Hi guys, I know I suck. A lot had been going on at my end (moving, new job, getting ready for grad school etc) so it took me a long time to finish this chapter. But luckily it's nice long one and I have the following one all plotted out! Hopefully you all won't have to wait as long. Anyway, enjoy and stay tuned! Also thank you to the recent reviewers. You guys are great.

The pale, bloodless body of a grimacing Zetsu clone fell to the ground at Sasuke's feet. So it was true, Madara had started the war.

Yet Madara's war was none of his concern.

A vague concept in Sasuke's one track mind, the only thing to do was to finish what he had started- to kill Naruto. With Naruto gone, there would be no one to stand in his way. Whatever Madara had planned to spite the allied nations was of no consequence. Because if there were Leaf Village shinobi still alive, if the village was still standing, he would still destroy it. He would not stop until the place he had once foolishly called home was devastated like the compound where he spent his childhood; until it was as grief stricken and lifeless as it had made his own heart. The cruel system that had suppressed and eradicated his family could not be allowed to be left standing. And once he was completely cut off from the bonds that had tied him to the village, the Uchiha could fully be restored.

... Just because it's imperfect doesn't mean it's not worth protecting...

The thought echoed into his consciousness without his willing it to, in a voice that was not his own. Sasuke scowled, pushing the voice of his brother out of his mind and marching forward towards the trees. Making his way further into the shadows towards the battlefield where he had confronted Naruto, his mind zeroed in only to squeezing out every bit of light in the stubborn bastard, and then finally achieving his justice.

Hikari sat alone in her makeshift house, sitting against the wall and looking blankly at the opposite side of the room. The sun was setting on the second day of the war. It was jarring to be surrounded by fighting with no one to fight for. For a majority of her life, she had lived her life with partnership. As a gennin at the age of seven, she had been assigned a team of three- all privileged young shinobi who for their own reasons needed to be separated from the academy. (It was mostly for conduct disorders, if she was honest.) In Root, she had been in a team of five, though two had been killed by their Uchiha targets, and another by Danzo for betraying them. Even in ANBU after the massacre, she had always taken on missions in a team.

Missions had always told her what to do, even if her last long term one had been self assigned. But what now? For the first time since the age of five, there were no missions and no teammates. For the first time, there was no one she could lean on and there was no one else to support. Listening to three hostile Zetsu clones boredly till her garden, Hikari had a moment of realization that she knew only meant a true coming of age.

In life, ultimately, the only person who would be there to support her had to be herself. No matter how connected to others she might one day become, no matter how bad things were, it was all up to her to decide what to do when there was no one else. The woman sighed, a small pang of fear clinging to her gut. Never before in her life had she felt so uncertain and alone. But life didn't care. It would continue to keep moving and it would decide for her if she didn't decide for herself. It was all up to her now. Hikari's eyebrows furrowed and her fists clenched. She would do what had to be done, even if it meant floundering for a little while.

The woman rose, and made her way out of the cottage. Three Zetsus walked back and fourth with wooden tools, working the land and mumbling to each other in irritation.

"What do you want?" One said upon seeing the woman they had grown tired of.

"Just wanted to see how things were coming is all," she said placing a hand on her hip.

"How do you think it's coming?! We're almost done. All this time we've had nothing to do but fertilize the soil and plant food that we can never eat!" Another accused exasperatedly. The woman shrugged raising her hands.

"I never said you had to help me. Madara is fighting a war and left you to watch me for days. It was just something for you to do. Besides, it's not like I can give you any other options because you won't let me leave." The first Zetsu raised an eyebrow as if in realization.

"Is that an attempt to manipulate us? You know we'll never let you leave. Not while the eye of moon plan is soon to be underway!" She chuckled at that. They had still never suspected that a clone had left and returned to her consciousness days ago.

"Well then if you don't want to sit around doing nothing for days on end you can keep helping me till and plow and water and farm the field or work in the rice patty." The woman set both hands on her hips and slanted her eyebrows fiercely like a scolding mother.

"I've had enough of this. If we set fire to the fields, maybe she'll starve to death," the third Zetsu declared to the others.

"Then I could either kill you and keep running away from the battleground or we could simply start again a little ways away from here. Would you like that?" The three looked at each other, considering their options. "I'm bored out of my mind too, and I'd like nothing but to rid myself of your incessant jabbering. But you forget that whatever fire you start I can put out. As long as I am a master of wood style, you can't kill me in this forest." Now their glances turned amused and they chuckled darkly.

"Master of wood style is that right?" One high, condescending voice teased her. It caused her to hesitate. Had they hidden a wood style ability from her all along?

"I only meant that I've spent my life specializing in it..."

"You think that a mere twenty one years being a wood style user means that you've mastered it? Even at your caliber, your abilities pale in comparison to another woman long ago... You don't even understand the fundamentals of what wood style is," he concluded with mirth.

"You've been hinting about this wood style thing a lot lately. When are you finally going to spit it out?"

"It doesn't matter if we tell you or not. In less than two more days, you will be dead."

"Whatever. The sun has almost set. I'm heading in for the night. You all can try to sleep or whatever it is that you do when you're not spying on people." Hikari sighed and went back inside into her room. She closed her eyes and searched the areas far and wide, gathering her chakra in the event she decided to intervene. Remote viewing spent almost no chakra- she simply had to separate part of her astral body from her physical one and use it to look over vast distances as fast as the spirit could move. But intervening over distance was different.

Where is Sasuke?

She scoured the area close to where she had last left him. Finally she found him. And to her great astonishment, she found another traveling so close to him it had to have been fate. It was Itachi, not alive, but undead.

If she was honest with herself, she would have preferred him to be lost to her sight and at peace in an unknown realm... to this.

Sasuke didn't spare as much as a glance at the fallen Zetsu around him. For a moment, he calculated the fastest route towards where Naruto might be. If he wanted to fight him, he would have to get past Madara's pursuit in the process. Then, something strange happened. A voice screamed inside his brain, clearly coming from somewhere outside of him.

Sasuke! Run strait ahead! Now!

While it took a moment for him to think and assess what had happened, he could place the voice as the woman named Hikari. For a moment, he thought he might run in the opposite direction. But if he followed her lead, he might be able to verify her true motivations and validity of all of her claims. There was a chance it was an enemy. He held his weapon in front of him, and moved forward.

Itachi ran swiftly though the trees, glad to be free of his bindings. As a reanimation, his vision was no longer impaired, enabling him to travel undisturbed through the cover of trees. The jutsu caster was just up ahead if Pein's sensory intel had been accurate. And while he would have liked too save Shiui's eye for Sasuke, using it to stop the reanimation was well worth it. A small grim smile crept across his lips. Perhaps after death his bad luck and finally turned for the better.

Yet regardless of this twist of fate, Itachi felt a dull anger well in his stomach. Ghosts of feelings past clung to his heart, weighing him down grief. Whoever cast this jutsu was responsible for re-instilling the pain of hundreds and thousands who were supposed to be at peace; pain and suffering that after being scarred up for years was now fresh in the hearts of all, including himself. Whoever did this, he thought to himself, deserved to soon reach a quick and just death. Itachi ran as fast as he could, mind only on the goal ahead of him: to leave the past in the past.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his fate twist once more. For to his left heading in the opposite direction, was a young dark, haired boy. It didn't take more than an instant for him to recognize who the boy was.

An ache filled Itachi's gut at the sight of his brother. He kept running. He knew full well his brother would follow, but he continued running anyway. Itachi's target was the jutsu caster and time was of the essence. He found himself stubbornly pushing away the thought that he was also running away from the source of this feeling. Perhaps in death he had not changed after all.

"Wait!" the boy called. Itachi, filled with shame, could not turn to look into the eyes of the brother whose life he had ruined. "I told you to wait!" Itachi did not turn around, but sensed a semisolid form heading towards him. He turned around if only to deflect the glowing purple skeletal hand with his own Susanoo.

"Talk to him!" The scolding voice that could only be his wife flashed into his mind for just a moment. He didn't need to be advised; he knew the situation he was in. There was no point in hiding who he was, it was too late. Finally, he forced himself to look into the eyes of his brother. And despite the new knowledge that his brother was now set on destroying the village he had sacrificed everything to protect, it was good to see him. Somehow, Sasuke's accusing eyes disarmed his usual guardedness. No, now that Itachi was somewhat alive, it had to be different. He had to change. To open up like the old Itachi had been afraid to. Perhaps then he could knock some sense into Sasuke.

"I'm impressed. I didn't know you had been able to master it as well, Sasuke." Sasuke was uninterested in flattery. He needed answers. But for now, Itachi was unable to deliver them.

"But what are you even doing here? You're dead!" So Sasuke did not know Madara's plan.

"Kabuto's jutsu. I have become a reanimated shinobi. No time to talk now. There's something important that I have to do." Yet old patterns were hard to shake, and he found himself habitually keeping the boy at a distance, out of necessity.

"So what I don't care! You're here in front of me right now and I have questions for you!" The boy almost shrieked, demanding the truth with a desperate existential need. But Itachi could not afford to indulge him now.

"Ask me later... though you probably won't listen." Itachi felt a dull bitterness weigh at his insides. There was a good chance that after all Sasuke had been through, there were no words Itachi could say that would reach him. After all, the person that had once been Itachi's sole source of light was now in absolute darkness.

"You're the one who told me to come and find you when I had the same eyes as you! Now you want to run away from me? Are you running out of guilt for being a liar? You don't have the courage to tell me the truth." His brother's words stung with the truth he wanted desperately to fight. Never before had he planned on being confronted by Sasuke in this way, after his illusion had been completed following his death. His brother continued. "I already know everything about you anyway. That's why I'm going to destroy the Hidden Leaf!" Itachi felt disarmed, but knowing that Sasuke would not be satisfied without a reply, he attempted a half thought out explanation.

"I told you before when we fought against each other, we each live inside our own fantasies. I asked you to think about it that way, and how one's reality might be an illusion. However, my truth is real*." While Madara might have told Sasuke the secrets behind the coup de tat, Sasuke was mistaken. He did not know his brother. Sasuke's view of himself and the life he lived was filled with holes and misconceptions. It was a view that turned him against the village in the first place. While it was more than likely Sasuke had learned small snapshots of what had transpired during Itachi's years in the Akatsuki, only he possessed the full story.

"I no longer live inside an illusion. And I can see through your genjutsu. These eyes are your eyes!" Sasuke still did not understand. But there was no time yet to restore order to the boy's mind. Why me? What's different about me than our father and mother? Why did you spare only me?!" Itachi knew the shameful truth deep within his heart, but it was so far repressed within him that he could not voice them.

"Because you didn't know anything," Itachi half answered. "You had no part in the Uchiha Clan's folly. You were just a child. And do you think that I did it just for you? I wanted you to grow up and judge me. I deserved to be dealt with only by another Uchiha." Memories of countless hours spent visualizing his own death and the peace he would instill in his brother's heart flashed through his mind. Countless planning and wishing and hoping that ultimately amounted to nothing. "And so I took advantage of the hatred inside you. That's... why I failed." Sorrow welled in the elder Uchiha just as much as it liberated him to tell Sasuke the truth he had only recently realized himself. "Ultimately I only filled you with hatred and made you go rogue... I turned you into a criminal." Anger rose in the elder man's heart, directed at himself. He could imagine the chaos Sasuke's hatred had already caused. The idea that he had sacrificed so much only to send the one who had given him so much light into the same dark and painful path he himself had walked was greater than anything he had ever feared. "Even though all I ever really wanted was for you to walk the right path..." What had gotten into him? He had never been so honest about his true feelings during his life. Yet now that he knew how much pain his lies had caused, he felt telling the truth liberated both of them. It spilled out of him almost uncontrollably. Validating Sasuke's rightful anger was the way to his healing.

"No matter how you change the sign posts, my eyes can strip away all of your lies." Itachi smiled to himself, still inexplicably filled with something akin to ecstasy. It was like a dream to be here, leading him, talking to him more openly about his inner motivations than he had ever even talked with his own wife. He chuckled to himself. "What's so damn funny?" His brother spat, still in the darkness of his hatred. The same blonde haired boy he had told Sasuke to connect with all those years ago flashed again through his mind. Itachi had noticed it back then, when he had entrusted the boy with bringing his brother out of the dark. The blonde had looked at him with the same radiant, confident and determined eyes he had grown intimately familiar with over the final years of his life.

"Nothing, just realizing that the signposts were not your only guides. Properly speaking, I'm dead now. There's no point talking any further."

Itachi sent a murder of crows to set back his brother, just along enough for Itachi to determine his destination was safe enough for the both of them.

"Don't panic, it's only reanimation," Hikari attempted to reason with herself, pacing back and forth in her kitchen. "He can undo it quickly, and then they will all be in peace... all of them," images of familiar faces raced through her mind, some of who were from history books, others from the Akatsuki. Deidara was currently yelling to his captors from within some sort of a puppet cage. From all she could see, Nagato and Kakuzu were nowhere to be found. "Don't panic," she winced, fighting back knowledge Madara had showed her in his old library once before.

"Hidan has no memory of how he became immortal. The jutsu involved created a partial amnesia to separate the life of the dead from the life of the undead. But just as Pain was able to restore the lives of your former villagers at the cost of his traitorous life, there are other ways to revive the dead."

"So he was brought back to life... using the reanimation jutsu?" The masked man nodded.

"Good guess. I speculate you are correct. But while the organization achieved full reanimation, the conversion process was flawed. This is why Hidan has vampiric tendencies. He depends on absorbing the life force found in blood for his power, and for his very life itself. However, there are other more effective methods for raising the dead completely."

"That's immoral. Why force the dead to fight once more after they've found their peace? Isn't transforming reality into a peaceful dream your ultimate goal? Why bring about more misery?" Madara chuckled darkly.

"It was only a side note. I haven't the ability to reanimate any shinobi."

Hikari had suspected Itachi's mentor had been hiding a piece of information from her, but had been unable to pick up on it. Now, with Kabuto controlling a formidable army of undead shinobi, a terrible idea creeped into her consciousness.

"Pain isn't here, and neither is Nagato. Even if anyone wished him to, no one could trap Itachi in the flesh." She watched the two Uchiha brothers arrive in the den of the young man she had once half-heartedly considered capturing and later disposing of, and kept her eyes peeled on the battles before her.

"Talk to your brother, Itachi, but don't stay longer than you need to. I'm happy, for your sake, that you have the chance to bring about peace to the ninja world one more time."

"This time for sure, I'm going to hold you to your promise," Sasuke said, referring to his brother's agreeing to talk with him after they took down the silver haired former servant before them.

"They say you take your personality to the grave. I've already died once. I plan to honor it."

The snakelike man opened his mouth to bear his long tongue, a behavior that was only reminiscent of Orochimaru, a behavior that had always sickened Sasuke.

If they weren't allowed to kill the pathetic man, so be it. Despite the fact he had spent years in shared quarters with this man, he couldn't say he cared whether or not he lived or died. All that he cared about now, was the fact that the same brother he knew nothing about, the brother he would once have given anything for to train with, was here now fighting alongside him. All he cared about was the truth.

"You've studied a lot, Dr. Snakes**," were the exact words that came from his brother's mouth after he explained how snakes operate. "Beware of traps, Sasuke," were the words he spoke next. His brother had lived a life of excruciating pain. He had died fighting him. And yet even now, despite it all, Itachi had still kept his humor about him, and was still protecting him. Sasuke half smiled, and for a moment his eyes flashed with another memory from Itachi's childhood.

He was watching himself, younger, playing hide and seek in the forest. It was strange to see himself through his brother's eyes.***

"Found you!" Sasuke cried, shooting a finger out at the crouching Itachi. His little brother looked down at him, eyes glittering brightly with dreams and hope.

"Not quite," Itachi said and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Shadow clone. The real Itachi was above Sasuke's head.

"Ah no fair!" his brother cried out naively, and abruptly lifted his face. "Ah!" Sasuke caught sight of his brother looking down on him from a thick branch.

"Hee hee!" Itachi unconsciously erupted in laughter upon seeing the wild look in Sasuke's face as he stared up at the sky, tilting his head so far back, it seemed like his neck would break. Although Itachi rarely let his feelings show in front of other people, he was naturally able to express what was in his heart to his brother. It was strange.

Kabuto attacked, and the brothers found themselves propelled into another chamber of the cave. It was colder, darker, wetter, and Sasuke found himself blinded temporarily by dust and soot from the crumbling stalactites above. Just as he regained his footing, the air glowed with a familiar red.

Hikari watched through Madara's orb.. or whatever man she had perviously known... at the scene unfolding before her eyes.

The entire first company had been almost entirely wiped out by who could only be the true Madara Uchiha. Now, in a battlefield of ash and sand and stone, the leaders of the free ninja world stood together, facing the reanimated Uchiha.

'If Itachi is fighting to end the reanimation now... then the only one who can face the real Madara if the reanimation doesn't dispel... is me… This is a battle between the potential first steps towards a unified shinobi nation against a man I no longer understand the motivations of.'

Before now, the Madara she knew had planned to bring about the beginning of an age of eternal peace through dreams. Had that too been the original Madara's plan? Or had the man she used to know taken his name for some other use? And if this Madara sought the infinite tsukuyomi as well, who was she truly in support of at all?'

Just as Hikari considered her options, she saw a shadow at the door. Turning, she was faced with six accusing eyes.

"Sage art: Lightning scream attack!" Kabuto threw an energetic ball with a dragon, which coiled in midair. Bright white light and deafening sound burst forth from the orb. Sasuke screamed and grimaced, holding his ears in desperation. His bones rattled and all there senses seemed to be put on hold. Glancing to his side, he saw his brother was in much the same state. Unable to move an inch, Sasuke was just barely able to see Kabuto running towards them, uninhibited. He ran towards Itachi.

Move... you've got to save him..! Sasuke silently willed to himself, to no avail. Then at the last second, he changed directions. Just in time, Sasuke was encased in the Susanoo of his brother.

"Itachi... somehow you are always able to find me... What sets you apart from your clan brethren is that you have true visual prowess. You can peer right into people's souls and read them, and then use what you learn against them in battle." Kabuto had no idea how right he was. Sasuke thought back to all of the times it seemed as if Itachi had every idea what lied inside his heart, even more than he himself did. "That is why you are so good at deceiving people. You died a genius... a genius at lying."

"Big brother, I'm home!" Sasuke had said one day after the academy. Itachi had been in his room a lot more lately when he was not busy with missions. On this particular day, Sasuke had learned that his brother would be arriving back at the house before him, and had spent all of the school session looking forward to their reunion. Sasuke had expected him to come out and at least wave. Instead, he found the house completely silent. Walking quietly through the halls, he listened for any sign of life. Finally, in the meeting room far on the other side of the house, Sasuke overheard the feint voices of his parents behind closed doors.

"Itachi, I'm worried about you. You're not eating with us; you barely even speak with anyone. It wouldn't hurt you to spend just a little time out of your room when you're home!"

"Mikoto, it's been over ten years since you retired from your days as a jounin squad leader," this time the calm but stern voice of his father could be heard. "Back then, before the war, you were always called away for use of your infiltration expertise. But you cannot understand the demands put on an ANBU ten years later. Since the war, the missions assigned in the village have increased by a sizable percent. Even if he wanted to, Itachi is just going to have less time with us for the time being. There's no way around it."

"Fugaku this isn't healthy. How long do you expect him to keep it up at this pace?"

"He's my son, and he's exceptional."

"That might be true, but he's only just thirteen."

"Mother, if I might interject," Itachi chimed in, causing Sasuke to quiet his breathing. "You really don't need to worry about me at all. My missions take time, but my squad is highly skilled. The missions themselves haven't been costly in terms of energy. I have other clan duties to fulfill, that's why I must spend more time outside of the compound…." Sasuke gasped having spent too much time holding his breath. As he did, both Itachi and his mother looked towards the screen door. It was true that over the last several months he had become more skilled at infiltration, but he was still from the Uchiha clan, whose senses were keen. His brother stood up, and opened the door.

"Sasuke," his brother stated, expressionless.

"What are you doing listening in on this conversation!? You should know better than that!" His father accused. His voice had always been harsh in the rare situation he actually wanted to hear the words of his youngest son.

"Sorry…"

"Sasuke was just about to knock, Father, because I had told him that I would help him practice his jutsu after class. We had a lot planned, so we should probably get started. Mother, will you need any help preparing for dinner?" Their mother smiled gratefully.

"No, Itachi. You go on ahead." To Sasuke's amazement, his elder brother closed the screen door on his parents to look down at him.

"Come Sasuke, let me show you how to hide from skilled ninja like Mother and Father more effectively. Then we'll do shuriken practice.

…...

Sasuke threw his last two throwing stars, one which hit the other, bending it and landing an inch and a half from the center of the target on the tree. Beside him, Itachi leaned against the large boulder, lost in his private thoughts.

"Itachi… um… I wonder.." the sound of his voice pulled his brother away from his silent contemplations. "You never usually have time to help me train. Is the reason you're helping me today because you wanted to get away from Mother and Father?" Itachi slowly blinked, putting on an unreadable expression.

"You've improved in erasing your presence. How much did you hear?" Sasuke wondered if he was going to try to distract from the question again.

"Just the ending, I think." Itachi looked off into the distance for a time. Finally he spoke with his eyes closed.

"Father is much too harsh on you. He's completely blind to how far you've come. Perhaps if you had been born before me he would see your true potential." Sasuke's eyes widened. He didn't know how to respond to his brother's acknowledgement. Itachi opened his eyes and smiled at him in a way that appeared genuine enough.

"That's why I want to help you get stronger. I've told you before, you have the potential to surpass me. And when you do, Father will have no choice but to acknowledge you." Sasuke doubted his brother's words. No matter how hard he tried, it had never been close to enough. As long as Itachi was around to be compared to, he would be a disappointment. But Itachi's words had unlocked a deep desire from within his heart, and validated him. Whatever they had been talking about in the meeting room was no longer of any importance. What mattered was that he was seen. What mattered was that in this rare moment, Sasuke felt close to the brother that mattered so much to him.

On the way home, they had stopped to get dessert for their dinner. Sasuke walked alongside him so he could hold the brown paper bag. Itachi had become quiet again, and his mother's words echoed in his head.

"Itachi…." Sasuke dared to ask the other question in his heart. "Are you okay?" Itachi looked down at him once more and smiled.

"Don't worry about me, Sasuke. I've just been tired. That's all." After dinner and desert, Itachi returned to his room where he stayed awake with the lights on into the night. Even Sasuke was uncertain what he did in there. He didn't come to the table the next night, or for the rest of the week. It would be one and a half months later when Sasuke would open a door to find the brother he had admired so much standing over their parents' corpses.

Looking back on the memory, Sasuke marveled at how Itachi had been able to disarm him by saying exactly what he wanted to hear. In retrospect, Itachi had probably stayed in his room because he was sick to his stomach with fear of his family's future. How hard would it have been to walk amongst the clan and eat along side his family when he saw the walls closing in on such a grim fate? Yet even then, he had taken the time to train with his brother once and a while, in hopes that no matter what happened, his brother would become strong.

Sasuke growled at the man who knew nothing of his brother and attacked with a bolt of lightning. Itachi had had no choice but to lie and hide himself back then. And Sasuke wouldn't let such a pathetic excuse of a person insult or tarnish his brother's memory. Now the snake hung from the ceiling, continuing his incessant talk.

"You truly think that a makeshift team of two people who hate each other can outwit my perception skills and stop me? And because your brother lied so much you know nothing about him and you will never trust each other." Sasuke looked over at his elder brother, who looked towards the ground, eyes closed. He could tell his brother acknowledged the truth in the words. After all, even fighting alongside each other, there was still so much doubt clouding Sasuke's mind about Itachi. There was still so much leftover hurt from their shared past. This was the price Itachi paid for hiding his own truth his whole life. Sasuke knew that in the short time he had with him, the distance between them would never be closed.

"What do you want?" Hikari sighed, looking at the three figures standing at her door. They barged in to the house.

"Spying on the battlefield are we? Did you really think we wouldn't find out if you were watching the war using stolen artifacts?" The pale faced Zetsu sneered. Indoors, Hikari now realized that the three clones did in fact, have no detectable scent.

"On the contrary, I assumed you already knew," she mumbled, rolling her eyes and returning to the purple orb along with her lunch of rice and vegetables.

"If you're thinking of getting involved, I'll remind you that we have the authority to enter this house at any time to ensure you cannot escape."

"I don't know how many more times I can say it. I'm not afraid of you. I promised Madara that I would not set foot on his battlefield. Then again… it seems that I didn't promise Madara anything at all…" her eyes returned to the scene in the orb in front of them where they remained intensely glued. The three Zetsu clones stood around her, watching the same scene.

"So the real Madara has been reanimated," another Zetsu stated sounding unsurprised. "The secret's finally been revealed to them."

"You knew?" Hikari said with a furrowed brow.

"We all knew. Ever since the previous war. Even if you do kill us and try to interfere, you wouldn't be able to withstand Madara. As a reanimation, his chakra is unlimited."

"I see that…" she mumbled, fixated on the battle before her. No, even if she used Hashirama's largest wood style jutsu, even if she could withstand his mangyekyo sharingan and blast through his susanoo with a sound wave, her chakra was limited. Even if she conjoined her attacks with the five Kage, eventually their energy would run out. Whatever wood style attacks she had he seemed to have access to somehow. Even if she were to bypass his susanoo by turning into ether and then hit him physically, it might not be enough to seal him away. Furthermore, from this distance she was unclear what his motivations were. He was clearly not being controlled. Why then did he fight so ruthlessly?

"Very well then, we will let you watch. But if we see you attempt to interfere, we'll use our telepathic signal with the other Zetsu to send reinforcements and hunt you down. You won't be able to escape us forever."

Hikari did not answer their threat. Instead she simply continued watching the scene before her.

What can I do? What should I do?' she thought to herself. Certainly, with any number of Zetsu watching her, she could not slip out unseen. And even if she was able to deceive them and produce another clone, to what end? In what direction would she run?

Hope you enjoyed it. That was certainly a clunky part to write but soon hopefully we can be done with the war arc and get into the aftermath of the war, which is kind of what I started writing this fanfic for in the first place! I had to make a decision about how much restating of cannon chapters I wanted to include. In the end I decided to do some, because I thought it was important to write this fight from the perspective of the brothers. It never goes into how they think and feel about the whole ordeal and I think it's really special. All these flashbacks might be annoying too, but they'll go somewhere. I promise.

Below I've included three sources of some of my writing for this chapter and why they were noteworthy. I don't own any Naruto characters, obviously.

* " However, my truth is real." This is verbatim a line from Itachi and it is my opinion the stupidest thing he's ever said. Mr. Existentialism over here always preaches about the subjective nature of everyone's reality and yet here for some reason he decides to say this? I, a nerd, often puzzled over this thinking it might be a mistranslation but it's not. So I wrote this scene out with his thought process to try and justify why he said the things he said, especially this stupid line.

** "You've studied a lot, Dr. Snakes." This, once again is the actual English translation to the official Japanese line. For real. And I, for one, am digging it. I wanted to highlight it so you all knew that is not a mistranslation if you ever read the manga. Chrispin Freeman says it wrong and a lot of japanese subtitles have the line wrong too so I double checked by listening to the japanese and translating it into english myself.

*** This is an excerpt from a scene in the first book of the Itachi Shinden.