The closer I got, the bigger the city became. Towers of steel and concrete clawed at the sky, black shapes against gray clouds, disappearing into the curtain of rain. From a distance, it looked almost beautiful, like a painting, but the closer I walked, the uglier it got — rusted pipes, jagged scaffolding, smoke curling from vents that never slept.
Every step forward felt like pressing a knife to my own throat.
My sneakers squelched in the mud. Water sloshed in puddles up to my ankles. The rain beat against my head so hard I could barely think. My stomach cramped with hunger, but the fear gnawed deeper.
I couldn't shake the feeling that the city was watching me. Every tower is a set of eyes. Every raindrop is a warning.
"This is suicide," I muttered, my voice drowned by the storm. "Actual fucking suicide."
But my legs kept moving. Slow, shaky, dragging me closer like I was on a leash.
I looked down at my hands — trembling, pale, empty. No chakra. No training. Not even a goddamn knife. Just me, a wet, hungover idiot wandering toward a city of killers.
What are you doing? my brain screamed. Turn around. Go back. Hide in the woods—anything but this.
But there was nothing back there.—just endless trees and a slow, pathetic death. At least here… there was something. Food, maybe. Shelter. A chance.
Or an execution.
I laughed under my breath, dry and cracked. "Pick your poison, man. Death in the woods or death in the rain."
Lightning split the sky, flashing across the towers, turning the rain into silver needles for half a second before darkness swallowed them again.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders against the storm. The paranoia pressed heavier with every step, like invisible eyes were crawling over my skin.
"Keep walking," I told myself, forcing one foot in front of the other. "One step at a time. You made your choice."
But each step felt less like a choice and more like a countdown.
The ground leveled out beneath my feet, mud giving way to cracked stone and flooded concrete. I stopped walking.
I was there.
The edge of the city.
Steel pipes ran like veins along the walls, spilling water into gutters that overflowed into black rivers. Towers loomed above, blotting out the sky, their edges lost in the rain. The storm hammered down harder here, as if the whole place breathed with it.
I froze. My chest tightened. One step more, and I'd be inside.
My heart thudded so hard I thought it would break my ribs. My body screamed to turn back, to run into the woods and disappear. Every instinct I had told me this was it — one wrong move, and I wouldn't even leave a body behind.
I stood there in the rain, staring at the streets like they were the open mouth of a beast, waiting for me to walk in.
"You're dead," I whispered to myself, voice trembling. "You know that, right? You step in there, and you're done. No take-backs. No second chances."
The silence after my words was louder than the rain.
My legs locked. I couldn't force myself forward, but I couldn't walk away either. I just stood there, soaked, shivering, every thought screaming louder than the last.
Turn back. Hide. Wait it out.No —, you'll starve. Keep walking. At least it's fast. Maybe someone will kill you. Maybe she will.
My knees wobbled. My stomach growled so hard it hurt. The rain stung my eyes, but I couldn't look away from the towers.
I swallowed hard, throat tight. "So this is it," I muttered. "Welcome to hell."
And I took one step forward.
High above the city, hidden behind iron walls and veils of rain, the tower pulsed with quiet life. Pipes hissed. Water dripped in constant rhythm. The storm outside bled through cracks, muffled but ever-present.
Nagato sat motionless in the dark. His true body was frail, skeletal, a husk chained to a throne of steel. Tubes fed into his back, carrying stolen chakra through his veins. But his eyes — those rings within rings, endless and cold — were wide open.
The Rinnegan saw everything.
He had been meditating, sinking into the storm, feeling the heartbeat of his city through its rain. But something broke the pattern. A ripple in the downpour, faint but undeniable.
An intruder.
Nagato's lips barely moved. His voice echoed through the bodies he commanded — deep, hollow, inhuman."Konan."
She stepped out of the shadows behind him, silent as the paper she wore. Her wings folded neatly at her back, droplets of rain still clinging to the edges.
"I sense something outside the city," Nagato said, eyes narrowing. "No chakra signature… yet it is not nothing. It feels wrong. Alien."
Konan tilted her head, her amber eyes sharp. "A spy?"
"Not one of Hanzo's. Not one of ours. Something… else." His gaze drifted beyond the tower, beyond the storm. "Go. See what it is."
For a moment, Konan said nothing. Then she nodded once. "As you wish."
Her body dissolved into paper, sheets unfolding like wings, scattering into the air until only silence remained.
Nagato closed his eyes again, but the unease lingered. In all his years, in all his wars, he had never felt a presence that didn't belong.
My foot splashed into a puddle. Then another. The streets swallowed me whole, rainwater rushing past my ankles like veins feeding the city.
I forced myself forward, one step at a time, teeth chattering from cold and fear. My breath fogged the air even though it shouldn't have — maybe that was just me, shivering so hard I couldn't tell the difference anymore.
Then I felt it.
The air shifted.
At first, I thought it was the storm changing, the wind cutting sharper, but then I saw it — a scrap of white drifting down in front of me. Not rain. Not trash. Paper.
I froze.
Another sheet fluttered by. Then another.
Within seconds, dozens swirled around me, spinning faster, sharper, slicing the rain itself apart as they folded into shapes. Shuriken. Knives. Blades.
My gut dropped straight through my shoes.
"Oh, fuck." My voice cracked, small and useless against the storm.
Every instinct screamed at me to run. My legs wouldn't move. My chest burned, breath coming in short gasps. The paper danced through the air with surgical precision, circling, tightening, building something bigger.
The storm wasn't mine anymore. The rain belonged to the city, and the city had just noticed me.
I stumbled back a step, palms raised like that would make a difference. "Wait, wait, wait—hold on, I didn't mean—"
The words caught in my throat as the paper twisted tighter, sharpening edges glinting in the lightning.
I wasn't hallucinating. I wasn't dreaming. This was real. And I was fucked.
The paper didn't stop swirling. It gathered, folded, twisted on invisible strings until the storm itself seemed to bend around it.
And then she stepped out of it.
Wings of white spread wide, each feather a blade sharp enough to cut bone. Her cloak billowed in the rain, black fabric painted with blood-red clouds. Lightning flashed, and for a second she wasn't a woman at all — she was a vision, an angel carved from storm and steel.
My breath caught in my throat.
Holy. Shit.
I'd seen her on a screen before, in panels, in episodes, but that hadn't prepared me. Nothing could've prepared me. Konan wasn't just beautiful. She was terrifyingly beautiful. Eyes the color of honey catching lightning, hair like indigo silk plastered against her cheek, lips pressed in a line that could cut sharper than her paper blades.
And she was staring straight at me.
"Why are you here?" Her voice carried over the rain — calm, measured, but with a razor's edge beneath it. She didn't shout. She didn't need to. The city listened to her. The storm listened to her.
My throat went dry. My mind screamed at me to answer, to say anything, but all I could think was: Oh God, she's gorgeous.
I swallowed hard, heart slamming against my ribs. "I…" My voice cracked, weak, pathetic. "I… wanted to stay."
Her eyes narrowed. The paper wings shifted, every fold ready to strike.
"This is no place for outsiders. Leave now… or die here."
The words should've sent me running, but instead I just stood there, staring at her like a fool, drenched, shaking, every nerve in my body lit up with dread and awe.
If I'm gonna die, I thought, at least it'll be her who does it.
Her stare didn't break. Those amber eyes pinned me in place like I was already nailed to the cross. My mouth opened, closed, useless, stammering air instead of words.
"I—listen, I—" My voice cracked under the weight of the rain. My tongue felt swollen, my brain empty. Every excuse, every lie, every plea evaporated under that gaze.
And then her hand moved.
Paper gathered from the air like it belonged to her, sheets folding into perfect symmetry, sharper and sharper until it wasn't paper anymore — it was a weapon. A shuriken, flawless, edges gleaming under the lightning.
She held it loosely, like it weighed nothing, but I felt the pressure of it against my chest from ten feet away. My stomach twisted. My knees wobbled.
She's gonna kill me.
I knew it. I felt it in my bones. She wasn't bluffing, she wasn't posturing. She meant every word she'd said — one more wrong move and she'd paint the rain with me.
Her voice came calm, cold, absolute: "Go back. This is your last warning."
The smart thing to do was turn around, drop to my knees, crawl back into the mud, and pray she let me live.
But I didn't. I couldn't.
I looked at her, at those wings, at the paper shuriken spinning in her fingers, and I felt the truth hit me harder than the storm.
"I was dead," I said, my voice low, trembling but steadying with each word. "I was dead when I woke up."
And before I could think better of it, before fear could strangle me silent, I took one step forward.
The shuriken tilted in her hand, catching the light. Her eyes narrowed, unreadable.
Every drop of rain between us froze in my mind, heavy, waiting for the cut.
Konan's gaze hardened, the faintest shift in her shoulders as the rain seemed to pause around her."…So be it."
Her wings exploded outward, sheets of paper slicing through the air like a thousand razors. The shuriken in her hand multiplied, splitting into disks, kunai, blades — the sky itself folding against me.
I froze for half a heartbeat, eyes wide, brain blank. Then the first shuriken screamed past my ear and buried itself in the wall behind me, and everything broke loose.
"OH SHIT—!"
I dove sideways, landing in a puddle that splashed up to my face. Cold water filled my mouth as more blades tore the air above me. I spat, coughing, flailing, mud soaking into my jeans.
Paper hissed through the storm, shredding the ground, slicing stone like butter. Each one whistled past my head, close enough to cut hair, close enough to burn my skin with the air they displaced.
"STOP! WAIT! I'M SORRY!" I screamed, scrambling on all fours. Another disk shot past, close enough I felt it kiss my cheek — hot blood immediately mingling with the rain.
I stumbled upright, slipped, and slammed shoulder-first into a wall. Pain shot down my arm. I bounced off and kept running, no sense of direction, just raw instinct telling me move or die.
Shuriken smashed into the ground where I'd been a second earlier, spraying shards of stone and dirt into my face. A kunai of folded paper stabbed into the wood beam beside me with a crack, burying half its blade like it had been forged from steel.
"What the fuck—why does PAPER hurt this much?!" I yelped, diving again. My palms hit water, splashing up cold as another storm of blades shredded the space above me.
Every nerve in my body screamed. My breath tore out of me in ragged gasps. I wasn't fighting. I wasn't dodging like some trained ninja. I was flailing, stumbling, half-blind with rain and panic, throwing myself out of the way by pure luck and desperation.
Somewhere above the storm, Konan hovered like a ghost, her expression calm, clinical. She wasn't struggling. She wasn't even trying. She was dismantling me the way a hawk dismantles a rabbit.
And all I could do was scream apologies and pray to any god listening that she missed the next one.
I tore down the flooded street, slipping and stumbling, paper blades slicing the air at my back. My lungs burned, every breath ripping like sandpaper, my heart slamming so hard it felt like it might burst.
Then I made the mistake.
I turned into an alley.
Narrow walls rose on both sides, slick with rain, no doors, no ladders, no way out. Just a dead end waiting for an idiot like me.
I skidded to a stop, shoes splashing in ankle-deep water, my chest heaving. The wall stared back at me, blank, unforgiving.
"Fuck," I gasped, pressing my palms against the cold brick. My head whipped around, searching for a ladder, a window, anything. Nothing. Just the sound of rain and the soft flutter of paper closing in.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I slapped my forehead, panic boiling over. "An alley? Really? Out of everywhere I could've gone, I picked a goddamn alley. Genius move. Five stars. Ten out of ten. Darwin Award incoming."
The air shifted again.
I turned and saw her.
Konan stepped into the mouth of the alley, wings unfurled, rain glistening off every perfect fold of paper. She didn't rush. She didn't posture. She just walked, calm and indifferent, like she was coming to take out the trash.
Her eyes didn't even burn with anger. They were flat, unreadable, the eyes of someone who had already decided I was dead.
My knees buckled. My back pressed against the wall. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
"I—I didn't mean—listen, I'm sorry, I didn't—" The words tumbled out of me, useless, shredded by fear. My hand shot up without thinking, trembling, fingers spread, palm facing her like some pathetic Iron Man knockoff.
She kept walking.
My brain screamed louder than the storm. Do something. Anything. You're dead anyway. Dead when you woke up. So fight. Try.
The thought came sharp, desperate: What if I use what she's using?
I squeezed my eyes shut, breath ragged, and started whispering under it, over and over, like a prayer, like a spell: "Paper shuriken. Paper shuriken. Paper shuriken…"
My arm shook, rain dripping down to my elbow, my palm stretched toward her as if the universe owed me a miracle.
My hand shook in the air, fingers splayed wide, rain sliding off my skin in cold rivulets. My voice was hoarse, breaking under the storm.
"Paper shuriken… paper shuriken… paper shuriken…"
At first, nothing. Just the hollow sound of me chanting like a lunatic about office supplies while a goddess of war stalked toward me.
Then the air around my hand changed.
The rain bent.
A faint rustling sound hissed against my ears, dry and sharp, out of place in the wet storm. I blinked, heart hammering, and saw it — scraps of paper fluttering from nowhere, peeling off me like they'd been hiding under my skin the whole time. They spun together, folding in midair, edges creasing into perfect angles.
Right there, in my trembling hand, a shuriken took shape.
Real. Solid. Exactly like hers.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat. My fingers curled around the weapon, the paper edges biting into my palm. My knees nearly buckled under the weight of what I was holding.
"What the fuck…" I whispered. The words vanished in the rain, drowned, but I barely heard myself anyway. My brain blanked, every thought burning away in shock.
Across the alley, Konan stopped walking.
Her amber eyes widened — just slightly, but enough. The calm mask cracked. She stared at me like she was seeing a ghost. Like something impossible had just unfolded in front of her.
The rain hammered down between us, sheets of water carving the silence, and all I could do was stare back, chest heaving, a trembling idiot holding a weapon I had no right to touch.
My lips moved before I could stop them. "I… I did it."
The paper shuriken pulsed in my hand, wet edges stiff, razor-sharp, heavy with the weight of a rule broken.
For a second, I just stood there, staring at the shuriken in my hand, chest heaving, adrenaline tearing through my veins. My whole body buzzed like I'd been plugged into a socket.
"I did it," I whispered again, rain dripping into my eyes. "Holy shit… I did it!"
I laughed, breathless and manic, holding the thing up like a trophy. "Oh my God. I'm amazing. I'm fucking amazing!"
I spun toward her, grinning like a lunatic. Konan hadn't moved. She just stood there, her wings half-spread, rain sliding down her face. Her eyes were locked on me — not angry, not cold, not even curious. Shock. Genuine shock.
And that only made me bolder.
"Ohhh yeah!" I shouted, my voice echoing down the alley. "Now you're fucked! Get a load of this!"
I cocked my arm back like some drunken college kid throwing the first pitch at a baseball game and let the shuriken fly.
It left my hand with all the grace of a wet sock.
The paper wobbled in the air, traveled maybe a meter, tapped against the brick wall with a sad little thwap, then slid down and landed in the puddle between us.
I froze, arm still outstretched. My triumphant grin wilted.
The shuriken bobbed in the water, spinning slowly, pathetic.
"…Well, shit."
For the first time since she appeared, Konan's face flickered. Her mouth parted just slightly, the tiniest break in her perfect composure. She didn't speak. She didn't strike. She just stared, as if her mind was still trying to catch up with what she'd seen.
The rain roared between us. My heart pounded so loud it drowned it all out. I stood there like an idiot, hand still raised, soaked to the bone, with nothing between us but a useless scrap of wet paper.
Konan's wings shifted. Her eyes narrowed again, sharp and unreadable. And without a word, she lifted off the ground, paper scattering like feathers, and vanished into the storm.
Leaving me alone in the alley, gasping, soaked, and wondering if I'd just won… or signed my own death warrant.