The rain continued to pour down on me but I paid no attention and didn't pry the wet hair from my face. I activated Byakugan and found the chakra's source not fifty miles from where I stood; Hoshigake Kisame and Uchiha Itachi. My body filled with cold dread.

There was no point in running, I wasn't fast enough and they were covering sections of the distance using body flicker jutsu in an unpredictable pattern. The furthest I could run before they caught up would be only forty-three miles tops. They would catch up soon enough; I would be tired and they would have a clear shot at my back. If it was only Kisame I could have won, maybe, I might have killed him on his own if I acted fast enough and with enough luck because I had been preparing to track him for sometime but he was with Itachi. I was out numbered and out matched. At the very best, if Itachi was alone and drained of significant chakra I could manage to get away, I had done it once when I had first become one of the twelve guards of the Fire Country, a post I resigned to be ANBU captain.

It was after the capture and extraction of the first tailed beast from Gaara. I was rushing to meet ANBU at the battle scene for investigation and Itachi was drained of more than a third his chakra from the extraction ceremony. For a moment I almost thought of hiding when I saw him, but obviously that would have been pointless. He was in a small clearing near the edge of the forest and I was sprinting through the trees overhead. His chakra signature had been suppressed so well I hadn't caught it when I scanned the area for a threat; but he had seen my signature coming and he immediately engaged me when I was in range. We went through bouts of genjutsus and ninjutsus, his more sophisticated than mine, but in the end I got away.

He could have destroyed me then, but he didn't pursue me when I broke away and for everyday after that encounter the thought echoed in my mind that he let me live.

I couldn't stand it.

The thought that I lived because someone else willed it on a whim, that galled me, and it pushed me to become a person who was strong enough to kill her clan.

There were often times in my life, before leaving for a mission, when I asked myself what I would do if I had to confront a member of Akatsuki and it came down to this. Even though they were all S-class there were clearly differences in their ability and there were some who I would be able to fight by myself and some I would be slaughtered by. Regardless of what techniques they used some members just wouldn't be able to affect me; but I absolutely could not, on pain of death or capture and subsequent torture, afford to engage some of them for more than two minutes if I was alone. Itachi Uchiha was one of these people; the others were Tobi, Zetsu, and Zero, the Anbu codename for the leader. There was another one, the one with the character for Bayoko on his ring but he was yet to be identified.

They were drawing closer now, twenty-nine miles. All I could hope for was that they would pass me by. I closed my eyes and sat back against the tree but before I could finish my genjutsu and sink into it someone—Itachi—was already behind me. He held a kunai to my neck and turned my head so I would look at him, into his crimson eyes, the tomoe were already spinning. "No," I whispered defiantly, my own blade was already at his neck. The clone he was holding disappeared and the veins around my eyes surfaced as I activated Byakugan. In the same instant he reached Mangekyo.

He turned to face me then dispersed into the wind--a genjutsu. He reappeared in the air a few yards away amid a flock of crows that transformed into his cloak. He landed on a branch and turned to stare straight at the tree my real body was encased in. I was already within the bounds of his genjutsu and he had discovered mine.

"Come out," he said simply, and he waited as my body slowly emerged from the wood with my eyes closed and my arms crossed across my chest, as if I had come out from a sarcophagus, the veins by my eyes still active. He didn't say a word but I could see the comment in his eyes. He knew it would be harder to manipulate genjutsu if he couldn't make eye contact with me and he wouldn't be able to use Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu which both required him to see his opponents pupils and hypnotize them. I didn't say anything. My arms unfolded and twin kunai slid into my hands from their resting places beneath my arm plates. He vanished where he stood again, this time not due to genjutsu but because he was moving faster than I could track. I felt my hair blowing in the wake of his movements.

I could see everything clearly, but he couldn't see my eyes…and that was the only chance I had to survive.

Xxx

Author Note: thanks so much for waiting, sorry it took so long but I finally have time since school is over now. Hope you enjoyed it. Please review.