Transmission # 3-4-8-0. Addendum "Kill or Be Killed"
35.7107° N, 139.8016° E
2000 hrs; December 8, 1963
Kill...Kill...I wanna kill...I wanna hurt...I want to feel something...Anything...
Thoughts as intricate and winding as these tunnels polluted her mind as her legs kept moving forward, ever forward. Never once taking her gaze beyond the beam of light before her. If she stopped, she'd turn once more into that scared little girl, and that would be of no use to anyone. No. No help at all.
All Anko wanted - needed - was to focus.
These thoughts and wants would pass, pleasures which only elicited a momentary release from pain; she'd grown stronger than these urges now, though. That's what she tells herself.
The tunnels stretched endlessly before Anko, an oppressive sprawl of concrete and steel that swallowed light and sound alike. Anko moved through them with the caution of a seasoned predator, her boots skimming over damp, uneven ground, the air thick with the scent of old water, rust, and something fouler lurking beneath.
The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel was an engineering marvel on the surface, a flood control system designed to keep Tokyo from drowning under its own weight. But here, in its lowest depths, it was something else entirely. A maze. A graveyard. A battleground long since abandoned by the living, but not by its ghosts.
Anko had heard the stories. She had been taught the stories—history passed down in quiet whispers by those who had seen firsthand what the Akatsuki had done in these depths. How the insurgents had used these tunnels as arteries, bleeding the city dry, slipping past blockades, moving unseen beneath the feet of their enemies. The North had every reason to suspect the South of sheltering them. Because someone had.
And yet, none of that mattered to her now.
She wasn't here to unearth old betrayals, to chase the echoes of revolutionaries who had long since turned to dust. This was personal.
She was going to find him.
Her fingers twitched near the hilt of her blade, a subconscious response to the pressure that coiled tight in her gut. A feeling which burned in her mind, as venomous as the man she hunted down here. He'd always been a creature of dark spaces, of twisting corridors and shifting walls, of secrets buried too deep to ever be unearthed. These tunnels were perfect for him—too perfect. If anywhere in Tokyo could offer him impunity, it was here, beneath the city's bones, where the past still festered in the dark.
But not forever.
The sound of dripping water echoed through the corridor, each drop a hollow punctuation against the stale, unmoving air. Anko pressed deeper, her senses thrumming, her pulse steady but sharp. She could feel it—that pull, that undeniable certainty that she was getting close.
The snake was here.
And she was going to drag him out of whatever hole he had slithered into. Whether he came willingly or in pieces was entirely up to him.
"Miss Anko, perhaps we should not linger down here without backup. I'm sure Captain Yamato would like to know of our position." Sai's placid face looked impervious by the light of the torch in his hand; Anko doesn't consider him.
In truth, she'd even forgotten that he was there with her. So inconsequential, so haphazard, so nonexistent he was to her. Like the toy she keeps away in her nightstand drawer, or the Icha-Icha series lost somewhere in her sheets. Which isn't fair to him - these past weeks Sai had been one of the few constants for her to lean - and relieve herself - on. But then again, it's not like he understands her apathy anyway - for now not a lot of things register to him yet. He was still a prototype. The idea of being "useful" was merely a reflex he was tasked to act on, not calculate. New feelings like "concern", "worry", or "anxiousness" were still a work in progress for him. Eventually he made come to understand, as was his intent, but Anko had reiterated she didn't want someone to act, think, or ponder much of anything else and get in her way. She wanted help, but not a partner.
It was as much as she told Yamato and Jiji soon as she felt good enough to get back on the streets. For the trail was hot - scorching, even. They didn't have the luxury of letting it sit. All that did was give their enemies the opportunity to move freely and operate. With rankled Anko something fierce; her recovery was a slow, miserable affair. The kind that left her restless, stuck in a hospital bed with too much time to think, too much time to feel.
Pain was nothing new—she'd endured worse, and she could endure this. The cracked ribs, the burns, the bruises deep enough to leave their mark for weeks, they were all just temporary. What unsettled her was the stillness. The forced inactivity. The feeling of lying in that stiff hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the steady beeping of the monitors, and knowing that for once, there was nothing she could do but wait.
Anko never really took into consideration how lucky she was to still be breathing.
Maybe it was an act of the Kami watching over her. Or maybe—more likely—it was sheer, stupid luck.
She figured plenty of people were like that in the world - in her case, wouldn't be the first time; Anko had a knack for surviving things she shouldn't.
One had to be lucky to make it through what she experienced.
To this day she can still feel the poking of scalpels. The prodding of tweezers. The surgical studies that left her feeling less like a child and more like a specimen on a table. She'd cried herself to sleep most nights back then, curling into herself beneath scratchy sheets, her body aching in ways she hadn't yet learned how to describe.
Orochimaru had culled her from a healthy batch of wayward orphans found on the Empire's peripheries. She didn't quite know where her start began, or where exactly home ought to be - though her dreams longed for it constantly. Sometimes the vision came to her in a dream. Colors of green, rich-red brown soil, the blue cooling waters of a slow moving river. Southern China, maybe? Perhaps Manchuria or Vietnam. She did know he pulled some from the island of Formosa, also. Anko only ever had a vague, hazy memory of what her life was before the gene splicing trials. And whenever an odd, alien form of nostalgia struck like a mosquito bite, she'd swatted the feeling down as swiftly as an oxen tail. To her, better to not know what she'd lost, than dwell on those regrets for the rest of her life.
Thoughts like that could make one sloppy, make her uncoordinated and unfocused. One couldn't have that luxury in this line of work; even when she was on point, there were always moments that could catch her off-guard. Ginza for one example - despite whatever one might say, quantity almost always made up for quality when it was a matter of firepower. Yes, she was humble enough to admit when she was lucky. Stupidly so. But despite the objections of Yamato and pretty much everyone else, Anko wouldn't - shouldn't stay holed up in recovery. Not whilst Gato and the Fangs were on the move, as North and South simultaneously dealt with blows which left the other respectively looking to hemorrhage the bleeding, and as this instinctual fear welled up inside once more. Everything made her feel like a deer at a watering hole, and she had to move.
Jiji was the only one who gave her consent to continue working. Begrudgingly so, but in the end her worth to him was greater beyond the garden than if she stayed put.
Besides, she was the only one other than him who knew the doctor intimately. Ishii Shiro - "Orochimaru" - was a creature of many faces, many skins, and many habits; Anko didn't believe any of the reports suggesting he'd passed away back in 1957. American reports first of all - so good reason they couldn't be trusted. Not leastwise due to the rumors Yankee leadership cut a deal with Ishii for "invaluable" scientific research as Tribunal took place. Orochimaru had a knack of slithering out of karmic retribution like that.
Their descent into the labyrinth was slow-going, their footsteps echoing against the vast, hollow chambers of these waterways. The air down here was thick with dampness, the scent of wet stone and stagnant water clinging to their clothing as they moved deeper into the abyss. Anko couldn't tell you what awaited them, really. Another northie patrol, most like. Maybe a cadre of Fang goons. Or, the chance of something else; oni were known to lurk down here, and make their hovels when times were tough above ground. Numerous intercepted Akatsuki transmissions from their conflict recorded how they'd had to flush the damn beasts out whenever they could, the tunnels veritably rife with all types of blues, red, kappas, and kijo.
Anko holds the flashlight before her, the beam of light failing to penetrate the dark void before them. The tunnel they walk down stretches before them like the crypts of ancient kings—vast, cavernous halls that swallowed light and sound, their arched ceilings vanishing into shadow. Beneath Tokyo, the past had been buried and forgotten, but these barren mausoleums still held too much space for bad intentions to take root.
Sai's voice cut through the silence, flat and measured. "I can sense much tension in you, Miss Anko, are your injuries not fully recovered? Would it not be wiser to doible back and inform the Metro PD squad."
She ignored him.
"Captain Yamato would probably enjoy hearing from you," he continued in that same emotionless, robotic tone, unfazed by her silence.
Anko exhaled sharply through her nose, tightening her grip on the flashlight in her hand. The beam of light flickered across the tunnel walls, illuminating moss-covered stone and rusted pipelines that had long since been abandoned to the depths. Water dripped from unseen cracks above, the sound rhythmic, steady, like a dying heartbeat echoing through the void.
She didn't want to hear it.
Not when they were this close.
She could feel it—something just beyond the edge of the darkness, just past the reach of her light. An unnatural stillness that set every nerve in her body on edge.
Somewhere in these tunnels, lurking in the cracks between history and secrecy, the doctor was waiting.
This time Anko wasn't going to give him any sort of quarter.
The tunnels beneath Tokyo were a world unto themselves—a vast, labyrinthine network of forgotten infrastructure, repurposed and abandoned in equal measure. They stretched for miles beneath the city, beneath the weight of the Sumida River, whose currents pulsed distantly overhead, a constant reminder of the world above. The air was thick, humid, heavy with the damp pressure of water pushing against the earth, the ceiling sweating in long, glistening streaks that dripped down the moss-covered walls.
Anko and Sai moved in near silence, their footsteps muted by layers of grime caking the floor, the uneven terrain a mixture of cracked stone, rusted metal grates, and damp concrete slick with condensation. The tunnels were old—some dating back to the Meiji era, when the city first began carving its veins into the earth, others more recent, built in secret during the wars, expanded by hands that never left records.
Here, the past was a physical thing. It clung to the walls, seeped into the foundations, whispered through the dark like a ghost that refused to rest.
The air carried the stink of cheap liquor, bulgogi sizzling on makeshift grills, and the acrid bite of cigarette smoke—signs that this place wasn't as abandoned as the government liked to pretend. Further down, deeper still, there were people. Smugglers, deserters, insurgents. The unwanted, the unaccounted for. Mercenaries who'd left the fields of their homeland because warriors without a war have no purpose, have no plan. Anko had seen it on many faces in this city's slums. And you know what, she agrees; scars shouldn't heal, they should be reminders for what tried to kill you is still out there.
Peace is for the weak, for the stagnant, for those who don't mind ever staying still. Peace is for Yamato, for Madoka - for the women of their society. Not for Anko. NEVER for Anko;s he would continue on fighting because that bastard didn't deserve her forgiveness, only the slice of her kunai across his throat.
Harsh slang bounces off the tunnel walls in clipped, guttural bursts—old dialects mixed with the new, the words nearly drowned out by the sounds of heavy breathing, of someone exhaling too hard, somewhere just beyond the next turn. Anko flexed her fingers, rolling her shoulders, her body bared to the cool air. She'd abandoned her trench coat tonight, choosing instead the freedom of movement her chainmail mesh afforded her. It clung to her skin like a second layer, cold at first, but quickly forgotten in the heat of her focus.
Sai was still speaking, his voice a low murmur behind her, suggesting again they retreat, regroup, inform Captain Yamato.
But Anko wasn't interested in retreat...
The enemy wasn't.
Anko wasn't interested in retreat.
And neither was the enemy.
"Tutumi naki ya, oto?"
"Shiranu ga hotoke."
"Ah, gomen-koumuru…"
The guttural voices grated against the concrete walls, reverberating through the tunnels in a way that made the words feel heavier, more solid, like they carried weight beyond their meaning. Anko could hear the subtle scrape of boots shifting against grit, the low murmur of breathy chuckles exchanged between the figures just beyond the bend. They were close now—too close.
She stowed the flashlight away, her fingers going down to the kunai at her belt, her senses sharpening against the oppressive stink in the air. It was worse than the usual sewer stench—rancid meat, sweat, the kind of unwashed filth that clung to bodies left too long without care. She resisted the urge to gag, exhaling slowly through her nose.
"Oni," she thought grimly.
Reds, most likely. Some of the northern units still favored using them as guards—big, dumb, and indifferent to anything but their stipends of food. Made sense. You didn't need loyalty when you had hunger to bank on, and the "people's" republic was definitley starving. The embargoes, the blockade, didn't even touch half of why those bastards didn't have enough to fill their bellies. Their own government's inept mishandling of their agriculture caused it. Dàyuèjìn - The Great Leap Forward they csll it- was looking to put more people in the grave, than food in their mouths.
She crept forward, silent as the breath before a blade strike, peering around the corner.
The encampment sprawled before her, a crude but functional setup—sandbags stacked in makeshift barricades, an old but well-maintained RPKM machine gun nestled between them. It looked aged, but Anko knew better than to underestimate Soviet steel; those things could take a beating and still spit fire when it counted.
And beside it, two hulking figures.
They were unmistakable—patches of coarse, wiry hair scattered over bright red skin, thick muscles coiled beneath uniforms that barely seemed to fit their massive frames. Their presence alone made the tunnel feel smaller, the air heavier.
Anko could hear the way they breathed—deep, rhythmic, like a low growl lingering at the back of their throats. They weren't talking anymore. Maybe they'd sensed something. Maybe their instincts, dull as they were, had picked up on the shift in the air.
She glances back at Sai. His face was unreadable - as it always was, as he was set to be. She could tell despite his misgivings, he was set to move whenever she did; protocols and synapses moving according to what he can process at any given moment. She knows he has her back; not due to any sort of human compassion, but a singular directive installed in him to do whatever is necessary.
She curled her fingers around her kunai, adjusting her stance. If they were going to do this, they had to do it fast. Before those bastards got the chance to start firing. Yamato and MetroPD attachment were too far behind in the tunnels, wanting to stick closer to the entrance; they'd be useless to contact now. Surprise was predicated on speed and precision. That's what Hiruzen taught her and Yamato; the enemy cannot be given quarter no matter what. Strike, strike, and strike again; always keep them on their toes.
The larger of the two oni let out a low, guttural grunt, his thick fingers curling around the belt of ammo slung over the RPKM's feed tray. His partner snorted, shifting his weight, beady eyes sweeping the tunnel entrance as if sensing something just beyond the edge of the darkness.
No more waiting.
Anko moved.
She was a blur—fast, vicious, precise. In three quick steps, she was on them, twisting low to avoid the barrel of the machine gun as she drove her kunai into the nearest oni's throat. The blade bit deep, sliding past the thick, rubbery skin, cutting through muscle and cartilage. His gurgled snarl turned to a wet, choking rasp as blood—thick, black, reeking of copper and bile—spurted from the wound.
The second oni roared, reaching for the machien gun, but Sai was already there. A piston liie sound wripted from behind Anko, a whoosh of air, and a blade flashed, clean and efficient, slicing across thick fingers before the brute could grip the trigger. A sharp cry—then silence.
Anko wrenched her kunai free, a final twist, and the first oni collapsed, dead before he hit the sandbags.
The second fell moments later, Sai standing over him, his expression unreadable beneath the flicker of the underground's sickly yellow lighting.
"There," Anko exhaled, flicking the blackened blood from her blade. "We don't need backup."
Sai turned his head slightly, his gaze cool and assessing. "By the law of averages, our percentage of success for every subsequent outpost we engage declines exponentially."
"Before we went into the tunnels, you told me we had a sixty-seven percent survival rate."
"That has since gone down to fifty-four."
Anko let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "I can live with that."
Her voice was sharper than she intended, edged with something she wasn't used to feeling—not anger, not really. Or maybe it was anger, but laced with something deeper, something she couldn't quite name. Fear, maybe. Resentment.
Normally, she filled moments like these with some offhanded joke, some biting remark to lighten the weight pressing down on her chest. But not this time.
Not while Yamato was busy dotting every i, crossing every t, dutifully upholding the city he'd shackled himself to.
Not while Asuma had gone AWOL behind the steel curtain of the DPRJ machine, lost to whatever shadowplay dictated his fate.
Not while Hiruzen—Jiji—kept everyone occupied, spinning his web, pulling his strings.
Anko's steps echoed against the cold, unfeeling concrete, the underground stretching before them like the throat of some ancient beast.
Jiji had his games.
And he played them well.
There was a reason they called Sarutobi Hiruzen The Professor—he was a man who didn't think in single moves. He thought in chains, four, five, six steps ahead. Every piece on his board had a role, a purpose.
And what was she?
What was she to him? A knight, maneuvering in controlled chaos? A pawn, thrown forward with reckless abandon?
And then, the question she had tried—for years—not to think about.
What piece was Orochimaru?
What had he been, in Hiruzen's grand game, before it all fell apart? Before they stopped calling each other comrade, ally, sensei, student…?
The Zainichi patrols were out in force the deeper they went, their presence marked not just by movement, but by sound—the sharp, clipped syllables of their dialect bouncing off the tunnel walls like stray bullets. Some didn't even bother with Japanese.
Anko listened carefully, parsing the shifts in pronunciation, the subtle inflections that set them apart. The Pyongan dialect had a distinct cadence, vowels rounding and curling in ways that diverged from the softer midland tongue. 위, 왜, 워, and 와 carried the raw edge of 야, 여, 요, and 유, as if the words themselves were hardened by the northern winds.
Clearly, they were continental.
A small squad moved down an adjacent corridor, their torchlight flickering as they passed, their voices fading into the depths. Anko didn't blink, didn't shift, didn't breathe too loud. Only when the last ember of their light vanished did she press forward, Sai following without question.
The deeper they went, the colder it became. The tunnels grew narrow, damp air clinging to her skin like a second layer, the moisture seeping through the fine mesh of her toeless sode. It cut through her in ways she didn't expect, coiling around her bones, making her stomach twist.
Sai moved effortlessly like the elements didn't touch him. He'd been given a civilian outfit fire whenever he was expected to work the field—dark pants, black shoes, a white button-down, and a long black coat. Simple. Efficient.
All he'd ever need, she'd been told by his scientist handler, mentor, friend, father...Anko exhales sharply, pushing those thoughts aside. Sai wasn't useful to her as a "thing", only as a tool.
What else was built for?
Pressing on till the tunnels lost all familiarity—there were no more markers, no more graffiti tags, no signs of passage of other wayward grifters and homeless who'd found themselves neath this place. Only the weight of the Sumida overhead, the whisper of running water against stone, and the quiet, lingering sense that something old—something hungry—was watching from the dark.
Luck had seen them through here as far as possible, but Anko could feel a presence hovering above, around, even inside them as they trekked further and further on. Sai, of course, didn't register a thing - not what he was programmed for. But Anko knew the difference between a healthy bit of professional paranoia, and what had been bred into her by those nightmarish nights. She remembered those fingers studying every crevice of her body, every angle, deducing and deciding if she were "strong" enough. He'd always told her she was his favorite, and Anko wanted so badly to believe that to be the truth.
Strong enough...?
She was strong enough.
Anko will prove to him how strong she'd gotten. Since that day Hiruzen got to her before the doctor could take everything away from her. Before she became just another experiment of filed away in some classified archive, another bag to be filled and tossed into the swamps. Or buried...Or burned...Anko had little recollection of what happened to all the rest of her fellow subjects. Only their faces came to her mind - what they were, and what they became afterward.
He had pulled her out while she was still intact—maybe not whole, maybe not unscarred, but intact.
Orochimaru always chuckled when she pleased him, a sharp, indulgent sound, patting her head like a favored hound. Good girl, he used to say.
Would he be pleased now? Watching as she cut through his men, one by one, silent and precise?
Her blade found the soft places—jugulars, tendons, arteries. A flick of her wrist, a gasp of breath, then nothing. No screams, no warnings. Just the practiced efficiency of someone who had long since learned the art of ending lives. She'd partly him to thank for such a talent. Sai followed at her back, stepping over the fallen, his own touch delivering the final mercy to those who lingered too long between life and death.
They were close - she knew they were close. The movement of troops and resources was just for show—this was a ruse. Smoke and mirrors, a distraction; Orochimaru was never so clumsy as to rely on brute force alone. No. He was building something underneath Tokyo, or through it. Within these tunnels or without, Anko knew the man well enough that disruption was the only way to ensure one could gain the upper hand against him. Walking down this path may very well be a trap, or a distraction, but the risk of allowing these DPRJ regulars, Gato and The Fangs, to act without fear was too great.
Anko had to tear this all apart before the doctor got the chance to play his tricks.
Hiruzen told her as such before he went off this night to oversee "important goings-on."
It wasn't her position to question him - not now. She trusted Jiji, much in the same manner as Yamato did; they both owed much to the old man, and everything to hate their masters former pupil. Only difference being where Yamato wanted to think the world was an easy place to live, with normal problems and normal lives trying to get by, Anko knew they were all simply broken things floundering for answers.
Sai points out the enemy perimeter's been getting smaller and smaller - most like they were nearing the opposite side of the Sumida. The water tunnels were becoming a little more decrepit, a little more battered and run down. Cement leaked and pillars were broken, with more entryways formed in the walls mainly due to disrepair than being actual avenues. He comments the patrols they've encountered have fanned out in a Sinor bend - a method of traversing counter-clockwise over a known area. "They've must've operated here for quite some time to learn the layout." He points out.
When they come to a hal crossroads, Sai beckons Anko to hold back. For just a moment, he tells her nonchalantly. Three paths before them, each vanishing into the abyss, where the walls were marked by faint grooves cut into the stone, but none so distinct as to reveal which way led where. Sai steps forward, head tilting slightly as he takes in the space. His mind was already calculating—probabilities, risks, outcomes. She could almost hear the numbers shifting behind his quiet gaze.
"Wait...wait...," he murmurs to her, raising a hand.
He was good at this—at measured choices, at seeing the threads others missed. That was one of the reasons she'd brought him.
The other was for protection.
A sour taste blooms at the front of her mouth, metallic and sharp. Her muscles flex, and it takes her a moment to realize she'd bitten her lip. The warmth of blood filled the space between her teeth, though she barely registers it. The animal instinct buried deep in her marrow tells her she's - they've - been watched. Followed. Perhaps since they've crossed into the heart of the River. A murderous intent pulses somewhere in the dark, barely restrained. Not because it wants to - that is obvious, but because it had been ordered to.
Anko's fingers curl, her breathing steady, as she builds her chakra and waits for the faintest tremor. The shadow trailing them was an asset that needed to be coaxed out - smarter than all the rest of these small-fry the've dealt with, but definitely more animal than man. Exactly the way Orochimaru likes to build his pets. If there was ever proof they were close, this "thing" proves it.
Anko exhales slow and quiet, all while Sai continues on voicing whether the probability of following the northern path would be wiser, or if they should veer due east. Didn't matter. Whatever was watching them from behind the broken teeth of these pillars, the rubble piles thrown off to the sides, the blanket of black which surrounds them, wasn't going to let them move another yard.
For it speaks, and lets its intentions be known.
"Kill… kill… I wanna kill… Someone… Anyone… Why are you making me do this…? Why are you making me feel this…?"
The voice slithered out from the darkness, fractured and raw, shaped by something not entirely human anymore.
Anko knew that voice. Not the person behind it, no—but the cadence, the torment, the break between control and compulsion. The words rattled through her skull like a ghost of her own past, a twisted echo of what she had once whispered in the cold, sterile cells before they had shoved her into his arena.
She remembered the sting of the scalpel, the burn of a failed experiment searing through her veins. The way the world blurred when the tests went on too long, the bodies piling up around her.
All of them had been tested.
And all of them had broken.
"Someone's here… boy or girl? A guy…? No… just one… A girl? Yes, I smell a girl. Only one…
"Damn it… I wanted more… Need more…"
Yes. They were close.
This wretched creature—this lab rat—was proof they were on the right path.
Sai exhaled, adjusting the cuffs of his black suit coat with a practiced ease, as if they weren't standing knee-deep in something monstrous.
"I believe we are found out, Miss Anko," he said, tilting his head slightly. "Is he who you're looking for?"
"No." Her teeth ground together as she kept her focus sharp on the shifting shadows. "But he'll point us in the right direction."
Then—
A rumble.
Deep and low, rolling beneath their feet. The ground trembles. Water sloshes, ripples expanding outward, each pulse stronger than the last. A current began to form, dragging sluggishly down one of the tunnels.
A flood is coming.
The shrieks crescendoed, excitement tipping over into full-blown hysteria. The scent of damp rot mixed with something fouler, the metallic tang of old blood curling at the edges of her senses.
Anko knew it would be a mercy to put this thing down. Whatever had been done to it—whatever had twisted its mind beyond repair—it wasn't coming back from it.
But she needed answers.
Yamato would forgive the radio silence if she came back with something substantial. With everything else going on, the MetroPD Chief of all people needed something concrete to hang his hat on, to tell Ikkyu Madoka they were doing a good job, making progress. Gato, The Fangs, these Northern Zainichi - they were all the shadow clone meant to turn your head.
All they needed was one poke for the disguise to fall, and when the smoke clears, to reveal the snake behind it all.
"Kill...Kill...Kill...KILL!...JACKPOT!"
The darkness convulsed, and then it moved.
Fast.
A blur of brown and orange erupted from the tunnel, the sickly glow of its yellow eyes flashing like a predator catching the light. Its skin—no, not skin, carapace—was thick and ridged, segmented like the hardened shell of an insect, glistening in the damp underground. The air crackled with the weight of its presence, the sheer wrongness of it.
Bright orange hair, wild and matted, clung to its scalp like a tattered mane, framing a face that had once been human. Now? A twisted snarl of jagged teeth, breath wheezing through an open mouth, drool pooling at the corners.
It lunged.
Sai moved first, slipping back, precise and measured, his ink already in motion—lines flowing from his scroll, forming a defensive net between them and the creature. The thing shrieked, an unnatural sound that sent a jolt up Anko's spine.
She didn't flinch.
Didn't hesitate.
Instead, she welcomed it.
Anko readied herself, her stance sinking low, her grip tightening around her blade.
And her anger—that she let rise, let it coil deep in her gut like the viper it was.