The real Itachi didn't waste the infinitesimal opening created by Kakashi's distraction. As Orochimaru flinched, instinctively shielding his serpentine eyes, Itachi exploded forward.
"Amaterasu!" he commanded, his Mangekyō Sharingan bleeding as it locked onto Orochimaru's form.
The Sannin screamed, a shrill, inhuman sound as black flames erupted directly onto his chest, spreading with unnatural speed, consuming his flesh, his chakra, his very existence.
The black flames were said to burn as hot as the sun and are nearly impossible to extinguish, continuing to burn for seven days and nights until the target is reduced to ash.
There was no escape.
Orochimaru staggered back, his pale skin blistering and turning to black charcoal instantly, the scent of burning flesh thick and horrifying. His signature confidence vanished, replaced by a rictus of agony and fury. "That eye... Itachi, you..!''
His words were cut off by a guttural roar as he dropped to the floor, convulsing. Itachi, his expression unreadable behind his weasel mask, maintained his focus. This had to be the end of it.
But Orochimaru was not a man to be ended by conventional solutions.
With a final, desperate heave, the Sannin's mouth unhinged to a grotesque, impossible width. His body contorted, and from his throat, a new form began to emerge, covered in viscous, transparent fluid.
It was Orochimaru, reborn, pale and whole, shedding his burning, charred previous body like a snake sloughing off its dead skin. The blackened husk that had been his former vessel collapsed, still burning with the inextinguishable Amaterasu, while the new Orochimaru landed with a wet slap on the cavern floor, gasping but very much alive.
"Kukuku... a magnificent jutsu," Orochimaru rasped, his new body still acclimating. "To think the Mangekyō held such power. It seems taking your eyes will be an even more rewarding endeavor than I first thought."
As this was happening, Kakashi engaged Kimimaro. There was no room for feints or psychological warfare.
"Chidori!" Kakashi yelled, his hand already crackling with contained lightning. He shot forward, aiming for a direct, disabling blow.
Kimimaro, his expression once again a mask of placid indifference, met the charge. He didn't try to block the Raikiri directly. His bones were strong, but even he knew not to test them against such a concentrated ninjutsu. Instead, his body moved with impossible fluidity. He spun, not away, but into Kakashi's attack vector. From his back, shoulder blades, and elbows, dozens of sharp, hardened bone spikes erupted outwards.
"Dance of the Clematis: Flower!"
It was a perfect, instantaneous defense. Kakashi, committed to his charge, was forced to abort, twisting his body at the last second to avoid being impaled on the forest of bone blades. His Raikiri sizzled past Kimimaro's ear, a testament to his own phenomenal reflexes.
They were now locked in a frantic, close-quarters taijutsu exchange. Bone blades emerged from Kimimaro's knees to counter a low kick, his palm hardened to deflect a chop, his fingers sharpened to turn a simple jab into a lethal thrust.
Meanwhile, Itachi, seeing his Amaterasu had been shed, knew a direct confrontation with the regenerated Orochimaru was inevitable. The Sannin, while weakened from the Body Replacement technique, was still one of the most dangerous shinobi alive.
"Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!" Orochimaru hissed, dozens of serpents shooting from his sleeves, each aiming to bite, to poison, to bind.
Itachi moved like a ghost. His Sharingan saw every snake, every fang, predicting their trajectory before they even lunged. He deflected them with his ninjato, the blade a blur of silver, never allowing a single one to touch him. He weaved through the assault, closing the distance.
He needed to end this. A prolonged fight gave Orochimaru too many opportunities to reveal another monstrous technique, another escape route.
"Susanoo!" Itachi commanded.
A colossal, spectral ribcage of blazing red chakra erupted around him, bones of pure energy forming from nothing. The hissing snakes slammed into the ethereal armor and disintegrated. Then, the chakra solidified further, forming arms, a torso, a ghostly armored warrior of immense scale.
Orochimaru's golden eyes widened with a mixture of terror and scientific avarice. "This… this is the Uchiha's true power! The third power of those cursed eyes! Magnificent!"
The spectral warrior's hand, wielding a shimmering Sword of Totsuka, swung down with force. Orochimaru, knowing he could not block such a blow, summoned his most powerful defense. "Kuchiyose: Sanjū Rashōmon!" (Summoning: Triple Rashomon!)
Three massive, demonic gates erupted from the ground in front of him, one after another, each designed to deflect and absorb incredible force.
The Sword of Totsuka slammed into the first gate. It didn't just break it, it erased it, the ethereal blade sealing whatever it touched. The first gate vanished. The second cracked, then imploded. The third, shuddered violently, holding for a split second before the irresistible force of the Susanoo shattered it into a million pieces.
The shockwave blasted Orochimaru backward, tumbling through the air, his body rent with deep gashes from the shrapnel of his own demonic gates. He hit the far wall with a sickening crunch.
At the same time, Kakashi's battle with Kimimaro reached its own climax. He had been forced onto the back foot again and again, his Raikiri ineffective against Kimimaro's perfect, adaptive defense. He needed to create an opening where Kimimaro's bones couldn't protect him.
He feinted high with a kunai, drawing Kimimaro's gaze.
It was a classic, almost rudimentary misdirection, one a genius like Kimimaro would see through in an instant. The Kaguya boy didn't fall for it, his teal eyes remaining locked on Kakashi's center of mass, his body already shifting to counter any follow-up attack from that vector.
But the feint wasn't for him. It was a signal.
Orochimaru, recovering from the Susanoo's devastating blow, snarled, his regenerated body surging forward. "Now, Itachi-kun... you will give me those eyes!" He lunged, snakes erupting from his wrists.
Itachi didn't move. He simply met the Sannin's charge, his Mangekyō Sharingan flaring with an unnatural, world-bending power. Orochimaru's advance faltered as his golden, slitted eyes met Itachi's spinning tomoe.
For Orochimaru, the world dissolved.
He was no longer standing on solid ground. He was bound to a crimson cross under a blood-red sky, a black sun hanging silent above a sea of skeletons. Itachi stood before him, his face hidden behind his weasel mask. "Tsukuyomi," Itachi's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"For the next seventy-two hours within this shattered mindscape, you will feel the pain of a thousand cuts, the agony of being flayed alive, again and again." The torture began, an eternity of precise, unending agony packed into a single, infinitesimal moment of real time.
In the real world, Orochimaru's lunging body simply froze mid-stride, his eyes rolling back in their sockets as his mind was being torn apart by the ultimate illusion.
He stood, paralyzed, utterly vulnerable. This was one of the major disadvantages of the Living Corpse Reincarnation. It weakened his mind considerably, to the point powerful genjutsu like Tsukuyomi were beyond just effective.
Kakashi seized the opportunity created by Itachi's mental assault. Kimimaro, distracted for a split second by Orochimaru's sudden, unnatural stillness, found his opponent had vanished. The high kunai feint hadn't been the primary attack, nor was it the signal for a frontal assault. It was the cover for something far more insidious.
Kakashi had used his feint to mask the hand seals for the Doton: Doryū Taiga (Earth Release: Earth Flow River), turning the patch of ground directly in front of him into a thick, sucking quagmire of mud. Simultaneously, he had created a single Kage Bunshin, which burst from the mud river, charging Kimimaro head-on.
It was a brilliant, multi-layered deception. Kimimaro, instinctively reacting to the most immediate physical threat, spun, his body erupting in a "Dance of the Larch" to shred the oncoming shadow clone.
He impaled the clone, which dispersed in a puff of smoke. But in that same moment, he felt the solid ground beneath his feet become treacherously soft, a result of the now-completed Earth Flow River jutsu.
It was the opening Kakashi needed.
While Kimimaro was occupied with the clone and the unstable ground, the real Kakashi had used the Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu (Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Technique), disappearing beneath the earth. Now, directly under the unbalanced Kimimaro, he erupted upwards.
Kimimaro's eyes widened as Kakashi's hand, holding a standard kunai, burst from the ground directly beneath his guard. The Kaguya's bone defenses were all oriented outwards, he had no immediate way to protect himself from a threat emerging from directly below his own feet.
Kakashi didn't hesitate. He drove the kunai upwards with all his strength, a single, decisive strike that punched through Kimimaro's jaw and into his brain. It was a vicious, graceless, but utterly effective killing blow.
Kimimaro's body went rigid. The placid, indifferent expression on his face remained, frozen in a final moment of shock. He made no sound as he collapsed, the light fading from his teal eyes forever.
Kakashi pulled his blade free, not wasting a single moment. With his free hand, he slapped a large, prepared sealing scroll onto Kimimaro's chest. With a surge of chakra and a complex swirl of ink, the body of the last Kaguya vanished, sealed away for Konoha's intelligence and research divisions. A specimen this valuable could not be left behind.
One of Orochimaru's most prized subordinates was neutralized.
Itachi released his Tsukuyomi. Orochimaru, his mind shattered by the phantom torture, crumpled to the ground, his body twitching, froth bubbling at his lips. He was alive, but mentally incapacitated, at least for the moment.
"It is done," Kakashi stated, pulling his blade from Kimimaro's skull, his expression grim behind his dog mask. "Secure Orochimaru. We—"
He was cut off by a deafening roar. From the multiple tunnel entrances leading into the cavern, a flood of Oto shinobi poured in. Dozens of them, their faces a mixture of fanaticism and the sickly pallor of Orochimaru's experiments, cursed seals already beginning to snake across their bodies.
"Tch," Kakashi clicked his tongue in annoyance. "There's never a clean ending, is there?"
Itachi surveyed the scene, his Mangekyō still spinning, though lines of blood trickled down from his eyes. His Susanoo had taken a massive toll, and Tsukuyomi had drained him further. He could likely use Amaterasu one more time, but it would leave him dangerously depleted.
Kakashi too was breathing heavily, the rapid-fire use of advanced Doton jutsu, a Kage Bunshin, and the need to constantly evade Kimimaro had been taxing.
They were two of Konoha's best, but they were not invincible. Facing fifty enraged, Cursed Seal-enhanced shinobi was a losing battle, a war of attrition they couldn't afford.
"The Sannin is the primary target," Kakashi stated, his voice a cold, tactical command. "Securing him takes precedence over all else."
The two elite shinobi moved as one. Itachi activated the first stage of his Susanoo again, the spectral ribcage forming a protective barrier as he lunged for Orochimaru's prone form. Kakashi provided covering fire, weaving through hand seals with blurring speed.
"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" Kakashi unleashed a massive fireball, not to kill, but to create a wall of searing flame, forcing the advancing Oto shinobi to scatter, blocking their immediate charge.
But the Oto ninja were not disorganized fodder. Under the command of a few jonin-level shinobi with more advanced Cursed Seal markings, they split into coordinated teams. Some used Earth Release to erect barriers against the flames, others unleashed volleys of senbon and poisoned kunai at the Susanoo, while a third group charged, their bodies warping, growing extra limbs, their taijutsu savage and unpredictable.
The Susanoo's ethereal ribs cracked under a combined assault from three powerful sound-wave jutsu. Itachi grunted, forced to pour more chakra into reinforcing it. "Their coordination is high. They are prepared to die to delay us."
"Then we won't give them the chance," Kakashi said grimly. He formed a new set of seals. Summoning Jutsu!
With a puff of smoke, his ninken pack appeared – eight ninja hounds, each with a Konoha hitai-ate. "Pakkun! Bull! Scatter their formations! Aim for the legs!"
The dogs snarled and shot into the fray, a low-profile, high-speed assault team, biting at ankles, tearing at hamstrings, disrupting the Oto shinobi's coordinated advances with their guerilla tactics.
It bought them a crucial opening. Itachi, protected by his Susanoo and Kakashi's dogs, reached Orochimaru. He was about to apply a high-level restraining seal when several large, grotesque figures crashed through the cavern ceiling. They were monstrous, vaguely humanoid creatures with muscular bodies and oni-like faces.
The giants lumbered forward, smashing Itachi's weakened Susanoo with massive, club-like fists, forcing him to disengage. The skeletal warrior finally shattered into red light.
"They're not just fodder," Kakashi grit out, dodging a venomous spit from one of the Doki. "Orochimaru has built a small army here."
The situation had spiraled. The element of surprise was gone.
"Weasel!" Kakashi's voice was absolute. "We are compromised. This battle is a loss."
Itachi cursed inwardly but knew Kakashi was right. This was a tactical retreat, not a rout. Pride had no place in ANBU operations.
"Acknowledged!"
Kakashi dropped several flash bombs and smoke pellets, plunging the place into blinding light and thick, choking smoke.