LOCATION: UCHIHA COMPOUND – MAIN FAMILY HOME & SURROUNDING GROUNDS
The silence that followed Sasuke's declaration was not empty. It was thick, pressurized, a vacuum before a storm. The lantern's flame guttered in the still air, casting frantic, dancing shadows that made the ghosts in the room feel nearer.
Itachi stood across from him, blood still tracing a path from his lip to his chin. His stance was not the effortless, predatory readiness of the Akatsuki member, but the weary, resolute posture of a man standing his ground for the last time. His Sharingan held Sasuke's gaze, the complex Mangekyō pattern a dark whirlpool in a sea of red.
Sasuke's own eyes, twin crimson pools with tomoe and the faint, jagged sage markings, reflected the flame. There was no battle cry, no surge of rage-fueled chakra. His energy was a low, potent hum, like a power line before a blackout—controlled, deadly, and thrumming with purpose.
It was Itachi who moved first. Not with a killing blow, but with a testing probe. A flick of his wrist sent three kunai singing through the air, not at Sasuke's vitals, but at his limbs—a disarming pattern. It was the move of a teacher, not an executioner.
Sasuke didn't dodge. His hand blurred. Shunshin. He vanished from his spot, the kunai thudding into the wall behind where he'd stood. He reappeared inside Itachi's guard, a Lightning Release-charged palm heel aimed for his brother's sternum.
Itachi: His own speed, though slowed by illness, was sublime. He flowed backward like smoke, the crackling energy grazing his robes. A puff of smoke erupted between them—a substitution with a piece of firewood from the hearth.
Sasuke was already spinning, his leg sweeping out in a low arc to shatter the log. He didn't speak. His silence was more terrifying than any scream.
Itachi rematerialized by the sliding doors to the garden. His hands formed a single seal. "Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"
A massive fireball, a signature of their clan, roared into the room, incinerating the kotatsu table, vaporizing the tea, and turning the lantern to molten glass. It was a technique they'd practiced together as children. The heat was immense, a wave of nostalgia and horror.
Sasuke didn't retreat. His hands moved in a mirror image, then twisted into a finer, more complex pattern. His chakra, supercharged by sage energy and a deeper, colder fire, erupted.
"Katon: Blue Flare!"
The fire that burst from Sasuke's mouth was not the orange-red of the Great Fireball. It was a searing, electric blue-white, a concentrated beam of pure, annihilating heat. It didn't balloon; it speared. It met Itachi's fireball head-on and pierced through it, drilling a hole in the heart of the technique before the surrounding flames could even be disrupted. The blue beam continued, forcing Itachi to abandon his position and leap backwards through the shattered doors into the overgrown garden.
The two conflagrations met and detonated. The roof of the living room blew outward with a deafening crump, showering the garden in splinters and burning debris. The shockwave rattled the bones of the dead compound.
Itachi landed in a crouch on the mossy stones of the pathway, his eyes wide, not with fear, but with profound, personal shock. The Blue Flare dissipated, leaving the air wavering with heat haze.
Itachi: "That… that is Uncle Fujian's technique." His voice was hushed, almost reverent amidst the destruction. "He never… he said it was too volatile. He never taught it to me."
Sasuke stepped through the blasted wall, embers swirling around him like dark snow. "He didn't need to teach it to you. He was going to teach it to me. When I was older. He told me so, the week before he died." His voice was flat, each word a stone dropped into a still pond. "You killed Uncle Fujian, who always slipped me extra dango when Mother wasn't looking and told me stories about the Second Hokage's lightning techniques."
The name, the specific, loving memory, was a different kind of attack. Itachi's composure, already cracked, fractured further. He remembered Fujian's laugh, his quiet pride in his own son, Indra. He remembered finding him in the police annex, trying to organize a last-ditch defense of the children's wing. The fight had been short. The look in Fujian's eyes hadn't been hatred, but a devastated understanding before the end.
Itachi said nothing. He launched himself at Sasuke, his movements becoming sharper, a flicker of the legendary speed returning. Kunai met chokutō in a shower of sparks. Their taijutsu was a brutal, silent dance under the sliver moon, a deadly echo of the sparring matches of their childhood. But there was no laughter, no correction, no praise. Only the grating of steel and the whistle of displaced air.
Sasuke was stronger now, his body hardened by Orochimaru's trials and Sage transformation. He parried a slash, twisted inside Itachi's guard, and slammed his palm into his brother's chest. "Raiton: Jibashi!" A surge of lightning chakra, not meant to kill, but to paralyze and burn.
Itachi gasped, muscles seizing. He broke the hold with a burst of chakra, but stumbled back, his breathing more labored. Blood flecked his lips again.
Sasuke: "You killed Old Man Saito." He advanced, not giving Itachi a moment to recover. "Who taught us both shurikenjutsu in the training ground behind the shrine. Who said you had the sharpest eye, but I had the more creative angles. He was seventy-eight. He was tending his bonsai trees when you found him."
Another memory. A kind, wrinkled face. Gnarled hands adjusting his grip. The old man had offered no resistance. Just a sad, tired sigh. Itachi had made it quick. A mercy he had no right to give.
"You killed infants in their cribs, Itachi." Sasuke's voice broke on the last word, not with grief, but with the sheer, monstrous weight of the fact. "Naota. One week old. Her only crime was the chakra potential in her veins. Did she cry? Did you hesitate for even a second before you smothered the future in its cradle?"
That was the blow that landed. Itachi's eyes screwed shut, a visceral flinch racking his whole body. The image Sasuke's words conjured—the tiny, sleeping face, the absolute innocence—was a spear through the last defenses around his heart. A raw, animal sound of pain was torn from him.
"AMATERASU!"
It was a scream of agony, not of attack. The black flames, the absolute negation of light, bloomed directly on Sasuke's chest.
Sasuke didn't try to outrun it. His Sage-enhanced perception had seen the ocular focus a millisecond before. His own chakra surged, and his body was sheathed in a crackling, shrieking lattice of blue-white lightning. "Raiton: Volt Tackle!"
He didn't dodge the Amaterasu. He charged through it.
The black flames clung, hungry and eternal, but the Volt Tackle wasn't just speed; it was a hyper-concentrated field of lightning chakra that surrounded him, a moving storm. For a crucial half-second, the hellfire fought the raging lightning, and in that moment of catastrophic energy collision, Sasuke became a living bolt, crossing the distance between them faster than thought.
Itachi's eyes widened in genuine shock. He hadn't expected a direct counter. He hadn't expected this… this scientific brutality. The Lightning Attack shook the Amaterasu's hold just long enough.
Sasuke's lightning-wreathed fist, carrying the momentum of the Volt Tackle and the weight of every named victim, slammed into Itachi's jaw.
The impact was thunderous. Itachi was lifted off his feet and hurled backwards like a ragdoll. He crashed through the stone lantern in the garden, skidded across the koi pond (long since dry and filled with debris), and slammed into the base of the old cherry tree, its branches bare and skeletal.
Sasuke landed, the last of the Amaterasu sputtering and dying as his lightning chakra dissipated. Smoke rose from his jacket where the black flames had touched, revealing scorched skin beneath, already beginning to knit together with the enhanced regeneration of his Sage-augmented body. He didn't pause. He walked forward, a relentless specter.
Itachi pushed himself up, leaning against the tree trunk. His jaw was clearly broken, his face a mask of blood and dirt. He looked at Sasuke, and for a fleeting moment, there was something like… pride in the depths of his agony. His little brother had become a monster of his own making, but also something entirely new—a force of cold, precise justice.
Itachi's chakra flared, a desperate, brilliant surge. Ribs of crimson, spectral energy erupted around him, cladding his broken form. The lower ribs, then the spine, then the torso and arms of a colossal, ethereal warrior. The Susanoo—the ultimate defense and offense of the Mangekyō. It was smaller than the legends told, translucent in places, flickering with the instability of Itachi's failing health and shattered spirit. But it was there. A ghostly, armored giant with a stern, masked face, clutching a spectral shield.
Itachi (voice echoing from within the construct): "You have… surpassed all expectation, Sasuke." The words were slurred by his broken jaw. "But this… ends now."
The Susanoo raised its shield, a wall of chakra-dense energy.
Sasuke stopped. He looked up at the towering spectral form, this manifestation of Uchiha power and pain. He felt no awe. Only a cold calculation. He raised his left hand. Blue-white chakra, hotter and more focused than before, coalesced into a roaring sphere above his palm, compressing until it was a tiny, searing star—the Blue Flare, compressed to its absolute limit.
In his right hand, lightning screeched and whined, drawing in ambient energy, compressing into a dense, humming lance of pure voltage—the Volt Tackle, not as a full-body move, but as a projectile spear.
"You're hiding behind it," Sasuke said, his voice carrying clearly over the hum of energy. "Just like you hid behind your mission. Behind your 'duty.' Behind your lies." He began to walk forward again, directly towards the towering Susanoo. "But the names follow you in there, brother."
"You killed Aunt Chiyo, who ran the tea shop and knew everyone's favorite blend."
He hurled the compressed Blue Flare. It struck the Susanoo's shield not as an explosion, but as a drill. It shrieked, grinding against the spectral energy, sending massive cracks spiderwebbing across its surface. The Susanoo staggered back a step.
"You killed Cousin Ren, who was going to propose to his girlfriend from the Hyūga branch the next morning."
The Lightning Spear lanced out, hitting the exact same spot. The cracks widened. A fragment of the shield broke away, dissipating into crimson mist.
"You killed Grand-Uncle Hayate, the last living veteran of the Second War, who lost his leg for this village."
Sasuke was sprinting now. He formed a new technique, a fusion of his heritage—Fire and Lightning. "Katon: Raiton—Shinsū Sōkōgeki!" A wave of blue fire, laced with arcing lightning, hammered into the Susanoo. The construct groaned, a sound felt in the soul rather than heard. Another rib shattered.
With each name, each specific, loving, ordinary person reduced to a victim, Itachi's Susanoo faltered. It wasn't just Sasuke's power. It was the truth of that power. Every blow was weighted with a stolen life, a stolen future. The spiritual energy that formed the Susanoo was intertwined with Itachi's will, and his will was drowning in guilt.
"YOU KILLED THEM ALL!" Sasuke's roar finally broke through, a tempest of grief and fury. He leaped, high into the air above the wavering Susanoo. He didn't aim for the body. He aimed for the head, where within the cockpit of bone and energy, his broken brother resided.
Itachi looked up, through the translucent form of his protector, and met Sasuke's descending gaze. He saw no hatred there. Only a vast, unyielding sorrow, and a resolution as hard as diamond. In that moment, Itachi accepted it all. He didn't reinforce the Susanoo. He let it weaken.
Sasuke's body became the weapon. He dropped like a meteor, sheathed once more in the ultimate Volt Tackle, this time focused to a razored edge around his fist. He punched down, not with a technique name, but with a final, silent cry for every ghost in the compound.
The Susanoo's head shattered. The spectral armor exploded outward in a shower of crimson light that lit up the entire district like a bloody dawn. The shockwave flattened the weeds, shattered the remaining windows in the house, and shook the watchtower where Naruto and Kakashi stood.
Itachi's Susanoo vanished.
Sasuke landed in the crater of the explosion, amidst the fading red light. Before him, Itachi lay on his back at the base of the cherry tree, utterly defenseless. His Mangekyō had faded, leaving his eyes dark, exhausted, and peaceful. His breathing was a wet, ragged struggle. He was defeated. Not just by power, but by the brutal, unassailable truth Sasuke had weaponized.
Sasuke walked the final few steps. He stood over his brother, looking down at the ruin of the prodigy, the monster, the tragic hero, the failed son. He raised his hand, lightning chakra crackling around his fingers, forming the Chidori. The sound was like a thousand birds screaming for justice.
Itachi looked up at him, his vision blurring. He smiled, a small, broken thing. It held no mockery, no regret for the path, only a deep, abiding sorrow and… gratitude.
Itachi: (A whisper, barely audible over the Chidori's scream) "You did it, Sasuke… You became strong… strong enough to see… the truth… and to end it…"
He coughed, a bubble of blood forming on his lips. "My eyes… are yours now… Take them… Use this cursed power… for your new path…"
Sasuke's hand, wreathed in killing lightning, trembled. The litany was over. The sentence was passed. All that remained was the act.
He looked into Itachi's eyes—the eyes that had once held only love for him, then only a calculated cruelty, and now held nothing but a quiet, waiting end.
For the clan. For justice. For an end to the story.
Sasuke's arm plunged down.
End of Chapter – 94.