A New Way of Ninja

26: The Facts

"I can't stop the fire!" Dabi yelled.

Shoto tried to ice it, but that didn't stop it either.

"Let me!" Momo ran up to him and held out her hand. "I command you to stop!"

Her hands glowed suddenly.

"Dabi, you too," Wally warned. "Don't let the fire eat you up. It's pure malice, from the sound of it."

Dabi repeated the words Momo had said.

The fire finally went out, but he had some serious burns on him.

"I'll have to heal you later," Momo said, looking up.

Bakugo had Sasuke's attention still, but then he glanced back at Shine and moved forward again, his sword reaching out with Susanoo.

"Get away from him," he said to her.

Shine looked up at Sasuke with a look that was something like anger and also like disdain. "Sasuke," she said, "shut up."

Sasuke blinked at her in amazement at her callousness.

"What is this power you have?" Itachi was trying to get free and finding, same as with Wally's speed force, he couldn't use any of his jutsu against Shine while her sword was in him. "Who are you?"

"It's really not who I am." Shine gripped the hilt more. "It's whose I am... I think you already know, or you will. I release this jutsu, now. I command it to depart this form and return to its master and back to hell."

She said some other words that no one else could hear.

The sword flashed again, like fire almost, but purer.

Itachi made kind of a moaning shudder...and then his fake body dissolved into dust.

"No!" Sasuke cried, in horror.

Shine stepped back, pulling her sword out of the wall.

"That was...actually way easier than I thought it would be," Wally said, glancing at her. "I thought he'd be stronger."

"So did I," Shine said. "But it turns out, since he was dead, he could do nothing to us. We don't fear the dead, we fear the living. This jutsu is a poor match for our powers."

She looked at Kabuto with loathing. "Which is bad news for you, you son of a serpent."

"What do you mean because he was dead?" Sasuke said. "I wasn't done with him yet."

"What? Did you want to kill him yourself?" Shoto said meanly.

"No!" Sasuke said. "None of you understand--Itachi wasn't actually to blame for what happened to the clan."

To his surprise, every single one of them except Momo looked at him like he was crazy. A few of them laughed in kind of a disbelieving way.

Momo was shaking her head in disbelief.

Kabuto was laughing too, though not for the same reasons.

Wally was keeping an eye on Kabuto but glanced up. "You were right," he said to Shine. "He really does believe that now..."

"But you do realize," Kabuto said, to Sasuke, "that, concerning your brother, there's no way to know if what that Obito told you was correct. But could it really have been?"

"For once, he's right," Shine said. "Nothing that man told you would be true."

"It is true," Sasuke said. "And I will not forgive you for what you just did. You killed him."

"Uh, no, she didn't," Wally said.

"Sasuke, he was dead already," Momo said, with tired patience. "Literally, that was a jutsu you were talking to...not your actual brother. Whatever it had of his memories and feelings, it was all part of a jutsu. You could not be sure anything it said to you was even real."