Chapter 24, Part 2: A Murder of Crows
The echo of the Black Coffin's destruction faded, leaving a silence that was heavier than any sound. The clifftop was a ruin, a landscape of shattered rock and warped space. Gin stood, his chest heaving with the first signs of genuine exertion, a single trickle of blood tracing a path from the corner of his lip. He had won. Decisively.
Kisame was on his hands and knees, the shark-like features of his fused form receding, leaving him gasping and grievously wounded. Samehada lay beside him, shuddering, having absorbed a near-fatal amount of the spiritual energy to keep its master alive.
Itachi was in a worse state. He was on one knee, his head bowed, blood streaming from both eyes-the unmistakable price of maintaining his Susanoo against such an incomprehensible force. The Yata Mirror had saved his life, but the temporal and spatial distortion had savaged his senses and drained his chakra to a critical low. They were broken. Defeated.
Gin began to walk towards them, his steps slow and deliberate. He casually rested the hilt of his Bankai, Kamishini no Yari, on his shoulder. He was the victor, here to survey the spoils of his masterpiece of destruction.
"Well now," he said, his usual playful purr returning, though it was strained. "That was a bit more effort than I expected. You two are surprisingly tough." He stopped a few feet from Itachi. "I suppose I should thank you. It's been a long, long time since I've had to use one of those."
Itachi didn't look up. He remained kneeling, his breathing shallow.
A soft caw broke the silence.
Gin paused, his smile faltering for a fraction of a second. He glanced around. A single black crow had landed on a nearby rock, its beady eyes watching him. Then another landed beside it. And another.
From the folds of Itachi's torn Akatsuki cloak, more crows began to emerge. They didn't fly so much as pour out, a river of black feathers and unsettlingly intelligent eyes. They swarmed across the ground, hopping and fluttering, surrounding the area, their soft caws creating a dissonant, eerie chorus.
Gin's expression soured. "Ugh. Creepy birds. I never liked birds."
He made a lazy shooing gesture with his free hand, then with his blade, trying to wave the flock away. "Go on, shoo. Party's over."
One particularly bold crow hopped onto a rock directly in front of him, craning its neck. Gin's sky-blue eyes met its small, black ones for a single, fleeting instant.
And the world ended.
Tsukuyomi
He was no longer on a clifftop. He was bound to a crimson cross, suspended in a blood-red sky under a black, dead moon. The air was thick and heavy.
Itachi stood before him, his Mangekyō Sharingan spinning, not with exhaustion, but with cold, absolute authority. "Three seconds in your world," Itachi's voice echoed from all around him. "Here, you are mine for seventy-two hours."
Gin's mind, a fortress of cunning and deception, tried to fight back. He tried to disrupt his own Reiatsu.
"I will not ask you for information," Itachi's voice continued, devoid of emotion. "I will not torture you for secrets."
Dozens of spectral Itachi figures appeared, each holding a black blade.
"I will simply... cut."
For three days and three nights in the world of the mind, Gin was subjected to an endless, monotonous torment. He was stabbed, sliced, and dismembered. His wounds would heal instantly, only for the process to begin anew. It was not the exhilarating pain of a real battle; it was the sterile, meaningless, soul-crushing agony of a perfect, inescapable trap. It was an attack on his very spirit.
The Real World: Three Seconds Later
Gin's eyes snapped open. He was on his knees, gasping, his body drenched in a cold sweat. His mind was screaming, reeling from the phantom agony of three days of torture compressed into three seconds. His vision swam, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
The clifftop was empty.
Itachi and Kisame were gone. All that remained were the scars of their battle and the faint smell of ozone and blood.
And the crows.
Dozens of them were perched all around him, on the rocks, on the ground, their heads tilted as if watching him with a shared, silent intelligence.
He staggered to his feet, his hand pressed against his throbbing temple. A genjutsu... cast through the crow's eye... A contingency. He had it planned from the start...
The crows suddenly took to the air, not in a frantic flutter, but in a coordinated, silent mass. As they rose, a faint red glow began to emanate from each of them.
Gin's eyes widened, a flicker of genuine alarm finally breaking through his composure. A clone... a trap within a trap...
He brought his blade to his chest, preparing to use Butō to attack.
He was too late.
"Karasu Daibaku (Great Crow Explosion)"
Itachi's voice seemed to whisper on the wind.
The entire murder of crows detonated simultaneously. It wasn't one large explosion, but dozens of smaller, perfectly synchronized blasts that created an inescapable, all-encompassing inferno. The force of the combined explosions ripped through the clifftop, sending Gin tumbling into the chasm below as the very ground he stood on crumbled into nothing.
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Chapter 24, Part 3: The Serpent's Promise
The roar of the explosions faded, replaced by the rush of wind and the distant crash of rock echoing up from the chasm below. For a long moment, the ruined clifftop was silent, shrouded in a thick cloud of smoke and dust, seemingly devoid of life.
Then, a quiet, almost cheerful voice drifted up from the abyss.
"My, my... that really was quite a bang."
A figure appeared at the cliff's edge, seemingly stepping out of thin air onto a solid foothold of his own spiritual pressure. Gin Ichimaru stood there, his silver hair slightly disheveled, his Shihakushō robes singed and torn in several places, but otherwise, he was completely unharmed. A faint shimmer of violet Reiatsu, dissipated around him.
He brushed a speck of soot from his shoulder with a casual, almost lazy motion, his ever-present smile firmly back in place. He looked down at the devastation, at the place where the cliff had been just moments before, and he let out a soft, breathy chuckle.
The laugh wasn't one of anger or frustration. It was a laugh of genuine, unadulterated amusement. A laugh of respect.
He had been so focused on overwhelming them with a power they couldn't comprehend—his Bankai, his Kidō—that he had momentarily forgotten the true nature of his opponent. Itachi Uchiha was not a creature of power; he was a creature of intellect. A master of contingencies and traps layered within traps. He had used his own apparent defeat as the ultimate misdirection, luring Gin into a state of victorious calm before springing his final, perfectly executed escape plan.
A genjutsu cast through a crow, followed by a crow explosion... Gin thought, his sky-blue eyes glinting with a sharp, analytical light. He didn't try to win. He just wanted to survive. He created an opening and escaped with his wounded comrade, all while leaving a nasty little parting gift. How wonderfully clever.
He had been outplayed. The thought didn't infuriate him; it thrilled him. It had been a long, long time since anyone had managed to truly surprise him. The game was far more interesting than he had initially thought.
He turned his gaze towards the distant horizon, in the direction the Akatsuki duo had presumably fled. His smile widened, becoming a sharp, predatory grin, the grin of a serpent that has just identified a worthy and delicious new prey.
"Well played, Itachi-kun," he whispered to the empty air. "You got me. This time."
He let the silence hang for a moment before adding, his voice a soft, silken promise of future violence.
"But next time... I won't be takin' it so easy on ya."
With a final, amused chuckle, he turned and vanished in a flicker of Shunpo, leaving only the ruined cliffs and the echoing memory of his laughter behind.
Tbc