Four tons of restless mustang muscle shifted at the front of the carriage, sending a dull vibration through the mossy boards and straight into the marrow of my shins.
Naruto scrambled into the interior with a relieved groan that sounded like a sensory assault against the layered roar of the matsukaze overhead.
Idate leaned against the polished wood, his dark eyes tracing the canopy gaps, while Anko hung off the doorframe.
Her mesh armor caught the bruised-green light, looking cold and industrial against the living firs.
My fingers started to twitch.
A frantic tapping against my thigh that I couldn't suppress.
I stared at the Guard HQ—a looming mass of roots and timber that felt like a closed fist.
"Come on, kid," Anko called out, loud enough to pierce through the wind. "The horses aren't waiting, and neither am I."
I took a breath.
It felt thin, saturated with the scent of damp fir and the lingering, bitter trace of sulfur from the vents.
"Uhm... Anko-sensei..."
Anko paused. Her eyebrows arched. She leaned into the carriage, caught Kakashi's eye, and gave a brief, two-finger salute. "Give us a minute," she muttered.
She hopped down. Her sandals hit the boards with a solid thud that echoed in the pit of my stomach. "What's up, Sylvie?"
I stepped back. Habit.
I put myself just out of reach before she could even think of grabbing my arm.
My limbs began to prickle as my blood pressure dropped.
"Uhm... what's going to happen to them? Shura and Monju?"
Anko blinked. She reached up to scratch the back of her head, her fingers ghosting near the high collar of her coat where the Curse Mark lay. "A long time in a cramped, dark space. Why do you care?"
I dug my nails into my palms until the skin stung. Sweat beaded at my hairline. I saw Mizuki's face—pale, gaunt, and so fundamentally broken he couldn't resist a twelve-year-old's seal. I saw Haku's mask. I saw Ranmaru's small, fragile frame.
"Like... Konoha does?" I asked. My voice felt brittle.
Anko stepped toward me, her expression softening, but I recoiled instantly. The space between us felt like a chasm filled with cold air.
"Sylvie, this is the process. This is what happens when you try to kill for money."
"No."
Anko looked confused, the irritation she usually wore like armor slipping. "No?"
"No."
She let out a long, jagged sigh. "Hey, Scarecrow!" she yelled over her shoulder. "Keep the horses warm. We'll be back."
Kakashi waved a lazy hand from the shadows of the carriage.
Naruto and Idate popped their heads out like confused gophers, but Anko didn't look back.
Her hand rose, fingers pressing hard into the skin beneath her collar.
She looked at the HQ, her eyes tracking the lines of the building as if she were searching for a hidden latch.
"Alright," she said. "Let's go look."
The descent through the Guard HQ felt like something grown and hollowed.
We walked a sloping pathway that cut directly through the hearts of enormous tree trunks.
The air grew colder with every step, the smell of sap-rot and damp minerals coating my throat with a stagnant sourness that threatened to turn my stomach.
My breath began to fog in the gloom. The boards underfoot were slick with oily condensation, and I heard the slow, rhythmic drip... drip... of water echoing from the bedrock below.
Every time we spoke, the sound resonated deep within the hollowed wood, a low-frequency hum that vibrated in my teeth.
Tsuzumi, the captain, led us toward the lower levels.
He walked with an uneasy gait, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
He looked at us—at Anko's rigid posture and my shaking hands—and his circular eyebrows rose.
"I didn't expect you back so soon!" he whispered, the sound vibrating against the tree-walls. "Todoroki is still fuming about Gantetsu. He takes 'security' personally."
We reached the first iron-barred door. I peered in. Shura sat slumped in an orange jumpsuit, his long brown hair tangled, looking leadenly bored.
"Next," I said, sounding small against the stone.
Tsuzumi and Anko traded a look.
The captain hesitated, his gaze lingering on the Konoha headband on my forehead, before he moved to the final door.
He pulled a heavy ring of keys from his belt. "You can't see him from the door," he noted.
The lock turned with a thick, metallic clack.
I stepped inside, my boots squelching.
The space was a zigzagging depression in the limestone floor, the air thick with the smell of wet rot.
Monju remained restrained in the center, his light-blue hair matted and wet.
Cold water trickled from the ceiling, seeping along the cracked walls and keeping him in a bone-deep chill.
His skin looked mottled—sickly grey under the torchlight.
He looked up, his black eyes tired.
"Back... to finish the job, Konoha?" Monju's words came out in a dry, hollow rasp.
I grabbed Anko's trenchcoat, my knuckles turning white. "Anko-sensei... this... this isn't right."
"This isn't our village, kid," Anko said. She glanced at Tsuzumi, who rolled his shoulders, his violet eyes unreadable. "Not our land. Not our problem."
Heat rose in my face. I bit my tongue until I tasted the iron tang of blood. Not our village. Not our land. My throat felt like it was closing.
"Doesn't it..." I started, the words cracking. I tried to shout, but it came out as a desperate, dysregulated fragment. "Doesn't it... fucking matter? Maps... they don't... people... exist because... because you... you don't... stop... don't..."
I trailed off, my breath hitching as the reverb of my own broken words rang in my ears.
My vision narrowed, the edges tunneling into black, and a ringing started behind my eyes.
I threw my hand out at the freezing pit, my fingers trembling so hard I could barely point.
Anko's eyes lowered. She didn't look at me. She looked at Monju with a tense stillness.
Her hand was white-knuckled against her collar. I saw her nostrils flare—the scent of the pit, the scent of the man.
She glanced at Tsuzumi, then at Monju, then at the rusty iron restraints.
She took a micro-beat, her gaze shifting to the dark hallway behind us, then she leaped down.
SPLASH.
Mud suctioned under her sandals as she grabbed Monju by the neck, pinning him against the wet stone.
His airway compressed with a wheezing gasp.
"Do you know Orochimaru?" Anko growled.
Monju blinked, his long, blue-mottled nails digging into the mud.
"W-who?"
Anko shoved him harder, the impact making the water on the wall ripple.
"Pale. Yellow eyes. Smells like a lab."
"N-n-no..."
"Kabuto?"
CRACK.
Anko slammed his head back.
Monju's breath hitched.
"Don't fuck with me. Silver hair. Big round glasses. Speak."
Monju sat in silence, his chest heaving, his jaw trembling with the cold. "Wait..." He swallowed hard. "I... he... no. No. You're just going to leave me here—"
CRACK-SLASH.
Anko's kunai sang.
A violent spike of chakra-heat flared, the blade glowing white for a micro-second before it sheared through the iron cuffs.
The vibration of the strike sent a shiver up Anko's arm, and she let out a sharp exhale.
Vertigo seemed to hit her; she swayed, her breathing deep, before she grabbed Monju and leaped back up.
She dropped him in front of Tsuzumi.
The captain's hand flew to his sword.
His jaw flexed—eyes flicking from the Konoha headband on my brow to the shattered steel in the mud—and shifted a half-step back toward the door. "This is... quite unorthodox! You have no authority—"
Anko didn't answer immediately.
She took a slow, deliberate swallow, her chest still heaving.
When she finally spoke, it was rougher than intended.
"Can it."
She stood there, the kunai in her hand beginning to spiderweb with cracks from the force of the cut.
A line of blood ran down her palm.
"What do you know?" she growled at Monju.
Monju stumbled, his legs shaking as pins-and-needles pain shot through his limbs.
He nearly lost his balance, his hands twitching in shock as the blood returned to his wrists.
"He... months ago. He came with weird teenagers. They weren't looking for money. They were looking for... for space. Large, quiet spaces. Near the border."
Anko slammed the kunai into the wall.
The blade shattered, steel fragments flinging down the hall with a series of clamoring pings.
One fragment grazed a torch bracket, sending sparks into the dark.
In the distance, the sound of boots echoed—getting closer.
The torchlight in the passage flickered and sputtered as the air pressure changed.
"Give this one a proper job," Anko said with a crooked smile that didn't reach her eyes. She ignored Tsuzumi's tightening grip on his hilt. "Work release. If he tries anything, put him back in the hole. We'll be back to check, Captain."
She looked at me, her face pale.
A flash of heat radiated from the skin around her neck.
Anko swallowed hard, a nasty taste seemingly hitting her as she adjusted her collar. "Happy now, kid?"
"Yes," I said.
But as I looked at the blood on her hand and the shattered steel on the floor, the adrenaline crash hit me like a wall of ice.
This wasn't just about Monju.
The boots were nearing, and the torch sputtered into a dying orange glow.
I had asked for a reason, and Anko had found one that felt far more dangerous than anything I had imagined.