Chapter 8: Triangles

Taking the directions Itachi had offered under the guise of bashing his brother, Sakura reached the scene as quickly as possible. What had once been a forest was now replaced by destruction and flames from the two brothers trading blows. The sun had risen and marked a full night of travel without rest; at least it meant that visibility would not be an issue. Sakura's gaze alternated between the two men as she decided how she should approach the situation.

Before she made her first move, Itachi called out, "I'm glad to see that you've decided to join us, Sakura Haruno. At least things will be interesting now." Knowing how Sasuke would feel about those words, Sakura cringed at his insult.

"I'm your opponent, Itachi!" Sasuke snarled. Sakura was unsurprised by his claim: she hardly thought that Sasuke was interested in sharing his revenge with her. In fact, he had probably been using her as bait all along.

Taking a moment to assess the layout, Sakura observed that they were standing in a large triangular formation. This arrangement made it seem that each person was on her or his own—there were no teams here. The moment his brother entered the equation, she could no longer rely on Sasuke to look out for her. Sakura did not doubt that this row would be without rules; it would be nothing less than survival of the fittest. With the two Uchiha brothers as her opponents, she was suddenly wishing that she had her own fancy ocular jutsu to level the playing field.

Before she even had a chance to figure out what to do to whom first, Sakura found Itachi barreling in her direction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sasuke's face contort into a mask of horror, presumably at the fact that his brother was ignoring him… again.

Oh fuck.

Suddenly, the remaining expanse between herself and Itachi filled with fire—Sasuke had sent one of his signature fireballs to interrupt Itachi's warpath. She knew better than to relax at the attempted save, though, and crossed her arms in front of her face just in time for Itachi to burst through the flames and land a kick on her anticipatory block.

As she flung him away, it occurred to her that the Itachi she was seeing on this battlefield sat in a totally different echelon than the one who she had faced days prior. This Itachi hurled himself through a wall of fire just to try to land a kick on her face—he was not messing around. Shaking off her old tendency to feel helpless, she decided that she would need to amplify her game if she wanted any part of this battle.

From where Sasuke stood, the sound of electricity crackled and the blade of his sword extended rapidly in Itachi's direction. With an edge of that length, Sakura knew that she would be in serious trouble if he swung it around with less-than-perfect awareness of its trajectory.

Sakura shouted, "Hey, Sasuke! Watch what you're doing with that thing!" He ignored her words and the blade blasted into the ground as the space where Itachi once stood suddenly became vacant.

"Son of a—." Her cursing was cut short when she whirled around to see the eldest Uchiha brother standing behind her. With Sasuke's sword at her back and Itachi's eyes at her face, Sakura knew that she needed to get rid of extraneous distractions in order to achieve her objective.

As she turned to look at what Sasuke was doing, she found him racing to pass her and presumably land an attack on his brother. Unfortunately for him, though, Sakura was going to make sure that he never got that far. She reached out, grabbed his thick rope belt, swung him into the air, and slammed him into the ground on the other side all in one smooth, arc-like motion.

When she saw the pile of rubble she had created with his body's impact, Sakura winced and apologized, "Sorry, Sasuke."

She was a little sorry—just a little, though. She would not risk her own safety by allowing the erratic behavior that his brother's presence bred in him. However, her brief guilt dissipated when his crumpled body morphed into a pile of snakes; it had been a clone.

"So, that's how you're playing this, Sakura? Each person on his own? That's a shame. I guess that the least savory member of Team 7 will last the longest," Sasuke announced with a hollow voice and eyes to match, "Sleep tight, Sakura." She could feel the air move as his sword swung, but she would be damned if this was how she would meet her end.

As Sakura watched Sasuke's sword pierce her heart from where her real body perched in the bushes, she found herself incredibly glad that she had spent all those painstaking hours developing a medically accurate clone jutsu. It seemed that her successful trials with Kakashi had not been a fluke after all—Sakura had managed to create a clone jutsu complex enough to fool even the eyes of the Uchiha.

While she wanted to dance at her small victory, she knew that now was the time to put her real offense into motion. Forming many hand seals in rapid succession, she focused her chakra on the spot where her clone was bound to turn to mush at any moment. As she formed the final seal, the ground beneath her extra body began sinking and, within seconds, the earth had consumed half of it.

Sakura could swear that she saw a hint of panic flit through Sasuke's eyes as he withdrew his blade from the clone's body. As a sinkhole formed in the spot where her slain clone had fallen, he skipped backward to avoid its rapidly expanding breadth. She wagered that a few things might have passed through his mind: he might have wondered if he was under genjutsu, if he really killed her, or if she was alive, and if so, where she might be.

"Good," she thought smugly to herself, "Let him wonder."

Upon seeing that the hole was continuing to grow, even Itachi hopped backwards a few feet. Sakura smiled at her work—she had been hoping to separate the two brothers with the technique. While she could have made it much larger, she decided to limit it to a diameter of fifteen feet with an equal depth. When it reached its set parameters, the earth stopped moving and the battlefield stilled once more.

"It seems that your friend had a risky jutsu prepared to activate upon her death. Such a waste of a potential ally, Sasuke," Itachi drawled.

From her hiding spot in the shadows, Sakura's eyes narrowed. She suspected that he knew she was alive somewhere. He wanted something from her—whatever it was—and she was unconvinced that a mass murderer would give up something he wanted so easily. Unless she had already served her purpose, of course.

Itachi began to turn away as he continued, "I'd come here to speak to her today—not battle you, Sasuke. You're not ready. Since it seems that I won't be completing my initial objective, I'll be leaving. Come find me when you're ready, little brother."

Now Sakura found herself wishing that she had popcorn on hand—this kind of tension looked like something straight from a bad soap opera. She knew that she had to make her next move now, though, just in case his threat to leave was not really a simple farce. Sakura quickly formed the seals for a new clone and decided to step onto the field as an identical duo.

She and her twin strolled onto the scene with the languid fluidity of dominance and threat. Sakura knew that the best weapons were sometimes psychological and she would gladly use body language to her advantage.

Sakura's clone called to Itachi, "I'm sorry to hear that you'd write me off so easily. But, don't worry, kids: I'm alive, healthy, and ready to kick some ass." Neither of them mentioned that they had met earlier in the day.

"Oh, I didn't doubt that you were still alive, Ms. Haruno—I've seen you in action, after all. It's just humorous to see that my younger brother would still kill his friends simply because I told him to do so," Itachi explained with a face of stone, "My control over his actions is still impeccable after all of these years." Even though he spoke of humor, he seemed lacking in that domain.

Seeing nothing with which to argue in Itachi's statement, Sakura decided to quit the chitchat and amp up the action. Noting their return to a triangular formation with her sinkhole in the center, she determined that it was time to put her trap to use.

Her clone threw a flurry of kunai in the direction of where Sasuke stood stunned by their current circumstances. Even in his daze, he dodged them all with grace—she expected nothing less of the Uchiha prodigy. However, his mental state had caused him to miss the chakra strings attached to her weaponry and he was clearly startled when the strings wound tightly around his body as she pulled them taut.

"You're too unpredictable when you're around your brother, Sasuke," she explained apologetically. His behavior became too erratic whenever an opportunity to face Itachi presented itself. Sakura knew that he would kill her without regret if she happened to be the last thing standing between himself and Itachi's ultimate demise.

Surely he could feel her chakra shutting off his systems now. It would tingle, but it would not hurt.

"I'll never forgive you for this, Sakura," Sasuke warned as she began to tug him toward the gaping aperture.

Sakura responded blankly, "You would've killed me a second time and yet you think I'm the one who needs forgiving." His rage-filled mind followed an incredibly backwards line of thinking—mental acrobatics at its finest.

Finally, the fury she should have felt at how easily he was willing to turn on her after their reunion began to spark in her belly. How could he tell her he missed her one minute and then put his blade through her chest in the next? Five years later, he was just as callous as when they were sixteen.

With anger stamping out logic, she nixed her plan to pull his body into the sinkhole so that he would be trapped while she dueled with Itachi. Instead, Sakura used her clone to launch her real body over the sinkhole and in his direction. While in the air, she soared over his head and landed behind him with a skidding halt. He wiggled his way out of the now-loose chakra strings just in time to dodge her first, angry punch.

Lucky him. Not next time.

Sakura shifted the momentum in her punch to plow her elbow into his nuque and drove her bone into his flesh with enough force to move him sideways. Even if that hit would leave him hurting, she was hardly inclined to stop there. Her rage was so potent that it might not be satisfied until Sasuke's body was limp.

Sakura stepped back and overlapped her hands to boost the momentum of her next move. As she moved forward to push Sasuke into the next dimension, her eyes caught a glimpse of Itachi staring at her from where he stood across the sinkhole. His gaze was so intense that she froze upon connection, allowing Sasuke to land a punch in her gut. As she crumpled over from the blow, she remembered why she was here: she wanted to know what it was like to fall under the tsukuyomi. What she wanted was only steps from her reach, so why the heck was she wasting her time with Sasuke?

Sakura grabbed his arm with each of her hands as he attempted to withdraw his blow—she was not going to let her opening slip by so easily. She tightened her grip, fixed her stance, and swung her ex-teammate around herself in a circle before launching him off into the distance as if she were a discus thrower.

Sasuke spun in the air like a ragdoll. Eventually, he fell and skidded across the ground in the distance. Sakura did not watch for long, though, because her concerns lay elsewhere wearing long black hair and the glowing mangekyou sharingan.

"Itachi Uchiha…" Sakura drawled as she turned to face her new opponent, "…may I have this dance?" As she slowly stepped—heel-toe…heel-toe…heel-toe—in his direction, she found that her sinkhole had disappeared. It seemed a peculiar change of environment, but she was hardly interested in its significance at the time: she only had eyes for her prey now.

Itachi looked like a man made of stained glass where he stood—fragile and shadowy. He seemed a fallen angel, so dark that not even the morning sunshine under which they faced each other could lighten his aura. His appearance did not properly portray the fact that he was a hardened criminal whose history was bloodier than a butcher's knife in an abattoir.

Finally, Sakura halted. She stood a mere two feet away from her opponent as she stopped to stare into his swirling mangekyou sharingan. Their centers spun slowly like Ferris wheels whose original pastel colors had been painted over in midnight black. She imagined that if she could hear the passengers of these carnival rides that they would be screaming.

"Shinobi only know one way to dance," he responded. He sounded so far away even though he stood within reach.

Her lips curved into a flirtatious smile. "Then your eyes know more than you do."

"The tsukuyomi is a despicable technique obtained by repugnant means, Sakura. It's much less glamorous than whatever schema you've conjured for it in your mind," Itachi warned sharply. The spinning in his eyes sped up.

"I'll be the one to decide that," she amended and continued, "Why don't you show me so I can find out?"

"I use the tsukuyomi to put people in their place when they're reaching too high—I don't use it on those who've sunk too low." His words were spoken without obvious malice, but they still delivered a poisonous sting to her ego. This was enough to tear Sakura's gaze away from the mangekyou's vortex.

She narrowed her eyes and spat, "You know nothing about me." The world seemed fuzzy in comparison to the sharp brilliance of his cerise irises.

"I may not know everything, but I know enough," Itachi replied coolly.

Sakura connected the dots. "Reconnaissance. Why?" She would hardly count herself as noteworthy enough for information gathering. After all, she was just the wallflower of Team 7.

As he opened his mouth to respond, Sakura froze in horror at what she saw: a bird's beak peaked out. First, its head and then its body followed. It was a full-bodied raven. It appeared as if Itachi's jaw had unhinged to make enough room for the creature to wiggle out from between his lips. Sakura wondered if any of its feathers stuck in his teeth as it wriggled from his jaws. Much to her dismay, it flew over to perch on Sakura's shoulder after it finished working its way free.

"Because not everything is as it seems."

A gust of wind kicked up Itachi's hair. As it blew, his locks began to waft away in the form of ravens' feathers. The wind picked up even more and his cloak burst into a cloud of down as it was carried off by the sudden gale. His face was the last thing to fade from sight. Once the wind had swallowed him whole, she was left alone with a red-eyed raven still perched on her shoulder.

Sakura angled her head a bit and offered her left hand to the bird—it gladly hopped over and wrapped its talons inoffensively around her first two fingers. From its new roost, it studied her face with a tilted head and curious eyes. Upon further inspection, Sakura realized that its eyes were smaller versions of Itachi's mangekyou sharingan. At this, her stomach clenched.

She wanted to look away, but its gaze held her trapped. Suddenly, its own mangekyou swirls began to spin like the blades in a fan.

"Wake up…" it commanded in Itachi's voice, "…now."

Her world spun so quickly that when it finally stopped she had to hold out her arms to steady herself and silently hope that she would not retch. Much to her relief, the bird had disappeared from her hand.

As she took inventory of the situation, Sakura discovered that her muscles were brutally cramped, her sinkhole had returned to its rightful place, her stomach hurt, and Sasuke was yelling. Remembering that Sasuke had slugged her in the gut, she concluded that Itachi must have used her moment of vulnerability to cast his genjutsu.

"What did you do to her?" Sasuke's voice demanded in a deadly tone. Sakura shivered—she had not heard that voice since his battle with the Sound nin in the Forest of Death. He had woken up in a merciless rage after seeing her swollen face that night.

Forcing her eyes to crack open, Sakura discovered that her entire body was shaking. Her muscular arms and hands had devolved into dead branches while she was held in the grasp of Itachi's gaze. Adding insult to injury, her clone had turned to useless sludge during her time under the genjutsu. Her entire being felt as though it had been dragged unnaturally fast through space and time.

Knowing that her condition would hinder her to the point of potential mortality, Sakura reached into the small pack on her leg and pulled out a syringe. She used her thumb to pop off the cap and slammed the needle into the sinew of her thigh. This shot contained a potent mixture of adrenaline boosting agents and non-drowsy pain relievers. It was just what she needed to enhance her state of mind and temporarily slake the maw of the all-over pain consuming her.

Sakura withdrew the needle from her leg and decided that the now-empty syringe had one last job to do. After a moment of debating on which demented fuck she should use her makeshift weapon, the syringe whizzed through the air like a dart zipping toward a bull's-eye—and it hit its target dead-on.

With a cringe-worthy schloop, the needle made itself at home in the nape of Itachi's neck. She could hold up against Sasuke on her own, but with Itachi in the picture… a two-fronted battle with shinobi of their caliber was more than any person could handle on her or his own.

After several moments of Itachi's stillness, Sakura was finally willing to believe that she had successfully paralyzed the Akatsuki member where he stood. When Sasuke fell silent and began twitching, though, she realized what she had not accounted for: paralyzing Itachi from the neck down still left him in possession of his eyes.

"…Sasuke?" she inquired hesitantly.

His twitching became more violent and he fell to the ground near Itachi's frozen feet. A teardrop of blood slid down the older brother's face and landed on the younger brother's trembling lips.

A raspy utterance crawled from Itachi's throat, "Tsu…ku…yo…mi."

Sasuke screamed.


Authoress's Note:

I apologize for how long it has taken for me to update. Life has been messy and I am exhausted, but I hope you all enjoyed the chapter nonetheless.

Thank you for your patience and thank you for reading!

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