Fog shouldn't crawl like this.
Real mist drifts. It softens edges, cools skin, dampens hair. This fog *hunts*. It clings low to the ground and thickens in pulses, as if it's breathing through the road itself. The air tastes wet and metallic—water, algae, and something sharp underneath, like a blade cleaned too recently.
My right wrist pulses under Danzo's sealing ring.
Warm density blooms around my ribs in slow waves.
And beneath it—cold depth, patient and amused.
The tether never slept. It only waited for this.
Kakashi raises one hand.
We stop so fast the motion sends pain lancing through my shoulder. Sakura's grip tightens on my right side; Sasuke braces my other. They're still half-carrying me because my legs keep deciding they aren't sure about standing.
My right arm hangs useless.
Not numb anymore—worse. Unreliable. Sometimes my fingers tingle and twitch as if they remember being mine. Sometimes they go blank and heavy as wet sand. Every time I try to curl them fully, the movement stutters.
A hand that can't close is a promise you can't keep.
Kakashi's voice is quiet. "Stay behind me."
Naruto mutters something—too loud for a whisper, too quiet for bravado. Sakura's breath shakes. Sasuke's posture tightens like he's trying to grow fangs.
Tazuna stands in the middle, hands trembling inside his sleeves, eyes darting like a cornered animal.
The fog thickens.
My lungs tighten with it—not from moisture, from *meaning*. The air feels heavier around Naruto, like the world is gathering itself closer to him.
I keep my gaze down.
If I look directly at Naruto too long, my ribs clamp and my nose bleeds. If I stand too close, I black out. That's the rule my body learned.
But the tether laughs at rules.
Even at this distance, it pulses like an extra heartbeat, insisting I remain connected to the center.
**Little…**
The intent brushes my mind's edge, lazy as a yawn.
I swallow and the tongue seal pricks, warning. Even thinking too clearly feels dangerous now—like my own skull has become a monitored room.
Kakashi takes one step forward into the mist.
And something steps out to meet him.
It isn't dramatic.
No thunder. No sudden music.
Just a silhouette resolving in white-gray air: tall, broad shoulders, a massive blade slung over one shoulder like it weighs nothing. Bandages. Dark clothing. A forehead protector worn wrong on purpose, scratched and arrogant.
Zabuza Momochi.
In fiction, he was "cool."
In front of me, he's a pressure in the air. A presence that makes the fog feel like an extension of his body. His killing intent isn't a burst—it's a slow, deliberate leak, like poison seeping into water.
Naruto stiffens so hard I hear the small click of his teeth.
Sakura's grip on my shirt trembles.
Sasuke's eyes sharpen. His face stays composed, but his jaw is too tight.
Kakashi doesn't change his stance.
He meets Zabuza like a mirror meets a blade—calm, flat, unyielding.
"So," Zabuza says, voice low and almost amused. "The Copy Ninja."
Kakashi's visible eye narrows slightly. "Zabuza Momochi."
The tether pulses.
Warm. Heavy.
Cold depth beneath it shifts, attentive now, like something inside Naruto has lifted its head at the scent of real danger.
Zabuza's gaze slides past Kakashi and lands on the kids.
Then, like an afterthought, it lands on me.
The pinned sleeve.
My pale face.
The blood crusted at my nostril that never fully goes away anymore.
His mouth twitches, not into a smile—into interest.
"Bringing wounded baggage?" he asks, like he's commenting on a tool Kakashi chose poorly.
Kakashi's voice remains even. "They're under my protection."
Zabuza's laugh is quiet. "Protection."
The word hits wrong coming from him.
It hits wrong because I know what protection looks like in this world.
It looks like steel bending away from Naruto's throat.
It looks like my blood in dirt.
Zabuza's killing intent spikes—sharp, sudden.
Naruto's knees buckles.
I feel it too, but differently. My ribs tighten, not from fear alone—because the story is bracing, clustering around Naruto, thickening the air like armor. That warm density surges, and my tether surges with it.
My vision stutters.
The world narrows.
For a heartbeat, in the back of my mind, I see red—bars, chains, and two lazy eyes opening like doors.
**Little… closer.**
Kakashi's voice cuts through like a rope thrown to drowning people. "Focus."
Naruto's hands tremble. Sakura's breath catches. Sasuke's eyes flick—once—to Naruto, as if measuring him.
Zabuza shifts his sword on his shoulder.
The motion is casual.
The threat is not.
Then he moves.
The fog seems to move with him.
Kakashi meets him, kunai flashing.
Metal kisses metal with a wet, intimate sound that makes my stomach twist. Kakashi's body is smooth economy. Zabuza's is brutal certainty.
They separate.
They clash again.
My brain tries to run ahead—*water clone, water prison*—and pain stabs behind my eyes so hard I almost make a sound. Reality slaps my thoughts away like a hand slapping a child reaching for a flame.
I squeeze my right hand into a fist to anchor myself.
My fingers don't fully obey.
I watch, helpless, as Zabuza's movements blur and—
—another Zabuza appears.
A water clone.
I know it before I see the sheen: the way the mist thickens around it, the way its edges ripple like liquid pretending to be muscle.
Kakashi reacts instantly, splitting his focus, but Zabuza's real body is already positioning.
My heartbeat stumbles.
I try to shout.
My tongue seal coils and bites hard enough that tears spring up.
No voice.
I try to gesture wildly.
Sakura's grip tightens, confused and frightened. Sasuke glances at me for half a heartbeat, irritation flashing. Naruto is staring forward, caught in the same old freeze—the same beat repeating like the story is stubborn about the lessons it wants him to learn.
Kakashi's hand signs blur.
Zabuza's hand slaps down.
Water surges.
A sphere forms around Kakashi's head and upper body—clear, shimmering, perfectly contained.
Water Prison.
Canon clicks into place with a cruel satisfaction.
Kakashi is trapped.
Zabuza's real body holds one hand on the water sphere, face calm.
The water clone stands a short distance away, solidifying, ready.
My chest goes cold.
Because now the story demands the next beat: Naruto and Sasuke must act.
They have to.
If they don't, Kakashi dies, and the entire arc collapses, and fate will do something violent to prevent that.
And if they do… someone else bleeds.
Zabuza speaks, voice low and pleased. "Copy Ninja? Impressive. But you're still human."
Kakashi's eye is visible through the water, narrowed with controlled anger.
Zabuza's gaze slides to the kids. "Now… what will you do?"
Sakura trembles.
Naruto's fists clench.
Sasuke steps forward, eyes hard. "Naruto."
Naruto flinches like he's been slapped with a name. "W-what?"
Sasuke's voice is sharp. "Move."
The tether pulses warm and heavy, syncing with Naruto's fear as it turns into anger.
Zabuza's water clone advances.
Not toward Tazuna first.
Toward me.
Of course.
Of course it does.
Because I'm weak. Because I'm close enough to matter and far enough to be expendable. Because the story can spend me without breaking canon's spine.
Sakura gasps. "It's coming!"
Sasuke shifts between us and the clone in a single step. He pulls a kunai.
Naruto stands frozen for another heartbeat, eyes wide.
My ribs tighten as Naruto's protection swells—warm and dense—and the tether follows it like a leash yanked.
My nose starts bleeding again, slow and hot.
The clone stops in front of Sasuke and smiles with Zabuza's mouth. "A child with courage."
Sasuke's eyes narrow. "Shut up."
The clone moves.
Sasuke blocks—kunai catching the clone's blade with a high ringing sound.
The clone is stronger than Sasuke.
You can see it immediately in the way Sasuke's arm trembles under the impact, in the way his feet slide back a fraction in dirt.
Sakura's nails dig into my shirt. I can feel her shaking through her grip.
I try to back away.
My legs wobble. My right hand flails for balance and finds only air.
The clone's gaze flicks to my pinned sleeve again.
And I feel something sick and intentional in that look.
A decision.
It feints at Sasuke—
—then whips its blade down toward my right wrist.
My only hand.
My breath stops.
I don't think in words. I don't have time.
I throw my body backward.
My shoulder screams. My stump flashes with pain. My right arm doesn't obey fast enough.
The blade kisses my wrist.
Not a clean cut.
A deep, tearing slice across the underside, exactly where tendons live.
Pain blooms late, like my nerves have to climb through poison and shock to reach my brain.
Then it hits, bright and violent.
My fingers spasm open.
The world tilts.
Blood pours down my palm, dark and fast.
Sakura screams.
Sasuke's face flickers—shock, then rage—then he moves harder, pushing the clone back with a slash that sprays water instead of blood.
Naruto's eyes lock onto my wrist.
Onto my useless arm.
Onto the blood spilling from the only hand I have left.
His face twists.
Something in him cracks.
The tether surges so hard my ribs seize.
Warm density floods my chest.
Cold depth rises beneath it like deep water swelling toward the surface.
My vision tunnels.
And behind my eyes, I see red again—bars, chains—
—and a smile I can't see but can *feel*.
**Little… break. Little… open.**
Naruto's breath comes out in a rough, animal sound.
His eyes—blue a heartbeat ago—darken, then flare.
Not fully red.
Not yet.
But something dangerous leaks into them like ink into water.
Kakashi's eye inside the Water Prison widens slightly, noticing.
Zabuza's real body tilts his head, interested. "Oh?"
The water clone laughs, amused, and steps toward me again, blade lifting for the finishing cut.
My right hand hangs uselessly, fingers trembling, blood dripping into dirt.
If it cuts again, it takes the hand.
If it takes the hand, I am done. Not as a shinobi. As a person.
My ribs tighten and tighten.
I can't breathe.
Not because the clone is close.
Because Naruto is.
Because fate is clustering around him, thick and urgent.
Because whatever lives behind his seal is leaning forward to watch how the story spends me.
Sasuke shouts, voice sharp and furious. "Naruto—move!"
Naruto moves.
Not with skill. With instinct.
Shadow clones explode into existence around him, messy and loud.
The tether punches through my ribs like a fist.
I choke on air.
The world blurs.
The water clone hesitates for the first time, and in that hesitation I see the opening canon demands—Naruto and Sasuke's desperate plan beginning to form.
But my blood is still pouring.
My right hand is still trembling open and shut like it can't decide whether it belongs to me.
And the clone's blade is still raised.
It comes down.
And the last thing I register—before steel meets tendon again—is Kakashi's eye staring through water, Naruto's half-red glare burning through mist, and the terrible certainty that fate will not let Naruto be the one who pays for this beat.
It will be me. Again.