Naruto : Domination

"What do you mean, Danzo is going to be Hokage?" the words left my mouth with the taste of ash, while my eyes narrowed dangerously towards Itachi, who looked supremely unconcerned with my plummeting mood.

The sky was clear and there was a fain breeze lifting the dust from the ground, leaving the landscape of the reddish mountains of Iwa to be seen through a faintly glimmering curtain of minuscule particles that reflected the sunlight.

Looking at Itachi, it appeared that everything was going as he wished for the first time in a long while, and sensing that I was already planning to storm Konohagakure no Sato, he spoke: "You once asked me about Shisui's eyes."

I frowned, my mind recalling the conversation we had inside of his Tsukuyomi immediately after I retrieved Kakashi's Sharingan "You told me he asked you to kill him because he couldn't bring himself to act against the Uchiha, and that you had destroyed those eyes."

Itachi nodded thoughtfully before casting his gaze forward, his black eyes spinning into blood red with no wavering of any kind in his chakra: "I lied."

The delivery was so dry, the words so soft-spoken, that I almost choked on my own spit. I had learned that he could deadpan like the best of them, but every time he did so, it was so unexpected that it left me floundering for a reply: "You... lied."

The silence of my companion was the only answer I received. In those seconds, we kept moving, only for my mind to connect the dots: "Ah... has Danzo, let's say... turned a new leaf? Coincidentally, just in time for your brother to return in Konoha without questions asked about his absence?"

"Coincidentally." Itachi nodded quietly, and I wanted to laugh.

I jumped over a jutting section of rocks while we neared our target: "Does this mean you have another Kotoamatsukami ready to turn an enemy into an ally?"

The silence that followed was the only answer I truly needed, but nevertheless, my mind was awhirl with the implications while I tried to adjust my plans: after all, we had a good amount of assets stacked against the quickly dwindling might of the Akatsuki. Soon it will be over.

"Leader-sama has tasked Hidan and Kakuzu with the hunt for Sasori and Deidara: the missing Kazekage is an issue that he can ill afford at this point in time, while he has personally retrieved the Two-Tails." Itachi's stoic voice underlined how his thoughts were mirroring mine: with our faction able to count on myself, Itachi, Tobirama, and Hashirama as front-line fighters, we were hardly pressed for forces.

Especially now with the complicity of Konoha under a Kotoamatsukami'ed Danzo. "Kakuzu and Hidan will disappear soon enough, then we'll only have to reach the Big Bad in Ame with the delivery of the four and fifth tail, is that correct?"

"Leader-sama instructed Konan to work with Tobi to capture the sixth tail." Itachi spoke idly, as if he wasn't delivering the most important news that could be heard in the Elemental Nations: "The Immortal Duo should have delivered the seven-tails already."

"So we'll be the last ones." I concluded, keeping up with the count of Biju the Akatsuki had captured: "We'll spring everything with the delivery of our two targets, I reckon... Changing topic, how do you feel? We've been running for a while, this should be enough of a warm-up."

Itachi made a scene of breathing deeply as he kept moving, his movements as efficient as ever, and I almost snorted. Since the discovery of his malady, he had to consciously focus on wasting the less possible energy on any given task: with his genius, he had turned economy of movement into a science that it would take me years to replicate as a pale copy.

Necessity shaped one of the most formidable minds of the Elemental Nations into what he was today, and hard choices, and the bone-deep hurt they caused, forged his peaceful character into an adamantine blade.

I found myself smiling as I ran behind him, and for the first time in a long while, relief sang in my soul: was it truly so odd, that I trusted him to stop me if I became worse than what the Elemental Nations currently had?

"Stress test your lungs: anaerobic sprinting, broken breathing, the works... try everything that makes you breath harder than you should." the med-nin in me instructed Itachi: I was pretty sure that his lungs were as good as they were going to get, Hashirama's cells surprisingly eager to work with the heavy, dense chakra that characterized my Eternal Mangekyo-wielder companion.

He glanced at me with a twitch of irritation in the corner of his eyes, and I had to bite back a smile. Buried deep under the unyielding layers that made him who he was, he appeared to be human: like all shinobi and kunoichi, he had skills that had been hard-won with endless training and great amounts of strife.

Because of his malady, he had forcefully applied his analytical mind to every step, every breath, every blink of his eyes: now I was asking him to temporarily behave like a badly trained rookie. Here's the smoldering remains of your pride, Itachi.

It was one of the few elements that could bring ninja on the same level: each individual had earned their skills with a lot of effort, perfecting them in a game that had your life on the line more often than not. And rightfully, shinobi developed a carefully kept in check pride for their skills. At least if they wanted to keep living: complacency was a signed suicide note, after all.

Itachi was a black blur as he streaked through the reddish, rocky plateau that would eventually reach the volcanic range where the host of the four tail was located: with his new lungs working cleanly and with no apparent side effects, I found that I was hard-pressed to follow as he started to put more effort in his running.

His striding steps weren't as long as he could make them on the flat terrain, chakra ran through his coils and exploded from the tenketsu under his feet in an inefficient manner that minute cracks on the rocks.

Still, he was starting to leave me behind, and without Sage Mode, I wouldn't be able to keep up for long without starting to actually get tired. In the lull of our run, my mind returned to counting our resources, in particular those that would reveal themselves extremely useful when revealed as a trump card.

I still had Kakashi's Sharingan: and Obito tended to use his phasing skill every time he could when he faced a new enemy. Should I implant it in a small snake, one capable of concealing himself, and train with him to be ready to throw my massive repertoire of ninjutsu into the Kamui dimension?

The Kotoamatsukami that was left in Itachi's hands... who among our enemies would be our best bet? Nagato with his bullshit Rinnegan? Maybe he could avoid the effects somehow, especially if the technique was executed through one of his puppets.

Konan could be extremely dangerous in the right circumstances, but she was hardly someone whose sudden presence on our side would change the tides of our war. Obito himself? With the Uchiha bullshit going on, and the half-Hashirama body he had? I didn't even consider Hidan or Kakuzu, neither would survive long enough to be useful in any case. Maybe we should simply keep it as insurance?

I shook my head as I kept running behind the increasingly smaller shape of Itachi.

...

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