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He was dying, his life a power point in front of his eyes. Not a very good power point, more of a true crime power point of really gruesome pictures of people he murdered at various points through out his life.
Through the blood covering his face, Itachi frowns, feeling a bit put out by the memories he's currently reviewing. His life was actually rather disappointing, wasn't it? He'd had so many plans when he was three. Not good plans, he'd really been hoping to grow up to be a tree, but he hadn't even accomplished that and what did that say about him? (To be fair, he's pretty all right with not being too adjacent to Zetsu in most ways, but it was the principle of the thing.)
Sasuke says something that Itachi can't quite hear through all the dying he was doing, and Itachi mustered up a smile from somewhere and shushed him. Itachi was thinking. Sasuke was not very good at thinking and would not be helpful in this endeavor.
His sharingans flutter in his eye sockets, reminding Itachi that all things are optional when one had two plot-breaking macguffins embedded in one's skull. "Of course," he mutters, blood pouring out of his mouth. "I'll use the sharingan."
Distantly, Itachi senses Sasuke's sudden alarm, but it was hardly important. Sasuke was fine, Itachi had dulled all his kunai in preparation for the fight, worried he'd accidentally murder his cute little brother while trying to throw the fight for him. There was only so much Itachi's good intentions could do (historically, very very little).
His eyes bleed a little, just enough to be attractively tragic in a deviantArt goth kind of way, and Itachi swirls away through time and space to childhood.
Sasuke yells in protest, his hand wrapped tightly around Itachi's wrist as the world disappears and reappears, very different.
Itachi blinks up at a stone ceiling, wrapped in blue light, and takes a moment to realize that he hadn't specified whose childhood, and also that he feels pretty fine, all things considered. He can see, that's nice. He's lost all the blood covering him, even the aesthetic choice trickles, which is a little disappointing. He worked hard on those.
Itachi sighs, and sits up. He's mostly naked, except for a pair of skin-tight boxers, which aren't really his style, but he'd deal with it. Commando worked better when there was something to go commando under. It was just nudity, otherwise.
A thin rectangle of stone falls on him from above, and Itachi scowls, tossing it aside as a distant voice murmurs to him, muffled and the words quite unintelligible. He rolls out out the strange bed he found himself in and immediately is standing on someone else. A blond teen, wearing the exact same boxers as Itachi, and, on brief inspection, possibly looking very similar to Itachi's new body.
Itachi tilts his head, and squints at the other boy out of habit. He kicks him a little to wake him up. It's rude to sleep on stone floors, probably. "Hey, you."
The other boy stirs, and eventually looks up at him. With the unerring instinct of siblings everywhere, Itachi immediately realizes that this mostly naked boy is Sasuke. This is helpful, as it allows Itachi to pretend he doesn't know this so that Sasuke doesn't recognize him in turn. "Who are you and why are you in my room?" Itachi asks, asserting dominance.
"Your room sucks," Sasuke says, because he's always been a rude little child. He groans and sits up, pressing his hand to his forehead, looking like he's battling a terrible headache. How strange, Itachi feels great. "Who the hell are you?"
Itachi freezes, and panics a little bit. "Uh--"
Sasuke looks up at him, newly blue eyes narrowing in suspicion as he takes in Itachi. "You...seem...familiar."
"I don't remember who I am," Itachi lies. "Come on, let's go, little brother."
"Wait--"
"We're identical," Itachi says, which he's only 20% sure of, but seems like a reasonable thing to say. "And I woke up first."
Sasuke gives him a killer stink eye and says, "Suuuuuuure."
"Twins!" Itachi says cheerfully, already feeling like this is going to go great. Sasuke suspects NOTHING, and now they can be brothers again! Basically what Itachi was trying to do anyway. Now all Itachi has to do is become a tree, and he'll have achieved all his life goats.
Sasuke pokes at the stone rectangle that Itachi tossed aside, and it starts to glow. Weird. "What's this?" Sasuke asks.
"Don't remember," Itachi says. "Probably not important. Come on, let's go."
***
There's no Konoha here. No Uchiha. Whole lot of very weird looking people with pig faces who liked to fuck around and find out.
Also, apparently they were named Link. Both of them. Everyone was a bit surprised by Itachi's secret twin, actually.
The second sun descends behind the horizon as Sasuke grumbles. "You're totally Itachi," Sasuke mutters as he cooks their dinner and Itachi relaxes, thinking about important things.
"Don't remember who I am," Itachi insists, reaching out and making grabby hands for the fried rice Sasuke made. "I'm hungry, foolish little brother. Feed me."
"I should poison this."
"But we're twins," Itachi protests through a mouthful of rice as Sasuke scowls into his roasted apple. "You'd be so alone without me."
***
"Itachi, you fucker, what did you do now?" The pretty and surprisingly buff princess demands, descending from the ceiling in a crystal that slowly dissolves as the very large mutant man bleeds out in the very big castle that Itachi is pretty sure he now owns.
Sasuke mutters something like, "Stupid big brother," that Itachi elects to ignore. Stupid little brother, he thinks fondly as he grins up at the princess. "Kisame!"
"You took your sweet damn time, kid, I was stuck in there for like. A year. Gai literally only cares about his workouts, he kept making me follow along inside the crystal because he could figure out how to open it."
As one, Sasuke and Itachi look towards the massive beastman that the strange townsfolk had called Ganon. "Like. Maito Gai?"
Gai wheezes. Quietly. "Youth."
Sasuke gets a grim kind of look on his face and pulls out a dozen bananas from his pocket. Itachi rolls his eyes, but allows Sasuke his little rebellion. Even if Itachi literally just defeated Gai, he supposes it's okay if his dumbass little brother decides to try for round two.
"Wow," Itachi says, looking Kisame up and down, his hand held to his chin as he studies his old partner. "You look buff. Like less buff than you used to, but, you know. Flex?"
Kisame flexes, shoulders still pretty buff, and the pale dress he's wearing straining under the pressure of his flexing. He's still at least a little taller that Itachi's new body (it's really short. He's still not a tree, so it's pretty hard to rectify this.)
"Yeah, I can be into that," Itachi decides.
"What? Ew!" Sassuke exclaims from where he's hand feeding Gainon bananas, the hypocrite.
Kisame sighs. "I left you alone to get a new toothbrush. I was coming back."
Itachi pouts a little. Not much, mother didn't raise them to be pathetic. Just enough. "Well, I didn't know what it was going to do. But didn't you miss me?"
"Give me the sword," Kisame says, nodding at the blade Itachi made Sasuke hunt down for like. A solid month and a half. Master Sword or something. Only blade in the world build by a half-decent smith, all the others crumple like cheap tin when jammed through a skull.
"Yeah, okay," Itachi says, handing him the blade. "Forgive me?"
Kisame grins, and give the blade a swing. "Sure. So, how's it been. Had weird visions of you all the time. Nice horse."
Itachi blushes as Sasuke yells "Pervert!" over his shoulder.