Chapter XXVII

The bell rang, and with its chime, our duel commenced. Itachi and I moved simultaneously, both taking a measured approach to assess each other's stance.

I smirked as we seemed to think the same. Our feet kicked away the dirt, propelling us backward. Each of us had four shuriken in hand, but I also had a kunai ready.

Itachi swiftly threw all his shuriken, and with a slight raise of his eyes, he knew I was planning something. Instead of meeting his shuriken head-on with mine, I strategically placed my kunai in the path of his projectiles.

A powerful explosion ensued, cratering the field. His destabilized shuriken fell harmlessly while mine soared towards his position. Yet, with his own set of kunai, Itachi effortlessly deflected my attack.

It was a flash of cunning tactics, an opening statement showcasing our skill. Perhaps, in the end, all they wanted was to be impressed.

There was no clear win condition for this duel. It felt like we had reached the same wavelength, both of us simply enjoying the moment and showing off our abilities.

As the smoke from the explosion began to clear, Itachi took a risk and closed in, his fist aimed at me with a kunai in hand. I quickly shifted to meet his aggression, and a brief flash of sparks erupted as our movements clashed. I managed to catch his hand, but he swiftly spun around, using his free leg to jab at me.

I leaned backward to avoid the kick, then swatted away the kunai he had thrown. However, I soon realized the impending danger coming from above.

Clang! A brief shower of sparks erupted from the intense friction.

I gritted my teeth in surprise. Where the hell did he get his Ninjato?

Itachi's assault was relentless, each movement deliberate, leading seamlessly into the next attack, again and again.

I managed to dislodge myself by subtly using Genjutsu, causing his attack to destabilize. On one occasion, he put too much stamina in his elbow, causing him to miss his momentum. I kicked him away and used his body as propulsion to jump backward, putting some distance between us.

The Uchiha flashed his hand signs, and a sense of trepidation washed over me.

"[Katon: Grand Fireball]," he announced.

Damn it, I had to either somehow dodge the absurdly large fireball in this confined field or clash head-on with a similarly overpowering jutsu. In the end, I made up my mind as he hurled the flaming comet at me.

I swiftly threw a kunai at it, a seal tag wrapped around the handle. The size of the fireball dramatically decreased as the chakra destabilized from the absorption seal I had developed. It bypassed me harmlessly, uprooting a nearby tree.

Without wasting a moment, I closed the distance between us. My hand poised to form the necessary seal for a counterattack. I released four shuriken infused with Fūton chakra, their blades spinning with a white gleam. The speed and precision were not to be underestimated.

Given Itachi's skill, I doubted he could simply deflect the razor-sharp shuriken. He tried to evade, but it was futile. The wind chakra ensured that they would always find their mark.

I thought I had won, and almost smirked if only he hadn't transformed into a log.

"Typical," I muttered in frustration.

The pattern usually involved a replacement jutsu followed by shunshin to launch a counterattack. I had been right. I felt a presence behind me, and I spun around to face him, but I was a fraction too late.

Instead of blood, Itachi's eyes widened in surprise as his sword harmlessly passed through an illusion.

"Caught you!" I declared, coughing lightly to hide my satisfaction.

Honestly, did he even have his Sharingan yet?

Without hesitation, I appeared behind him and swiftly thrust my kunai towards his back. He spun around and blocked the attack. We exchanged another flurry of taijutsu strikes, with Itachi skillfully mixing in his impeccable kenjutsu techniques.

As I activated the Three-Line Formation Jutsu, my strike pounded him with greater force. My downward slash was met with a deflecting strike from his sword, rattling it due to the combined effect of the Genjutsu and my secret technique, making his feet unstable.

Whether he still didn't realize he was under the influence of the Genjutsu or not didn't matter. I quickly capitalized on his opening, spinning my kunai before thrusting it precisely into his abdomen.

Perhaps due to the stress I had forced him through, I felt a shift in the air. Reacting on instinct, I swiftly moved to cover my ground, throwing my kunai towards him. He met it with a slash, resulting in another explosion as I had laced it with an explosive seal.

In the chaos, I switched my position and hid myself from view.

It was a Ranmaru doll disguised as me that stood before Itachi, with his unwavering faith. His eyes flashed a crimson hue, and I shuddered as I looked at them.

"Oh, I'm screwed," I thought to myself.

As expected of a monstrous genius like him, Itachi had awakened his Sharingan with one tomoe. My measly genjutsu wouldn't work on him anymore. I tried to blend in with the Hokage's retinue and flashed an awkward smile at him, keeping my feet dangerously close to the arena limit.

Itachi effortlessly predicted each of Ranmaru's strikes, easily bypassing the doll as he peppered it with slashes and thrusts. The material I used for the doll endured under his assault, but I knew it wouldn't last long at this rate.

I had to think quickly. When facing a Sharingan user, the best strategy, if not through sheer power, is to outnumber them. They're like anime protagonists who grow stronger with the fluctuations of their emotions alone.

Ranmaru threw another explosive kunai and jumped backward. Itachi, well aware of my trick, simply threw another set of shuriken in its path. But this time, there was no explosion; instead, his eyes burned at the sight. It was a flash seal.

I had saved this trick for an occasion like this, a fight with a doujutsu user. Blinding them with the flash seal, stabbing them in the eyes – it's an effective way to neutralize their advantage.

With Itachi groaning and panting, covering his throbbing eyes, Ranmaru and I could capitalize on the opening and use a brief shunshin to gain distance. His ultra-sensitive eyes were burning under the light, and he was clearly in pain. As tempting as it was to exploit the opportunity further, this was just a friendly spar, and I started to feel bad for him. It would be a lesson for him in the future, I supposed.

We waited for his pain to subside as he glared at the Ranmaru he thought was me. He seemed angry, but his surprise was evident when he saw three Nobuyuki-like figures standing side by side. Thanks to the absorption seal, it was easy to support the doll and create the illusion of multiple versions of me.

Itachi didn't use a shadow clone, probably knowing that it would drain him, even if a portion of chakra would return upon its destruction.

The Ranmaru dolls flashed towards Itachi with swift motion, each equipped with a kunai as they pounded him simultaneously. Under my guidance, they attempted to overpower him with Genjutsu. However, it wasn't as easy as before since his red eyes allowed him to detect the subtle changes in his body. Nonetheless, our goal was to divide his attention among three opponents and subject him to a relentless Genjutsu assault.

He deftly moved his blade to dance between the kunai-wielding dolls, trying to counter-attack with Genjutsu, but it was futile. "Genjutsu will never work on me or Ranmaru," I thought to myself. I felt confident that I could even break free from Tsukuyomi and Kotoamatsukami under certain condition, though it was mostly conjecture.

Why? Thought partition. I divided my mind into its own independent thought processes, but "dividing" isn't quite the right term—it was more like exploiting the abundance of spiritual energy I possessed, adding more processors to my mind. In short, I cloned it.

At first, grasping the concept was difficult, but as soon as I started to dive into Naruto's consciousness and talked to the imprisoned fox there, it became easier to process. Ranmaru has become the lynchpin as his memory started to pour on me everytime I dispelled him, making me easier to understand the concept, dividing my persona then thoughts processes,

I could lose my personality all along if I wasn't careful in the initial stages, each of partition has their own ego, including ranmaru. A rather fatal flaw in the design, though I try to develop a dampener by filtering their ego before their thoughts processed inside the main memory, me.

In short, if you can't put me and all of my partitition in Genjutsu all at once, it's futile as each would try to free the other.

Well, not that Kotoamatsukami or anything similar to it would work, especially since they probably don't even know about this secret technique in the first place.

I refrained from using the technique until I summoned Ranmaru. Having multiple thoughts running inside my head felt uncomfortable, but I knew I would need to keep it active as the danger around me would inevitably increase.

I maintained my focus on the three Ranmaru dolls that were still engaging with Itachi. His breaths were becoming haggard, likely due to the strain of using his Sharingan for the first time, causing him to tire even more quickly. His stamina was waning.

The ultimate weakness of the Sharingan is its inability to track multiple targets effectively when fighting in a group. Doing so would put a strain on the user, overwhelming them with excessive information gathered by their almost photographic eyes.

That's why the Second Hokage developed the Kage Bunshin technique, to overpower the Uchiha in close quarters with sheer numbers. He used Suiton to counter their Katon specialty and developed Hiraishin to bypass their eyes prowess. That man had such a strong hatred to unhealthy degree for the Uchiha, it wouldn't be surprising if he had built a gas chamber for them if he had survived the war. But I digress.

I believe it's time to end this.

I swiftly performed a series of hand signs, disappearing from my initial position as Shunshin propelled me above Itachi. Coordinating with the rest of the Ranmaru dolls, we overwhelmed him while he remained oblivious to the descending danger from above.

I revealed a steel gauntlet adorned with intricate black lines and a whirlpool emblem at the center as the seal's focal point—a prototype of my ultimate creation, a master seal. A seal to rule them all.

Well, not really. Just kidding.

It's still in the early stages of development. I opted for the gauntlet because I couldn't risk a permanent tattoo on my arm, and using the Natural Energy is dangerous if it actively circulates within my body.

Sickly green sparks crackled from the gauntlet as I propelled my descent with a push of Fūton chakra from behind. Itachi had a moment to look up, his voice trembling, "N-Nobuyuki?!"

Evading was futile as the dolls enclosed all his escape routes within a tight circle.

"Shannarou, Itachi!" I yelled as my fist connected, pulverizing the ground. The cracking of spiderweb-like patterns and the gust of wind escaping signaled the immense pressure that enveloped the entire field, obscuring it with swirling dirt.

At some point, Itachi bit the bullet and escaped by overpowering one of the Ranmaru dolls, earning himself a stab in the abdomen that I had always desired.

Well, it would have been dangerous if he took it directly. That's why I had absolute confidence that he would somehow evade.

He lay panting on the ground, chest heaving, both of us exhausted from the battle. I looked at him as the remaining Ranmaru dolls dispelled, returning to the storage scrolls in my satchel.

"I yield," he declared.

"The match is over!" Katou-sensei announced.

A grin appeared on both of our faces as I pulled him up by his hand, adrenaline dissipating from our veins. We formed the seal of reconciliation afterward.

Thankfully, it seemed that Itachi would be the one fainting from exhaustion this time, not me. Well, I did collapse to the ground, utterly drained from chakra depletion, but I managed to remain conscious.

The gauntlet had transformed into a lifeless stone, crumbling away into useless dirt.

I had dedicated so much time and effort into its creation...

I let out a heavy sigh, feeling a mixture of disappointment and regret even if I'd expected that would be the result.