The hospital didn't smell like healing. It smelled like bleach, burnt ozone, and the sour, metallic tang of panic sweat.
I stood in the hallway outside the ICU, clutching the strap of my canvas bag until my knuckles turned white. The corridor was a blur of motion—medics shouting, gurneys rattling, nurses running with armfuls of blood packs.
But the center of the hallway was terrifyingly still.
Kakashi Hatake lay on a stretcher. He wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing on his own. His single visible eye was wide open, staring at a horror only he could see, the pupil blown wide and trembling. His chakra felt... shredded. It was like looking at a tapestry that had been put through a woodchipper.
Next to him, on a smaller gurney, was Sasuke.
He was catatonic. His wrist was splinted, his ribs wrapped, but the physical damage wasn't the problem. His mind was a closed room. The chakra around him was a tight, black knot of trauma that felt so cold it burned my sensory range just to look at it.
"Stabilize the cranial pressure!" a medic shouted. "Get the Yamanaka head of staff! We need a mind-dive assessment now!"
Anko sat on a bench against the wall.
She looked small.
I had never thought of Anko as small. She was a force of nature, a loud, violent storm in a trench coat. Now, she was huddled in her mesh armor, a blanket draped over her shoulders, staring at her boots. A medic was healing a gash on her forehead, but Anko didn't seem to feel it.
She was vibrating with rage.
"I couldn't stop him," she whispered to the floor. "I stood right there. I had the snakes. I had the angle. And he just..."
She snapped her fingers. A dull, wet sound.
"And they broke."
"It wasn't your fault," I said. My voice sounded thin, like it belonged to someone else.
"Shut up, kid," Anko snapped, but there was no heat in it. Just exhaustion.
The double doors at the end of the hall burst open.
Homura and Koharu marched in, followed by a frantic-looking medical administrator.
"This is a breach of protocol!" Homura was shouting. "We need to lock down the village! The gates must be sealed! No one leaves until we assess the threat level!"
"The Uchiha boy must be moved to T&I for debriefing," Koharu added. "If Itachi spoke to him, he may have compromised village security codes."
"He's in a coma!" the medic yelled back. "If you move him, his brain will liquefy!"
"Silence."
The word wasn't shouted. It was dropped like a stone slab.
Jiraiya stood up from where he'd been leaning against the wall. He loomed over the elders. He wasn't the Pervy Sage. He wasn't the smiling pervert who stole dango.
He was the Toad Mountain Sage, and he looked ready to flatten the building.
"There is no lockdown," Jiraiya rumbled. "And nobody touches Sasuke."
"Jiraiya," Homura warned. "You have no authority to—"
"They came for the Fox," Jiraiya interrupted. His voice was cold, hard, and absolute. "Itachi didn't come for a reunion. He came for the Jinchūriki. If Naruto stays in this village, Konoha becomes a crater. The Akatsuki will come back, and next time, they won't leave survivors."
The hallway went dead silent.
"I am taking him," Jiraiya said. "Now."
"You cannot simply abscond with the village's weapon!" Koharu sputtered.
Jiraiya stepped forward. The sheer weight of his chakra made the lights flicker.
"I am not asking," he said. "I am telling you. I am taking Naruto. I am going to find Tsunade. And I am going to bring back the only person on this continent who can fix..."
He gestured to the broken forms of Kakashi and Sasuke.
"...this."
He turned his back on the elders.
"Pack his bags," Jiraiya ordered the room at large. "We leave in ten minutes."
-----------------
The waiting room was quieter, but the tension was worse.
Naruto was sitting in a plastic chair, staring at his knees. He wasn't crying. He wasn't shouting. He looked like someone had reached inside him and turned off the light.
"It's my fault," he whispered. "They came for me."
"It's not your fault," I said. I was running a diagnostic check on my own gear, counting kunai, counting tags, trying to keep my hands busy so they wouldn't shake. "It's biology. It's politics. It's a thousand things that aren't you."
"Come on, kid."
Jiraiya appeared in the doorway. He had a massive pack slung over one shoulder.
"Up," he said to Naruto. "We're moving. Fast."
Naruto stood up, robotic. "Where?"
"Away," Jiraiya said. "Somewhere they can't find you while I teach you how not to die."
He looked at me.
"You stay here," Jiraiya said. "Go home, Sylvie. War's over for you."
My hands froze on the buckle of my bag.
"No," I said.
Jiraiya turned to leave, ushering Naruto. "I don't have time to argue. Go back to the academy. Read a book. Stay safe."
I stepped in front of him.
It was the stupidest thing I had ever done. Blocking the path of a Sannin who was currently radiating enough killing intent to curdle milk.
"Move," Jiraiya growled.
"No," I repeated. My voice shook, but my feet stayed planted. "You can't take him alone."
"I'm a Sannin," Jiraiya scoffed. "I think I can handle one genin."
"You can handle the fights," I said. "You can't handle the head."
I pointed at Naruto, who was staring blankly at the wall.
"He's traumatized. He just saw his best friend tortured and his teacher lobotomized by his own brother. If you take him out there alone, he's going to crack. He's going to panic, or he's going to tap into the Fox because he's scared, and you're going to spend half your time suppressing him instead of training him."
Jiraiya's eyes narrowed. "I don't babysit."
"Then don't," I said. "I will."
I took a breath. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"I'm the logistics," I said. "I carry the gear. I cook the food. I watch the perimeter while you sleep. I keep him sane. And..."
I looked at the floor, then back up at him.
"...I need a teacher who isn't in a coma."
Jiraiya looked down at me. His expression was unreadable.
"You're shaking," he pointed out.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling. Fine, rhythmic tremors born of adrenaline and terror.
"Yeah," I said. "I am."
I reached into my pouch. I didn't pull out a weapon. I pulled out a brush.
In one fluid motion, I painted a seal on the inside of my left wrist. It was a crude design—a variation of a chakra-suppression tag mixed with a nervous system regulator.
Seal: Stasis.
I flared my chakra into the ink.
The seal bit into my skin, cold and numbing. The tremors stopped instantly. My hands went still. Unnaturally still.
I held them up.
"I'm not shaking anymore," I said.
Then I pushed my chakra further. I pushed it to my eyes.
I didn't have a Byakugan. I didn't have a Sharingan. But I had spent months learning to see the shape of the world through the static of energy.
I looked at Jiraiya.
I didn't just look at him. I looked into him.
"Your chakra is a mess," I said, my voice dropping to a monotone as the sensory overload hit. "It's heavy. Oil-thick. There's a fracture in your shoulder from the recoil of the swamp jutsu. And underneath the anger... it's gray. You're grieving."
I blinked, the chakra fading, the world snapping back to normal color.
"Take me with you," I said. "I won't slow you down."
Jiraiya looked at the girl.
He saw the seal on her wrist. It was impressive—a localized nerve block applied in seconds. Dangerous, reckless, but effective.
But that wasn't what stopped him.
It was the eyes.
When she had pushed her chakra to her optic nerves, he had seen it.
It wasn't the dilated pupil of a medic focusing. It was a flicker.
A tiny, rapid spasm of the iris. For a microsecond, the dull green of her eyes had shifted. A ripple of pale, opalescent white had washed over the color, like moonlight hitting the surface of a deep pond.
It looked like the Byakugan, but... wrong. Denser. Older.
That's not a sensor technique, Jiraiya thought, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. That's biological.
He thought of the scrolls he had read in the Mount Myōboku library. He thought of the myths of the Sage of Six Paths. He thought of the boy in the Rain Village with the ripple-patterned eyes.
A mutation? he wondered. A recessive trait surfacing from a bloodline so old nobody remembers the name?
The girl—Sylvie—was staring at him with a desperation that was entirely human, but the chakra she had just used felt... cold. Distant. celestial.
She was an orphan. Civilian file. No history.
Interesting.
Jiraiya rubbed his chin.
The boy needed a stabilizer; she was right about that. Naruto listened to her. And if she had potential like that... leaving her in a village that was currently being circled by Danzō and the Elders was a bad idea.
"Pack your bag," Jiraiya said abruptly.
Sylvie blinked. The tension snapped out of her shoulders.
"What?"
"Five minutes," Jiraiya said, turning toward the exit. "If you're late, I leave you. And bring the requisition scroll. I saw the bag. Raidō gave you the good stuff."
He walked out the door, dragging Naruto with him.
He heard the girl scramble into motion behind him, shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
Jiraiya paused for a second in the hallway, looking back at the empty space where she had stood.
"Is this girl developing a kekkei genkai...?" he muttered to himself.
He shook his head. One mystery at a time. First, the Akatsuki. Then, the drunk gambler. Then, the girl with the moon in her eyes.
The main gate was empty this time.
There was no Ino with conditioner. No Chōji with snacks. No Kiba pretending he didn't care.
There was just the open road, stretching out into the darkening afternoon.
Jiraiya walked ahead, his wooden sandals clacking against the stone. Naruto walked beside him, head down, shoulders hunched. He looked smaller than usual.
I brought up the rear.
I paused at the threshold of the village.
I looked back.
I could see the hospital roof from here. Somewhere inside, Sasuke was screaming in a silent room. Somewhere inside, Kakashi was drowning in a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.
Anko was bleeding. The Third was dead.
The village looked exactly the same as it always did—peaceful, green, solid. But it felt like a stage set now. A cardboard cutout hiding the rot and the danger.
I touched the heavy canvas bag on my shoulder. I felt the shape of the Kunai, the weight of the ink, the cool ceramic of Hinata's ointment jar.
I touched the seal on my wrist. It was starting to itch.
I turned away from Konoha.
Jiraiya's back was a wall of red and gray ahead of me. He was walking toward a woman who didn't want to be found, to save a village she didn't want to lead.
We aren't looking for a hero, I thought, hitching the bag higher and stepping onto the dirt road.
We're looking for a miracle.