Metal lifts again—black claw curved like a question mark—aimed at my throat.
I can't move.
Not in time. Not at all.
My right arm is a dead weight pinned to the road by my own body, numb from elbow to fingertips. The poison isn't a sting anymore; it's a cold flood spreading through muscle like winter water seeping into cracks. My fingers don't curl. My wrist doesn't flex. The hand that's supposed to keep me alive has turned into something I drag behind me.
My lungs take shallow, panicked sips of air.
Each breath scrapes, thin and useless, because the tether around my ribs has tightened into a dense, warm clamp—like the world is pressing down, not to save me, but to ensure the correct person remains untouched.
I see Naruto's face in the corner of my vision—wide-eyed, frozen, the exact same paralysis as before.
The same beat.
Different victim.
The claw begins to descend.
Then Kakashi's voice cuts through the chaos like a snapped wire.
"Enough."
He moves.
Not with the dramatic speed my memory wants to assign him, but with something worse—economical inevitability. The attacker's wrist is caught. Twisted. A sharp sound like wet wood cracking. The claw stops inches from my throat.
The Demon Brother makes a muffled howl.
Kakashi doesn't answer it. He doesn't need to.
His hand blurs, and the man's body drops into the dirt like someone turned off a puppet.
The second attacker lunges, chain whipping.
Sasuke's shuriken flashes.
Metal bites into metal. Chain jerks sideways. The Demon Brother stumbles, surprised for half a second—and that half second is all Kakashi ever needed.
A chop. A twist. Another body pinned, restrained, neutralized with a brutality that feels gentler than hesitation.
Silence falls in fragments.
Not peaceful silence. The kind where everyone's brain is still trying to catch up to the fact that they're alive.
Sakura is shaking, one hand clamped over her mouth.
Naruto's eyes are locked on me—on my blood, on my useless arm—like he's trying to understand why the trap didn't bite Kakashi like it was supposed to.
My mouth tastes like copper. My nose is still bleeding, but I barely feel it. The numbness is creeping higher now, up toward my shoulder, and the idea lands with calm horror:
If it reaches my chest… if it reaches my heart… I stop.
The tether gives a faint, warm pulse, as if acknowledging the possibility.
Under it, cold depth shifts lazily.
**Little…**
The intent brushes my mind like breath against skin.
I can't tell if it's the thing inside Naruto or my own fear giving shape to darkness.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
Kakashi kneels beside me.
His single visible eye takes in everything in one sweep—my pinned sleeve, my pale skin, the claw marks torn into my right forearm, the unnatural pallor spreading around the wound.
His gaze hardens.
"Poison," he says.
Not a question. A diagnosis.
He grips my right arm above the elbow, fingers pressing into muscle.
I flinch reflexively with my shoulder and ribs, but the arm itself doesn't feel anything. That's worse than pain. Pain at least proves you're still connected.
Kakashi's eye flicks up toward Tazuna. "This is not a D-rank mission."
Tazuna's face tightens. He looks suddenly smaller, like his lie is finally heavy enough to crush him.
Kakashi doesn't wait for excuses. He looks back at me.
"Can you breathe?" he asks.
I try to answer.
The tongue seal tightens, warning sting at the base of my tongue.
My throat makes a useless sound. My jaw shakes.
Kakashi's eye narrows slightly. He notices the failure to speak. Of course he does. He files it instantly.
I nod once, small, because nodding costs less than words.
Kakashi reaches into his pouch and produces a small vial.
Glass clicks against glass.
He bites the cork with his teeth and tips the vial to my lips.
"Drink," he says.
The liquid is bitter and sharp. It burns down my throat like concentrated medicine and metal, and for a second my stomach revolts. I swallow anyway because the alternative is dying quietly on a road.
The bitterness spreads. My tongue seal prickles, offended.
Kakashi sets the vial aside and pulls a strip of cloth from his pouch.
He wraps it above my wound and cinches hard.
Pressure bites into my arm. I can feel *that*, faintly—deep ache, not surface. The tourniquet clamps the poison's path like a dam.
My vision swims. Sweat breaks cold on my skin.
Kakashi's voice remains calm, but his eye is sharp. "You're going to stay awake."
I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to vomit again.
Instead I focus on the smallest thing I can: the smell of Kakashi's gloves—leather and dust. The warmth of sun on the road. The grit under my cheek.
Stay awake, I repeat in my head.
Because I'm not protected by fate.
If I black out now, no invisible hand catches me.
Kakashi stands and turns.
"Sakura," he says. "Watch him. If he stops breathing, you shout."
Sakura flinches like she's been slapped with responsibility, then nods hard, eyes shining with fear.
"Naruto. Sasuke. Guard Tazuna," Kakashi continues. "Do not let your eyes leave the surroundings."
Naruto's gaze jerks away from me, then back, then away again, like he can't decide which fear to prioritize. Sasuke's jaw is tight; he looks shaken in the way he hates, and that hatred turns into focus.
Kakashi walks to the bound Demon Brothers.
He doesn't ask who they are. He already knows.
His voice drops, dangerous and quiet. "Who sent you?"
One of them spits dirt and blood. "Gatō."
Tazuna stiffens.
Kakashi's eye narrows.
The name is a knife placed gently on the table: *organized crime, paid killers, a mission disguised as cheap.*
The story sliding into the next gear.
And me bleeding on the roadside like a down payment.
Kakashi turns his head slightly, checking on me without fully looking away. He's doing three things at once: interrogating enemies, tracking threats, and triaging a dying extra he didn't agree to bring.
That competence should feel reassuring.
It feels terrifying.
Because it means he will notice inconsistencies.
He will notice that I can't speak properly.
He will notice the way Naruto's orbit makes my body react.
He will notice that I don't behave like a normal injured child.
Sakura crouches beside me, hands hovering uselessly over my shoulder, too scared to touch.
Her voice comes out thin. "Souta… I— I'll get help. We can go back—"
Kakashi's voice cuts in immediately, firm. "We are not going back yet."
Tazuna's head snaps up. "What?"
Kakashi's tone stays even. "You misrepresented the mission. That makes you a liability. But abandoning you here makes us responsible for whatever happens next."
A pause.
"And I will not drag my team into a bloodbath blind."
Naruto bursts, because he can't not. "We can handle it! We're ninjas!"
Kakashi's eye flicks to him, mild turning razor-sharp beneath. "You froze."
The words are quiet.
They land like a kunai.
Naruto's mouth opens, then closes. His face flushes, and beneath the anger something wounded flickers.
Sasuke shifts, eyes narrow, defensive and ashamed all at once.
Kakashi continues, voice calm again. "You will learn from that. But you will not pretend it didn't happen."
Naruto's fists clench.
The tether in my wrist pulses warm and heavy, in sync with Naruto's emotion, and my ribs tighten as if the story itself is leaning toward him, watching to see what he becomes next.
A thin line of blood runs from my nose again. Sakura sees it and flinches.
She wipes it away with shaking fingers, then realizes she has blood on her hand and looks like she might cry.
I stare at my right hand.
It lies limp on the dirt, fingers half-curled, useless. The claw marks on my forearm are already swelling, the skin around them paling strangely, veins standing out dark.
The antidote burns in my gut. The tourniquet bites. The poison still crawls, slower now, but not stopped.
My vision blurs again.
In the blur, I see red.
Bars.
Chains.
A slow, amused gaze opening like a door.
**Little… used.**
The intent isn't words, but it shapes itself like them anyway, sliding along the tether.
I shiver violently.
Sakura gasps. "He's— he's shaking!"
Kakashi's eye snaps to me instantly.
He crosses the distance in one smooth movement and crouches, palm pressing against my forehead.
His hand is cool.
He frowns. "Fever."
His gaze drops to my wrist.
Not the wound. The wrist.
The sealing ring Danzo placed is hidden under skin, not visible unless you know what to look for. Kakashi shouldn't know.
But he's Kakashi.
He notices things other people don't even think to look for.
His fingers hover near my wrist, not touching. Thinking.
Then he pulls back, expression neutralizing into professional calm.
"Sakura," he says, "keep him stable."
She nods hard, biting her lip.
Kakashi stands and looks at his team.
"We continue," he says.
Naruto's eyes widen. "What about—"
Kakashi's gaze cuts to me. "He comes."
I want to laugh again—bitter this time.
Root's handler told me the mission continues if I die.
Kakashi, at least, says it like I'm still a person.
But "he comes" is also a sentence. A decision. A path.
It pulls me forward into the story anyway.
They don't carry me gently.
Sasuke and Sakura lift me under my arms—Sasuke on one side, Sakura on the other—because Naruto is too keyed up, too guilty, too loud to be trusted with careful hands.
My body sags between them. The stump of my left shoulder throbs. My right arm swings limp, and seeing it move without my permission makes nausea climb again.
The road resumes underfoot.
Trees pass.
Sunlight flickers through leaves in bright strips that make my eyes ache.
The tether pulses with each step, warm and heavy, a metronome tied to Naruto's presence.
And beneath it, cold depth shifts, patient.
Naruto walks ahead, glancing back too often, as if looking at me will somehow put the blood back in my body.
He tries to speak once, mouth opening, then closes it. His jaw clenches.
He doesn't know what to say.
Neither do I.
Even if I did, my tongue seal would punish me for shaping the wrong words.
The poison does something strange as we move.
It isn't just numbness anymore. It becomes a crawling heaviness, like my arm is full of wet sand. Pins-and-needles spark in my fingertips, sharp and useless, then vanish again.
My right hand twitches once—an involuntary spasm.
Sakura yelps softly, tightening her grip.
"It's okay," she whispers, more to herself than to me. "It's okay."
I want to tell her it isn't.
Not because I'm dying—Kakashi's antidote might keep that from happening.
Because even if I live, something in my arm feels… wrong.
Like the poison isn't only trying to kill.
It's trying to *change what survives.*
Kakashi slows the group at a small clearing.
He sets Tazuna down on a rock and makes the old man face him.
"Tell me everything," Kakashi says.
Tazuna swallows. "Gatō… he's taken over the country. I built the bridge to—"
His voice shakes. Not with guilt. With fear.
Kakashi listens without interruption. When Tazuna finishes, Kakashi's eye drifts to Naruto and Sasuke.
"This is now at least B-rank," he says. "Possibly higher."
Naruto straightens, excitement fighting fear. Sasuke's eyes sharpen, as if "higher rank" is a challenge he can't refuse.
Kakashi continues, "We can return to Konoha."
Naruto explodes immediately. "No way! We're going!"
Sasuke doesn't argue, but his posture says the same thing. Sakura looks terrified.
Kakashi's gaze slides to Sakura. "You?"
Sakura swallows hard. Her eyes flick to me—pale, shaking, bleeding—and something resolves in her expression.
"We… we can't just leave him," she says quietly.
Kakashi's eye narrows slightly.
He looks back at Naruto and Sasuke. "Then understand this. If you insist on continuing, you accept responsibility for each other."
Naruto nods too fast. Sasuke's jaw tightens.
Kakashi's voice lowers. "And if you freeze again… someone dies."
Naruto flinches.
The tether pulses warm, heavy, approving—like the story is pleased to see the lesson being carved into him with fear.
My stomach twists.
So this is how canon resists.
It doesn't stop the danger.
It makes sure the danger still shapes Naruto.
Even if the blood belongs to someone else.
We continue.
As the sun climbs, my fever worsens.
The world swims. Sounds come muffled, then sharp. The rustle of leaves becomes too loud. The birds' calls become knives. The road's smell—dirt and pine—mixes with my own blood until I can't tell where the environment ends and my body begins.
Somewhere in the blur, I hear Kakashi speaking softly to Sakura.
"Watch his breathing."
Sakura's voice, trembling: "He's cold."
Kakashi: "Poison does that. Keep him moving. Talk to him."
Talk to me.
My tongue seal coils like a joke.
Sakura tries anyway, voice shaky. "Souta… can you hear me?"
I want to answer. I want to tell her to stop, because if I speak too much, Root's curse will bite, and if Root's curse bites while poison is in my blood—
My mind recoils from the thought.
I force a small nod instead.
Sakura exhales, relief and fear braided.
The tether pulses again.
And in that pulse, the cold depth beneath it shifts closer.
Not fully.
Just enough that I feel something brush my mind's edge with lazy amusement.
A sense of *waiting.*
As if it knows I'm being dragged toward water and mist and blood, and it's curious how the extra tied to Naruto's orbit will break this time.
We reach a point where the road narrows and the air grows damp.
The smell changes.
Less pine, more water. More salt. More rot.
Land of Waves is still ahead, but the world already tastes like it.
Kakashi slows, scanning.
His posture changes—subtle, but my body recognizes it now: predator attention, the switch flipping.
Naruto notices too and quiets, tension replacing loudness.
The tether tightens around my ribs in a slow, steady clamp.
Not the suffocation of proximity.
The warning of approaching narrative weight.
Kakashi raises a hand, signaling stop.
The team freezes.
He stares at a patch of fog creeping along the ground, unnatural in the midday sun.
My blood runs cold.
In my half-delirium, one name tries to surface—*Zabuza*—and pain spikes behind my eyes so hard I almost black out again.
The story slaps my mind away from the future.
Fine.
I don't need the name.
I know the feeling.
The tether pulses.
Warm density.
Cold depth.
And for the first time since the poison hit, my right fingers twitch—three of them—then curl weakly, as if trying to form a hand sign they can't remember.
Sakura tightens her grip, whispering, "Souta?"
I try to lift my hand.
It rises an inch, trembling violently, and then drops.
Not numb now.
Not dead.
Something worse: unreliable.
Kakashi's voice is quiet, serious.
"Stay close," he says to his team.
My breath comes shallow.
My vision blurs at the edges.
And in the damp air ahead, the fog thickens like a curtain being drawn.
I realize with sick clarity that even if the antidote keeps me alive, I may have lost fine control in my only remaining hand.
Permanent nerve damage.
Permanent weakness.
No plot armor.
And now, with poison still in my blood and mist crawling toward us, the story is about to introduce a real killer—
while I can't even trust my fingers to close around a kunai.