On the screen, after the two brothers finished exchanging verbal barbs, they immediately launched into a frenzied barrage of shuriken throwing.
Their shuriken clashed in mid-air, sending sparks flying in all directions, the sharp clang of metal against metal ringing out in rapid succession.
One shuriken deflected and embedded itself into the wall, another ricocheted and stuck into the ground, yet another tumbled through the air. Both stood their ground, arms swinging at high speed.
Unlike Tenten's overwhelming volume-based throwing style, the two brothers relied on their Sharingan's assistance, their accuracy was impeccable.
Their Sharingan spun rapidly within their eye sockets, tracking the trajectory of each other's shuriken, predicting impact points and rebound angles. Every throw was a sight to behold.
If anyone in the Shinobi World could match them, it would likely be Hiruzen with his Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu.
But that was a Ninjutsu, not pure skill. The Uchiha brothers, on the other hand, played it old-school, relying on raw technique and visual acuity.
As the shuriken continued their aerial symphony of clangs and sparks, both brothers moved simultaneously.
They charged toward each other and collided in the center of the room. Sasuke's left hand shot out, gripping Itachi's right wrist firmly to prevent the kunai from striking down. At the same time, Itachi's left hand seized Sasuke's right wrist, his thumb pressing against the joint, preventing Sasuke's Kusanagi blade from swinging any further.
For a moment, the two were locked in a deadlock, neither able to advance, neither willing to retreat.
Just then, another "Itachi" leaped up from behind him, holding three kunai in hand.
The figure seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
The people watching the Sky Screen were stunned.
When? When had Itachi formed the hand seals for a Shadow Clone?
They widened their eyes, desperately replaying every previous detail in their minds, but no one had seen Itachi make any hand seals at all.
Hadn't his hands been busy throwing shuriken? So when had he split off a Shadow Clone?
This guy's hand speed was truly incredible!
It had been the same during his battle with Kakashi; he had already formed his Ninjutsu seals in places nobody could see.
Keep in mind, that when Kakashi faced Zabuza, he had effortlessly mimicked the Water Dragon Bullet's 44 hand seals, every single one clearly visible and flawlessly replicated.
Yet he couldn't even perceive the speed of Itachi's seals. The gap was unimaginable. If Zabuza was average, and Kakashi was elite, then Itachi was on a whole other level of abnormal.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Itachi's Shadow Clone swung its arm in mid-air, sending three kunai flying straight at Sasuke.
The sharp whistle of the kunai cutting through the air was piercing, and the three kunai formed a triangle formation, sealing off all of Sasuke's possible escape routes. And with both his hands locked by Itachi's main body, Sasuke was trapped in place, unable to react.
His arms were pinned, his body restrained, he could only watch as the kunai flew closer and closer.
Just as everyone expected Sasuke to be struck, the Cursed Seal on his neck suddenly released a white serpent, its tongue flicking out like a white bolt of lightning.
The serpent shot out and began spinning rapidly around Sasuke, its body shielding him completely and blocking the kunai attack.
At the same time, the serpent broke the deadlock.
Seeing the white serpent appear, Itachi's main body furrowed his brow slightly. He released his grip and withdrew instantly, flipping backward several times to create distance and avoid being ensnared by the serpent.
Taking advantage of Itachi's retreat, Sasuke quickly produced a large Fuma Shuriken.
In the blink of an eye, he identified Itachi's real body and hurled it at him with all his might. The Fuma Shuriken spun through the air with a low hum, whistling straight toward Itachi's face.
Itachi had no choice but to raise his kunai and block it one-handed.
The kunai and the Fuma Shuriken clashed, sparks flying, and Itachi's arm was slightly numbed by the impact.
Zzzzzzzap!
Then to Itachi's surprise, blue lightning flickered across the Fuma Shuriken's blades.
Sasuke had silently infused the shuriken with Chidori's lightning, the Lightning Release chakra crackling and hissing along the metal.
Itachi was forced to use his Crow Clone Jutsu to escape, his body dispersing into a flock of black crows to evade the follow-up electrical strike.
And Itachi's reaction was equally astonishing.
His true form appeared before Sasuke in an instant, twisting midair to land a savage kick to Sasuke's chest.
Sasuke's body flew back like a broken kite. And Itachi gave him no time to recover, pressing forward, stomping on Sasuke's wrist, grabbing his collar, hauling him up, and slamming him back down onto the floor.
After pinning Sasuke down, Itachi reached out and drove his hand straight toward Sasuke's eye socket, intending to gouge out his Sharingan with his bare fingers.
Sasuke's eyes widened, the approaching hand reflected in his pupils. He struggled desperately, but Itachi's strength was overwhelming, he couldn't break free.
"Forgive me, Sasuke... This is my reality... Give me your light!"
Itachi's fingers curled, touching Sasuke's eyelid.
Accompanied by Sasuke's shrill scream, his Sharingan was ripped from its socket. Blood gushed from the hollow, streaming down his cheek and dripping onto the floor, a horrifying sight under the dim lamplight.
The screaming echoed through the enclosed room for a long time.
---
[Konoha, Year 52. Uchiha Clan Grounds]
Witnessing this tragedy of brother against brother, Fugaku closed his eyes in exhaustion.
Mikoto held young Sasuke even tighter, as if afraid he would disappear the next moment. She reached out with her right hand to cover Sasuke's eyes, unwilling to let him witness this scene.
Young Sasuke, his eyes covered, didn't know what was happening, only that his mother's hand was pressed firmly against him, a little painfully.
On the screen, Sasuke clutched his eye, blood seeping continuously through his fingers and dripping to the floor, pooling into a dark red stain.
"I told you. You do not possess the Mangekyō Sharingan. You can never win against my eyes," Itachi said flatly, his eyes devoid of any pity.
Hearing that, Sasuke opened his hand, revealing the bloodstained socket, and looked at the blood on his palm with his remaining eye.
His left eye was now a hollow darkness, bleeding without end.
"I'll take the other one too," Itachi said coldly.
And at that critical moment, the power of Sasuke's Cursed Seal exploded violently, chakra surging wildly through his body, instantly pushing him into State Two.
A massive pulse of chakra erupted, and a giant fleshy wing suddenly burst from the right side of Sasuke's body, unfurling and forcing Itachi back.
'So this is the power of the Cursed Seal…' Itachi muttered inwardly, his brow furrowing slightly.
His left hand moved, and a bottle of liquid slid from his sleeve into his palm, as if he had prepared it in advance.
Then Itachi gently placed Sasuke's left eye into the bottle. He even had time to offer one last admonition: "This is the difference in our strength. And… the difference between your ocular powers and mine."
And before his words even faded, another Itachi appeared behind Sasuke.
He locked one arm around Sasuke's neck from behind like an iron chain, while his other hand pinned both of Sasuke's arms behind his back, rendering him completely immobile.
Meanwhile, the earlier Itachi had already placed the eye in the bottle and was now walking slowly toward Sasuke, unhurried.
He reached out again, bloodstained fingers extending little by little toward Sasuke's right eye socket.
But just then, the power of the Cursed Seal surging within Sasuke exploded violently, and the space around them shattered.
No, the entire Genjutsu space cracked like a mirror, fragmenting into countless drifting shards.
It turned out that from beginning to end, the scene of eye-stealing had been nothing but an illusion woven by Itachi.
Sasuke's eyes were completely intact, his dark pupils reflecting the shattered illusion, and the three-tomoe Sharingan still spinning calmly within their sockets.
---
[Konoha, Year 60. Tazuna's House]
Kakashi stared at the moment the illusion broke on the screen, his eyes filled with astonishment.
Wasn't that Itachi's Tsukuyomi? The forbidden Jutsu that had once tormented him for three days and nights within a mental space—Sasuke had actually managed to break it?!
According to the Sky Screen, when he himself had first faced that Jutsu, he had suffered a terrible defeat.
And he still didn't know why Itachi had let him go back then, otherwise he would've been dead on the spot.
Kakashi shook his head, brushing the thought away. Future Sasuke had faced the same Jutsu, and had actually overcome it? That was truly remarkable.
Still, that guy Itachi was really difficult to deal with.
Kakashi silently sighed. Genjutsu layered upon Genjutsu, nesting dolls within nesting dolls. Just when you thought Sasuke had finally countered, it turned out to be another layer of illusion. You never knew which layer you were on, or which version of yourself was real.
But then again, he himself also had a Mangekyō Sharingan. His resistance to Genjutsu should be stronger than future Sasuke's, right?
To be honest, Kakashi wasn't entirely sure. Could Obito's eyes really see through Itachi's illusions?
Meanwhile, on the screen—
Having broken free from the illusion, Sasuke's eyes were completely unharmed—both eyes intact, the three-tomoe Sharingan still slowly rotating. However, his mental state seemed fragile; his body swayed, and he dropped to his knees, gasping heavily.
Breaking the Tsukuyomi had consumed a tremendous amount of his mental energy and chakra.
"That was fast—Itachi's won," observed Zetsu from the wall, watching the brothers fight.
At this moment, many people across the various Shinobi World timelines turned their attention to him too.
This Akatsuki member, embedded into the wall, split into black and white halves, wearing an eerie smile, sent chills down their spines.
He had been there all along, watching the battle between Itachi and Sasuke like a mere bystander. And from the very start, he hadn't left that wall.
---
[Another Timeline. Somewhere in the Shinobi World, underground]
The aged Madara leaned back in his stone chair, his body withered and frail, yet his eyes burned with startling intensity. He watched that black-and-white figure embedded in the wall on the screen, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
His own will—Black Zetsu—was indeed carrying out his plan in the future as instructed.
Everything was proceeding according to plan; this was truly excellent.
However, contrary to Zetsu's expectations, after unleashing Tsukuyomi, Itachi also revealed a state of reaching his limits, falling to his knees directly.
He was panting heavily, his breathing rapid and heavy, veins bulging on his forehead, as if enduring tremendous pain. His voice came in fragments: "You… actually broke through my… Tsukuyomi?!"
That appearance clearly showed he had never expected Sasuke to be able to make such a counterattack.
Hearing that, Sasuke rose calmly to his feet, dusting himself off, showing no sign of having been hit by Tsukuyomi at all.
His Sharingan fixed on Itachi, kneeling on the ground, as if looking at an opponent already defeated.
From the side, Zetsu revealed the truth with a single line: Sasuke had never fallen for it in the first place—he directly broken through Tsukuyomi.
With only a three-tomoe Sharingan, he had actually managed to nullify an attack from a Mangekyō Sharingan.
This scene left everyone across every timeline in disbelief. The Sky Screen had clearly stated that the gap between three-tomoe and Mangekyō was the largest of all Sharingan evolution stages.
Yet Sasuke had done it. With eyes that had not yet evolved into the Mangekyō, he had blocked Itachi's strongest Genjutsu.
On the screen, Sasuke stared at the fallen Itachi and spoke coldly:
"Like I told you... No matter how much you use those eyes of yours, my hate will turn illusion into reality."
Itachi also finally recovered enough to push himself back to his feet.
"Hmph... Turn illusion into reality, eh? Then let me throw those words right back at you." His voice had regained its calm.
Itachi was finally getting serious. Everything before—the shuriken, Taijutsu, Shadow Clones, and even Tsukuyomi—had only been a warm-up.
The real battle was just beginning.
"You saw your eyes gouged out during the Tsukuyomi just now, right? Well, allow me to make that a reality."
In his eyes, the Mangekyō Sharingan glowed with an eerie light.
Watching from the side, Zetsu's anticipation surged, he felt he was about to witness Amaterasu, another iconic Dōjutsu.
His eyes lit up, both black and white halves of his face clearly saying, 'The real show is about to begin.'
[Amaterasu, sounds incredibly impressive on paper, hailed as the strongest attack, capable of burning anything to ash, an inextinguishable black flame. But in actual combat performance… it was painfully underwhelming.]
[The first time Amaterasu appeared, Itachi used it to quickly break through the Toad Mouth Trap summoned by Jiraiya. Against a massive, immobile target, the effect was naturally excellent. In moments, the toad stomach wall was pierced, and Itachi and Kisame escaped with ease. And the continuing black flames were later sealed by Jiraiya using a Fire Sealing Method after he arrived.]
The screen then flashed a scene: black flames burning through the toad stomach wall, creating a large hole, through which Itachi and Kisame slipped out and made their escape.
When Jiraiya finally arrived, the black flames were still burning. He calmly unrolled a scroll, formed several seals, and the black flames were sucked into the scroll, sealed securely.
[The second appearance was during the great battle between the brothers. Sasuke, with only three-tomoe Sharingan, thought he could defeat Itachi's Mangekyō, and evaded it using Orochimaru's Substitution Jutsu.]
In that scene, black flames erupted from Itachi's eyes and shot toward Sasuke. But Sasuke's body suddenly turned into a scattering of white snakes, dispersing in all directions. The flames hit nothing, leaving only a scorched crater on the ground.
[The only genuine success? Against the Fourth Mizukage.]
The scene of Yagura kneeling on the ground flashed after being struck by the black flames, but the full details of that encounter weren't shown.
[And as for Sasuke, who inherited Amaterasu, he used it many times, yet his track record remained equally underwhelming.]
[In most cases, it only proved effective when he used it in its transformed state—Kagutsuchi—as an absolute defense. When used offensively, it almost never hit its target, primarily because the focusing time before release was far too long, giving enemies plenty of time to predict and evade.]
*****
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