[ANBU HQ Forensics Division Sub-Basement 3 – Hidden Leaf Village]
The sharp scent of disinfectant lingered faintly in the air when Hanabi Hyūga stepped back from the sterile worktable, brows knitted tightly. Her gloves trembled—not from fatigue, but from something far worse. She stared at the empty containment case where the kusarigama once lay, locked, sealed, and warded. Gone. Without a trace.
Behind her, the low hum of chakra-powered scanners continued uselessly. No alarms tripped. No seals broken. The weapon simply vanished.
Hanabi swallowed, her pulse tightening. "HQ," she spoke into her comm, voice clipped, "We have a containment breach. No physical trace. No forced entry. Artifact missing."
A pause.
> "Confirmed. Initiate internal lockdown. Elevate to Priority Black."
Her heart dropped at the words.
---
[Ichiraku Ramen – Hidden Leaf Village]
The clatter of chopsticks and the rich scent of broth mingled lazily in the air at Ichiraku Ramen. It was late afternoon—just before the streets of Konoha would fill again with evening foot traffic—and Ino Yamanaka had her elbows on the counter, half-listening as Shikamaru grumbled about paperwork while Choji happily devoured his third bowl.
"I'm telling you," Shikamaru muttered between bites, "they're squeezing us dry. I spent more time filling mission reports last month than actually being on missions."
"Maybe if you wrote faster instead of doodling clouds," Ino quipped without looking up.
Choji slurped loudly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Cloud doodles aren't bad though."
Ino sighed, twirling her chopsticks absently. "You guys don't get it. At least you're out here. I've been stuck in deep cover so long, I forgot what Konoha even smells like."
"That's what happens when you're good at mind games," Shikamaru said. "A drag, but effective."
Just as Ino reached for her tea, a faint shift in the air prickled the back of her neck—a shadow too quiet, too close.
Before her instinct even caught up, her hand shot out, grabbing the cheap aluminum fork from the counter, spinning to her left and jabbing it up at neck height.
It stopped just short of a familiar smirking face.
"Sharp as ever, canary," Sakura teased, one brow arched.
Ino exhaled hard, shoulders relaxing. "You psychotic fox," she snapped, but her lips twitched despite herself. "What kind of killer sneaks up on people at lunch?"
"The good kind," Sakura grinned, sliding into the seat beside her, resting her chin in her palm. "Though honestly, if you stabbed me with that fork, I'd say I deserved it."
Choji blinked between the two. "Is this what you two call friendly greetings?"
"Always has been," Shikamaru muttered. "Some things never change."
The next few minutes eased into casual chatter—the kind Sakura hadn't indulged in for what felt like years. They joked about old missions, Shikamaru's eternal laziness, Choji's unstoppable appetite. Ino threw barbed comments at Sakura's expense, who fired them back effortlessly with her usual snark.
For a moment, it felt like nothing had changed.
Until the flicker of an ANBU operative appeared at the far end of the street.
They walked briskly toward Ichiraku, masked, hands tucked in signal-ready posture. Sakura noticed it first—her smile fading a fraction.
The operative stopped beside her and handed over a sealed scroll.
"Tiger," they said quietly. "Priority Black. You're requested."
The air around the four of them shifted—like a cord pulled taut.
Sakura exhaled slowly, breaking the wax seal with a thumb.
"That's never good," Ino muttered, voice tight.
Sakura scanned the message once, twice. She folded it carefully and stood.
Her usual smirk returned, but her eyes were sharp now, cold beneath the surface. "Well, there goes my peaceful day."
She placed a hand briefly on Ino's shoulder—a rare, quiet gesture. "Watch your back, Canary."
Without another word, she disappeared in a flicker of movement, slipping back into the shadows that always seemed to pull her away.
At the ramen counter, Ino stared after her, the ramen long forgotten.
"She always makes me nervous when she smiles like that," she muttered.
Shikamaru glanced at the spot where Sakura vanished, expression unreadable. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Means someone's about to bleed."
---
[ANBU HQ Forensics Division Sub-Basement 3 – Hidden Leaf Village]
The sterile light of the Forensics Division lab always had a cold, surgical quality to it—a place where blood became data, and bodies became puzzles to solve.
Sakura walked in briskly, her scarlet yukata fluttering behind her like a wound made fabric, long gloves pulled tight to her elbows. Her Tiger mask now dangled loosely from the sash at her hip, swaying with each step like a silent threat. The air inside smelled faintly of ash, chemicals, and antiseptic—mingling with something heavier, something tense.
Hanabi Hyuuga was already waiting by the central table, her arms folded tightly beneath her chest, expression unreadable except for the faintest crease between her brows.
Two other Forensics personnel stood to the side, whispering nervously to each other, their eyes flicking toward Sakura and then away.
"Report," Sakura said curtly, voice flat but sharp as a blade.
Hanabi handed her a file without preamble. "It's not a report," she said quietly. "It's a complication."
Sakura's eyes scanned the parchment—and then narrowed, jaw tightening.
Hanabi continued, her voice low but urgent. "Your Kusarigama... It's gone."
For a heartbeat, Sakura didn't react. Didn't breathe.
"Define 'gone,'" she said carefully.
Hanabi exhaled through her nose. "Not stolen. Not misplaced. It simply... vanished. No evidence of removal. No tampering on our records, no chakra signatures detected. One moment it was in containment, sealed under four layers of protective lock—next moment, the seals collapsed from the inside. The weapon isn't there."
Sakura's gaze snapped up, sharp and cutting. "Is that even possible?"
Hanabi shook her head, frustrated. "It shouldn't be."
She tapped the report with her finger. "We have no forensic trail, no witnesses, no logical explanation. It's as if it slipped through space itself."
The air between them grew heavier.
Sakura leaned back slightly, gloved fingers drumming once against the edge of the table before curling tightly into a fist.
"You're telling me," Sakura said slowly, voice taut, "that the one thing he left in your hands—the chain I've used to gut people, the one thing I trust to bite when I tell it to—just vanished while you were holding it?"
Hanabi didn't flinch. "That's exactly what I'm telling you."
Silence.
It lasted longer than it should've.
Then Sakura exhaled sharply, pushing a hand through her long pink hair, eyes narrowing—not with anger, but with something deeper. Something more dangerous.
Loss.
Her kusarigama wasn't just a weapon. It was her—an extension of her hand, her rage, her control.
And now, it was gone.
"I'll need access to the lab records," she said finally, her voice cold as glass. "Every log. Every visitor. Every seal fluctuation, every chakra anomaly—no matter how small."
Hanabi nodded. "Already prepared."
Sakura turned on her heel but paused at the door.
"Hanabi," she said without looking back. "If someone's taken it... if they're using it without knowing what it was made for..."
Hanabi met her gaze evenly. "We'll find them."
Sakura's lips twitched—not a smile, but something harder.
"You'd better," she murmured. "Because that chain wasn't made to sit pretty on a wall. It was made to kill."
Without waiting for an answer, she stepped into the hall—a shadow hunting the weapon that had once been hers.
---
The Forensics archive felt like a different kind of battlefield—rows of scrolls, logs, and ledgers stacked neatly like the bones of dead cases. A place where truth could be exhumed, if you knew how to cut deep enough.
Sakura stood at the central desk, her yukata's long hem pooled around her like a pool of blood-red silk, one foot tapping faintly on the polished floor. In front of her, a series of scrolls and sealing parchments unfurled—each one marked with the security records of the containment room.
Hanabi's assistant lingered awkwardly by the door, casting wary glances at her.
"You can leave," Sakura said without looking up.
The girl nearly stumbled in her haste to obey.
Sakura inhaled slowly, eyes trailing over the fine, almost invisible fluctuations noted in the chakra seal reports. Lines of ink, bureaucratic and dry—but within them, she was looking for the cut, the wound, the place where something bled out.
Pattern recognition.
That's all an assassination was, in the end.
Recognizing weakness.
Predicting movement.
Delivering the strike.
Her fingers paused over a specific timestamp.
It wasn't the fluctuation itself that caught her eye—but how innocuous it looked.
Two days ago, mid-afternoon.
The containment seal logged a brief pulse—a collapse and reformation within a fraction of a second.
No signs of forced entry, no signatures left behind.
The staff had logged it as an "instrument error."
Sakura's lips pressed into a thin line.
Error, her ass.
She flipped to the visitor logs, cross-referencing.
No suspicious entries.
Only registered personnel.
No one unauthorized.
Except...
Her eyes flicked back.
One name appeared on the visitor registry twice in the same hour.
A Forensics clerk—an ordinary chuunin she vaguely recalled from some failed exams long ago.
Nothing unusual about him.
Except that no one ever visits a containment chamber twice in an hour.
Unless they forgot something.
Or unless they wanted it to look like they did.
Sakura closed the scroll slowly.
She didn't know if the clerk was connected.
But it was a thread.
And she was very good at tugging threads.
The door behind her creaked open.
"Report, Tiger."
It was one of the ANBU logistics agents, breathless and clearly nervous.
She glanced over her shoulder. "What?"
"We've got something strange. Perimeter patrol picked up a chakra residue outside the eastern gate, about thirty minutes ago. It matches the chain's signature."
Sakura's eyes sharpened immediately.
"And?"
"And the signature vanished after five seconds. Completely gone."
Her smile wasn't pleasant.
"Prepare a field kit," she ordered. "And a map of the eastern sector. I want a sweep team ready in ten minutes."
The ANBU hesitated. "Orders from HQ say to keep this in-house."
Sakura's stare pinned him in place like a kunai to the wall.
"It's in-house," she said softly. "You've got me."
The agent swallowed and left quickly.
Sakura rolled up the scroll, sliding it into the slim pouch strapped at her hip.
The chain wasn't just missing.
It was moving.
Not stolen, not misplaced—but acting on something she couldn't see, couldn't predict.
And that unsettled her more than she cared to admit.
Wherever it was headed...
She would find it.
And she would end it.
---
[Eastern Woods – Outside Hidden Leaf Village]
The woods east of Konoha had always seemed quieter than they should. Too tame, too domesticated by the village's borders—but tonight, every rustle felt heavier.
Sakura walked ahead of the three-man sweep team assigned to her, their footsteps deliberate but soundless across the undergrowth. The moon filtered through the canopy, casting jagged shadows that danced along the forest floor.
They were ANBU support operatives—all competent, all lower-ranked than her. Extension agents like herself didn't carry formal ANBU ranks, but she stood at the same level as their best operative: the Black Fox.
Their masks reflected faint slivers of light as they fanned out behind her. She hadn't bothered learning their names. This wasn't a mission for camaraderie.
It was a hunt.
"Nothing on the residual scan," one of them whispered over comms. "Chakra trace is cold."
Sakura crouched near the base of an old cedar, fingers brushing over a faint scar in the earth—a shallow impression almost invisible to the untrained eye.
But something about it...
A chain link pattern, pressed lightly into the dirt. Like someone had dragged the weapon but stopped abruptly.
She rose quietly. "Spread to a forty-meter perimeter. Watch for unnatural silences."
The forest responded in kind—nothing but the chirr of insects, the distant hoot of an owl.
And then...
A snap.
Sharp.
Deliberate.
Sakura's hand flicked up instantly.
"Stop."
The ANBU froze, eyes flicking to the source of the noise.
A clearing just ahead.
The air felt heavier there, like the pressure before a thunderstorm.
Sakura moved forward alone, steps cautious but fluid.
The clearing revealed nothing at first—just old stone and moss.
Until her eyes traced something in the grass.
A line.
An imprint.
A deliberate pattern burned faintly into the soil.
A sealing formula.
But not any standard Konoha array.
The structure was strange—kanji strokes threaded with something else.
Unfamiliar glyphs curled elegantly between the matrix, subtle but unmistakable.
Her breath hitched.
It wasn't just a seal.
It was Dominion sigil.
A symbol she'd first encountered, fragmented and buried in the half-forgotten scrolls Tsunade had once pressed on her.
Symbols she had dismissed.
Pretended meant nothing.
Until now.
The moment her eyes locked onto it—her head throbbed sharply, a sudden, splitting pressure crawling behind her eyes like a needle shoved too deep.
She staggered a half-step back, hand instinctively flying to her temple.
One of the ANBU glanced her way.
"Ma'am?"
Concern edged beneath the flatness of his voice.
Sakura breathed out slowly, forcing her spine straight, shaking off the crawling pulse in her skull.
"I'm fine," she muttered, eyes narrowing on the sigil again, though she deliberately kept her distance now.
Her heart hadn't slowed.
The sigil felt like a hook tugging something loose inside her.
A signature meant for her, whether she wanted it or not.
Behind her, the ANBU comm crackled.
"Movement detected. Northwest ridge. Possible intruder."
Sakura's mouth tightened.
The chain hadn't been stolen.
It had been released.
And someone out there knew exactly what they were doing.
She rose, cracking her neck lightly.
"Pull back perimeter," she ordered. "And get me a suppression squad ready. Whoever's out there—"
Behind the Tiger mask, her smile was all teeth.
"—they're about to regret it."
---
The forest felt alive now.
Sakura moved like a shadow, weaving between tree trunks without sound. The suppression squad trailed behind her—three seasoned ANBU operatives under strict orders to follow her lead and not engage without her signal.
Her breath came evenly, her eyes razor-sharp as she traced the faint disturbances along the forest floor.
The chakra trace was subtle—almost too subtle. Whoever moved ahead of her knew how to cover their tracks well.
But they weren't perfect.
Sakura noticed it. The odd broken twig too far from natural footpaths, the snapped fern pointing north, the way the moss was disturbed without a clear animal trail.
They wanted her to follow.
But not catch them.
A message crackled in her earpiece.
"Target moving northwest. Estimated pace: evasive, not fleeing."
Sakura smirked slightly.
"That's what I thought," she murmured, signaling the suppression squad to fan out.
She shifted her pace. Not chasing. Herding.
A game.
Minutes passed. The forest narrowed into a shallow ravine ahead, rocks slick with moisture. It would bottleneck the intruder's escape.
Perfect.
Sakura ducked low, crouching behind a fallen log as she motioned her squad to flank.
Then she saw it.
A flicker of movement—barely a blur—just beyond the ridge.
Human-shaped. Agile.
And then, deliberate.
The figure stopped.
Turned.
And looked directly toward her.
Even from this distance, she caught the faint curve of a smile beneath their mask.
They knew.
A sharp, cold pulse ran up her spine.
The figure took one slow step backward, vanishing into the deeper woods.
Leaving something behind at the base of a tree.
Sakura raised a hand, signaling her team to halt.
She approached alone, footsteps measured, tension prickling beneath her skin.
Her eyes traced the scrap of parchment pinned to the bark—
—and the faint outline of a sigil, gray ink curling like a brand.
The moment she registered its shape, a sharp throb stabbed behind her eyes—sudden and blinding, like a spike driven straight through her skull.
Her breath hitched.
Her body recoiled before she could stop herself—one step back, hand twitching toward her temple as the pulse hammered at the base of her skull.
It eased after a heartbeat, leaving only a crawling discomfort beneath her skin.
Sakura exhaled slowly, forcing her shoulders straight again.
"Second operative," she muttered over comms without looking away. "Describe it."
One of the ANBU behind her stepped forward, voice low and precise.
"It's a parchment strip. Seal formula embedded... foreign glyphwork integrated into standard matrix. The pattern's inconsistent—lines uneven, some strokes incomplete. No chakra signatures, no traps."
Sakura nodded faintly, fingers flexing at her side.
Without meeting the sigil directly, she reached out and plucked the parchment free, folding it carefully without looking at the seal.
Beneath it, a crude translation scrawled in Shinobi script:
'The weapon returns to its origin when the blood sings loud enough.'
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
Behind her, the squad leader's voice came through.
"Commander Tiger, what now?"
Sakura crushed the parchment in her fist.
"They're baiting me," she muttered.
Her smile grew sharper.
Dangerous.
"Good. Let's see how far they want to dance."
---
The squad regrouped near a clearing deep within the ravine, their formation tight but restless. Even seasoned ANBU shifted uncomfortably—each of them sharp enough to recognize that the pursuit had shifted.
They weren't hunting anymore.
They were being guided.
Sakura stood at the edge of the clearing, one gloved finger tapping absently against the chin of her Tiger mask, her mind working through the pieces like a blade against whetstone.
One of the ANBU, Wolf-Three, broke the silence.
"Commander Tiger. That parchment..."
He hesitated, voice low but careful. "It's the same pattern Forensics flagged before, isn't it? The one tied to that cult symbol circulating in border towns."
Sakura didn't answer immediately.
She thumbed the folded scrap between her fingers, gaze distant.
"Same pattern," she said quietly. "But rough. Sloppier than the others. Like Crow-Two said—uneven, incomplete. Whoever left it doesn't understand what they're copying."
Crow-Two, glanced at Wolf-Three before speaking.
"So, why would anyone carrying that sigil care about your weapon?"
Sakura's jaw tightened beneath her mask.
"That's the wrong question," she said quietly. "The real question is: how do they even know about it?"
The silence that followed hung heavier than the night air.
Behind them, the squad leader checked his comm bead.
"HQ wants a progress update."
Sakura glanced at the moon filtering through the trees.
"Tell them this is no longer a retrieval op. It's an intelligence hunt now."
Before the agent could respond, a faint chime drifted down from the treetops—
a hollow, metallic resonance, almost musical, almost a whisper.
They froze.
Sakura's head tilted slightly beneath the Tiger mask, her eyes narrowing.
The sound came again.
Soft. Patterned.
Like a lullaby played on cold iron strings—familiar, but distant, like something half-remembered from childhood or a dream long forgotten.
A shiver crawled faintly down her spine.
Crow-Two's voice crackled over comms, hushed. "That's not shinobi technique..."
"It isn't," Sakura murmured.
The sound pressed against her skull—not painful, but oddly intimate, like a song meant only for her.
Her gaze hardened.
"I've heard this melody before."
The others glanced at her, confused behind their masks.
"Where?" Wolf-Three asked quietly.
Sakura's lips twitched into a thin line behind her mask.
"In a dream," she answered.
And then she moved, fast and fluid, motioning the squad to follow.
"Let's not keep our ghost waiting."
But in her mind, she knew it wasn't a ghost.
It was something older.
Something darker.
Somehow familliar.
And it knew her name.
---
The sound led them deeper—through roots that curled like serpents, under hanging branches slick with dew. The melody came and went, like something breathing between the trees.
Then it stopped.
Dead silence.
Sakura raised her fist. The squad froze.
Before them, a hollow shrine stood forgotten. Old stone, cracked and suffocated by moss. A lone chain, unmistakably hers, dangled from the archway like a noose.
Her kusarigama.
But it wasn't the weapon that chilled her.
It was the figure seated beneath it, back to the shrine wall, head lowered as if in prayer.
A child.
Or something shaped like one.
Hair white as frost, skin unnervingly pale. A simple traveler's cloak draped over its thin frame—scratched with faint, uneven sigils across the fabric.
Dominion script.
Crude, but real.
The sight of them sent a pulse lancing through Sakura's skull—sharp, sudden.
Her throat tightened as her temples began to throb.
The headache clawed at her skull like fingers scraping bone.
She swallowed it down, straightening, but her hand unconsciously hovered near her temple beneath the Tiger mask.
The child spoke without lifting its head.
"You've come," it whispered—two tones bleeding over each other, one human, one hollow.
The pain sharpened.
Sakura took a breath, steadying her voice.
"Why?"
The child's head lifted.
Eyes like churned mud, slitted pupils, smile stretched too wide.
"Because your chain sings," it said. "And we wanted to hear the song."
Behind the mask, Sakura's breath hitched.
The headache worsened, buzzing in her skull like iron scraping against glass.
Her knees felt unsteady, though she didn't move.
She forced another breath.
"Who is 'we'?"
Her voice cracked at the end despite herself.
The child tilted its head.
"Those who remember."
The headache dug deeper—like something trying to split her mind open from the inside.
Her vision wavered.
The edges of her sight blurred.
The Dominion sigils scratched on the child's cloak danced like crawling insects.
She heard her own pulse in her ears.
Her hand twitched, the muscles in her jaw locking as the child's voice cut again:
"The Dominion is a garden, Tiger. But gardens grow weeds."
Her legs trembled.
Her breath came faster.
And for the first time in years—after slaughter, after blood, after everything—
Sakura felt it.
Not battlefield fear.
Not tactical doubt.
But the fear that when this was over,
she would not be herself anymore.
The sigils on the child's cloak burned at the edge of her vision.
The pressure became unbearable.
Her knees buckled slightly.
Behind her, one of the ANBU operatives took a half-step forward.
"Commander...?"
She barely heard them.
Her fingers twitched against her mask—grasping, trembling.
The chain slid free from the shrine arch without being touched, rattling in the still air.
The child stood gracefully, unnervingly smooth.
"This belongs to you," it said.
Sakura's breath hitched sharply.
Her vision darkened at the edges.
A part of her—cold, logical—knew she was unraveling.
But she couldn't stop it.
One of the ANBU moved closer, voice breaking protocol.
"Commander Tiger, step back—"
The child vanished like smoke.
The chain fell at her feet.
The weight of it felt like a stone on her chest.
Her breath was ragged.
The headache had dulled, but something else had broken open in its place.
One of the operatives placed a hand gently but firmly on her shoulder.
"Commander. You're not well."
Sakura stared down at the chain.
Her voice came out cracked, raw.
"It knew my name.".
---
[Anbu HQ – Hidden Leaf Village]
The kusarigama lay on the cold iron table.
Coiled neatly, like it hadn't slipped through her fingers and nearly hollowed her out hours ago.
Sakura sat stiffly across from it, gloves in her lap, back straight—but her shoulders too tight, her jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Across the table, two black porcelain masks watched her without expression.
Beside them, Goat skimmed the incident scroll like it meant nothing.
The weight in the room wasn't from them.
It was inside her.
Gnawing.
Scraping.
The hum in her skull hadn't stopped since the clearing.
It hadn't stopped since she touched the chain.
Goat's voice sliced through the silence.
"You reported reacquisition of the weapon at 0400 hours following contact with an unknown assailant."
Sakura nodded mechanically.
"No visual confirmation. No chakra trace. No signs of forced entry or exit."
The words fell like stones.
Goat set the scroll down.
"Explain, operative Tiger."
Sakura's mouth opened.
Nothing came out at first.
Her eyes flicked to the chain.
The sound of that melody thrummed at the base of her skull—quiet, but persistent.
Her stomach twisted.
Her chest felt tight.
She forced breath past her teeth.
"I retrieved it," she said.
"How?"
Her throat locked.
Her fingers twitched under the table.
"I..." She swallowed, forcing composure. "I confronted the target. They... gave it back."
Goat's eyes narrowed.
"The sigil?"
Sakura's pulse jumped.
Her hand moved without thinking, sliding the parchment onto the table.
The crude Dominion pattern scrawled across it like a brand burned into her skin.
One of the masked officers spoke, voice flat.
"Pattern analysis indicates a match with fringe cult sigils reported in prior incidents. Structure inconsistent, execution sloppy."
Her breathing rattled.
The sigil parchment on the table blurred at the edges, twisting like it was moving.
The sound—the melody—the words—slithered inside her skull like worms.
Goat's voice kept speaking, sharp and clinical.
But Sakura couldn't hear it anymore.
The child's voice echoed behind her eyes.
Weeds.
The chain sings.
You.
You.
You.
A sharp, splitting pain shot behind her eyes.
Her chair scraped back violently.
"Get out," she hissed, fists pressed against her temples. "Get out—"
The humming grew louder.
The voices blurred.
The chain on the table felt like it was wrapped around her throat.
"Get out of my head!" she shouted, stumbling to her feet.
The ANBU operatives moved, tension slicing through the room.
Sakura staggered backward, shaking violently, breath ragged.
Words tumbled from her lips—half-formed, incoherent:
"I didn't ask for this—
I don't want to hear—
Make it stop—
Why are you in my head—"
Her knees buckled.
The last thing she heard before darkness swallowed her was the faint metallic chime again—
and Goat's voice, distant:
"Medic."
---
[Anbu HQ, Command Chamber Sub-Basement 1 – Hidden Leaf Village]
The chamber was dim, the air dense with the quiet hum of surveillance screens and inked reports stacked neatly along the far wall. Only the faint glow of a single overhead light cut the shadows, casting long silhouettes across the room.
Goat stood at attention in front of the central desk, his porcelain mask resting under one arm. Across from him, Danzo remained seated, his only visible eye steady, cold, and calculating.
A moment of silence passed, heavy and deliberate.
"Report," Danzo said quietly, folding his hands beneath his chin.
Goat's voice was measured, neutral. "The retrieval operation was conducted per protocol. Field command delegated to operative Tiger. Initial objective: recover classified weaponry classified under Black-level authorization."
Danzo's fingers drummed faintly against the table. "The result?"
"The weapon was recovered. But... the circumstances were irregular."
A pause.
Danzo tilted his head slightly. "Explain."
Goat glanced down briefly, organizing the words like weapons. "No forced entry at the Forensics containment. No chakra residue. Internal breach. The weapon moved on its own."
Danzo's gaze narrowed.
"Continue."
Goat did not flinch. "Operative Tiger initiated a field sweep without waiting for additional authorization. Traced a pattern of movement beyond the eastern quarter. Pursuit confirmed anomalous behavior—target deliberately guiding rather than fleeing."
He slid a slim dossier across the table.
Danzo flipped it open, scanning the contents with clinical precision. Forensic photos. The crude sigil. Sakura's field notes.
Goat's voice softened, but not with concern—only precision.
"The sigil matches prior sightings linked to the fringe cult symbol circulating in outlying border regions. Correlates faintly with Dominion patterns, but sloppier. Incomplete."
Danzo's eye flicked upward. "Meaning?"
"Meaning someone out there is trying to mimic the Dominion without understanding what they're invoking."
Danzo's brow furrowed faintly. "And operative Tiger?"
Goat's silence lingered a beat longer than necessary.
"She made contact. An unknown assailant, non-hostile. Physical profile: child-sized, but behaviorally inhuman. No chakra trace. Entity vanished without leaving physical evidence. The chain returned immediately afterward."
Danzo's eye hardened.
"And?"
Goat exhaled through his nose.
"Following the debrief, operative Tiger experienced a severe psychological break."
He tapped the incident scroll beside the dossier.
"Subject displayed escalating distress. Described auditory hallucinations. Physical reaction triggered by sigil exposure. Breakpoint reached during questioning. Operative Tiger collapsed mid-session. Currently under sedation at the Medical Wing."
Danzo's expression remained neutral, but a faint tension crept into the lines around his mouth.
"And your assessment?"
Goat folded his hands behind his back.
"The weapon's retrieval was never the true objective."
Danzo said nothing.
Goat continued. "Someone wanted her to find it. Wanted her to see that sigil."
His gaze sharpened beneath his mask. "And whoever orchestrated this knew exactly who she was."
The silence thickened.
Danzo leaned back slightly in his chair.
"Prepare a Level Two intelligence barrier around this incident. All reports rerouted through my office."
Goat nodded once. "Understood."
"And the girl?"
Goat hesitated, just for a fraction of a second.
"She is a weapon, sir," he said quietly. "But a weapon can crack, too."
Danzo's eye lingered on him, unreadable.
"She will be reminded of her purpose."
Another long pause.
Then, almost offhandedly, Danzo added:
"And notify operative Fox. The girl's collapse will affect his operations."
Goat inclined his head, slipping the mask back into place.
"Of course."
Without another word, he disappeared into the shadows beyond the chamber door.
Leaving Danzo alone in the half-lit chamber, his gaze fixed not on the reports, but on the growing cracks in the system he had spent a lifetime building.
---
[Haruno Residence – Hidden Leaf Village]
The Haruno residence felt too large tonight.
Walls that once echoed with quiet footsteps now stood silent, the air inside stretched thin like something waiting to break.
Mebuki Haruno stood by the window, one hand resting against the wooden frame, the other clutching the hem of her sleeve so tightly her knuckles turned white.
The night outside was quiet.
Too quiet.
The moon hung low beyond the rooftops, casting pale light over the streets.
Somewhere across the village, in one of the sealed hospital wings, her daughter lay unconscious.
No one told her much.
Only that Sakura had collapsed after an assignment. That she wouldn't wake up tonight. That she needed rest and time.
Tsunade herself had stood at her door that evening, delivering the words in that clipped, diplomatic tone only the Hokage could manage when speaking to civilians.
But Mebuki wasn't like the others.
She had seen the look in Tsunade's eyes—the tension beneath the formality.
Something had gone wrong.
Something that no one wanted to say aloud.
Mebuki's fingers flexed unconsciously at her side.
She didn't need a report.
She could feel it.
The pulse that had settled beneath her skin since the day she'd first held Sakura in her arms—soft, fragile, burning like a star in her chest.
It hummed tonight. Low, persistent. Like something old stirring in its sleep.
A memory.
A curse.
A melody written in blood.
Her gaze drifted toward the corner of the room, where a faded photo sat on the shelf—Sakura as a child, grinning awkwardly, missing her front teeth.
Mebuki closed her eyes, breath catching faintly.
She had left that world behind.
Abandoned the Dominion's shadows, the weight of caste and bloodline, the void-song that whispered in their bones.
She had thought she could build something here. Something human. Something warm.
But blood remembers.
It always remembers.
And tonight, it was singing again.
She exhaled sharply, wiping her eyes roughly with the back of her hand before turning away from the window.
In the silence of her empty home, the whisper clung to her like a wound:
"You don't get to run from who you are."
The scene fades with her silhouette framed in the window—small, fragile, and utterly alone.