle of filth and what smelt like human feces, his lithe body covered in the grime that surrounded him. It was then that Orochimaru noticed that save for a flimsy cloth at the boy's waist, the child was completely naked.
"Please sir do you have some change to spare for an orphan?" The beautiful angel had asked gazing up at him pleadingly. From the child's emaciated form and weak voice the Snake Sannin could tell that he was knocking at death's door either due to starvation or some heinous disease.
"You don't deserve spare change." Orochimaru had said before surprising the child by picking him up. He remembered reveling in the child's close proximity as he wrapped skinny arms around his neck. Orochimaru had carried the child to the next town where he got a hotel room with the boy. He fed and cleaned the child up and treated him of his many wounds and injuries, obviously from the brutal beatings that came with being a beggar. One night Orochimaru returned back from sending a message to his former sensei making up a story to explain his delay in returning. He remembered locking the door behind him and turning to see the most glorious sight his eyes had ever witnessed.
There standing across the room from him was his beautiful fallen angel as bare as the day he was born. The bathroom door behind him was open allowing the steam from his bath to come wafting into the room. The steam coupled with the room's lighting made the child appear more ethereal than human. His eyes traveled the length of the child's beautiful body devouring the sight of long slender limbs, a tight stomach, a slim waist, and a member a child his age could be proud of hungrily and without shame. No matter how long he stood staring he could not get his fill of the boy and so he continued just as he was doing now to the Uchiha.
The raven-haired angel smiled at him seductively before asking, "Do you like what you see?"
Orochimaru had been too breathless to come up with a coherent answer right then and there so he settled for nodding instead. The child laughed before slinking over to him stopping mere meters away from him. Orochimaru felt his arousal twitch with desire when the child reached up to touch his pale face.
"If you like it so much then you can have me." Without pausing to wrap his head around what had just been said Orochimaru reached out and closed the distance between them melding their bodies together as he claimed the angel in a smoldering kiss. He had taken the child right there and then on the floor reveling in the feel of him on, under, inside, beside, in front, behind and around him. They had spent the night together entwined in the heat of passion. And when the sun rose the next day, the angel made a request the Snake Sannin could not deny him.
"They say that bliss is short-lived," the angel paused and ran his angelic hands through Orochimaru's long hair. "Now that I know what bliss is, I want you to kill me before it is taken from me."
Without a word of protest or a single argument the Legendary Konoha Nin bent to the will of a mere child and killed him where he lay with one swift and painless move. He remembered dressing and leaving the room, not bothering to hide the body or cover up the child's nakedness. He never returned to the town where he had picked the child up off the streets and he never dwelled long on thoughts of the boy. Pretty soon he forgot about the child-angel enough to pretend that it had all been a dream. However, dream or not the deed was done. And ever since that day Orochimaru could no longer be pleasured by the opposite sex.
Watching the raven-haired Uchiha Orochimaru couldn't help thinking that he was that child's incarnate. They were very similar in both appearance and disposition. Before the massacre and Itachi's subsequent defection Sasuke had been bright, playful, loving, kind and angelic in every sense of the word. Now he was more demonic than angelic as he gave himself up to the rage that had been eating up inside him since his clan's demise. No matter his nature the Snake Sannin was absolutely smitten by him.
As he felt his arousal harden between his legs, Orochimaru acknowledged the signs of his body's weakness and decided to leave before he completely lost control of himself. As he went through the hand signs of the transportation jutsu Orochimaru licked his lips one last time.
"Soon Sasuke, very soon you shall be mine." With that he disappeared along with all traces of his ever being there.
High above the ground a raven flew in the sky watching as the snake slithered back into its hole away from the brightness of the surface, dark intentions in its mind. With one last look at its human incarnate resting in the clearing below, the raven took off towards the horizon, intent on returning to its master.
Sasuke looked up from where he lay on the ground watching the eerie bird flying above. For some reason the sight of those birds made him uneasy and had it not been for his exhaustion he would have aimed a lethal lightening jutsu at it. Understandably the reason for his discomfort around the bird was the same as the reason for his comfort around it years ago. When he was still a young, innocent, and naïve child he had noticed his precious aniki's fondness for the bird. And had understandably come to associate it with him. He found that whenever the bird was around Itachi was always nearby. He remembered something his nii-san had told him to comfort him one day when Sasuke had refused to let him leave for a lengthy mission.
"You see that Sasuke." The bane of his existence had said softly, pointing out a flying figure in the sky. Sasuke had recognized it instantly but chose to bury his head in his brother's chest instead of answering his prompt. Knowing that his brother had seen the raven in the sky, Itachi continued.
"Whenever you see that bird in the sky know that I am always there in spirit watching over you."
Sasuke scoffed closing his eyes as he fell into a light doze. "As if."
Itachi found himself doing a lot of watching lately. Then again what had he expected? Going in he had known that watching the Yondaime wouldn't be a picnic, but nothing could have prepared him for this. It had been two months since their little confrontation in the guestroom and the spiky-haired male was doing everything in his power to make the Uchiha's life a living hell. Thinking back on the past few days all Itachi could think of was that if this was deliberate, which he was willing to bet his life on, then mission accomplished.
At first he believed that he could handle the man on his own; after all, all it took was a little force to bend any man into submission. But the man had taken everything he had thrown at him and then some, even withstanding the Tsukuyomi at its full wrath. He remembered how shocked and enraged he had been when the man had started small talk while being devoured by the dark, unearthly beings he had conjured up as a form of torture. To his credit the Tsukuyomi managed to exhaust the man mentally, however, it had long lost the ability to break the man's spirit. And what use was exhausting the man if he couldn't even break his resolve. So he had stopped using the straining ocular jutsu on the blonde and began devising other ways to force the blonde into submission.
He had decided to play the man's game and prey on him mentally. But the man had read his intentions and managed to turn it around on him. Whenever he tried to bring up his deceased students and lover the blonde always brought up his mother and little brother, which sent the Uchiha fleeing as far away from him as his legs could take him. Seeing as he had more pent up guilt and hidden agendas than the blonde, he was at a higher risk of letting something slip out that could damage all that he had worked so hard for. In the end the mind games proved pointlessly stressing and the raven discontinued using it.
He hadn't even bothered with physical torture for two reasons; firstly, if anyone could withstand his Tsukuyomi, even going so far as putting it to shame, then they were well beyond physical torture for they had survived the epitome of pain. Secondly, as a former Leaf ANBU Itachi knew all too well the gruesome exercises they went through in the name of training. In the Initiation process they went through four stages; although they were led to believe that they would only be facing three just like in the Chunnin exams. The fourth stage decided whether or not you made ANBU and it was the reason Itachi had sworn to keep Sasuke out of that cursed organization. The contestants were put through ten grueling torturous stages made up to look like they had been captured by enemy forces and would surely die unless they gave up vital information they had been given in the previous stages. Those who made it through the first six stages received automatic admission into ANBU ranks, and usually that was the limit of most people's pain tolerance. Six was the norm, eight was beyond exceptional and ten was flat out impossible. In history only three people had made it all the way; Kakashi Hatake, Itachi Uchiha and Minato Namikaze—the first person to have ever accomplished that feat. All had been willing to die in order to ensure that the people of Konoha slept safely that night. Itachi had taken the pain he experienced in those ten stages, intensified it and poured it into his Tsukuyomi. For three grueling days he had suffered the most inhumane and unimaginable physical pain known to man. And so likewise his prey would suffer his wrath for three miserable days.
For this reason, Itachi had accepted defeat and settled instead for watching the blonde kage with both eyes. The Yondaime, strangely enough, didn't seem to mind the raven's constant surveillance. Much to his annoyance, Itachi realized that the man seemed to be enjoying the attention being given him. But what else could he do, with the man's memories rapidly returning to him he couldn't risk the Yondaime leaving his sight. By now the man could remember his entire tenure as an ANBU, his Chunnin and Jonin years and bits and pieces of his Genin days.
Itachi had noticed a disturbing trend in the things the blonde remembered. He could remember his entire adulthood now but most of his childhood still remained fuzzy to him. On top of that he could remember the names of everyone he had ever met in his later life except for that of his red-haired lover Kushina Uzumaki. His Akatsuki duties had kept him from investigating the cause of this for some time; however he was determined to get to the bottom of this. Especially now that he would be leaving Amegakure for the first time since his last mission almost a month ago.
Pein had finally granted Kisame that leave he had been pestering him for and the Kiri missing-nin had only lingered long enough to take the blonde out for another night of partying drinking before bidding his partner good bye. In order to accommodate his partner's absence, the Akatsuki leader had taken Itachi off the active duty roster allowing him to spend enough time watching his prisoner. Had it not been for the specific skill set, which he possessed, the mission required Itachi was sure that Pein would never have sent him out on this solo mission.
Refusing to leave the blonde behind unsupervised, the Sharingan-wielder had forced him to tag along much to said blonde's delight. He hadn't even bothered with chakra-suppressing restraints or similar seals for he knew that the man before him had a sealing prowess rivaled only by the late Sandaime Hokage. As they traveled, flying through trees at top speed, Itachi turned to watch the man they called the Greatest of the Hokages. He had expected the man to live up to his moniker and leave him behind to eat his dust. However, the Yondaime chose to travel beside him as opposed to in front of him. It was either because he distrusted him so much, or because he wanted someone to talk to during the trip. Personally, Itachi had a faint feeling it was a mixture of the two.
"It's so good to be leaving that place after all this time." Minato said starting small talk. Itachi gave him a noncommittal grunt in response and said nothing. To his delight he saw the blonde narrow his eyes at him before turning to face the path of tree branches ahead. Itachi narrowed his eyes as he watched the Yondaime from the corner of his eye.
It was easy to assume and make up a lot of things about people held in high esteem by the multitude. And for that reason Itachi had always made a point of not relying on any information about someone's personality which he read or heard about. No matter how objective a writer or historian tried to be there was always that small room for misinterpretation and bias when chronicling a historic figure's life. For example he had read somewhere that although Madara Uchiha disapproved of the way Konoha was being run by his long-time rival, he still maintained some sort of loyalty to the village he had helped found. On the contrary, as anyone who ever spent two minutes in that man's presence can tell, Madara held no such attachments or sentiments for the village that had rejected him as leader.
Thus, he always made a point of acquiring such information either directly from the person or from someone amongst the subject's inner circle. And Namikaze Minato had been no different. He had turned to the Yondaime's only surviving student to get an idea on the man behind the legend and found that the more he heard about him the deeper his admiration grew.
According to Kakashi Hatake, a fellow ANBU at the time, his sensei was a quiet, tolerant, patient, and compassionate man. However, he was somewhat distant from people in general particularly the people of Konoha. He put up a show of being charming and jovial when he was quite the opposite. Although he loved his privacy he loved pleasing people even more and so he accepted the fate his life of servitude as a shinobi brought him. Finding the Yondaime's distant behavior weird and unusual, Itachi had investigated the matter further and what he had discovered rocked him to his core.
When The Yellow Flash became hokage all traces of a man named Raiden Hikaru disappeared. Including the man himself. Itachi found it strange that the Hokage had taken interest in an unknown shinobi until he discovered the connection between the two men. His mother Amaya Namikaze, the daughter of a wealthy minor lord in Fire Country capital had been kidnapped by a terrorist nicknamed Dark Blue. Four years later Amaya had turned up dazed and pregnant at the gates of Konoha; she had been abandoned by her captor who she had gotten married to sometime during her disappearance.
When her father refused to accept his bastard grandchild into his home, Amaya refused to leave her child in an orphanage and remained in Konoha against the lord's wishes. As it turns out Minato was a spitting image of his father who was a member of a clan that had betrayed the village and fled with several scrolls containing all sorts of valuable jutsus. And so he faced the stigma of being the fruit of a traitor's loins, a constant reminder of the man's treachery, which led him to retreat into himself. Like his son Naruto, he was a forced loner until his lover Kushina had arrived from the destroyed Whirlpool village and brought happiness into his life.
Against his mother's wishes he had changed his last name and adopted hers instead, leading to their estrangement until her death a year before his own demise. Kakashi had told him that only three things had ever brought the Yondaime to tears; Obito's death, Rin's death and his mother's death. And looking back on it Itachi could see why the blonde couldn't quite recall his childhood.
He activated his Sharingan and turned to examine the humming man beside him. Sure enough when he examined the man's memories he saw a small gap in the mass and instantly knew what the man had done. At first he had suspected that Orochimaru had sealed those memories securely in his mind. However, he now knew that it was the Yondaime, not the Snake Sannin who had tampered with his memories. He had eradicated all of the inescapable pain and humiliation that was his childhood. And rather than replacing it with something else he had left it blank probably because he didn't know what to put in its place.
"Are we there yet?" Minato asked a mischievous smile on his face.
"Almost." Came Itachi's reply as he focused on mentally preparing for what awaited them.
"Where are we even headed anyways?" Minato asked for the umpteenth time that day. And for the umpteenth time Itachi ignored him.
"Boy, aren't we chatty today." The blonde said sarcastically as they continued on.
Itachi liked to watch him sleep. Although he was in his most alert state when he slept, he was also at his most peaceful then. He knew that the blonde was a light sleeper and he also knew that there was a very good chance that the man knew he was being watched while he slept, but Itachi didn't care if he got caught or not. He didn't care as long as the man continued feigning sleep, because then his keen blue eyes would be closed and he couldn't see the need and possessiveness that took hold of him in those moments.
Mine, mine, mine! The mantra was the only coherent thought he could form when his eyes fell on the man's sleeping form. He was his prize; he had subdued him and purchased him from Madara. And although it had been a steep price to pay it was all worth it. The man was a legend, his own idol and he being in his very presence was as intoxicating as it was surreal.
Whenever the man yawned or showed any outward signs of drowsiness, Itachi was always glad because it meant hours of shamelessly ogling the beautiful enigma before him unseen. He now knew how Madara felt, although he couldn't for the life of him figure out why that old relic desired a broken man like him above all others. He had thought that he too would one day pounce on the former Hokage; unable to contain his desire, and claim him like his ancestor had him. But to his surprise just watching the man proved to be all the satisfaction he needed. And so he continued.
He heard the blonde exhale and knew that the Yondaime was now feigning sleep but he pushed that away to the back of his mind and continued. He knew that the blonde man welcomed the attention he gave him and who was he to deny him what he wanted. As long as they were both comfortable Itachi saw no reason to stop. Besides watching the Yondaime provided enough distraction from the pain eating away at him on the inside.
Although Itachi preferred camping in the outdoors, as it was cheaper and a lot more effective, they were currently lodged at an inn in the heart of a commercial non-shinobi town. Their location was more for convenience than it was for comfort. For he had hidden a special seal beneath all the protective seals he had placed around the room for security. This seal was the last line of security in keeping the blonde confined to his room. Now that the man had most of his memories back he was a bigger flight risk than before. Knowing the man's ungodly speed Itachi had formulated a seal that always checked a confined space for the man's presence.
It was the same seal that kept the blonde in his apartment back in Amegakure. It not only detected the man's chakra but it also detected the quantity and quality of it to know it he used a shadow clone to trick the seal. Furthermore, it detected his temperature, the radiation of body heat from him, his weight, breathing rate, and all other vital signs that could tell if he was still in the room or not. It was a design of Itachi's own making and he was absolutely proud of it for he knew the Yondaime hadn't yet figured a way to deceive it. The reason why Itachi knew that the Yondaime hadn't broken past the seal was because if he ever managed to get through the other security seals, they would activate the seal beneath and like a stack of dominoes they would all be activated until the last one was triggered causing whatever building they were in to be blown sky-high. It was for this reason that they had taken up lodging in the most populous part of town. It was foolproof and ingenious and that was all you needed to outsmart a fellow prodigy.
The raven continued his silent vigil until the early hours of dawn when he finally rose from his post and left the room, not bothering to lock the door behind him. Minato finally allowed his eyes to flutter open as he snuggled closer to the pillow at his head. He turned in his bed and casted a doleful look at the empty bed beside his. They had gotten a room with two beds for appearances sake and the Uchiha had not even laid down in his. Minato had noticed the raven's refusal to sleep around him ever since they had first met in that cave and it bothered him somewhat. He knew that the Sharingan-wielder was sick and he thought that for that reason the raven didn't trust him enough to fall asleep around him. The Uchiha's lack of sleep, among other things, worried him to no end. But whenever he brought up how frail and weak he looked the Uchiha lied that it was in order to fool his enemies. Something within Minato ached at the knowledge that he was the indirect cause of Itachi's misery. Although he tried not to be that much trouble he just couldn't help himself, especially when the Uchiha kept challenging him the way he did.
He felt his eyes grow heavy with sleep again but forced them open. Sitting up in bed he turned to glare at nothing in particular. The tailing jutsu he had placed on the Uchiha didn't work beyond a certain range and Minato could feel the raven moving further and further away. It wouldn't be long before he would be out of reach and Minato just couldn't let that happen. He knew that the younger man was out here on Akatsuki business, he was wearing that intimidating cloak of his over his normal clothes. And whatever it was it had to be so important that the leader would allow him to work solo as opposed to waiting for Kisame to return from his leave. He had a gut feeling that if he didn't intervene now things would get ugly for Konoha.
Although he didn't know what exactly the Uchiha was up to he knew that he would lead him right to it. With all this hanging in the balance Minato felt a sense of urgency heightened by his current predicament. That cursed last seal he had nicknamed the Gate to Freedom. The fate of the entire world depended on him outsmarting the Uchiha's seal. And he had only ten minutes to spare.
"He sure does know how to create a challenge." Minato said to himself a small smile playing on the corner of his lips.
That's it for now. I'll be updating this story pretty soon. Oh and expect a fight scene in the next chapter.
