Starting over

#92 Itachi

Sasuke POV

Jumping to my brother I landed in front of him. "Are you ready to do this?", he asked, getting into a fighting stance. "It doesn't have to be this way, brother.", I replied. I had known about his mission and the coup d'etat that the Uchiha clan had planned, before Itachi slaughtered them. The Hokage had told me about it, when I had been accepted into Anbu. My first mission as an Anbu was to collect a report from him. There we had talked about everything and I had forgiven him. However he also told me about his plan, to be killed by me and for me to take his eyes. I didn't want him to die, just so that I could gain the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, but he said, it had to be, he was already too deep into this whole undercover operation. "Yes it does.", Itachi replied with a single tear rolling down from his almost blind eyes. I nodded as Neji, Shino and Ino landed next to me. "Let's do this.", I said with a heavy heart. Jumping at my brother, I activated my sharingan and tried to catch him with a downward slash of my kunai, but it didn't work. He caught my arm and threw me over his shoulder, before he made a simple fireball to get rid of the swarm of bugs that Shino had sent at him. His sharingan began to spin, as it changed into the mangekyou and a small trail of blood escaped from his left eye. Shino immediately collapsed, before I could do anything to warn him.

Meanwhile Neji and Ino had thrown a bunch of kunai at the Akatsuki member. Itachi blocked them all with the single kunai he had in his hand, but had to jump back, as he realized that Neji had only used the kunai as a distraction to get close to the genjutsu user. I smiled as he had fallen for their trap and shot a fireball at him. I watched as my brother went up in flames, only for him to reappear two feet away from the fireball. Neji was too shocked to see it coming, so he was just knocked out by a simple chop to the neck. Ino and I were the last two standing. I looked at her and saw that she was shaking slightly. "Don't worry, Ino, we can do this.", I tried to reassure her. She smiled weakly at me and I ran forward towards my brother throwing a few fire jutsu at him. Itachi simply dodged them, while making a series of handsigns blowing out a series of small fire dragons. I evaded them just as easily, before taking my sword from my back and slashing at my brother. He was forced to jump away and landed right where we had wanted him to be. Ino had just finished her hand signs and her hands ended up in a very familiar hand sign. I watched as my brother relaxed and couldn't help but feel slightly terrified to see, that the Yamanaka clan jutsu were stronger than the sharingan. Then I saw Itachi's sharingan spin.

Ino fell to the ground, just as I had pierced my brother's heart with my sword. Coughing up blood he looked at me and smiled weakly. "You did good Sasuke. Don't worry about your friend, she is just sleeping.", he whispered. "Why did it have to be this way?", I asked tears in my eyes. "You know why. They would never have let me go. I knew too much about them.", he reasoned, blood running down his chin. "My time has come. Don't forget about the eyes. I have never stopped loving you.", he said with his last breath, slowly reaching up to poke my forehead one last time. I couldn't say anything, as his eyes glazed over. There were no words that could describe how I was feeling, I just stood there, my brother's corpse only being held up by the sword in my hands, silently crying.

Shiji POV

We jumped away, towards the only woman that stood against us. Immediately we were greeted by paper flying towards us. Apparently she didn't want to wait for us to get ready. We scattered and took care of the small amount of paper sheets that flew behind each of us with simple fireballs. As we regrouped we saw that Konan was now flying over our heads, paper wings on her back and paper shuriken floating around her hands. Making a few hidden hand signals to my teammates I jumped up to throw a kick at the woman, which she just evaded by moving herself a bit to the side. As she did that, I saw her move her hands towards me, but she pulled them back and let the paper form a cocoon around her just as two large dragons crashed into her. Large chunks of earth were flying everywhere as the jutsus tried to get through the purple haired woman's defense. But alas, the justus ran out of power and died down, crumbling into lines of dirt on the ground, while the small cocoon of paper was still afloat. Gritting my teeth, we regrouped and waited for the cocoon to open back up.

After about half a minute I suddenly felt the ground rumble and spun around, only to see a giant paper dragon emerge from the ground. Konan stood behind it, smiling slightly. I cursed loudly and took a hold of my teammates, before pulling them with me out of the path of the giant jutsu. We landed roughly on the ground and I looked up to see the last remainders of the cocoon peel off and fly back to the purple haired shinobi that stood opposite of us. I looked at Korun and Joaba, who were both looking at me with serious faces. Korun made a few quick hand signals, explaining what she had planned, earning a nod from me and Joaba. Korun immediately jumped away and began to throw small fire jutsu at Konan, who just blocked them with a bit of her paper. Joaba and I went through a series of hand signs and when we finished, two dragons shot out of the ground next to us, flying towards Konan forming a spiral. I grinned when she seemed to fall for our trick and she took her eyes off of me, as I continued my hand signs. When the dragons meet the paper wall Konan had erected to block them, I was finishing the last of my hand signs, before a bunch of spears shot out of the ground next to me, and flew straight at the Akatsuki member. The paper wall, that had at first concealed my spears, crumbled, confirming that Konan had no idea that my attack was coming. I saw that the woman's eyes widened before the spears crashed into her, creating a large cloud of dust. I was relieved, that our plan had worked, but I still kept my guard up, since we could not confirm that Konan was really dead.

When the dust settled I growled silently seeing the familiar white cocoon floating in front of us. This fight would not be easy.