"You speak of choice, Naruto, yet were you not chosen by Konoha only because of Uzumaki Karin's death? By the Third? And speaking of Chosen, what of Nagato?"
"Nagato's case is different for a few glaring reasons that we'll get to in time. And I do understand the point you are making, Neji. As for me, you are right in saying this was possible at all because of her death. However, it was also something I did everything in my power to make happen afterward. A burden I did not understand then. Just as Nagato could not possibly have understood his own fully at the time."
"Burdens, yes. As was my seal. As was Hanabi's birthright. Call it however you want, it doesn't offend me. I choose to call it fate. The very word 'choice' implies we were meant to decide at all."
"We were. Giving up my birthright, as well as a life of peace, all to go to Konoha in the hopes of saving my mother — those were choices I made. Choices that shaped everything after. For better or worse."
"Were they? Did you not reject Uzushio because it was in your nature to do so? Did you not instinctively decide you were the only one who could find a way, and thus, decided to leave? Is that not precisely what someone like you would do?"
"Brother please, mind your—"
"Please let him speak, Hanabi. I want to hear this."
"Your very nature drove you to these choices, Naruto. Your resistance to fate became your fate. Your defiance of destiny became your destiny. Even now, you fight against what I'm saying because it is who you are. Who you were always going to be."
"And what made me who I am, Neji? The village I never felt I truly belonged in until I left, as you said it was? The comrades I made afterward? The world, and my choice to focus on becoming strong enough to survive it?"
"All of them. None of them. You were always going to be exactly who you are now. The circumstances merely revealed your truth."
"If that were true, and if you did believe it, then why fight at all? Why seek to change anything? Why did you yourself fight against the fate of the branch family?"
"Because that too is written into who we are. Some of us fight — all three of us do. But some yield. Some break. I fought because I was meant to fight."
"And some learn, Neji. Some grow beyond what anyone — even ourselves — thought possible. Out of necessity. Circumstance. You are living proof of this. You changed. That's the choice you made."
"Growth itself is a path predetermined. Even this conversation, this very moment of disagreement."
"What do you think of those who stray? Those who had every chance to better the world and chose to make it worse instead?"
"I believe I told you already. That was their nature all along. Their truest self, finally revealed."
"Let us agree to disagree. I do not believe that's all we are — puppets playing out our assigned roles. And although I know what you will say to this, Neji, I believe things could have gone either way — Why are you smiling, Hanabi…?"
"For the same reason Neji is, I suppose. It is that certainty that we can transcend fate, Naruto — that stubborn, unwavering belief. In spite of your words, I see traces of it even now. Ironically, it might be the most fated thing about you. And, though it pains me to admit it, I find myself agreeing with Neji, at least in part. This feels like who you were always meant to be."
"…Bah."
苦
い
血
19 — BITTER BLOOD
NO ONE IN THE ROOM moved a muscle.
This suffocating silence hung, every breath trapped in twenty-six pairs of lungs. Or twenty-seven, perhaps — Naruto couldn't tell, and not knowing clawed at his gut. The barriers still shimmered in the air, as useful as paper walls against a tsunami. Against him.
Tenjin. Konoha's supposedly deceased master Sealweaver.
Naruto's quick assessment felt like ashes in his mouth: twenty-three non-fighters. Two student shinobi. And one monster wearing a pleasant smile, radiating power that made the air itself feel heavy.
"Hello," Tenjin's voice cut through the silence like silk over steel. "Are you to be my spares? Your names, each of you, please." When silence answered him, something dangerous flickered behind his eyes. "Which one of you is Shinpachi?"
They remained silent, both of them.
A civilian's trembling finger betrayed Shinpachi before anyone could stop it. Tenjin's gaze swept over the informant with such dismissive contempt that the man seemed to shrink into himself.
"What manners," Tenjin's words dripped with mock disappointment. "Where is your introduction, Shinpachi? Which noble house spawned you?"
The pause stretched like a wire about to snap before Shinpachi answered, voice tight: "...Gakusha-ke."
"Ah, you are a little noble!" Tenjin's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Tell me, do you still wake before dawn to recite the ancient texts? Still trace the same tired symbols until your fingers bleed?"
Each word seemed to chip away at Shinpachi's composure. Naruto could see the minute tremors in his friend's hands (and only then realized he had grown to care for him already), the way his jaw clenched and unclenched.
Naruto noticed something else — and he was seemingly alone in that.
He showed none of this, although it took a lot from him.
"Square bastards, the lot of them," Tenjin continued, circling closer. "No room for creativity. Everything done just so, because tradition demands it. Doesn't it make you want to scream too?"
Aiko's first sob shattered the tension like glass. Her crying started soft but grew, each gasp for air more desperate than the last, until she was shaking so hard Naruto thought she might fall apart.
"Please stop," Tenjin's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow filled the entire room.
When she couldn't, and his words, in fact, prompted her to do just the opposite, his expression shifted — just slightly, just enough to show the predator beneath the smile.
"I loathe the sounds of crying children," he sighed, reaching toward her. "Especially when I believed you all were at the right age to be so perfectly molded. Oh, I certainly was."
"Wait—" Naruto stumbled forward, heart hammering against his ribs. "She's not part of this. Lady Shiori's already—" His voice cracked. "Ai—She's not shinobi — there's no reason to involve her at all."
"And so?" Tenjin asked, spider-like fingers stretching around Aiko's tear-streaked face with deliberate slowness.
"She's from Snow!" Naruto blurted out, desperate sweat cold on his neck. "She doesn't know shit!"
"Oh, I know that much." The smile in Tenjin's voice made Naruto's stomach turn.
"I think you're just trying to get us to come — You're not after anyone but us and Nagato."
Tenjin's hand removed itself from Aiko's face, his attention sliding to Naruto like oil on water — the weight of it nearly bringing Naruto to his knees. "You think? And what makes you think your thoughts would be more valuable than even hers?"
"…I don't know much about what you want from us — but I'm not entirely clueless." Naruto forced steel into his trembling voice, even as his fingers twitched uselessly at his sides. "I know a few things. I—I know you were sent to the East, for one."
To the eastern coast. Where Tenjin had supposedly died, although he had only heard it had likely happened there in passing and didn't have much more to base his theories upon.
Shinpachi shot Naruto a desperate warning look, but Tenjin's eyebrow merely arched with cruel amusement. At least his hand had dropped from Aiko's direction. "Oh?" His voice was silk over steel. "And what exactly is happening there, then?"
Naruto's mind raced, fragments clicking together with terrifying speed. The coast. The East. The choking secrecy around yōkai and that old village that made no sense unless—
"You were trying to reach old Uzushio," he ventured, watching Tenjin's face like a man watching the sea for the first sign of a whirlpool. "The sealing grounds there — they're why there's so much activity concentrated eastward."
Something flickered in Tenjin's eyes — not surprise, but a cold, hungry sort of amusement that made Naruto's skin crawl.
"Go on," he purred, his attention now fully fixed on Naruto; a blade pressed to skin. The pressure in the room was suffocating.
"I know there's something important there," Naruto pressed on, feeling as though he were balancing on a tightrope he couldn't even see. "That must be the reason you were sent there. That place — It's where all those sealing masters used to work. And now that it's gone..." He trailed off, letting the implications hang in the air.
Tenjin's sudden laugh shattered the silence like breaking glass.
"Oh, you boys. Always thinking you're so clever." He moved closer to Naruto, each step deliberate. "You grasp at fragments of manure, play around in it a bit, and think you've solved the puzzle. Tell me, child — if I wanted to breach the barrier, why would I need those ruins?"
Naruto's mouth felt dry. What barrier…? "Because... the seals are still active. Even underwater. That's why—"
"Wrong," Tenjin's voice cracked like a whip, making several civilians flinch. "Most of these seals died a few short years after the last Uzumaki drowned there. The ruins are nothing but graves now." His smile turned cruel. "But you've given me something somewhat interesting in this pitiful improvisation — you know more about those things than a regular student should, do you not?"
Naruto felt his stomach plummet. He'd overplayed his hand, revealed too much in his desperate gambit for attention. He hadn't even mentioned yōkai, and yet somehow he knew that's what Tenjin meant now. Those predatory green eyes studied him with renewed interest — like a cat that had found a mouse worth playing with before the kill.
"As you know," Naruto attempted a shrug, but his muscles felt like wire about to snap, and Tenjin was already circling closer, that terrible pressure building with each measured step, "there wasn't much to do up there aside from reading—"
"No," Tenjin said, and it felt like an order. "No, I don't think that's it. And I think we're going to have a very enlightening conversation about exactly what you know and how."
Naruto's palms were slick with sweat, mind racing through options that seemed to crumble with each passing second. Tenjin had all but dismissed Shinpachi already, focusing his full attention on him.
"So, let us do that," Tenjin said, voice dropping to freezing temperatures. "Will you come quietly, then? Or need I subdue you?"
Just keep him talking. Just a little longer.
"Come quietly?" Naruto forced a laugh that sounded far too shaky. "No, I don't think we will."
Finally — the flicker of movement. Behind Tenjin's back, Shiori's fingers twitched, forming the beginning of a seal.
Tenjin chuckled, a low, humorless sound that sent a shiver down Naruto's spine.
Then, faster than a breath, his hand shot out, seizing Naruto's shirt with crushing force. The impact knocked the air from his lungs as Tenjin yanked him close, breath hot against his face.
Behind him, Shiori's seal blazed to life, chakra flaring sharp and sudden in the air. Before she could release it, Tenjin hurled Naruto toward her like a ragdoll.
Naruto stumbled, his body slamming into Shiori as Tenjin's strength sent him hurtling backward. The impact either broke her concentration or prevented her from releasing a lethal technique, lest she kill Naruto: she didn't manage to make use of it.
"Pathetic," Tenjin sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. He advanced slowly, his footsteps deliberate, each one sending a ripple of oppressive energy through the air. "Did you really think you could deceive me? That you could outmaneuver me?"
Naruto scrambled to his feet, his pulse pounding in his ears. He instinctively reached for his kunai pouch, only to remember it was empty now.
The air grew thick with killing intent as Tenjin's chakra pressed down on them like a physical weight. Naruto's legs trembled with the effort of staying upright, cold sweat trickling down his neck.
"We had to try," he spat, trying to mask his fear with defiance. His voice came out hoarse, barely above a whisper.
Behind him, Shiori struggled to her knees, blood trickling from both her scalp and nose, and her labored breathing punctuated the silence. Her fingers spasmed through half-formed seals, chakra sputtering like a dying flame. The sight of his latest teacher — his protector — reduced to this made something twist violently in Naruto's chest.
Tenjin's eyes gleamed in the dim light, and his pupils seemed to swallow the iris whole; bottomless pits that promised only darkness. When he smiled, it was with the patient cruelty of someone who had all the time in the world to savor what came next. "Try?" He took another step forward, and the ground itself seemed to recoil. "I think you can do better than that."
The air crackled with building pressure. Naruto's ears popped. His chest constricted as if massive coils were wrapping around him, squeezing tighter with each of Tenjin's measured steps.
"When I was your age," Tenjin assured, voice dripping with amusement, "I don't believe I was anywhere near this pathetic. Neither was he. No, we were as ready as we could ever be."
"Naruto," Shiori managed. "The scroll—"
Tenjin's hand blurred. There was a sickening crack as his backhand caught Naruto across the face, sending him sprawling. Stars exploded behind his eyes when his head struck the ground.
"The scroll," Tenjin said softly, reaching into his own robes with deliberate slowness, "is exactly where it belongs." He withdrew a familiar parchment, one stained with dark symbols that seemed to crawl across its surface like living things. Naruto couldn't even tell when he had obtained it from him. "Oh, this brings back memories. Much like the one you gave us then, isn't it? Shame it did nothing to help Nobu."
Naruto tasted copper. But even through his blurred vision, he saw Shiori's face drain of color as she heard the words — ashen gray.
"I must commend you on surviving my little technique," Tenjin rolled the scroll between his fingers with casual indifference, as if he wasn't discussing Shiori's near-death. "I half-expected you to die right away, though I would have been a bit disappointed."
"You're not the only one who can learn from your correspondence," Shiori said, her voice barely regaining steadiness.
"Indeed." Tenjin's grin widened, showing too many teeth. "You were always rather good at healing techniques, which was why they had to go first. Though it's quite a shame only one of us had the luxury of preparing for this meeting, wasn't it?"
"A shame," Shiori echoed, her voice dropping to something hollow and dangerous, as she looked him sharply in the eye. "Why yes... it is. A shame."
For the first time, something dark and honest flickered across Tenjin's expression – a tightening around the eyes, a slight tension in his jaw.
"Please do not talk about shame," Tenjin said, almost gently. More terrifying than any show of rage. "Even now, at your age, you're looking for meaning. For depth." He laughed. "You always were desperate to see what wasn't there."
He took a step closer, and despite herself, she flinched. "That was one of your greatest failings. You only saw what you wanted to see. A student. A son figure. Someone who cared about your nonsensical ideas." His lip curled. "You never even questioned why I kept you close. Why I tolerated your endless theories, your pathetic need for approval."
Tenjin's casual shrug felt like a knife twisting deeper.
"Konoha taught me well. You were nothing but a tool," he continued, voice devoid of any warmth. "The moment you let him die taught me never to see you as anything more." His eyes turned to ice. "You let him die."
"I didn't—" Shiori started, but the words caught in her throat.
"You did. With your incompetence. Your weakness." Tenjin's chakra surged, a tidal wave of murderous intent that made Naruto's vision darken at the edges. "If you had been more vigilant then, smarter — if you had been worth anything at all — you could have saved him. But you weren't. You never were."
Something in Shiori's eyes cracked, a deep fissure in decades of carefully maintained walls. For a moment, Naruto saw raw anguish there, bleeding through like an old wound torn open.
Then she blinked, and steel replaced glass — a perfect demonstration of how shinobi killed their hearts to do battle. Her stance shifted, not just ready to fight — ready to murder. "You're wrong," she hissed, each word sharp enough to draw blood. "Whatever darkness consumed you... whatever happened to you, doesn't matter now."
"Am I?" Tenjin smiled, and Naruto could almost see how sick it all was — it was almost certainly the same smile he'd worn when she praised his seals, when bringing him tea after late-night training. Or a grotesque mirror of it. "Poor, old, desperate Shiori. Still trying to prove herself worthy in some way. Still failing."
Though Naruto saw the words pierce her like knives, Shiori's resolve hardened into something beyond pain or fear. She met Tenjin's gaze in silence.
"But don't worry," he said softly. "I'll give you one last chance to be useful."
The finality in his tone spurred Naruto forward. Despite the screaming protest of his muscles, he dragged himself up, positioning himself between Tenjin and Shiori. Shinpachi was already there, spell cards crackling with barely contained power.
"How utterly adorable," Tenjin's words cut like razors. "Everyone playing their assigned roles. Next comes the speech about Infinity, I suppose?"
Tenjin's eyes flicked to Naruto, then Shinpachi, and when he saw their expressions, his own twisted into something that looked like the perfect cross of disbelief and disdain, all at once.
"…Truly?" he breathed.
Then he laughed, and the sound was like breaking glass.
"Oh, you haven't changed at all!" The laughter rang out, sharp enough to draw blood, more maniacal than amused. "Still poisoning children's minds with fantasies!" His accusatory finger stabbed toward Shiori. "Teaching them the same lies about honor and sacrifice that got him killed. Making them believe they can change anything." He shook his head with mock tenderness. "At least he died believing in something. But this one?" His gesture toward Naruto felt like a death sentence. "He'll die confused."
"Shut up," Naruto snarled through bloodied teeth, crimson spattering the stone. "You don't know anything about—"
"I know everything about you, boy." Tenjin's voice cut through his protest like a blade through flesh. "Another lost child, desperately searching for meaning. You think you're embarking on some grand, noble quest that only you can fulfill." His laugh turned to ice, sharp enough to freeze the air itself. "And she must have encouraged that delusion. Did she already fill your head with pretty lies about how chasing the impossible leads to greatness?"
Shiori's hands clenched so tight her knuckles went white, tendons standing out like cords. She had said that.
"That's enough," Shiori's voice carried a deadly edge, but underneath lay something raw and bleeding.
Tenjin's chakra thickened until breathing felt like drowning in tar. His gaze pinned Naruto like a butterfly to a board, merciless and calculating. "She will die, you know."
Naruto froze, breath catching. His mind raced.
How does he know about my mother—?
No. This was the serpent's game. He hadn't said mother. He hadn't specified anyone, hadn't said anything about her.
But the seed of dread had been planted, and in the suffocating darkness, it began to grow.
The silence stretched like a bowstring pulled too taut, ready to snap. Naruto forced himself to breathe through the crushing pressure, through the taste of copper flooding his mouth.
"You talk too much," Shiori said quietly, and something in her voice had changed. Gone was the tremor of fear, replaced by something harder, colder. "Always did. I never told you, I believe."
Tenjin's smile brightened. "I always suspected how you felt."
His hand moved in a blur of seals too fast to follow, the same way Shiori's fingers did, before settling into one. The air itself seemed to crystallize, chakra so thick Naruto could feel it, and his skin prickled with the promise of pain.
"Ready yourself," Tenjin continued, each word measured and precise. "This time, however… This time, when I break you, I'll make sure you stay broken."
Shiori had recovered some and she was strong, Naruto thought with desperation, there was lucidity in her eyes, and her movements had regained enough precision. Tenjin wanted them alive. That all had to count for something. "Naruto, Shinpachi, get back—"
The air exploded.
Crystallized chakra shattered into thousands of razor-sharp shards, each one seeking flesh. Naruto felt them slice across his face, his arms, drawing lines in the air like tracers of blue and then red. But before they could do worse, a barrier of pure energy erupted around the two boys — Shiori's last-second protection.
It wouldn't hold. Already, cracks were spreading across its surface like spider webs.
"Protecting others at your own expense," Tenjin observed, almost disappointed. "You haven't learned anything at all."
He was testing her.
"If this truly all was a mask…" Blood ran freely down Shiori's face as she spoke, from earlier wounds that were bleeding again. Why? Why hadn't she healed? Her breathing came in ragged gasps. "Then I was wrong in ever thinking there was anything to learn from you."
"Nothing to learn?" He asked. His chakra surged, dark and poisonous. "If you say so. I'll let you decide."
Shiori's barrier shattered.
Naruto moved without thinking, throwing himself backward, the same way Shinpachi did, at the same time Shiori advanced. Pain exploded across his back, jagged shards of chakra slicing it to ribbons, and he forced himself to go on, to bounce across the surface of a wall to move away faster.
But for some reason he couldn't understand, he slipped and slammed into the wall. Shinpachi's thrown spell card also flickered, never detonating the way he had meant it to. Both boys managed to roll away, if barely in time.
The ground where they had been cratered beneath some unseen impact. The air filled with dust and the acrid smell of burning stone.
Through the haze, Tenjin's voice carried, dripping with malice: "How noble. Let's see how well you fare, half dead and trying to keep children away from me."
Shiori didn't respond. Her hands blurred through seals, the air crackled with building energy, but something was wrong. Her chakra flickered erratically, like a candle in a storm.
"Your disruption technique," she hissed, voice strained. "You modified it."
Tenjin's smile widened. "Finally noticed?" His eyes gleamed with cruel satisfaction. "I wasn't about to come here with a technique you understood."
"Of course not," Shiori muttered.
Naruto didn't know the specifics of it. Perhaps Tenjin had somehow applied his technique to the barriers already in place — no, perhaps to the walls themselves — weaving them in so subtly even Shiori had never noticed. Or perhaps the answer lay in that clash of barriers, some of them Naruto could see and some he likely couldn't.
For the first time, it really dawned on him how crippling this lack of chakra awareness could be. In this sort of high-level battle, he might as well be fighting half-blind.
Shiori adapted first, her experience showing in every fluid motion. She feinted toward the wall, and when Tenjin's hand snapped up to target her, she dropped low. The wall shattered above her head, stone spraying outward. Naruto tried to make sense of it — Tenjin might have one technique with two applications: disruption and destruction. Or perhaps they were two distinct techniques altogether, the end result was the same.
With impossible speed, Shiori disappeared, a blur of lethal motion.
Naruto's heart hammered against his ribs as he watched the deadly dance unfold. Shiori moved like liquid shadow, closing the distance in a blink. Tenjin whirled around, extending his hand to seize her.
Naruto had no idea how the man had managed to even perceive her. This was too far beyond him. Shiori slipped under Tenjin's hand like water through fingers, those obsidian claws gleaming. Naruto saw the exact moment Tenjin realized his mistake — his stance was now too wide open, his recovery too slow.
Tenjin spun, gracefully but tensing. He launched into a spinning kick — textbook perfect form, but Naruto could see it wouldn't be enough. Shiori caught the leg between her forearm and palm, those black claws sinking deep into flesh. Blood welled around the punctures.
A feint within a feint. She had him.
The worst part was seeing the calm in Shiori's eyes. And the mad delight in Tenjin's. There was no way to tell who seemed more in control of the situation. It seemed as though Shiori had him. This was her element, he knew — close quarters, where Tenjin seemed more vulnerable.
And if Naruto tried to help, he was nearly sure he would manage to do the exact opposite.
Naruto's fingers dug into his palms as Shiori yanked Tenjin forward, her free hand cocked back for a strike that could end everything. In that frozen moment, Naruto saw with crystal clarity just how it might happen. That perfect temple strike, a crimson rose blooming, and Tenjin's sneer becoming that familiar understanding.
Tenjin's other hand flicked upward, fingers weaving through a motion so subtle Naruto almost missed it.
A ripple of chakra pulsed through the room, unfelt by Naruto.
Shiori's hand shot forward, claws aimed for Tenjin's temple, but her momentum faltered. Her body jerked unnaturally, her arm dragged sideways against her will. For the briefest instant, Naruto saw it: a complex seal glowing faintly across the skin of Tenjin's left palm, the one facing upward.
"I have you now." Tenjin's voice was quiet, mocking.
Shiori's eyes narrowed as her hand was wrenched low, her claws dragging along Tenjin's chest instead of ending him. Then she snarled, twisting her body with all her strength. But it was too late. Her hand was already burying itself into a seal that hovered in midair.
The seal snapped into place like an iron clamp, encasing her wrist in a binding glow.
With a grim smile, Tenjin twisted his hand.
The sickening sound of tearing flesh filled the room as Shiori's hand was severed clean at the wrist. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc as she staggered back, the glowing seal now inert and her stump bleeding freely on the ground.
Another feint. This time, hidden within his opponent's double-layered one.
Naruto froze in shock. He hadn't even fully registered what had happened when Tenjin shifted again, raising his hand toward the ceiling.
"Scatter," Shiori barked, her voice sharp and commanding.
Her words had barely cut through the roar when Tenjin slammed his palm against the wall, detonating a massive explosion. The ceiling caved in with an ear-splitting crash, and debris rained down in a choking storm of dust and stone.
And from the dust, Tenjin spoke, now unseen to Naruto.
"You thought that as long as you managed to steer clear from my right hand, you'd be fine?" he asked. "It's not the worst of ideas, I suppose. You were working with old assumptions, however."
Naruto barely had time to react before Shinpachi grabbed his arm, yanking him toward the corridor.
"She said to go," Shinpachi hissed.
It was chaos — civilians running amok, and the sounds of steel against steel, or perhaps steel against flesh.
The two boys sprinted through that chaos, Naruto's ears ringing and his vision blurred. He cast one last glance over his shoulder, heart twisting as he saw Shiori dashing amid the wreckage. She was unbowed, her bloodied stump hanging at her side as she clashed time and time again with Tenjin.
"Leave!" she snapped again, her tone leaving no room for argument.
And then she was gone from sight, swallowed by the falling rubble and swirling dust.
Naruto stumbled into the dimly lit passageway, coughing as the air cleared slightly. Shinpachi pushed him forward, his usually calm expression grim.
"She's buying us time," Shinpachi muttered, pulling out a spell card and weaving chakra into its surface. "But… I am not quite sure what she hopes for us to achieve."
Naruto clenched his fists, his mind racing. Shiori had been a pillar of strength, the one person who felt as though she might manage to keep them safe. And now, she was hurt — badly hurt — and fighting someone who seemed just as untouchable as she had previously been.
"…Should we go back?" Naruto asked, his voice rough.
Shinpachi rounded on him. "And get captured or die? Because that's what will happen if we rush in blind."
It was only then that Naruto noticed how panicked he seemed.
Shinpachi was right, though. It was true. Besides—
The dim corridor echoed with distant crashes and muffled shouts. Naruto's chest heaved as he tried to gather his thoughts, his pulse still roaring in his ears.
And then close to a dozen people stumbled out from the adjoining hallway.
Naruto spun, heart lurching, but the sight of dark hair and the familiar pale green of a tattered sleeve stopped him.
"Aiko!"
She staggered into the light, clutching her side. Blood seeped through her fingers, staining the hem of her tunic. Her eyes were wide and glassy, darting around the space as though still searching for threats.
"...Naruto?" Her voice was shaky and raw.
He was at her side in an instant, steadying her before her knees could buckle. "Aiko! What happened? Are you—" He cut himself off. She clearly wasn't okay. Her breathing was shallow, and her weight sagged against him.
"Where," she said weakly, though the wince she gave when she shifted said otherwise. "Where's my dad…" She trailed off, her face pale as her gaze flicked over Naruto's shoulder. "Where's my dad?"
Naruto's throat tightened. "I have no idea," he said, forcing the words out. "But we need to move, now—"
The wall exploded.
From its depths came a hellish creature — a massive dragon wreathed in fire, scales glowing like molten rock. The heat surged through the corridor like a wave, scorching the stone and an unfortunate man who wouldn't scream for long, and forcing Naruto to shield his face with his arm. The beast roared, seemingly shaking the marrow in his bones, and continued to surge forward, great maw opening to unleash an inferno.
Shinpachi's eyes widened as he confirmed the chakra signature flowing through the creature.
"It is Lady Shiori's," he hissed, barely audible over the cacophony.
The dragon's blazing form tore through the wreckage, crackling with heat and energy that turned the air into a shimmering haze. Tenjin stood at the center of the destruction, his tall silhouette outlined by the brilliant flames. He had raised both hands, forming a barrier of glowing light. The dragon slammed into it repeatedly, and the hallway trembled with the force of the impact.
Tenjin laughed.
The sound was manic, echoing through the corridor even as his barrier cracked under the relentless assault. Sweat poured down his face, but his grin only widened.
"Brilliant, Lady Shiori!" he shouted, his voice reverberating. "More! Show me more of that fire!"
Why wasn't she using that Sealing Field technique of hers? Could she not use it again right now? Did she fear something else?
The dragon reared back, and with another deafening roar, its fangs dug deep into Tenjin's barrier. The seals weaved into it fractured further, faint lines of light splintering like glass—
"Run!" Shinpachi's voice cut through the chaos, snapping Naruto back to the moment.
Naruto tightened his grip on Aiko's hand and turned. Shinpachi grabbed her and shoved her upon Naruto's shoulder, urgency driving every step.
Behind them, the dragon continued its assault, the airship continued to fracture, the heat licking at their backs as they sprinted through the orange-lit hallways.
There was no aiming in this, Shiori had apparently decided. There were too many things to take into account at once: once-pleasant corridors were a hellscape of twisted stone and seared corpses.
It was, of course, the sort of damage that shinobi battle usually claimed to be collateral — or, depending, a failed objective.
Naruto's stomach churned as they passed bodies. Some were scorched beyond recognition, their features frozen in expressions of terror. Others lay crumpled, victims of earlier explosions. Aiko buried her face in Naruto's shoulder, trembling against him.
"Don't look," Naruto muttered, his voice hollow.
Shinpachi was a few steps ahead, his gaze flicking left and right as he searched for a safe path.
"We have to keep moving," Naruto said, sounding lost to himself.
"That dragon's heat is destabilizing everything. This whole place—!"
Death came so close it singed them, in the form of a burst of power.
The only reason they survived was because Shinpachi had already primed his Sanctuary card for this eventuality. Golden light englobed all three of them, and the blast of heat that glassed their part of the ship passed them harmlessly.
Five seconds passed, and Shinpachi's near-impenetrable barrier shimmered out of existence again. He was breathing hard again, trying to stay on his feet.
Naruto's mind raced as he stumbled forward. The weight of Aiko on his shoulder, the blistering heat at his back, the haunting images of the dead around him — it was becoming too much. His throat felt tight, his breaths coming short and ragged.
"Where's my dad?" Aiko's voice broke through the haze, small and desperate.
Again. Naruto didn't have an answer. He bit his lip, his frustration bubbling to the surface. "We'll find him," he said, though he wasn't sure if he believed it himself. He helped Shinpachi to his feet, and they ran again.
The distant roars of Shiori's dragon faded as they descended further into the ship's bowels again. It was darker here, and a cold wind blew; the heat gave way to an eerie, bone-deep chill.
Naruto could feel Aiko's trembling growing worse. She wasn't going to last much longer without proper care, but he couldn't stop — not yet.
Shinpachi stumbled ahead of him, leaning heavily on the wall for support. His Sanctuary card had saved their lives, but it had drained him. The usual calm in his expression was entirely gone, replaced by a grim something that barely masked his exhaustion.
"Where are we even going?" he asked, his voice tight.
"Down," Naruto said, between ragged breaths. "Or up. Anywhere. Away from… that." He waved vaguely toward the chaos above them.
Naruto glanced back, his heart still racing. The distant echoes of battle made it clear Shiori and Tenjin were still locked in their deadly struggle. He shook his head, trying to banish the image of her standing against that madness, her bloodied arm limp at her side.
"Down isn't safe," Shinpachi muttered, though he didn't stop moving.
Naruto turned sharply. "Up, then — Do you have a better idea? Because I'm open to suggestions."
Shinpachi clenched his jaw, the words dying in his throat. He hated this, the same way Naruto did — feeling powerless, running while others fought.
Aiko stirred weakly in his arms. "It's… cold," she murmured.
Naruto shifted her weight, trying to keep her as steady as possible. "We'll get you warm soon, I promise."
"…Stop promising things," Aiko said.
Before Naruto could respond, the floor beneath them groaned ominously.
Tilting?
Yes. They were. The whole whip was splitting in two, in spite of the water tendrils' renewed efforts. Shinpachi froze, holding up a hand to steady himself. The three of them stood still, the only sounds their labored breathing and the distant rumble of collapsing structures.
Then, from somewhere below, came the faint sound of movement.
Naruto's grip on Aiko tightened as he felt his stomach rise. "What was that…?"
Shinpachi didn't answer immediately. He reached into his pouch, pulling out another spell card. The faint glow of chakra began to emanate from it as he activated the weave.
"Not good," Shinpachi muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "The ship's altitude is lowering."
The sound grew louder — metal scraping against metal, accompanied by a faint, rhythmic thudding. Naruto's stomach twisted as the shadows ahead of them seemed to ripple.
"Naruto?" Shinpachi asked, his voice low. "What do we do?"
"I don't — Keep moving," Naruto said. "And whatever happens, don't stop."
He hesitated, of course, but the look in Shinpachi's eyes left no time for that. He adjusted his grip on Aiko and pressed forward, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the oppressive silence.
The shadows shifted again, and this time, Naruto caught a glimpse of something moving — something impossibly large.
Aiko whimpered softly, her fingers clutching at Naruto's shirt.
"What is that?" she whispered.
Shinpachi didn't answer. Instead, he moved closer to Naruto, the glowing spell card clutched tightly in his hand. The tension in the air was suffocating, and every instinct in Naruto's body screamed at him to run.
Then, from the shadows, a pair of glowing green eyes emerged, locking onto them with a predatory intensity.
"Run!" Naruto shouted, and this time, Shinpachi didn't hesitate.
They bolted down the corridor as something slammed into Tenjin's hastily-erected barriers, the sounds of battle growing louder behind them again. The rhythmic thudding became a deafening roar, and the walls trembled with each step they took.
Naruto's breath came in short, panicked gasps as he ran, the weight of Aiko making each step harder. He could almost feel the heat of that monster in human flesh on his back, the oppressive weight of his presence driving them forward.
Shinpachi threw a glowing spell card behind him, and there was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a deafening explosion. The corridor shook violently, and for a moment, the sounds of pursuit stopped.
"This way!" Naruto's voice cracked, more a desperate shout than a command.
The airship's innards groaned around them, metal twisting and settling like something alive. Each step echoed with a hollow promise of pursuit. Naruto could feel Aiko's heartbeat against his back — a frantic, desperate rhythm that seemed to be counting down to something inevitable.
We can't keep this up.
The side passage swallowed them, pressing close like suffocating walls. A blast roared behind them — not just sound, but intention. It might have been paranoia, but to Naruto, it seemed deliberate. The kind of sound that whispered: I know exactly where you are.
Naruto's mind raced faster than his feet. Something was wrong. Not just the chase, not just the danger. They had overlooked something fundamentally, terribly wrong. And he couldn't figure out what it was.
They skidded to a halt at the passage's end. Trapped. Up brought them closer to the top of the ship, which meant exposure. Down meant cutting through Shiori's battle. Neither option felt like survival — more like a choice between different forms of defeat.
"…We have to go up," he decided, the words hanging in the air like a noose.
Shinpachi's hand gripped his arm, spinning him with a violence that shocked Naruto into stillness.
His friend's face had transformed — not just tense, but altered. Something had broken behind his eyes, yes. The sharp, calculated expression that Naruto was used to seeing on him had fractured, revealing something raw and terrified underneath, certainly…
But something of that pragmatism was back. The juxtaposition made Naruto freeze.
And the other thing in Shinpachi's eyes, aside from it, wasn't mere panic. No, it was worse, somehow. It was recognition.
"Wait," Shinpachi whispered. His eyes darted around the corridor, seeing something Naruto couldn't. Not looking for threats. Expecting them. "I think — I think he's tracking us."
Naruto blinked. "He's behind us, of course he's—"
"No," Shinpachi interrupted, his tone clipped. "I don't mean he's chasing us like a wild animal. I mean he knows exactly where we are. The way he's been moving — he's toying with us, leading us somewhere."
The realization hit Naruto like a punch to the gut. Aiko's breath caught — a tiny, terrified sound that made the damp hair on Naruto's neck rise.
Shinpachi's mind was visibly racing, connections forming behind his eyes like a complex seal taking shape. "Lady Shiori kept avoiding his right hand, that's what he himself said. Deliberately. Specifically." His gaze bore into Naruto. "Did he do anything with it when he grabbed you? Did you notice anything?"
Naruto's heart dropped as he tried to recall the fight. His memories were fragmented — flashes of Tenjin's sadistic grin, the explosion that split the ceiling, Shiori's desperate battle against him. Naruto's recollection felt fragmented, like a broken mirror reflecting impossible angles.
"I—I don't think so," he stammered. "He grabbed me with his left, and besides—"
Shinpachi was already extending his senses, probing. Checking. His fingers traced invisible lines around Naruto, searching for something else. Not just physical contact. Something deeper. More insidious.
A moment stretched, taut and terrible.
Shinpachi nodded, but his relief was thin. "Nothing on you. Nothing on me." His eyes kept moving. Searching. Paranoia, rising. "What if he doesn't need direct right-hand contact after all? He could have marked anything—"
Think.
The wall. The explosion. The technique that collapsed everything around them—
Aiko's small hands clutched Naruto's jacket. Trembling.
Shinpachi and Naruto's eyes met. A silent conversation erupted in that instant. The thin string of tension snapped.
"There's no way," Naruto whispered. A plea more than a statement.
Shinpachi's response was terse. "I'm sorry."
The horror wasn't in the chase, in the end. It was in this understanding. Tenjin hadn't been pursuing them. No, he'd been herding them, into the night.
Naruto's hands began to shake.
Aiko's small frame felt different now. Her breath came in small, ragged gasps against his neck.
Shinpachi's eyes never left her. Cold. Calculating. The way a surgeon might study a patient.
And worse, he switched back to Uminokoe.
"Put her down, first," he said. Not a suggestion. A command. "I'm not leaving without you."
Naruto's world tilted, just a bit more.
"No," he whispered. The word tasted like ash. "Please, speak in Kyosei — You all made me learn that horrible — We're all — What does it matter—?"
"Please."
Gentle movements. Too gentle. As if sudden motion might trigger something irreversible. Delicate. Precise. Naruto lowered Aiko to the ground with a tenderness that felt like a goodbye.
Her eyes looked up at him, wide with something that seemed closer and closer to realization.
"It's okay," Naruto said. The lie felt like glass in his throat. "Everything's going to be okay, Aiko."
"Naruto?" she asked quietly. "Are you lying again?"
Her small fingers clutched at his sleeve, and in that gesture was that very fragility they were all too close to fully lose. Shinpachi said nothing. Just watched. The way one might watch a fuse burning down.
Something inside Naruto fractured slightly further. Right now, it didn't feel as though it would ever heal properly.
"Stay very still," he whispered. Not just to her. To himself.
Silence stretched. The sort that filled lungs like water and threatened to drown. Both boys stepped away from her quietly, and to Naruto, every movement felt like betrayal.
Then, after barely a few moments — footsteps. Not heavy. Not light. The kind of measured approach that suggested absolute control.
Tenjin emerged from the shadows like a blade sliding from its sheath — wounded, but no less deadly. When he emerged, the moonlight caught the blood on his skin in ways that made it look almost beautiful — like crimson lacework, like art. His eyes held the calm of a man who had already won.
With him came a barrier, and it felt different from the others. Heavier, final. Naruto's muscles strained against it until they trembled, but it was like fighting against the weight of something inevitable.
Of course. If Tenjin had led them here, why wouldn't he have—
"Say nothing," Tenjin said, in Uminokoe. "Or she dies. Say nothing, in fact, or they both die."
Then, he projected his voice further.
"Lady Shiori," he called out, like silk over steel. "I know you're watching. Waiting for an opening. Come out."
Only silence answered him.
"Come on, now. After all," Tenjin's voice was almost kind, "I did promise to show you everything Nobu never could."
There was no way to know, Naruto thought. Whether this monster truly had cared about the boy named Nobu at any point and thought this was retribution for an event Naruto realized he didn't know anything about aside from Shiori's words, or if he was merely pressing upon what seemed the one weakness in her armor, repeatedly.
And whether it mattered at all.
Everything stilled. The boys' frozen forms were illuminated by the moonlight's glow. On their faces was the sort of dread that only slowly dawning understanding could bring about.
Two words broke that silence.
"Sealing Field."
And then there was light.
First came the wave of biting cold that made Naruto's teeth chatter, and then the heat, so scalding it felt like standing in the heart of a forge. The air solidified, sheets of luminescent red rising from every direction, like the walls of a fortress born from pure chakra.
For one breathless moment, Naruto felt it — a surge of wild hope. Shiori had done it. They had a chance—
"Sealing Field."
Tenjin's voice sliced through the air with the effortless precision of a Bushi-ke sword master. Calm, unhurried, yet inarguable. A statement of truth.
The crimson walls shuddered, cracks racing across their surface in jagged streaks. The fissures spread unnaturally fast, faster than sight could track, as if the barrier was unraveling under its own weight. Then, like the crescendo of a shattered symphony, the walls collapsed in a burst of blinding fragments. Shiori's masterpiece dissolved into a rain of glittering dust.
"No," she breathed out. "You learned to imbue your disruption technique—"
Darkness rushed in to claim the space, heavy and absolute. And the terrible weight that came with it was much the same; something that would have been enough to make Naruto kneel, were he not frozen standing. Instead, it felt as though his knees were about to shatter. When Tenjin's face appeared again, dimly lit by the faint glow of distant embers, his smile was a blade wrapped in silk — smooth, but no less cruel.
"Void Disruption Ward."
Silence.
"Wrong choice. Not that there was a good one," Tenjin said. "Particularly so with one hand. Even for you..." He shook his head. Then, raising his voice, he called out to the void: "You know what this means, Master. They're exposed — and I don't care for them that much. One should be enough. Show yourself."
For a moment, the silence reigned. Then it broke with a crackle, the air warping as if torn apart by unseen hands. When Shiori emerged, she brought with her the electric tang of ozone and the suffocating weight of raw power.
Her body was a battlefield. Blood ran from her wounds in rivulets, and they weren't just bleeding — they were smoking, as if her very life force was burning away. Curling into the air like the product of a dying fire. Her shoulders were rigid, defiant, but her eyes betrayed her. When they fixed on Tenjin, they held centuries of regret.
"You led them here to catch me," she said, voice hollow. "All of it — the chase, the fight, the fear. A performance."
"Was it?" Tenjin's lips curved, but the smile never reached his eyes. "The best traps are the ones we walk into willingly. You taught me that."
He had a hand upon Aiko. Aiko, whose trembling intensified, the seal in her hair flaring brighter. Recognition flashed across Shiori's face.
"The girl. You had marked her as a conduit since the beginning."
Perhaps if she had been able to see it fully, she would have been able to tell. Right now, something was clear in her tone to Naruto's ears.
No way to win.
"And now you are all within my range. You may speak again now, children — if you even can. As for you..." Tenjin's voice hardened, all pretense of kindness falling away. "This girl, right now, carries enough raw power to level a decently-sized hill. And with that much chakra in the air, I believe that even you—"
"…You wouldn't. I know—" But even as she spoke, Shiori saw the truth in his eyes. And to Naruto, something even more terrifying entered her voice. "They're all children, Tenjin. Innocent. It is me you want. You may have my life. But they — No matter what happened to you, and what you've done already, this—"
"Innocent?" His laugh was brittle glass. Tenjin's hand rose toward Aiko's neck. A decision had been reached. "Like we were?"
Shiori lunged forward, power crackling around her like lightning, one barrier rising in front of her as she appeared in between Naruto and Shinpachi — but it was already too late.
Tenjin's fingers brushed Aiko's seal, and the girl screamed as she became a catalyst, a bridge between his will and a vast reserve of energy. In that moment, Aiko's eyes met Naruto's, and he saw in them not just fear, but that same, deep emptiness that broke something inside him forever.
The blast that followed was soundless.
A moment of perfect, terrible silence as reality itself seemed to fold inward, before expanding in a wave of annihilation that consumed everything in its path.
The last thing Shiori saw was Tenjin's face, a single tear tracking through the blood on his cheek, the final remnant of the boy she had once known, dissolving like salt in rain as the power she had tried so hard to contain was turned against her fully in one final, devastating release.
The last thing Aiko saw was Naruto's face, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood as well, as the shinobi world she had already grown to hate used her and discarded her in one final, devastating release.
Tenjin's goal, Naruto would later ruminate in the countless sleepless nights that followed, had always been to kill Shiori, certainly. But some part of him had stretched that kill out. Whether it was closure he had been looking for, pleasure, a chance to prove he had surpassed her as a shinobi, or even hesitation, was another matter entirely.
The rest — the children, the traps leading into traps, the performance of pain — was rather secondary. And although the man didn't take any true joy in it, so was Aiko. Secondary. If even that. She had been nothing more than ink in his brush. Nothing else.
That she wanted to see the city of Kiyoteru where it was always night, that she disliked snow and made up stories about stars, didn't matter at all.
With the last of her will, the bloodied Shiori crawled to the still-frozen boys. Although Tenjin's seal was now gone, Naruto remained stuck, forced to watch as she drew her final breaths. A terrible rasping rose from her sightless face.
"Take… it."
And since neither boy knew who she meant, they both reached for her hand. That small wisp of chakra split between them like a dying star finding its last light, carrying with it memories, power, and a burden that would shape them for years to come, if in different ways.
"You… must…"
She fell still.
When the light faded, only ashes remained, dancing like black snow in the hollow wind under the moonlight. And in the center of the destruction, Tenjin stood alone, brushing something from his face that Naruto assumed might have been a tear, or what remained of Aiko, now nothing more than soot on the wind.
Years later, Naruto would remember this moment the same way he remembered that day at sea. Not just for the horror or the power displayed, but for the quiet afterward — the terrible silence that followed as the ashes settled, and the way the moonlight caught them, making them sparkle like stars falling to earth.
He would remember how victory and vengeance, on Tenjin's face, looked exactly the same as loss and regret in that silver light, and how some wounds never truly healed — they just became part of who you were.
In that moment, watching that monster — or perhaps that was a man — walk toward them in the moonlight, Naruto understood something fundamental about the shinobi world. Not its power or its politics, as those were still too far removed then, but the cost of them. The price paid in innocent lives, in children's tears, in dreams turned to ash.
And whichever promise he made in his heart was only for him to know.
The moon continued its journey across the night sky, indifferent to the tragedy below, as it had for countless nights before and would for countless nights to come.
But something had changed in the world that night — something fundamental and irreversible. And in the ashes of innocence lost, the seeds of a different future were already beginning to take root.
i/MTUizk : Nobu and Tenjin
i/MTbUBD : Extra — Ryūjin: On Having a Support Technique
AN: Here's a man who has taken no new year's resolutions.
...No? I meant Tenjin, not me.
Next chapter: Sacrifice