"Tsukuyomi."
Itachi's icy voice seemed to come from the depths of hell, exploding inside Kakashi's mind.
Kakashi felt the world before him instantly lose its color, turning a suffocating blood-red. The sky was dark red, with an eerie black moon hanging overhead. He found himself bound tightly to a massive cross, unable to move a muscle.
"This is... a genjutsu space?" An unprecedented fear surged through Kakashi. He tried to muster the chakra inside him to break the genjutsu, only to find that his chakra seemed completely frozen, refusing to respond at all.
"In this world of Tsukuyomi, space, time, mass-everything is under my control."
Itachi appeared before Kakashi like a phantom. There was not just one Itachi, but hundreds upon thousands, each holding a sharp longsword and gazing coldly at Kakashi bound to the cross.
"For the next seventy-two hours, I will keep piercing your body with this sword. Outside, only an instant will have passed."
Itachi raised his longsword and plunged it into Kakashi's abdomen without hesitation!
"Aaaaargh-!"
Excruciatingly real pain instantly coursed through Kakashi's entire body, and his agonized screams echoed shrilly through the blood-red space. Then a second Itachi stepped forward and drove a sword through his thigh; a third pierced his shoulder...
Seventy-two hours of endless torment dealt an utterly devastating blow to Kakashi's mind.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Asuma and Kurenai saw only Kakashi charging toward Itachi. The instant their eyes met, Kakashi dropped to his knees on the water with a thud, like a puppet that had suddenly lost its soul.
Kakashi gasped for breath, his entire body drenched in cold sweat, his eyes unfocused. He did not even have the strength to stand. After just one second of eye contact, Konoha's elite jonin Kakashi had been utterly defeated! His mind teetered