Hidan listened to Itachi's warning to Kisame and only let out a faint cold smile.
Even if Itachi shouted himself hoarse, what difference would it make?
With his current speed and strength, even Amaterasu could barely keep up with his movements.
"Be careful!"
Itachi's voice cut sharply across the lake, But it was already too late.
BOOM!
Hidan slammed a brutal side kick into Kisame's ribs.
The force was monstrous, sending the Shark Man's body flying across the lake like a launched torpedo, water erupting upward in towering waves.
"Gah—! So fast…!"
Kisame staggered in shock, coughing blood.
Had Itachi not barely kept up with Hidan's outline and warned him at the last possible instant, that blow would've shattered him completely.
Even so… the damage was serious.
"Sa… samehada…"
Kisame stared at Samehada as it throbbed violently in his hands.
The blade wasn't damaged...
But somehow, it was shaking.
It was afraid.
"Don't let him touch your blood, Kisame!"
Itachi shouted sharply.
But with Hidan's current speed far surpassing the sound barrier, the warning reached the air a fraction of a second too late.
Before the echo faded—
Hidan was already behind Kisame.
"It's already over."
Hidan's cold voice and Itachi's warning overlapped in Kisame's ears.
Kisame reacted faster than he ever had in his life.
Pushed by sheer survival instinct, he instantly fused with Samehada, scales ripping across his back in a layer of armor.
Clang—!
Hidan's decapitating scythe scraped across the scaled armor, showering sparks into the air.
Kisame used the impact to fling himself back toward Itachi, hands forming seals at blinding speed. The opponent before him radiated a level of power he'd never encountered.
Fortunately… this battlefield happened to be a massive lake.
A perfect stage for Kisame.
"Water Style: Thousand Hungry Sharks!"
"Fire Style: Great Fireball!"
Kisame and Itachi unleashed their jutsu simultaneously.
Hundreds of chakra sharks exploded out from the lake, all lunging toward Hidan with snapping jaws.
A blazing great fireball roared above the water's surface, sweeping toward him.
And Itachi's shuriken skill sealed every possible escape path with perfect precision.
For teamwork like this…
Hidan had to admit, only these two in Akatsuki could pull it off flawlessly.
Few in the organization trusted each other.
Fewer still fought like true partners.
Facing such opponents, Hidan cracked a small grin...
And his right arm gathered power.
"Daytime Tiger!!"
A furious burst of pressure tore the lake apart, water exploding outward as a massive white tiger materialized from pure compressed air.
It roared, then charged forward with earth-shattering force.
The white tiger swallowed everything—
the sharks, the fireball, the shuriken—
tearing through them all like brittle paper, before lunging directly at Itachi and Kisame.
"Water Style: Great Shark Bullet!!"
Feeling the crushing pressure of Daytime Tiger, Kisame's expression froze.
He immediately unleashed his strongest technique.
A gigantic chakra shark lunged toward the white tiger, fangs bared.
For a moment, the two titanic beasts clashed evenly.
Hidan only watched with cold amusement.
A similar move from Might Guy had once shredded Kisame's Great Shark Bullet effortlessly.
"How—how is this happening…?!"
Kisame's voice cracked with disbelief.
His Great Shark devoured ninjutsu and grew stronger.
But this attack...it devoured nothing.
Why couldn't it consume the tiger?
A heavy dread settled in Kisame's heart.
"This isn't ninjutsu… it's pure taijutsu."
Itachi answered calmly.
He knew of the Eight Gates.
But not the killing moves hidden behind them—
because no one had ever lived long enough to record them.
Hidan used them freely.
And through the Sharingan, Itachi finally saw why the Great Shark failed.
"Taijutsu…? Impossible! How can taijutsu become something like that!?"
Kisame was stunned.
This wasn't human-level combat anymore.
Meanwhile, the white tiger—still bolstered by Hidan's monstrous aura...ripped Kisame's Great Shark apart and lunged straight for them.
"Amaterasu!"
Blood streamed from Itachi's right eye as pitch-black flames erupted, latching onto the white tiger.
Even a taijutsu construct couldn't resist Amaterasu's nature; it burned and burned until the compressed air finally dissipated.
"Oh? Amaterasu again. Seriously… for something that claims to burn anything, it's got the worst kill record in the whole series."
Hidan sighed, genuinely unimpressed.
It looked cool.
It sounded invincible.
And yet almost nobody ever actually died from it.
"Itachi." Kisame wiped blood from his lips.
"We can't beat him like this. My chakra absorption is useless… Samehada can't heal me."
"No choice. Retreat. Encountering him already means the mission has failed."
Itachi's breathing was heavy.
Amaterasu took a toll, and against an opponent who also wielded a Mangekyō, even Tsukuyomi was unreliable.
That left only Susanoo—
Which he didn't want to use.
"Tch… I don't want to run away like this!"
Kisame growled, frustrated and wounded.
"Retreat? You two seriously think you can walk away in one piece?"
Hidan tilted his head, amusement and bloodlust mixing in his gaze.
"You're getting naïve, Itachi."
With the Gate of Shock open, exhaustion didn't exist for him.
On the contrary...
This kind of fight thrilled him.
Hidan didn't bother using Susanoo or any of the abilities from his eyes.
He just wanted to throw hands.
And honestly?
It was exciting — the fact that just the Eight Inner Gates alone were enough for him to beat both Itachi and Kisame at the same time.
"Itachi…" Kisame glanced at him grimly.
He understood...escape was no longer an option.
But Itachi's expression, calm and unreadable as still water, didn't waver.
"Hidan. Don't push me."
His voice was quiet… but carried a sharp edge.
"Since you've awakened a Mangekyō Sharingan of your own, then surely you understand a certain forbidden Uchiha technique."
Hidan paused raising an eyebrow.
Itachi continued, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"Izanami."
The final trump card...he had.
Hidan almost forgot about that particular jutsu.
Izanami.
A technique that didn't need eye contact at all.
An illusion cast not through vision, but through the body's sensations, locking the target inside an endless loop unless they accepted the caster's predetermined "answer."
If the victim refused to align with the caster's will…
They would be trapped forever.
Hidan clicked his tongue, annoyance flashing in his eyes.
"Itachi, you're really willing to go that far? One of your eyes goes blind the moment you use it. And if that happens… what about Sasuke?"
He wasn't rushing forward anymore.
Instead, he asked quietly, almost mockingly—
but with an edge that cut deeper than his scythe.
Because it was true:
A Sharingan that had completely lost its light…
was useless.
It couldn't be transplanted.
It couldn't be evolved.
It couldn't help Sasuke in any way.
If Itachi used Izanami here…
He would be destroying one of Sasuke's future eyes forever.
Even Hidan, pissed that this bastard dared to threaten him, didn't miss the irony.
Itachi's face remained cold, controlled, unreadable as ever.
"If you insist on pushing us," he said, voice steady but tight with resolve, "then go ahead. Try it."
"I, too," Itachi continued, "would like to see whether someone who awakened a Mangekyō like you… can truly resist Izanami."
"…"
Well damn… he really went nuts.
Hidan frowned.
He had the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, but his Kotoamatsukami was on cooldown — he needed time before he could use it again.
So using that on Itachi right now wasn't an option.
And Izanami?
Yeah, that wasn't something he could underestimate, even with the Eternal Mangekyō.
If he had the Rinnegan, he would've slaughtered both of them on the spot and walked away humming.
Right now, his remaining choice was to bust out the full-body Susanoo and turn Itachi into paste-meat.
But pushing Itachi that far meant risking Izanagi too — he could reverse his own death and then cast Izanami right after, and Hidan didn't have a way to protect himself from that crap at the moment.
Not that the situation was actually dangerous.
He could Kamui-warp out at any moment.
But that would mean letting them go.
And that annoyed him more than anything.
For the first time, he felt something weird — he was clearly stronger than both of them, could kill them right here, but Izanami, that fucking plot-hole Kishimoto summoned from the pits of narrative hell, had him stuck in check.
The more Hidan thought about it, the angrier he got.
This little bitch Itachi… I swear I'll make him pay for this with the worst kind of punishment.
No.
No, that wasn't enough.
He had to pull a full Griffith on him...
Yeah, that felt right.
Itachi deserved the Guts treatment.
Hidan decided on the spot...he would make Itachi get pounded by at least a thousand shinobi.
The reason he was so pissed wasn't just the fight...
It was because his will had been threatened.
Hidan didn't play around with that.
He wasn't going to take risks here.
Sure, he could try to kill them right now…
But if even one misstep — one tiny slip — somehow threw him into Izanami, even if the chances were low, he wasn't willing to gamble it.
He refused to be trapped by that bullshit.
But that didn't mean he'd forget any of this.
Itachi Uchiha had officially been added to his worst enemies list, stamped in red ink and underlined with pure hatred.
And Hidan promised himself one thing:
Itachi's ending would not be pleasant.
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