Chapter 57 - Itachi vs Yoruichi II

"Telling yourself it's an illusion will do you little good." — Itachi Uchiha.

°

°

°°°°°°

A deafening explosion rocked the silent forest first before it was engulfed in lightning and fire that turned over the very earth the two people fighting stood on.

Yoruichi was easily the one with the overwhelming advantage as it could be clearly seen how battered and covered in dust Itachi was.

To battle Yoruichi, he felt it necessary to disable how she negated his motion after figuring it out.

Other than the vents in every Shinigami wrists that are used to release Reiatsu, there are two other main pressure points in a Shinigami's body; the Saketsu and Hakusui, located in the heart region and sternum respectively.

Blocking or destroying any of these pressure points could seal away a Shinigami's power, permanently cripple them or outright kill them.

Yoruichi's mastery over Hakuda and her knowledge of the soul allowed her to manipulate the wrist vent by sending just the right amount of her Shunkō needed to freeze her target's nervous system.

'I need to offset her Shunkō with an equally intense force to cancel it out. Too much and I might just as well block it and kill myself from implosion.'

Slashing down the empty air with his sword, a bright yellow line was drawn as the blade traveled down. "Hadō #32: Ōkasen."

The bright yellow line shot out an encompassing yellow beam in Yoruichi's direction but the agile and petite behemoth met it head on and triumphed against it.

"You're faring better than I expected you to. But now you should understand that there's still a fundamental difference between skill and pure raw power. You have an astonishing level of skill but your raw power is severely lacking. And that is where your Zanpakutō holds you back." She commented her observation while looking at Itachi, who even till now, was still thinking about how to level her advantage with his disadvantage.

Deep inside him, something flickered violently upon hearing what Yoruichi said about the 'drawbacks' of his Zanpakutō.

Even Itachi disagreed with her. "My Zanpakutō is not the problem, I am. The opposite of what you said being the truth – I am the disadvantage of my Zanpakutō."

Yoruichi looked stunned at the admission. Itachi wasn't the only Shinigami to blame himself rather than his Zanpakutō, but there was a certain surety in his words that made it sound true.

"Are you good to go, or should we continue this another day?" She offered but he shook his head.

"I'm ready. Come." He beckoned her forward while brandishing his sword that was now a normal length katana.

Yoruichi's lightning came alive once more and she blinked to his front to throw him off, following up with a punch to the gut, only to raise her other hand to block a sword strike to her head after she realized that her hands didn't touch him.

'Spatial deception. Very Itachi-like.' She grudgingly admitted.

She looked around and the unnatural state of the battlefield. Left was right and right was halfway in the sky and halfway to the side.

She was only able to keep track with him with the lightning around her acting as signal receptors to any like charges. She also had to regularly flex her Reiatsu just to make sure.

The one good thing about Shunkō was that a slight relapse in focus would hurt her and disable the technique, which was also her saving grace the five times that Itachi caught her inside a genjutsu without her even knowing.

'Tsukuyomi.'

'Manipulating those illusions are hard and you have to take care not to get drawn in. The Tsukuyomi technique is now vastly different from how you used it when you were alive.'

CLANNNG! KRACKLE!!

Fist and blade met, Itachi dodging her punches with careful manipulation of the distance between them and Yoruichi reacting to most of his blind attacks with nothing aside from instinct.

'Is there a reason to go this far? Self-gratification? Acknowledgement? Or is it to satisfy something else?' Tsukuyomi asked, incomprehension laced in his voice as he struggled to understand why Itachi was entertaining her to tell detriment of himself.

'I don't know, but something tells me that hiding behind illusions for every fight isn't what I should be doing. I'm trying to see if I can figure anything out with this.'

Itachi admitted that he too was as clueless as to why he let the fight go on for this long.

Just like how his illusions weren't infallible and almost moot against people like Jiraiya of the Sannin and Mukai Kohinata, the lost Hyuga who fought both him and Shisui and would have killed them too had it not been for Shisui's Mangekyō Sharingan genjutsu.

'What I wouldn't give to have my Mangekyō at this point.' He mused in nostalgia.

Casting the Tsukuyomi technique without the basis of a Mangekyō was dangerous as it was a genjutsu that could manipulate the perception of time and space of the victim to an unbelievable length.

Yoruichi lagged again for a brief moment before her Shunkō flared up and she was snapped awake with pain.

"Goddamned brat!" She cursed and attacked a clone of Itachi which instantly dissipated and returned the feedback.

….

'BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND!'

….

'Too little.' Slowly and surely, Itachi figured out a way to counter her Shunkō's basic ability through the help of his clones, the Sharingan helping him with the precise amount of energy needed to offset the intensity of Yoruichi's Shunkō.

Face it head on.

Something seemed to scream at him but he couldn't hear it, mind fully focused on confronting Yoruichi's Shunkō head on and resisting its destabilizing effects.

…. And he did, much to the stunned surprise that was painted across Yoruichi's face.

But that wasn't the only surprise he had for her.

At the split moment of stunned silence, Itachi took an illogical and unnecessary risk and cast Tsukuyomi on her.

Being an illusory technique sharing the same name with one of the counterparts of Itachi's Zanpakutō spirit, Tsukuyomi, the Tsukuyomi illusion was a top tier illusion technique that was as taxing to cast as it was to get out of.

Unfortunately, he was yet to possess the Mangekyō Sharingan needed to perceive and accurately manipulate the illusion without having to suffer the strain of the extended time. Not to mention the mental strain it would have on Yoruichi if she spent centuries, or worse millennials, fighting and dying on repeat.

"Releas–"

His world spun like a kaleidoscope that sucked his consciousness in, blinking as he found himself in a world of red moon and smokey black flames, heavily littered with his bodies that they formed literally hills.

Looking towards the peak of the highest hill of bodies, Itachi saw someone crucified mercilessly like a pin cushion with numerous blades, some transparent like his Shikai and some swords made of solidified jet black flames.

With a thought, the world rearranged itself and he was now atop Yoruichi's peak with all the transparent blades gone, leaving her still impaled with the black ones.

"This isn't Tsukuyomi." He realized. The sensation of this illusion didn't feel like any of his other Illusions that all had traces of Tsukuyomi's presence in them.

"Of course, here isn't Tsukuyomi. Similar, but something entirely different."

He turned around but he didn't see anything to identify as the presence he was feeling.

"Amaterasu…"

The black flames that were the soil under the body-littered ground flickered excitedly in response to Itachi's call.

"Who else could it be?" Amaterasu's voice, unlike Tsukuyomi's, reverberated hauntingly in a violent way deep inside Itachi's soul. "I tried calling you countless times from this desolate world, but like always you ignored my voice. Only wishing to use me when your precious illusions fail you."

Itachi frowned as he listened to Amaterasu speak, confused by why his own spirit would think of him that way when he has been trying to reach out to Amaterasu ever since he achieved his partial Shikai.

"Even now with that woman who thought she could wantonly rampage here; you called out to Tsukuyomi first, never bothered to call me, even when the both of us are one and the same."

"The words you speak are false, Amaterasu. I have been trying to reach out to you years now–"

"But you never once expressed my flames, did you? Not back then, and not now."

And that was when it hit Itachi like Yoruichi's Shunkō.

Habits.

His personality was always calm, reserved, always wearing a façade, passively aggressive and rarely ever confrontational. A life of illusions – one where he only expressed a part of his soul, Tsukuyomi.

He never appeared arrogant, forbearing, burning with passion and ambition – never, not once. Always content to remain in the shadows.

He sighed despondently and sat down atop the piles of his own body. "I was never aware that my choices forced you to be shunned. Truthfully, I was never aware of a lot of things."

He looked below at the flickering light and asked genuinely, having only ever shown such a genuine expression and a healthy bit of vulnerability.

"Help me understand you, Amaterasu. You, me and Tsukuyomi – that's all we are; different parts of the same whole." He dipped one of his hands into a spot of the flickering black flame scattered across the ground. "You know just as well as I that I wouldn't have neglected you if I knew how not to."

"Truthful words, but truer actions." The voice of Amaterasu breathed out in an old way of resignation. "Even if I don't want to heed your words, you'd find a way to force me to."

#######################

A/N: Amaterasu has been finally introduced and the Zanpakutō spirit seems hurt and betrayed that Itachi never expressed the part of his soul that was Amaterasu.

(Obviously his Zanpakutō spirits are different. This is 'technically' their second life with Itachi, and going with the Uchiha lore, there are the proof of his love and pain. His eyes, both figuratively and literally.)

What is the essence of Amaterasu and how does it affect Itachi as a person? Whelp, even I don't know yet.