"Kurotsuchi, I'm sorry." Sasori looked somewhat ashamed.
Since the two had met, this was the first time Sasori had botched a task Anyo had entrusted to him.
Proud as he was, Sasori immediately climbed into the Mecha and said, his embarrassment turning to anger, "I'll go back and bring him here right now."
"Forget it." Anyo sighed. "It's too late. The brothers have presumably already begun fighting by now. It seems this fated battle couldn't be avoided after all."
Sasori asked, "Will Itachi really die?"
"He wants to fulfill Sasuke's potential through his own death." Anyo pointed at his eyes. "One of the prerequisites for awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan is that the person must experience intense emotional stimulation."
"But how did he fool me?" Sasori asked blankly. "To avoid falling under genjutsu, I only switched my real body with the puppet at the very end, and I activated Sage Mode. With the two different types of chakra inside me interfering with each other as well, I was already immune to genjutsu attacks."
By now, Sasori was certain that he had fallen under Itachi's genjutsu. Otherwise, there was no way he could have failed to see through a clone.
Anyo looked at the crow in his hand with a complicated expression. "What Itachi used on you wasn't ordinary genjutsu, but the strongest genjutsu, Kotoamatsukami. Never mind you—even I would fall for it."
Sasori blurted out, "How is that possible? What kind of genjutsu could be that powerful?"
With nothing to do at the moment, Anyo decided to analyze it for Sasori. "Not just me. Kotoamatsukami works on anyone. It's just that its effects differ depending on the person."
Anyo held up one finger. "The first category consists of people with poor resistance to genjutsu and relatively weak minds and wills. Kotoamatsukami