Chapter 5

Danzō Shimura truly believed his life was currently in danger.

Not from the enemy they were chasing, or any other possible enemies that they could encounter along the way – but from fellow Konoha shinobi.

This…was rare. Subordinates of the Hokage may dislike, hate, or even hold grudges against him, but only once or twice in his decades of service to the village did one ever hold true killing intent against him.

Even more of an oddity; the killing intent came not from the expected males on the team – yes, they were angry (Kakashi and Yamato were the only ones doing an acceptable job of hiding that fact, and he could only tell the Aburame's feelings because of his time spent with Torune) – but from the only two kunoichi. Chūnin, no less.

Yes…very rare indeed.

"Danzō-sama." The call came from one of them, and Danzō could feel the chill in his bones. It was…impressive…that her voice could sound so polite yet hold enough quiet rage as to promise a shattering of all of his tenketsu with a single touch of her Jūken.

"Your decision to divert from our original path proved a good one. I'm picking up a faint chakra mass about five kilometres due east."

And to give a compliment on top of it too. This girl had promise.

She had seemed merely disappointed when she heard that the Jinchūriki would not be coming on the mission. However, that very night, Tsunade's apprentice had pulled aside – or had been pulled aside – by the rest of her former classmates, and his own student, where she divulged what had happened in Tsunade's office in detail.

Since then, the atmosphere Danzō was met with from his own team shifted from bemused and a bit cautious but professional, to barely hidden hostility and openly unwelcome but extremely professional.

Danzō, for the most part, did not care.

He had come on this mission with a singular purpose, and it was this purpose that he was going to fulfil.

"How did you know there was an Akatsuki hideout nearby?" Kakashi asked in curiosity.

That man was truly gifted. The way he was able to hide downright distrust and suspicion behind such bored, unassuming tones was exquisite. He would give due credit – Tsunade truly had some excellent people on her side.

But they still were not good enough to fool him.

"Reconnaissance," he said. The answer was true enough.

"Ah, I see. I understand if knowledge like this is kept confidential for unrelated missions. But surely for this one, locations of Akatsuki hideouts would be useful."

"And so I have shared it with you."

"Yes. You have. Not the Fifth Hokage, but you." And in that last word, Hatake's mask faltered, and Danzō could taste his leeriness.

He leaped off his branch with a bit of extra chakra, putting himself slightly ahead of the group. Kakashi was right beside him before he made contact with his next branch.

"You don't trust me," Danzō said bluntly.

"No, I don't," was the equal reply.

"That is inconsequential. We have a mission to perform, and to that, I would say that I have given you no reason to guard against me. I have willingly shared what I know. Whatever you think of my politics, Kakashi, is a different matter entirely, and it would do you well to set it aside."

Kakashi said nothing, but if possible, his eye grew even lazier and he stared towards the bits of sky that flew past them between the leaves.

The man was furious. And quite frustrated.

Again, Danzō was impressed. It was stifled, somewhat, by the spikes of raw fury he felt speared into his back, again by the group's only two kunoichi who had been listening.

"Danzō-sama –" if Danzō had been a bit of a lesser man, he would have dodged the Jūken he could feel just yearning to be stabbed into his flesh. "Kakashi-sensei. A message is coming from Konoha."

Kakashi leaped as soon as his toe touched the branch, and grabbed the bird – a hawk – out of the sky. Danzō suppressed a smirk as they all came to a sudden stop.

"Itachi Uchiha is sick."

Belying the deadpan tone, Kakashi's eyebrow was raised, and his eye itself was calculating.

Danzō kept his expression perfectly flat. His plans did not change. If anything, they were made much, much easier.

"Some sort of lung disease by the looks of it," Kakashi continued. "We can use this. If we can arrange our fighting style to aggravate his condition –"

"Uh, Kakashi-sensei," Kiba made a single handed sign in front of his face, his eyes narrowed in uncharacteristic concentration. "The scent's starting to move."

"How fast?"

"Walking speed. But if he decides to Shunshin – it could be bad."

"We'll discuss the attack pattern on the way then. Let's keep moving."

They travelled on, covering dozens of meters in seconds. Danzō barely listened to Kakashi's words, engulfed instead in his own devices.

Ever since learning of him, he had always intended to use the full power of Shisui's eye to kill Madara.

However, in order to subdue the Jinchūriki, he needed to use a bit of the eye's power. He had thought then, that he would need to scrap his plans for Madara and use the eye's full power against Itachi.

But the news of Itachi's illness was truly sublime. He would be able to save his eye for Madara after all.

When they were within one kilometre of Itachi, they all immediately suppressed their chakra and prepared to spread out, hoping to encircle the Uchiha.

"HOLD IT!"

And all the trees within a five metre radius suddenly detonated.

In the clouds of dirt, charred bark and sawdust that billowed from the site of the explosion, a childlike giggle was heard.

"Oh, that was pretty good for Tobi huh? Tobi's Great Landmines no Jutsu can work without Deidara-senpai huh?"

As the dust settled, the owner of the voice could be seen crouching on a nearby branch, his black cloak decorated with red clouds hanging off the branch around him.

Suddenly, he leaned forward. Something had sparked in the dust.

Tilting his head in childish curiosity, he leaned closer. Blue…somethings were sparking all over in the dust, hovering around the crater at the blast's epicentre.

He scratched his head. Then yelped. The tree behind him had suddenly come to life, and was hugging him to its trunk.

Tobi liked hugs, but this was too much.

"Hey, let me go! Let me – uh…" He silenced at the kunai that was pressed against his neck. His eye strained to look through the one hole in his mask, and he finally saw seven shapes standing, unharmed, in the middle of the crater – though one shape was bent over and appeared to be breathing heavily.

He also finally saw the remnants of the bright, blue streams of chakra that had protected them from the blast.

On the ground, Sakura held glowing green chakra to Hinata's back, while she quickly regained her breath.

"Thanks Hinata," the girl said. "You saved us."

"You okay?" Kiba asked, while Akamaru nosed her hand worriedly.

"I'm…fine… It's just harder… with the Shugohakke Rokujūyon Shō… to deflect pure energy rather than solid projectiles. The Hakkeshō Kaiten really is the better technique for it."

"Are you kidding?! That was awesome!" Kiba encouraged, as she slowly straightened.

"Yes, it was particularly impressive," Shino intoned, "Why, you ask? Because you were able to shield all of us from the negative effects of the explosion, with less than a second's notice to do it."

"Yeah!" Kiba inputted. "You even protected the old fart over there!" He jammed his thumb towards Danzō, who blinked slowly in his direction, then looked up at the orange mask who was currently tied to a tree by its own limbs.

Captain Yamato (that name), held a kunai to his neck.

"Stay still and answer our questions and you will –"

The man disappeared. Danzō blinked, and he reappeared, popping out of a hole in another tree trunk.

"No no no. You can't catch Tobi like that, silly tree!" he laughed. It was a laugh of sweetness and innocence, but Danzō did not miss the raw sense of danger underneath those dulcet tones.

Neither did Kakashi.

Danzō went to him. "He's more powerful than he looks."

"Aah," Kakashi nodded shortly, focusing on the mask who was sitting next to the hole he'd made in the branch, swinging his legs happily.

The Darkness of Konoha turned to Kiba. "Itachi's still moving, I presume?"

"Yeah. Away from here. He's moving faster."

"We don't have time for this," Sakura finally spoke. Her whole attention, including her furious green glare, was directed at the masked man, but Danzō swore three quarters of it was somehow still aimed at him.

Once again, impressive.

"I'll get rid of him," she continued, tightening her glove. "He can't move if he's unconscious."

Kakashi came up behind her. "We'll use formation B." Sakura immediately turned and grabbed Kakashi's arm. Kiba and Akamaru darted for the tree trunk's mossy base.

Turning on her heel like a top, Sakura spun with Kakashi in her grip. When she let go, he flew upwards, high above the branches and through the treetops.

The orange mask watched him go.

"Whoa, he flew up pretty high! Huh?! What? Wait, you distracted me!" Sakura focused half of her chakra to the bottoms of her feet and pushed.

She rocketed straight up, and out of her peripheral vision, she could see two grey-and-white tornados coming at Tobi's left and right sides. Great square tendrils of wood stretched and shot at their enemy, taking his entire back.

She barrelled straight on towards him, her fist cocked back and powered with chakra for a wicked blow.

Tobi danced. He pranced. He dodged all of it, the wood, the Gatsūgas…all while laughing and giggling and making the most asinine comments. Like he was having fun.

Sakura screamed and threw her fist forward. It buried itself into his mask, and went right through it, out the back of his head. And the rest of her body followed.

She passed through him. Shock, disgust and fear rippled through her as she finished her passage through his head, neck and torso, leaving not a hole, wound, or even the smallest scratch. It was like passing through a bunshin, except this one did not disappear, and bid her farewell with a playful 'Olé!'

She flipped in mid-air and landed on a nearby tree trunk, sticking to it with chakra to the soles of her feet. She stared.

Tobi stared back. Then he put his hands on his hips and stuck out his bottom, in a full-bodied expression of a pout.

"That was no fair! You distracted me at first and then came at me from all sides! Tobi can't fight against something like –" The song of a thousand birds descended from the sky. Tobi looked up to see Kakashi plummeting for him, his hand alight with singing electric chakra.

"Oh, he wasn't a distraction?!" Tobi's seemingly last words as Kakashi collided with him, destroying the branch in the process. Sakura covered her eyes from the flying woodchips, but still peeked out to see the shattered edge of the tree branch where Tobi had once stood. Below them, Captain Yamato caught Kakashi in a wooden net.

Sakura wondered how Yamato managed to make that a soft landing.

"Wait!" Hinata called from below, veins bulging around her eyes. "It's not over! He's –!"

Sakura heard him rather than saw him. Before he could say one more word in that sickening childish voice of his, she moved, pushing off of the tree trunk with enough force to shatter the bark.

Tobi barely had time to turn around.

"Shannaro!" She punched, her blow making the air crack with its rapid displacement.

She passed through him again, and tumbled through the air before landing safely in Yamato's net.

Oh, it was a bit soft after all.

There was silence for a few long moments. Sakura slid out of the net and stared up at their enemy, who looked down at them, tapping the tip of his foot against his new perch.

He…was strong. Damn it.

"They passed through him," Danzō said, having watched everything without moving from his single spot.

"Yes," Hinata agreed. "I've been watching him. And I've extended the range of my Byakugan, in case he's a bunshin or genjutsu. But all of our chakra systems are stable, and there is no other chakra around except his own. He also has a stable chakra system, but – in the places where he's attacked – it's like that part of his chakra system goes somewhere else."

"You mean part of his body disappears?" asked Sai, his impassive expression finally giving way to a slight rise of his eyebrows.

"I – I think so. But we can still see the part that disappears. But it's like that part becomes an illusion, and one passes right through."

Shino took a deep breath. "That…is troubling."

"Indeed," Danzō agreed lightly, shocking everyone in the group though none showed it. "And Itachi?" Kiba, who had slammed into a tree after missing his attack, swayed a little on his feet. Sakura rushed to him – after a few seconds of healing, he spoke.

"Moving away…" he suddenly grimaced, his lip curling into a snarl. "If he gets any further we'll lose him."

"Then, we have to split up. I'll go after Itachi –"

"Wait," Kakashi started. "You can't go alone."

"Not that you care about my wellbeing, but you still don't trust me." Kakashi was silent, and Danzō sighed. "I am the one with the best chances against Itachi. That was partly what persuaded the Hokage to allow me to take the place of the Jinchūriki." Two chakra spikes reminded him not to mention Naruto, but he did not care. Itachi was getting away.

"The only way I can betray you now is if I take this opportunity to run away from the mission. And if that was my intention, I would not have –"

"Broken Naruto's spirit," a soft-spoken but dangerous voice supplied. "And took a place that never belonged to you."

Danzō's lip firmed a little.

"I would not have judiciously made my case the way I did. I will confront Itachi, and capture him, whether with you or without you. But we are running out of time. You were appointed leader of this mission, Kakashi. Your choice, if you please."

Kakashi had closed his one eye sometime during Danzō's speech. When he opened it again, he simultaneously raised his headband so that its brother could join it.

"Sakura, you go with Danzō."

"Kakashi-sensei –"

"We'll create a distraction. Use it to slip past. As Hinata said, there's no other chakra around except for his."

"Well then, Hinata should –"

"We need Hinata here to follow this guy's movements, as well as warn us if anyone else does show up. Same thing for Kiba and Akamaru. Besides, you're a fighter as well as a medic-nin. You'd be very useful in facing Itachi."

"But if that's the case, why can't more of us –"

"If too many people try to slip by him, he'll intercept us and then we'll be right back where we started. Two is the ideal number for now. We'll catch up as soon as we can."

He clapped a hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Danzō knew what it was without even having to look. 'Be careful, and keep an eye on him.'

She whispered something back. It was too long to be a simple 'I understand', and even then, a nod would have sufficed. Kakashi paused, considering her words for a moment, then he nodded.

"Hey, hey!" the orange mask finally spoke, waving his arms in a ridiculously exaggerated fashion. "Aren't we gonna play some more? I'm bored."

Kakashi turned to Shino. "Can you –"

"I'm already on it," was the zealous reply (which was only one-eighth of a tone different from his normal voice really). A second later, the air around him was alive with insects.

Sakura leaped swiftly through the trees, the hem of her skirt still smoking. They had managed to slip past when Shino's insects had swarmed the masked man, covering him from head to toe.

But even when he had turned into a black, buzzing hive, he somehow sensed they were escaping, disappeared out of Shino's Insect Bog, and planted two bombs in the trees right in front of them, which detonated immediately.

It was only Sai's Super Beast Scroll that saved them in the end, distracting the masked man just long enough for them to complete their escape.

Now they were closing in on Itachi Uchiha. Once he was captured, it was only a matter of time before Sasuke would be in reach. They were so close.

Danzō started to say something.

Sakura decided to beat him to it.

"I hate you."

She certainly does not mince words.

"Naruto should be here. Naruto should be the one beside me, going to face Itachi."

"The Jinchū –"

"Naruto! Na-ru-to!" she snarled at her superior, at one of the echelons of village government, and she did not care. "Damn you! Is that all he is to you? Can't you even say his name without being told?!"

Danzō fell silent. Sakura took a breath, willing herself to calm down. "Even though I hate you, I will work with you. You are still a shinobi of Konoha, regardless of my personal feelings. And you are helping us to capture Itachi. So, for that and that alone, we are comrades."

Kakashi made a mistake. I am sorry that you will pay for it.

"Sakura."

There is one other way that I can betray you.

Sakura's eyes widened, as her head turned automatically to the sound of her name. But, for it to be called so casually from Danzō's lips was wrong.

And that is…

She inhaled to correct him, or to tell him off, but never got the chance.

She looked into the spinning red Sharingan and missed her next branch entirely. She fell; fell into a soft, dark world that called her to a long, warm sleep.

To perform and complete a different mission entirely.

By the time Danzō reached Itachi, the three golden braces that had been clamped to his right arm for over a decade had fallen away; the bandaged appendage freed.

It was a premature action.

"A Shadow Clone." Danzō glared at the clone, almost letting a frustrated grunt of air squeeze through his teeth in the all too common 'tch' sound.

He held it in. He was above such displays.

The Shadow Clone, however, shamed its original by showing the slightest hint of surprise – a widening of its eyes.

"Danzō," his voice redeemed him; perfectly blank and void of all emotion – the speech of a brick wall would have had more feeling. His eyes then shifted slightly, to the left then the right.

Someone without a Sharingan would not have caught the movement.

"Even the best of shinobi have bad days, Itachi," Danzō began, shifting his bandaged arm back into his robe. It was more a rain-robe really, much like the black one he always wore but with more material to cover the left side of his body and his head. The hood was down, however, since the rain had long stopped.

Itachi stared at the recently reaffixed bandages over his right eye for the briefest moment, before focusing on Danzō's left one.

"What do you mean?"

"Where is your original?" Danzō ignored the question. "I need to speak with him." The clone was silent. Danzō stiffened, and suppressed a sigh.

"You geriatric bastard!" He was mildly shocked that the owner of that voice knew the word 'geriatric' and could correctly use it in a sentence. Well, if you can call what he had just shouted a complete –

"What the hell did you do to Sakura?!" Two thuds landed behind him. Danzō did not need to turn around to be sure that one of the thuds was not human.

Though the boy who grabbed his shoulder with fingernails that were too long and too sharp just barely passed for one.

"You bastard! I knew we couldn't trust –" the dog-boy finally saw Itachi, and immediately shut up. It was almost comical.

Danzō heard that mundane 'tch!' (this one holding fear as well as anger) as the Inuzuka shifted into a defensive stance in front of his partner.

Ah. So the dog is carrying the girl. That might actually be useful to me.

"I'll ask again," Danzō said as though the past five or so seconds had not happened. "Where is the original?" He ignored the gasp of surprise that the revelation brought to his 'comrade' behind him.

Again, the clone did not respond. "Shall we trade information then?" A blink, eyebrows rising in a miniscule expression that declared he was vaguely intrigued.

"Sasuke is not here. Nor is he anywhere within a radius of 300 kilometres."

The clone's eyes widened slightly again. With Itachi, unless something shook him, he expressed no emotion at all. This news was a great shock to him.

"This is not the first of your plans to have failed, Itachi," Danzō told him, locking eyes with the clone. "Naruto Uzumaki is not here either. You were looking for him as well, weren't you?"

The clone said nothing, but the muscles around its mouth imperceptibly tightened. "You might think of those two failures as mere roadblocks. Admittedly, your most careful and precious plan has not failed yet, but it is falling apart. You've made a huge oversight. And I'm here to make sure that Konoha does not pay."

Danzō took a step forward. "Where is your original?" Clone and human stared at each other for the longest and tensest five seconds Kiba had ever endured, before the clone slowly raised a hand (Kiba flinched and brought two kunai defensively in front of him) and pointed straight ahead of them.

Then it dissolved into a murder of obnoxiously cawing crows.

"What – the – hell?"

Kiba was duly ignored as Danzō turned to the girl slumped over Akamaru's back. He put a hand on her back and woke her with a silent pulse of his chakra.

Before she could move his lips were by her ear.

"Tell anyone what happened and I'll put both of you down. I assume Kakashi has not sent anyone else, has he?"

The soft grating of teeth behind a tensed cheek was all the response he needed.

"Now," he said, turning to Kiba as she rose silently and needlessly tightened her glove, "Lead the way, dog."

Luckily for Danzō, Kiba took that as a compliment.

The clone had been a minor annoyance, but now, it was an all but forgotten memory.

Danzō was inside the long abandoned Uchiha hideout, an impressive if not bland construct that rather suited his tastes.

Itachi Uchiha sat before him, poised lazily in a plain throne of sorts – probably an archaic and overstated seat of power for a previous clan head – with one arm resting casually in his cloak, watching him idly with his Sharingan.

The children, also forgotten to Danzō, were waiting a few hundred meters away, at the very outskirts of the town-like hideout, with a large, imposing, and blue missing-nin whose name barely registered in the man's mind.

The name of his sword, Samehada, held more weight, but that was only because of the weapon's utterly bizarre appearance.

It would shred those children to pieces if they were not careful. But then Danzō, the only one allowed to pass the sharp-toothed man, had never told them to engage him and attempt to force their way past, and did not have the time to waste trying to stop them.

They were back there, somewhere, alive or dead. Danzō could hardly bring himself to feel any way about either option.

Not when his true mission was sitting right in front of him, his Sharingan beginning a lazy, almost audible rotation as Danzō slowly began to undo the bandages around his right arm.

The last of the bandages fell to the floor. The rotation stopped cold – the pupils inside their respective tomoe dilating then contracting ever so slightly.

It was a motion impossible to see from the distance, but Danzō sensed it anyway, even though Itachi's face was abnormally blank. He almost looked asleep, or dead, except for his eyes.

"Those Sharingan…" he began.

"Yes. They were from that night," was the frank, shameless response. There was not even a spike of chakra from the Uchiha. Either the man was truly a genius at hiding his emotions, or he truly felt nothing seeing ten of his clansmen's eyes rotating aimlessly in their unnatural sockets, seeing nothing but futilely trying to see everything.

"You've been keeping ties with Orochimaru."

Danzō's response was seamless. "In maintaining peace, darkness is necessary. I do not need to lecture you on such things, Itachi. You drove your brother to the very darkness where Orochimaru resides."

Itachi said nothing, but his Sharingan was spinning again. A murky haze, as thick as tar but flowing as quickly as water through one's fingers, descended over Danzō's mind, before being blown away by a sharp pulse of chakra.

"You said I made an oversight," Itachi began as though his attempt at a genjutsu had not just been violently negated. "What is it?"

"Madara knows." Those two words shattered Itachi's impassive mask to pieces. It was only for a second, but in that second wide, crimson eyes enveloping quivering tomoe, and a mouth whose corners were twisted downwards to reveal a line of pale teeth, scarred the world around them with their frightful wrongness.

It was a look that could have sent a town running for their lives, certain that the Apocalypse had come.

"How?" Itachi's voice was the twin of the look.

Danzō told him the story, slowly sliding his black cloak off his right shoulder, and following it with his sleeve, leaving the right side of his torso – and that arm – exposed.

Itachi slowly sat upright in his throne, the tomoe whirling, his left hand gripping the armrest. His face was consternation desperately masked as impassivity, his mind working frantically behind the scenes.

Danzō sighed. It was shameful to see Itachi like this. He would end the man's suffering soon.

"Itachi." The man looked up, his mouth set in a thin line, his eyes sparking with what could almost; if one tilted his head and squinted his eyes just right, and perhaps shone some light at the perfect angle; almost be identified as a fire of pure rage.

But the flames were smothered almost as soon as they were ignited, and Itachi's eyes returned to their glasslike serenity.

"Sasuke is going to know," Danzō stated with ruthless simplicity. "If you die here, Madara will simply tell him." He paused, letting it sink in. "There are some workarounds, however."

Itachi watched him, dōjutsu slowed down to its previous lazy spin. Though his eyes had hardened somewhat.

"First. You can kill Madara." The subtle stiffness that entered Itachi's muscles spoke volumes. "I assume you would have, if you had been able. That is the whole point of this, is it not? You turned Sasuke into an avenger to make him strong, so that you can augment his strength with that of your own."

Danzō took a step forward, shrugging as he went. "I admit, it was a flawless plan. But for this oversight, I would not have interfered."

"But you did." Itachi finally spoke, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "Why? Why come in person? And why replace the Jinchūriki, rather than join him?"

Danzō's mouth twisted in a would-be smile. "You are a cautious man, Itachi. Much like myself. You did not know for sure, whether or not Madara knew, but you undoubtedly came up with a failsafe or two in the event that he did. One of those…" he brought his left hand up slowly, to rest it on his bandaged right eye.

Itachi's gaze held the cold beauty of a painting, his eyes glowing in the bunker's dim light.

Ah, so he does still feel something, Danzō thought with bitter disappointment. Hiruzen's influence cut that deep.

"You had every reason to believe that the Jinchūriki was coming on this mission. Therefore, I suspect that one of your 'failsafes' (he tapped the bandaged eye) had something to do with him. However, if Madara knows about the coup, then he knows about this. He would take precautions, or perhaps even predict your intended use for it. All he has to do, really, is make sure that the Container and Sasuke never meet. A feat that is easy enough to –"

"If you think it is easy," Danzō's blood ran cold. There was something too, too close to a smile rippling over Itachi's face at that moment. "Then you do not know the Jinchūriki."

"I was able to stop him coming on this mission." The smile-that-never-was disappeared completely from Itachi's face, leaving behind nothing but a perceptible chill.

Danzō countered it with a chill of his own. He shook his head. "May I continue from where I left off?" The feigned politeness only made the arrogance dripping off of Danzō's every word more loathsome. Itachi remained as still as stone, the chill in his eyes undiminished.

"The second workaround. We let everything continue as you had originally planned. Sasuke comes here. You fight. He is the victor. And then, instead of Madara tucking him under his wing like a wounded fledgling, myself and my team take the exhausted Sasuke as soon as the fight is over, preventing Madara from having him."

Itachi betrayed nothing, not even the fact that he was still breathing. Not that he seemed dead, more like he had become stone itself, a simple extension of the throne in which he sat, almost like the two were carved together out of the same rock.

It was remarkable; only few shinobi could mould themselves into their environment so thoroughly, and fewer still could do it successfully right in front of an open and alert pair of eyes. And only those the level of a Kage could do it without thinking.

Sadly, in Danzō's eyes, it was a blatant show of Itachi's emotion. The man might as well have burst into hysterics.

"There are a few flaws in that plan, however. The most obvious being that my team is after Sasuke. There is a pink haired kunoichi in particular who is most… eager to see him. When she does (Danzō searched for a way to adequately describe her passion) she will not let him go," he finished simply.

The finality in his tone brought the point home. As soon as she saw him; Itachi's chances of fighting his brother would drop to the negatives.

"But, let us say that, unlikely as it is, I get my team to cooperate. As I said before, Sasuke is nowhere nearby. Even in the unlikely event that he is just outside the 300km radius, it would still take him at least half a day to get here if he runs nonstop and straight on in this direction," the sarcasm with which this estimation was given only reinforced its steep improbability.

"When he does arrive he, or someone on his team, is likely to notice our presence. He will either confront us, divert from us, or in the worst case scenario, refuse to fight entirely. And in the case that none of this happens, and the fight continues to its conclusion, I hold no delusions that we will be able to fend Madara off before he makes an escape with your brother. After all, he has a rather peculiar power that is perfectly suited to the task…"

The moment of mild confusion on Itachi's face (only a slight narrowing of the sculpted eyes) horrified Danzō. He briefly explained what he had seen of Madara's power, both on 'that night', and little more than half an hour ago. If the man could plant bombs inside of trees, there was no telling where he could stash Sasuke.

Cracks were beginning to spread from where Itachi's right hand had an iron grip on the armrest.

Another failsafe lost, perhaps?

Danzō continued.

"The third workaround. You tell him the truth."

The stony façade cracked, and Itachi was alive once more. His eyes were the first to reveal it; incredulity being too strong a word for the subtle emotion shimmering inside them.

It was very close to it though.

He moved slightly, as though he was going to open his mouth, to protest, when he hesitated.

Danzō suppressed the minute shake of his head that he so wanted to make.

How far you've fallen.

"I do believe that this would have worked, had you been healthy." Itachi merely blinked… far too slowly for it to be natural.

Danzō suppressed his smirk; even now, the boy still thought he could keep secrets.

"An illness to which you have not found the cure, therefore it is incurable. Despite this, you were ready to fight to your death today. If you had simply let Sasuke kill you, your brother might have caught on and questioned his victory, but more importantly your motives. Your illness, however, would let you die more 'naturally'. You could easily pass off your very real symptoms as accumulative damage from the battle or overuse of the Mangekyō. You can then drop dead in front of him; Sasuke would be deceived into believing that his goal had been fulfilled and go on his merry way back to Konoha to be hailed as a hero."

Danzō paused, carefully surveying Itachi. There was a reason for all he was saying, this careful expounding.

It was a simple, silent message to the mass murderer: everything about you, your plans, the way you think and feel has already been exposed. It always had been.

But under Danzō's words that tried to worm through Itachi's blood like slowly spreading poison, Itachi only became stone-like once again, glaring down at him with cold eyes and a grim set of his jaw.

Danzō was undeterred. He had expected nothing less after all.

"You were ready to die, using your illness as camouflage. A fatal disease. I would estimate that, despite your excellent guise of health, you do not have much more than a few days, maybe even a few hours."

Danzō drew himself up to full height, looking up at Itachi with the painfully ironic air of a king.

"And here, Itachi, is where we come to a dead end." Danzō stepped forward, his voice grave. "And a nightmare more horrifying than the slaughter of your clan."

Silence rang through the fortress, permeated only by a wind whose origin no one knew. It blew Itachi's bangs, drawing them across his face, making him look almost handsome.

His eyes were frightful though, too frightful for anyone to look long enough to recognise his beauty.

The black tomoe had whirled and stretched, becoming three twisted sickles spiralling around a greatly constricted pupil.

Danzō appeared to face it fearlessly, but the beads of sweat growing on his brow, only to be immediately absorbed by the bandages that hid his right eye, told a much different tale.

He had done too much research to actually be fearless when these eyes made an appearance.

"You are sick," his voice was steady, his eyes on Itachi but not looking directly into the spiralling pupils. He would be a fool if he did. "Had you been healthy, and able to stick around long enough to guide and mould and nurture Sasuke towards the right way of thinking, then even if he did know the truth, I would not object. If you were healthy, then you could have been a match for Madara yourself, instead of depending on your brother.

"But you are sick. If you fight Madara, you will die, and he will claim Sasuke. If you fight Sasuke, you will die and he will learn the truth. And if you told him the truth but then died of illness...

"The result of all three would be the same. He would be overrun with grief and guilt, and the hatred and desire for vengeance he would have against Konoha would be of such magnitude that he would hurt anyone and everyone in his way, just to relieve himself of his own sorrows. And, most tragic of all, he would do it all in your name, Itachi."

The twisted sickles spun. Danzō swallowed. Itachi had already figured it out, his real reason for coming. He had to buy some time, so he pretended not to notice.

"There is only one way out of this dead end that will spare Konoha from your brother and Madara's wrath. It is the reason why I replaced the Jinchūriki on this mission. Give Shisui Uchiha's other eye, and the complete and perfect Kotoamatsukami, to me. With Madara's knowledge, Sasuke will find out the truth no matter which way we go. This will give Konoha a non-lethal alternative against Sasuke's assault, as well as a viable defence against Madara –"

"You know, Danzō." Danzō froze. He had been standing on a solid, stone floor just a second ago, and now he was sinking waist-deep into a brown, stinking bog.

Itachi was still seated in his throne, his heels resting comfortably in the mire. There were strange shadows playing on his face, making his eyes look unnaturally huge and bulging.

For a moment, Danzō's vision was filled with red, and he cursed himself for not seeing this genjutsu coming. It was a much subtler one than the first, probably softly and carefully woven immediately after the first one had failed.

Itachi continued speaking, his voice echoing through the space that was now under his control.

"The messenger of bad news should never practice deceit. Most of the time, he would only make the mood of the recipient that much fouler."

The Sharingan glowed, throwing a crimson veil across the entire ceiling that was no longer a ceiling, but a brown and slimy sky.

"I do believe you came for Shisui's eye. But I do not believe for a moment that you would see fit to waste the Kotoamatsukami of even one eye on Sasuke. And even if you did mean to do as you say, Madara would most likely search my body for the eye after my death. When he does not find Shisui's other eye, and you start covering both eyes instead of one, well (Itachi Uchiha smirked, and Danzō's heart almost stopped with fear) he'll get the idea. You will die before you get to meet Sasuke. And you know it. So, instead of wasting the dōjutsu of one eye on what you would deem as 'a lost cause', you would likely save both eyes to use against Madara. But I have a question for you, Danzō…"

Danzō sank an inch further into the swamp. His spine was aching, being the only means of supporting his body as his legs and arms were rendered useless.

Itachi spoke in a voice as ominous as death, his spiralling eyes dancing in the hellish play of shadows.

"Where does all of this leave my brother?" Itachi then deigned to give Danzō a warning. The act alone promised to Danzō his own death, should he disregard it. "Choose your answer carefully."

"The fourth and final workaround," Danzō laboured to speak, the swamp around him pressing against his lungs and making breathing difficult. "We fight your brother together, and kill him."

"No."

The response was instantaneous, final and loud. It was the closest to shouting Danzō had ever heard Itachi get.

"Why?" It was a genuine question. Danzō sank neck-deep into the muck. "Itachi! You must not let your emotions get a hold of you here! As I have painstakingly made clear to you, Sasuke will become an enemy of Konoha –!"

"There is no Konoha without my otouto."

Danzō floated for a moment, too incensed to speak. Then, he smiled – a thing so disgusting as to rival the stinking swamp around him.

"You are pitiful, Itachi. That you can only expose your true heart, not among family, friends or a lover, but in front of the man who is going to kill you. That is the real reason I have come, merely as insurance if all other avenues of reasoning failed. Your otouto was always the special one, eh Itachi?"

Danzō's voice dripped with bitterness, even as he swallowed some of the bog. Coughing it up as quickly and violently as he could, he continued.

"Not even for the sake of Konoha, of peace, will you kill that boy or allow him to be killed. It was not even a privilege you allowed your own parents. But I knew it all along. That is why I will kill you, take Shisui's eye – and both of your own – and then with that new power I will pursue, and kill, the remaining Uchihas, Madara and Sasuke both. If those two are allowed to live, they will throw the shinobi world into chaos and peace will never be grasped. The Nidaime was right, the Uchiha are a curse –"

His last few words bubbled uselessly to the bog's surface, as Danzō was sucked under. He was dying. He could feel it; the thick mud slowly filling his lungs and bursting his alveoli, his stomach bloating with the same foul substance.

He was going to die, he was going to… No. For the sake of Konoha and the shinobi world, he could NOT die here.

Shisui's eye throbbed.

Danzō gritted his teeth and, bitterly fighting the thick sludge that crept between his fingers, brought his hands together in three simple seals.

Then, despite the crippling pain of his collapsing lungs, he shouted out one word with as much force as a drowning man's last breath could make.

"Izanagi!"

And in the next moment, Itachi staggered back, eyes wide with shock and hands grasping futilely at the kunai lodged in his throat.

Danzō cursed. Internally. Outwardly, he remained calm as the man before him gave a final death rattle and slumped in his throne, before disintegrating into a swarm of crows.

It was not genjutsu. It was simply a trick of Itachi's, a Shadow Clone made of crows with a dispersal that mimicked the effects of genjutsu. Quite a wicked little mind game, and one that Danzō had fully anticipated.

In spite of that, he could not stop the ignition of his right arm. Danzō screamed and fell back, staring at the black flames that slowly devoured the limb and the eyes within it as they spun wildly in their sockets.

One eye managed to close before it popped from the heat.

And there Danzō stood, the Amaterasu disappeared out of existence, and his arm and eight remaining eyes whole.

He faced Itachi, who stood silently at the opposite end of the room, a single Sharingan glowing lowly in the dark. Blood, thick and dark, made a too perfect arc from his closed right eye, down his cheek to gather and drip from his chin.

Whether he had substituted himself with the clone at the last moment, or the clone had been seated in that throne all along, Danzō did not know nor care.

He was certain that the real Itachi was before him now. Now that Danzō had made clear his intentions, Itachi could no longer let him go.

Not that it mattered.

Itachi moved first, a startling change from his usual, aloof fighting style. Moved was not the accurate term either, since Danzō did not see actual motion.

One moment, Itachi was there, and the next Danzō was parrying a kunai aimed for his heart. Itachi flowed with the motion, whipping round to deliver what would have just been a devastating backhand, but was made lethal with the kunai blade that aimed to penetrate Danzō's skull.

Danzō barely managed to block with his right arm.

Undeterred, Itachi completed his 360 degree spin and tossed the kunai to his left hand. He gripped Danzō's wrist with his right, yanking the whole arm forward.

Danzō could only watch as, with a marvellous liquid motion, Itachi's kunai sliced downwards, aiming for a swift amputation.

Desperate, Danzō ducked under the hostage arm, almost dislocating his shoulder in the process, and jabbed with the kunai he had used to block Itachi's, aiming with lethal precision for a spot between his ribs to puncture a lung.

Two ribs, orange and red and flaming with chakra, sprung into existence, protecting Itachi's side. The kunai blade struck one of them and snapped cleanly in half.

Danzō blinked, and in that second his right arm was chopped off with mirror neatness.

A normal kunai could not do that, could only rend flesh not cut through bone. A kunai covered in eternal black flames, and wielded in an arm whose strength was powered with chakra, could decapitate a man.

Danzō supposed he should be grateful, then, that Itachi settled for the arm, which hung limp in his grasp.

The eyes had stopped their endless, aimless rolling in their sockets, and were now all staring at him.

That was creepy. It was almost as though they could see. And there was almost a certain emotion in their gaze. One that Danzō did not like.

Not that he had to endure it for long.

The arm faded, rippling out of Itachi's grip as though it were a dream. The flames surrounding Danzō's right stump disappeared, and his arm was made whole again.

Itachi stared at him, the strange crimson ribs disappearing from his side, his eyes calculating.

Danzō almost smiled. This was why, even though their ideals differed, Itachi would always be a shinobi for whom he held the highest respect. The man never despaired from a failed strategy – he merely re-evaluated.

And without missing a beat, Itachi's hands flew into seals. Danzō dashed back, putting a dozen meters' distance between them in seconds.

It was not enough.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"

He's gotten better. Danzō felt the technique's intensity from the first instance it bloomed from Itachi's mouth. By the time the great fireball reached him, his face, neck and arms were already blistering with second degree burns. Still, he was confident as he made his seals.

"Fūton: Shinkūha!"

Normally, throwing a wind-natured technique at an abnormally powerful fire-natured technique was a terrible idea.

Throwing it at a floor thickly layered with a decade's worth of dust to counter a fire technique was nothing short of genius.

Danzō's technique raised great plumes of dust, immediately covering the entire battleground in a dark cloud. It also dug grooves into the floor, pulverizing the material into a fine substance that added to the billowing haze.

Danzō squinted, unable to see beyond a few feet as he covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. His eye watered, and in a surreal fraction of a moment, he wondered if the dust would irritate the Sharingan in his arm.

The fireball was immediately extinguished before it ever reached its target. But before Danzō could feel a moment's relief, a gravelly voice reached him through the cloud.

"Suiton –"

Water technique?! Surprised, Danzō staggered back, preparing new seals even while bracing himself for the blow. Itachi had gotten much more versatile during his time away from the village; he had probably learned water techniques to counter the counters to his fire style.

"Suiryūdan no…"

He stopped?

And then, Danzō heard the most wonderful, most wretched series of sounds he had ever heard in his seven long decades of life, rivalling the sounds of war that were forever etched into his ears.

A cough.

A cough wet with blood and mucus.

A desperate wheezing, retching and gasping, the sickening splatting of blood dripped through fingers and onto the floor, and at last, a loud and final thud.

Itachi Uchiha had fallen to his knees, succumbed to the symptom of the disease that plagued him.

It was a happy moment for Danzō, one of the few that could rival his joy when he finally became Hokage.

Almost dizzy with the sheer ecstasy of his near decided victory, Danzō finished his seals and took a deep breath, avoiding sucking in the surrounding dust entirely. Itachi was not the first Katon user he had nullified using a dust cloud, after all.

"Fūton: Shinkūgyoku!"

Danzō spat out the compressed air bullets, each one the size of a peanut, but each one able to pierce his enemy's skull.

Which they all aimed to do. It did not matter if the dust was still too thick to see him; Itachi's fit had him making enough noise that Danzō's aim could only be true.

In an almost deafening silence he waited, counting the seconds – two…three…four…

Crunch! Squelch! A cry of pain that not even a decade of cold emotionlessness could hold back, and then silence.

Danzō had won. He did not believe it.

After a few seconds of silence, he took a tentative step forward. The dust that had once been his saviour was now a nuisance, taunting him in its slow settling. There was no telling, until the dust cleared, if the Uchiha was alive or dead, unconscious or even hit at all. Even the coughing, Danzō knew, could have been a trap to lure him.

But those blood splatters had sounded awfully real. Itachi was brilliant, but would he really go into that much detail? Danzō wished he could have heard his ragged breathing, but the cloud muffled sound to some extent.

After a minute or so had passed, Danzō stepped closer, and closer still. Could he dare hope…believe that he had…? No, not yet. But, "Kai!" he could conserve a little chakra. The chakra drain of three Izanagis in a row was nothing to ignore.

His pace quickened to a slow walk. He heard nothing from the Uchiha. He was less than three meters away when he stepped on something. It made a light crunch, almost like…

Danzō crouched slowly and felt the thing under his foot. Feathers. Pinching what felt like bone with two fingers, he picked up the creature by its wing.

A dead crow hung there, its wing broken from when Danzō had stepped on it. It had a hole the size of a peanut through its breast.

Without moving, Danzō knew there were other crows all around him. All dead in like manner.

Without seeing, he knew it was the sheer force of Itachi's roaring chakra that suddenly blew a significant portion of the dust away.

However, he did move, and was grateful for the sudden visibility when a great fist, solidified scarlet, punched a hole through the ceiling.

He dodged the falling concrete, following Itachi with his eyes, watching as a full ribcage, made of that same fearsome chakra, formed around him along with a spine to his back and a skull whose hollow eyes held a demonic yellow glow.

Itachi leapt through the hole in the roof, blood flying from his left arm.

Despite this, he still spared a backwards glance for Danzō.

"Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu!"

Danzō swore – there was no time to recast the Izanagi. He dodged; his fluid agility spitting in the face of his age as he deftly backflipped, handspringed, darted, ran and leaped past all of the miniature fireballs.

They followed him mercilessly, making sharp turns only possible through chakra control, even employing feints and weaves to confuse him.

Danzō snarled. He should have just hurled kunai into the spot where Itachi was and be done with it. He had been too cautious.

Kunai flashed into his hands and he speared the fireballs, forcing them to disperse. A few still got too close; he slashed at them, but the flames still managed to litter his left arm.

That was nothing. As long as his right arm was safe, he was still in the fight.

He looked to the hole, and saw that Itachi was gone. But a giant skeletal hand reached for him with frightening speed, tendons and muscles moulding around the bone as it went.

Danzō's hands desperately flew into seals, but he was not fast enough.

In an instant shorter than a breath, Itachi was staring up at him with both of his Mangekyō.

From lips covered and crusted with dirty blood, he spoke a single word.

"Reconsider."

Danzō scoffed. Then choked as the fingers around him tightened their grip.

"So this… is Susano'o."

It was truly marvellous; a great warrior, a spiritual guardian created entirely out of ferocious chakra. It was all bone now, save for the arm that held him, but it was still a power that Danzō longed for, and would have once he had Shisui's other eye.

Danzō smiled, even as the glow in the Susanoo's eyes brightened and it squeezed, snapping one of his ribs. He groaned, expelled a gasp that was meant to be a cough, and tasted blood.

"I do not want to kill you." Though his coughing subsided, and his breathing was under control, the Uchiha's voice still scratched, as though the dust that had aggravated his lungs was still stuck somewhere in his throat.

"Though your methods are ruthless and oftentimes suspect (Danzō did not miss his glance to his right arm), I understand why you would think they are necessary. And though you are jealous, greedy and power-hungry (a reprimanding squeeze kept Danzō from arguing) I know you are loyal to Konoha. Reconsider on my brother, and let us end this fight."

Danzō gasped, again meaning to cough.

"Your brother…do you see a way to save him now…without condemning Konoha to his hatred?"

Itachi fixed him with a truly bottomless look.

"No," he said finally. "Reconsider, Danzō."

Danzō was shocked, but beyond that, he was furious. "Hypocrite! It's always him! Your brother your brother – that damned boy! You'd slay your own kin to spare him, and now you condemn the world to save him!" In a low, gravelled voice, shaking with the deepest rage, "You even sacrifice peace for his life. It's unforgivable."

Itachi's lips parted, then closed. He shook his head and gave Danzō a look.

A final look.

Susano'o squeezed.

Danzō suppressed his chakra.

Hashirama's chakra flourished, blooming forth as the chakra that had restrained it for decades was finally pulled back. And from Danzō's right arm, a great tree grew, shattering the hand of the Susano'o.

Danzō lost sight of Itachi behind the rapidly growing and twisting wood; he quickly released his chakra, reigned in control of Hashirama's, and snapped the tree off of his right arm, or rather the face of the First Hokage eerily positioned on his outer shoulder.

At last his hands performed the three seals.

There was a crash on the other side of the tree; not a second later a blade of ghost-like liquid edged in dancing fire shot from the trunk and speared Danzō through.

It happened with such speed that he did not even have time to feel pain. All he knew was that he was melting – which was a rather strange sensation. It was the feel of all of one's bones dislocating and dissolving, leaving one's flesh to liquefy and slough off into the liquid flames; all without the expected excruciating pain, which in a way made the entire process much more horrifying.

Under the Totsuka's powerful current, Danzō's formless mass of flesh was dragged back into the gourd that served as the sword's hilt. Into that bottomless darkness would he fall, fall, keep falling into an endless world of drunken dreams…

Izanagi!

Danzō panted as he skidded back, his flesh and bones solidified, and all of his joints popped back into place.

Then he screamed, more in surprise than pain, as a flaming shuriken stabbed into his shoulder. He looked up; the sky was filled with fire and steel, a veritable storm of flames raining down upon his head.

Danzō drew up his hand, creating a large arc of wind which he threw at the firestorm. It worked – the wind tumbled the shuriken, throwing them off their intended path, and outing their flames like candles. A few still got through, but they were easily blocked with a kunai wielded in his left hand.

Danzō smirked; the Hōsenka Tsumabeni was a good technique that combined an already powerful fire technique and shuriken jutsu, but it just was not enough.

He knew what Itachi had been trying to do; he was attacking hard and fast in hopes that Danzō would use up all his eyes. And now that he knew that Danzō could turn the technique on and off (shown by his using the tree instead of another Izanagi), this blitzkrieg strategy was the best option Itachi had. If he slowed down and prolonged the fight, Danzō would just turn the technique off. And as long as the technique was on, Danzō was immortal.

But here, Itachi had made a mistake. Danzō had only used four eyes so far. And sure he was running low on chakra, but from what Danzō could see with his one fully functional Sharingan, Itachi was nearing the end. The boy always did have pitifully low reserves. The trade-off for being a prodigy.

He raised his head, prepared to lecture Itachi, and was faced with a giant, gauntleted fist bearing down. With a final, earth-quaking crash, it pounded him through the ceiling. His corpse shot into the floor of the bunker below, meeting the hard stone with the terrible sound of bones shattering and pressurized flesh being flung out of place.

The impact created a crater three meters wide, and blood spread like grotesque wine from the corpse's head.

Itachi took barely a moment to confirm Danzō's death (which would only keep him down for about a minute) before he gripped his cloaked chest, trying to resist the urge to succumb to another coughing fit.

He could feel the bloody mucus sloshing in his lungs and pooling in the back of his throat; helplessly, he coughed it up, grimacing as the action shook his entire body, and only amplified the cellular-level pain that came with using the Susano'o.

But he only had to keep it up a little while longer. Just until –

Itachi's thoughts ended as a wind the strength of a hurricane gripped him and his Warrior, pulling them to its origin below the ceiling.

The roar of an elephant rose above the gale, and a pale trunk smashed through the ceiling where Danzō's corpse had flown just moments before.

Itachi could see its tusked, gaping mouth right below him; chunks of ceiling and whole uprooted trees flying past him and disappearing into the dark abyss of its throat.

He gritted his teeth, as even within Susano'o, he slid forward inch by inch.

Baku. Not good.

The Yata mirror was useless here; it was only able to repel oncoming attacks, and was powerless against the forces of suction.

However, the solution was almost pitifully simple. Especially for an Uchiha.

He formed the seals, even as great blades of wind slammed into his Susano'o from behind. Their power augmented from the Summon's powerful suction, they peeled apart his stalwart warrior's flesh, exposing its spine and Itachi himself to the open.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" As with everything else, the dumb beast sucked Itachi's flames from his mouth – right into its own. The creature screamed as its entire head caught fire, and it vanished in a puff of smoke.

With only a small push of his will, the Yata mirror spun around to cover Itachi's back. It was a rapid motion; there was a punishing clang followed by a mangled yell as Danzō was sent flying.

Not missing a beat, Itachi finally turned around and carefully aimed for the place Danzō's insensible body would land. Once there, he sent forth the Totsuka no Tsurugi, the ethereal blade piercing Danzō for the second time.

A shimmering of flesh turned into a dream, the closing of a disposable Sharingan that forever lost its light, and Danzō stood strong, if not a little battered, before him.

He looked at his arm. And smirked.

Itachi mouth also twisted into a grimace, that of pain as, with a dying roar, the Susano'o finally vanished.

He coughed up blood. Two attacks with the blade of Totsuka, and a full battle using his ultimate technique; they all took their toll at once, and it was worse than Itachi had anticipated.

It was all necessary, but as the Uchiha opened his eyes, and realised that the red, fuzzy worms in front of him were his own blood-soaked fingers, he knew the cost had been extreme.

Though he had won this battle, his eyes barely had any of their light left. He could almost feel the cataracts growing inside them, blocking his pupils. His Sharingan could barely move, feeling more like rusted gears than smoothly spinning pinwheels.

How would he face Sasuke now?

Itachi paused, seemingly ignoring Danzō as he blew rainbow-coloured wind chakra onto his kunai, growing the reach of its blade to that of a sword.

How… would he face Sasuke now? For the first time in over a decade, ever since he made the decision that cursed Sasuke's heart and fate, he asked himself a simple but excruciating question.

What will I do now?

Danzō, uninterested in giving him time to answer, charged in, brandishing his blade, ready to run it through Itachi's mucus-filled chest.

Itachi slowly turned to face him.

What will I do?

Danzō stabbed. So did Itachi, sidestepping slightly so the blade hit nothing vital, giving him a flesh wound that was easily taken care of.

Itachi's blade, however, buried itself hilt-deep into Danzō's chest, and right through his heart. The man near collapsed on Itachi's shoulder, coughing up blood that soaked through the black cloak's fine material.

He was, well, in excruciating pain of course, but more than that he was confused. There was no way a kunai could reach that far unless it was augmented like his own had been.

Did Itachi have a sword? Impossible. If he had, he would have used it by now. And there were no records or intelligence to suggest that, ever since leaving Konoha, the boy had ever used a sword.

Then what…?

Danzō looked down. There was no fear of death or self-cursing for his failure in his eyes, only honest bewilderment. He gasped, recognising the hilt of Itachi's blade immediately.

A hilt black as night, with an even darker diamond pattern cutting straight down its middle and dirty bandages – blackened with the blood of a past lifetime and now dyed afresh with his own – wrapped around the base of the blade.

It had changed slightly over the years, but this was the standard katana design for Konoha Anbu.

Danzō stared in shock at the blade, then up at Itachi. Blood stained his teeth and dripped from the corners of his mouth as he asked, "You… kept it?"

Itachi only stared straight ahead, his onyx eyes wide. It was the first time since Danzō had approached him that the old man saw Itachi's natural eyes.

What a tempest they were now.

Danzō was sure that, chronic disease or not, he would have had a harder time in their duel if Itachi's mind was whole.

But Itachi was breaking. He had been all throughout the fight and now the boy's mind was on its last leg.

And Danzō still had four more Izanagi at his disposal.

But…strange. Danzō coughed as his lungs filled up with blood and his heart stuttered.

Why wasn't Izanagi activating?

That bird was still there.

Kakashi stared at it before leaping back, landing on the surface of a small river behind him. Ever since Kiba escaped by pretending he and Akamaru had done another failed Gatsūga, then disappearing into the forest when the mask was not looking, they had spent the last half hour trying to defeat, capture, or just get by their enemy.

All to no avail. After letting three slip by him, the Akatsuki member seemed to decide to get serious.

Not by actually getting serious, however, as he still danced, played and used the most foolish sounding jutsu, most of which did absolutely nothing at all.

His only offence so far was putting bombs in trees, and since he had tried to stop Sakura and Danzō from leaving, he had only done that once – which was responsible for Sai's now broken drawing arm. Oh, and there was that one kick that had sent Hinata flying into the same river on which Kakashi now stood – and with such force that she snapped her wrist against the river bottom.

She was focused now on healing Sai, her own injuries only patched up to the bare minimum. Shino covered them both, his insects buzzing around the trio in a protective swarm. Yamato was somewhere in, or inside the trees, waiting for the slightest signal from Kakashi to strike, while searching for an opening himself.

The mask, or Tobi as he had introduced himself after kicking Hinata, sat down on his new tree branch, swinging his legs and humming tonelessly while vigilantly watching them all.

Kakashi was not fooled by the childish act. The next person who tried to slip past him was either going to get maimed, or die. Or something much worse.

He had been in the process of making experimental attacks, trying to decipher the nature of Tobi's intangibility, when he saw the bird.

Again.

The first time he had seen it, it had flown in at around the same time that Kiba had made his escape. It had landed on a branch, watching the battle between the Leaf shinobi and the single Akatsuki.

And it had stayed, only moving when startled by the same bomb that almost took Sai's arm off. And even then, it had simply moved to another tree that it was pretty sure was not going to explode any time soon, and roosted comfortably, sometimes preening a wing but mostly staring right at them. Or more specifically, right at Kakashi.

That was weird. The bird was a Konoha messenger bird. Not only did they already get one message a little over two hours ago, but this bird, while wearing the proper jōnin grey sash, was not acting like a properly trained bird at all.

If a messenger bird came upon a scene of battle at its destination, it was to immediately hide itself until the danger had passed. To that end, they were trained to sense things like spilt blood or hostile chakra from over a kilometre's distance. When the battle was over, they were to go straight to the one in command, or the one who survived, to take any messages back to Konoha. If only corpses were around, they gouged out pieces of flesh from the Konoha shinobi to take back. Every ninja down to the smallest genin knew how to decipher that message at least.

But this bird was still there. It should not have come at all, having sensed battle. It could be untrained, or still green, but then Konoha would never send such a bird out on the field, and certainly not to an S-ranked mission.

And then Kakashi froze and almost hit himself. There was one exception.

If the message was a command from the Hokage to her shinobi to abandon their mission, and immediately disengage and retreat from any and all battle, then the entire Fire Country could be burning to ash and that bird would stay rigid, in plain sight, staring at its home shinobi and waiting for its message to be opened.

Kakashi grabbed the bird, took the scroll from its pouch, and read without interruption from friend or foe.

His eyes grew wide. Not too shocking. His body shook. Unnerving, but still not too bad.

But then, Hatake Kakashi, Legendary Copy Ninja and Man of a Thousand Jutsu, fell to his knees, his eyes filling with a suspicious substance that almost looked like tears.

His team was around him in an instant, including Yamato who leapt from his hiding place right behind the Akatsuki (the mask did not even flinch having known he was there all along). Tobi leaned forward, listening as Kakashi gave some sort of instruction to the artist.

Tobi thought it was creepy how that boy smiled even though his arm was still bending the wrong way. "The drawings will be a little shaky as I'm using my left hand, but they'll do their job." And moments later, dozens of lopsided black ink mice scurried off into the forest. Tobi supposed he could send Zetsu to intercept them, but the idiot was probably still watching Itachi and Danzō's fight.

No matter. Tobi already knew what Konoha's message was. He had read the man's lips (it was easy enough even through his mask) and even without that, there were very few things that Kakashi would be emotionally invested enough to shed tears over.

A prodigal student's homecoming was at the very top of that list.

"W-why?" Danzō staggered back, snapping the ten year old blade as he did so. His blood trickled steadily from the broken (and rapidly rusting) steel in his chest to his feet, bloodying each trembling footstep.

"What… did you do? Why won't Izanagi…?"

Itachi stared at him, that bland wide-eyed gaze. He turned that gaze slowly to the now useless hilt of his sword.

Why did he keep it?

Itachi did not know why he kept it.

All he knew was that when he had first brought this blade home, Sasuke held it up over his head (in its sheath of course) and proclaimed that his Nii-san was going to beat up all the bad guys with his new Blade of Justice. Then Shisui had come over – with one of his grandfather's keepsake bottles of sake – and in a rather senseless ritual had 'blessed' the katana by pouring the treasured alcohol over its blade.

And when, after that wretched night, he went to Akatsuki, it was the only thing of his uniform that he could not bear to burn. Instead he kept it in a seal inside the sleeve of his cloak, and there it had remained until this moment.

Why had he used it now?

Did it matter?

It was broken now, anyway. Itachi tilted his hand, letting the hilt clatter to the floor.

Danzō stared. Itachi's face was the same blank painting it had always been. But his eyes were unhinged. There was not even an effort on Itachi's part to hide it – probably because he did even know he was showing it.

That was a bad sign. Something had broken inside of him and Danzō, who by now was only alive because of Hashirama's cells, knew it was his death if he did not act quickly.

But before he could even raise his arms, Itachi's gaze was on him, and he put his fingers to his lips in a one-handed sign.

"Kai."

Genjutsu! Danzō's horrified thought rang true as the mist lifted from his brain. On instinct, he looked at his arm.

The six eyes he had used voluntarily were closed normally. The other four, however, had been destroyed. One had been stabbed with a kunai blade, one burned until it popped, the gross liquid having dried into a sticky film over the back of his hand. The remaining two looked like they had been stabbed and burned simultaneously, though the stab wounds were smaller. Shuriken.

"Y-you've…been destroying them."

Itachi walked towards him, a kunai slipping into his hand, his eyes glinting with a terrifying madness.

Despite this, he spoke so calmly.

"It was my last resort. The Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu, and cutting off the limb did not work."

So all those were tests?! He built four theories on how to stop a legendary kinjutsu, executed them, disregarded the failures and found the one that worked, all in little more than a minute…

"I destroyed the first eye as a test of my genjutsu's effect on your Izanagi. It was when I chopped off your arm."

Even with his illness, even with his deteriorating mental state…I was still no match?

Danzō fell to one knee, the pain overwhelming him in that moment. Itachi glanced down at him, unconcerned, and continued.

"I wanted to see if putting a genjutsu on you to make you believe an eye was undamaged would affect Izanagi's regenerative effect." Itachi shrugged. "It did. The Izanagi cannot repair damage or reverse a situation its user does not know about. So I kept destroying your eyes, and my genjutsu kept you none the wiser. That way, when Izanagi activated, the eyes I destroyed remained that way, closed forever to the light.

"The first eye I stabbed when I cut off your arm. The second I hit with my Hōsenka. It was when you used your left arm to block that final volley. The third and fourth eyes were the victims of my Tsumabeni.

"The fifth and sixth…well, you were partially right there, Danzō, about my hard and fast attacks. In addition to destroying your eyes, I also forced you to use up your remaining ones. You ran out long before you tried to run me through with your sword."

Danzō was stunned. How had Itachi known – he had never revealed what he thought Itachi's strategy was…

Of course. A moment of horrifying clarity and awe, and Danzō could see. Itachi had used such an obvious strategy because that was what he wanted Danzō to focus on and 'figure out'. If an opponent thought they had already found the main flaw, they would be less likely to go looking for others, or even recognise that others existed. It was brilliant and awful and so obvious now in hindsight.

After all, Danzō knew Itachi. Was this not the very same tactic he used on his brother? To fill his eyes with hatred for him and the one goal of an avenger, while forever blinding him to the massacre's truth, and Konoha's shame.

Draw your focus to the lie, and forever conceal the truth. It was Itachi's ninja way, and Danzō had fallen prey to it.

Unaware of Danzō's epiphany, or perhaps simply not caring, Itachi kept speaking. His walk had deteriorated into an old man's shuffle, his body hunched over in pain – whose full extent adrenaline alone kept him from feeling.

"You thought that, since you broke out of my Tsukuyomi at the beginning, probably using some power from Shisui's eye to make the seals you needed (was that bitterness in Itachi's voice?), that you no longer had to worry about my genjutsu. You got overconfident. That was your downfall."

Danzō snarled. "You should have been…suffering from that…"

Itachi blinked. "I see…I misspoke then. If you had broken out with a genjutsu reversal technique, or a strong enough burst of chakra, I would have indeed felt the backlash. But you slipped through with Izanagi, so your escape was not a strong enough shock to affect me –"

Itachi froze. His chest imploded, his eyes flashed with a premonition of red before he lurched forward, staining the ground before him with blood.

He started to fall, but never completed the motion, remaining suspended as something that felt as cold and hard as chains – but weren't – snaked around his body, holding him awkwardly upright. His eyes rolled as far as they could go in their sockets and watched (with rapidly failing vision) a progression of black curse marks crawl over his skin, twisting their way around his hands and up his sleeves.

A paralysis seal, probably set during their last point of contact. Now, he could not even cough. The blood was pooling again, filling his mouth with gore before it overflowed and leaked out over his lips.

"If…I must die…" Danzō smiled triumphantly, his teeth slicked with blood. "I'll take … you … YEAARRRGGGGH!" If Itachi could have turned his head, it would have amazed him that a tree with a trunk nearly twenty feet wide, dwarfing the previous one several times over, could all but explode out of such a skinny arm without ripping it to shreds.

With a strangled snarl of a yell, and a horrific and woody snap, the roof stopped shaking, the marks disappeared from Itachi's body, and Danzō collapsed once again, wheezing as his crimson life slowly seeped out of him, and his heart gave its last few shuddering beats.

Missing his right arm, which was still embedded somewhere within the gnarled twists of wood and vines, Danzō glared up as Itachi finally finished his approach, and looked down at him with a familiar expression; cold, perfect beauty worthy of becoming the world's most priceless painting.

"I will now take Shisui's eye. You have failed to truly appropriate its use." And he reached down with bloodied fingers bent into a claw.

A snarl from Danzō and a pulse of chakra from Shisui's eye ('Finally it's recovered!') tried to stop him.

A tap to Danzō's forehead negated the effort as abruptly as a reprimanding slap to a wilful child.

"What…?"

"A seal," was all the explanation Itachi gave to him, digging with unstoppable purpose into the bandages covering the eye.

Itachi did not see him at all. That last use of chakra stole the poor remnants of his vision; his eyes were grey, almost white, the cataracts having all but filled them completely. They were unfocused, staring at the point where Itachi sensed him to be, but not seeing him.

But Shisui's eyes…would let him see. And give him power unimaginable.

Itachi had almost dug the eye out of its socket when Danzō skidded back, nearly completing the process himself. With his remaining hand, he ripped open what was left of his robe, revealing his bare chest and the black seal imprinted on it.

Itachi could not see, but above Danzō's ranting, he could still sense the swell of hostile chakra. From his own practice with seals, he recognised the feel of a sealing jutsu.

And this was a big one. He made to leap back but his chest constricted with pain.

"…do not fear death now! For the sake of Konoha, for the sake of the ninja world, I cannot allow you to live!"

Itachi felt it coming. Summoning every last ounce of his will and shreds of chakra, he leaped away as far as he could.

It was not far enough. Something wet, heavy and reeking of the good-as-dead man's chakra splashed onto his leg, and he was immediately being pulled at incredible speeds, the spray of ink, or something very close to it, roaring in his ears.

Itachi did not see the seal, but its effects were something similar to his own Totsuka blade. He was going to be sealed away, permanently. And then Sasuke would never get his eyes, or even the Mangekyō. In fact, Sasuke would have nothing. To hear that his brother had died by a hand other than his own; the news would leave Sasuke hollow and void of any purpose.

He would have no reason to get strong or keep the strength he had already acquired. All he would have left would be an unresolved hatred and a bitterness that would leave him stagnant as both shinobi and person.

He would be easy pickings for Madara.

Itachi could NOT let that come to pass.

And so for the final time, over the scarred, blasted rooftop of one of the last remaining monuments of the Uchiha clan's legacy, the call of a single forbidden jutsu rang out.

Izanagi!

And Itachi's left eye closed forever to the light.

A/N: There is one thing I learned from writing this chapter. Choreographing fight scenes. Is. HARD. Seriously, hats off to you Kishimoto for doing so many of them. The dialogue, the fighting styles, the dang jutsu names! Do you know how many times I had to watch Danzo vs Sasuke, and Sasuke vs Itachi to get their lines and their styles and their EVERYTHING right?! I couldn't have picked Sakura and Tsunade where they would just punch each other until one of them wins. No. I HAD to do two of the most serious and complex characters in the whole dang Naruto series!

Okay, enough ranting. I am personally very proud of this chapter, but don't let that hold you back. Let me know how I did.

And as always, thank you all who reviewed, favourited and followed this story. I hope this chapter was enjoyable, cuz I definitely had fun writing it.

And yes, I know this baby is VERY long but I just couldn't cut it anywhere.

See you all next time.