Chapter 15 - Illusions I

Itachi found himself in a red world, one that resonated familiarly with him for some reason, unfortunately he wasn't giving the time to bask in the profoundness of the landscape he found himself in as his focus was drawn to the source of the swirling red storm that painted the entire landscape in its crimson hue.

Towering over the size of the tallest mountain he had ever seen, so tall that even the clouds floated at half its height, fully covered with majestic mane of feathers with the blackest sheen ever to witness the light's shine; a crow stood, staring down at Itachi with it's blinding red eyes. 

For the first time since he could remember, Itachi felt the feeling of complete hopelessness; something he'd never once felt even when he had been in the presence of people like Pain, Jiraiya of the Sannin, the Third and Fourth Hokage. 

It wasn't a threatening hopelessness or anything that suggested the likely result of a confrontation, no. It was a serene hopelessness that Itachi felt in the depths of his-

"Soul."

Its stare brought a sort of suppression that weighed on Itachi's very soul, one the rogue ninja could very clearly feel. 

From its stare, Itachi could feel as if the whole world was bearing down its weight on him. 

'Almost like a genjutsu!' 

It wasn't a physical phenomenon, the man could tell, but the distinction between it and a physical suppression was so thin that it could almost be negligible. 

"… Tsukuyomi." At his muttered utterance, the suppression stopped and though the clouds and storms remained, there was a certain clarity to the place. 

Yet even now, Itachi wasn't sure where he was. Was this his mentalscape or was it the sword's?

A loud rumbling resounded out and with how quiet the place had been, it became akin to a thunderclap as the mountain-sized crow lowered its head towards Itachi. 

"Itachi Uchiha." It slowly began, and with each articulated word it spoke, the swirling storm around him solidified into smaller normal-sized crows and flew around it. "I suppose I should welcome you here…or rather you me."

Some of the crows that fell off its feathers separated themselves from the rest and flew towards Itachi and started flying around him, enabling a sensation the ninja had dearly missed. 

Even now he could feel it. His pact with the crows and whatever illusory world this was. 

"What are you?" The number of times he's been caught out of loop ever since coming to the afterlife has been numerous that he started harboring the slightest doubts of his abilities. 

"What am I?" Unlike the answer he was expecting, he was met with a question of his own. 

Amidst a murder of crying crows, the two individuals, man and crow, stared at each other's faces. 

"You know who I am, but I don't know who you are." Itachi started, no longer feeling the initial pressure or any other hostile feeling from the humongous crow. 

"You know who you are, indeed." Its words flowed out with an intensity that reverberated through the air and ruffled Itachi's garments. "But you don't know who I am. A misfortune, yes?"

"Are you the sword's spirit?"

"Your Zanpakutō's spirit, in particular." The glow in its eyes increased as it spoke to Itachi, scrutinizing and judgemental. "All Zanpakutō spirits are born from their wielder's spirit. An essential part of them from inception to death."

Itachi could faintly make out a swirling pattern on its red eyes. "So you are a part of me?" The huge crow didn't answer but Itachi got the feeling that it was nodding its head. 

"This place… what is it?" Itachi asked as he looked around. "Is this an illusion?" That was the feeling Itachi was getting from this place. It felt real and at the same time it wasn't. 

"Is it? An illusion?" It's way of speaking was as if, just like Itachi, it was a stranger to this world. "What do you think?"

The former shinobi quickly realized the huge crow's weird speech pattern. Its earlier words resounded to Itachi, about Zanpakutō spirits being a part of its wielder, so in a way it would seem that just like Itachi, it too was a stranger here. 

'But that can't be.' With the way it initially addressed Itachi, and backed up by Itachi's intuition, there was little to no doubt that it was at the very least acquainted with this place. But instead, 'It feels like it's copying my ignorance.'

With all the clues aligning, even without his genius, Itachi's initial assumptions became a lot more solid and all that was left was confirmation. 

"It feels too real to be an illusion and conversely it would be too fake if it was real," Staring at the huge red beady eyes, Itachi felt like he saw an illusion of a familiar pattern spinning inside of them. "And it naturally can't be both."

It tilted its head in a way that showed that it didn't understand what Itachi meant. Slowly raising its head until it pierced the clouds, it directed its gaze upwards. "So is this real?... Or is it an illusion?"

Its neutral voice sounded both detached and forlorn that one could hardly make out any difference as both evenly overlapped. 

Watching the crows flying around the both of them, Itachi closed his eyes as at that moment it could feel something from the huge crow. It was a kind of despair that was not overwhelming or choking. It was a kind of despair that was soft, most times not even hurting, ephemeral and lacking intent. 

Is this real?... Or is it an illusion? 

This was the perfect expression for the despair that Itachi and the crow felt. 

This despair that lacked intent was what Itachi had felt for almost a decade and sometimes it was so lacking that he forgot it was ever there. 

Opening his eyes, dark orbs that had long lost their childish luster, Itachi looked at the sky that started raining red droplets of smoke and blood. 

"It's an illusion… because it once used to be real, now no longer." The crows around them started squawking as they both turned to look at each other. "Illusions are only real when we are not strong enough to break through them."

As of this moment, Itachi felt like the crow in front of him wasn't just a soul of a sword but rather a split part of his soul. It was a feeling of mutual understanding that flowed through them as two parts of one soul. 

"So it is an illusion. I see." Neither of them cared longer for the smoke and blood raining down on them. It was only an illusion of the world. "Do you know who I am now, Itachi Uchiha?"

"No, I don't." Itachi simply replied. "You are not an illusion of mine, so who are you?"

It was the first thing Itachi noticed about the crow after its first words: it always reflected everything Itachi spoke. 

Another way of saying it would be that the crow copied everything Itachi did – A concept so familiar to Itachi since he was born with it. 

"Who am I?" The storms of red and black stirred with a mild rumble as it brought its head way down to Itachi's level, obscuring everything else apart from its large encompassing body and red eyes from his vision. "If you know your name, you should know mine. Do you not?"

He did. 

This world of illusion was very telling in that regard but it was the identity of the crow that had made Itachi doubt. It had literally been staring at him the entire time and still the simple answer eluded him like the perfect illusion – one indistinguishable from reality. 

"Your name…" This world of illusion where he had the greatest control and one of his strongest abilities when he was alive, now stood in front of him. A real illusion. 

"… is Tsukuyomi." 

The crow, a motif mostly tied to him, and the pinnacle of genjutsu, one of the reasons why he was so dreaded, had both come alive in the same being. 

At Itachi's clear utterance of Tsukuyomi's name, the raining sky of smoke and blood ceased and cleared up, revealing the source of the red hue that lighted this world. 

A red moon. 

Seeing the moon, something clicked in place inside Itachi and the moon reflected it. 

A red eye with 3 tomoe. 

The Sharingan. 

Seeing the changes in his eyes on the moon, Itachi frowned a little in confusion and turned to Tsukuyomi. "Only the tomoe? Why can't I access your Mangekyō, Tsukuyomi?"

Not just Tsukuyomi, his left Mangekyō, he couldn't access his right, Amaterasu. 

"The answer is your soul, Itachi Uchiha." Now when he heard Tsukuyomi speaking, he no longer felt the threat of being oppressed. "Using the force of your soul to draw on our abilities, while it increased the potency, the cost for it also increased by folds. Your soul can't wield me and Amaterasu at the same time. Not yet."

It was simple. 

The soul was the most primal force of any living thing and Itachi now using his soul's energy to power the Sharingan instead of his physical and natural energy like he usually did with Chakra was akin to pouring flammable oil into a flame sustained with wood. It burns bigger, brighter, and hotter and conversely so does the wood. 

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A/N: A mostly obvious knowledge but Tsukuyomi is known as the God of the Moon. 

Also p@t is now 10 chapters ahead, and a few stones would be nice