I hated T&I.
The Torture and Interrogation building didn't just look like a prison; it felt like a stomachache built out of gray stone. The chakra in the air was thick and sour, tasting like old iron and panic that had soaked into the mortar.
"This is a bad idea," I said for the third time since we'd left the Academy.
Iruka-sensei didn't slow down. He walked with his shoulders set in a line so straight it looked painful. His chakra was a mess—usually a warm, steady brown, like polished wood, but today it was streaked with guilt-gray and a hard, brittle blue resolve.
"It's necessary," Iruka said. He didn't look back.
Naruto kicked a pebble. It skittered across the pavement and hit the T&I wall with a hollow clack.
"I don't see why," Naruto grumbled. He had his hands jammed deep in his pockets, hunched forward. "Mizuki's a jerk. He tried to kill me. He lied to me. He's in jail. End of story."
"It's not end of story if you're still asking why," Iruka said quietly.
He stopped at the heavy steel door. A chunin guard nodded to him, looking bored, and buzzed us in. The sound was an angry electric hornet.
I flinched.
"We're here," Iruka said, turning to us, "because you deserve to look him in the eye when he's not holding a giant shuriken. You deserve to see that he's just a man. A small, angry man."
"I know he's small," Naruto muttered. "I beat him."
"You beat him," Iruka agreed. "But you still flinch when people talk about the scroll incident."
Naruto went quiet.
Iruka looked at me. "And you, Sylvie. You were there. You saw the aftermath."
"I see a lot of aftermaths," I said. "It's kind of my brand."
Iruka's expression softened, just a fraction. "I asked you to come because Naruto listens to you. And because… I think you need to know the village isn't just made of victims."
"Optimistic," I said.
My stomach churned.
Going into a high-security prison to visit the guy who'd traumatized my teammate felt like the kind of side quest you were supposed to skip. But Iruka's chakra was vibrating with that specific teacher-frequency of I need to fix this for them, and I couldn't just leave him to do it alone.
We stepped inside.
The air got colder immediately. It smelled like bleach and misery.
"Let's get this over with," I whispered. "Before I break out in hives."
The cell block was a long corridor of bars and shadows.
Mizuki was in the third cell on the left.
He looked… diminished. Without the flak jacket, without the giant shuriken, without the forest to hide in, he was just a guy in gray sweats sitting on a cot. His hair was greasy. His chakra felt like curdled milk—white, lumpy, sour.
He looked up when we stopped.
A sneer twisted his face instantly. It looked like a reflex, something he put on to hide the fact that he was rotting in a box.
"Well, well," Mizuki drawled. "The demon brat. And his little… pets."
Naruto stiffened beside me. His chakra flared—hot orange, defensive.
"I'm not a demon," Naruto said. His voice was steady, but his fists were clenched.
"Aren't you?" Mizuki stood up and walked to the bars. He gripped them, knuckles white. "Look at you. The village hates you. They just tolerate you because the Hokage is dead and they're scared. You think Iruka cares? He's just doing his job. Babysitting the monster."
"Shut up," Iruka said. His voice was cold. "I'm here to show Naruto that you have no power over him."
Mizuki laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound.
"Power?" he spat. "You think I did this for power? I did it because I was the only one honest enough to say what everyone thinks! That thing—" he pointed a shaking finger at Naruto "—should have been put down years ago."
Naruto flinched.
Just a tiny movement. A micro-shudder in his shoulders.
That was enough.
My anxiety snapped.
It didn't go away; it just transmuted into something sharp and very, very useful.
"Okay," I said. "Boring. Next topic."
Mizuki blinked, looking at me for the first time. "What?"
"You're boring," I said, stepping closer to the bars. "Villain monologue, tragic backstory, 'everyone hates you' speech. We've heard it. It's stale. Zero out of ten on the originality scale."
"You little civilian trash—"
"I'm a ninja," I corrected. "And you're an inmate. The hierarchy is pretty clear."
I pretended to trip.
It was a good stumble—my toe caught on a floor tile, I lurched forward, and my hand slapped against the bars to catch myself.
Right next to Mizuki's hand.
"Oops," I said.
In the split second of contact, I pushed chakra into the paper tag palmed in my hand.
It was a modified medical seal—something I'd been working on with Migaki for patients who were too tense to let healing chakra in. Sedation mixed with a little Vulnerability. It wasn't mind control. It was just… removing the filter. Lowering the blood pressure until the brain stopped being able to hold up the walls of bravado.
I slapped it onto the metal bar.
The ink flared invisible against the steel, bleeding the effect into the metal, conducting straight into Mizuki's skin where he gripped the bar.
"Get off!" Mizuki snarled, jumping back.
"My bad," I said, straightening up and adjusting my glasses. "Clumsy."
Mizuki rubbed his hand. He glared at me, mouth opening to say something venomous—
And then his face went slack.
His pupils dilated. He swayed on his feet. The curdled milk of his chakra thinned out, turning watery and loose.
"You…" he mumbled. "You don't get it."
"Get what?" Iruka asked, frowning. He'd noticed the shift. He was too good a teacher not to notice when a student—or an enemy—changed states.
Mizuki sat down heavily on his cot. He looked at his hands.
"I wasn't… supposed to get caught," he whispered. "He said it would be easy."
The air in the corridor went very still.
Naruto stepped forward. "Who said?"
Mizuki's eyes darted around the cell, chasing shadows that weren't there. The sweat on his forehead wasn't from heat anymore. It was cold fear.
"The scroll," Mizuki said, voice hitching. "It wasn't just me. I couldn't… I wouldn't have known where to look. The rotation schedules. The blind spots in the barrier."
I felt a chill walk up my spine.
Someone had fed him the intel. Someone had set him up to fail, or to succeed and take the fall.
"Mizuki," Iruka said, voice low, dangerous. "Who told you?"
Mizuki looked up.
His eyes were wide, terrified, like a kid who'd realized the monster under the bed was real and holding the door shut.
"I can't," he squeaked.
"Who?" Naruto demanded.
"Him," Mizuki whispered. "The shadow. The one with the… the cane."
He clamped his hands over his mouth like he was trying to physically shove the words back in. He started rocking back and forth.
"He's watching," Mizuki mumbled into his palms. "He's always watching. Even in here. If I say his name, I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead."
Iruka looked at me. His face was pale.
"Danzō," I mouthed.
I didn't say it out loud. The name felt like a curse in this place.
Mizuki let out a whimper that sounded entirely broken. The seal was doing its work—stripping away the arrogance, leaving only the pathetic, scared reality underneath.
Naruto looked at Mizuki. Really looked at him.
The anger drained out of Naruto's face, replaced by something that looked uncomfortably like pity.
"He's just… scared," Naruto said.
"Yeah," I said. "He is."
Iruka let out a long breath. He put a hand on Naruto's shoulder.
"We're done here," Iruka said.
"But—he knows something!" Naruto protested.
"He knows he was used," Iruka said. "And now we know it too. That's enough for today."
Iruka steered us toward the exit.
I glanced back once.
Mizuki was curled on his cot, staring at the corner of his cell, muttering to himself.
"Please," he whispered. "I didn't say it. I didn't say it."
The seal on the bar was fading, the ink dissolving into nothing.
"Let's go," I said, shivering. "I need to be anywhere that isn't here."
The T&I facility was quiet at night.
It was a specialized kind of quiet—the silence of a place where noise was strictly regulated.
The guard at the checkpoint was asleep. Not naturally. A small, precise genjutsu had settled over his mind like a heavy blanket. He snored softly, chin on his chest.
Danzō Shimura walked past him without slowing.
His cane tapped against the stone floor. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound echoed down the corridor, rhythmic and inevitable.
He reached the third cell on the left.
Mizuki was awake.
The man was huddled in the corner of his cot, knees drawn up to his chest. He looked like a man who had been taken apart and put back together wrong.
When he heard the tapping stop, he looked up.
His face went the color of old ash.
"No," Mizuki whispered.
Danzō stood in the shadows outside the bars. He didn't need to step into the light. His presence filled the space anyway—cold, heavy, absolute.
"You had visitors today," Danzō said.
His voice was dry leaves skittering on pavement.
Mizuki scrambled backward until his back hit the stone wall. "I didn't tell them anything! I swear! I didn't say your name! I just—I just said I wasn't alone! That's all!"
"That," Danzō said, "was too much."
"Please!" Mizuki's voice cracked, high and desperate. "I'm loyal! I can still be useful! I can—"
"A tool that speaks out of turn is broken," Danzō said.
He raised his hand.
He didn't use a seal. He didn't use a kunai.
He simply channeled chakra. Wind nature. Sharp, invisible, thin as a wire.
He flicked his fingers.
The air inside the cell moved.
There was a wet, soft sound.
Mizuki's plea cut off.
His head tilted at an unnatural angle, sliding slightly to the side. A thin red line appeared across his throat, blooming wider.
He slumped forward.
Danzō watched him fall.
He felt nothing. No satisfaction. No regret. Just the mild, dull sense of a chore completed. A column balanced. A smudge erased.
"Silence," Danzō murmured, "is the foundation of the village."
He turned and walked away.
The guard at the front desk would wake up in an hour with a headache and no memory of anything but a quiet night.
The loose thread was cut.
Now, only the knot remained.
The tea shop was closed, but the owner had left the lantern on the porch lit.
Asuma Sarutobi sat cross-legged on the wooden engawa, a shogi board between him and the empty night.
Clack.
He moved a pawn forward.
Smoke drifted from the cigarette clamped between his teeth, curling up into the eaves where a spider was busy repairing a web torn by the invasion winds.
Clack.
He reached across the board and moved a piece for his opponent. A silver general. Defensive. Annoyingly prudent.
Asuma scowled. Even playing against himself, he could feel the old man's style bleeding into the game. Hiruzen had played shogi like he ran the village: slow, deliberate, suffocating you with options until you realized you had nowhere left to move.
"You're leaving your flank open," a voice drawled from the shadows.
Asuma didn't jump. He just exhaled a cloud of gray smoke.
"I'm baiting the trap," Asuma grunted.
Shikamaru Nara stepped into the circle of lantern light. He looked tired. His ponytail was messy, and he was dragging his feet, but his eyes were sharp as they swept over the board.
He didn't ask if he could sit. He just dropped onto the cushion opposite Asuma—the empty seat.
"It's a bad trap," Shikamaru observed, picking up a Golden General. "You're trading a Knight for a Silver. The value exchange is negative."
"Maybe I don't care about the value," Asuma muttered. "Maybe I just want to clear the board."
Shikamaru sighed, the sound of a boy burdened with too much IQ points. He placed the Golden General down with a sharp snap.
"Your move."
They played in silence for ten minutes. The only sounds were the crickets, the click of wood on wood, and the hiss of Asuma lighting a fresh cigarette off the cherry of the old one.
Asuma played aggressively. He threw his pieces forward, tearing holes in Shikamaru's defense, trading material for position. He played like he was holding trench knives. He played like he was angry.
Shikamaru parried. He absorbed the attacks, shifted his King, and rebuilt his walls. He didn't attack back. He just refused to die.
It was infuriating.
Asuma looked at the board. His Rook was pinned. His Bishop was blocked. He was losing the attrition war.
He felt a spike of hot, irrational frustration. The same frustration he'd felt standing on the roof, watching the barrier. The feeling of being boxed in.
He reached out.
He grabbed his King (Osho).
Instead of moving it one square to safety, or one square behind a pawn, he shoved it three squares forward, right into the heart of Shikamaru's formation.
It was a move that smashed through a line of pawns. It was a move that put the King in striking distance of the enemy Bishop.
It was a move that said: Fight me.
Asuma took his hand away.
"Check," Asuma said.
Silence.
Shikamaru stared at the board. He stared at the King sitting in the middle of the kill zone.
Then he reached out, picked up the King, and put it back where it had started.
"Illegal move," Shikamaru said quietly.
Asuma bristled. "It's a bold move."
"It's against the rules," Shikamaru corrected. "The King moves one step. Not three. And you never move the King into a suicide trade."
"The King should lead the charge," Asuma snapped. "If he's the most important piece, he should be the strongest. He shouldn't be hiding behind pawns while they die for him."
He wasn't talking about wood chips anymore.
Shikamaru looked up. His dark eyes were bottomless, reflecting the lantern flame.
"That's not how the game works, Asuma-sensei."
"Maybe the game is wrong."
"The King doesn't move like that," Shikamaru said, his voice steady, stripping away the metaphor. "Because if the King trades himself for a Bishop, the game ends. It doesn't matter if he took the piece. It doesn't matter if he was brave. The game is over."
Asuma clenched his jaw.
"The King is the only piece that can't be exchanged," Shikamaru continued softly. "Once it's off the board, you can't drop it back in. It's gone."
He pointed to the empty space across the board.
"Like the Third."
Asuma flinched. The smoke caught in his throat.
He looked at the King piece. Small. Wooden. Fragile.
Hiruzen had stepped forward. Hiruzen had moved into the center. And Hiruzen was gone.
"You're the head of the Sarutobi clan now," Shikamaru said. He picked up a pawn and twirled it in his fingers. "Konohamaru is eight. The clan elders are useless. You're the King piece for them. If you make a suicide move because you're mad... who holds the board together?"
Asuma stared at the pieces.
He had spent his whole life trying to be the Lance—charging straight ahead, breaking things, leaving the village when the walls felt too tight. He wanted to be the weapon.
But the weapon was just a tool. The King was the anchor.
He slumped, the tension draining out of his shoulders, leaving him feeling heavy and old.
"Troublesome," Asuma whispered.
Shikamaru offered a small, crooked smile. "Yeah. It is."
Asuma reached out and tipped his King over. Resignation.
"I forfeit," Asuma said.
"Good," Shikamaru said, standing up and stretching. "Because my mom is making dinner, and if I'm late, I get the frying pan. And that's scarier than Orochimaru."
He turned to leave, then paused.
"Don't play alone, Asuma," Shikamaru said, not looking back. "You make bad moves when there's nobody to check you."
Asuma watched his student disappear into the dark.
He looked down at the board, at the toppled King. He reached out and set it upright again.
"Yeah," Asuma murmured to the empty air. "I guess I do."
He sat there for a long time, listening to the village breathe, learning how to sit still in the center of the board.