Not Sick Chapter 17
The Inner World
Every mindwalk was different.
Ino had learned this at a young age, practicing on birds and other small creatures under her father's watchful eyes. Animals were easier to take over than people, but that didn't mean things couldn't go wrong for an inexperienced user of the Shintenshin. Getting lost, or trapped, was always a real possibility, no matter how simple the mind.
For every mind was different. Using the Shintenshin, or other body swapping jutsu of its nature, did not produce a standardized experience. Some minds were like gridded cities, laid out and easy to find the center of. There were certain jutsu used by the interrogation department that flayed a mind open and left its secrets bare to the intruder, but more often than not, unprepared minds were fortresses, or labyrinths; some unusual ones like Sakura's had inner defenses, a literal manifestation of will to push the intruder out.
Animals didn't have a very strong sense of identity, but ninja usually did. And they always, always, fought the intrusion (though the fight rarely lasted long). They always realized that there was something in their head, in their chakra, that wasn't them.
Ino's father had once told her it was because mind, body, and chakra were inexorably linked, and ninja trained all of those equally.
Ino's father had also once told her it wasn't just chakra and willpower that helped fight a mind invasion. It was also the victim's soul, rushing to their defense. He'd made something that had been logical to her three-year-old brain seem almost mystical.
Ino didn't think much about things like souls, but after that talk, she often found herself considering chakra and souls two sides of the same coin: one physical, and the other insubstantial, but both entirely unique to their owner.
Which was why right now, Ino was worried. This mind, this chakra she found herself in, was like none she'd seen before.
Ino had only just arrived, but she was already lost. She'd shown up lost.
That just didn't happen. Time was 'slower' during a mindwalk, but it still must have been nearly a minute in reality, and she hadn't even located the center. She'd never even heard of something like that.
It was raining, water eternally falling from a cloudless, dim blue sky. That was also something she'd never seen before.
Ino stood in an ocean of chakra. The water, a deep, ugly green beneath her, was completely placid. There were no waves, or swells. It seemed like a still lake, but no lake could be so impossibly large.
The water extended farther then Ino could 'see'. The rain, omnipresent even here, filled it with ripples, sending out infinite rings to clash against countless others.
The water didn't make a sound. She was the only thing here that seemed to produce any. Her breathing, the blood pounding through her body: they resounded across the ocean like an endless drum.
She couldn't really see, of course. None of this was real: just a construct, a simulacrum of Pain's mind. Whether Ino had created it, or Pain, or a little bit of both, didn't matter.
She couldn't find her way to Pain's consciousness. She was stranded in his chakra.
The notion that the man simply had that much chakra had occurred to Ino, before she dismissed it. It wasn't the scale of the chakra that had left her lost: it was the way the man was handling it.
Pain's chakra, and conscious with it, was fragmented. Stretched across the entire village, straining, thrumming with a heavy violence; piano wire strung across a ballroom, ready to decapitate the gathered dancers.
Ino stretched. She wasn't supposed to be here. Yamanaka techniques weren't meant to deal with something like this.
She realized now, more than ever before, that Pain was truly something entirely inhuman. No man could survive their mind being spread like this: where most mindwalks would at least have some sort of core, a recognizable center for Ino to attack and subvert, there was nothing here.
There were, however, seven indefinable focuses. Ino could feel them, invisible, beyond the horizon of the endless ocean.
Six Paths, and one main body. The number couldn't be a coincidence
She only needed one, though. As soon as she could access even a fragment of Pain's mind, she'd be able to follow it back to the core consciousness. If she were lucky, she'd be able to take over him and his Paths from there. But even if she wasn't, she'd be able to learn whatever she wanted while she was an occupying force. Particularly, where the man was keeping Sasuke, and his real body.
Ino started walking, her feet creating their own ripples, fighting the rain's.
Shikamaru had made it clear to her, and she'd agreed with his assessment: if she could locate those two things, Sasuke would be as good as saved. Naruto could go after the main body, and the rest of the team after Sasuke. The Akatsuki's leader would either have to bring all his Paths back to defend his main body, or split his forces and risk everything.
Ino knew that in his place, she would have done the former.
The rain stopped. Ino did as well, looking around in confusion. The ocean became truly calm: not a single ripple, a hint of disturbance, marred its surface.
Ino took another step forward, unconsciously captious. The ripples from her step flowed out, faster than they should have, speeding towards the horizon.
And the ocean opened up beneath her.
Ino screamed.
The unsound echoed across the emptiness surrounding her, and the Yamanaka's screech swirled and vanished, sucked up by the endless expanse of purple light.
Earlier in the night, Konan had shunted her into one of her endless paper clones, and then dispelled it into so much whirling paper. The sensation of falling apart had been interesting, to say the least, but Ino had managed to clamp down on the chakra backlash before her physical body could be affected.
But this…
The Yamanaka choked. Or tried to. She couldn't. No physical reality here. Her mind projected the approximation of choking.
What was happening?
The blonde was walking a jagged path, volcanic rock cutting into her feet. She was swimming in a burning, storm-swept ocean of chakra, her legs dipping into something lurking beneath, something so cold that it froze the breath in her non-existent lungs. Boiling rain poured from the sky, filling her brain with acid as it crept through her upturned eyes.
It hurt.
Ino floundered and flailed, searching for anything to latch onto; something to help her make sense of the alien mind she found herself lost in.
There wasn't anything. No logical path to take, no handholds to seize, no strongholds to assault. She was drowning in hostile chakra.
Ino snarled, and the water around her, scalding hot above and deathly cold beneath, froze, calming in an instant. The rain stopped.
The sky opened up, and something peered down through the hole. Something purple, with a set of concentric rings.
Little girl, the Rinnegan stared. You have no idea what a mistake you have made.
"Screw you!" Ino shouted back at the sky. Boiling water was filling her lungs and throat, but it didn't stop her. The enormous eye blinked in what was undeniably surprise.
None of this was real. Intellectually, Ino knew the only real thing that could stop her was herself.
Instinctively, the unbelievable pain and fury wracking her body and liquefying her organs disagreed with her.
You won't win here, Yamanaka. Ino stiffened at her clan's name. I know your tricks. Did you really think I wouldn't be prepared for something like this? That a god wouldn't be prepared for such a pathetic effort?
Ino mulled on that as the ocean ate away at her bones.
"You're no god," she finally decided. She raised her chin, even though the muscles that would have supported the action had melted long ago. "Naruto told me about the real you."
The blonde laughed, and the Rinnegan narrowed. "You're just a little man with delusions of grandeur, and a puppet as a best friend. And I'm to prove that, and save my friends."
Ino grinned, her teeth long since fallen out. "And there's nothing you'll be able to do to stop me."
And with that, she dove beneath the ocean, vanishing beneath its placid surface.
Her legs were gone by now, there was no way she'd be able to swim, but of course her legs weren't really gone because this was all in her head. And so, just like that, her legs were there.
Ino took off into the depths of the scalding ocean like a startled shark. The omnipresent purple light faded, until darkness and agony were her only companions.
Such arrogance. Pain followed her. The Rinnegan appeared again, this time before her, drawing ever closer as she knifed her way deeper into his chakra. And you call me deluded? You are doomed. Who are you to be making such claims from that position?
Ino took a deep breath, allowing the water to fill her lungs. It didn't burn at all anymore: now, it was the coldest thing she could have imagined.
"My name is Ino," she said, her voice like a sword slicing through toughened leather. The Rinnegan drew closer. "My best friend calls me Pig. I came here to save her teammate."
She closed her eyes, but she could still see the glaring Rinnegan before her. "I am the twenty-third heiress of the Yamanaka clan. My family is feared across the world. We are Konoha's finest interrogators, information gatherers, and spies."
Her pupilless eyes flashed open, and the Rinnegan cracked like glass, water leaking into the fragments snaking across it.
"You have nothing that can stop me," Ino promised. "I'm going to take every one of your secrets. And then, I'm going to leave."
She shot forward, punching through the gleaming purple eye, and the ocean drained away in a moment.
Ino grinned.
She was in.
The Deva Path's neck broke with a deceptively quiet crack.
The man stood up for a moment, glaring hatefully at Naruto out of the corner of his vision, his head twisted unnaturally backwards. Then he fell, crumpling to the ground on unresponsive legs.
Naruto panted, his golden eyes fading back to their natural blue.
"Thanks, Gamakichi!" he shouted, not looking away from the Path's still body. The oversized orange toad grimaced, flipping Naruto a sardonic salute with his uninjured arm. He kept the other one tucked in, wary of moving it.
The toad vanished in a puff of smoke, and Naruto refocused on the man below him. He dropped to a knee, groaning.
If the ruined sector of Amegakure had been a wasteland before, now it was a true battleground. Dust and vaporized concrete filled the air: most of the buildings had already been reduced to rubble, but that rubble had been reduced to something even finer.
There was an ugly patch of blood, nearly a meter wide, marring the ground near a small cairn of rebar. Gamakichi had bled profusely when Pain had slammed a metal pole through his forearm. The rain was doing a poor job of wiping it away; the toad's blood had the consistency of oil.
The air smelled of ozone, and there was another perfect hemisphere of absence carved from a patch of concrete that had once been a decent sushi shop.
But Naruto was the one standing (well, kneeling), and Pain was the one prone on the ground, his neck twisted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees around. The fact that he was still staring at Naruto didn't really matter. He certainly wouldn't be doing much with shattered vertebrae.
Naruto sighed, though it sounded more like a chuckle. Who would have thought that the fight- Rasengans, dozens of shadow clones, a hasty rasenshuriken, a collaborative fire and wind jutsu, and a seemingly eternal taijutsu game of cat and mouse- would have ended with a moment of hesitation and one lucky punch?
"Pointless," Pain said, like a record just as broken as his neck.
Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Leave them alone, then," he growled back.
"Why?" Pain said, looking like a dropped porcelain doll. "What could you possibly hold over me? Unless-"
"I'm not going to give up!" Naruto shouted, shooting to his feet.
If Pain could have shrugged, he would have. "Then you have no bargaining chip. I'm trying to help you understand me, Naruto Uzumaki. You could at least be a little grateful."
"You-!" Naruto raised his foot to stomp down on the Deva Path's head and finish it. The man stared up fearlessly.
Something flashed in his eyes. Naruto paused, his brow dropping in confusion.
"Wuh?" he asked intelligently, lowering his foot and bending down. He sank to his haunches, staring at Pain's face.
"What are you looking for?" the man spoke in a monotone. "Why not just finish it?"
"Shut up, will you?" Naruto murmured. "I saw something..."
"I can assure you," Pain said dully, "that you are-"
But suddenly, there it was again; one of Pain's Rinnegan, the left one, closer to Naruto, flashed and changed color. The purple sheen vanished, replaced by a vibrant, pupilless teal.
Naruto had only ever seen that particular eye color in one other place.
"Holy crap," he whispered. "Ino?"
"It seems Ino's plan was a success," Katsuyu whispered from Naruto's shoulder.
"Plan?" Naruto glanced at her. "You mean-"
"Yes," the slug confirmed. "She attempted to possess one of the Paths of Pain. It appears she has somewhat managed it."
"She has 'managed' nothing," Pain hissed. "All that foolish little ninja has accomplished is-"
He twitched, his cheek spasming, and the gleam in his Rinnegan faded slightly. It seemed to be staring at nothing. The teal eye, on the other hand, sharpened and darted up towards Naruto's face.
"Naruto!" Pain said, his tone sharp and completely alien to him. "Thank god!"
Naruto blinked. "Ino?"
"Duh!" Pain… no, Ino shot back. "Who else would it be?"
Naruto just blinked again. Hearing Ino's tone in Pain's voice as the man lay still on the ground, his neck turned unnaturally towards him, with Amegakure's chill rain pouring across his body and Katsuyu leaning forward on his shoulder, was undoubtedly the most surreal thing he'd ever experienced.
Naruto shook his head, sending water flying from his soaked hair. "I dunno. I mean… I didn't see this coming."
"What, you thought he was too tough a nut to crack?" Ino's arrogance and Pain's confidence bled together for a moment, and Naruto rocked back, his hand coming up to his forehead.
"Uh… no!" he said after a moment. "'Course not!"
"Good!" Ino humphed. "It's tough in here, but I think I'm close to figuring out where Sasuke is."
"Really!?" Naruto practically shouted. "Where-!"
"But that's not important!" Ino cut him off, Pain's face horrifically folding into a seventeen-year old girl's most disapproving look. At Naruto's shocked - and even a little angry - look, she elaborated. "I've definitely figured out where Pain's hiding. Where Nagato is hiding."
Naruto gaze honed in on Ino's single eye. "Where?" he asked, his voice suddenly cold.
"The highest tower in the village. Real piece of work. It's…" Ino paused, before rolling her eye. "Well I'd point, but you really messed this guy up, huh?" Naruto rubbed the back of his head, grinning good-naturedly. "Well, it's near the center everything. You should be able to find it just by looking hard enough. It's kinda hard to miss, after all."
"Alright," Naruto said. "And where's Sasuke?"
"Still working on that," Ino muttered distractedly. Naruto started as the whites of her eye began to disappear, a purple wave encroaching on them.
"Shit. He's pushing me out," Ino growled. Her eye refocused on Naruto, the iris sharp even as it was swallowed by purple. "Naruto. You've got to go after Pain. The real one. It's the only way to end this fight now."
"What about you guys?" Naruto asked quickly. He could tell Ino was almost gone. "Can you take him while I track him down?"
Ino hesitated. Naruto saw it, plain as day. Her eye quivered before she answered.
"Yeah," she said, her voice the exact opposite of Pain's normal certainty. "We'll be fine."
Naruto wordlessly looked to Katsuyu. The slug shook her head.
"Your friends have done very well, Naruto," she murmured, as Ino looked on accusingly. The whites of her eye were completely gone, replaced by ringed purple. Only the teal iris remained, slowly shrinking. The slug sighed. "But there is no way they will be able to hold off Pain for much longer. He's retreated for now, but when he goes back for them..."
Naruto's mouth straightened into a grim line. He glanced at Ino, and then stood up.
"Thanks, Ino," he said, smiling his glass smile. "Try to find Sasuke, huh?"
"Naruto!" the Yamanaka shouted, Pain's voice, as always, tripling the surreality of the situation. "Don't worry about us! Just go after the real body!"
"What's the point of winning the fight if I leave all you guys behind, huh?" Naruto said, and Ino shut up. The blond smiled again. "Don't worry, Ino. We'll take him on together."
"How touching."
Naruto stiffened. Ino was gone.
"But you can't seriously believe you'll win?" Pain murmured, rainwater dripping from the rods embedded in his nose.
"Man, you just say the same thing over and over again, don't you?" Naruto groused.
"And you do the same thing over and over," Pain coolly responded. "I wonder… you and your friends seem to enjoy calling me insane, but have you ever considered another definition of madness? I've heard that-"
Naruto snorted. "Just shut up, will you?" He raised his foot, stomping down on Pain's throat. The man's trachea collapsed with a muffled whine, and the Rinnegan wandered away from Naruto, staring blankly at the ground.
The Deva Path was finally dead.
Naruto sighed. "Katsuyu. Which way are they?"
"You should dispose of the body first," the slug answered, one of her eyes bending towards the prone Path.
"I know," Naruto said patiently. "Can't have him getting back up, right? But tell me where everyone else is. I gotta go meet up with them."
Katsuyu told him. Naruto nodded, and then put his hands together in a simple cross.
A kage bunshin appeared in a puff of smoke, and bent down, hefting the Deva Path's body over its shoulder. It took off in a flash of kicked up concrete, sprinting towards the edge of the village, the dead man's arms flapping over his shoulder.
Naruto watched it go, and then sped off in the opposite direction. He had to get to his friends before Pain could.
The rain never stopped. To Naruto, it seemed like it had only grown colder.
Amegakure pressed down, the blond reaching the greater part of the village he hadn't demolished, and Naruto picked up his pace.
"Orochimaru…" Fugaku Uchiha muttered, his arms crossed at his chest. "What have you done?"
The Sannin chuckled throatily, leaning against the concrete wall. He was imitating Fugaku's pose. Sounds of battle raged from deeper in the tower, far below, but he gave it no mind. Neither did anyone else in the room: their attention was focused entirely on the Snake.
"You sound so offended, Fugaku," Orochimaru hissed with amusement, speaking as if the Uchiha patriarch were an old friend. "I would think you would happy to reunite with your sons, particularly after your… violent departure."
The deceased Uchiha's eyes narrowed, the Sharingan spiralling out, its bright red color surreal against the darkness of his sclera. It glinted menacingly in the low light.
"Not like this," he snarled. "Never like this. To be brought back in such a disgusting manner is entirely unbefitting of an Uchiha."
Orochimaru just shrugged. "Oh, well…" he said languidly. "I suppose we don't always get what we want?" He gestured at Sasuke, who was watching him, his fist clenched around his sword, breathing heavily. "For example, all I want is your son's body…"
Mikoto Uchiha flinched back, her eyes widening, as Orochimaru sighed heavily. "But he's so stubborn. He won't see that it's in his best interest to hand himself over to me, and so I'm forced to resort to you two."
"His body?" Mikoto whispered, and Orochimaru slowly turned his head towards her, smiling warmly. There was no fear in his eyes: he had absolute confidence that his Edo Tensei wouldn't be a threat to him. He was merely enjoying the chance to verbally torment them.
Mikoto continued. "Orochimaru, what is this? Why are you here? Why are we here?" She spun towards her son. "Sasuke? Why…" She bit her lip. "You… how old are you now? You look…"
Sasuke's grip, impossibly, grew tighter. He gritted his teeth.
"Seventeen," he muttered, and Mikoto deflated.
"Ten years?" she whispered glancing at her husband. Fugaku stared back, his gaze narrow, before turning towards Orochimaru.
"You," Fugaku said coldly, as Mikoto turned back to stare at her sons. "Sannin. What do you want with my son?"
"Don't worry, Fugaku!" He smiled, holding his hands up, somehow making the unthreatening motion wordlessly menacing. "I have only the purest intentions for young Sasuke! That Sharingan of his…" Orochimaru's teeth glinted in a blatantly inhuman grin. "It's remarkable. Surely, you could understand why I would want my hands on it?"
Mikoto whipped her head around, her lips curling back. "You…" It was only one word, only a single syllable, but it was the most threatening thing Sasuke had ever heard. It was a prophecy of death, like a knife piercing a lung and leaving it to bleed and wheeze, coming closer and closer to exsanguination.
And coming from his mother, who had only ever sounded patient and understanding, the word only gained a deadlier aspect.
She took a step forward. Sasuke's father watched her go, his arms still crossed.
Her summoner smiled guilelessly. "How eloquent."
Mikoto rushed forward. She had been reanimated in standard wartime gear for an Uchiha: a form-fitting bodysuit, over which was laid a cloak with a high, chin concealing collar, and a shinobi flak jacket. Her cloak flapped behind her as she sped forward.
Orochimaru smirked, and lifted two fingers from his crossed arms.
Mikoto froze mid-sprint, and Sasuke snarled and took a step forward. Itachi, standing next to him, didn't make a move. The older Uchiha was staring at the Sannin, his entire body completely still. His eyes were flat, devoid of life, the newly awakened Eternal Mangekyō like a painting.
Suigetsu, clinging to the corner of the room, as far away from the Uchiha and Orochimaru as he could be, took one look at Itachi's eyes and sunk down as low as he could, his legs liquefying. Karin glanced at him, but stayed rooted where she was: there was so much hostile chakra being thrown around that the room felt like a fountain of ice and malice.
Juugo, long forgotten by almost everyone in the room, snored in the corner, the genjutsu Tobi had laid over him rendering him senseless to the escalating danger.
"Orochimaru," Sasuke said, and the Sannin glanced away from the frozen Mikoto to him.
Sasuke snarled. "Let them go. Now."
The Sannin raised one eyebrow. "If you insist," he drawled, and then he extended his fingers fully. His chakra spiked.
Both Mikoto and Fugaku jerked, a whole body spasm, and then shuffled about to face Sasuke.
"Sasuke!" Fugaku barked, before shifting towards to his elder son. "Itachi! Prepare yourself! He's controlling us!" He frowned thunderously as his arms uncrossed, falling to his sides. "I don't believe we will be able to stop him."
Mikoto just stared at Sasuke, not saying anything. He looked back, unable to decide what he should be feeling.
There were cracks running down his mother's face. She looked like a paper doll, an extremely accurate copy that nevertheless was wrong.
But her eyes couldn't lie to him. Those were definitely his mother's eyes. There was a tear leaking from one of them.
Sasuke's left leg involuntarily twitched. His palms were sweating, his hands shaking. The tip of his chokuto was jerking itself in minute circles.
"Sasuke." Itachi's voice, deader than the concrete surrounding them, emerged from behind him.
Sasuke twitched upright and looked over his shoulder, trying to watch his parents and his brother at the same time. It had been a long time since he'd seen his mother and father's face -he'd carried no pictures of them away from Konohagakure - and however unconsciously, he wanted to take as much of an advantage of Orochimaru's summoning for now.
"There's no need to worry yourself, Sasuke." Itachi stepped forward, his face completely blank. He spoke in a monotone: like he had three years ago, right before he'd thrown Sasuke into his second Tsukuyomi. "I'll take this burden."
"Oh?" Orochimaru muttered, grinning. "So cold, Itachi. You'll face your parents in Sasuke's place, will you?"
Itachi stared at him, completely emotionless. "I've killed them before," he said flatly. "I'm sure I can do it again."
Fugaku smiled grimly. "It's good to see you haven't lost that will of yours, Itachi," he said proudly. "But be prepared: the Edo Tensei is nothing to be trifled with."
"I know, father," Itachi ground out. "Please: forgive me for what I must-"
Orochimaru gestured before Itachi could finish speaking, and both Mikoto and Fugaku flung themselves forward. Fugaku ran through hand signs, familiar Uchiha fire jutsu taking shape, clear to Sasuke long before his father raised his hand to his lips.
"Katon!" he growled, hatred clear in his voice.
Itachi punched his throat out before he could finish the jutsu. The elder Uchiha flowed across the ground, pummeling his father, gouging chunks of paper-like skin from the man's torso with a glinting kunai. Fugaku fell back, blocking the majority of son's blows, but still suffering glancing hits.
Mikoto went for Sasuke's throat with a spear-like hand, and he knocked the attack to the side with the back of his fist. Shifting into the blow, he brought his sword up over his head, ready to bring it down and cleave his mother's head in half…
And froze. His mother stared up at him.
"Sasuke!" she shouted, before she punched him as hard as she could in the gut. He doubled over, his air gone, and then flashed the chokuto around, blocking another blow meant for his head.
"What are you doing?!" Mikoto screamed, her leg shooting out. She kicked under Sasuke's guard, taking him in the chin, and he stumbled backwards. He'd bitten his lip, and a trickle of blood poured from his mouth. His mother attacked again, and Sasuke caught her haymaker with a left hand. He was almost too slow, and the shock of the poor block shook his whole arm.
His mother punched out with her other hand, and Sasuke slid past it. They were pressed against each other, the sword inches from Mikoto's stomach. She stared at him, her Sharingan whirling.
"You have to fight, Sasuke," she whispered.
"I can't!" Sasuke shouted in her face, and Mikoto flinched. Sasuke sneered. "What am I supposed to do!?" he roared, knocking her back and spreading his arms. "Kill my own parents?! I'm not him!"
He leveled his hand at Itachi, who was busy dismantling Fugaku's defenses with a vicious series of axe-kicks.
"We're already dead, Sasuke!" Mikoto shouted back, rushing forward into another attack. Sasuke barely reacted.
"So what?!" he screamed back. His eyes felt hot and wet. The pain of the hastily acclimated Mangekyō had yet to fade, but this was something else entirely. His vision was blurring. "Just because you're gone, doesn't mean I should-!"
His mother hit him like a runaway train, and Sasuke was thrown to the ground, stunned. The world was grey at the edges. He lost his grip on his sword. It felt like his whole body was bruised.
The world resolved itself after a moment of confusion and pain.
Mikoto stood over him, her face twisted in agony. She held his chokuto in a two-handed grip, leveling it over his body. Sasuke stared up at her without comprehension.
How could he possibly fight her? Kill her?
It was impossible. Madness. He'd devoted his life to avenging her death: recreating it would be a sick joke, another impossibility stacked upon a set of endless mockery.
His mother raised his sword above her head. Her entire body shook, like a thin glass pane in a storm.
Orochimaru's mad laughter filled the room. "Now, don't damage him too much, Mikoto. I'll need his eyes, after all."
Mikoto swung downwards, her eyes horrified. Sasuke's blade disappeared as his mother brought it down towards his neck. If it weren't for his Sharingan, he wouldn't have been able to see it at all.
Karin screamed.
There was a loud clang, and suddenly Suigetsu was there, his oversized sword laid above Sasuke's body. He'd intercepted the blade with his own. Mikoto's head shot up towards him, a smile spreading across her face.
Suigetsu growled, knocking the woman's sword up and spinning around, leveling a kick at her midsection. Sasuke watched, unable to rise, the surreality of the situation rendering him dumb and mute.
Mikoto knocked the kick aside with an elbow, grimacing. She reversed the grip on Sasuke's sword at the same time, bringing the blade parallel to her forearm.
"Get back!" she shouted, nearly in Suigetsu's face.
"No, you-!"
Mikoto's sword caught fire, blue flames dancing along the edge of the blade.
Whatever the rest of Suigetsu's sentence was, it evaporated along with his lungs. Mikoto's blow, so fast that only the other Uchiha in the room could see anything but blue tracery, cleaved through the boy's chest. Suigetsu hissed, superheated steam pouring from his mouth, and stumbled backwards, slumping.
Sasuke watched distantly. He hadn't known that his mother could shape chakra like that. It certainly looked spectacular.
As Suigetsu fell, in shock, Mikoto turned back to her son.
"Sasuke!" That was Itachi, still fighting Fugaku. He seemed a million miles away.
Saske barely noticed, due to what happened next.
Half of his mother's face caught on fire, black flames springing into existence across her body. They greedily devoured her paper-like skin, but Mikoto didn't seem to care in the slightest.
Sasuke stared in shock as his mother, frozen above him, regenerated just as quickly as she was eaten away. Itachi's Amaterasu burned into her body, but Mikoto didn't even flinch.
"I won't," she said clearly, her teeth visible through the flame-wreathed hole in her cheek. The fire was melting them away too.
Her head, trembling even more intensely than the rest of her body, slowly, agonizingly, bent down towards Sasuke, like a door swinging on impossibly rusted hinges. What remained of her lips pulled back, exposing the rest of her teeth.
"I won't," she hissed at her son, and Sasuke stared back at her with wide, blank eyes.
Mikoto's Sharingan shifted. The tomoe moved towards the center, grotesquely joining together around the pupil. A ring of black formed, an orbit around the center pupil. Three triangular spikes spread out from it, where the tomoe had originally rested.
Mikoto stopped shaking.
Sasuke watched her incredulously.
"Mangekyō?" he whispered.
Mikoto blinked, and then turned away from her son, towards Orochimaru.
The man stiffened at the sight of her eyes, though he quickly regained his composure.
"Oh my…" he murmured. "Where did you get those, I wonder?"
"Do you really think I could have my husband bleed out on top of me without feeling a thing?" Mikoto shot back, taking a step forward. She walked like she was underwater, but she walked nonetheless, and Orochimaru's expression grew somewhat strained.
"So that's how you evolve it," he said, grinning even as his arm began to visibly shake, his extended fingers trying to peel themselves apart. "I knew that the Sharingan developed in dangerous or stressful situations… but you're saying the specific event of your husband's death elevated it to a higher level?"
Mikoto stopped, straining. Sasuke's sword fell from her still fingers, clattering on the floor. She took another shuddering step, fighting an invisible crushing pressure.
"Mikoto!" Fugaku shouted, and Sasuke turned towards his father. Both he and Itachi were frozen mid-grapple.
"Fight him!" Fugaku shouted, not struggling against Itachi's hold. Orochimaru's effort towards Mikoto had left Fugaku out from under his direct control. "If you win here-!"
Orochimaru hissed, making a series of signs with his other hand. Ink spiraled out across Mikoto's body, and she screamed in frustration, her glacial advance coming to a halt. The Sannin smirked, sweat making his pale skin shine in the dim room.
"It seems I picked my host well," he said, watching Mikoto carefully. The Uchiha matriarch, unable to move, glared at him hatefully. Sasuke slowly picked himself back up to his feet, hot anger pouring through him at the sight of his mother frozen by Orochimaru.
"Now, Mikoto," the Sannin said. "Won't you please-"
He stiffened, and hurled himself to the side. Sasuke watched the whole thing in what seemed like slow motion: a great blade, rippling with orange chakra, gouged a hole in the floor where Orochimaru had stood, effortlessly punching through the material.
Sasuke turned to the side, and found his brother there, the aura of the Susano'o ringing him. The sword, immaterial and deadly, emanated from a partially formed hand, not even sheathed in armor. Fugaku, behind his son, watched with something between horror and painfully obvious admiration.
Itachi was staring at Orochimaru. His painted eyes were gone. They'd been replaced by something else entirely. A glasslike glint, a bloody murder laced with black, occupied his sockets.
"Enough of this." Itachi's voice shattered the shocked silence that had formed in the wake of his Susano'o's appearance. The sword flicked out again, and Orochimaru dodged once more, yet another clean hole being struck in the concrete floor. The building seemed to shudder.
"You will not despoil them like this, Orochimaru," Itachi hissed, and the Sannin's eyes narrowed. "I'm done. And soon…"
He leveled the sword, pointing it at Orochimaru's chest, lining up a deadly strike. "You will be as well."
The Sannin stared back, slowly coming to his feet. And then, he started laughing.
"Itachi," he chuckled, uncaring of the Totsuka Blade mere meters from his chest. He cocked his head to the side, watching all the Uchiha with amusement. "We've only just begun!"
His tongue darted out, unnaturally long and thick. Sasuke tensed, ready to dive away, but it wasn't meant for him, or Itachi.
Instead, it slapped Juugo, long forgotten, right in his sleeping face.
At the same moment, something slipped from Orochimaru's throat, riding his tongue. The Sword of Kusanagi, its golden guard and distinctly wrapped hilt coated in something masquerading as saliva, slid into the Sannin's hand.
Itachi stabbed forward. Orochimaru grinned, and knocked the blow aside, spinning with the strike. The Kusanagi made a ringing noise as it deflected the much larger, barely physical Totsuka Blade.
Two legendary blades, meeting for the first time in hundreds of years.
One of his hands came away from the sword, forming the distinctive two finger sign once more. Mikoto and Fugaku snapped to attention, listening to invisible orders.
Itachi reared back, preparing another blow. More and more of the Susano'o was swelling up around him, orange chakra-flames licking at the concrete at his feet.
Sasuke clenched his hands, looking down. He still had no idea how he was supposed to fight this fight.
"Sasuke!" Karin's voice snapped his head up. The redhead grinned, and kicked his sword at him. It skittered across the floor, and he tracked it mechanically, kicking it up to his hand when it drew close.
"Snap out of it!" the girl ordered, and Sasuke stared back at her, shocked. She looked back earnestly. "I know they're your parents, but you can't just stand around! Your brother… we need your help!"
Sasuke looked at her, cocking his head. "How can you… they're my-"
Karin rolled her eyes. "You can worry later! Right now, we need to survive!"
Sasuke blinked.
She was right.
How was she right? When was Karin right?
He shook his head, his new eyes spiraling. The burning in them had been pushed to the back of his mind, subsiding into a dull, fiery ache that was easy enough to ignore.
"Itachi!" he shouted. His brother looked back at him through the aura of his Susano'o, and an invisible smile stole over his face, gone before it had formed. Sasuke ignored it.
"What can I do?" he demanded.
"Go to Naruto!" Itachi yelled, swinging the Totsuka Blade again, and Sasuke stiffened. The ringing sound of Orochimaru deflecting Itachi's attack once more rolled over him.
"Why?!" he yelled after a moment. "He's not important! What's happening here…" He gestured at Mikoto and Fugaku, who were both watching him blankly, life fled from their eyes.
"I'll handle it," Itachi said forcefully. "You have to make sure Naruto is safe. If he dies here, all of us are in trouble!"
"But-!" Sasuke shouted, and at that moment, three things happened.
The first thing was Orochimaru smirking.
The second was Fugaku and Mikoto snapping up as life returned to their eyes, and both turning towards Sasuke.
"Sasuke!" Mikoto shouted, and Fugaku picked up her sentence for her.
"We're coming after you!" he yelled, something fierce and sad in his tone.
Sasuke turned towards them.
Then, the third thing happened.
"Sasuke?"
The boy in question froze, looking away from his parents.
Juugo was pulling himself away from the wall, gray markings dancing over his skin. His eyes flashed yellow, and he stared at Sasuke, his pupils rapidly changing size and shape.
"Juugo?" Sasuke asked, instinctively raising his sword. He could see Juugo's chakra: there was a damper over it, a potent genjutsu coating the whole of his being. It was black and white, a startling contrast of chakra.
"You…" Juugo stared at him. His lips pulled back, revealing teeth that were growing ever larger. Another set of them had popped up behind the first row.
"You're not Sasuke!" Juugo roared, and launched himself forward, protrusions on his back firing pure chakra. There was a crack as the sound barrier broke.
Sasuke blinked. He barely had time to bring his arm up as the grey boy filled his vision.
"IMPOSTER!" Juugo screamed, bringing an arm back.
Sasuke's Mangekyō spun faster, and a trickle of blood ran from both his eyes.
Juugo hit Sasuke at slightly more than four hundred meters per second. The shock of the impact sent out a wave of pure force that blew Karin over on her back. Both Sasuke and Juugo disappeared, and less than half a second later one of the walls of the room exploded, opening the tower to the brewing thunderstorm outside.
Suigetsu blinked.
Orochimaru grinned.
Both Fugaku and Mikoto sprinted for the hole. Itachi took a swipe at his father as he sped past him, but Fugaku leapt over blow, unable to even give his son an apologetic look: since the beginning of the fight, Orochimaru had explicitly kept both him and Mikoto from looking in Itachi's eyes.
The elder Uchiha vanished into Amegakure's night, after their son, and Itachi turned back to Orochimaru.
The Sannin's smug look faded at the plain hatred on Itachi's face.
"I tried to save him," he muttered, the Totsuka Blade dropping. "Tried to keep him from having to do this."
Itachi sighed, as Orochimaru watched with interest. "And, as always, I failed."
The Uchiha looked up, his Sharingan rapidly rotating. Orochimaru froze at the sight of it.
"And it's your fault," Itachi calmly said.
The Susano'o advanced, the Totsuka Blade coming back up. Orochimaru gave a sickly grin, and raised his own sword.
"So, Itachi," he hissed, something vile twisting his lips. "Shall we begin again?"
Itachi nodded, and swept forward.
Watching two S-ranked ninja preparing to give their all as they attempted to murder one another, Suigetsu bent towards Karin.
"We should get the fuck out of here."
Karin glanced at him, sweating profusely, and wordlessly nodded.
They both scrambled towards the hole that Sasuke and Juugo had made, and as Itachi and Orochimaru began their latest dance, vanished into the storm outside.
Sasuke didn't know where he was. There had been a flash of purple as Juugo had rushed him, and then the world had exploded, replaced by darkness and pouring, freezing cold rain.
He twisted in the void, unable to divine up from down. His chest hurt; there was a weight bearing on it.
But he wasn't dead. And that made no sense. Juugo had hit him so hard that there should have been nothing left but paste.
Speaking of which, the weight on him was thrashing, clawing at him. Sasuke's Sharingan was already adjusting for the darkness around him. He could make out Juugo, feral and mad, clinging to his front.
Juugo slashed out, and one of Sasuke's arms began stinging. The berserker had drawn a long cut along the forearm.
"Juugo!" Sasuke shouted, his voice nearly lost to the wind and rain surrounding the both of them. "Juugo, it's-!"
His breath vanished with a muffled grunt as he landed on something backfirst, up and down finally resolving themselves. Sasuke slid backwards, Juugo slipping off of him in the confusion. The back of his shirt, and some of the skin beneath it, was torn up by the rough brass beneath him.
Sasuke rolled head over heels, coming to his feet and shaking the dizziness assaulting him away as quickly as he could, looking around. He was standing on a brass pipe wrapped around a huge tower. The metal beneath his feet was slippery, but nothing that his chakra couldn't keep him anchored to.
About thirty or so meters away, there was another tower, directly across from him, with unlit neon signs adorning its sides. The rain made it nearly impossible to see: the precipitation was thick with chakra, and it drew a thin black curtain across the world to the Sharingan.
Through the rain, Sasuke could just barely spot a hole in the side of the tower. There was a firestorm dancing within it: the blaze poured out of the hole, and the Uchiha spotted two figures silhouetted against the raging flames, leaping away from the tiny apocalypse.
His parents? He hoped that Suigetsu and Karin hadn't stayed around for that.
There was a growl to his left, and Sasuke spun towards the noise.
Juugo, crouched like an animal, stalked along the pipe towards him. One of his hands was distended, flopping away from the arm and covering itself in spikes; a gruesome flail.
"Juugo," Sasuke hazarded. He still had his sword: he'd lost the sheath as he'd fallen through the dark. Thunder cracked above, and brought a momentary light to Juugo's eyes. There wasn't any sanity there. They were like a shark's, black and empty.
"Where's Sasuke?" the man hissed. "Why do you have his face?!"
"It's me," Sasuke said carefully. "Juugo, you're under a-"
"TELL ME!" the man roared, and then he charged, the flail coming around above his head.
"Hn." Sasuke dodged to the left, the flail crashing down onto the brass next to him. The pipe was only about five meters wide, but it was enough. Juugo turned to him, panting.
Sasuke watched him carefully. Talking wasn't working. He had to dispel this genjutsu.
Easy enough. Pain, or a chakra spike. He just needed to touch Juugo.
He darted forward, aiming his open palm for Juugo's shoulder. The berserker spun his flail towards him at waist-height, and Sasuke jumped, spinning over the attack, and coming down settled in front of Juugo. His hand clapped down on the man's shoulder.
"Kai!" he shouted, sending his chakra pouring into the man's system.
Juugo punched him in the stomach.
Sasuke coughed, all the air knocked out of him. Something sprouted out of the back of Juugo's elbow.
The Sharingan could see it all. The way chakra from all across Juugo's body rushed to his arm. The whole thing was practically glowing, even as the genjutsu's covering broke away from it. Sasuke's eyes widened.
'Oh… not good.'
The pipe emerging from Juugo's arm lit with propelling chakra, and Sasuke rocketed back, smashing into the side of the building and denting the concrete.
And… he didn't die. Again.
Sasuke groaned, looking down. Something dull purple had was dancing in the air, like a heatless flame. It was pushing Juugo's hand away from his stomach.
He glanced back. It was at his back as well. The concrete around it was shattered.
It was unmistakably chakra. Thick, solid looking chakra.
It almost looked like ribs.
He looked back up, at Juugo. The man was staring at him, completely still.
Sasuke stiffened. The grey on Juugo's skin was retreating; his eyes no longer held the yellow gleam of madness.
"Sasuke?" the orange-haired man whispered, and Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
"Juugo," he said firmly. "Are you-"
"Oh my god," Juugo whispered, horrified. He shrank back, his entire body curling in on itself. His mutations vanished, folding back into his skin: his right arm straightened out, returning to its normal shape, along with the hand. "Did I-?"
"No," Sasuke said firmly, stepping forward. He kept his sword lowered at his side, the blade facing away from the former berserker.
"I did," Juugo said, his eyes wide. There was something beyond horror in them. Something more animalistic than his rage had been.
Panic.
Sasuke clapped his hand back down on Juugo's shoulder. "It wasn't you," he said calmly. Juugo stared into his eyes, hyperventilating. Sasuke continued, even as the rain matted his hair down. The scratches covering his back were itching.
"It's never me," Juugo muttered. "It's this damn… curse." He snarled, stepping backwards. "I can't… you shouldn't…"
"You have, and I will," Sasuke said dryly. "Calm down. Or have you not noticed that we're not exactly in Konoha anymore?"
Juugo finally noticed the rain pouring down on him, and looked up, his panic melting away into confusion. "What?" he murmured. "Were... why is it so dark?" He looked back at Sasuke. "We were in the hospital just a second ago, weren't we?"
"We were taken," Sasuke said calmly, keeping his sword down and his hand on Juugo's shoulder. "Kidnapped. We're in The Village Hidden in the Rain."
"What?" Juugo twitched. "Who took-"
"Sasuke!" A woman's voice, high and strident, carried itself clearly though the rain. "Duck!"
Sasuke obeyed without hesitation, throwing himself prone on the pipe. He brought Juugo down with him, cutting the man's question off as they both hit the brass beneath them with a muffled grunt.
A shuriken tore over the both of them, its cutting edge extended nearly a meter out by swirling wind chakra. It looked like a buzzsaw to the Sharingan.
Sasuke glanced at where it had come from. To his complete lack of surprise, he found his father standing there, descending the wall with a grim look on his face.
Sasuke looked the other direction, and found his mother doing the same.
He frowned. He couldn't afford to be trapped between them.
So, he sprung to his feet, pulling an unresisting Juugo with him, and sprinted up the wall. His parents changed direction, like hunting dogs, and followed him at a distance.
"Who are they?" Juugo shouted, finally coming to his feet and keeping pace with Sasuke.
"My parents!" Sasuke shouted back, breathing heavily as they ran up the wall. The rain, still as thick with chakra, poured towards his eyes. It looked like a million tiny black spears falling from the sky.
"What?!" Juugo asked. Sasuke ignored him.
They reached the apex of the tower in less than ten seconds. It wasn't flat, by any means, but it gradually tapered out to a point, and the thirty-or-so degree slope was more than enough for Sasuke to catch his breath.
"Juugo," he said, releasing his hold on the heavy man. "You've got to get out of here."
Juugo looked up at him blankly, confusion and disorientation plain as day on his face. Sasuke reached down, bringing himself in closer.
"Please. You've got to do it now. They're only after me."
"I can't leave you to fight them alone, Sasuke," Juugo muttered. Sasuke could practically see his thoughts squirming around beneath his skull.
He'd already attacked him. And so...
Juugo took a shuddering breath. "There's no way I can abandon you now."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "I don't want anyone in this fight except me, Juugo. Do you understand?" He sighed, and then let out an aborted laugh. "They're my parents. My responsibility."
"That's a very mature thing to say, Sasuke," Mikoto Uchiha said, cresting the lip of the tower, slowly making her way onto the slope.
"It's also exceedingly foolish," Fugaku calmly joined in, coming up and over the other side of the building.
Sasuke glanced at both of them. "Why should I put him in danger?" he said flatly, rising to his feet. His grip on his chokuto whitened his knuckles, but as he stared into his mother's Mangekyō, he didn't feel the emptiness that had frozen him earlier. Only grim anger.
And, unmistakably, a tinge of relief.
"Would you be putting them in danger? Or would they be doing it of their own will?" Fugaku asked.
"There is a difference, after all," Mikoto said. Her hands began running through signs. "Oh, and be ready: this will be a large one."
Sasuke stared at Juugo. "This is your last chance," he warned.
"I won't leave you, Sasuke," the man said resolutely, rising to his feet. "I hope you'll forgive me." He glanced around, taking in Sasuke's parents, and looking eerily like Suigetsu for a moment. "So, are they like, zombies, or…"
Sasuke sighed. "Idiot."
He spun towards his mother, and began running through signs, just barely faster than her. "My father!" he shouted, even as his mother raised a hand to her mouth. "Keep him occupied!"
"Right!" Juugo growled, the grey madness running across his body again, and then he sprang out of Sasuke's sight, with the sound of tearing metal accompanying him.
"Katon!" Mikoto shouted, giving Sasuke ample warning. The rest of the jutsu name was lost in the enormous fireball blooming from her mouth, vaporizing the rain for meters around and instantly drying the front of Sasuke's shirt.
Sasuke took a deep breath, his hand coming up, and breathed out a blazing match for it.
The fireballs struck each other with a thunderous sound, shooting rogue flames across the rooftop. The air crackled with the pressure of the firestorm, distant thunder drowned out by the miniature explosion. Sasuke pushed, feeding more chakra to the flames, and he felt his mother start to give, his flames overpowering hers.
He couldn't see her through the blaze. Behind him, he could hear Juugo roaring, and his father grunting with exertion; whatever was happening back there, it was clear Juugo was at least managing to hold his own, for now.
"Sasuke!" His mother's shout, desperate and cracked, pulled his attention back to the fireball.
Sasuke's eyes went wide as the fireball tripled in size, his mother pouring far more chakra into it then he could hope to match. He pushed back for a moment, but the fire didn't give at all; it was like fighting the ocean's tide. Mikoto just wasn't relenting. It was if she had an endless pool of energy.
If this kept up… there was no way he'd be able to escape the jutsu being steadily pushed towards him. And if that happened, the battle would be over as quickly as it had started.
Sasuke snarled, and his eyes whirled. He couldn't let that happen.
'I won't lose,' he desperately thought, pouring more chakra into the technique in a futile attempt to halt the endless tide of flames. 'I can't. I won't be taken before Orochimaru by my own parents.'
His eyes stung, and he felt something trickle from his left.
Sasuke stopped. The world seemed to freeze for a moment, the fire before him ceasing its dancing, his mother's flames whirling with infinite slowness. He couldn't tell if it was a trick of his perception as his thoughts finally caught up with each other, or if the Sharingan was actually granting him this moment of clarity.
He grinned, his teeth shining in the light of the fireballs.
'But with these eyes...'
The younger Uchiha reached deep within himself, looking for something he didn't know how to find. Something that he hadn't the slightest clue about, and yet knew, on an instinctive level, as sure as his lungs knew how to breathe and his tongue how to taste.
And he found it.
Sasuke's smile widened. So did his left eye. He breathed out the last of his air harshly, in something that was both an invocation and a prayer.
"Amaterasu."
The fireball exploded away from him, completely covered with black flames, more growing on it at every moment, like malevolent moss. Sasuke blinked away the sting in his eyes, watching carefully.
The fireball rolled over where his mother had been.
And then, in an blink, it completely vanished in a flash of silver.
Sasuke blinked. His mother was gone. But what had been-
"Sasuke!"
He looked up just in time to catch him mother's descending kick on the flat of his sword. She'd leapt high into the air, under cover of the fireball and the rain.
She was smiling at him. A full, dimple inducing smile. Something in Sasuke's heart rolled over and twitched painfully at the sight: he hadn't seen it in ten years.
"That was incredible!" his mother yelled, leaping off his sword and over his head, executing a perfect flip. Sasuke tracked her, staying low. Mikoto landed easily on the slope and rushed at him.
"You're a natural!" she said, striking out with a hooked left hand. Sasuke slipped to the side, out of its reach, and his mother went low for a sweeping kick. He jumped over it, but nearly took a foot to the face as she followed it up with a higher one.
"And to think, you're only seventeen!" Mikoto continued, completely both her kicks and coming back for him with streamlined strikes, targeting his center mass and vital organs. Sasuke danced around most of them, deflecting several with his sword. "Both of my sons!" the woman said enthusiastically. "Geniuses!"
"Itachi is still better than me," Sasuke said flatly.
"Bah! He's older," Mikoto brushed him off, sending a kick at his kidneys. They were clearly deadlocked in taijutsu. Mikoto was fast, and though Sasuke was slightly faster, his mother left no holes in her defense. She was an Uchiha jōnin through and through.
"You'll catch up," Mikoto said, pure sincerity coloring her voice. "Probably even surpass him."
Sasuke paused. "If I want to do that, I'll have to win this fight first," he said gradually.
Mikoto smiled. "If you want to do that, Sasuke…"
"I'm going to have to hurt you," Sasuke said blankly.
Mikoto shook her head, jumping away from her son and running through more signs. "You can't hurt me, Sasuke," she said gently.
Sasuke breathed out heavily, watching his mother run through more signs. "I know," he muttered, his chokuto dropping.
"Then show me, Sasuke!" Mikoto called. "Katon: Goukakyuu no-!"
Her voice cut off, and she stared down at the lightning-sheathed blade piercing her chest.
Then she looked back up into Sasuke's eyes.
"You're that fast, huh?" she said, her smile not vanishing.
Sasuke swallowed, leaving the sword buried in his mother. "I…"
"Itachi certainly never did that," Mikoto mused, her arms falling limp; the electrical current was disrupting her chakra, though it did her no real damage.
Sasuke finally broke.
"How can you just… stand there?!" he screamed in her face, the wind and the rain almost stealing his words.
"What do you mean, Sasuke?" Mikoto asked, cocking her head.
"Just… just…!" Sasuke growled, wrenching the sword out of her. The hole in his mother's chest filled over with something like old parchment, and after a moment it was like it had never been.
"It's been ten years!" Sasuke roared, and his mother flinched. "Ten years! And you're just acting like… like it was then! Like it never happened!"
Mikoto frowned. "Itachi killing us?"
"Yes!" Sasuke shouted. His mother rushed at him, but he barely cared; he kept talking, even as they were drawn back into a taijutsu brawl. "I don't understand!" He took her hand off at the wrist with his sword, and it returned a moment later. "Why don't you care? Why don't you hate him?"
His mother stared at him. "Itachi did what he did for good reasons," she said, as if it were the truth.
Sasuke's eyes went wide, and he tackled her, form forgotten. They rolled across the slick rooftop, sliding across the rain-soaked steel.
"How can you say that?!" he screamed in her face, his Mangekyō madly rotating. "Why does everybody say that?!"
"Because it's the truth!"
Sasuke twitched. Itachi had used those exact words.
His mother kicked him off of her, blowing him a meter or two straight up. There was a moment of confusion before his feet met the tower again, and then he fell back, his breath lost. Mikoto was on the offense now.
"Do you know?" she asked, locking his off-hand in place with her own. "About the coup?"
"Itachi told me everything!" Sasuke shouted, breaking the lock and slicing one of her legs as he cartwheeled away.
"Then you should understand!" Mikoto insisted. Sasuke had completely forgotten about Juugo and his father. As far as he was concerned, the only thing in the world right now was himself, his sword, the rain, and his mother.
"Understand?!" Sasuke spat. "He stole you from me!"
Mikoto paused her attack, her whole body freezing. Sasuke watched her in confusion for a moment.
She looked like she had when she had been fighting Orochimaru. Was she starting to-
She slapped him across the face, as hard as she could.
A moment later, she jerked into place, Orochimaru's commands reasserting himself. Her hands came back up. She was frowning viciously.
Sasuke stumbled back, his hand coming up to his cheek. The inside of his mouth was bleeding.
"You shouldn't say things like that," Mikoto said firmly. Her hand was shaking. "We made a mistake, Sasuke. And we payed for it. We were the ones who took your parents away."
"And Itachi was the one the village sent to kill you!" Sasuke shouted, wiping away the stinging sensation covering his cheek.
Mikoto closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, Sasuke," she whispered. "That we died so early. That we left you with your brother, alone…"
"I wasn't with Itachi," Sasuke snarled. Mikoto's eyes snapped open. "He left too."
"What?" his mother asked, quietly. Sasuke had to strain to hear her over the rain, and his father and Juugo clashing.
"He left me. He used the Tsukuyomi on me, told me that he'd killed all of you to test himself, and then he left," Sasuke growled, shaking. The tip of his sword was flinging water droplets around.
"That's… that's impossible," Mikoto said. "He told us… he would take care of you."
Sasuke laughed, though it sounded more like a sob. "All he wanted was to die."
For a moment, neither of the Uchiha spoke. All that was between them was the rain.
"Oh god." Sasuke had never heard his mother sound so broken. In fact, before today, he'd never heard her as anything but comforting, and reasonable. One more thing Orochimaru had ruined for him.
"You've been alone. All this time?" Mikoto asked. She struggled towards him, visibly fighting the urge to attack him. Blood poured from both her Mangekyō as they spun desperately, attempting to subvert Orochimaru's control. "You didn't have your brother? You didn't…"
She swallowed, and finally broke, sprinting forward, with her hands forming more signs. "Tell me you had someone?" she shouted, a volley of fireballs following her words, hissing through the curtains of rain. Sasuke dodged through them, batting one aside with his sword. His face had reset towards something that wouldn't have looked out of place in stone.
"Someone?" he asked dully, breaking his mother's charge with a low kick.
"Friends!" his mother cried, tears mixing with the blood dribbling from her eyes. Sasuke idly wondered how a corpse could cry and bleed, even one that looked like his mother.
"Friends, huh?" Sasuke muttered. "I don't think I had many of those."
'Liar.'
Sasuke stiffened. Something must have shown on his face, because his mother, in-between trying to break his kneecap and stove in his voicebox, gave him a severe look.
"Not a single one?" she asked forcefully.
"Itachi told me that to gain the Mangekyō, I would have to kill my dearest friend. And that to gain the Mangekyō was the only way to defeat him," Sasuke said, his voice just as dead as his opponent. "So, I made sure the opportunity wouldn't arise. I didn't want to be tempted."
Mikoto stared at him over their deadlocked arms. "Those eyes… they're not normal, but they're not just a Mangekyō either." She sucked in a breath. "Eternal Mangekyō? Impossible. Itachi…"
"Still has eyes, yes," Sasuke confirmed. "We traded."
"Traded?" Mikoto asked, shocked. "Traded eyes? How? In all the history of the clan..."
"Itachi changed his mind. About dying. And so, he wanted to ensure we would both have the necessary power," Sasuke said.
"For what?" Mikoto asked.
Sasuke broke her guard, slashing his blade across her arms and chest. She fell back, already reforming.
"Madara," he spat.
Mikoto had nothing to say to that. Instead, she just sighed. "I don't understand. Has he been revived as well?"
"No. He's survived all these years. He's planning something; he orchestrated the Kyuubi's attack on the Village Hidden in the Leaves," Sasuke explained. "Itachi wants to stop him, and he needs my help."
"Madara's still alive?" Mikoto whispered, before shaking her head. "And why wouldn't you help him? He's your brother."
"Help the brother that abandoned me to save the village that ordered the murder of my clan?" Sasuke laughed, stepping away from his mother. He heard thunder in the distance, and subconsciously filed it away.
"If you really believe that…" Mikoto smiled sadly, on the edge of tears. "So it's true? You really didn't make any bonds after we were gone? There's no one in the village for you?"
"No one," Sasuke confirmed.
"I can't believe that!" Mikoto shouted, sending another series of fireballs at him. "You can't have succeeded!"
"It's the only thing I ever succeeded at!" Sasuke insisted. "I cut all ties with that place!"
"So there were ties to cut!" his mother yelled. She leapt into an axe kick, and when Sasuke's hand came up to guard, her other foot came around kicked his sword out of his hand. It flipped into the air, and Mikoto caught it without a hint of flourish.
The blade lit with the same blue fire that it had when she'd attacked Suigetsu, and she attacked again, leading with the tip.
Sasuke dodged back, his mind rolling. He was losing this fight.
"You did have friends!" his mother insisted. "What happened to them, Sasuke? Did you kill them for those eyes?"
"No!" Sasuke roared. He slipped around one of her attacks and buried his fist in her face, feeling the burning sword sear all the hair from his left arm. Mikoto flew back, and Sasuke pursued her. "I would never-"
"Never what, Sasuke?!" Mikoto laughed, already back on her feet. He really couldn't beat her. There was a gleam in her eyes. "Kill them? Who was it?"
"I don't-!" Sasuke yelled, and then, as his own sword darted towards his chest, froze. The rain stopped once more. His mother, her expression something between furious and afraid, did so as well.
His heart sped up, drumming in his ears. His own blood was deafening him.
The darkness, the darkness he'd hoped driven away by the new light his eyes had given him, curled out of his brain in the frozen moment, like icy smoke.
No friends, huh?
It smirked. An achingly, infuriatingly familiar smirk.
His smirk.
No bonds?
None that haven't been cut, he confirmed, utterly without confidence.
He'd done this before. He hadn't been able to finish then: there'd been something missing.
He couldn't have found it now. All this fight had brought him was new questions.
And yet… there had been something scrabbling against his mind, earlier that day. Something desperate for him to notice it. Something pathetically obvious.
Something he had overlooked. Or ignored. Shut away.
And now…
'What happened to them?'
He remembered the Valley.
The water beneath his feet, the effortless act of standing, fighting, on top of it; how far he'd come in just a couple months. His eyes humming with chakra, the curse seal on his neck painfully pulsing.
Naruto, practically glowing with power, red chakra dancing around him and boiling the water, the very air charging itself with ozone and blowing Sasuke's hair back. The raw power of the Kyuubi.
Sasuke hadn't known, then, that the blonde carried a monster inside him.
'What the hell are you?' he'd asked, unable to understand the dreadful feeling in his gut.
The idiot had been crying. Actually crying. Crouched to the water like a hunting dog, eyes red, pupils vertically slit… and with tears beading in his eyes.
Unbelievable.
And Naruto had responded, his voice crushed truth.
'I'm your friend.'
And then, he'd punched Sasuke so hard that the world had gone white, and a moment later buried him so far beneath the surface of the water that he'd had thought he might never see light again.
The depths of the lake had been like the darkness around him, shifting, crushing him under its invisible weight. He'd tried to swim back to the surface, but had had no idea which way was up.
But Naruto…
Naruto had showed him back to the surface: with a series of punches to the face and stomach. But without them, the Uchiha never would have found the world of light and air again. He would have been left alone to suffocate in that binding dark.
Sasuke laughed.
The darkness fled, drowned at the bottom of the Valley. The world resumed. The rain began falling again. His mother pushed his chokuto forward, a plea on her lips.
His hand shot out, sheathed in lightning, and he caught his sword, inches from his chest. His mother stared up at him, shocked, her words forgotten. The blue fire and his lightning mixed, ratcheting out and lighting up the entire rooftop.
Slowly, he equalized the chakra, overpowering his mother's and running his own through the familiar blade. He knew the sword, better than she did: it was easy to hijack the metal. His hand burned, maybe second-degree at worst, but it was nothing he couldn't ignore. His palm bled as the steel dug into it.
"You're right," he said, frowning. Mikoto stared at him.
Sasuke brought his other hand around, snapping his mother's grip on the pommel of the sword.
"I did have a friend."
He caught the sword as it fell.
"And who was he?" Mikoto asked, kicking out.
Sasuke cut her leg off. And then the other. His mother fell back, and he severed a trailing hand as she did.
"Naruto," he said, his expression flat. His hand trembled, and then stopped. An invisible weight, crushing his organs and buckling his mind, lifted away from him. He straightened up, feeling the rain pour on his shoulders, effortlessly penetrating his thin hospital shirt. Invisible steel filled him, and his blood ran faster, anew.
"Naruto Uzumaki."
His mother, flat on the ground with only a single leg as her other limbs regenerated, blinked.
"Naruto?" she asked, more shocked than he'd ever seen her.
Sasuke blinked back. "You know him?"
Mikoto just stared at him for a moment. Then, she burst out laughing. Sasuke rocked back. He'd never heard such a free laugh from his mother before. It shook her whole body, even as she levered herself back up on a recreated leg.
"That's… Sasuke, you don't even know what you've done, do you?" she laughed, getting to her feet. Sasuke raised his sword in response, his face twisting in confusion. He didn't know what was going on here, and that worried him.
"You're friends with Naruto. Of all the things you've told me so far…" she sniffed, wiping away a rogue tear: Sasuke couldn't tell if it had been brought by laughter or something else. "That's the best."
"How do you… is it because he's a Jinchuuriki?" Sasuke asked, circling around his mother. He couldn't hear his father and Juugo anymore. Glancing over his shoulder, he couldn't find any sign of them on the rooftop; they had taken their fight to lower ground while he'd been distracted.
"Oh, god no," Mikoto said, something devious making its way into her eyes. "It's just… his mother and I planned this from the very beginning. Before he was even born. I just can't believe that it took both of us dying to make it happen."
Sasuke just stared at her, completely dumbfounded. This only raised more questions for him.
Right now, he wasn't especially in the mood for questions. He wanted answers.
"You knew his mother?" he asked. "Naruto's been alone since the day he was born. The only reason I was able to tolerate him was because he'd known the same kind of loneliness as me."
Mikoto flinched, and Sasuke ignored it. "Why didn't you help him?" he continued, stepping forward through the sheets of rain. "If you knew his mother… if you wanted us to be comrades, friends… why on earth would you leave him alone?"
Mikoto bit her lip. "God, Sasuke… I couldn't. It was impossible."
"Why?" Sasuke demanded, rain spattering from his hair as he shook his head. His Mangekyō spun.
"Politics," Mikoto spat. "I'm sure you know: the Uchiha were already under suspicion for the Kyuubi attack." She snorted. "I guess we were responsible, in a twisted sort of way, if what you said about Madara was true."
His mother shook her head. "Anyway. It was completely impossible for me to contact Naruto, let alone try to take him in or anything like it. The Hokage's advisors wouldn't allow it, and the Sandaime himself was… wary. I was one of the last people who saw Kushina before she died. And the Sandaime's wife, as well."
"Kushina?" Sasuke bit out.
"Naruto's mother," Mikoto confirmed. She began running through signs. "Kushina Uzumaki. She was-"
Her hands came up to mouth, preparing to launch another jutsu. Sasuke didn't give her the chance.
The Mangekyō spun faster, something ugly curling in its depths.
'Amaterasu.'
Mikoto's lips caught fire. The black flames ate their way down into her body, smothering the burgeoning fireball in her lungs.
Sasuke's mother stared at him over a devastated face, surprise clear in her eyes. Her mouth was completely gone.
Then, for the second time, the fire vanished in a flash of silver. Sasuke's eyes narrowed. As the fire disappeared, he caught a glimpse of something: a floating, silvery pearl, the Amaterasu rolling beneath its surface.
"What is that?" he asked as his mother's mouth regenerated. The pearl vanished, but Sasuke's Sharingan kept it in his mind. "That's the second time I've seen that flash."
"I think…" Mikoto said, testing out her new mouth. "It's my Mangekyō. It's doing something, stealing your technique's chakra."
"It looked like a pearl," Sasuke said. "A sphere. It sucked the Amaterasu inside of itself."
Mikoto's face twisted. "Sasuke, the Mangekyō Sharingan can develop unique powers, depending on the individual. Your cousin Shisui had access to a peerless genjutsu, the kind many would have killed for. If my eyes are using an unknown technique, you have to finish me quickly: there's no saying how they will affect you."
"Not quite yet," Sasuke muttered.
"What?!" his mother shouted. "Sasuke, if my eyes are using some sort of chakra-draining technique, you have to-!"
"Mother, prepare yourself," Sasuke said calmly. "I'm going to try something."
He stared into her shocked eyes, feeling for that instinct within him. The same one that had saved him when her fireball had overwhelmed him.
And once more, he found it.
Sasuke smirked.
"These are Itachi's eyes," he said out loud, as his mother charged at him, preparing to draw him into another taijutsu brawl.
"His shall become mine. The power of the Mangekyō, shared, and not stolen," Sasuke whispered, remembering his brother's words, all those days ago.
Spoken to him within a genjutsu. One that had allowed them ample time to talk, even as Sasuke lay unconscious in a hospital bed, and Naruto watched the both of them with a truly disgusting amount of protectivity.
His mother crashed into him. He seized one of her arms, and brought her face in close. Her lips pursed, preparing something deadly.
Sasuke glared into her eyes. Both of their Mangekyō were whirling, blindingly fast.
But Sasuke's was faster.
He spoke with utter confidence, his voice like a blade wrapped in bandages.
"Tsukuyomi."
The world fell away.
It was easy for Sasuke to build a new one to replace it.
It was created as quickly as he could imagine it. But in the end, his imagination always fled back to the same things.
The Uchiha compound. Just inside the main gate. The sounds of birds in the sky, the babbling of a nearby brook. A sunny, guileless day.
It was where Itachi had taken him.
It was where he took his mother.
He was there. Well, he was everywhere. The world only existed as a facade, after all: his chakra, coursing through his mother's system, waylaid electrical signals, nerve sensations, firing receptors, and convinced them that they were seeing, hearing, feeling, and experiencing something entirely different from reality.
Or at least, that was how Sasuke understood it to work on a living target. Now, his mother was a construct of pure chakra: there was no middleman in the prospect of hijacking her senses. Chakra itself provided a facsimile of those now, and subverting it was child's play.
His mother, he confined to a single body. It was all she would need for this conversation. For himself, he created a replica, dressed as he normally would be.
When they appeared in the compound, his mother started, looking around. It took her a moment to realize the truth: that none of this was real, reduced to a fond memory.
"Sasuke," she whispered. "Is this all your genjutsu? That's… amazing."
Then, she took a moment to look him over. She blinked.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
Sasuke looked down at the loose outfit, and the tied purple rope he used as a belt.
"It is somewhat tacky, isn't it?" he murmured.
His mother's hug hit him like an avalanche. It was easy enough to delude himself into actually feeling it.
She pulled back, holding tightly to his shoulders. Her face, uncracked, whole and alive, was filled with undeniable joy.
"Sasuke, why… how did you-"
"I'm tired of fighting," Sasuke said. And he meant it. There was a bone deep weariness seeping through his whole body, only exaggerated by the chilling rain. "I wanted to make a place where we could just talk. However briefly."
His mother smiled. "What do you want to talk about?"
Sasuke cocked an eyebrow. She knew perfectly well what he wanted to talk about.
Mikoto smiled, and began.
AN: Once more, I bring myself back from the land of Real Life to update this thing.
I recently returned to college. Until I've got my schedule ironed out, updates might be even slower than usual. My apologies.
A couple things I want to make clear, though. Yes, Mikoto has a unique Mangekyō jutsu. Two, actually. We'll be seeing more of that. Fugaku didn't feature much in this chapter, but he'll show up later: I just wanted to dump all the present exposition on one parent without having to worry about both of them interjecting/disagreeing/crying during the fight scene.
And don't worry. He'll also be impressive. If you're clever, the hint about his capabilities earlier should give you an idea of what he'll be able to pull off.
One last thing: Sasuke doesn't know how to use Susano'o yet. However, he can instinctively activate it to keep himself from dying (as Itachi did in canon, with the Kirin (because I don't care how awesome itachi is, there's no way he out-thought lightning). Susano'o shenanigans will come later.
Anyway: thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
Serendipity, out.