The first HYDRA operative came in from the left.
Naruto saw him the same moment his Spider-Sense registered the shift in air pressure — a figure dropping from the rooftop above with a weapon already raised, moving with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this exact thing many times before. Professional. Fast. Committed to the angle of attack.
Naruto stepped inside it.
Not around it — inside, closing the distance instead of creating it, which was the counter-intuitive response that most opponents didn't train against because most opponents' instinct was to retreat from incoming aggression. He had learned this principle from Jiraiya at fourteen and had spent the next fifty years refining it until it was as automatic as breathing.
His right hand caught the weapon arm at the wrist. His left palm drove upward into the operative's elbow joint — not breaking it, just hyperextending enough to communicate that the arm was no longer a reliable tool. He redirected the weapon toward the sky as it discharged — a muffled crack, some kind of charged projectile, harmless into open air — and used the operative's own momentum to spin him into the low wall at the rooftop edge.
The operative hit the wall, bounced off it, and did not get up immediately.
Three seconds. Beginning to end.
He turned.
Peter had handled the second operative with a web line to the weapon hand and a kick to the chest that had sent the operative sliding across the gravel rooftop surface to an ungraceful stop against an exhaust vent. Clean. Efficient. The movement had a particular quality — instinctive rather than trained, responsive rather than proactive, working with incoming force rather than against it. Different from Naruto's approach in methodology but identical in outcome.
The third operative had stopped moving.
He was standing at the rooftop access door, weapon raised, pointing it between Naruto and Peter with the careful calculation of someone who had assessed the situation and understood that the tactical balance had shifted unexpectedly. He was also the one Naruto had identified as the smart one in the original perimeter — the one who hung back and evaluated.
He was speaking into a radio.
"That's a problem," Peter said quietly, not moving. His lenses were fixed on the operative's weapon.
"Calling for backup," Naruto agreed, equally quiet. "How long do we have before they arrive?"
"Depends on how close the next team is. Could be two minutes. Could be less."
Naruto calculated.
Two minutes was enough time to do several things or not enough time to do several things depending entirely on what those things were. What he needed was the radio — specifically the channel the operative was using, and ideally the content of the communication, because HYDRA units operating with this level of organization in a city this size had a local command structure and that structure had a location.
He fired the webbing before the operative finished his sentence.
Not at the weapon. At the radio.
The strand crossed the rooftop in a fraction of a second and caught the radio device on the operative's shoulder, yanking it free and snapping the wire connecting it to his earpiece. The operative flinched — involuntary response to the unexpected contact — and in the quarter-second his attention moved to his shoulder, Peter's web line had already secured his weapon arm.
Naruto crossed the rooftop in four steps.
He was not using chakra for the speed — couldn't sustain it yet, the reserves too thin for movement enhancement. He was using Ryu's body the way he had been learning to use it over the past four days, working with its particular capabilities rather than against them. The speed was in the footwork, the efficiency of each step, the complete absence of wasted motion that came from five decades of physical training distilled into the muscle memory of a seventeen-year-old body that had its own extraordinary baseline.
He reached the operative and had one hand on the tactical vest before the man could redirect his attention from his secured weapon arm.
"Who's your commanding officer," Naruto said. Calm. Direct. Not a question in inflection, just information being requested. "And where are they."
The operative looked at him.
He was perhaps thirty years old, experienced, with the flat affect of someone who had been through enough that fear had been largely replaced by professional assessment. He was assessing now. Calculating odds, considering options, weighing what he knew against what he was seeing.
"You're the asset," the operative said. "Ryu Uzumaki. You were supposed to be in phase three."
"Phase three of what," Naruto said.
"I'm not—"
"You're going to tell me," Naruto said, "or I'm going to leave you webbed to this rooftop until the police arrive and you can explain your operational activities to them instead. I've read enough about HYDRA to know that option is significantly worse for you than talking to me."
A pause.
The operative looked at Peter. Then back at Naruto.
"The program's already in secondary activation," he said. "It doesn't matter if you know. You can't stop it now. The asset was a vessel — we needed the Uzumaki healing factor to stabilize the compound. Without it, the compound degrades in—" He stopped.
"In how long," Naruto said.
The operative said nothing.
"How long," Naruto repeated.
"Seventy-two hours," the operative said. "Give or take."
Peter made a sound beside Naruto — not quite a word, more the sound of someone whose internal processing had hit an unexpected result. "What compound. What are you actually trying to do here?"
The operative looked at Peter. Something in the look was almost amused. "Ask Stark," he said. "He knows more about the Infinity Residue than he's told you."
Then he closed his mouth and did not open it again.
Naruto looked at Peter.
Peter looked at Naruto.
"Infinity Residue," Peter said.
"I read about it," Naruto said. "Residual energy from the Infinity Stones. Still present in the atmosphere."
"Yeah." Peter's voice had gone tight. "Yeah, I know what it is. Tony's been monitoring it for two years. He's very—" A pause. "He's very not-casual about it, actually. He doesn't talk about it much but when he does he's—" Another pause. "We need to talk to him."
"I know."
"Like, today. Right now today."
"I know."
"He's going to have a lot of questions about you."
"I know that too."
Peter looked at him for a moment with the lenses doing a complicated series of expressions — wide, narrow, wide again. "Are you always this calm?"
"No," Naruto said honestly. "This is actually me at reduced capacity. I'm running on eight percent."
"Eight percent of what."
"I'll explain on the way."
He picked up the confiscated radio from where it had landed when the webbing pulled it free. The channel was still active — he could hear the faint sound of a voice on the other end repeating a call sign with increasing urgency. He turned the volume down and pocketed the device.
The first two operatives were beginning to recover. The first one was sitting up against the low wall, holding his elbow, looking at Naruto with the specific expression of someone updating their threat assessment in real time. The second was still tangled in Peter's webbing against the exhaust vent.
"You should go," the first operative said. His voice was flat but there was something underneath it — not fear, more like a warning delivered from a position of genuine certainty. "You don't understand what's already been set in motion. Taking the asset back doesn't reverse the program. It just means you're carrying it."
Naruto looked at him.
"Carrying what," he said.
The operative looked at the sky.
"You'll find out," he said. "In about seventy-two hours, give or take."
They left the three operatives webbed to various rooftop fixtures and moved.
Peter led — his knowledge of the rooftop geography was significantly more detailed than Naruto's, and his movement through it had the quality of someone navigating a familiar environment. He took angles and gaps that Naruto would not have identified without Spider-Sense guidance and moved between them at a pace that required Naruto to work at the upper limit of what Ryu's body could sustain without chakra assistance.
He kept up. Barely, and at a cost, but he kept up.
After six blocks Peter dropped to a fire escape and then to street level and then into a gap between two buildings that turned out to be a narrow service alley containing a very old motorcycle covered with a tarp.
"You have a motorcycle," Naruto said.
"Borrowed," Peter said, in a tone that suggested complicated feelings about that word. He pulled off the tarp, folded it, and then stood looking at the motorcycle for a moment before apparently making a decision. "Okay. I need to make a call before we go anywhere. Do you have a phone?"
"No."
Peter looked at him. Then he pulled a phone from somewhere in the suit — a small compartment Naruto hadn't noticed — and dialed.
He turned slightly away while it rang, which Naruto interpreted as an attempt at privacy and respected by turning his attention to the street beyond the alley entrance. The city moved past in its continuous indifferent flow.
He could hear the call anyway. Shinobi senses, even at reduced capacity, were not something a turned shoulder addressed.
The phone rang four times. Then a voice — male, quick, carrying the particular energy of someone whose brain moved faster than most conversations required:
"Kid. It's eight in the morning."
"It's almost eleven," Peter said.
"I was up until four. Eight in the morning."
"Tony I need to—"
"Is this a bleeding situation or a not-bleeding situation."
"Not bleeding. But—"
"Then it's an eight in the morning situation and I need—"
"HYDRA took someone's DNA and used it to build something that interacts with the Infinity Residue and they have a seventy-two hour window and I'm standing in an alley with someone who makes webs from his wrists biologically and also he's apparently a ninja from another dimension and I don't know what to do with any of this information Tony please—"
Silence on the other end.
Naruto kept his eyes on the street.
"Say that again," Tony Stark said. "Slower. The middle part."
"Someone. Makes webs. From his wrists. Biologically." Peter's voice had acquired the quality of someone reading from a list of facts they still hadn't fully processed. "Like me. But different. And he says HYDRA used your DNA to make it happen."
More silence.
Then: "Where are you."
"Service alley off—"
"Don't tell me on an open line. Get to the tower. East entrance. I'll have Happy waiting." A pause. "And kid."
"Yeah."
"Don't touch anything involving the Infinity Residue until I've run a scan."
"Why—"
"Just don't. East entrance. Twenty minutes."
The call ended.
Peter lowered the phone and turned back to Naruto.
"We're going to Stark Tower," he said.
"I gathered that."
"He's going to scan you."
"Okay."
"He's going to ask you a lot of questions."
"I know."
"He's going to be—" Peter searched for the word. "A lot. He's a lot of things at once and he processes them out loud and sometimes it feels like being yelled at even when he's not actually yelling. Just so you know."
Naruto thought about Jiraiya's communication style. About Tsunade's. About the Raikage's. About fifty years of dealing with personalities across the full spectrum of intensity.
"I can handle a lot," he said.
Peter looked at him for a moment. Then he apparently made a decision and reached up and pulled back the mask, revealing a face that matched the descriptions in the library articles — young, open, currently wearing an expression that was caught between exhaustion and the specific manic energy of someone whose morning had gone in an entirely unexpected direction.
"Peter Parker," he said, extending his hand.
"Naruto Uzumaki," Naruto said, and shook it.
They looked at each other for a moment — two people with webbing in their wrists and the weight of other people's expectations on their shoulders, standing in a service alley in New York while the city moved past without noticing them.
"Okay," Peter said. "Couple of quick questions before we get there because I need to have some idea what I'm walking into."
"Go ahead."
"The other dimension thing. Is that — are you okay? Like, is that something you chose or something that happened to you?"
Naruto considered the question. It was a different question than anyone had asked him since he arrived — most of the interactions had been tactical, adversarial, or informational. This was a different category. A human question.
"It happened to me," he said. "And I'm — processing it. But yes, I'm okay. I've lost things before. I know how to keep moving."
Peter nodded slowly. Something in his expression suggested he understood that specific kind of loss at an experiential level.
"The body," Peter said. "Ryu Uzumaki. He was a real person."
"He was."
"And now you're in his body."
"Yes."
"Does that — is that weird? For you?"
"Profoundly," Naruto said. "But I've decided to treat it as carrying him forward rather than replacing him. It's the best I can do with the situation I'm in."
Peter was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's actually a — yeah. That's a good way to think about it." He paused. "Last question. The HYDRA operative said you're carrying something. That the program is already inside you."
"Yes."
"Do you know what it is?"
"Not yet," Naruto said. "But I can feel something. It's been there since I woke up — faint, sitting underneath everything else. I've been treating it as background noise but—" He paused. "It's getting slightly less faint."
Peter's expression went through several things in quick succession.
"Okay," he said. "Okay we definitely need to get to Tony." He pulled the mask back on and swung a leg over the motorcycle. "Can you—"
Naruto was already on the back of the motorcycle.
Peter blinked. Then he started the engine.
"How are you doing that," he said. "You moved like you knew what I was going to do before I did it."
"Spider-Sense," Naruto said.
Peter turned to look at him — or rather turned the lenses toward him, which had the same effect.
"You have Spider-Sense," Peter said flatly.
"Apparently."
"And the webs."
"Yes."
"And also ninja powers."
"Yes."
"And you're running on eight percent."
"Correct."
Peter faced forward and sat with that for approximately three seconds.
"I need you to never tell me what you're like at a hundred percent," he said. "I need that information to not exist in my brain."
Naruto almost smiled. "Probably wise."
Peter pulled out of the alley and into the street and the city swallowed them both, indifferent as always, completely unaware that the two people on the borrowed motorcycle were about to walk into a conversation with Tony Stark that was going to change every calculation anyone had been running about the next seventy-two hours.
In Naruto's pocket the confiscated HYDRA radio crackled once — a burst of static and then a fragment of a voice speaking in clipped operational language — and then went silent.
Seventy-two hours.
He didn't know what was inside him yet.
He knew it was counting down.
He looked at the city around him — the towers, the people, the noise and color and motion of eight million lives moving in every direction at once — and felt something settle in him that was not calm exactly but was adjacent to it. The thing that came after you had assessed a situation fully and accepted the parameters and decided to move forward anyway because moving forward was what you did.
Kurama's presence stirred warmly from inside.
Ready?
"Always," Naruto said quietly, under the noise of the engine and the city.
The motorcycle moved through New York and somewhere ahead, at the tower with the glowing letter on its face, a very complicated morning was about to get significantly more complicated.
End of Chapter 5
Next: Chapter 6 — Tony Stark Has Questions (All of Them)