Time passed. The sky turned into one solid grey sheet and the rain strengthened, turning the track into slick sludge. Ahead, through the curtain of rain, a huge dark surface of water appeared, a pond or a lake. And in the middle of it, rising straight out of the water like a hallucination, stood a village.
Not a normal one.
Its silhouette was grim, mechanical, ominous.
Buildings thrust upward like black steel fangs, wrapped in thick, faceless pipes of every diameter. Each tower-like structure looked like a giant spike stabbing into the low clouds. A long bridge, straight as an arrow, stretched across the water, connecting the shore to the village gates on the far side.
I slowed, then stopped entirely, staring at the unreal landscape. A wave of fragmentary but horribly familiar memories rolled over me.
After a long pause, rain streaming down my face, I exhaled slowly, strangled.
"This… this can't be Amegakure. The Hidden Rain Village."
My knowledge of the Naruto world was ragged. But Nagato, the one who brought pain and destruction to the world through the 'bodies' of Pain, that monster, the real final boss, I remembered clearly.
His technique wiped whole districts of Konoha off the map. Even someone as strong as Jiraiya didn't get out alive when he stuck his nose into that hornet's nest. And me? A nobody with almost no chakra, no clan techniques, a runaway in rags? Wouldn't I be a fly caught in the web of the deadliest spider?
But after another heartbeat, I forced my fists to loosen. I wasn't even a genin. I was nobody. Empty space. Trash like me didn't deserve attention from powers like that.
I tried to choke down the rising anxiety with that thought.
The road ran downhill towards a wide, muddy river where a heavy wooden bridge had been thrown across. I crossed with the sparse, soaked travellers, grim merchants trudging under mats. The gates were guarded, but the search was formal. The rain did its job. The ninja on watch, a man in a hooded cloak that hid half his face, one eye showing through a slit in his headband, flicked a quick, indifferent look at me.
Soaked to the bone, in filthy rags, a skinny kid, no threat. He waved me through without even asking my name, and I passed under the heavy steel doors into a kingdom of eternal rain and metal.
The streets were a labyrinth of mud, wood, and damp that never ended. The air reeked of mould, rotten fish, and something chemical, probably from local workshops. People hurried along, paying no attention to a dirty, ragged child.
'Find the back end. The poorest, filthiest part, where strangers aren't rare and losses are routine.'
I twisted through narrow alleys where the walls nearly met and rain ran in dirty streams down a central gutter. Crooked shacks flashed by, boarded windows, the stink of waste.
Here.
At the end of a dead lane formed by a blank shed wall and a fence, a dark recess yawned. A pile of rubbish, a stench, but shelter from rain and prying eyes. I leaned against a cold, rough wall and sank into a squat.
A tremor ran through my whole body, not from cold but from savage exhaustion and the hollowed-out feeling after those chakra bursts. Hunger cinched my stomach into a hard knot. I took off my pouch, dug inside, pulled out a kunai and one pill. I shoved it into my mouth. Bitter, then the familiar warmth spreading through me, blunting the edge of hunger and fatigue.
Did it… got out… The thought was as ragged as my breathing.
The tension of the last hours, the adrenaline, it all began to loosen. My eyelids turned to lead. Here, in this stinking wet hole, I felt… relatively safe for the first time in half a year. For an hour. For a minute.
My head dipped to my chest. My body demanded rest, even a tiny pause. I let myself relax, dissolve into the rain's hiss.
Just… just sit for a second…
"Tired, Max-kun?"
Hayashi's voice, familiar enough to chill bone, cut through the rain like a dull knife. My heart dropped into an abyss, blood pounding at my temples. Instinct screamed.
Run.
But my legs were rooted in the mud.
His figure formed out of shadow, tall, wrapped in a dark cloak, like a nightmare that had crawled up from hell. Lightning tore the sky, and for a moment his scar-ruined face lit up, those blood-slit eyes filled with cold, predatory triumph.
I thrust the kunai out in front of me, shaking with adrenaline and helpless rage.
"The cult leader himself!" My voice cracked into a squeal. "You came personally for a seven-year-old kid? I'm so important the great Messenger honoured me with a visit?"
Hayashi didn't flinch. He took a step forward, unhurried, almost leisurely, as if he were strolling through a garden. Rain slid off his cloak without leaving a trace.
"Important?" His voice was low and thick with mockery. "You're a mistake, Max-kun. A cursed gift of fate. A runaway rat. Doesn't an owner have the right to return a lost… thing… to its cage? Especially such a… stubborn thing."
Another step. The distance shrank. The weight of his chakra pressed like a physical force, my heart hammering with animal terror.
A fight? Suicide. Negotiation? Laughable. Run? Where? The alley was a dead end. The walls were high and slick. The only way out was behind him.
"I… I'm not a thing!" I screamed, backing up, raising the kunai higher. Playing the frightened child was my last card. "I'm not going back! Not to the table! Not to hunger! Leave me alone!"
"'Not going back,'" he echoed softly, a frozen smile in his voice. "How touching. You thought you could simply run? After you wounded my man? After you defiled the shrine?" He shook his head, as if mourning my stupidity. "You belong to Jashin. And to me. Until your last… eternal… breath."
His hands shifted under the cloak.
I bolted.