Kabuto didn't even look at us.
He swept his hand along the blackened, jagged walls of the ruined hall as if he were a docent pointing out that the light fixtures were merely dusty. I blinked, my vision swimming behind my polarized lenses. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be taking notes on the architectural collapse or ducking for cover before the ceiling finished its slow-motion suicide.
"Look around," he said. His voice was syrupy and calm, practiced in a way that made my skin crawl. It tasted like bitter almond and cold linoleum. "Every village is the same. Labor monopolies, risk pools, insurance schemes with knives. Did you know Konoha once charged double mission fees during the Third Hokage's winter festival? Historical record, mind you. Not interpretation. Just the ledgers."
He smiled. It was a small, polite expression that showed too much teeth—bright, white, and sharp. Like he'd just told a joke that required a degree in accounting to find funny.
I pressed my knees into the rubble. The grind-clack of pulverized lime and shattered timber dug into my skin. I gripped my kunai until my knuckles ached, trying to ignore the rhythmic hammering in my marrow as the courtyard continued to settle.
"Traitor?" Kabuto's voice floated through the haze of pulverized masonry. "That implies Konoha represents something greater than the sum of its ledgers and missions. But the record shows—it rarely has."
A plate dropped somewhere inside me. Not physically—I didn't hear the ceramic shatter. It was just a hollow, wooden thunk in my chest that told me everything I believed about the village, about the Academy, about me, was optional. I tried to swallow, but my throat was a desert of dry cedar dust and grit.
He stepped closer. The light caught his glasses—chink-glint—hiding his eyes behind twin discs of hard, white glare.
"Shinobi aren't warriors. They are workers. Each life insured, accounted for. Each mission a contract, not a choice. Your village teaches obedience, yes—but obedience is a subsidy for risk."
His glance flicked sideways, a movement so light it was almost a suggestion. It landed on me.
"And you… deviate. That's historically dangerous for your type. Unstructured power isn't a concept I invented—it's an emergent pattern. The orphaned, the inventive, the unlined."
He stepped forward. Slow. Measured.
I felt a cold flutter behind my ribs. A pulse of nausea that tasted like sucking on a lead weight. I wanted to tell him I didn't understand. I wanted to tell him I wasn't an "emergent pattern," I was just a kid who didn't want to die. But the air was too heavy to move. He didn't give me a choice to respond.
"No."
The word barely carried across the field of broken stone, but it was all Naruto had.
His fists clenched so tightly the leather of his gloves creaked against his skin. He could feel the words vibrating in his throat before he could make them make sense. His whole chest burned, a smoldering, orange heat that felt like he'd swallowed a coal and left it to glow.
Kabuto was smiling. Talking like shinobi were… tools. Like Sylvie was just a mark in a book.
The man stepped forward. Slow. Measured.
"No." Naruto said it again, louder this time. The word wasn't enough to stop a man like that, but it was the only weapon he had left.
Anko moved faster. She didn't just walk; she displaced the air, shadowing Naruto instantly. Her presence alone cut through the acrid, wet scent of the burning masonry.
"You touch him," she said, her voice a low, vibrating hum. She didn't move her lips. The threat was pure atmospheric pressure.
Kabuto tilted his head, the metal of his glasses making a tiny tink-clink as he adjusted them. Amusement rolled off him like thick, rancid oil.
"The boy resists… interesting. But resistance is part of the ledger. Risk spread across assets. Did you know—Konohagakure's foundation itself was financed by a mix of mercantile guilds and clan debts? Historical record. And yet here you are, trying to defy what centuries of ledgers intended."
Naruto growled, his boots twisting on the shattered slate and ash. Somewhere behind the chaos, he could hear the heavy, wet thud of Gamabunta stomping through the east wing. The smell of swamp-water and sulfur drifted over the ruins.
But Kabuto made him feel small. Like they weren't fighting a man at all, but debating a philosophy written in yellowed ink and human teeth.
And Naruto hated it. He wanted to punch the ink. He wanted to break the ledger.
"Step away," Anko said again. She moved between them, her body a coiled spring of friction and heat. "Or get cut out of the equation."
Kabuto's glasses slid down the bridge of his nose—a mock-adjustment. "All right. Let's see which option you choose."
Then he laughed. It was a light, metallic rattle that sounded like dry parchment tearing.
He began to retreat, dancing backward over the debris with a terrifying, weightless grace. He didn't look at the rubble; he just knew where the lines were.
Anko struck.
A blur. A shrip-slice of steel through the humid air. She was moving at a velocity that turned her silhouette into a smear of violet shadow. Naruto didn't even see the blade until it kissed Kabuto's shoulder.
Kabuto sighed. It was the sound of a man disappointed in a boring lecture.
"Predictable," he said.
He flipped backward over a chunk of fallen pylon, his body moving against the drag of gravity as if the rules didn't apply to him.
The group fractured.
Naruto spun, his eyes locking on Tsunade through the bruised haze of the smoke.
"Move!" he screamed.
He sprinted, weaving through chunks of masonry that might have been the castle walls yesterday, but were just jagged geological scars today.
I followed Anko, moving faster than I thought my legs could carry me. My heart was hammering a frantic, irregular rhythm against my ribs.
The air was a suffocating mix of copper and pulverized stone. My tabi slapped against the broken floors—slap-scuff, slap-scuff.
I didn't look at Kabuto. I didn't want to see the poise or the precision. I didn't want to admire the way he turned a massacre into a curriculum.
I gripped my kunai in both hands. I let the mechanical rhythm of survival dictate my steps. This wasn't poetry. It wasn't "history." It was logistics. It was the simple, biological necessity of putting one foot in front of the other before the roof finished its descent.
Behind me, Naruto was shouting. He wasn't here for the philosophy. He was here for the people.
I didn't turn. I kept my eyes on the path, on the broken steps, on the violet silhouette of Anko's back as she cut through the dust.
"Step," I breathed into my gaiter, the fabric tasting of salt and grit. "Step. Don't think."
Kabuto's laugh followed us—a thin, tinny vibration that carried across the halls of broken stone.
I let it slide past. I didn't record it.
We had work to do. We were alive.
That was enough of a ledger for today.