The Nine-Tails' chakra arms erupted from Naruto's abdomen, instantly parrying the massive boulders hurtling toward him.
"Nice dodge, Naruto!"
"Compared to when I fought Pain, I've gotten a lot stronger!" Naruto stepped forward, a confident grin playing on his lips.
"Naruto... though I have no right to ask this of you... I'm leaving Kanon and Sasuke in your hands."
"I've planned on that from the very beginning!" Naruto shouted back at Itachi.
"Then entrusting them to you was the right choice..." Itachi's voice was low, burdened with a rare trace of relief. "I'm leaving Kanon to you as well, Naruto."
"Don't you worry! I'll stop Kanon, and then I'm bringing her back to Konoha!"
Hearing Naruto's declaration, Itachi let out a faint, soft chuckle. "Then I'll leave it to you."
Beside Itachi, Nagato shouted to the group, his voice strained, "Stay away from me! I have no mobility!"
No sooner had the words left Nagato's mouth than his hands began weaving signs of their own accord.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Poof!
With a cloud of smoke, the Giant Multi-Headed Dog and the Giant Drill-Beaked Bird appeared.
"Did I miscalculate?" Nagato sat atop the giant bird, looking down at Naruto with a sense of helpless frustration.
"You can still use those moves?!" Naruto yelled.
Under the cover of the commotion, Itachi had already flickered behind Killer B.
"Behind you!" Naruto warned.
"I'm on it!" B swung Samehada in a wide arc behind him.
"Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Fire: Scarlet Claw!"
Itachi spat out a volley of flames, concealing a flurry of shuriken within the searing heat.
B furrowed his brows. Aside from Sasuke, why was every Uchiha this much of a pain to deal with? A massive chakra hand manifested from the Eight-Tails, shielding him from the blast. Simultaneously, an octopus tentacle erupted from the ground, ensnaring Itachi's form.
"Gotcha, bakayaro, konoyaro!"
"You're big, but you're easy to take down!" Naruto shouted, flooring one of the summons with a heavy punch.
"Don't let your guard down, Naruto!"
"What the—?!" Naruto's eyes widened as the giant dog began to split and multiply after being hit.
Just as Killer B moved to finish Itachi, he froze. The Itachi in his grasp dissolved into a cloud of dozens of cawing crows.
"Genjutsu!" B realized, startled.
"Do not look into my eyes!" Itachi warned, his crows diving toward B with lethal precision.
Deep within his subconscious, the Eight-Tails struck B to snap his focus. "Hey! Look closely, B!"
Sure enough, the swarm of crows morphed back into a hail of shuriken. B's reflexes were lightning-fast; he instantly drew his seven blades from Samehada's mouth.
The Seven-Swords Style Killer B had returned. With a burst of explosive speed, he became a blur of steel, lunging toward Itachi.
Faced with the sheer velocity of the Seven-Swords Style, Itachi's expression shifted to one of genuine surprise. He didn't dare clash head-on, opting instead to leap back several paces to create distance.
Across the clearing, Naruto attempted to blast the giant dog with a Rasengan, only for the beast to divide once more.
"The more you attack it, the more it multiplies! You have to take me down first!" Nagato urged.
Naruto ashed his teeth, his gaze hardening as he looked toward the side.
True to Nagato's warning, Itachi leaped into the fray, his eyes shifting into the Mangekyō Sharingan.
"B-otchan, be careful! If you get hit by Amaterasu or Tsukuyomi, it's game over!"
"Watch out for the Mangekyō!"
Naruto knew all too well that Itachi's Tsukuyomi wouldn't be nearly as "gentle" as the one Kanon had used on him.
But in that exact moment, Naruto felt a violent upheaval in his stomach. His throat constricted, and a crow, bearing a Mangekyō Sharingan in its left eye, forced its way out of his mouth!
"So, it finally appeared..." Itachi whispered. In that instant, everything became clear to him.
The others watched the scene in confusion. What was Itachi Uchiha trying to achieve?
"Why... why did a crow just fly out of my mouth?!" Naruto gasped.
Suddenly, a trail of blood leaked from the corner of Itachi's eye.
"Naruto! It's Amaterasu! Get out of there!" Nagato roared.
Killer B threw a blade to provide cover, but he was instantly repelled by Nagato's Shinra Tensei.
"Dammit, my body moved on its own again!"
In the next heartbeat, Itachi's eyes locked with the Mangekyō Sharingan of the crow.
…
Elsewhere, a strange sensation washed over the caster.
"What? What's happening?" Kabuto asked, stunned.
"It's Shisui's Sharingan. Kotoamatsukami," Kanon said plainly, glancing down at her blue Uchiha coat.
"Kotoamatsukami?!" Kabuto's voice rose in shock.
"I was wondering why Danzo only had one eye capable of Kotoamatsukami. It seems Itachi hid the other one away," Kanon remarked, her expression showing a hint of mild surprise.
"Because of this, we might have just become the targets." Kanon placed a hand on Kabuto's shoulder. "It looks like we'll have to deal with Itachi Uchiha together," she added tonelessly.
"Tch. That Itachi! I was too careless."
"He's nothing like the other dead souls!"
"To think he could actually break free from the Reanimation Jutsu..." Kabuto was still reeling from the impossibility of it.
"Of course he could," Kanon said softly. "That is the power of Kotoamatsukami, after all."
…
"It wasn't Amaterasu?" Nagato asked, bewildered.
"I didn't expect it to turn out like this..." Itachi said, his voice laced with a weary resignation.
"What's going on?"
"Amaterasu!" Itachi whipped his head around.
Black flames instantly engulfed Nagato, along with the multi-headed dog. The summons began to incinerate under the inextinguishable fire.
"Did he miss with the Amaterasu?" Naruto asked, confused.
"That crow belongs to you, doesn't it?! What did you do with it?!" Nagato shouted through the pain.
Itachi's only response was a second volley of Amaterasu.
"It worked," Itachi called out to Nagato.
"I see." Nagato nodded, his charred form falling toward the ground.
Itachi flickered back to Naruto's side.
"Here he comes!" Naruto prepared to attack, but Itachi held up a hand to stop him.
"Calm down. I've broken free of the control!"
"The enemy's ninjutsu has been overwritten by a new genjutsu."
"One titled 'Protect Konoha.' It has nullified the Reanimation Jutsu's command."
"I prepared that crow in advance. It was set to emerge and react in response to my Mangekyō Sharingan... just in case."
Killer B leaped over, eyeing Itachi warily as the Uchiha explained the situation to the group.
"Hidden within the crow's left eye..."
"Is Shisui Uchiha's Mangekyō Sharingan. The ultimate genjutsu: Kotoamatsukami!"
"Thanks to this jutsu, I've regained my autonomy. It seems Shisui's Mangekyō has closed, though." Itachi looked at the crow as the eye reverted to a standard three-tomoe Sharingan, a flicker of regret in his gaze.
"Shisui Uchiha?" Naruto asked, but Killer B seemed to recognize the name.
"The greatest genjutsu user of the Uchiha clan... Shisui of the Body Flicker?"
Itachi nodded. "Shisui's visual power allows him to manipulate an opponent's will without them ever realizing it. It is the strongest of all genjutsu."
"I cast a command upon that eye, 'Protect Konoha,' and placed it within the crow's left eye before giving it to you, Naruto."
"I simply didn't expect that I would be the one to fall under its spell."
Naruto looked puzzled. "If you had an eye like that, why did you give it to me?"
Itachi lowered his head, his eyes bleeding back from the Mangekyō to three-tomoe.
"A nameless shinobi who sacrifices themselves to protect peace from the shadows... that is a true ninja. That is what Shisui taught me."
"Shisui sensed that his eyes would only cause more conflict, so he staged his death to make it look like the eyes were destroyed."
"I helped him, as I was already under suspicion from the village at the time."
"He gave me his left eye and told me to use it to protect the village. Then, he disappeared."
"And I, using the same methods, simply gave that eye to you, someone who shares Shisui's ideals."
"If the Sasuke I left behind ever became a threat to the village, then as the one who held Shisui's eye, I would have failed Shisui's final wish."
"The only one who can correct that mistake is you. You said Sasuke is your brother... therefore, you are the only one who can stop him, Naruto."
"To obtain true power, the Eternal Mangekyō, Sasuke will eventually transplant my eyes. At that moment, the crow inside you would have reacted to my eyes and emerged."
"It would have cast Kotoamatsukami on Sasuke, forcing him to protect Konoha."
"But there was only one eye. It wasn't intended for Kanon, who somehow managed to survive. I had no way to ensure she would act to protect the village."
"So... my only option was to kill her with my own hands. To ensure the plan stayed on track without a single deviation."
"That... was my plan."
After hearing Itachi's explanation, Naruto lowered his head, his expression twisted with pain. He had no brother, no family of his own, so he couldn't fully grasp Itachi's logic, but he could understand Kanon's agony perfectly.
Rejected from the moment she was born, living under the shadow of her own brother's hunt... if Kanon hadn't been strong enough, she would have been dead long ago.
"Itachi... you don't understand Kanon at all."
"She craved the love of her family, too. But no matter how hard she tried, all she got from you was abandonment!"
Naruto lunged forward, grabbing Itachi by the collar and hoisting him into the air. Killer B rushed to pull Naruto back.
"She was only six years old back then! She just wanted to live! What did she do wrong?! Why did she deserve to be hunted and abandoned by her own brother!"
"Answer me, Itachi Uchiha! What could a six-year-old have possibly done wrong to make you want her dead no matter what?!"
Faced with Naruto's roar, Itachi said nothing. His inner world was a storm of turmoil, and tears of blood began to stream from his eyes.
"Then why didn't you use Shisui's eye on Sasuke back then?" B asked.
"It wasn't that I didn't want to; I couldn't. At the time... the interval between uses for Shisui's Mangekyō was over a decade, unless one possessed the chakra of Hashirama Senju."
"Besides, I needed my death to push Sasuke toward certain paths."
"But Kanon... before I died, I truly intended for her to die with me. It's only now, in death, that I finally see myself clearly..."
"Kanon becoming who she is today... that is entirely my fault."
Itachi offered his apology to Naruto, who was vibrating on the edge of pure rage.
…
In the other location, Kanon was tugging hard on both of Kabuto's ears, screaming at him.
"Hurry up and cancel my senpai's Reanimation! That guy has the Totsuka Blade!"
"Wait! Kanon-chan, stop pulling my ears!"
For the first time, Kabuto realized how helpless it felt to deal with a younger sister.
"I'm switching to manual control now! I'll handle it all myself!"
"I'll give you the authority to retract them. If things look bad, you pull them back," Kabuto muttered, figuring he could still squeeze a bit more out of this operation.
————
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to my p-atre-on: p-atre-on.c-om/Overgod [Just remove the hyphen to access normally]