The bass hit so hard it rattled my ribs. Sweat, neon lights, perfume, spilled beer — the whole club was a blur, and I was right in the center of it, twenty-two years old and invincible.
"Another round!" I shouted over the music, slamming my empty shot glass on the sticky bar. My voice was hoarse from laughing too much, singing too loudly, and yelling too hard.
The bartender gave me that you've had enough look, but I waved a twenty in his face until he sighed and lined up three glowing shots of something radioactive green.
I spun around and shoved two into my buddy Tyler's hands."Bro! Too bad decisions!"
He clinked one against mine, grinning ear to ear. "To future regrets!"
The burn hit my throat like fire, but it was perfect — everything was perfect. The dance floor pulsed like it had a heartbeat, bodies grinding together under strobes. A girl in glitter heels grabbed my wrist and pulled me in, and for a few seconds, the world was nothing but heat, music, and her hair brushing against my cheek.
I was laughing again before I even knew why. My head felt like it was full of helium, floating above the crowd. Everyone looked beautiful, like we were all extras in some music video that would never end.
I stumbled back toward my group, tripping on somebody's abandoned purse. Nearly went down but caught myself on the edge of a table, knocking over a half-empty beer."Shit—my bad, my bad!" I slurred at the guy it spilled on. He just laughed, clapped me on the back, and shoved me toward the dance floor.
The night blurred into snapshots:
Someone screaming the lyrics of a song in my face.
My phone was buzzing in my pocket, and I ignored it.
More shots, more drinks, more red solo cups shoved into my hands.
My throat is raw from shouting, my shirt is damp with sweat, and my smile is hurting my cheeks.
At some point, I slipped outside for air. The cool night hit me like a punch, steam rising off my skin. I staggered down the street, shoes slapping pavement, stars spinning overhead like the whole sky was drunk with me.
"Home," I muttered, but the word felt hollow. No Uber. No plan. Just the kind of night that chews you up and spits you out wherever it wants.
I cut through a patch of grass behind some buildings, looking for a shortcut, but my legs were jelly. I tripped once, twice, then just gave up — dropped into a bush like it was a feather bed.
Branches dug into my back. I laughed at how stupid it all was. My last thought before blacking out was simple and stupid and perfect: God, twenty-two feels like forever.
--
The first thing I felt was pain. Not sharp, not stabbing — dull, throbbing, like my brain was trying to claw its way out of my skull. My mouth tasted like warm pennies and bottom-shelf vodka.
I groaned and rolled onto my side. Something damp and cold squished under my cheek. Grass. Mud. Not the carpet of my apartment or the busted couch in Tyler's living room.
I cracked an eye open. The sky above me wasn't the hazy orange of city lights. It was… blue. Bright, endless, almost too clean. The air smelled different, too. No exhaust, no fried food, no stale beer. Just earth. Wet dirt. Trees.
"What the hell…" My voice came out gravelly, like it had been sandpapered.
I pushed myself upright, wincing as every muscle screamed protest. Leaves clung to my shirt. My jeans were streaked with dirt. I was sitting in the middle of a field, surrounded by tall grass and a scatter of trees that looked like something out of a hiking calendar.
No cars. No buildings. No sound except the breeze.
Panic didn't hit me all at once — it crept in, slow and prickling. I patted my pockets. Phone? Gone. Wallet? Empty. Keys? Nowhere.
"Okay. Okay, maybe…" I swallowed, throat dry as paper. "…maybe Tyler dragged me out here. Some dumb prank. Or I wandered too far."
But deep down, I knew that was bullshit. The club was in the city. There wasn't a place like this within miles of downtown.
I stood, swaying on weak legs. The hangover was a live wire buzzing behind my eyes. My stomach cramped — I hadn't eaten in hours.
Each breath felt wrong. The air was sharp, alive, like every inhale filled me with something heavier than oxygen.
"This… isn't right," I muttered, but the silence swallowed my words whole.
I spun in a slow circle, heart pounding. Trees, grass, dirt. No roads. No buildings. No sounds of life except a few crows circling overhead.
For a second, I thought maybe I was still dreaming. Maybe I'd blacked out harder than usual, and this was some fever dream cooked up by tequila and bad decisions.
But the ache in my stomach was real. The mud under my fingernails was real. The way the wind tugged at my shirt, raising goosebumps along my arms — all of it was real.
And that was the scariest part.
I dragged a hand down my face and whispered, "Where the hell am I?"
I started walking. What else could I do? Sitting in the mud wasn't going to fix anything.
My legs felt like lead, every step pounding the hangover deeper into my skull. The grass soaked through my sneakers. Dew clung to my jeans. The sun was high enough that heat pressed down on me, sticky and relentless, but it didn't feel like any summer day back home. The air was too sharp, too clean.
I kept expecting to hear traffic. A car horn. A plane overhead. Anything. But all I got was the crunch of my own footsteps and the occasional caw of a bird.
"How much did I drink last night?" I muttered. My voice cracked, rough from smoke and shouting. "Five shots? No, six. Tyler dared me. Then those glowing green things at the bar. Tequila? Rum? Jesus."
My head throbbed in agreement. I pressed my palms against my temples like I could squeeze the pain out.
"This has to be a prank. Some dumb-ass frat stunt. Right? They carried me out to… what, the middle of a national park? Dumped me in a bush? Ha ha, hilarious, guys. Really sold it."
But the words felt empty the second they left my mouth. My buddies weren't that clever. And I sure as hell didn't remember anyone renting a forest for the night.
The ground sloped under my feet, uneven and rocky. Branches scratched my arms. My sneakers weren't made for this — every root threatened to roll my ankle.
I scanned the horizon, praying for a power line, a street sign, anything to tether me back to the world I knew. Nothing. Just green stretching forever.
The hunger in my gut gnawed sharper with each step. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My body was screaming for water, Gatorade, and greasy food — the holy trinity of hangover recovery. Instead, all I had was a pocket full of lint and a pounding question I couldn't shake:
"Where the fuck am I?"
I tried to piece together last night like a puzzle dumped on the floor. Music. Lights. Shots. That girl in glitter heels. Tyler screaming lyrics in my face. Stumbling outside. The bush.
And then… nothing.
No Uber. No walk home. Just this.
I laughed under my breath — dry, cracked, humorless. "Guess this is what dying feels like. You black out and wake up in the middle of some fantasy screensaver."
The laugh turned into a cough. My throat burned.
Still, I kept walking. Because there had to be something out here. A road. A gas station. A farmhouse. Something.
Anything to prove I hadn't fallen off the edge of the world.
I don't know how long I'd been walking. Minutes? Hours? My head was a foggy mess, time stretched and folded until it didn't feel real. My throat was raw, my stomach twisted into knots, my legs shaky from the effort of trudging through endless green.
The trees finally began to thin. The ground sloped upward, jagged with rocks. I dragged myself up, palms scraping against stone, lungs wheezing like I'd just run suicides back at practice.
"Come on…" I muttered to myself, clawing at roots for leverage. "Just… give me a goddamn road."
I hauled myself over the ridge, chest burning, and froze.
There it was.
A city.
Huge. Industrial towers clawed at the sky, jagged spires of steel and concrete. Smoke or mist curled between them, thick and heavy. At first, I thought it was smog — but then a droplet hit my cheek. Another. And another.
Rain.
Not a drizzle, not a passing shower. Sheets of it, hammering the skyline. The whole city drowned beneath it, streets shining black, rooftops slick, rivers spilling from gutters. A storm with no end.
The sight punched the breath out of me. My hangover haze evaporated in an instant, replaced by a cold crawling in my gut.
"Oh… fuck."
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Quiet. Shaky.
Because I knew — somehow, deep down — that nothing about this was right.
The city didn't look like home. Didn't look like anywhere I'd ever seen. It was alien in its design, jagged and unforgiving, a fortress built in defiance of the world around it. The constant rain wasn't natural. The silence wasn't natural.
I stood on that ridge, soaked, trembling, my brain trying to claw for any explanation that made sense.
Maybe this was some weird Eastern European factory town?
Maybe I'd stumbled into some military zone after wandering too far?
Maybe I was concussed, hallucinating, dead in that bush, and this was the last fever dream of my fried neurons.
But none of it fit. None of it felt real — and that was the part that terrified me the most.
The rain thickened, plastering my hair to my forehead, dripping into my eyes. My sneakers squelched in the mud as I took a stumbling step forward, staring down at the skyline like it might swallow me whole.
"Oh, fuck," I whispered again, because it was all I could say. Because the truth was clawing its way up my throat, and I wasn't ready to say it out loud.
Not yet.
I stood there in the rain, staring at the city, and it stared back.
Something gnawed at me — something familiar. The jagged towers, the endless storm, the way the whole skyline looked like a blade shoved through the earth. I'd seen this before. Not in real life, but somewhere.
A shiver crawled down my spine, sharper than the cold rain.
"No," I whispered. My voice barely carried over the wind. "No, no, no."
My brain tried to fight it, to bury the thought. But the more I looked, the harder it pushed. Every tower, every flood-swollen street, every sheet of rain hammering down in endless rhythm… it clicked into place like a puzzle I didn't want solved.
Amegakure.
Hidden Rain Village.
My stomach lurched. I doubled over, hands on my knees, retching dry air because there was nothing left in me to throw up.
"This isn't real," I muttered, voice shaking. "This is—this is a dream, or I'm dead, or I'm still drunk, or—"
But the rain on my skin was too sharp, too cold. The ache in my head was too deep. The hunger in my gut was too real.
You're in Naruto.
The words hit like a slap. My chest squeezed tight, panic boiling under my ribs. I knew this place. Knew the stories. Knew exactly who lived here — and it wasn't anyone you'd ever want to meet.
Pain.Konan.The Akatsuki.
This wasn't the cool, edgy "fan moment" you daydream about. This was a death sentence. A city ruled by gods who could kill me with a thought. A fortress where outsiders weren't welcomed — they were erased.
The rain slid down my face, salty with sweat and fear. My heart pounded so loud it drowned out everything else.
What time is it? I thought, frantic. Before Naruto? After? Is Jiraiya still alive? Has Pain already killed Hanzo? Am I about to get caught in some massacre I don't even remember?
My mind spiraled through trivia, facts, timelines — useless knowledge that only made the dread worse. Because the one truth I couldn't escape was simple:
I didn't belong here.
And if I stayed in this forest, starving, weak, lost — I'd die. If I went toward that city, I'd probably die faster.
Thunder cracked overhead. My knees buckled, mud splashing my jeans.
"Oh, fuck," I whispered again, but it didn't sound like panic this time. It sounded like surrender.
I staggered back from the ridge, heart hammering like it was trying to break through my ribs. The city stayed there, unbothered, drenched in its endless rain.
"No," I hissed, shaking my head so hard drops flew off my hair. "No way. This isn't happening."
I slapped myself across the face. The crack echoed in the empty air. My cheek stung, heat blooming under my palm."Wake up. Wake up, man. You blacked out in a bush, that's it. This is a dream, a nightmare, something."
I dug my nails into my forearm and pinched until my skin burned. Still there. Still solid. Still real.
"Shit!" I cursed, kicking at the mud. The splash coated my jeans, cold and sticky. "Goddamn it—"
I punched myself in the thigh, hard enough to send pain shooting up my leg. Then again, and again. "Wake up! Come on! This is—this has to be—"
But every sting, every ache, every shiver of rain down my spine only drove the truth deeper. I wasn't waking up.
I pressed both hands to my face, smearing water into my eyes. Maybe it's drugs. Yeah. Somebody slipped something in my drink last night. Hallucinations. That's all this is.
I laughed — a broken, hollow sound. "God, laced vodka. Figures. Tyler always said I'd end up in a ditch. Guess he wasn't wrong."
I pinched the inside of my arm again until it left angry red marks. I smacked the back of my head with my palm. I even bit down on my tongue until blood filled my mouth.
Still here. Still raining. Still, Ame was staring down at me like a judge.
I sank to my knees, mud soaking into my jeans, my chest heaving. My brain spun like a hamster wheel on fire, scrambling for excuses. Drugs. Fever. Coma dream. Some underground LARP with way too much budget.
But no excuse stuck.
Because my body knew what my brain didn't want to admit. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't drugs. This wasn't anything I could laugh off when I woke up hungover in my own bed.
This was real.
And real meant dangerous.
I leaned back on my heels, rain dripping from my hair, whispering to no one, "Jesus Christ… I'm actually here."
My knees hit the mud with a wet slap, and I just stayed there, staring at the city. The rain didn't let up — it poured harder, like the sky was trying to drown me where I knelt. Water ran down my face, plastered my shirt to my chest, and stung my eyes until everything blurred.
Amegakure.
The most dangerous place in this entire world. And I was right outside its gates with nothing but wet sneakers and a hangover.
My throat tightened. I let out a shaky laugh, bitter and cracked."Of all the places… why here? Why the hell here?"
The towers loomed in the distance, black and jagged like knives. I could feel the weight of eyes in there, even if no one was looking yet. Gods lived in that city — and I was just some idiot who couldn't even start a campfire.
I ran a hand through my hair, tugging at it, desperate. "Okay. Think. Think. You're here. You're in… in Naruto. Yeah. Great. Perfect. In front of the one city where outsiders vanish without a trace. You don't know the timeline. You don't know where Konoha is. Hell, you don't know east from west."
My stomach growled, sharp and empty. I pressed a hand to it, swallowing hard. "And chakra? Forget it. You can't mold chakra. You don't even know what it feels like. You're a damn tourist in a warzone."
I tilted my head back, letting the rain slap my face. My voice cracked when I whispered, "What the fuck am I supposed to do?"
For a long moment, there was nothing but rain. No answers. No miracle. Just me, kneeling in the mud, shaking from cold and fear.
The panic pressed against my ribs, thick and suffocating. I wanted to scream, to cry, to wake up back in my bed, hungover but safe. But that wasn't happening.
Instead, all I had was this view: towers of steel and storm, the lair of gods who didn't tolerate strays.
I buried my face in my hands and muttered through clenched teeth, "I'm dead. I'm already dead."
But I didn't move. I just kept staring at Ame, because whether it killed me or not… it was the only thing in this world that looked like a way forward.
The rain didn't stop. It hammered the mud, soaked my clothes, beat into my bones until I was shaking uncontrollably. My thoughts looped in circles: Run. Hide. Wait. But every path ended the same — starving in the woods, a nobody corpse in a world that didn't care.
I dragged my hands down my face and stared at the skyline again. Those black towers. That endless storm. Ame wasn't a refugee — it was a death sentence. I knew it. Every part of me screamed it.
And yet…
"What's the alternative?" I whispered, my voice trembling. "Starve to death out here? Get eaten by some… giant snake, or a bandit, or whatever the hell roams these forests?"
My laugh came out broken, half a sob. "Yeah. No thanks."
I leaned forward on my knees, fists buried in the mud. "So that's it. Walk straight into Ame. Knock on the devil's door." I swallowed hard, throat dry even with rain dripping into my mouth. "Maybe… maybe if I'm lucky… it'll be quick. Maybe she'll do it."
Konan. The Angel of Ame. Paper wings, blade-sharp. If I had to die, if this was how it ended… dying at the hands of a goddess didn't sound half bad.
I stood, legs shaking, mud clinging to my jeans. My sneakers squelched as I forced one step, then another, toward the distant towers. Every instinct screamed at me to stop, to turn, to run. But there was nowhere to run to.
"This is so fucking stupid," I muttered, voice hollow under the rain. "The dumbest idea I've ever had."
I pictured the cloak. Black fabric, red clouds — the symbol of monsters. I'd seen it a hundred times on a screen, thought it looked badass. Now it was real, and maybe the last thing I'd ever see.
I laughed again, soft and cracked, and shook my head. "Screw it. If I'm gonna die… at least let me die in style."
The city loomed closer with every step, rain swallowing me whole.