Chapter 9
Then came the smell—charred earth and ozone, unmistakable even through the gore. Itama turned slowly, copied Rinnegan spinning wildly as Madara landed in the crater. The Uchiha's susanoo flickered between skeletal and armored forms, unstable with rage. "You," Madara said, voice cracking like splitting timber, "are wearing my brother's face." The air between them turned to syrup, heavy with the promise of annihilation.
Itama exhaled through cracked lips, tasting blood and the metallic tang of stolen Lightning Release. He'd devoured three sensor-nin before the ambush, their memories still squirming behind his eyes. The Senju insignia on his stolen flak jacket felt heavier than armor. "Your brother," he said, shifting Izuna's copied body into a stance Hashirama had favored, "died begging for your name."
Madara moved before the last syllable faded—a blur of violet chakra and drawn steel. Itama barely twisted aside, feeling the susanoo sword shear through spacetime where his ribs had been. Rock vaporized in its wake. He countered by vomiting up every stolen Fire Release technique at once, the resulting explosion warping the battlefield into a hellscape of glass and screams
.
Somewhere in the inferno, Madara laughed. The sound made Itama's stolen Sharingan pupils contract involuntarily. "Good," the ghost of Uchiha Izuna whispered through Itama's teeth as their chakra systems fused deeper. "Now he'll fight to kill."
The ground liquefied underfoot as Madara's Perfect Susanoo manifested fully—a titan of crystallized hatred swinging its sword in a crescent that split mountains. Itama rolled through molten stone, ribs knitting together with stolen regeneration as he spat out half-digested Earth Release mud dragons. They shattered against violet armor, buying milliseconds.
Izuna's muscle memory yanked his stolen body sideways just as the real attack came—not from the sword but from above, where Madara had hidden a dozen Amaterasu flames in the smoke. Black fire pinned Itama's shadow to the ground like nails through a butterfly. He screamed with Izuna's voice, raw and familiar enough that Madara hesitated
.
That instant cost them both. Itama's Devour activation wasn't clean—he didn't absorb the Amaterasu so much as fuse with it, black flames licking up his stolen veins as he wrenched Izuna's remaining memories forward and let them flood out in a sobbing, perfect imitation: "Aniki, why won't you look at me?" Madara's susanoo flickered. The sword dropped. And Itama struck.
His stolen hand plunged through violet chakra armor like rotten fruit, fingers elongating into Hashirama's wood release roots. They burrowed deep into Madara's sternum before flowering outward—not to kill, but to latch. The Devour hitched, stuttered, then began pulsing like a starving mouth. Chakra, memories, even the taste of childhood summers by the Naka River flooded into Itama's stolen flesh.
Madara roared, not in pain but recognition—he knew this hunger. His own Mangekyou spun wildly as their stolen and original memories collided: two sets of Izuna's death, two versions of every betrayal. The Perfect Susanoo wavered into transparency as Itama laughed with Izuna's vocal cords and Madara's stolen sobs. "You feel it too," Itama gasped between Devour pulses, "how we're all just echoes eating echoes
—"
Then the sky split. Not with fire or lightning, but with Hashirama's wooden dragon crashing down between them like divine judgment. Its impact shattered the Devour connection mid-gulp, sending both men skidding backwards across glassy earth. Blood and stolen chakra arced between their broken link, sizzling like acid on stone.
Madara's susanoo reformed instantly—except now it wore half of Izuna's faceplate, twisted in agony where Itama's Devour had partially succeeded. His remaining eye pulsed between sharingan and mangekyou, unstable from the violated memories. "You..." Madara's voice came out shredded, deeper than before, "you taste like graves
."
Itama coughed up black Amaterasu smoke, realizing too late that Madara had let him latch on purpose—those childhood memories were poisoned with Uchiha genjutsu traps. His copied Rinnegan hemorrhaged light as Izuna's stolen consciousness fought him from within. "Clever," he admitted, spitting out teeth that regrew as Uzumaki fangs. "But I didn't come here for just *one* Uchiha
."
Behind them, the dragon's wooden scales clattered like bones as it dissolved into a thousand paper-bomb tags. The real trap. Itama grinned with Izuna's smile just as they detonated—not outward, but inward, collapsing spacetime itself into a Kamui vortex. The last thing Madara saw before the implosion was Itama's outstretched hand, copying the susanoo armor even as both their bodies tore apart at the molecular level.
They landed hard in Kamui's dimension, the colorless void shuddering with the backlash of forbidden techniques. Itama's stolen flesh bubbled where Madara's poisoned memories metastasized, his Devour ability turning inward to consume his own infected chakra pathways. Black blood steamed between them as they knelt—two broken things in a world of nothing. "This place," Madara rasped, his voice echoing with Hashirama's cadence where Itama's Devour had left scars, "always smelled like Izuna's fever
dreams."
The Kamui space rippled as a third presence announced itself—not Obito, but something older. White Zetsu spores bloomed from the void ceiling like weeping sores, dripping liquid chakra that pooled around their knees. Itama's Rinnegan spun backward in time to see the spores arrange themselves into a familiar silhouette: Kaguya's unfinished vessel, hungry for their despair
.
Madara's laugh was jagged glass on stone. "You wanted more Uchiha?" He spread his arms as Zetsu tendrils pierced his spine, fusing stolen and original flesh into something blasphemous. "Come and eat, little grave robber." The last sane part of Itama recognized this was no longer war—it was an infection trading hosts. Then his Devour instinct overtook him, and he lunged with teeth made of Hashirama's mokuton.
Black chakra met white as Zetsu's spores invaded Itama's copied Rinnegan, triggering a feedback loop of endless replication. The Kamui dimension warped around them, walls bleeding with half-formed memories of every body Itama had ever consumed. A Uchiha scout's final scream echoed from his left elbow. A Senju medic's prayer for death vibrated in his molars
.
Kaguya's unfinished vessel pulsed hungrily above them, its form flickering between a woman's shape and raw chakra abscess. Itama's Devour ability began hemorrhaging stolen identities—Izuna's face melted into the Fourth Hokage's, then a Rain Village kunoichi's, each visage screaming as it sloughed away. Madara wasn't faring better; his susanoo armor now grew Zetsu mushrooms that wept Hashirama's sap.
Somewhere between devouring and being devoured, Itama's original consciousness—that dead Senju from the Third War—woke up screaming. Not in pain, but in revelation: this was always the endgame of copy techniques. Not mastery, but a cacophony of stolen voices where no single self could ever dominate. He laughed through Izuna's ruined vocal cords just as the Kamui space ruptured, vomiting them both back into the real world mid-apocalypse.
The battlefield was unrecognizable—not destroyed, but rewritten. Trees bearing Uchiha crests wept scarlet sap onto earth that pulsed like living flesh. Distantly, Hashirama's unfinished Wood Golem twitched as Zetsu spores fruited from its eye sockets. Madara landed kneeling, his spine elongating into a grotesque tail that lashed at the air, each vertebra studded with Sharingan that blinked in discordant rhythms.
Itama tried to stand and found his legs had fused with the ground, roots of stolen Mokuton threading through the battlefield to where Tobirama's corpse had been buried months prior. The Second Hokage's half-decomposed hand burst from the soil to grip his ankle, whispering forbidden time-space formulae through rigor-mortis lips. "Stop stealing," the corpse rasped. "Start *choosing*."
Above them all, Kaguya's form finally coalesced—not from Zetsu, but from the sky itself, her hair unspooling like roots through the fabric of reality. When she spoke, it was with the voice of every person Itama had ever devoured: "You made me from your hunger." Madara's answer was to vomit a stream of Amaterasu that curved upward in worship, forming a spiral staircase of black flames. Itama watched his own stolen hands begin climbing without his consent.