Cold ink sinks into my skin.
Danzo's seal doesn't burn like fire—no dramatic flare, no chakra shockwave. It's worse than that. It's clinical. Like a document being stamped, like flesh being treated as paper.
The moment it settles, the air in the room changes.
Not the temperature. The *ownership*.
My pulse trips. My breath catches halfway in. For an instant I expect the same invisible punishment I felt near Naruto—the ribs-tightening pressure, the warning grip.
It doesn't come.
Fate doesn't react to Danzo's seal.
It doesn't protect me from it.
It just watches, indifferent, as a different kind of law takes hold.
"Take him," Danzo says.
Hands close around me. The chair scrapes back. My stump jolts, pain spiking so hard I see white. I try to steady myself and almost fall anyway; my balance is wrong, my center of gravity unfamiliar without the left arm I keep trying to move.
A mask leans close enough that I can smell the fabric through it—smoke and metal and something faintly medicinal.
"Eyes down," he murmurs.
I obey because I want to keep breathing.
We move.
The corridor outside the interrogation room swallows sound. Lantern light turns the walls into long, clean shadows. The plaques on the doors flash past again—**Interrogation**, **Sealing**, **Archives**—and my stomach twists at each one like my body recognizes the word and knows what it costs.
They don't blindfold me this time.
They don't need to.
Every turn is measured. Every stop is deliberate. The message is clear: I'm not being transported through a building. I'm being guided through a decision that can't be walked back.
Down stairs. Colder air. Stone dampness. The faint scent of ink and old paper thickening until it feels like I'm breathing someone else's secrets.
A door opens without creaking.
Inside, the light is dimmer. The ceiling is lower. The corridor narrows, and the walls are too smooth, as if they've been polished by years of bodies brushing past in silence.
Not ANBU.
Something else.
The masks change.
The animal shapes are simpler here, the paint less decorative. The posture is different too—less "guarding the Hokage" and more "guarding a vault."
Root.
I don't hear the word spoken. I still hear Danzo's voice in my skull anyway.
*Voluntary service… or involuntary containment.*
My acceptance tastes like blood.
I'm led through another door into a room that smells like antiseptic stripped of kindness. The light is harsh and flat. A table. A stool. A metal basin. White cloth. Clean bandages.
A medic-nin stands in the corner, face partially covered, eyes blank with practiced detachment.
He doesn't greet me.
He assesses the stump like a mechanic inspecting a broken hinge.
"Sit," one of the masked shinobi says.
I sit because my knees are already threatening to fold.
The medic peels back layers of bandage with quick, efficient hands. Cool air hits raw skin and I bite my tongue so hard I taste copper. The phantom itch spikes—my nonexistent fingers curling tight as if they can hold onto reality if they squeeze hard enough.
The medic doesn't apologize.
He cleans. He tightens. He rewraps.
He leaves the empty sleeve pinned neatly again, like presentation matters.
When he's done, he takes my chin between two fingers and tilts my head up.
I flinch. My body tries to jerk away. A gloved hand clamps my shoulder—careful of the stump, not kind, just precise enough not to tear the stitches.
The medic's eyes search my mouth.
Not my teeth.
My tongue.
I go cold.
A memory I didn't live flashes through my head: Root agents unable to speak secrets, tongues bound by a curse mark that punishes betrayal from the inside out.
Canon. Real.
My ribs tighten faintly at the thought, like fate acknowledging the reference without caring.
The medic produces a small seal tag. The ink lines on it look thin and elegant, like calligraphy—too beautiful for what it's meant to do.
"No," I whisper.
The word is pathetic. The room doesn't react.
The seal touches my tongue.
Pain detonates sharp and deep, nothing like the blunt agony of my arm. This is intimate. It feels like being branded in the one place words are born. My eyes water instantly. A choked sound escapes me that isn't speech.
The medic holds my jaw shut until the pain settles into a sick, pulsing ache.
Then he releases me and steps back.
I swallow.
It hurts.
But worse than the pain is the new sensation beneath it: a tightness coiled at the base of my tongue, like a snake sleeping under muscle, ready to strike if I say the wrong thing.
One of the masks watches me for a long moment.
"Now," he says quietly, "you cannot talk your way out."
I don't answer. I can't tell if I'm allowed.
Even if I were, the question claws at me: *Out of what?*
The answer is obvious.
Out of Root.
Out of Danzo.
Out of this version of my life where my choices are all different sizes of cage.
They stand me up again. My legs shake.
We walk.
The corridor stretches like a throat. Doors pass. I catch glimpses through cracked openings—rooms with mats and weapons racks, rooms with scrolls stacked like coffins, rooms with children my age moving in silence with eyes that don't look like children's eyes anymore.
The atmosphere isn't loud. It isn't theatrical.
It's suffocating precisely because it's normal here.
This is how the village keeps its hands clean.
By hiding the dirt underground.
They bring me to a small cell.
It isn't a prison cell with bars. It's worse. It's a simple room with smooth stone walls, a futon folded against one corner, and a single lantern recessed into the wall so it can't be thrown.
No window.
No sound of the village above.
Only the faint, distant rhythm of footsteps and the occasional soft click of a door opening and closing somewhere deeper in the complex.
A mask points at the futon.
"Rest," he says.
Another mask produces folded clothing—dark fabric, plain, uniform. He drops it at my feet like I'm being issued a skin.
Then they leave.
No warning. No goodbye.
The door closes with a quiet finality.
For a long moment I just stand there, breathing shallowly, as if full breaths might summon someone back.
I lower myself onto the futon with my right hand, clumsy and slow. The stump throbs with every movement. My phantom fingers twitch uselessly beneath bandages.
I stare at the plain clothes.
Uniform.
Not a hospital gown, not my old clothing. A statement: *you don't go back to your life.*
I try to picture "my life" as Souta before I woke up inside him.
Nothing comes clearly. Just impressions—walking to the Academy, sitting in the back, being unseen. A background routine.
Even that is gone now.
I press my right hand to my face.
My skin smells like antiseptic and ink and faint sweat. Under it all is blood that won't wash out, the metallic reminder of the forest.
Naruto's face flashes in my mind—blue eyes, brittle grin, the way the air around him felt thick with protection.
I flinch as the pressure brushes my ribs.
It isn't choking.
It's… attention.
Like the story's gaze sliding over me briefly and deciding I'm too far from the main thread to bother correcting—for now.
That "for now" is a blade hanging over my neck.
I force myself to think, carefully.
Timeline.
Naruto has shadow clones now. He'll be assigned to a team. Team 7. Bell test. Land of Waves not long after. Zabuza. Haku.
My mind tries to assemble the sequence—and pain lances behind my eyes, hot and corrective. I gasp softly and the thought fractures, details slipping away like wet paper tearing under my fingers.
Incomplete.
Not because I forgot.
Because something is actively making remembering expensive.
I sit there with my breath trembling and realize the cruelty of it: knowledge is the only weapon I brought into this world, and the world is charging me interest every time I try to draw it.
I look down at the pinned sleeve again.
Interest.
Payment.
I flex my right hand slowly. My knuckles are scabbed. My palm has calluses. This body trained. It just wasn't *good*.
If I'm going to survive Root, I need leverage.
Not power-ups.
Leverage.
What do I have?
A warning instinct that Danzo mistook for something useful. A mind that sees patterns. A fear sharp enough to keep me alive.
And one more thing, terrible and undeniable: the story's rules.
Naruto is protected.
I am expendable.
That means if Danzo tries to use me to change Naruto's path directly, I will be punished—by fate, by the world, by the story's immune system.
But if I can position myself so that my actions *serve* the canon trajectory, not oppose it…
The thought is disgusting.
It feels like collaborating with a god that only speaks in casualties.
Still.
Survival isn't moral. It's arithmetic.
I don't know how long I sit like that, listening to underground silence and the distant movement of people who don't exist aboveground.
Eventually the door opens.
A masked shinobi enters alone. His animal mask is simple—rabbit, maybe. The paint is worn at the edges.
He tosses something into the room.
A bowl. Rice. A few pickled vegetables. Water.
No steam. Lukewarm.
He watches me eat.
I hesitate, then use my right hand to lift a clump of rice. My fingers shake. Hunger and nausea wrestle in my stomach. I swallow anyway.
Halfway through, he speaks.
"Danzo-sama will see you."
The words make my stomach sink so hard the rice tastes like ash.
I nod once.
He waits until I finish because efficiency doesn't require cruelty—cruelty is just a tool they use when it saves time.
Then he leads me out.
The corridor feels narrower now, like it shrank while I wasn't looking.
We pass training rooms again. I catch a glimpse of two children sparring in silence—one moves like a ghost, the other like a machine. Their eyes never meet. They don't snarl or shout. There is no ego here, only obedience.
We enter a larger room lit by lanterns placed high and out of reach. The space is clean, empty except for a single low platform and a table.
Danzo sits behind it as if he's always been there.
No guards visible. No mask. He doesn't need them in the room to be protected; he is protected by the structure he built.
His visible eye lifts to me.
He doesn't acknowledge my missing arm directly.
That omission is deliberate. Injuries are statistics to him, not tragedies.
"You will learn," he says, "to control yourself."
I swallow. The tongue seal coils tight in my mouth like it's listening too.
Danzo's gaze drops briefly to my throat, then back to my face.
"The seal," he says.
Not a question.
I nod again.
"Good," he replies.
He gestures to the platform. "Kneel."
I move stiffly and lower myself. The stump throbs. The phantom limb screams for balance it can't find.
Danzo watches without expression.
"Your fear is loud," he says. "It will get you killed."
My mouth opens. I want to say *you already killed something in me.* The tongue seal tightens, warning me.
I close my mouth.
Danzo's voice remains calm. "You have information."
My skin goes cold.
"I don't—" I start, and the tongue seal bites sharp enough that my eyes water. I choke the words off before they become betrayal.
Danzo's eye narrows slightly. Satisfaction, faint.
"You do," he corrects. "Not in the way you understand. You see threats. You anticipate."
He leans forward a fraction. "How did you know Mizuki would betray Konoha?"
My heartbeat stumbles.
I can't answer with the truth.
I can't answer with a lie that sounds too clean.
"I suspected," I rasp, carefully. "He… was too kind. Naruto was… easy to use."
The tongue seal remains quiet. That means the statement doesn't violate whatever definition of "Root secrets" they've bound into it.
Danzo's fingers tap once on the table.
"Useful," he says, as if he's tasting the word.
Then, with the same tone: "Replaceable."
The second word hits harder.
My chest tightens. I keep my face still. Stillness is armor here.
Danzo stands.
The movement is unhurried, which makes it worse. Hurry implies uncertainty. Danzo's pace implies inevitability.
He walks around the table and stops close enough that I can smell him—old cloth, ink, antiseptic that never truly leaves.
"You accepted," he says softly. "So you will be shaped."
He reaches out and places two fingers on my forehead.
I flinch despite myself.
Chakra pressure touches skin, subtle and invasive. Not a full technique, not a mind probe—more like a test press, checking for resistance.
The sensation crawls under my skull.
I see nothing. Hear nothing.
But I feel exposed in a way that makes me want to vomit.
Danzo withdraws his hand.
"Your mind is noisy," he says. "But not empty."
I don't know what that means, and that not-knowing is terror.
He turns his head slightly toward the shadows at the edge of the room.
"Bring the subject," he says.
Footsteps sound. Soft. Measured.
Two Root operatives drag someone into the lantern light.
A man—older, maybe late teens or adult, hard to tell under bruises and exhaustion. His wrists are bound behind his back. His mouth is gagged. His eyes are wide and bloodshot with the animal fear of someone who understands exactly where he is.
He struggles weakly. No one reacts.
Danzo looks down at me again.
"This is a spy," he says. "Captured on the border."
The man's eyes snap to mine, pleading. Furious. Desperate.
I feel my stomach drop through the floor.
Danzo speaks as if he's discussing paperwork.
"He has information," he continues. "But he will not give it willingly."
The Root operatives force the man to his knees across from me. His shoulders shake.
Danzo's gaze does not soften.
"Kill him," Danzo says.
The words land without echo.
I stare at him.
The room tilts slightly, as if my body tries to reject reality again.
The phantom itch in my missing hand becomes a scream.
"Danzo-sama," I manage, and the tongue seal tightens as if warning me about even speaking his name.
Danzo's visible eye remains flat. "You heard."
The Root operative beside me places a kunai on the floor within reach of my right hand.
The metal catches lantern light. Clean. Sharp. Simple.
My throat closes—not fate this time. Not the invisible punishment around Naruto.
This is purely human terror.
I look at the bound man again. His gag muffles a sound that might be a sob, might be a curse.
I think of Naruto's face when he learned what he was.
I think of Iruka throwing himself into a blade.
I think of my own severed hand in the dirt, fingers curled like it still wanted to matter.
And I realize, with sick clarity, what Danzo is doing.
Not testing my strength.
Testing whether my "willingness" is real.
Whether I will turn my fear into obedience.
If I refuse, I become a problem.
If I comply, I become *the kind of tool Danzo likes*.
There is no answer that doesn't cost something permanent.
My right hand hovers over the kunai.
It trembles.
The man's eyes lock onto mine, and in them I see the simplest truth of this place: in Root, compassion is not a virtue. It's a leak.
Danzo's voice is quiet.
"Decide," he says. "Now."
I wrap my fingers around the kunai.
The metal is cold.
My stomach heaves. I swallow bile.
I can barely feel my legs. My stump throbs in time with my heartbeat. The tongue seal coils tighter as if excited.
I lift the blade.
The man jerks against his bindings, gag muffling a desperate, strangled sound.
My arm—my only arm—feels too heavy to move.
I look up at Danzo one last time, hoping—stupidly—for any sign this is a bluff.
There is none.
Only expectation.
Only ownership waiting to be confirmed.
The blade hovers inches from the man's throat.
And the story aboveground—Naruto's story—keeps moving in sunlight, untouched.
Down here, in the dark, my first act as "Rootbound" waits on the edge of a single choice.
My hand shakes.
Then steadies.
And I inhale, tasting antiseptic and iron, and bring the kunai down—toward a line I can never uncross.