Naruto: Blind

"Just simple genjutsu," to told him, turning towards him to better study him. The uncertain tone did not match the emotionless expression on his face. She wondered if she had imagined it, "It's an experiment because I don't know how it'll work on you in your blind state. Genjutsus are illusionary techniques that work on the nervous system by using your own chakra against you. So I'm wondering if it'll have no affect on you because I can't make real eye contact to disrupt your senses, or if you'll experience the illusion of sight because of the way it uses your own chakra."

"Assuming it works, what kind of illusion would you cast on me?" he asked after a moment's pause.

"I know a variety of genjutsus, I suppose I could let you pick the illusion, and I'll try to cast it on you," she said off-handedly, "Anything specific?"

He shook his head, "It doesn't matter."

"Okay," she shrugged, then moving to stand in front of him, "Make sure your eyes are facing straight ahead; I'm going to try it now."

She stared straight at his sightless eyes, aligning her viridian irises with his obsidian ones. A serious expression was on his face, and she noticed that he was slightly tensed up; she wondered dimly if he was nervous. Genjutsu was not something to be taken lightly, and you had to trust someone to a tremendous degree if you were to willingly let someone cast it on you. Selecting an illusion in her mind, she formed the signs with her hands, and signing the last symbol, she focused her chakra and threw the illusion in his direction.

At first Sasuke wondered if anything had even happened to begin with—it was still dark around him, there were no illusions, and there was still the rustling of the leaves. Then the world spun dangerously and he felt himself lose his balance, the ground seeming unnaturally soft, and fake. He was falling over, unable to get his balance, and as he fell, he kept falling, and falling.

'Sasuke…?'

The voice echoed from far away, almost drawn out on the whispers of the breeze. It came from everywhere, no fronts and backs, ups and downs existing in the insubstantial world, yet he could recognize it as Sakura's voice. He tried turning his head, getting a pinpoint on her illusionary location, but the vertigo was overwhelming, and he felt sick.

"Your genjutsu had better be me falling endlessly over in a world with no directions," he told the air, trying not to vomit, "because that's what I'm experiencing at the moment."

'No, that's not what it is at all,' came Sakura's voice, 'You can tell it's an illusion?'

"Yes," he croaked, holding onto his illusionary stomach, "Unless you want me to feel the sensation of falling endlessly off a cliff."

There was a pause, and Sasuke continued to feel ill, before her voice came to him.

'Can you break out of it?'

He considered the possibility for a moment. Once the body became aware of an illusion, it was generally simple to escape a genjutsu, but all anomalies in genjutsu he had been trapped within were visual anomalies—he had never broken through one with distorted sensations. And there was one genjutsu he had been unable to break free from—one that shown him something that had been real, and was no illusion.

He released his stomach and made a hand seal that would disrupt his own chakra flow, "Kai."

The world instantly stilled, and he felt his back against the ground; a sharp rock was poking painfully into his right shoulder blade. He felt Sakura's hand on his shoulder, and while the wind was still blowing softly, there were now birdcalls in the air, something that had dissipated in the illusion.

"Okay, so that didn't have any affect on you—visually that is," she said quietly to herself; Sasuke didn't move from his spot, the rock in his back was a nice reminder he was back in the real world, "That could be advantageous—if an opponent doesn't realize that you're blind, and cast genjutsu, you won't be affected enough to fall fully into it."

He grunted at her voiced thoughts, he himself wondering when she had learned so much on genjutsu.

"If you don't mind, I want to try one more," she said after a moment's pause, "There's something Tsunade-sama taught me when I was studying under her. Though it's not as commonly used, due to it being in an inconvenient place to try and attack, genjutsu can be applied to the back of one's skull. Because most information received from the senses is received by the cerebrum's occipital and parietal lobes, close contact with it should have a greater affect on you."

"How is it more effective?" he asked, trying to absorb what she had just said, only getting a vague grasp on it.

"For genjutsu to work, one often has to trick the primary sensory organ: the eye. But if one has trained their eye hard enough to resist most illusions, some of the more powerful ones can become completely useless against certain opponents," she clarified lightly, the explanation seeming almost automatic, and her mind elsewhere, "Most of the illusion is recognized as information is sent to the brain. But if one attacks the brain directly, information is instantly received and perceived as true, before other parts of your brain can work out what's illusion and what's not."

"Why the back of the head?"

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