Chapter 184: Itachi vs. Obito
Land of Rain. Amegakure.
Central tower.
Three days had passed by the time Itachi made it back through the familiar steel forest, dragging an exhausted, missing-a-limb Sasori behind him.
The moment they touched the rain falling on Amegakure, Pain already knew they were back.
"Itachi's home~~"
Zetsu had sensed both of them before Pain did, and reported it immediately to wherever Obito happened to be hiding that day.
"Good for him. Why are you telling me."
Obito leafed through Madara's old materials, not bothering to look up.
Since the engagement with Sakura, he'd been forced to confront something uncomfortable about himself: he relied almost entirely on Kamui to fight. Once an opponent worked out how to counter it, his options collapsed fast.
And working out the counter wasn't actually that hard. Two experienced jonin coordinating properly could expose Kamui's mechanics within a single engagement.
Against Sakura, it had done essentially nothing. He hadn't stopped the Fourth Raikage's death. Her physical durability and recovery had simply absorbed everything he threw at her. He hadn't even managed to slow her down meaningfully.
He needed real strength. Soon.
And it wasn't just that fight eating at him. Since his identity came out, Pain had started handling him differently — assigning him tasks rather than treating him as an equal. Even someone as low on the totem pole as Kisame had started needling him. If Deidara or Hidan ever got a real opening, the mockery would be relentless.
His mood darkened slightly.
"They look pretty rough~~" Zetsu thrived on this kind of thing, and the long-running tension between Obito and Itachi was a particular favorite source of entertainment for him.
"Hm?" That got Obito's attention. "When did this happen?"
"Just now. They're probably heading to report to Pain right now~~"
Zetsu's grin had the specific quality of someone enjoying other people's misfortune.
"Let's go watch."
Obito set down the dragon-flame scroll without hesitation and headed for the door. Zetsu trailed after him happily, eager for the show.
If Black Zetsu had been present, he'd have told Obito to stay focused on his own training instead of inserting himself into someone else's business. Unfortunately, Black Zetsu was several thousand miles away in Kumogakure, buried under the logistics of running a captured village — postwar administration that only he and Killer Bee had the standing to handle, and Killer Bee's temperament was poorly suited to paperwork.
In the dim steel corridor, footsteps echoed against the sound of rain outside.
"Itachi. This was my bad luck this round. If I have any say in it, I am never running another mission with you again."
Sasori, fresh from briefing Pain, looked at the expressionless man beside him with real venom.
This mission had cost him dearly. The Third Kazekage puppet, abandoned in Konoha. His own body — modified into a puppet shell — also abandoned in Konoha. The three hundred decoys sustaining Hundred Puppets Performance, gone entirely. What remained of him now was one surviving decoy body, missing an arm, courtesy of an enlarged shuriken during his escape.
Years of accumulated work, destroyed in a single mission.
"I never asked you to come with me."
Itachi's response was flat, uninflected.
He'd already worked through, privately, why his luck had been this consistently bad. At first he'd assumed it was simply Sasori's misfortune rubbing off, or that the two of them together generated some compounding effect.
But after they'd split up, he'd run into Mei a second time, and then Jiraiya. That had clarified the pattern.
It wasn't Sasori who was cursed.
It was him.
And the reason was Sasuke.
He thought back to the seven-pointed Mangekyo. Right before they'd parted, Sasuke had used a technique on him — Kotoamatsukami, by name.
A yin-release force settling onto him. At the time he'd assumed the technique had simply malfunctioned.
It hadn't.
That was a Mangekyo built to interfere directly with fate.
Whatever else could be said about Itachi's character, his analytical capacity was genuinely top-tier in the ninja world. He'd reconstructed the mechanics of Sasuke's ability almost entirely from observed effect alone.
Misfortune. Bad luck. Whatever name applied — the function was the same. Make someone's circumstances turn against them.
Konoha was a large village, and in the span of one night after parting from Sasuke, Itachi had run into Mei, an Inuzuka tracking dog squad, Sakura, then Mei again after briefly losing her, and finally Jiraiya.
By the end of it he'd had nothing left to resist with.
Hikaru. Mei. Sakura. Jiraiya. Every single encounter a serious threat in its own right — and all of it happening inside the village, where Itachi had to fight with one hand tied behind his back to avoid drawing a full-scale response, while his opponents arrived one after another in sequence.
At least it was sequential and not simultaneous.
Sasuke. Those eyes.
Is this what you meant by a Mangekyo born of love?
"You—" Sasori's jaw tightened, looking at someone who simply wouldn't engage.
A figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
Obito.
"Out of my way."
Sasori, already irritated, snapped at him without preamble.
He didn't know Obito personally — had assumed he was simply an Akatsuki probationary member until Kisame had mentioned, in passing, that this was the man who'd been impersonating Madara.
None of that concerned Sasori directly. His attention belonged entirely to perfecting his own eternal art.
Obito had no interest in starting anything with Sasori either. He stepped aside, letting him pass, and turned his full attention to Itachi, who was watching him from across the corridor.
"Heard this mission left you in rough shape."
Mockery in his tone, open challenge in his eyes.
Sasori, halfway past, went rigid.
Is this aimed at Itachi, or at me?
He wasn't stupid. He understood the comment was aimed squarely at Itachi.
But the framing still grated.
This sneaking, hiding little rat.
"And?"
Itachi's voice stayed level.
He'd just gotten back, hadn't had time to recover properly, and had no interest in starting something with this particular man tonight.
Not interested didn't mean afraid, though. Kamui was a real problem to deal with, but Tsukuyomi wasn't exactly toothless either. If physical force didn't connect, genjutsu would.
"Seeing your little brother again — does it bring back the night you killed your parents with your own hands?"
Obito understood the full context of the Uchiha massacre. He knew perfectly well that the "gathering intelligence on the Two-Tails" cover story was thin enough to see through.
The actual point of Itachi's repeated trips to Konoha was obvious — applying pressure to Sasuke, keeping the boy moving toward where Itachi wanted him.
And Obito had his own grudge to settle. Itachi's comment about killing his own teacher, last time, hadn't been forgotten.
The mention of the massacre landed harder than Obito expected. Itachi's composure wavered, just slightly.
He found himself thinking, unbidden, about Sakura's words from the night before.
The entire clan was your entry fee. The price you paid to keep your brother safe.
And this man — Obito — had been part of pushing events toward that outcome in the first place.
And Izumi. You're the one who killed her.
Itachi wasn't looking for absolution. But—
You don't get to live.
Red bled into his eyes.
"You want to fight me?"
His voice had gone cold, the killing intent in it no longer disguised.
"You think I'm afraid of you?"
Obito met the shift without flinching, mildly surprised at how easily he'd provoked it, but not concerned.
"Follow me."
Itachi gave him one flat look and launched himself out into the rain.
Obito didn't hesitate. He went after him.
Back in the room at the corridor's end, Pain watched both Uchiha leave without intervening.
"Not going to stop them?" Konan asked, watching the same exit.
"They've been carrying this grudge a long time. Let them settle it. I'll step in if it actually matters."
Pain's tone was unhurried, carrying the specific confidence of someone who genuinely believed he could end either confrontation with a thought, whenever he chose.
"As long as you can actually control it."
Konan had no objection. She'd never liked Obito to begin with. And Itachi's "intelligence gathering on the Two-Tails" had clearly been a thin pretext for something personal — she had no particular investment in defending him either.
Let them tear into each other. Dogs fighting dogs.
Elsewhere in the corridor, Sasori watched the two of them go, jaw locked.
He'd have liked to take a turn at Obito himself, but with every puppet currently destroyed, that would have to wait.
"Sasori-danna, why are you just standing here?"
A blond-haired teenager with a single ponytail wandered up, puzzled at finding Sasori frozen mid-corridor.
"Nothing."
He gave Deidara a flat look and walked off.
Obito.
This debt is logged.
There will be time.
"Fire Release — Great Fireball!"
The moment they hit the open rain, Itachi launched the technique the Uchiha were known for.
"Cute trick."
Red flickered through Obito's eyes. He didn't dodge the fireball moving through the downpour — he walked straight into it, hands already running through seals, and finished them the instant he came out the other side.
"Fire Release — Great Fire Annihilation!"
Where Itachi conserved his chakra carefully, Obito spent his without concern. He could throw out a B-rank fire technique like it cost nothing.
Great Fire Annihilation worked differently from a simple fireball — the more chakra fed into it, the wider the area it consumed, closer in principle to a water technique than a typical fire jutsu.
A wall of flame rolled across the open space like a tidal wave, evaporating rain on contact in a wide hissing sheet.
Itachi watched it come, composed.
Exactly the profile I expected.
He didn't know how Obito sustained this level of chakra expenditure without limit, but the dependence itself was the exploitable flaw. No technique was without weakness. And this man's weakness was structural.
Me.
With his identity exposed, Itachi no longer carried any reservation about how far to push this.
Obito, for his part, understood with equal clarity that Itachi had stopped holding back.
Both of them were fighting to kill.
A genuine death match.
The flame wave swallowed Itachi entirely, then continued past him into a steel tower behind, instantly drying every drop of rain in its path.
Only the fact that Amegakure was built almost entirely from steel, in constant rainfall, kept two fire techniques of this scale from starting a real conflagration.
Crows poured out of the dissipating flame, gathering, reforming into a human silhouette.
Itachi.
Genjutsu?
When?
Obito hadn't registered it being cast. Not even a flicker of awareness.
Is this what a genjutsu specialist's Sharingan actually looks like in practice?
"Obito."
Itachi's voice cut through the rain, quiet, precise.
"What?"
Obito turned toward the sound on reflex.
"Behind you."
A trap. He knew it the moment the words landed. But the warning in his nerves was real regardless, and he turned anyway.
A shuriken, closing fast.
And behind him, a second Itachi he hadn't noticed appearing.
A clone? When did he form the seal?
Obito's expression went tight. Without thinking it through further, he activated Kamui, and the shuriken passed cleanly through the space where his body should have been.
Clink.
A second shuriken intercepted the first mid-air with a sharp ring.
Uchiha Style — Wind Wheel, Three Blades.
More shuriken followed, fired in rapid succession, ringing off each other through the rain, curving and redirecting in midair.
The Itachi clone behind him closed in with a kunai raised.
"Hmph. Amateur tricks."
"A shuriken and a clone — you think that's enough for me?"
A black rod slid from Obito's sleeve, already swinging toward the approaching clone.
A feint.
Itachi read it the instant it started.
Exactly as he expected — both figures passed through each other's space, and in the same instant, both reversed direction and closed again.
Another feint.
Same read, same result. They passed each other a second time.
Two exchanges, neither one producing the opening Itachi needed — a clean line of sight into Obito's eyes.
Obito was being careful. He had Itachi's profile on file: Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu. Amaterasu he could simply phase through without concern. Tsukuyomi was the actual threat — eye contact with that, and the outcome was death or permanent damage, no middle option.
Feint.
Feint.
Feint again.
The repetition kept Itachi's focus stretched thin, both of them probing for the real opening behind the noise.
Somewhere off to the side, the clone kept firing shuriken in a steady, ringing rhythm through the rain.
Obito glanced briefly at the clone.
Irritating. Find an opening, remove it.
That thought itself was the opening — Itachi dropped low, eyes lifting slightly, angling for direct contact.
Obito had anticipated exactly that. His wide Akatsuki sleeve swept up, blocking the sightline cleanly, the black rod already thrusting forward.
Still a feint, Itachi told himself, certain of it.
In the instant before the rod made contact, his kunai had already found Obito's chest at the same moment.
Both bodies passed through each other again.
Rain fell through where Obito's body should have been solid.
Itachi spun immediately, throwing the kunai he'd just used directly at Obito's retreating form.
It passed clean through him.
Obito's eyes sharpened, and the black rod stabbed directly at Itachi's face.
A flurry of incoming projectiles forced him to phase again mid-motion, intangible for the duration.
And in that instant, the shuriken in the air had vanished. The kunai in Itachi's hand had vanished too.
The opening.
Obito's confidence locked in. The black rod shot forward at lightning speed, aimed directly at Itachi.
This wasn't a feint.
Itachi's mouth pressed into a tight line. He didn't dodge the rod coming from behind. He turned to face it directly.
He wants to make eye contact at the exact moment of impact. Use the wound itself as the bridge into Tsukuyomi.
You're underestimating me, Itachi.
A body carrying Wood Release isn't taken down by one Tsukuyomi.
My yang chakra isn't something a sickly little brother gets to compare himself to.
Obito's confidence was real, mathematically grounded — he was braced and ready for the technique to land.
A pierced chest in exchange for a successful Tsukuyomi. Worth it.
But Tsukuyomi never arrived.
The rod drove through Itachi's chest, and water sprayed outward in a wide arc from the impact.
And in the spray, visible for just a fraction of a second: a burning explosive tag.
Clone — detonation.
Obito's eyes contracted.
BOOM.
Flame and rainwater erupted together in a violent column.
When the dust settled, Obito stood untouched in the center of the clearing.
He looked across the open ground at Itachi, standing some distance away, unhurt.
He wasn't using the clone as a Tsukuyomi vector. I read the play wrong.
He set me up.
"Your phasing technique has been active for four minutes and twenty-one seconds, total, across this engagement."
Itachi's voice carried across the rain, flat and even.
Something cold settled in Obito's chest.
Don't tell me—
"Every technique in this world has a limit. There's no such thing as a perfect, unbeatable jutsu."
"If I round that number — should I assume your maximum sustained phasing duration is roughly five minutes?"
!!!
Obito's expression went through several stages of bad in rapid succession.
Damn it.
He had never intended to actually use Tsukuyomi on himself. Itachi had been running a calculation the entire engagement — measuring his cumulative phase time, piece by piece, across every exchange.
And Pain was watching all of this.
"So what if you know that?!" Obito's voice came out sharp, ugly. "You held me to one five-minute window. Try holding me to a second one!"
Itachi's mouth curved, faint and cold.
"That's incorrect."
"Remember the first crow you saw — right at the start?"
Obito went quiet.
"That was a minor genjutsu. No real damage potential. Just enough to skew your perception slightly."
"The actual elapsed time was two and a half minutes. The 'four minutes twenty-one seconds' I stated out loud was disinformation — meant to provoke exactly the correction you just gave me."
"I genuinely didn't expect you to confirm the five-minute ceiling yourself, out loud, in front of witnesses."
...
!!!
This absolute—
"Your phasing technique is genuinely strong. But it has one weakness."
"Me."
Itachi now had Obito's actual operational limit confirmed. There was no reason left to hold anything back.
Force him to phase repeatedly with Amaterasu, exhaust the technique's window, and the instant his body solidified — Tsukuyomi, full force. Then Totsuka's blade, to finish it.
He launched directly at Obito.
Obito, furious past the point of careful calculation, came back at him without a word.
Anything I say now just gives him more information. Silence is the only safe option left.
A voice cut between them.
"Stop."
An orange-haired figure appeared instantly, positioned directly between the two of them.
Itachi halted immediately.
He'd already extracted what he needed from confirming Obito's phasing window. The message embedded in it was clear enough: if Pain didn't intervene, Itachi would finish this himself. If Pain did intervene — Obito's remaining days inside Akatsuki were going to get considerably harder regardless.
Identity exposed. Operational details compromised. What leverage did the man have left, facing Pain, in this condition?
"Lethal combat between members is forbidden."
Itachi stopped. Pain registered the compliance with satisfaction.
Obito did not stop.
He surged forward without losing speed, straight through where Pain's body stood.
He'd nearly lost his mind to fury. Identity gone. Operational secrets gone. What was left for him to negotiate with, going forward?
Win or lose against Itachi right now, the larger contest was already lost.
"Hmph."
A short, cold exhale.
The instant before the solidified rod reached Itachi's forehead, Obito's body was wrenched backward through the air, uncontrolled, slamming away from the engagement entirely.
Universal Pull.
Every inch of Amegakure existed inside Pain's perceptual range through the toad-summon sensory network. The moment Obito had solidified, Pain had already known exactly where and when.
"Obito. Are you defying me?"
The voice came from behind, calm, flat, entirely without heat.
Obito stood frozen where he'd landed.
A long silence.
"...No."
Itachi watched Obito fold and felt something cold and satisfied settle in his chest.
Using one weapon to remove another. This was exactly that, no more complicated than it looked.
There was still a use he could make of this. Leaking Izanagi's existence to Pain, at the right moment, would finish the job thoroughly.
Itachi's own Mangekyo was reserved entirely for Sasuke's future — Izanagi held no real value to him personally. But to Obito, it was everything. The single technique his entire survival strategy depended on.
Obito.
Did you ever imagine it would come to this?
☆☆☆
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