[Closed] Oh brother, let's go down

[dangodragon]

Who: Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Sasuke
Where: Down by the river
When: May 28th
Notes: Sasuke gets to spend some expensive time with his brother.

Itachi still didn’t know how he felt about Sasuke actually buying time with his brother. He felt guilty Sasuke felt he had to do that. Then again, this was time spent with his brother instead of any number of horrible people he’d thought he might be forced to spend time with, so it wasn’t that bad.

Whatever he thought about it, Itachi had no idea what to do on a date with his brother. Usually they spent time together because they had something to do together. Itachi wasn’t good about finding “fun” activities, so he’d done the best he could and secured food to eat that he knew were Sasuke’s favorites. Or had been at one point.

Okay, Itachi had food and a location, which was a shady bend of the river he thought was a nice place to relax with summer heat coming on. As he set the basket of food down, Itachi contemplated minor genjutsu and small children. Would severed heads be too graphic for them? When was the first time he’d seen a severed head--not that he was a good judge on how a normal child would react.

Comments

[not_thedragon]

"Sensei doesn't really need reasons to do that," Sasuke said in as ominous a tone as he could imagine. Maybe that wasn't entirely fair -- generally, he could see the method behind the madness, even if it took until after the fact -- but sometimes it was hard to tell what was a reasoned strategy and what was for the hell of it. Possibly that was the whole point; he'd given up trying to understand Obito at this point.

He grinned when Itachi smirked at him, though, folding his arms. "Genjutsu's not my strong suit, so I need to practice anyway.

"And even if it isn't, I'm certainly better than a genin."

[dangodragon]

"Exactly, which is why I'm trying not to do anything that will give him a reason to think I'm anything but blissfully happy with my life and healthy." It wasn't really a grumble. Itachi knew he wasn't exactly happy or healthy, nor had he been for a while, but for the moment he was content to ignore those deeper issues and focus on more important things like the upcoming exams or fretting over recommending Sasuke for Jounin and listening to complaints from clan members.

"If that's really what you want to do..." This was Sasuke's time to do with what he wanted, and the issue of what genjutsu to cast was solely Itachi's issue, not his brother's. He felt selfish using this time to work on that.

[not_thedragon]

That was honestly a policy that Sasuke could follow more himself -- it would definitely get him fewer bags of candy thrown into his face, at least. He should take notes from Itachi on how to more convincingly get their cousin off his back. Not that he hated Obito's tendency toward overbearing concern, exactly, but at Sasuke's age it was also a tendency toward embarrassing concern.

"Sure," he said, breaking off that train of thought in favour of one much more interesting. "We can conspire to make sure you don't traumatize foreign genin, and our cousin won't be able to haul either of us in for a wellbeing check."

[dangodragon]

"Unless he realizes we're conspiring together and makes us come in for a family therapy session," Itachi added. He put a last bite in his mouth and flipped his hands through signs, not bothering to use the normal eye-to-eye contact, but the more subtle flick of a finger as he brought his hand up to look at his nails. His fatal flaw was nail gnawing, and hopefully Sasuke's food now tasted like oranges.

"I'm sure it would be enlightening." Itachi added.

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke's face made it abundantly clear what he thought of that -- Obito would probably want to include Shisui to make it more efficient, and he wasn't sure he could handle that many big-personality cousins for that long -- with an exaggerated shudder. He took another bite of his food, then blinked at it, chewing with a conflicted expression.

"That's different," he said. "Do you find it practical?"

[dangodragon]

"It's very useful, once you know what someone associates with certain tastes. There are a few universal responses to certain tastes, but those are not quite as effective." Of course, that meant knowing your target fairly well, which Itachi sometimes did if he'd been tracking or tailing someone for a while. That was usually what happened. Itachi could pull off an excellent interrogation, but he was usually sick afterwards. He hated it.

"It's probably not the kind of thing to bring to test gennin with. Though an auditory genjutsu of someone calling for them might be good...." Itachi looked past Sasuke's left shoulder in contemplation, then back at his brother. "The real question is, can you break it?" Itachi quirked an eyebrow at Sasuke and diplomatically sipped his tea to keep from smirking.

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke took another bite of the omusubi, trying to figure out how useful it would be: this was weird, to be sure, but far from debilitating. He supposed that it could be done to force people to taste blood or vomit -- or even less pleasant bodily fluids -- but what were the chances of taste alone bringing someone down, even if it came associated with some kind of memory?

"The genin probably won't be eating in the maze, either," he pointed out. "And if they were, they'd be the overconfident type that would be easy to fool."

As for breaking the genjutsu: something not visually-based would for once been fairly immune to the Sharingan, but even if Sasuke didn't spend that much time creating genjutsu, he'd gotten an increasingly fine-tuned sense of his own chakra as various med-nin has drilled it into his head. The orange-flavoured rice texture was bizarre enough that his body cooperated, too, and it didn't take long before he'd isolated the point of intrusion and flushed it with his own chakra, restoring the proper flow.

And then made a face, because sweet citrus had changed very suddenly to tart tomato.