The thief vaulted over the edge of the roof and dropped into the skeleton of a half-built watchtower.
Wooden scaffolding climbed the structure like ribs. Loose planks, ropes, and stacked beams were scattered across the unfinished floors.
Aoi landed a second later. Light. Controlled. She slid across the wooden platform and planted herself between the thief and the exit.
I reached the tower a moment after that, slowing before I entered and slipping behind a stack of timber near the wall.
From there, I could see everything.
But they couldn't see me.
Aoi straightened and pointed toward the pouch in the man's hand.
"Give up," she said, her voice steady. "Hand over the pouch."
The man chuckled. Rough. Bitter.
"Or what?"
Aoi didn't answer.
She moved.
Her body slipped forward like a gust of wind, stepping inside his reach in a single fluid motion — and then she struck. Her kick slammed into his ribs, and surprise flashed across the thief's face—
A puff of white smoke burst between them.
A wooden log dropped to the floor.
Substitution.
I frowned slightly as the man reappeared a few steps in front of her. But Aoi didn't hesitate. She pivoted instantly and closed the distance again before he could reset.
The thief threw a punch. Aoi bent backward into a smooth back walkover, the fist passing inches above her face — then her body snapped forward again, her leg whipping toward his head.
The thief stepped back, confident the kick would miss.
But as her foot passed near his face, a small blade slipped free from the sole of her sandal.
Kunai.
The metal flashed upward. The thief jerked his head back just in time to save his face — but the edge sliced through the top of his ear, and a thin line of blood sprayed into the air.
Both of them jumped back.
The thief pressed his hand to his head. When he pulled it away, his fingers were stained red. He stared at the blood for a moment, then slowly looked up at Aoi.
From behind the timber, I felt my stomach tighten.
She had surprised him. But that kind of trick only worked once.
For a second, something malicious crossed his face. Then it disappeared, replaced by the same careless smirk.
"Wait."
Aoi didn't relax, but she stopped advancing.
"Let's make a deal," he said, breathing slowly. "You look the other way… and we split the loot."
Silence hung between them.
Aoi's eyes hardened.
"A deal with you?"
Her voice dropped.
"You're a coward. A stain on the name of shinobi."
For a moment, the thief just stared at her. Then Aoi's fists tightened, and something flickered behind her eyes — images she hadn't asked to see.
Her father.
A shinobi who had died on the frontlines, protecting the village. Protecting people who couldn't protect themselves.
"To fight for the weak," she said quietly. "To protect those who can't fight back…"
Her gaze locked onto him.
"That's what a shinobi is supposed to be."
The man's expression twisted. Something surfaced in his eyes — old and ugly, the kind of thing that doesn't come from anger but from years of it.
"Shut up," he snapped. "What the hell do you know?"
His voice rose, raw.
"I gave everything to this village! I bled for it. Lost my hand for it. Lost my life for it!"
His remaining hand tightened around the pouch.
"And what did it give me in return?"
From the shadows, I stayed still.
His words hit closer than they should have. If my sister and my nephew hadn't pulled me back... that could have been me. Another man broken by war. Left with nothing but bitterness.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the thief let out a slow breath. His shoulders relaxed, and the anger drained from his face all at once — like water out of a cracked vessel.
When he looked up again, the rage was gone.
His eyes were calm. Cold.
I felt my stomach tighten.
That look. I had seen it before — the moment a soldier stopped being emotional and started fighting seriously.
Aoi didn't notice the change. She stepped forward.
"Drop the pouch," she said firmly.
He simply moved. One step, too fast — and as he shifted, his foot hooked the kunai Aoi had thrown earlier. With a quick flick of his toes, he lifted it off the floor and caught it against his coat before sliding it into a pocket.
Clean. Experienced.
Aoi reacted instantly, throwing a kick toward his ribs.
He caught her ankle. Effortlessly.
Her eyes widened. The thief twisted his wrist and pulled, and Aoi lost her balance before she could recover. His knee drove into her stomach, and the air burst from her lungs in a sharp gasp.
He released her leg and stepped inside her guard. Two quick strikes — a sharp blow to her shoulder, another to her side. Precise. No wasted movement.
Aoi tried to counter, but every movement she made was already anticipated. He swept her feet out from under her, and the wooden floor slammed against her back.
She tried to push herself up.
His boot drove into her stomach.
She flew backward and crashed into a nearby barrel. Hard. The metal rattled as her body slumped against it.
She winced.
"You're fast," he said quietly. "But you fight like someone who's never been in a real battle."
He said it without a trace of emotion. Then he pulled the kunai from his pocket and started walking toward her.
Slowly.
Each step echoed through the hollow tower.
This is bad.
He's calm.
I had seen that look before — the moment a soldier stopped yelling and started killing.
They were too far. Even if I ran now, I wouldn't reach them in time.
My eyes swept the floor. Loose stones. I grabbed one — too light. My ten-year-old arm wouldn't generate enough force to stop him at that distance. The only way to throw it that far was Tsunade's technique. Gather chakra at one point. Release it.
But could I do it?
No.
I had to.
Aoi's life is on the line.
I took a deep breath and clenched the stone in my hand. Hirose's voice surfaced in my mind.
"Feel it. Mold it. Release it."
Just enough.
I focused inward, searching for the faint current moving through my body. Slowly, chakra gathered in my arm — rough and uneven, but there.
I snapped my arm forward and threw.
The rock cut through the air faster than any normal throw.
Crack.
It slammed into the thief's wrist. His arm jerked sideways, his grip failed, and the kunai clattered across the wooden floor.
For a split second, the entire tower went silent.
Then the thief slowly turned toward the shadows, and his eyes landed on me.
"Who are you?"
I stepped out from behind the stacked timber.
He blinked once.
"…Ah. Another kid." He sighed. "Don't your parents teach you to stay away from strangers?" His hand tightened around the kunai. "Well. You can learn that in your next life."
I shrugged.
"I get it now. You didn't lose everything because of the war." I held his gaze. "You lost it because you were weak."
Silence.
The words hung in the air between us, and something dark moved across his face.
Good. That worked.
Inside my head, the calculation was simple — I didn't need to beat him. I just needed to keep him busy until help arrived.
The thief charged.
I turned and bolted for the stairs, my feet pounding against unfinished wooden steps as I took them two at a time. Behind me, heavy footsteps — fast, too fast. I scrambled up to the second-floor landing.
The thief didn't bother with the climb. He vaulted the railing, skipping the steps in a single explosive leap toward the floor where I stood.
"...Of course you would do that," I muttered.
I didn't allow him a clean landing. I had already spotted a loose plank propped against the wall, and as he was mid-air I kicked it hard. The board flew straight toward his chest.
Suspended in the air, he couldn't dodge. He reacted on instinct, lashing out with his boot to knock the plank aside — and it worked. The wood spun away, clattering against the wall.
But the impact killed his forward momentum. Instead of reaching the landing, he dropped like a stone, his boots hitting the stairs halfway down, the wood groaning under the sudden weight.
Half a second. That was all it bought me.
I didn't waste it.
I darted across the unfinished floor, weaving through stacks of timber and wooden beams. Construction tools lay everywhere — ropes, loose boards, buckets of nails. A mess.
Perfect.
I didn't hear footsteps behind me anymore. I glanced back.
The path was empty.
Then I looked to the side, and my stomach dropped.
The thief wasn't on the scaffolding at all. He was running horizontally along the tower wall, his body perpendicular to the stone — bypassing every obstacle I had set without slowing down.
I grit my teeth and kept scanning.
Then I saw it: a section of the walkway ahead where the support beams were splintered and gray. Weak. I deliberately slowed my pace and let him pull ahead. He reached a point just in front of me and leaped from the wall, his silhouette blocking the moon for a heartbeat —
THUD.
He landed on the planks directly in my path. He didn't notice the wood groan beneath him. He didn't see the planks bow under his weight.
"End of the line, kid," he said, grinning.
I didn't stop. I didn't slow down. I increased my pace, sprinting straight at him, and he looked momentarily shocked before planting his feet to catch me — pressing even more weight onto the weak wood.
When I was four feet away, I lunged upward and grabbed a support railing hanging from the beams above.
CRACK.
The wooden floor shattered beneath him. His grin vanished as the planks gave way under his boots, and I used the railing to swing my body across the widening gap, my feet missing his reaching hands by inches.
I landed on the solid floor on the other side and looked back.
He hadn't fallen — not yet. He was dangling over the drop, his fingers hooked into a jagged piece of the remaining frame.
Persistent. That only bought me two seconds at most.
I turned and ran.
Behind me, the thief hauled himself back onto the scaffolding, his breathing heavy and ragged. "You're dead when I get my hands on you!" he shouted.
I didn't respond. I kept running and scanning the structure ahead — support beams, loose boards — and then I saw it.
A suspended bundle of lumber hanging from a pulley system, held in place by a single wooden locking pin on the support post.
I ran straight toward it.
Behind me, the thief accelerated. The crazed look was gone now. He moved like a proper shinobi on a mission, and somehow that was worse.
"You're running out of space!"
He was right. The scaffolding narrowed ahead into a dead end.
But I wasn't looking for an exit.
As I sprinted past the pulley post, I snatched a heavy stone mallet from a tool bucket and slammed it against the locking pin with every ounce of my weight.
CRACK. The pin snapped. The mechanism gave way.
CRASH. The suspended lumber plummeted, heavy beams slamming onto the walkway between us and nearly snapping the scaffolding in half. Dust exploded into the air.
I stopped at the dead end and exhaled slowly.
Then the air in front of me shimmered.
I didn't see him move.
I didn't see him climb.
One moment he was behind the timber.
The next — he was standing directly in my path, and his face was something I didn't have a word for. Not anger. Past anger.
I didn't even have time to breathe.
Impact.
His foot slammed into my stomach, and the world lurched sideways.
"You are a clever kid. Really clever."
The breath exploded out of my lungs and I collapsed forward, coughing up what remained of my evening meal.
"But still a kid," he said.
He tangled his only hand into my hair and wrenched my head back, forcing me to look at him.
"Hahaha!"
He started laughing — not a human sound. Something mechanical. Hollow. Like gears grinding together in a cold room.
Then he slammed my face into the wooden floor.
Crack.
"I will kill — I will show you — I will show everyone what a 'weak' man like me can do!"
He slammed my head again.
"I will cut your limbs. Remove your eyeballs."
Another slam. The splinters from the unfinished wood bit into my skin.
"And leave you here to die."
He leaned in close, his voice trembling with years of built-up rot. I could smell the bitterness on him.
"You will be the first one to see what I went through in the war. Then it will be my wife. Then those loan sharks. Then the Hokage."
He was completely broken — and whatever was left behind was grinning with it. The kind of look that had stopped needing a reason.
I tasted copper in my mouth.
As a last move of defiance, I gathered the iron-tasting heat in my throat and spat. A spray of blood hit him square in the face.
He stopped laughing.
Silence fell over the tower. He slammed my face into the floor one last time — harder than all the rest — and stars exploded in my vision. He let go of my hair and stood slowly, wiping the blood from his cheek.
Then he smiled.
A madman's grin.
He reached into his vest and drew a kunai, and the steel looked cold and indifferent under the moonlight. He didn't say another word.
The blade rose.
Suddenly — a masked shinobi appeared beside him. White mask. Black cloak.
ANBU.
A gloved hand caught the thief's wrist mid-swing.
"Stop."
Two more shadows dropped silently from the beams above, and before the thief could react, his arm was twisted behind his back and metal restraints clicked shut.
"W-what?!" he shouted, struggling against the grip. "How did you find me so quickly?!"
One of the ANBU calmly held up several torn pages. "We followed these."
The paper fluttered slightly in the night air, and the title printed across them was clear.
Pressure Points: Basic Guide.
Right. While chasing them across the rooftops, I had been tearing the pages and wedging them into roof tiles and cracks in the walls.
A trail. Insurance.
The thief was forced to his knees, and just like that — it was over.
From a nearby rooftop, an ANBU watched in silence. A pale porcelain mask turned toward me for a brief moment, then the figure vanished into the night without a sound.
My legs finally gave out.
The last thing I saw before everything went dark was Aoi running toward me.
Damn.
My old habit almost got me killed in this life, too.