The Forests - Land of Rivers
FLASH.
The displacement of space announced itself with a sharp, concussive clap, leaving behind the distinct, metallic scent of ozone. Golden light flared for a fraction of a second before dying down, depositing Alaric Jonathan Kenway into the heart of a disaster zone.
He stood up straight, his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his dark trousers as his piercing blue eyes swept over the apocalyptic landscape.
It was a forest... or at least, the mangled, drowned corpse of what used to be a forest. Everywhere Alaric looked, ancient trees had been violently uprooted or snapped clean in half like dry twigs. The earth itself had been churned into a massive, muddy basin, pockmarked with deep craters where localized floods had gouged the soil down to the bedrock. Lingering pools of water reflected the pale moonlight, mixing with the dark, undeniable stains of freshly spilled blood.
A low, appreciative whistle escaped Alaric's lips, the sound cutting through the eerie, dripping silence of the ruined clearing.
"Well, well, well," Alaric murmured, his gaze drifting over the devastation.
A few meters to his right lay the motionless body of a massive, broad-shouldered man. Even in the dim light, the distinct, shark-like gills on the man's neck and his pale blue skin made his identity unmistakable. Kisame Hoshigaki lay dead in a shallow pool of muddy water, a single, ordinary kunai buried to the hilt in his throat. A faint, almost peaceful smile was frozen on his sharp features.
But Alaric's attention did not linger on the fallen swordsman. He turned his head forward.
Sitting on the waterlogged earth, his back slumped heavily against a splintered, half-submerged tree log, was the victor of the massacre.
Itachi Uchiha was a complete and utter wreck. He was half-naked, his iconic Akatsuki cloak and undershirt entirely gone, leaving him clad only in his dark pants and shinobi sandals. His pale, emaciated torso was heavily bruised and bleeding from dozens of shallow lacerations. His chest heaved with shallow, rattling breaths, each inhale sounding like crushed glass scraping against his lungs.
He looked like a man who had fought a war and had barely managed to crawl out of the abyss.
"Ala...ric?"
The whisper was incredibly faint, raspy, and laced with absolute exhaustion. Itachi's head lolled slightly toward the sound of the whistle. His eyes, typically sharp and piercing, were milky and entirely unfocused. He was staring blindly into the dark, unsure if the emergency spatial scroll he had activated with the last dregs of his chakra had actually worked, or if the voice was just another hallucination brought on by his dying brain.
Because Alaric was only a single meter away, he didn't even need to step forward. He simply looked down at the broken prodigy.
"Hey kid," Alaric said, his voice calm, echoing slightly over the dripping water. "What the hell happened here?"
"I... They—"
Itachi attempted to force the words past his ruined vocal cords, his blind eyes widening as a violent, agonizing spasm seized his chest. He doubled over, coughing up a massive, horrifying volume of dark, viscous blood that splattered across his own lap and the muddy ground.
Alaric let out a long, heavy sigh, shaking his head at the sheer stubbornness of the Uchiha.
"Don't bother talking. You're literally coughing up pieces of your own lungs," Alaric instructed, his tone shifting from casual observation to clinical authority.
He crouched down gracefully, his boots sinking slightly into the mud, and hovered his glowing right hand directly over Itachi's shattered chest. He didn't weave a single seal. He merely commanded the temporal algorithms woven into his very soul.
"Fuinjutsu: Hourglass of Samsara."
A brilliant, complex spherical matrix of golden kanji materialized around Itachi's form.
Itachi was entirely unable to react to the sudden, overwhelming influx of energy, his body shaking violently as the temporal field took hold. But the panic was short-lived. Slowly, miraculously, the agonizing, blinding pain that had defined his existence for the past five years began to fade. The shallow lacerations across his torso stitched themselves closed, leaving smooth, unblemished skin. The crippling fatigue was forcibly purged from his muscles.
Most profoundly, the deep, systemic rot of his terminal illness… the disease that had been slowly liquefying his internal organs… was violently reversed. His lungs cleared, expanding freely to draw in a deep, unobstructed breath of cold night air.
As the golden light dissolved into the ether, Itachi blinked.
The milky, opaque fog obscuring his vision melted away like morning frost. The sharp, vibrant clarity of the world rushed back into focus, restoring his eyesight to the exact, pristine condition it had possessed long before the Mangekyō Sharingan had begun to exact its heavy toll.
He could breathe. He could see. He felt... young.
Itachi remained silent, staring down at his hands, watching his fingers flex without the usual, creeping tremor of exhaustion. He desperately wanted to ask how Alaric had bypassed the absolute limits of medical ninjutsu to seemingly rewrite his biology, but his disciplined mind forced the question down, prioritizing the immediate tactical reality.
"Now that you aren't actively drowning in your own blood," Alaric stated, leaning back on his heels. "Explain what happened here."
Itachi slowly raised his head, his dark, fully restored onyx eyes locking onto the man who had just handed him a second life.
"It happened an hour ago..."
An Hour Ago
The life of an Akatsuki operative was defined by blood, shadows, and perpetual motion. But for Itachi Uchiha, the death of Kakuzu had fundamentally shifted the burden of the organization's logistics directly onto his failing shoulders.
With the immortal miser gone, Pein had officially reassigned Itachi from standard intelligence gathering to the primary role of generating and collecting operational funds.
It was a task that deeply conflicted with his methodical, solitary style. Constantly tracking high-value bounties, infiltrating black market exchanges, and turning in severed heads to corrupt village officials for briefcases of Ryo was exhausting. It required relentless travel and endless chasing. For a man whose body was actively betraying him, where every activation of his Mangekyō Sharingan dragged him a step closer to total blindness, the grind was nothing short of suicidal. He could still fight with terrifying efficiency, but he could no longer afford to fight every single day.
It was approaching eleven in the evening when Itachi finally conceded to his body's demands.
He had navigated deep into an uncharted, dense section of the woods, intentionally putting dozens of miles between himself and any mapped civilization. Seeking a rare moment of respite, he had set up a camp, utilizing a minimum expenditure of chakra to hunt a simple wild rabbit. He roasted the lean meat over a small, nearly smokeless fire, eating mechanically just to provide his failing stomach with the calories required to survive the night.
As he finished the meager meal, Itachi stamped out the embers of the fire. He sat at the base of a massive, ancient oak, leaning his aching back against the rough bark and allowing his heavy eyelids to slide shut.
'Just a couple of hours of rest...' Itachi thought, his breathing shallow, trying to ignore the dull, persistent throbbing in his chest. 'Then... I will have to return to the base.'
The forest was silent, save for the ambient chirping of crickets and the rustle of leaves.
Ten minutes passed.
Suddenly, Itachi's eyes snapped open, the black irises wide and perfectly alert. The illusion of vulnerability vanished in a microsecond. He pushed himself up from his seated position, his posture shifting into a flawless, relaxed guard as he turned his head slowly toward the thick brush to his right.
He didn't draw a kunai, but his chakra coiled tightly beneath his skin.
A few seconds later, the shadows parted.
Stepping into the faint moonlight filtering through the canopy were two figures cloaked in the red clouds of the Akatsuki. Kisame Hoshigaki led the approach, the massive, bandaged bulk of Samehada resting easily on his shoulder. Trailing lazily behind him was the immortal zealot, Hidan, carrying his lethal, triple-bladed scythe with careless arrogance.
Itachi remained entirely silent. He did not ask why they had tracked him, nor did he demand their purpose. The absolute unusuality of the situation… two elite operatives actively seeking him out in the dead of night while he was supposed to be operating solo… spoke volumes. He was ready for violence.
Kisame halted a few paces away, his shark-like face splitting into a wide, serrated smile.
"Good evening, Itachi," Kisame greeted, his tone carrying its usual, respectful camaraderie, though his white eyes were sharp. "How have you been faring out here? I trust you've collected enough bounty money to satisfy the Leader's demands and return to the base?"
Itachi did not reply. He merely stood his ground, the cold, dead calm of his gaze sweeping over his long-time partner before settling on the smirking zealot.
Hidan let out a loud, grating scoff, rolling his eyes as he rested the haft of his scythe against his hip.
"Told you, fish-face," Hidan complained loudly, his voice completely devoid of subtlety. "We should've just jumped him from the trees. All this polite chit-chat's makin' Jashin-sama impatient. Let's just bleed him and get it over with!"
Kisame's smile didn't falter, but his tone dropped, carrying a heavy, warning edge as he glanced back at his crude companion.
"Shut it, zealot," Kisame reprimanded smoothly. "This isn't some helpless roadside sacrifice for your god. Itachi's not the type of man you underestimate, regardless of the circumstances."
Hidan merely chuckled, a dark, manic sound, as he shifted his grip, fully readying his triple-bladed scythe for a sweeping strike.
Itachi's expression remained carved from ice. He addressed them with the monotone precision of a blade. "If your intent was to assassinate me, you should have been far less obvious in your approach."
Kisame let out a slow, heavy sigh, shifting the weight of Samehada on his shoulder. A flicker of genuine regret flashed across his predatory features.
"You shouldn't have betrayed the Akatsuki, Itachi," Kisame stated, his voice quiet but absolute.
"I didn't," Itachi replied calmly, his heart rate entirely steady despite the accusation.
Kisame shook his head slowly, taking a step forward. "Zetsu is an incredibly capable observer, my friend. His roots go deep. During the mission to secure the Ichibi... Zetsu sensed your chakra, and the chakra of that Ice-user who ultimately killed Sasori, standing together in the exact same sector of the forest."
Itachi's eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. The lie had unraveled.
"I was there to delay the Ice-user," Itachi countered smoothly, his Sharingan silently flaring to life, casting a crimson glow over his pale face. "He is an exceptionally strong combatant. Engaging him directly would have consumed too much time."
"A plausible defense," Kisame conceded, "except that Zetsu watched the Ice-user arrive at the cavern shortly after your encounter. The boy possessed absolutely no signs of combat fatigue. He wasn't breathing hard, his chakra wasn't depleted, and he entered the cave perfectly clean. You didn't delay him, Itachi. You spoke with him. And because of that... Pein has already issued the order. We are to execute you."
Hidan had clearly heard enough exposition.
"Oi, enough with the formalities!" Hidan roared, his manic grin stretching ear to ear as he exploded forward. The heavy, triple-bladed scythe whistled through the night air in a vicious, horizontal arc aimed directly to split Itachi from collarbone to hip.
Itachi did not retreat. He sidestepped with economical, terrifying grace.
A standard kunai slipped silently from his sleeve into his palm. As Hidan's momentum carried the scythe past him, Itachi's blade flashed once in the moonlight.
Schlick.
Hidan's right arm parted company with his shoulder in a sudden, violent spray of dark blood.
"GAAAAH! YOU BASTARD!" Hidan screamed, the sound carrying more sheer outrage than actual pain. He pivoted sharply on his heel, using his remaining left hand to swing the heavy scythe back around in a brutal, desperate backhand slash.
Itachi merely ducked under the crescent edge, his kunai rising again in a fluid, continuous motion.
Schlick.
Another clean sever. Hidan's left arm dropped heavily into the dirt, the fingers still rigidly clutching the weapon's haft. The immortal fanatic staggered backward, his mouth hanging open in a snarl of absolute disbelief and furious indignation as blood poured from both stumps.
Before Itachi could press the lethal advantage, a massive, compressed bullet of dense water screamed past his ear. Itachi was forced to twist violently aside, the projectile gouging a deep, muddy trench through the earth exactly where his head had been a microsecond prior.
Kisame lowered his hand, his expression tight, the regret entirely replaced by operational focus.
"Sorry, Itachi," Kisame said, unwrapping the bandages from Samehada in a single, fluid pull. "I can't let the priest die just yet. He's incredibly annoying, but he's useful for drawing aggro."
Hidan howled like a wounded dog, kicking his severed arms across the grass toward his body. "You useless shark bastard! I had him! Just sew me back together!"
Kisame simply tsked, revealing the dark, jagged scales of his living sword. Samehada quivered eagerly in his grip, its scales rippling as it smelled the dense, potent chakra radiating from the Uchiha.
"Quiet," Kisame commanded without looking back at the fanatic. "He's still highly dangerous." He rolled his broad shoulders, his voice dropping to a low, battle-ready hum. "You've been a good partner, Itachi. It's a genuine shame it has to end like this."
The fight ignited in earnest.
Hidan lunged again almost immediately. The dark, esoteric power of Jashin's curse was already working; thick, black threads burst from his stumps, latching onto his severed limbs and pulling them back into place, weaving flesh and bone together with grotesque, instantaneous speed. He swung wildly, his scythe carving chaotic, unpredictable arcs through the air that forced Itachi to constantly weave, backpedal, and parry.
Simultaneously, Kisame circled the perimeter to flank, wielding Samehada with crushing force. The massive, scaled blade swept in low, wide arcs meant to either shatter Itachi's legs or aggressively shave away his chakra upon the slightest contact.
Their coordination was, frankly, abysmal. Hidan charged with zero regard for Kisame's positioning, his wild swings nearly clipping the shark-man more than once. Kisame growled curses under his breath every time the immortal zealot physically blocked his line of attack.
Yet, the sheer, overwhelming pressure of their combined assault was unrelenting.
Itachi's body, already heavily taxed by his chronic fever and the deep fatigue of travel, violently protested every rapid dodge and parry. His lungs burned as if he were inhaling ash, and his peripheral vision began to tunnel, fringed with a creeping, suffocating darkness. He was a master of brief, decisive encounters; he simply did not have the stamina to afford a prolonged, physical engagement against an immortal tank and a man with the chakra reserves of a Tailed Beast.
Hidan pressed harder, terrifying in his fanatical relentlessness. He laughed maniacally through bloodied teeth, willingly accepting shallow cuts from Itachi's kunai just to close the distance, his scythe spinning in blurring figure-eights.
"Come on, Uchiha! Bleed for Jashin-sama! Let me taste it!" Hidan cheered, stepping directly into a high kick just to swing his blade at Itachi's neck.
Kisame capitalized flawlessly on the openings Hidan created. He slammed Samehada down in crushing overhead strikes that cratered the earth, or seamlessly unleashed rapid bursts of Ninjutsu.
"Water Release: Water Shark Bullet Technique!" Kisame roared.
Multiple, sharp-toothed sharks composed of dense water surged from his mouth, snapping viciously at Itachi's heels and forcing the Uchiha to continuously expend precious energy to evade.
Itachi's breath came in ragged, painful gasps. He couldn't keep dancing around them forever. The physical toll was reaching a critical threshold.
The three tomoe in his eyes spun wildly, bleeding into the sharp, intricate black pinwheels of the Mangekyō Sharingan. He focused his left eye directly on the charging immortal.
"Amaterasu...!"
The air distorted. A sudden, roaring pillar of inextinguishable black flame erupted into existence, completely engulfing Hidan's torso mid-swing.
The immortal froze instantly, his manic eyes widening in absolute horror as the demonic fire chewed effortlessly through his Akatsuki cloak and immediately began incinerating his flesh.
"GAAAAAAAHHHH!"
Hidan screamed… a raw, guttural, animalistic sound that tore through the quiet forest. He dropped to his knees, frantically clawing at his chest in a desperate bid to smother the black fire, but the flames refused to die, searing deeper into his muscle and bone with every panicked heartbeat. His fury gave way to genuine, agonizing shock.
Kisame's eyes narrowed sharply, realizing the immediate danger of the ocular jutsu. "Damn it—"
But Itachi had absolutely no time to savor the temporary reprieve.
Recognizing that close-quarters combat against the Mangekyō was suicide, Kisame slammed his hands together, channeling an ocean of chakra.
"Water Release: Massive Exploding Water Colliding Wave!"
A colossal, terrifying torrent of water exploded outward from Kisame's mouth. It wasn't a mere wave; it was a roaring, liquid mountain that instantly uprooted the surrounding trees and transformed the dark forest clearing into a violent, churning lake. The tidal wave crashed toward Itachi with apocalyptic force, threatening to crush him under thousands of tons of pressure.
Chakra surged painfully through Itachi's failing veins. He had no choice.
Susanoo.
An ethereal, skeletal ribcage of brilliant crimson materialized around him just as the wave struck. The spectral armor absorbed the absolute brunt of the deluge, groaning under the pressure as the water battered against the ribs, spraying outward in towering geysers. Slowly, skeletal arms formed, anchoring the construct against the current.
Kisame, standing atop the surging waters, grinned savagely. He fused his body with Samehada in a blinding shimmer of chakra and scales. Gills flared aggressively along his neck and shoulders as his form shifted into a terrifying, humanoid shark. He dove gracefully into the flood he had just created.
"Water Prison Shark Dance Technique!"
The massive lake of water suddenly coalesced, rising up from the ground to form a colossal, shifting dome of liquid that completely engulfed Itachi and his Susanoo. Trapped within the aquatic sphere, the currents twisted violently, actively draining chakra. Shadowy, conjured sharks circled the perimeter, waiting for the crimson armor to falter.
Itachi coughed a splatter of blood inside his protective shell, the strain of maintaining the Susanoo against the draining environment threatening to tear his mind apart. But his resolve was absolute.
The crimson Susanoo flexed its massive structure. One ethereal arm lashed out with blinding speed, its massive fist connecting solidly with Kisame's fused midsection. The sheer force of the blow hurled the shark-man completely through the boundary of the water dome like a fired cannonball. The fusion broke momentarily as Kisame crashed violently into the distant tree line, splintering several massive trunks upon impact.
Freed from immediate harassment, Itachi shifted his focus back to the screaming zealot below.
The Susanoo's secondary arm reached out, drawing the ethereal, flaming edge of the Totsuka Blade. The legendary, spiritual weapon gleamed with a holy, sealing light.
The blade descended in a single, merciful arc.
Hidan, still writhing on the muddy earth under the unquenchable burn of the Amaterasu, looked up just in time to see the crimson sword falling. The blade passed entirely through his body without physical resistance.
His final scream peaked… defiant, furious, and deeply afraid… before he was silenced completely. His burning body dissolved instantly into scattered motes of light, sucked inexorably into the gourd of the Totsuka Blade, sealed away for all eternity in a genjutsu of drunken stupor.
A moment later, Kisame rose from the distant wreckage, shaking off the impact. Water streamed from his scaled form, his white eyes blazing with a mixture of respect and lethal intent.
"You...!" Kisame growled.
Knowing that drawing out the fight would only favor the Uchiha's lethal hax, Kisame threw everything he had left into a final, overwhelming assault.
"Water Release: Great Shark Bullet Technique!""Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
Massive, chakra-devouring water sharks and roaring, liquid dragons erupted from the churning lake. Torrents of high-pressure water reshaped the forest into a storm-wracked sea, all converging on the glowing crimson avatar. Chakra poured out of Kisame without restraint; he no longer cared about conserving his reserves. Itachi was simply too dangerous to let live.
The Susanoo stood immovable, a crimson sentinel weathering the deluge. Each technique crashed violently against its armor, exploding outward in thick mists and churning foam. Itachi endured the onslaught, but his body was failing. Chakra hemorrhaged from his coils with every passing second the ribcage held. Blood leaked steadily from his spinning eyes, staining his pale cheeks.
He briefly considered utilizing Izanagi to rewrite the battle, but quickly discarded the thought. Not yet. Not against a straightforward brawler like Kisame. He needed to preserve his light.
Finally, after minutes of relentless bombardment, Kisame's attacks began to slow. His breaths heaved, his gills flaring wildly as the dark scales of Samehada dulled. The tailless beast was finally running dry.
'Now...' Itachi thought, seizing the microscopic opening.
He dropped the Susanoo entirely, letting the crimson ribs dissolve into the air. He stood exposed, completely vulnerable.
Kisame paused, caught off guard by the sudden drop in defense. He looked directly at Itachi.
Itachi's Mangekyō Sharingan flared to life, capturing Kisame's gaze.
"Tsukuyomi!"
Their eyes met across the ruined, waterlogged battlefield.
Kisame's physical world collapsed instantly into an eternity of red skies and black moons. Seventy-two hours of unimaginable, psychological agony were compressed into a single fraction of a second in the real world. Blades carved into his flesh, water drowned his lungs, and the agonizing memories of his past betrayals replayed in endless, torturous loops.
When reality violently snapped back into place, Kisame staggered forward, his white eyes entirely glassy and unfocused. His consciousness was fraying at the seams, his knees buckling under the phantom weight of three days of torture.
Itachi, his vision blurring heavily into darkness, raised a trembling hand. His last remaining kunai left his fingers in a weak, desperate, but mathematically precise arc.
The blade sailed through the air, burying itself deep into Kisame's throat.
The shark-man dropped heavily to his knees, his hands weakly grasping at the hilt. Thick, dark blood mixed with the pooling water on the ground. A faint, almost resigned smile tugged at the corners of Kisame's lips as he looked up at the blurry silhouette of his partner one last time.
Then, his eyes closed forever, and his massive body tipped forward into the mud.
Silence returned to the devastated forest, broken only by the steady dripping of water from the broken canopy and the soft hiss of dying embers where Hidan had burned.
Itachi stood alone.
The adrenaline abruptly abandoned his system, leaving nothing but the crushing reality of his failing biology. He walked forward, his steps slow, dragging, and incredibly deliberate, until he found a fallen log half-submerged in the newly formed shallows.
He sank heavily to the ground, resting his bare back against the damp wood, his chest rising and falling in a shallow, agonizing rhythm as the darkness finally claimed his vision.
The forest around him lay devastated… Rtrees toppled, the earth churned to mud, water pooling in deep craters. Two comrades lay dead by his hand.
And because of this... he had nowhere to go.
Flashback Over
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