We walked South through the market, pushing against the flow of morning traffic.
The boomtown was already awake. The air smelled of frying fish, cheap diesel, and the unwashed density of too many people crammed into too little space. The sound was a wall of noise—hawkers shouting prices, seagulls screaming over scraps, and the constant clang-clang-clang of construction hammers in the distance.
A fine grit of pulverized concrete hung in the air, coating the back of my throat with an alkaline dryness that made every swallow feel like sandpaper.
Naruto walked between Kakashi and Anko, kicking at loose cobblestones. His usual bounce was gone, replaced by a sullen drag in his step.
"Where are we even going?" Naruto grumbled, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "We've been walking in circles for an hour."
"We're patrolling, knucklehead," Anko said, flicking a wrapper from her dango stick at the back of his head. "Try paying attention to the mission instead of pouting about your boyfriend."
Naruto stopped. He spun around, his face flushing red.
"This isn't even a real mission! Ugh!"
He grabbed his head with both hands, messing up his spiky blonde hair until it looked like a bird's nest.
Scritch-fwhump.
The harsh fabric of his gloves snagged against the follicles, the static electricity making the strands stand up in defiance of gravity.
"We're wasting time! We should be out there- " He gestured vaguely toward the treeline. "-tracking him! Doing something!"
Kakashi stopped reading his book. He placed a hand on Naruto's head. He didn't say anything. He just let the weight of his palm sit there, grounding the kid.
I could see Naruto's shoulders drop as the steady warmth of Kakashi's hand melted the tension right out of his neck.
Naruto deflated. His shoulders slumped.
"It's just..." Naruto whispered, looking at his feet. "He's out there... alone. We don't even know where he could be."
I watched him. I felt that familiar tightness in my chest, the anxiety that usually made me want to check my pulse. But today, it felt different. It felt like empathy.
I stepped forward and bumped my shoulder into his. Just a solid check to let him know I was there.
Thud.
It wasn't a gentle nudge; I hit him hard enough to rattle his teeth, a physical jolt to knock him out of his head.
"That's why we're looking for clues," I said softly.
I swallowed, the lump in my throat tasting like dust.
"Look at what happened when we pushed too hard before," I murmured, thinking of the hospital roof. "Maybe... maybe he just needs some time. To cool off."
Anko looked at me. Then she looked at Kakashi. They exchanged a glance over our heads. It was a silent conversation—a quick flicker of eyebrows and a slight nod- a slight nod- that I couldn't read. But the tension in their shoulders relaxed just a fraction.
"Actually," Anko said, reaching into her pouch and pulling out a folded piece of paper. "We do have a real mission."
She snapped the paper open.
Crinkle-snap.
The fibers were stiff with wax sealing, the sound sharp enough to cut through the ambient drone of the crowd like a dry branch breaking.
"Tazuna hooked us up. He's got a contact with a boat transporting goods to the Land of Forests. We're the security detail. It's only D-Rank on paper, but it gives us a legitimate reason to be combing the coastline without alerting the local authorities."
I looked around the crowd. The "local authorities" seemed nonexistent. But the crowd itself...
Something was wrong with the demographics.
I adjusted my glasses, scanning the faces passing us.
In a normal fishing village, you'd expect sunburned skin, calloused hands, and the same salt-worn face on twenty different men.
Here, it was a biological patchwork.
I saw a man with pale, almost translucent skin and delicate features haggling over rice.
His skin was paper-white, so thin I could see the blue roadmap of veins pulsing underneath, burning in a sun he wasn't built for.
Two stalls down, a teenager with stark white hair and two red dots painted on his forehead was sharpening a knife. His facial bones were thick ridges, heavy plates that shadowed his eyes and gave his skull the weight of a helmet. He looked savage, tribal.
And everywhere, I saw teeth.
Serrated, shark-like teeth flashing in the mouths of men carrying water jugs. It wasn't cosmetic filing. The gums grew high and thick to hold roots meant for tearing meat, not smiling.
"Anko-sensei," I whispered, stepping closer to her.
"I count three people with shark teeth and two with weird bone structures in this market alone. That feels...wrong for a fishing village."
Anko's eyes narrowed. She scanned the crowd, her gaze sharp and predatory.
"Yeah," she muttered. "It's a diaspora. The Blood Mist isn't just a nickname anymore. They're purging the bloodlines. These people aren't tourists; they're refugees fleeing a genocide."
Suddenly, Anko stiffened.
She grabbed my shoulder, her grip like a vice, and pulled me behind a crate of dried squid.
"Don't look," she hissed. "Three o'clock. By the noodle stand."
I didn't look. I focused on the smell of the squid- salty, pungent, leathery.
The sharp, piss-yellow stink of curing salts was strong enough to burn my eyes
"What is it?" Naruto whispered, sensing the shift in atmosphere.
"Hunter-Nin," Anko breathed. "Kiri ANBU. The mask with the wavy lines."
The porcelain was terrifyingly pristine against the grime of the market, reflecting the street in a wet, white smear that erased the wearer's face completely.
"Are they here for the refugees?" Kakashi asked, his voice low, his book already gone.
"Maybe," Anko said. "But they're acting erratic. Too frantic for a simple hunt. They're checking readings. Looking at the water."
She paused, listening to something I couldn't hear.
"Rumor is the Fourth Mizukage dropped dead," Anko murmured. "But the beast- the Three-Tails- didn't respawn in the village. It vanished."
She looked at the coastline, where the grey waves crashed against the pier.
"They're frantically searching the coastline," she said grimly. "They aren't just hunting people. They're hunting their lost Nuke. And if they find it here..."
She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
If a Tailed Beast was loose in the Land of Waves, and the Mist ANBU were hunting it, this entire island was about to become a war zone.
I looked at the water. It looked heavy. Dark.
The surface tension looked unnaturally high, as if the water had become viscous oil, hiding something massive that was pushing up from the dark.
Spirals, I thought, remembering the ruins. Everything here leads back to spirals.