"Why do you ask?"
His tone sharpened like the edge of a finely honed blade. The crimson hue of his sharingan deepened, narrowing as he studied her with renewed suspicion. There was a subtle shift in his posture — still poised, still calm, but with the unmistakable scent of a warning in the air.
Konan didn't flinch.
"I just wanted to know," she said, with the same serene, unbothered tone as before. A voice that could've been mistaken for casual… but he knew better.
He held her gaze, the silence between them coiling like a drawn wire.
"I don't think you should be asking such questions." His voice was quiet, but resolute — like a boundary had just been drawn across the earth itself.
"I know," she replied, eyes softer now, and yet curiously distant. "But… I do feel for him. I know what living under such conditions would be like. That's all. That is my concern."
"That is my concern," he snapped back, just enough edge to cut. His gaze still unblinking.
"Yes," she murmured, almost as if confirming something to herself. "You really care, I can see."
He said nothing. His silence louder than any retort.
Then, the truth he wanted no one to forget came out like a declaration of war.
"The Akatsuki has nothing to do with my brother. I had already made that clear to Madara the first time we spoke, and I also made clear what lengths I can go to protect him."
It was not a bluff. Not a plea. It was a statement.
But Konan didn't bristle. She only nodded, slow and grave.
"I have no intention to put any form of harm to your brother, Itachi," she said softly. "But I fear… someone else might."
His eyes sharpened. A sudden ripple passed through his entire being — a quiet jolt, subtle but unmistakable.
"…Who?"
Her gaze drifted to the distant horizon, where paper birds circled silently in the wind.
"Our former member," she began. "The one we expelled because his ambitions... conflicted with the Akatsuki's. Obsessive, dangerous, unpredictable. His interest lay not in peace, not in power alone, but in knowledge as well. In… the dōjutsu of the Uchiha, the Sharingan."
Itachi's fingers curled slightly. A low hum of chakra began to build in the air around him.
"He even went to great lengths to kidnap and experiment on young easily targetable Uchihas to get his hands on the Dojutsu but with no success. He had many people to target and harvest from. Back then, there were many Uchihas to hunt."
Her voice dimmed.
"However"
"With the uchiha clan...gone that left the world with only 4 Sharingan users, Madara himself. The Copy ninja Kakashi Hatake, you...and your brother Sasuke...
She paused, letting the final name hang in the air like a blade suspended above a thread.
"The easiest one to target."
For a second, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Itachi's sharingan flared violently not just with chakra, but with something colder… darker. His hands remained still, but the rage was unmistakable.
"-Orochimaru"
he said. His voice dripping with venom and the moment he said the name a murder of crows erupted the room with violent caws and intense gusts of wind that would seem to tear down the walls.
A violent cacophony of caws shattered the stillness , screeching in agony and rage, wings slicing through the air like knives. And yet, amid the chaos — he did not flinch
"Where is he, Konan?" His voice was low, but it cut through the storm like a blade through silk. She raised her hand gently, her own paper wings stabilizing against the wind, strands of hair whipping past her face.
"He has several labs… all over the nations," she answered, voice barely rising above the roar. "He's elusive. Difficult to track. He rarely stays in one place long. But—" she hesitated, "there is one base… near the outskirts of Konoha." "Some reports say… he has even captured and is now ruling a small village of his own. North of Konoha." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper.
"Otogakure."
And with the murder of crows enveloping him. He vanished subsiding the violent winds leaving the room with the atmosphere it had just a few minutes ago . Except the wreckage that just happened.
...
He moved like a shadow across the Land of Fire, the crimson moon overhead casting his silhouette. He was searching — not just the physical outskirts of Konoha, but also his own memory.
That day… that encounter with Orochimaru. He remembered it vividly.
The snake had approached with his usual slither of flattery, laced with the sickly scent of ambition. Eyes gleaming. Tongue forked not just in speech, but in soul. Orochimaru had tried to steal his eyes his very essence. Foolish.
He fell then easily, pitifully — caught in a genjutsu so absolute, it paralyzed even his grotesque sense of self-confidence.
Itachi could have ended it there.
He should have.
But he made a mistake.
Thinking he wouldn't be any threat to him and by extension Konoha but that was a lapse in judgement and a self centered thought, with him gone from Konoha it made the place vulnerable to that stripling's horrid intentions. But more than Konoha he knew, from his own experience and Konan's confirmation that the person who was under the most danger was his own brother. Sasuke.
He searched. For almost the entire day,
The northern woods, the ravines west of Konoha, even the old outposts that once bore the Snake's stench — but there was nothing. Just silence and the whispers of trees that knew better than to speak.
No lab. No signs. No trail.
Yet the silence was telling in itself. Orochimaru was indeed here. For silence this deep was unnatural — as if the land itself feared being too loud, lest the serpent stir from his burrow.
But there was no entry point, no physical clue. Orochimaru had become more careful since their last encounter — less flamboyant, more deliberate.
And in that stillness, Itachi's mind wandered to the past.
He remembered his talks with Kakashi Hatake during their days together at the ANBU. The masked ninja told him about his brief fight with Orochimaru not far from the old Shinomiya river, near one of the labs. and despite being close to rivaling the disgraceful Sanin's power the fight made one thing clear that Orochimaru weak or strong was a very difficult fish to catch. One that can slither away from you even when you have an upper hand, figuratively and literally.
"He's not just strong," Kakashi had said once, voice calm but eyes haunted, "He's slippery. Even when you're winning, he's already slithering out of your grasp. It's like trying to fight smoke with a kunai."
This lapse in judgment — sparing Orochimaru — had opened a door not just to the village's peril, but to his brother's fate.
No more.
This time was different. There would be no misplaced mercy, no oversight, no arrogance masked as principle.
He would not make the same mistake twice.
...
Eventually, beneath a crescent moon hanging like a silent witness in the sky, Itachi found him.
The lab was nestled behind a jagged mountain face — concealed with the sort of chakra-obscuring genjutsu only someone like Orochimaru could devise. But no illusion, no matter how clever, could hide from a Mangekyō Sharingan sharpened by years of shadows and suffering.
The encounter was as expected — a hiss, a smirk, and that voice laced with mockery and intellect.
"Ah, Itachi-kun... I wondered how long it would take before you came crawling back. To protect your dear, dear brother?" "Or to atone?"
He didn't even get the opportunity to finish his sentence as Itachi charged towards him without a word or a hint of expression. The battle began swiftly.
And though Orochimaru had grown stronger — his jutsu more refined, his movements more tactical, he had also become more vigilant and careful of Itachi's abilites, so despite Itachi had the upper hand throughout the fight. He couldn't get a firm hold on the disgraceful sannin to land a finishing blow. Precision over flamboyance. Control over chaos.
He maneuvered through the serpent's summoned beasts, the fangs, the acidic fogs — and landed blow after blow. Each strike was purposeful, each genjutsu a dagger through Orochimaru's psyche. The Sanin had never truly understood what it meant to face death, not fear actual death. For years Orochimaru had studied about ways to achieve immortality, that was clear from the remanats of the labs he saw had to display, but today, he would end those dreams.
At last, Itachi stood over him, ready to land the final blow — the one he should have delivered all those years ago.
A sharp sting to his side. A warmth spreading through his veins. A flicker in his vision. He stumbled.
"Orochimaru-sama," he said with a sickly sweet reverence, "Looks like the traitorous Uchiha is done for finally."
His eyes, still glowing crimson, snapped toward the source of the voice.
A young man, perhaps in his early twenties. Pale, with shoulder-length silver hair, round spectacles perched upon a narrow nose, and a grin that reeked of arrogance. His face was too calm for someone facing an Uchiha. His chakra signature was controlled, quiet — a traitor's weapon.
Kabuto Yakushi.
His vision blurred, his breath shallow. But then—
"You both should have killed me the moment you had the chance."
His irises widened — dilating with an intensity that pierced the air itself. The elegant symmetry of his three-tomoe Sharingan began to twist, converging into his pupils and A black and crimson pinwheel, shot out the pupils with sharp angular edges radiating from the pupil in a pattern resembling a three-pronged shuriken, but each blade curved inward.
AMATERASU
The word did not echo—it detonated. the voice rupturing through what remained of the destroyed battlefield. Suddenly a black inferno of flames burst out from his eyes engulfing the surrounding withing moments Orochimaru hissed — recoiling, vanishing into mist. Kabuto shrieked, shielding his face, leaping back into the shadows, barely escaping the edge of the flames.
And amidst the cacophony — Itachi vanished.
...
Or rather, he tried.
With a twitch of his hand, chakra surged to his feet. He initiated the Body Flicker—a technique he'd used a hundred times before, escaping assassination attempts, ambushes, and wars alike.
But this time…
His legs buckled.
Pain surged up his spine like a dagger twisting into his nerves. The poison. The blows. The sheer chakra strain of Amaterasu.
He winced, a sharp gasp escaping his lips. His cloak fluttered as he stumbled against the bark of a half-burnt tree. Blood dripped from his eyes as he collapsed on the floor. He could still feel the flames in his mind. The inferno, the pain, the echo of Kabuto's voice like a sneer carved into his subconscious.
But now…
Silence.
...