[Temporary ANBU Outpost – Southern Borderlands]
The torii gate loomed in the moonlight, its frame blackened at the base by old soot, its shadow stretching long across the frost-kissed grass. No wind stirred. No insects hummed.
Only silence followed him.
Naruto stepped beneath the gate, his boots muted against the dirt path. His coat, still laced with ash and blood, trailed behind him in quiet folds. The mask was clipped to his belt. kusarigama hung loosely at his side, its chain still faintly warm.
No one greeted him.
The outpost was dim—three tents, a low-banked fire, and a rusted weapons rack. Two agents on outer watch nodded faintly but said nothing. That was protocol. If a solo agent returned breathing, they would talk only if spoken to.
He crossed to the central tent, ducked in, and let the flap close behind him.
Darkness.
He didn't light the lamp.
Instead, he removed the kusarigama, set it gently on the ground, then knelt beside it. His coat slid off next. He peeled the vambraces from his forearms one by one, hands steady despite the faint tremor beneath his skin.
He stared at the weapon.
At the faint gleam of dried blood in the chain links.
His jaw tightened.
That's when Kurama spoke.
"You're not breathing right."
Naruto didn't answer.
"Your chest's too still. Your pulse's too shallow."
"You're pretending you're calm."
Naruto exhaled once, slow and even. Measured. "He was just a monk," he said. "Delusional. Fed a lie and made others eat it."
Kurama was quiet a moment. Then:
"No. He wasn't."
Naruto's hand flexed. The chain clinked faintly.
"He saw something, kid."
"Something older than this land. Older than chakra."
"And when you killed him—whatever he saw looked back."
A silence passed.
Not empty. Just thick.
Kurama wasn't snarling. He wasn't mocking.
He was uneasy.
"That spiral," Naruto said quietly, "it moved. Not like a jutsu. Like it meant something."
"It is something," Kurama said. "Or someone."
"And now it knows your scent."
Naruto slowly stood, retrieving the kusarigama with quiet hands.
He didn't clean it.
Didn't sheath it.
He simply stared at it for a long moment, then set it beside his pack.
"So," he murmured, "I just made something worse."
Kurama's voice dropped lower, almost a whisper, something Naruto had never heard before—genuine fear.
"No," Kurama answered. "You just woke it up."
---
The flap rustled softly.
Naruto didn't move.
Weevil stepped in, a half-eaten rice ball still in hand, chewing slowly like he hadn't planned on saying anything at all. His boots dragged against the canvas floor. Casual, like he was trying not to startle a wild animal.
"Didn't expect you back this fast," he said, mouth half-full. "Figured it'd be messier. You know, screaming, fire. The usual."
Naruto didn't reply. He was still seated on the ground, coat off, kusarigama laid across his lap like an offering.
Weevil took a breath. Swallowed.
"You filing the report?"
"Working on it."
Weevil nodded. He looked at the unlit lamp in the corner. Didn't move to light it. Something about the dark felt... intentional.
A moment passed. Then another.
"You ever smell something off after a clean kill?" Weevil asked.
Naruto blinked once. Still didn't look at him.
"Like blood that doesn't belong to the body," Weevil continued, softer now. "Or air that doesn't shift right. Like it's too… heavy. Like someone else is still breathing, but there's no one there."
Naruto glanced at him. Not surprised. Not defensive.
Just watching.
Weevil scratched the back of his neck.
"I've seen it. Once. Few years back near Tanzaku. Small border cult. Went quiet after the third rain season. We went in to clean up the leftovers. But it was... weird. Like everyone knew we were coming."
He rubbed his jaw, voice quieter now.
"I stepped inside a prayer hall, and my partner started crying. Said he saw his mother, even though she died ten years ago. Another guy—medic, good one—threw up the moment he stepped over the threshold. And when we burned the place down, the smoke didn't go up."
Naruto looked away.
"I don't remember that report."
"You don't," Weevil said. "We never wrote one."
Pause.
"The old man running point? He told us to chalk it up to stress. Said it was an emotional contaminant. That's what he called it. Emotional contaminant." He laughed once. Hollow. "You ever hear anything so cleanly stupid?"
Naruto didn't answer.
Then: "What did you see?"
Weevil paused.
Then looked Naruto straight in the eye.
"Nothing."
A silence fell.
"But I felt watched," he added. "Still do sometimes. Like something slipped through and didn't go back."
He stepped toward the flap again, then stopped.
"I saw the way you walked back in here, Fox. That wasn't a man who finished a job. That was someone who found something he didn't mean to bring home."
Naruto didn't speak.
Weevil sighed and stepped out into the cold.
Before the flap fell behind him, he said:
"If you're smart, you'll get that blood tested. But don't send it through the official lab. They're good, but they file everything. If it's like mine was... you won't want it on record."
The flap closed.
Naruto was alone again.
But only barely.
---
[ANBU Forensics Division Sub-Basement 3 – Hidden Leaf Village]
2:01 AM
The hallway down to the forensics chamber was chilled stone—silent save for the low hum of sealing glyphs embedded in the walls. Naruto's footsteps echoed faintly behind him as he approached the reinforced door marked "Sector B3 — Private Analysis."
He pressed his hand against the locking seal.
The door unlatched with a low hiss.
Hanabi Hyuuga was already inside, sleeves rolled, hair tied back, leaning over a pair of hovering scan tablets and a sterile operating slab. No formal greeting. Just a glance up, sharp-eyed and alert.
"You're an early Fox."
"You're always awake, Hound" Naruto replied, stepping inside. He removed the scroll case from beneath his coat and set it on the tray.
Hanabi arched a brow. "Unregistered. No seal tag. You want this off the record?"
"I want it real," he said.
She paused, then wordlessly activated a chakra filament around the scroll tube. It glowed faint orange—then abruptly pulsed once, violet.
Hanabi narrowed her eyes. "That's new."
She broke the scroll's containment and gently unrolled the weapon. The kusarigama unfolded without resistance, chain gliding across the tray like silk. The metal had darkened—not rusted, not bloodstained. Just… changed.
Hanabi didn't speak. She donned reinforced gloves and pulled out a portable scanner, tracing over a tiny blotch of residue dried along the chain.
Naruto stood behind her, arms crossed, silent.
A soft chime echoed from the reader.
Then another.
Then… nothing.
Hanabi frowned and tapped the runes again. The scanner dimmed, flickered, and shut down with a quiet beep.
She checked the chakra buffer, reset it, tried again.
Same result.
"Your tool's defective?" Naruto asked.
Hanabi glanced at him. "It was calibrated this morning."
She stepped over to the larger console—a proper resonant reader linked to the ANBU databank—and placed a fleck of the sample into a containment pod.
Blue chakra lines flickered over the surface.
Then darkened.
Then went flat.
Hanabi's brow tightened.
"No chakra signature. No genetic marker. No elemental trace. No bloodline affinity. Not even ambient residue."
She looked at Naruto now. Really looked.
"This blood doesn't register as biological."
Naruto didn't flinch.
Hanabi turned back, hands moving quickly now—runes igniting along the sample tray as she activated a secondary spectral overlay. The interface rippled once, then pulsed out a warning glyph.
[UNSTABLE ANOMALY – FURTHER ANALYSIS REQUIRED]
She exhaled, slower than usual.
"Preliminary's stalled. Full-phase resonance might work, but I'll need to process it through four containment layers and stagger the tests."
"How long?" Naruto asked.
"Minimum? Three days. If nothing else goes wrong."
"And the weapon?"
Hanabi looked at the kusarigama—its chain slightly curled as if it had settled into the tray of its own will.
"It stays here. You shouldn't have used it in the first place."
"It's not mine."
Her eyes flicked up, brows furrowed. "Then whose is it?"
"Sakura."
Hanabi stilled.
There was something quiet in the way she processed that.
"She let you take it?"
"She didn't need it."
"And now?"
Naruto didn't answer right away.
"I'll tell her once it's clean."
Hanabi studied him. Not coldly. Not even judgmentally. Just… long enough to know that wasn't entirely the truth.
She turned away and began resetting the containment grid. As she worked, her voice came softer—almost thoughtful.
"You know, Naruto" she said, "I've seen infected samples before. Blood cursed by seals, corrupted chakra, even demon-infused ash."
"This isn't any of that."
Naruto waited.
Hanabi closed the scanner, locking the pod in a stasis field.
"This isn't blood anymore," she murmured. "It's something… left behind."
A pause.
"Whatever you killed, it didn't want to stay dead."
Naruto nodded once. No emotion. Just acknowledgment.
He turned to leave.
But Hanabi's voice stopped him.
"Is it over?"
He stood in the doorway, mask half-shadowed under the cold lighting.
"No," he said.
Then, more quietly:
"It wasn't her kill."
"But it left a stain anyway."
The door closed behind him with a hiss.
Hanabi stood alone in the flickering lab, staring at the tray where the kusarigama lay.
And in the silence, the chain moved.
Just barely.
As if remembering.