The salt-crusted megaliths of the Mercantile North gave way to the cramped, rotting timber of the Southern Slums.
We surged into the so-called "Shadow Belt," where the unseasonably warm air trapped the stench of storm-damaged shanties and stagnant mud.
My black socks felt heavy, sodden with street-rot and hurricane silt, making every footfall a slippery, uncertain thud against the damp stone.
Senta and Bunzō scrambled ahead, their light-purple cloaks snapping like the wings of panicked moths.
Naruto led the charge, his gray pajama shirt billowing and his green nightcap pom-pom bouncing rhythmically against his neck.
"I got 'em! They're slowing down!" Naruto yelled. He yanked a jagged piece of steel from his pajama pocket. "I always keep one on hand!"
The glint of the kunai against his gray pants made my stomach drop. "That's not a safe place for that! You're going to castrate yourself!"
I didn't wait for his rebuttal.
My vision blurred—the absence of my glasses turning the distant oil lamps into smeared halos.
I narrowed my attention, prioritizing the heavy dampness of the Slums.
I slammed my foot down into a shallow puddle.
"Water Style: Hiding In Mist!"
The splash erupted. I funneled chakra through my soles, forcing the water to atomize.
The conversion sent a sharp, parched sting through my throat, my lungs protesting the sudden oxygen debt as a thick veil rolled over the street.
I could only hold the shroud for twenty feet before the internal pressure in my chest threatened to collapse my rhythm.
Splash-thud. Splash-thud.
The stone transmitted a wet syncopation through my heels.
I felt the vibration of their footsteps as rhythmic jars against my ankles, misreading a skip for a turn as I pushed through the white-out.
"There!" Naruto shouted.
He lurched forward, but without the weight of the necklace to anchor his center of gravity, he overshot the turn.
His bare feet skidded on the grit, and he nearly pitched into a collapsed porch before snarling and recovering his stance.
They ducked into a narrow alleyway where the walls were still weeping.
I snapped my hands together, my knuckles clicking in the damp heat.
"Water Style: Stillwater Domain!"
The puddles surged upward like liquid manacles.
I felt the resistance immediately—a jagged, pulling strain in my forearms as Senta kicked against the hold.
The puddles shivered under my grip, a micro-slippage in the tension that I had to snap back into place with a surge that made my wrists throb.
I had to split my focus, anchoring two separate targets while the chakra link shuddered through my joints; if one of them broke my rhythm, the recoil would likely tear a tendon.
Senta and Bunzō went face-first into the muck—splat-squelch.
Naruto didn't go for a physical restraint or a clone.
He was already off-balance, his energy manifesting as flickering violet static shedding from his palms.
He held his right hand out, opting for a "guaranteed stop" through raw escalation.
The air began to scream.
The Rasengan manifested, but the rotation lagged; the hum was lopsided, dragging behind the movement of his wrist.
Heat radiated from the orb, causing the air displacement to push against my chest.
"GIVE IT BACK!" Naruto roared, charging.
I squinted through the mist, my focus narrowing. Senta and Bunzō scrambled to their knees, but their blade tips were drifting, the steel wobbling in the moonlight.
Their grips were too wide, their thumbs misaligned, and their stances lacked any weight distribution.
They weren't reacting with combat training; they were reacting with the frantic motor patterns of prey.
The Rasengan's scream reached a crescendo, but the light flickered as Naruto's chakra desynced.
The heat asymmetry intensified, singeing the air.
"Naruto, stop! They're not—"
Naruto froze mid-stride.
His gaze tracked the tremor in Senta's wrists and the way Bunzō's eyes were blown wide with a terror that bypassed any shinobi discipline.
His shoulders dropped an inch, the Rasengan's rotation buckling as the energy nearly misfired into his own palm.
The heat from the orb singed the hem of his gray pajama sleeve, the smell of burnt cotton sharp in the alley.
At the last microsecond, he pivoted.
BOOM.
The Rasengan pulverized a rusted metal trash can.
Shards of iron and rotting tea leaves hissed through the air, clattering against the alley walls as the pressure wave slapped my skin.
The silence that followed was broken only by the cadence of settling debris and the rhythmic drip of water from the eaves.
The alley's puddles, displaced by the blast, sloshed back into the ruts with a hollow sound.
My ears rang, the sudden pressure drop making my head swim.
Senta and Bunzō tossed their swords aside—the blades hitting the stone with a pathetic clink-clash.
They dropped into a full-bodied dogeza, foreheads hitting the mud.
"Please! Spare us!" Senta sobbed. His vocal cords sounded frayed, cracking under the pressure of the aftermath. "We just need the money! We can't go back!"
Naruto stood over them, his gray pajamas covered in soot. He inhaled, a sharp, ragged sound that suggested the pressure wave had knocked the wind out of him. "The money? You stole this for money?"
"It's the debt!" Bunzō wailed, clutching his head-gauze. "The Akagi clan... we're exiles! The boss said we can't come home to see our families until we collect on the Slug Princess's debts! Three years we've been out here!"
Naruto's fists unclenched. He didn't answer immediately.
He looked down at his soot-stained pajama shirt, then at the two men trembling in the mud.
He shifted his weight, his bare feet splashing softly, his gaze drifting toward the dark sky.
He bit his lip, his jaw tightening as he tried to reconcile the theft with the desperate mention of family.
"Tsunade-baachan's debt...?" Naruto finally muttered, his voice dropping as he rubbed his neck. "Wait, so you're just trying to go home?"
"Our wives... our kids..." Senta whispered.
I stepped forward, my wet socks squelching.
The oxygen debt from the mist still made my chest feel tight.
"Okay," Naruto said, his volume leveling out as his shoulders finally loosened into that line of absolute, reckless intent. "I'll help you! We'll collect the debt together!"
My stomach did a slow, sickening flip.
A sharp breath hitched in my throat as I visualized the report hitting the Council's table.
If the Hokage's apprentice was caught assisting debt collectors to cover her own gambling losses, the village's reputation would rupture.
"Naruto, stay here," I commanded, my voice flat. I forced my legs to move, though the adrenaline crash made my knees wobble. "Keep an eye on them. I'm going to get some help."
"Where are you going?" Naruto asked, tilting his head.
"To find someone who knows how to stop this from burying us alive," I muttered, already turning back toward the lights of the Mercantile North.
I needed Anko. And I needed her before Naruto signed us up for a local civil war.