Jiraiya noticed the silence first.
Not quiet—quiet was normal for old stone. This was something else. The wrong kind. Guards breathing too slowly, as if they'd been instructed. Banners hanging limp despite the draft the hall should've had. Even the echoes felt delayed, like sound itself was reluctant to come back once released.
For half a heartbeat, a stupid thought crossed his mind.
The castle is holding its breath.
Then—
CLACK.
The sound cut straight through the pause, sharp as a snapped bone.
Naruto flinched. "What was that?"
Another beat of silence. Almost polite.
CLACK.
Wood on wood. Hollow. Intentional.
Naruto's shoulders tightened.
For half a second—just a fraction—he thought it sounded cool.
The realization hit him harder than the noise. His stomach dropped. His jaw clenched until it hurt. His nails dug into his palm like he could punish the thought out of himself.
What's wrong with me?
"Hyōshigi," Jiraiya said automatically, the word leaving his mouth before he'd finished the thought. His feet slowed. His spine tightened. "Festival clappers."
Anko's cigarette stopped halfway to her lips. "Festival ended yesterday."
The rhythm started up again—too fast, then dragging, then briefly, horribly syncing with Jiraiya's pulse before slipping out of alignment.
Naruto felt it too. His chest matched it for one beat before his body rebelled, heart stumbling like it had stepped on the wrong stair.
It wasn't walking music.
It was an entrance cue.
Hyōshigi weren't meant to summon enemies. They were meant to tell you where to look.
Naruto swallowed and hated that his eyes were already tracking the sound.
Jiraiya swallowed as his sensory perception flared, unbidden and angry. Chakra flooded the hall ahead of the sound, thick and layered and wrong. Purple, yes—but not alive in any honest way. It smelled like old battlefields and failed surgeries. Like a hospital room after the patient died and no one opened the windows.
Copper hit his tongue.
His eyes burned, watering like he'd inhaled solvent.
Whatever this chakra was, it hadn't been born. It had been brewed. Sedative sweetness on the surface, frenzy roiling underneath. Not killing intent.
Intoxication, leaking into the room.
"It's coming from the balcony," Anko said quietly. Her hand dropped to her sword. "And it's close."
The doors at the end of the hall could have opened.
Jiraiya knew it in the same way you know when someone is choosing to be rude.
For a fraction of a second, the hinges screamed—
Then they gave up entirely.
The explosion tore through the entryway in a shower of cedar and stone, smoke rolling in thick and violet, heavy with incense and medicinal herbs burned too long.
And from inside the haze, a voice began to sing.
"Shinobu to wa…"
High. Familiar. Wrong.
Naruto froze.
He couldn't look away.
He tried—blinked hard—but his eyes snapped back like they were on a string. The performance felt important, like missing a step would be a mistake, like if he didn't watch closely he'd fail something without knowing the rules.
This is what real shinobi look like, a traitorous thought whispered.
His chakra stuttered.
Kurama shifted—not angry. Alert. The way a dog goes still when it smells something buried.
Jiraiya felt the recognition land like a hook under the ribs. He'd heard that song a hundred times—festivals, border towns, drunken nights when it was sung properly, reverently.
This wasn't that.
The pauses were off. The syllables leaned where they shouldn't. It was like hearing your own name pronounced just slightly incorrectly on purpose.
"Oni-zura naru… toku wa sukui ka…"
A figure emerged.
Not walking.
Performing.
The Roppō swagger—Kabuki's exaggerated stride—played badly on purpose. One stomp landed perfectly, textbook precise. The next bent grotesquely, knee flexing too far, spine flowing like something without bones. Balance flawless even as joints violated their own limits.
Orochimaru.
White-painted face. Purple-lined eyes too bright. Kimono hanging loose like it had lost interest in staying on him.
He wasn't mad.
He was parodying madness.
"Sake no zaregoto…" he crooned, holding the pose just half a second too long, daring correction.
CLACK.
Naruto flinched again—this time not from fear, but recognition.
Jiraiya's eyes snapped to the sound.
Not to hands.
To guards.
To forearms.
To wooden bracers strapped where hands should have been.
The sound didn't come from where hands belonged.
Understanding slid in cold and complete.
Orochimaru's arms hung dead at his sides, necrotic, lifeless. He swung them like pendulums, smashing the wooden guards together with enough force to crack what bone remained beneath.
CLACK. CLACK.
He smiled as if he felt none of it.
Naruto's breath caught.
He turned damage into an instrument.
The thought surfaced clean and sharp—and made him nauseous.
His throat burned. Iruka's voice flashed in his head. There are lines you don't cross, even if it works.
He swallowed hard, like he could force the thought back down where it belonged.
Orochimaru sang like someone who'd dissected a thing and put it back together wrong.
"To be a shinobi," Orochimaru hissed, voice dropping wet and intimate, "is it the endurance of a toad… or the mask of a demon? Is that salvation you sell… or just a drunk man's sermon?"
He stopped dead center of the hall.
Tilted his head back too far.
Crossed one eye inward.
The mie.
The room froze.
Guards flinched. Dust hung midair. Someone inhaled and forgot to exhale. Even Anko's cigarette smoke hesitated, curling uncertainly, like it wasn't sure it had permission to move yet.
Orochimaru slammed his arms together one last time.
CLACK.
"White hair like moonlight," he recited, eyes locked on Jiraiya. "A savior's mask worn by a demon. Does he seek peace now… or just another bathhouse wall to peek over?"
He giggled. Wet. Rattling.
Orochimaru wasn't improvising.
He'd rehearsed this.
Jiraiya stepped forward without speaking, placing himself between the snake and the others. His chakra surged, furious and bright, but his body stayed still.
From the shadows, Tsunade emerged.
Her hand hit the stone wall hard enough to scrape. Her breath stuttered. Her chakra spiked violently—then slammed down, compressed until it hurt to sense.
She stepped into the light like someone approaching a grave she'd already dug.
"Shizune," she said hoarsely. "Civilians. Now."
Shizune bowed once and vanished with Tonton.
Anko dragged on her cigarette. No one laughed when she said, "Don't do drugs, kids."
The joke landed on stone and stayed there.
"YOU'RE SMOKING!" Naruto snapped, panicked.
"Coping mechanism," Anko shot back, pointing with the cigarette. "That is a pharmaceutical disaster."
Orochimaru's neck extended, snake-smooth, snapping toward them.
"Anko-chan," he purred. "You brought me presents."
His gaze slid to Naruto.
Then past him.
"The Nine-Tails," he whispered. "And the anomaly."
Kabuto stepped out of the smoke behind him, already adjusting his glasses.
"I'm very sorry about this," Kabuto said tiredly, like a man who'd already filled out the incident report. "Lord Orochimaru, the painkillers are scheduled. We should proceed to negotiations."
"Boring," Orochimaru hissed.
He looked at Jiraiya.
"Don't you have a puddle to sit in?" he asked sweetly. "Or are you finally ready to dry off and die?"
Tsunade bit her thumb.
"No—Hime, not here—!"
Jiraiya bit his own.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Three hands hit the floor.
The castle didn't just break.
It exploded.
The floor of the Great Hall disintegrated. The roof was blasted into the stratosphere.
Naruto was thrown backward, tumbling through a cloud of dust and splinters. He grabbed Sylvie's arm mid-air, yanking her onto a falling beam, and they rode the debris down into the courtyard below.
BOOM.
When the dust cleared, the sun was blocked out.
Three mountains had appeared in the courtyard.
Gamabunta, the Chief Toad, sat on the left, smoking a pipe the size of a chimney. He drew his massive dosu sword. "Jiraiya! You summoned me in a building! I have splinters in my ass!"
Katsuyu, the giant slug, was on the right, her body splitting into hundreds of smaller clones to cushion the falling debris. "Lady Tsunade! Your chakra levels are unstable!"
And in the middle—
Manda.
The giant purple snake didn't just sit there. He was wrapped around the main keep of Tanzaku Castle. His massive coils crushed the white stone walls like they were made of Styrofoam. Towers crumbled. Roofs collapsed.
Naruto stared.
Not at heroes.
Not at monsters.
At math.
Anyone standing near them would die. Not targeted. Not attacked. Just… erased. Power like this didn't aim. It existed, and everything else paid the price.
The strongest thing in the area didn't care who survived.
"OROCHIMARU!" the snake hissed. "You dare summon me while high? The sacrifice better be double, or I will eat you first!"
Orochimaru stood on Manda's head, swaying, his empty sleeves flapping in the wind.
"Eat them all," Orochimaru giggled. "Start with the toad."
The castle groaned.
Manda tightened his grip. The main keep imploded. Stone rained down on the courtyard.
"MOVE!" Anko screamed.
She grabbed Naruto and Sylvie, diving behind a fallen statue as a chunk of masonry the size of a car smashed into the ground where they had been standing.
"This isn't a fight!" Sylvie yelled. "This is a demolition!"
"Welcome to S-Rank!" Anko yelled back. "Stay down! Don't look at the snake's eyes!"
Naruto peeked over the statue.
Gamabunta leaped. He cleared the castle walls in a single bound, his sword flashing. Manda uncoiled from the keep, lashing out like a purple whip.
The two monsters collided mid-air. The shockwave shattered every window in Tanzaku Town.
"Awesome," Naruto whispered, terrified.
The word escaped before he could stop it.
His stomach dropped.
He clamped his mouth shut like he'd swallowed glass.
From behind him, he heard Anko's voice—low, sharp—speaking to Sylvie.
"…don't admire—"
The word cut through him.
Is that what I was doing?
I was huddled behind a statue of a samurai that was now missing its head. The ground was shaking so hard my teeth hurt.
Above us, the sky was full of monsters.
Gamabunta spat a bullet of water that decimated the east wing. Manda shed his skin to dodge, the massive, discarded husk crushing the gift shop. Katsuyu was everywhere, melting stone with acid to create barriers.
It was chaos. It was madness.
And in the middle of it, I saw Orochimaru.
He was dancing.
He was standing on Manda's nose as the snake lunged, performing a fan dance with no fan, just his limp, broken arms swaying in the wind. He was laughing.
I pulled out my notebook.
I didn't know why. My hands were shaking, but the rhythm of the clappers was still stuck in my head.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
I wrote.
(Snap, snap, snap!)
Neon-lit Leaf-town
Zapping the brave like insects
We hide in the dark
Gambling for "new starts" just like
Cheap toys in a plastic ball.
"What are you doing?"
I jumped.
Anko was crouching beside me, wiping blood from a cut on her cheek. She snatched the notebook from my hand.
She read it.
Her eyes narrowed. She looked up at Orochimaru, who was currently cackling as Manda bit Gamabunta's arm.
"You think he's poetic?" Anko asked. Her voice was dangerous.
"I think he's tragic," I said, my voice small. "Cheap toys. That's us, right? In his eyes?"
Anko ripped the page out of the notebook.
She crumpled it up.
"He's not tragic, Sylvie," she said, leaning in close. "He's just a junkie who broke his own toys because he got bored playing with them. Don't you dare admire the performance."
She jammed a kunai into my hand.
"Admiration gets you killed," she hissed. "Now get up. Kabuto is coming."
The castle crumbled around us. The sky screamed.
I looked past the statue.
Kabuto was walking across the ruined courtyard.
Naruto saw him too.
He forced his eyes down. Not the scalpel. Not the glow. Feet. Steps. Distance.
Count. Measure. Angle.
Details keep you alive.
Kabuto adjusted his glasses.
"Playtime is over, kids," he called.
Naruto tightened his grip.
I gripped the kunai.
"Right," I whispered. "No admiration."
I stood up.
"Just logistics."