The rest of the battlefield blurred into distant noise the moment Itachi's eyes settled fully on her, rain sliding off both of them in steady sheets as they came to a stop several meters apart, close enough to read each other's stance, far enough to still be measuring.
No one even questioned whether that was really rain or a certain shark man throwing the Ninja world's equivalent of military bombardment, made of water ninjutsu.
"Kiyomi," Itachi said again, quieter this time, like saying the name twice might help him make sense of why she was actually standing here.
"You sound disappointed," she said. "Expecting someone else?"
He actually did. But of course, he didn't answer that directly, though something in his expression shifted, calculating now rather than simply surprised. "Where is Sasuke?"
"Funny you'd ask about him before asking why I'm here at all."
"I already have some idea why you're here." His tone stayed even, controlled, the same practiced calm he wore for everything. And let's be honest, it didn't take a genius, which by all means he was, to figure out why the girl was standing there in front of him.
Kiyomi's eyes narrowed slightly. She saw his face, that calm, calculating face of his, and immediately sneered. Those cold eyes seemed like they had already seen things which weren't even in front of them. Like he had figured out the situation even before the situation had revealed itself in front of him.
She remembered that about him, distantly, an older brother who never said anything simply if he could say it sideways instead.
"Before I kill you, which I will for sure, I'm very certain about that, answer something for me first," Kiyomi said, curse energy already gathering, faint and restless, at her fingertips. "Why did you do it? The clan. Our parents. All of it."
Itachi's expression didn't change, not visibly, though the silence that followed stretched a beat too long to be nothing.
"I did it to test my limit, to forge my will and ascend to a higher realm."
"Which practically means nothing in reality."
"It's the truth."
"It's the same non-answer you'd give if I asked you back in the village, or ten years from now, or anywhere else." Her grin sharpened, though there wasn't much humor behind it anymore. "Tell me seriously, Itachi, why did you do it?" She asked again, this time even more serious, no-nonsense attitude.
"Did this have something to do with that man called Danzo? Was the Third Hokage or the higher-ups of the village involved as well in what you did?"
Itachi's gaze held hers a moment longer, unreadable, before he finally moved, Sharingan already spinning into focus as he closed the distance between them with practiced, economical speed.
Because fighting it out was much easier than answering that line of questions.
The exchange that followed was fast, precise, Itachi's taijutsu built around efficiency rather than force, every strike aimed to test her out rather than wear her down. Kiyomi met him blow for blow regardless. First it was just basic hand-to-hand fighting and, of course, Uchiha's famous shuriken jutsu, but as the fight progressed, Kiyomi introduced her speciality into the fight, the liquid metal.
Itachi's Sharingan narrowed at it. He had seen many types of jutsu in his life, watching liquid metal gave him no surprise, but what did surprise him was that Kiyomi was using it.
It was no elemental jutsu, so it had to be a Kekkei Genkai, and the one using it was his little sister.
How?
Kiyomi didn't give him much time to think about it, though, forming reactive plating along her forearms as she blocked what she couldn't dodge, curse energy sharpening her own reflexes past what her body alone could manage.
He was better than her, at least when it came to pure fighting IQ and skills. And no matter how much Yorozu would argue about that, the inner Mai inside Kiyomi knew that facing Itachi was dangerous even when she was vastly more powerful than what she used to be — years of experience, refined taijutsu, a Mangekyō mastered far beyond her own very recently awakened and most unused one. But better didn't always mean it ended quickly.
A genjutsu slid into the exchange without warning, subtle enough that she nearly missed the shift entirely, reality bending faintly at the edges before her own Sharingan caught the intrusion and unraveled it on reflex.
Mostly because Itachi didn't know she had a Mangekyō as well. "You'll need better than that," she said.
"You have improved." Itachi's tone stayed level, though something in his focus sharpened further, recalculating. "I honestly expected to face Sasuke one day, not you. It seems that I have underestimated you quite a bit, Kiyomi."
"You have no idea."
She let her own eyes shift then, crimson deepening, tomoe rearranging into the spiraling pattern of her Mangekyō, and watched something genuinely rare cross Itachi's face in response.
Shock.
"That's—" He stopped himself, composure slipping for just a moment before he reined it back in, though the unease stayed visible now, harder to hide than before. "Mangekyō!"
"Didn't come easy," Kiyomi said, not elaborating further.
Itachi's mind was already working through the implications. She could see that plainly enough — turning over every possibility, weighing something that clearly disturbed him more than the fight itself. She was seven when their parents died. Too young for the kind of loss that awakened eyes like these on its own. Which meant something else had happened. Something later.
Something involving Sasuke, maybe.
The thought settled visibly behind his eyes, and for one brief instant, something genuinely close to horror flickered across his expression before he crushed it back down beneath practiced control.
"Sasuke…," he said, quieter now, an edge creeping into the question that hadn't been there before.
"He is fine if you are wondering. I got these eyes because of him." Kiyomi's tone flattened, unimpressed that he'd even gone there. "Unlike some people, I don't kill family for power."
Itachi said nothing to that, though the tension didn't fully leave his shoulders. Did he believe her?
Yes, he did. There was no reason to lie to him. But that also raises the same question again: if not because of Sasuke, then how come Kiyomi got her Mangekyō?
They traded blows again, faster now, Itachi weaving genjutsu into every opening he found, Kiyomi's Mangekyō unraveling most of it on instinct alone, though a few slipped through regardless, forcing her to burn precious focus just to stay oriented.
Itachi was still Itachi after all. And he was still not fighting seriously; he was fighting to Kiyomi.
Liquid metal spiraled into blades, into shields, into whatever the moment demanded, curse energy bleeding into every motion until the fight had less shape than pure exchange, strike after strike, neither willing to give ground.
Itachi's suspicions, if anything, were improving rather than going down. First and foremost, his Mangekyō could see how Kiyomi's chakra felt; it was quite different. It could happen because of Mangekyō awakening, but it was still very different for some reason.
Secondly, after learning that she had Mangekyō, he naturally thought that the liquid metal she was using was a technique of her Mangekyō. However, it didn't seem to look like it, since she was using that power continuously without facing much backlash from what a typical Mangekyō ability would do to its user.
She landed one solid hit — a construct blade grazing his side deep enough to draw blood — and he answered with a strike to her ribs hard enough to steal her breath entirely, sending her stumbling back several paces.
"You fight well," Itachi said, breathing slightly uneven now himself. "But skill alone won't close this gap."
"Wasn't planning on closing it with only skills." She smirked, and then the liquid metal converged on her, coating her entire body and turning into armor.
The famous insect armor she used once to destroy the sun, moon, and star squad in the Heian Era.
Hard shell covered her entire body, looking much like an insect, wings formed behind her the second she was encased inside an even harder shell-like armor which looked like it could tackle even a tank bombardment.
Itachi's eyes narrowed, his Mangekyō, though by now already hazed up by years of constant usage, distinguished the complex armor she had created.
He didn't even think twice about the strange insect-inspired design, which looked like it was an Aburame's handiwork with their obsession with insects over an Uchiha.
When you live as a shinobi in this world, you have seen enough strange things that you just learn to accept strangeness with whatever quirks it comes with, arguably the only way to keep one's sanity. So Itachi didn't think twice about the armor design, but he did wonder, how come.
How come Kiyomi was capable of using this kind of technique, which resembled nothing less than a Kekkei Genkai, or a Kekkei Tōta.
"Ready." Kiyomi didn't give him time to wonder for long; she had already launched herself towards him.
And she was faster, much faster. Not fast enough for Itachi's Mangekyō to miss her, but still fast enough that Itachi barely reacted when she was near him.
He only had time to use his one remaining arm to block his sister's bone-crushing attack, and he could have sworn that if not for infusing his chakra heavily into his hand, he might have lost that one too.
Itachi was sent flying backwards with a heavily bruised arm, earning a smirk from Kiyomi. It was just starting after all. She shot herself at him once again, but Itachi had already moved from there, already forming one-handed hand signs for a fire attack.
A giant dragon-headed fireball rushed right at Kiyomi, who was too close to dodge the said attack, so she instead ended up tanking the fire with her insect armor.
To Itachi's pride and irritation, his sister actually tanked it. Whatever that armor was, it was strong.
"That shell sure is sturdy…" Itachi said, even now completely emotionless.
"Let's see if it can handle this fire." His eyes turned into Mangekyō, and then a blood streak trailed down from his eyes.
"Amateratsu."
Black fire roared right at Kiyomi, the initiation was so fast that even her Mangekyō couldn't predict this attack coming. Before she could even react, her insect armor flared up with black flames.
Kiyomi's eyes widened, the flames were different, she could tell. She tried to use curse energy to extinguish it, change the nature of the liquid metal itself to something which prevented fire.
Nothing.
The flames weren't putting out. And her highly advanced liquid metal was slowly starting to evaporate. She had to pour her own curse energy to make more of it, however, that was a losing battle no matter from where she looked at it.
She finally started to panic a little, only a little. Knowing that she had to do something quick, she finally decided to put her Mangekyō to use, the one she had been holding back from now on.
Her Mangekyō flared up, and the next second a black hole emerged out of nowhere, sucking the black flames inside it.
However, even then she found the flames refused to leave her armor. The more fire was sucked inside the black hole, the more black flames ignited from her armor as if it was multiplying.
'What the hell are these flames?' Kiyomi pursed her lips. It wasn't working, and her insect armor was disintegrating faster under the high temperature of Amaterasu.
She had no other option but to sacrifice her entire armor ultimately. Something she was avoiding so far, mainly because the armor needed the majority of the premade liquid metal she had on hand.
However, it was still a better option than being burned alive under the burning black flames of Amaterasu.
She ejected herself out of the armor, and the entire armor turned back into liquid metal the moment she did, still caught in black fire, though.
And the entire thing was sucked inside the black hole.
"So, my estimates were on the spot? You either have a limited amount of that metal you used for fighting, or it needed too much energy to create." Itachi finally spoke.
Yup, in this short fight, he had already figured out that Kiyomi was using the same liquid metal, wasn't creating more during the fight, and majorly was hesitant to waste the liquid metal as much as possible. That was the intelligence-gathering capacity of a trained Shinobi.
"Don't get cocky." Kiyomi growled, and her other eye turned into Mangekyō and activated.
Curse energy surged around her, and more liquid metal was constructed out of thin air.
She felt a significant dip in her curse energy, but not anywhere close to what he used to have. If this was before her Mangekyō, then she might have lost more than 60% of her curse energy.
Not anymore, not only were her reserves much more now due to the additional amount to her previous reserves + improvements her Sharingan and Mangekyō brought.
But the majority of the efficiency improvement was brought by her Mangekyō. While one of her Mangekyō powers was Black Hole, the eye was much subtler. However, almost a godsend for someone like her.
The Mangekyō ability was supposed to improve efficiency. Truly, an eye which represented one's own heart. Mai's biggest weakness was her low reserves, and when she awakened her eyes, she got something to solve that one problem.
Not to mention, Black Hole and Susanoo both took ridiculous amounts of curse energy, so this one technique would be a perfect match for her other techniques as well.
And with that kind of efficiency came another possibility. To use her best technique without expanding her own domain.
'Perfect Sphere.'
The newly constructed liquid metal formed a perfectly created ball, not as big as she would have wished it to be but still usable. Just as she was about to throw the Perfect Sphere toward Itachi, to eradicate him entirely, Itachi's own eyes shifted.
Mangekyō spiraling into something ancient and heavy, and the world around her twisted sideways into red and black.
Tsukuyomi.
The illusion built itself in an instant — not the ravine, not the rain, but somewhere else entirely, dry and quiet, the ghost of a memory that wasn't hers but felt uncomfortably close to one anyway. Itachi stood across from her within it, exactly as he had outside, though something in his posture had shifted now, resigned in a way it hadn't been a moment ago.
A genjutsu, a rather strong one if her own Mangekyō was having a hard time getting out of here.
"I'm not going to kill you," he said.
Kiyomi's brow furrowed. "You're saying like you can. Don't underestimate me."
He just studied her a long moment, something unreadable and tired behind his eyes. "I intend for Sasuke to fulfill our destiny, however, it seems that I was too narrow in my thinking.
You're no less than Sasuke. If anything, you have surpassed him. And thus, I believe you have to be the one who will complete me, Kiyomi," Itachi said, entering back into his excellent acting.
Kiyomi narrowed her eyes, not understanding what she was spouting all of the sudden. Itachi hardly cared about her confusion, he kept on going, majorly about his grand plan to complete his Mangekyō and awaken the Eternal Mangekyō, where Sasuke should have entered the scene.
However, it was no longer needed, since she was here.
The illusion dissolved as quickly as it had formed, dropping her back into the rain, back into the ruined street, no torture this time around, since sooner or later Kiyomi would have broken the genjutsu with her Mangekyō anyways.
Itachi already several paces back, breathing hard, Mangekyō visibly straining at the edges from the technique's cost.
"Seems like you have been using those eyes of yours a little too much, ain't you." Kiyomi gleamed at him. She could also tell that Itachi's Mangekyō was closer to running out of its light.
Itachi didn't deny it. He just decided to show just how much was left in him. Red chakra armor emerged around him, Susanoo manifesting.
Kiyomi pursed her lips, her eyes went to the 'Perfect Sphere' she created, which barely was enough for Itachi's, but in front of Susanoo.
'Tch…'
"I have learned it first-hand that that armor is not foolproof, let me show you how…."
"Domain Expansion…"
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