"What powerful ocular power, Itachi. You're exquisite~"
Orochimaru trembled as he raised both hands before his chest, attempting one last resistance.
Little did he know that the more he resisted, the more excited it would make the other man.
Itachi swiftly swung his kunai, and Orochimaru's left hand fell away.
Blood had been drawn.
Itachi said mercilessly, "I imagine you can still tolerate this degree of pain, Orochimaru... none of your techniques work before these eyes of mine. You can never have me. Give up on me."
Orochimaru clutched his right hand in agony. "Hmph, big words. I won't give up on you!"
Ignoring him, Itachi aimed the kunai at Orochimaru's face and deliberated aloud, "Orochimaru, I don't know what to do with you. Should I kill you right now... or... put you to some other use..."
The kunai drew closer and closer, gradually approaching the space between Orochimaru's brows.
"Itachi!" Orochimaru cried out in despair, his face pale.
It wasn't because he had lost to Itachi, but because the feeling of wanting something he couldn't have truly hurt.
"You want me? You... aren't worthy yet..."
Just as Itachi was about to perform cranial surgery on Orochimaru, several shuriken suddenly flew toward him from afar.
Itachi stepped back and made three consecutive leaps, perfectly evading the shuriken.
Kabuto Yakushi, the third party who had been hiding in the shadows all along, hurriedly leaped in front of Orochimaru and asked with concern, "Lord Orochimaru, how are you? Are you all right?"
Orochimaru ignored Kabuto Yakushi and stared straight at Uchiha Itachi instead, his voice trembling with disappointment. "Itachi, this unfinished affair between us today... someday, I will repay it!"
Eager to protect his master, Kabuto Yakushi fled the scene with Orochimaru under cover of several explosive tags.
Uchiha Itachi did not pursue them.
After escaping somewhere deserted, Kabuto Yakushi aligned Orochimaru's severed right hand with his right arm. "Lord Orochimaru, I'll reattach your hand right away!"
"Don't bother..." Orochimaru panted, still shaken, and snarled through gritted teeth, "I'll just change bodies when I get back. Damn that Itachi..."
"Then do you still want this severed hand?"
Kabuto Yakushi truly was meticulous; even while fleeing, he hadn't forgotten to take Orochimaru's severed hand from the ground.
Looking at the ring marked "Void" on the severed hand's little finger, Orochimaru seemed to make a decision, his snake pupils contracting. "Keep it. Make it into a specimen when we get back and put it in my room. It'll serve as proof that I was once part of that organization..."
"Hmm? Lord Orochimaru, do you mean...?"
"Exactly that. Starting today, I'm leaving the Akatsuki!"
In a secret cave, at the Akatsuki's base.
Pain, the leader of the Akatsuki, issued a summons as usual.
Soon, the members' figures appeared out of thin air before him, one after another.
Konan, Zetsu, Uchiha Itachi, Sasori, Kakuzu.
Only Orochimaru was absent.
Pain had already sensed that Orochimaru had rejected his summons and announced directly to the members:
"Orochimaru has defected from the organization..."
Sasori snorted in an aged voice. "Hmph, I knew that brat was unreliable. Always putting his personal matters before the organization. He doesn't know his place."
Pain said, "Although I don't want to let Orochimaru pursue his freedom either, we have too few members right now. Our first priority should be..."
Before he could finish, Tobi suddenly raised his hand from the corner:
"Hey, hey, hey! Look at me, look at me! Just let me join~"
Sasori treated Tobi with utter disdain. "Get lost!"
"Oh..." Tobi's shrill voice instantly sank, and he curled back into the corner, looking aggrieved beneath a cloud of gloom.
As Sasori's longtime partner, Sasori volunteered:
"Leave Orochimaru to me. His subordinate Kabuto is a spy I planted there. I can track Orochimaru down using Kabuto's intelligence. The organization's traitors must be eliminated!"
Pain said, "Don't rush. Recruiting more members is our most pressing matter. I already have several candidates who are well suited to the organization. I'll need you to recruit them personally shortly."
"Mm..." The members all agreed with their leader's decision.
"Right, there's something else to tell you. It's news about Konoha, a shinobi village of one of the great nations."
This news actually meant little to the Akatsuki, but Obito had told Pain to announce it.
At this point, Pain and Tobi, who was hidden in the shadows, deliberately looked toward Uchiha Itachi:
"Konoha's shadow leader, Danzo, has fallen. And he was brought down by someone from the Uchiha Clan. His name is Uchiha Xia Yu. He has awakened the Mangekyō in both eyes and can summon Susanoo..."
"..." Uchiha Itachi remained unmoved.
Hearing this, Kakuzu immediately grew interested. "Oh? Since when did the Uchiha Clan have someone so talented? Itachi, do you know him? His head might fetch a good price."
"I don't know him," Itachi replied coldly.
His face remained expressionless, but inwardly, Itachi felt conflicted and surprised.
Xia Yu, I never imagined you... had reached this level too.
They belonged to the same clan. How could he not know him?
But in Uchiha Itachi's memory, Xia Yu was nothing more than a lecher.
On the night of the massacre, he had even felt that killing Xia Yu or leaving him alive made no difference.
The main reason was that he hadn't found Xia Yu anywhere. Xia Yu hadn't been in the Clan Compound at all.
Time had been tight then, and after finishing the massacre, Itachi couldn't possibly have roamed openly around the village just to find Xia Yu.
In the end, the matter had been left unresolved.
Itachi knew very well that anyone who could awaken the Mangekyō was no ordinary person, nor was it something accomplished overnight.
I really misjudged you, Xia Yu. Could you be an actor even better at pretending than I am?
It looks like I'll have to find time to return to Konoha.
Itachi mulled it over silently. This matter concerned him greatly.
He wanted to see clearly just what kind of person Uchiha Xia Yu was.
As one of only two survivors of the massacre, and with Xia Yu being so strong, his younger brother Sasuke would certainly choose to band together with Xia Yu for comfort.
Itachi wanted to meet the real Xia Yu and see whether he could safely entrust his younger brother Sasuke to him.
"Itachi, what sort of person is he?" Kakuzu persisted.
Xia Yu counted as a rising star in the shinobi world. Kakuzu believed that a newcomer capable of bringing down Danzo would surely appear on the black market's bounty list soon.
Naturally, Kakuzu wouldn't easily let a potentially valuable prospect slip away.
"I told you, I don't know him well," Itachi denied again.
"Hmph!" Kakuzu shot Itachi a vicious glare, black threads secretly stirring inside his sleeves.
Itachi's cold attitude had stirred the killing intent in Kakuzu's heart.
"Kakuzu, I can answer that question." Pain's words dispelled Kakuzu's killing intent:
"According to our intelligence, Uchiha Xia Yu is a lecher. He has established his own harem paradise in the Uchiha Clan Compound. He has nearly two thousand wives alone... and there are already over a hundred newborn Uchiha children."
At this, even these eccentric members of the Akatsuki were stunned.
Throughout history, this was the first time they had ever heard of this sort of shinobi.
Sasori mocked:
"Heh heh heh... to think the Uchiha Clan produced such an oddity. Itachi, you bear a lot of responsibility for this!"
"It looks like your massacre last year was wasted effort. In just one year, that Xia Yu has practically bred back everyone you killed, hasn't he? Tsk, tsk. Interesting..."
"Itachi, since we're colleagues, do you need me to wipe them out again for you? I'm not like you. I don't leave loose ends. I'm very thorough..."
Before you continue