At the other end of the destroyed hotel lobby, a completely different fight was underway.
Quiet. Deadly.
Sasuke moved with feline grace, progressing right in the middle of battle with frightening speed.
He used everything he could. Wire strings with chakra to bind movements. Fire techniques to conceal displacement. Shuriken thrown in an arc to attack blind spots. Everything that had come with difficulty during endless training, his body now executed with perfect precision.
In this fight, Sasuke surpassed his level. He fought not as a lone avenger, but as a Konoha Jonin. Competently. Calculatedly. Trying to inflict at least one wound on an invincible enemy.
Itachi didn't attack back. He simply... shifted to where Sasuke's attacks weren't.
Minimal movements. A slight tilt of the head—and a kunai flies past the ear. A step to the side—and a fireball crashes into the wall.
"You've become stronger," the Elder Uchiha stated dispassionately, blocking Sasuke's kick with his forearm.
"I don't care about your opinion. All I want is your head!"
Sasuke activated the Cursed Seal to the maximum available. His speed increased even more, at the cost of barely maintained composure and extreme precision.
The fight moved to close range; a series of lightning-fast strikes intertwined with an active Chidori in his left hand.
Finally, Itachi caught his hand.
CRUNCH.
Sasuke screamed in agony as his wrist was twisted unnaturally. A knee to the stomach knocked the wind out of him.
He flew back like a snapped kite, smashing through the remnants of wooden structures.
Now! flashed through the younger Uchiha's mind as he pulled on wire strings invisible in the dust.
He had attached them to the overhanging debris of the ceiling at the very beginning of the skirmish. A huge concrete slab, losing support, broke off from the ceiling and crashed straight onto Itachi's head, raising a cloud of stone dust.
It was his final trap—using the enemy's inertia and the chaos of the environment.
Sasuke landed heavily, clutching his broken hand while trying to catch his breath. He expected to see his brother crushed.
But when the dust settled, Itachi stood in the same spot.
The concrete slab was neatly split in two and lay on either side of him. He looked exactly the same as before the fight began.
The elder brother had walked through the trap like a ghost.
"Not bad," he threw out indifferently. "You've learned to use the terrain. But it is still not enough."
Itachi walked slowly toward him.
Sasuke struggled to lift his head. There was no fear in his eyes. Only frozen, cold hatred.
Using the last of his strength, lying on the floor, he thrust a kunai forward with a barely responsive hand.
Itachi closed the distance instantly, interrupting the younger brother's desperate struggle with a precise blow to the jaw.
Sasuke lost consciousness, falling into darkness with the thought that he still hadn't been able to do enough.
The elder brother's gaze lingered on the younger. Even in oblivion, the avenger's grip on the kunai didn't loosen.
He shifted his gaze down; on the sleeve of his black robe with red clouds, a small but visible cut could be seen.
"Is that so..." he whispered barely audibly.
***
Itachi approached the spot where Kisame was playfully beating Naruto.
The Jinchūriki's last trump card had been erased a couple of minutes ago. The Scarlet Cloak, which Naruto activated as a last resort hoping to even the odds with brute force, lasted exactly two heartbeats.
Samehada, unable to absorb the "dry" and tough Qi, greedily pounced on the Nine-Tails' chakra. The giant sword simply "inhaled" both tails, leaving the Uzumaki drained and devoid of protection. Instead of empowerment, he received instant exhaustion, while Kisame, fueled by the delicacy, only became faster.
Naruto, despite the one-sided suppression, didn't give up; his face was swollen and blue, but he continued to get up after every blow like a walking corpse.
"Wrap it up, Kisame," Itachi said. "We're leaving."
"I wonder when he'll break. So, what about the brother?" Kisame nodded toward where Sasuke's body lay.
"He is unimportant right now. Our goal is the Nine-Tails."
Itachi looked at Naruto.
"I'll have to silence you," the Uchiha uttered.
His Sharingan changed. Three tomoe merged into a three-pointed shuriken.
"Tsukuyomi."
Even in his current state, the blonde knew: don't look into the Sharingan. But Itachi gave him no choice. The Uzumaki didn't even notice how he fell into the illusion trap.
The world inverted.
The sky turned red. The ground—black.
Naruto found himself tied to a wooden cross. He couldn't move.
In front of him stood Itachi with a katana. And another Itachi. And another.
"In this world, I control space, time, and matter," the Uchiha's voice sounded in his head like a sentence. "Seventy-two hours of torture. This way we can take you quietly without resistance."
Itachi plunged the sword into Naruto's stomach.
The pain was real. Sharp, tearing. Naruto clenched his teeth, suppressing a scream.
Something was wrong.
Usually, a Tsukuyomi victim gradually loses touch with reality; sanity shatters into fragments from shock.
But Naruto's consciousness held together. Unlike ordinary shinobi, Naruto had something others didn't.
In the center of his mental body, where the Dantian was located in reality, shone a blindingly white, dense point.
The Pseudo-Core.
It worked like a gravitational field. It kept his Self intact, preventing agony from consuming his personality.
Naruto felt the pain but didn't forget for a moment that it was just an illusion. His spirit was too dense to be cut by a mental blade.
An hour passed. A day. Three days.
Itachi stabbed him again and again.
Naruto breathed heavily; his mental body had been tormented and restored countless times. He raised his head and looked Itachi straight in the eye.
There was not a trace of madness in his gaze. Only steely will.
"Is that... all?" he rasped. "Training... with the Old Man... was worse."
Itachi froze.
He hadn't experienced such shock before. The genius of the Uchiha clan, whose genjutsu broke even hardened killers in seconds, encountered something like this for the first time.
His mind... it's structured differently, as if he isn't human at all, a terrifying thought raced through Itachi's head as the illusory world crumbled into shards. Usually, human consciousness is fragile. Apply the right pressure, and it snaps like a dry branch. But here... It's like trying to cut water with a sword. As soon as the sword leaves the water, it restores its shape as if nothing happened.
The world of illusion wavered.
In reality, only an instant had passed.
Itachi swayed, clutching his left eye.
Blood trickled down his cheek.
"Kisame..." he exhaled. "We're leaving."
"What?" Shark-face was surprised. "We just started. The kid hasn't even fallen."
"His mind..." Itachi whispered. "It's whole. Like a monolith. The technique... is ineffective. We'll take him by force."
Kisame grinned and swung Samehada to chop off Naruto's legs.
"With pleasure!"
Naruto, staggering after physical and mental exhaustion, tried to trigger a kunai explosion, but his reaction was slowed.
The sword came crashing down.
Suddenly, the surrounding space changed.
From out of nowhere appeared walls, floor, ceiling, consisting of soft, pulsating red flesh.
The meat contracted, grabbing Samehada and blocking the strike.
"What the hell?!" Kisame barked.
"Who dared to touch my student?!" a thunderous voice echoed through the organic space.
Next to the Jinchūriki towered a figure with a white mane of hair. His face was distorted with rage.
"Summoning: Toad Mouth Bind!"
"You are inside the stomach of a fire-breathing toad from Mount Myōboku. No one has escaped from here yet. Here, you are just food."
Itachi instantly assessed the situation.
"Kisame, back. We cannot fight a Sannin under these conditions."
"The walls... they're closing in!"
"Amaterasu."
Black flame burst from Itachi's eye. It burned through the toad flesh, which was considered invulnerable to fire. A hole formed in the wall.
The Akatsuki jumped out, disappearing into the night.
Jiraiya didn't pursue. He immediately dispelled the technique.
The ruins returned to normal; at the very edge, part of the collapsed wall was scorched by black fire that continued to burn.
Naruto slid down. He was shaking from the lingering effect of phantom pain from Tsukuyomi, but he remained conscious.
Sasuke lay unconscious, his arm unnaturally twisted.
Jiraiya leaned over Naruto.
"Are you intact? What did they do?"
"Genjutsu..." Naruto exhaled. "Strong. But I'm... okay. How is Sasuke?"
Jiraiya looked at the black flame, then his gaze lingered on Sasuke.
His face became darker than a storm cloud.
"Damn. The mission just got exponentially more dangerous."