The main gate of Konoha stood open, which felt like a lie.
Raidō Namiashi leaned against the guard post, arms folded, the scar across his face itching in the humidity. The village behind him was a mess of scaffolding and grief. The forest ahead was a green wall that didn't care about either.
He watched the boy in the orange jacket bounce on his heels.
Naruto Uzumaki.
He was louder than the construction crews. He was brighter than the warning flares. He was shouting something at the girl with the pink hair about ramen packing strategies, waving his arms like he was trying to flag down a cloud.
Raidō's chest tightened.
Every time he looked at the kid, he saw a ghost.
Not a scary one. A bright one. A flash of yellow hair, a white cloak snapping in the wind, a smile that made you believe the impossible was just a Tuesday afternoon.
Minato Namikaze.
And now Hiruzen Sarutobi was gone too.
Raidō shifted his weight. The dark sword strapped to his back felt heavier today. The Black Blade, they called it. A weapon meant for assassination, for silent killing, for protecting the Hokage.
He hadn't protected anyone.
Not Minato, that night with the fox. He'd been young, slow, ordered to stay back.
Not Hiruzen, on the roof with the barrier. He'd been with Genma, fighting Sound jonin in the stadium, while the old man died alone in a box of violet light.
"Hey! Old man Raidō!"
Raidō blinked. The boy was looking at him. Blue eyes—Minato's eyes—wide and confused.
"You're staring," Naruto said. "Is there something on my face? Did I get broth on my cheek again?"
Raidō pushed off the wall. His legs moved him forward before he decided to walk.
"No," Raidō said. His voice sounded like gravel grinding together. "No broth."
He stopped a few feet away. Up close, the resemblance was worse. The jawline was Kushina's, maybe, but the expression… that was all Minato. That stubborn, sunny refusal to accept reality.
"I just…" Raidō started, then stopped.
What do you say to the orphan of the man you failed to save, after you just failed to save his successor?
"I'm sorry," Raidō said.
Naruto tilted his head. "Huh? For what? You didn't do anything."
"Exactly," Raidō said.
The word fell out of his mouth like a stone.
"I'm sorry," he said again, looking at the hitai-ate on Naruto's forehead. "About the Third. I should have been there. We… the Guard Platoon… we should have been there."
Naruto's face softened. The loud, brash mask slipped, revealing the scared kid underneath.
"It wasn't your fault," Naruto said quietly. "The old man… he chose to fight. That's what Pervy Sage said."
Raidō flinched.
"He shouldn't have had to," Raidō murmured. "Just like the Fourth shouldn't have."
The slip was instant. Unforgivable.
Naruto blinked. "The Fourth? You mean the Fourth Hokage?"
Raidō froze.
The secret sat on his tongue, heavy and toxic. The village law. The S-class silence order. Don't tell the boy. Don't tell anyone.
But looking at him—at the whiskers, at the eyes—it felt insane that nobody had told him. It felt like the village wasn't protecting him; it was erasing his father.
"I…" Raidō swallowed. He forced the professional mask back into place, even though it fit badly now. "I failed him too. That night. With the Fox."
Naruto scratched the back of his head, looking baffled. "Oh. Well. That was a long time ago, right? I was a baby. I don't even remember it."
He laughed, a little nervous chuckle.
"You guys worry too much about old stuff," Naruto said. "We gotta worry about the new stuff! Like finding the new Granny Hokage!"
Raidō stared at him.
The boy didn't know. He really didn't know. He looked at Raidō and saw a weird, scarred guard talking about history, not a man confessing to letting his father die.
Raidō felt a wave of exhaustion so deep it nearly knocked him over.
"Yeah," Raidō whispered. "New stuff."
He stepped back. He couldn't look at those blue eyes anymore. It was like looking into a mirror that only showed his own failures.
He turned his gaze to the girl standing next to Naruto.
Sylvie. The one without a clan. The one who had drawn seals on the ground in the prelims and screamed at Neji Hyūga.
She was watching him.
And unlike Naruto, she didn't look confused.
She looked like she was reading his autopsy report while he was still standing there.
Raidō Namiashi's chakra tasted like wet ash and rusted iron.
It was thick, heavy, and clogged with so much guilt I could practically feel the weight of it on my own shoulders. He stood there looking at Naruto like Naruto was a walking tombstone.
"I failed him too," he'd said.
Naruto, being Naruto, had brushed it off with the emotional depth of a golden retriever. Old stuff. Who cares.
I cared.
Because Raidō looked like a man who was about two bad days away from walking into a kunai on purpose.
He turned his scarred face toward me. His eyes were dark, flat, empty.
"You," he said.
"Me," I agreed, adjusting my glasses. "Sylvie. Team 7. Medic-in-training. Currently trying to keep this one—" I jerked a thumb at Naruto "—from wandering into traffic."
Raidō studied me. He looked at my hands—still bandaged, faint tremors when I held them still. He looked at the pouch on my hip where I kept my ink.
"You're the logistics," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Someone has to be," I said. "Naruto packs ramen. Sasuke packs angst. I pack the things that keep us alive."
Raidō made a sound that might have been a snort or a choke. He reached into his flak vest.
My muscles tensed. Old instinct. Adults reaching into coats usually meant bad news.
He pulled out a scroll.
It wasn't a jutsu scroll. It was cream-colored, official-looking, with the red stamp of the Hokage's office—or rather, the Jōnin Commander's office, now that Kakashi was drowning in paperwork.
He held it out to me.
"Take it," he said.
I took it. The paper felt expensive.
"What is it?" I asked. "If it's a bill for damages, I'm putting it in Naruto's pocket."
"It's a Requisition Form," Raidō said. "Class B. Authorized by the Guard Platoon."
My eyebrows shot up.
"Requisition?" I repeated. "Like… shopping?"
"Like armory access," Raidō corrected. "Standard issue gear is garbage. You're going out there with a Sannin to find a Sannin, and Akatsuki is moving."
He glanced at Naruto, who was currently trying to balance a kunai on his nose.
"He won't know what to get," Raidō said, voice low. "He'll buy flash bombs because they're loud, or ration bars that taste like sugar. He won't buy wire. He won't buy blood coagulant. He won't buy the boring things that stop you from dying."
I looked down at the scroll.
It was a blank check. Not for money, but for survival.
"Why?" I asked.
Raidō looked back at Naruto.
The grief in his chakra spiked—sharp, jagged, ugly.
"Because I can't go," he said. "I have to stay here and guard a village that's already broken. I have to stand at this gate and watch him leave."
He looked back at me.
"Don't let him die," Raidō said.
It wasn't an order. It was a plea.
I closed my hand around the scroll. It felt heavy, like it was made of lead instead of paper.
"I won't," I said. "I'm very stubborn about that."
Raidō nodded once. Short. Jerky.
"Good," he said. "Go to the main depot. Tell them Namiashi sent you. Take what you need. Be responsible."
He paused, then added, "Please."
The 'please' was the worst part. It sounded like it had been ripped out of him.
I tucked the scroll into my pouch, right next to my notebook.
"Thank you," I said.
He didn't answer. He just turned around and walked back toward the guard post.
He walked with a heavy, dragging step, like the gravity was higher where he was standing. A ghost of a generation that had lost its leaders, haunting the gate of a village that was trying to forget.
Naruto stopped balancing the kunai and caught it.
"Weird guy," Naruto said cheerfully. "What did he give you? A map?"
"Something like that," I said, patting my pouch. "Come on. We have shopping to do."
"Shopping?!" Naruto groaned. "Booo. I thought we were leaving!"
"We are," I said. "But first, we're going to get you gear that isn't held together by hope and ramen grease."
"My gear is fine!"
"Your gear is a safety hazard," I said, grabbing his sleeve and steering him toward the logistics building.
I glanced back once.
Raidō was standing at the gate, back to us, watching the empty road.
His chakra felt like a bruise that wouldn't fade.
I turned forward.
"Let's go," I said. "Before the adults change their minds."
----------------------
The Konoha Ninja Tool Research Facility didn't look like a place where legendary weapons were forged. It looked like a DMV that had been aggressively militarized.
The lobby smelled like ozone, hot grease, and the specific, dusty despair of paperwork. Stacks of crates lined the walls, stenciled with warnings like EXPLOSIVE – HANDLE WITH CHAKRA and DO NOT OPEN NEAR OPEN FLAME OR CIVILIANS.
I walked up to the main counter, clutching Raidō's requisition scroll like it was a winning lottery ticket I was afraid might be fake.
Behind the desk, a guy with messy hair and goggles pushed up onto his forehead was drowning in forms. He was stamping things with a rhythm that suggested he was imagining punching someone's face.
"Name, rank, and reason for interrupting my inventory audit," he said without looking up. His chakra tasted like stale coffee and copper wire—frayed, buzzing, hyper-focused.
"Sylvie," I said. "Genin. Team 7. I have a note; Namashi said to tell you 'give her the good stuff.'"
The stamping stopped.
He looked up. He blinked, eyes adjusting behind thick lenses as he took in the pink hair, the glasses, the general air of 'I have survived terrible things and I am tired.'
"Oh," he said. A grin split his grease-smudged face. "You're the pink one. Tenten's friend."
"I—yes," I said, startled. "Wait. Tenten talks about me?"
"Tenten talks about anyone who doesn't treat weapons like garbage," he said. "She said you actually bother to clean your kunai. High praise."
He leaned over the counter, extending a hand that was stained three different colors of ink. "Shōseki. Assistant to Iō. We make the things that make people go boom."
"Nice to meet you," I said. "I would like some of the boom things, please."
I slapped Raidō's scroll onto the counter.
Shōseki picked it up, broke the seal, and unrolled it. His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. Then he let out a sharp, barking laugh.
"Raidō signed a Class B open req?" he wheezed, tapping the paper. "For a genin team? Man, what kind of guilt trip did you put on him? This is basically a blank check for the armory."
"He feels bad about the Hokage," I said honestly. "And he thinks Naruto is going to die."
Shōseki's amusement vanished, replaced by a quick, somber nod. The copper taste in his chakra dulled to something heavier, like tarnished brass.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Lot of that going around."
He re-rolled the scroll and tossed it into a pneumatic tube behind him. It vanished with a thwump.
"Alright," he said, jerking a thumb toward a heavy steel door on the right. "Storage Room Four. It's mostly field surplus, but it's high-grade. Wire, tags, soldier pills, coagulants. Take what you can carry. If you can lift it, you can keep it."
"Seriously?"
"Raidō's dime," he said with a shrug. "Go nuts. Just don't touch the crates marked with red X's. Those are unstable prototypes. Last guy who touched one lost his eyebrows."
"Noted," I said.
I turned to head for the door, my brain already calculating weight ratios and inventory space. Wire spools. Flash bombs. Did they have those barrier stakes I'd read about?
"Hey!" Shōseki called out just as I reached the handle.
I looked back.
"Since you're seeing her," he said, leaning his chin on his hand. "Tell Tenten that Iō finally fixed her Jidanda."
I tilted my head. "Her… Jidanda?"
"Yeah." Shōseki chuckled, miming a massive, crushing shape with his hands. "The giant metal ball with the spikes! The one she swings around on a chain like a wrecking ball."
My brain summoned a mental image of Tenten, who usually threw elegant, precise storms of needles, suddenly whipping a medieval torture sphere around her head.
It tracked.
"Oh," I said, nodding sagely. "Of course. The giant spike ball. I'll tell her."
"Thanks, Pinkie," he said, and went back to violently stamping forms.
I pushed open the heavy steel door and stepped into the armory, ready to loot the government for everything it was worth.
Because if we were going to find a Sannin, fight a Sannin, or just survive Anko, I was going to need a bigger bag.