Chapter 3: This Feeling..
"Shit," Itachi thought, "How'd he get it?!"
He had tucked the cannister from the drawer under his vest and raced out of the laboratory, using as much speed as he could muster. His thoughts were in disarray, for the first time since his brother had been born. Then, he'd only worried about his position in the clan and his standing in his parents' eyes, but this was different, more serious than that by at least a hundredfold. His father needed to know about this, as clan head, and as an Uchiha. Orochimaru having a sharingan eye sample was bad enough, but those research charts on his desk made the matter all the more disturbing.
He could have implanted the eye into himself, like that current so called genius copy-nin Kakashi had done. Itachi thought he was disrespecting the Uchiha family, receiving an eye from a fallen comrade, and parading it around in battle, ungoverned by the rules of the Uchiha, but that was a matter for another day. There were more pressing matters at hand. That snake freak had to have obtained the sharingan from an Uchiha, any of whom would rather die than give up their precious bloodline limit willingly. Which meant that murder had been committed, and worse than that-treason! The charts on Orochimaru's desk were littered with hints of kinjutsu. There were pictures of undead summonings, sacrifices and soul siphoning. The young genius did not know what to make of them, but they disturbed him nonetheless.
He felt as though he was missing something, a link between the sharingan eye in the cannister bulging against the fabric of his vest, the drawings on that snake freak's table, and what he had said to him during their earlier encounter. He tried to organise what he had seen, to make sense of the puzzle by first collecting all the pieces like they had taught him during his prior training with the ANBU, but just this once, the puzzle wouldn't click for him. Every time he felt like he was close to grasping something, it was gone. That niggling feeling was so tangible that he'd forgotten the first rule as a ninja, "The first rule a shinobi must follow, is to always be aware of his surroundings. You were given these eyes to surpass all others at this..", as his father had told him a long time ago when he'd gotten the first tomoe of his sharingan. He failed to realise a presence that had been following him in the shadows.
Swish Itachi twisted as he saw two shurikens soar past him, narrowly missing his head and vitals. For the second time today, he thanked God he was an Uchiha with the sharingan. Preoccupied in his thoughts as he had been, any other shinobi would have been dead, pierced once in the jugular and again in the heart, through the gaps of the jounin vest. Instinctively, he landed atop one of the tree branches in the dense forest that he had been travelling through. Having processed all the trajectory angles, he'd deduced two things. Whoever threw that had known that he would be able to dodge them, and whoever it was, their shuriken skills were at least as good as himself, as he could detect no presence, and the shurikens had seemed to come from different directions, meaning the user had been fast, and using shuriken deflection techniques, or he had been using Kage Bunshin. Intently, the dark haired Uchiha scanned the terrain, looking up, down, left and right frantically, searching for the person who had thrown those shurikens at him, but obviously not meant to kill him. It had been a very long time since he had been challenged this way. Even on S-ranked ANBU missions, most of his enemies then had been far too easy for the Uchiha prodigy to dispatch, barely breaking a sweat, although being only 13, and strangely, although he felt fear for his life, his heart was racing in way that it had never done before, and it was not from fear. He could not quite put his finger on it, but he knew that much, he wanted to meet such a worthy opponent and defeat them, by any means necessary.
"Ku ku ku.." That familiar voice rang in his ears as it resonated through the dense canopy of the forest,
"Itachi-kun, what are you doing out in the jungle at a time like this? It could be very dangerous for someone as important as yourself to be caught here...ALONE". Suddenly, the tree exploded from behind him, and Itachi threw himself onto his belly, barely avoiding the snakes that had materialised and were hovering in the air, but an inch from his head. Having no time to contemplate Orochimaru's motives, he rolled forward and leaped onto an opposite tree branch, wanting to get a better look at what exactly that snake bastard was going to throw at him. As soon as he landed however, he had to jump again to another branch in order to avoid a punch that Orochimaru had thrown at him, using the extended length of his snake encircled arm.
"Shit, what the hell IS this freak?!" was all that ran through Itachi's mind as he dodged incessantly, jumping from tree to tree, struggling to come up with a battle plan, an idea, something that would enable him to counter the attack, for he knew that if he kept this up, he would eventually lose energy and although the sharingan enabled him to see movements well before they happened, his body would not have enough energy to dodge the attack, and he had a feeling that if he got hit, the outcome would not be rosy for him. Stealing glances from time to time, he tried to sum up his surroundings, searching for something that he could use to his advantage, some tree to hide behind, some weapon to throw at him, for some help even, for Itachi knew he was overmatched, at least for now, since he had used up a lot of his chakra climbing the walls and running at high speeds.
Dodging right, he chanced a look down. Two bodies lay on the ground at the entrance of the tunnel. "The ANBU!" the realisation hit him as he saw their katanas shattered and broken, scattered on the floor beside their bodies. "Shit!" In his haste to report to his father, he had not told the ANBU to stop standing guard, and they had paid for it with their lives. Most likely, they would not have even seen or sensed the snake freak coming up to them, and had tried to put up a fight once they realised he had been attacking them.
Suddenly, a strange feeling rose inside Itachi. He had been their captain, their leader, and now, they were dead, and it was all because he was selfish enough to forget about them in his haste. The quiet, black haired boy he once was was washed away from him in that instant, and that feeling continued building up within the confines of his 13 year old body, so strong and uncontainable that it seemed to want to burst from within him. He could not explain it, could not quantify it as he had been able to with his other feelings, but most importantly, it was getting increasingly difficult for him to confine it. However, he found that he could harness it. Use those feelings as energy, as fuel to his body, mind and spirit, and in harnessing it, he knew, he would not lose here.
Transformed, he radiated a bloodlust that even Orochimaru seemed to sense, as he hesitated for a moment, giving Itachi the split second he needed. Almost automatically, even though he had had no plan before that, Itachi reached into his ninja pouch and pulled out shurikens. With a cry of "DIE!", he flung a handful of them at Orochimaru, with only half intended to hit the target, as the other half flew past almost half a metre above the snake sannin.
To avoid the barrage that had been thrown at him, the pale man jumped upwards, managing to avoid all the shurikens that had been thrown at his jump level as well. "My my, Itachi-kun, you sure are underestimating me, using such basic Academy level tactics against me," he said. Itachi only smirked, as the snake Sannin's eyes widened in surprise, feeling himself being restrained by ninja wires and backed up against the thick trunk of a tree.
"Sofushasan no Tachi!!(Manipulating Windmill, Triple Blades!!)"
Itachi only smirked and walked up to Orochimaru with a kunai in his hand, careful not to get too close. He'd heard about the snake freak's inhuman abilities to extend parts of his body, and he, Uchiha Itachi did not intend to lose a battle because of such careless slip ups.
"Now," he said, "tell me what you want, and why you threw those shurikens at me.." With his killing intentions unbridled, Itachi then continued, "Give me a reason to end your pitiful existence, freak..Please.."
He then realised the feeling that he had been holding in during the battle. It was excitement. Such a fight was energising, almost refreshing to him. It was almost...FUN...
A/N: Thank you for the most recent review. I'll change Yondaime to Sandaime, many apologies on that. Anyways, thank you for reading! Please leave a review! Cheers!