[Konoha — village square, beneath the Sealing Card, sunset deepening to bruise-purple, day forty-two of the Ranking Broadcasts]
"Seventh place — Mitarashi Anko."
The square made a sound that wasn't quite a gasp and wasn't quite a laugh — the noise a crowd makes when it's been told something it half-expected and half-hoped wasn't true. Up on a rooftop two blocks east, Anko herself was lying on her back chewing dango, one knee up, the stick clenched between her teeth like a cigarette.
She didn't move.
"Reasoning: residual chakra imprint of Orochimaru's curse mark continues to influence emotional regulation. Subject demonstrates verified tendencies toward sadistic interrogation methodology, isolation from peer support, and an unresolved master-bond that, under specific stressors, would render her recruitable. Probability of villain trajectory: thirty-one percent. Reward: one (1) Curse Mark Suppression Seal — partial. Reduces, does not remove."
Anko took the dango stick out of her mouth, looked at the sky, and said, to no one, "Thirty-one percent. Huh." She bit the next dango off the stick. "Thought it'd be higher."
She thought: thirty-one. Cute. Sensei would laugh. I'm not gonna laugh. I'm gonna eat this dango and then I'm gonna go to Ibiki's and drink until the seal stops itching. Reward's nice though. Partial's better than nothing. Partial's a Tuesday.
[Group Chat — "Shinobi Ranking Live Reactions"]
IbikiM: anko my office. now.
AnkoM: nah
IbikiM: anko
AnkoM: IBIKI i'm FINE i got a SEAL out of it relax
KurenaiY: anko come over kakashi's bringing food
KakashiSilverFang: am i
KurenaiY: yes you are
KakashiSilverFang: ok
AnkoM: ...fine but i'm not crying
KurenaiY: nobody said you were
AnkoM: i'm just saying
AnkoM: preemptively
GuyEternalRival: ANKO-SAN! THE FLAME OF YOUTH BURNS BRIGHTEST IN THOSE WHO WERE ALMOST EXTINGUISHED!
AnkoM: guy i love you but read the room
GuyEternalRival: I AM READING IT. I AM READING IT LOUDLY.
AnkoM: ...ok yeah that's fair come too
[Konoha — Forest of Death perimeter, twilight]
The trees here grew the way trees grow when nobody tells them no — wide-trunked, knotted, branches thick as a man's torso, leaves the size of dinner plates that smelled, faintly, of iron whenever the wind moved through them. Anko sat on a fence post at the edge of the forest she called home, dango stick now empty, the curse mark on her neck pulsing slow under the collar of her mesh shirt.
Kakashi appeared beside her without a sound, paper bag in one hand, book in the other. He set the bag on the fence post next to her. Yakitori. Two skewers of chicken, one of leek, and a small container of rice with umeboshi pressed into the center like a bullet hole.
"Kurenai sent food," he said.
"I see that."
"You gonna eat it."
"Eventually."
He nodded. He didn't sit. He just stood there beside her, reading his book, the orange cover catching the last of the sun, and Anko looked at him out of the corner of her eye and thought, he's staying because he doesn't trust me alone right now and he knows I know that and he's not gonna say it. Cool. Cool cool cool.
She picked up a yakitori skewer and ate it.
[Konoha — village square, the Card pulsing again]
"Sixth place — Yakushi Kabuto."
A murmur this time, not a gasp. Kabuto wasn't surprised. Nobody was surprised. The medic-nin who'd been spotted three times in the last six months at the borders of the village in clothing that didn't quite match his rank had been sliding toward this announcement like water toward a drain.
"Reasoning: subject is currently embedded as long-term reconnaissance asset for Orochimaru. Loyalty fractured at age six. Subject's villain trajectory is not probabilistic — it is in progress. Probability: ninety-four percent. Reward withheld pending ANBU intercept."
That last word — withheld — landed in the square like a kunai in a tatami mat.
[Group Chat]
HiruzenS: anbu has been deployed.
HiruzenS: civilians clear the eastern district.
KakashiSilverFang: on it
KakashiSilverFang: anko stay with kurenai
AnkoM: kakashi i can—
KakashiSilverFang: anko.
AnkoM: ...fine
ItachiU: Hokage-sama. Permission to assist.
HiruzenS: granted. quietly.
ShisuiU: itachi text me when you're back
ItachiU: I will.
ShisuiU: itachi
ItachiU: I will, Shisui.
[Konoha — eastern district, narrow alley between the apothecary and the abandoned weapons-stamp shop, full dark now]
The alley smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet and like the particular sourness of old medical disinfectant — Kabuto had been here, recently, and Kabuto always smelled faintly of the supply closet at the hospital, of rubbing alcohol and the dry-paper smell of bandage rolls. The cobblestones were wet from a vendor's spilled bucket, reflecting the lantern light from the next street over in long yellow streaks.
Kakashi crouched on the rooftop above, Sharingan uncovered, breath shallow. Itachi was somewhere — Kakashi couldn't see him, which meant Itachi wanted it that way. Below, in the alley, a figure in a hooded medic's coat was kneeling beside a sewer grate, hands moving fast, sealing something into a small lacquered box.
The figure paused.
Looked up.
Smiled — that small, polite, infuriating smile that everyone in the hospital knew, the one that made you feel patronized by a man four years younger than you.
"Hatake-senpai," Kabuto said, conversational, like they'd run into each other at the market. "You've been busy."
"Mm." Kakashi didn't move. "Step away from the grate."
"I'd love to. Unfortunately." Kabuto tapped the lacquered box. "I'm on a schedule."
A shuriken came out of the dark behind Kabuto — Itachi, of course, the angle impossible unless you'd been crouched on the apothecary's chimney for the last four minutes — and Kabuto twisted, caught it between two fingers, tch'd, and dropped a smoke pellet.
The alley filled white.
Kakashi was already moving. So was Itachi. The smoke parted around them — one silver, one black-haired, both fast — and the lacquered box hit the cobblestones with a wet, hollow clack as Kabuto's hand left it half a second before Kakashi's kunai pinned the sleeve to the wall.
Empty sleeve. Of course. A substitution — water clone, by the smell of it, dissolving into the puddle at the base of the wall and leaving a faint chemical residue that Itachi knelt and touched with one gloved fingertip.
"Tracker compound," Itachi said quietly. "He wanted us to follow him."
"Yeah." Kakashi pulled the kunai free. "He always does."
Itachi thought: the box. Don't follow the body. Follow what he dropped.
He turned. The lacquered box sat on the cobblestones where it had fallen, lid askew, and inside — nestled in dark silk — was a single scroll bearing the seal of the Konoha archives. Forbidden Scrolls Section. Sub-vault three.
Kakashi exhaled, long and slow, the way a man exhales when he realizes the night is going to be much longer than he'd planned.
Above them, the Sealing Card pulsed gold over the village, getting ready to read out the fifth name, and in the Hokage Tower Hiruzen Sarutobi was already on his feet, pipe forgotten, walking toward the war room with the heavy, even tread of a man who had buried too many students to be surprised by anything anymore.
Kakashi pocketed the scroll and leapt for the rooftops, Itachi a shadow at his shoulder, the alley behind them filling slow with the smell of rain that was, finally, beginning to fall.
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