Scalding white steam filled the sky.
It clung to their faces like countless tiny insects crawling over their skin, so stifling they could barely breathe.
The smell of burning mingled with the earthy stench of sludge.
It was unbearably pungent.
Whoosh!
Something sliced through the air.
The edges of Itachi's black cloak with its red clouds had already been scorched through in several places.
His left hand, its nails painted black,
shot out.
He seized the back of the still-dazed Kisame's collar.
"Move."
Itachi's voice was low, almost inaudible, as though he had forced it through clenched teeth.
Splash.
Their feet kicked up a long trail of white spray across the water.
Under cover of the explosion from the balls of black fire tearing at each other in midair,
the two of them,
like a pair of startled crows,
beat a frantic retreat, skidding backward across the water.
They retreated more than fifty meters
before stopping beneath a thick weeping willow on the riverbank.
Water droplets covered its leaves, dripping down with a steady patter.
They struck Kisame's blue-green, gilled head, cool against his bare scalp.
"Mr. Itachi..."
Kisame panted heavily, his chest heaving like a broken bellows.
He casually slung the limp, half-dead Samehada over his shoulder.
Samehada lacked even the strength to whimper.
"Are... are you all right?"
Kisame looked at Itachi beside him.
A trace of panic flashed through his pupil-less, dead-fish eyes, unnoticed even by Kisame himself.
Itachi did not answer.
He leaned against the rough willow trunk, his body slightly hunched.
His right eye, which he had just forced to unleash Amaterasu,
now
was squeezed tightly shut.
Two painfully vivid trails of warm, scarlet blood
flowed slowly down his paper-white cheek.
They dripped into his high black collar.
"Cough..."
Itachi covered his right eye and