OBD: Chapter Thirty-Seven: Severely Outmatched

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Severely Outmatched

The night lay heavy over the Uchiha District. It was a silence like the weight of death itself, pressing down. Fugaku stood at the threshold, hands folded at his back, eyes fixed on the dark horizon. His son stood beside him, unmoving. Neither spoke. The stillness was thick, a waiting thing, its edges sharp. They had been here for too long. Time had already begun to warp, bend, its passage uncertain.

The air was damp, laden with the scent of earth and stone. It was the smell of his home, of things that had lived and things that would die. The night was cold but not unkind, as if the world itself were holding its breath, waiting.

Itachi did not stir. He was still as a shadow. Fugaku could feel his presence, a cold knot at his side.

He could feel them coming.

They didn’t make noise. Not the kind a man might expect. It was a shifting, a sliver of movement in the air, a subtle thing that set every nerve on edge. Fugaku knew this feeling. He had learned it long ago. His senses, honed to a razor's edge, could read the smallest details. There was no mistaking it. They were close now.

The first shift. Fugaku could hear it in the breath of the earth, in the quiet churn of the wind. He drew in a slow breath, his hand brushing the kunai at his hip.

“Itachi,” he said, his voice as low as the night itself.

The boy didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Fugaku could see the shift in his son’s stance, the subtle tightening of his muscles.

“They will split,” Fugaku continued, his words moving like shadows between them. “Intercept the detachment.”

Itachi didn’t hesitate. He melted into the darkness like it was a part of him. Fugaku stood still, eyes fixed on the horizon.

The seconds stretched thin. A silence fell over the district, but this was the quiet before the storm, the uneasy stillness before the blood would start flowing. Fugaku’s senses expanded outward, widening, searching.

Then they came.

The air rippled and the one Itachi called Obito emerged first. His mask was familiar. Fugaku had studied him, though he had not met him. His eyes, blood red, locked onto the stranger. Behind the traitor, White Zetsu followed, strange and alien, his form a grotesque mockery of flesh. Fugaku’s eyes tracked them both, calculating. His kunai twirled in his grip.

A flicker.

Obito. He appeared at Fugaku’s left, an instant blur of motion, a shift in space. Fugaku’s kunai lashed out, a blur of steel. But Obito was already gone. The mask flashed again, and Fugaku felt the wind snap behind him.

Beneath him, there was another shift—a strange ripple of chakra. Zetsu.

The creature was a puzzle, a blotch of unnatural growth, twisting, shifting with impossible speed. Itachi had given him a rundown. Fugaku understood the basics: it was fast, regenerating, and unrelenting. Dangerous, but well within his reach.

It lunged, wood-release snapping like whips. Fugaku was already in motion, his body coiling with a speed that made the air crack. Obito followed, reappearing behind him, blade poised, his body warping back into the real world. Fugaku had anticipated it. For a split second he opened the Seventh Gate of Wonder and kicked the air. Flames flashed around his ankles from air resistance and a pocket of compressed air gathered beneath his soles. Leverage. He spun, in mid-air, much to Obito’s surprise, hands blurring as he widened his maw. 

And from its infernal depths came hellfire. 

BOOM!

The fireball cratered the earth. Fugaku kicked again, already moving in the opposite direction, his feet snapping into third charged kick that severed the Zetsu in half. The deformed thing hissed as Fugaku grabbed its upper half, raising it into the air. The back of his throat glowed orange as an inferno gathered once more.  

BURN!

AHHHHHHH!!!

A dying whine.

Silence.

Turning slowly to face the masked one, Fugaku dropped Zetsu’s smouldering husk to the ground, its charred remains crumbling into ash. Obito had survived the fireball, but just barely. His cloak was singed, the fabric shredded in places, and the porcelain of his mask was cracked, warped from the heat.

Frowning, Fugaku reached into his pouch, fingers brushing the familiar handle of another kunai. “Your turn.” he grunted, his voice like gravel. 

***

Itachi’s footfalls were silent on the pavement, his body a blur of movement, sliding between the long-emptied buildings of the district. His Sharingan flickered, activated, scanning every nook, every shadow, every rooftop. Then—there. The faintest shift in the air, a heartbeat too loud, a chakra signature too distinct to miss. They were waiting for him. He stopped at the edge of a darkened alley, his breath steady. The cool night seemed to hold its breath. He had them. They had come to him. The tables had turned.

A shadow peeled from the corner. Danzo, the root of all this, stood motionless at the far end of the alley, his arm unsealed. Beside him, the unmistakable form of the snake sannin—Orochimaru. 

Itachi started his internal clock. 

Ten minutes.  

Go!

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"

***

The alley exploded in fire. A massive fireball erupted from The Uchiha’s mouth, consuming the narrow space, sending heat waves rippling through the alley. It was a fiery beast, roaring forward with terrifying speed and intensity.

Orochimaru’s eye narrowed, but there was no panic. He had expected this. Danzo’s arm snapped up, his fingers forming a seal. His chakra churned. His chest swelled as he inhaled. When the exhale came, so did a crushing sphere of wind chakra that intercepted the fireball. The two techniques mixed, swelling, consuming each other and growing intensity before finally exploding in a conflagration that slagged the surrounding brick and concrete.

The Uchiha was already moving before the fire had fully dissipated. A blur of motion. But Orochimaru had anticipated this as well. His mouth twisted into a cruel smile, and he raised his hand. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

The ground beneath the boy’s feet cracked open, the earth splitting as a massive serpent, its scales shimmering in the moonlight, rose up. Its fangs were bared, dripping venom, the smell of death heavy in the air.

The serpent swallowed the Uchiha. Then it didn’t. Orochimaru blinked, his chakra pulsing in quick succession, and Itachi reappeared on the rooftop above leaping down towards them. The Sannin looked up. Met his gaze again. A mistake. 

The alley was gone. The world was gone. Everything that was real sloughed away in an instant. Orochimaru’s senses were drowned in ink—a realm of suffocating darkness. There were no weapons, no tricks, no air. Suffocation. Asphyxiation. Drownin—

Kai!

Orochimaru fell to his knees gasping for air. The pain hit him then. A dozen kunai stuck in his torso. Blood in his lungs. The smell of it. Poison. He bent over, retching as he vomited the potent toxins. Some distance away, Danzo died—

—The smell of it. Poison. He bent over again, retching as he vomited the potent toxins. Some distance away, Danzo leapt out of the way of an electrically charged projectile that almost took his off head. 

As if sensing Orochimaru’s awakening, a clone tore from the Uchiha’s shadow, low to the ground as it gathered chakra in its palm.

"Raiton: Chidori."

Lightning crackled, a thousand volts of pure chakra surging through the clone’s body and into its hand. The air around it  seemed to distort, charged with static. Orochimaru hurriedly rose, his body stretching and contorting as his limbs elongated into grotesque, serpentine shapes, skin rippling like a tide of flesh. His hands became claws. His eyes narrowed to slits. His monstrous form lunged to escape, but Itachi’s Chidori clone was faster. With a single thrust, its palm pierced through his defenses, striking him square in the chest.

The Sannin reeled as the clone exploded in a puff of white smoke, his snake-like body convulsing, hissing in agony as the lightning burned a fist-size hole through his scales. His mouth opened wide, an agonized scream escaping, but it was clear—it hadn’t been enough to kill him. It was enough for Danzo, however—

—it hadn’t been enough to kill him. Neither was it for Danzo, as the Hokage leaned just barely out of the way to evade the palmful of lightning that punched through the concrete wall behind him. Orochimaru’s body began to slither and shift once more, regenerating, even as he bled from the wounds inflicted on him.

The Sannin rose to his feet, wiping the blood from his lips as he made a split-second decision. 

Without hesitation, or thought for his dignity as a Shinobi, he turned and fled whilst the monstrous Uchiha was preoccupied with trying and failing to kill Danzo for the umpteeth time.

***

The air tasted of metal, thick with the scent of blood. Nagato’s vision through the Deva Path was clearer than any mortal eye could perceive. The Uchiha district stretched out before him, a labyrinth of old stone and dying hope. It was a battlefield now—a battlefield between Danzo’s loyalists and the Uchiha clan members of non-civilian status. His will, embodied through his Paths, commanded the scene. The battle, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, was nonetheless necessary. The Uchiha's defiance had to be crushed; their desires fuel to see the enactment of his grand designs.

Konan was beside him, quiet as ever, her figure an unmoving silhouette against the backdrop of ruin. She had done her part, ensuring the Nine-tails Jinchuriki was in their care. The boy’s unconscious form would soon be whisked away from the madness, and with it, the first piece of their plan would begin to fall into place.

"You should go," Nagato murmured, his voice carrying the weight of finality. "Take him to the base. You can come back to continue your search."

Konan nodded, her expression unreadable. She had always understood. With a fluid motion, she turned, disappearing into the shadows.

Nagato let out a long breath, his thoughts settling on the road ahead. The Eight-Tails still eluded them, but that would change. He had already seen it—the path ahead was clear, and nothing would stand in his way. He turned his attention back to the battle. The Uchiha and ROOT would tear each other apart, but he still needed to be part of it. 

To see it to a conclusive end.