The chase led him away from the roar of the blast furnaces and into the silent veins of the facility.
Asuma's boots rang against the grated floor—clank, clank, clank—heavy and rhythmic. He skidded around a corner, his trench knives held in a reverse grip, the chakra blades humming with a faint wind-edge.
"End of the line," Asuma growled, turning into a dead-end corridor.
His breath misted slightly in the cooling air, a faint white puff that vanished almost instantly in the drafts.
It was empty.
The woman, Kotohime, was gone. The only trace of her was a lingering wisp of steam curling near the ceiling pipes.
Asuma slowed his breathing. He stood still, letting his senses expand.
The factory hum was distant here, muffled by layers of concrete and lead. It smelled different, too. The sharp, acidic bite of chemical runoff was fading, replaced by something sweeter. Something cloying.
It coated the back of his tongue like powdered sugar, sickly sweet and choking.
Sniff.
Asuma frowned.
It smelled like white makeup powder—oshiroi. It was the scent of the Geisha district in the capital, dusty and floral, utterly out of place in this tomb of iron.
Ping.
A single note plucked on a string cut through the silence.
It wasn't a mechanical sound. It was the vibration of silk cord stretched over paulownia wood.
The note hung in the air, vibrating with a clarity that made the industrial rumble seem muddy and distant.
Asuma followed the sound. At the end of the grim, industrial hallway, a section of the wall had been replaced. A sliding shoji screen door stood slightly ajar, glowing with a warm, amber light that clashed violently with the toxic purple neon of the corridor. Dust motes danced in the shaft of light, looking like gold flakes instead of factory grime.
Asuma pushed the door open with the tip of his knife.
He stepped inside.
The room was an illusion. Tatami mats covered the floor. Painted screens depicted a mountain landscape that didn't exist in this smog-choked country. In the center of the room, kneeling on a silk cushion, was Kotohime.
She was playing a koto, her fingers dancing over the strings with practiced grace. She didn't look up. Her kimono was immaculate, untouched by the soot that coated the rest of the town. The silk shimmered as she moved, catching the light like oil on water.
"You're a long way from the red-light district," Asuma said dryly, sheathing his knives but keeping his hands loose.
"My orders were to intercept the intruders," Kotohime murmured, her voice harmonizing with the instrument. "But my preference... is to entertain guests."
She stopped playing. The silence that rushed back into the room felt heavy, like a pressure drop before a storm.
She reached for a porcelain bottle resting on a low lacquer table. She poured a clear liquid into a small, delicate cup. Glug. Glug. Glug.
The smell of premium sake wafted toward him. It masked the fainter, sharper scent of the sedative laced within it.
A fly landed on the rim of the cup, twitched once, and fell off onto the floor dead.
"Will you drink with me, Sarutobi Asuma?" Kotohime asked, holding the cup out with both hands. Her eyes were dark, devoid of fear, filled only with a rehearsed seduction.
Asuma looked at the cup. He looked at the woman. He knew it was a trap. A child would know it was a trap.
But Asuma Sarutobi was a man who appreciated the theater of a bad decision.
"Well," Asuma chuckled, the gravel in his chest vibrating. He walked forward, his shadow stretching long against the paper screen. "It would be rude to refuse a host in such a dreary place."
He sat down across from her. He took the cup. The ceramic was cold against his fingers.
"To hospitality," he lied, and raised the poison to his lips.
Anko moved through the maintenance tunnels like a feral cat.
She was fast, silent, and vibrating with adrenaline. She had lost sight of Asuma when the security gate slammed down, but she could track the smell of his clove cigarettes through the darkest sewer.
Condensation dripped onto her shoulder—plip—feeling like a cold finger tapping her for attention.
"Stupid beardy bastard," she hissed, vaulting over a leaking steam pipe. "Running off alone. Who does he think he is? Jiraiya?"
The tunnel opened up into a cavernous sub-basement.
Anko skidded to a halt. Her boots kicked up a cloud of bone-dry dust.
The grit crunched under her soles, sounding painfully loud in the cavernous silence.
She wasn't in a hallway anymore. She was standing on the edge of a massive, circular depression in the concrete floor. It was about thirty feet deep and a hundred feet wide.
The air here was bone dry. The humidity of the factory didn't reach this low. It smelled of dry earth, musk, and something ancient and reptilian. The silence here wasn't empty; it was heavy, pressing against her eardrums like the pressure at the bottom of a lake.
Anko froze. Her breath hitched in her throat.
She looked down into the pit.
It was empty now, save for piles of discarded rocks and dry, shedding skins that rustled in the draft. But in her mind, it wasn't empty.
Flash.
Suddenly, she wasn't the Special Jonin of Konoha. She was twelve years old. She was small. She was terrified.
The memory slammed into her:
The darkness. The cold stone against her back. The sound of a thousand scales sliding over each other—shhh-krrr, shhh-krrr. The hiss of vipers hungry for warmth. Orochimaru standing on the ledge above, looking down with those golden, indifferent eyes.
"Survival is not a gift, Anko," his voice echoed in her skull, smooth as oil. "It is a theft. Steal your life from them, or become their meal."
The memory came with a smell—rotting meat and copper blood—that was so vivid she gagged.
Anko's hand flew to her neck. Her fingers dug into the skin over the Cursed Seal of Heaven.
It wasn't glowing. It was dormant. But the phantom pain seared through her nerves like a branding iron. Her pulse hammered against her fingertips where they pressed into her neck, frantic and erratic. She remembered the feeling of fangs sinking into her calf. She remembered the taste of raw snake meat because she had been starving. She remembered being the only one to climb out.
"No," Anko whispered to the empty pit.
She shook her head, her purple ponytail whipping around.
The factory hum returned, drowning out the phantom hissing. She blinked, forcing the twelve-year-old girl back into the box in the back of her mind where she kept all her broken things.
She looked across the expanse of the room.
On the far side, set into the concrete wall, was a traditional wooden door. Light spilled from underneath it. She caught the faint, distinct scent of sake and white powder.
The light from under the door cut a sharp yellow line across the dusty floor, a beacon of civilization in the dark.
"Asuma," she growled.
The fear evaporated, replaced by a spike of protective rage.
Anko leaped. She didn't go around the pit. She jumped straight over it, clearing the graveyard of her childhood in a single bound, drawing a kunai as she landed.
She kicked the door in.