By the time the screaming started, the fog was already lifting.
Not all at once. Just in thin strands, peeling off the bridge and drifting out over the water. Enough that I could finally see more than ten meters without guessing which blob was Naruto and which blob was a corpse.
Zabuza and Haku lay side by side on the cold stone, wrapped in cloaks that were probably never meant to be burial shrouds. The air around them felt weirdly quiet, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Naruto had finally stopped yelling.
He knelt a little away from them, shoulders heaving, fists clenched on his knees. His chakra was scraped raw—bright and jagged, all grief and fury and something else he didn't have words for yet.
Kakashi stood over the bodies, hitai-ate back down over the Sharingan, face unreadable above his mask. Sasuke was propped up against a support pillar, pale and stiff, keeping the weight off his more-needles-than-skin leg. Tazuna just… stared. At the bridge. At what was left of his enemies. At the future he'd almost lost.
I was trying very hard not to fall over.
My hands were wrecked—ink ground into the lines of my fingers, dried blood at my knuckles, chakra scraped thin from slapping emergency seals anywhere they'd stick. My cooldown timer was blinking red. Emotionally, I was somewhere between "hysterical laugh" and "lie down on the ground and never move again."
That's when the shouting reached us from the direction of the village.
High, panicked voices. A deeper roar of men trying to sound meaner than they felt. A toddler-level tantrum wrapped in adult-size weapons.
Kakashi's head snapped toward the sound. Naruto flinched.
"What now?" Sasuke muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing.
Tazuna cursed quietly. "Gato's leftover trash," he said. "Without him, they'll be trying to grab what they can before they run."
Kakashi's chakra pulsed, then dipped—he was running on fumes too. Great. Fantastic. Love that for us.
"We'll handle it," he said. "Naruto, Sylvie, you stay here with—"
A second voice cut through everything.
"LEAVE THEM ALONE!"
It carried weirdly well over the water, small and cracking but sharp enough to sting.
Naruto's head jerked up. "Was that—?"
"Inari," Tazuna breathed, face going bloodless and then flushed all at once. "That idiot boy—"
Naruto was already scrambling to his feet. "Come on!"
"Hold it," Kakashi snapped, grabbing his shoulder. "You're exhausted, and if there are more thugs—"
"They're going after the village," Naruto shot back, wrenching his arm free. "We're not just gonna sit here!"
He looked at me like I was the deciding vote.
My legs hurt. My everything hurt. But somewhere back in that village was a kid with a too-big hat and a courage charm I'd scribbled at two in the morning hanging off his belt.
"Yeah," I said. "We're not."
Kakashi looked from Naruto to me, then out into the fog. I could feel the calculations. Threat assessment, chakra reserves, risk vs reward.
Then he sighed, long and resigned.
"Fine," he said. "Naruto, Sylvie, move. Sasuke, you stay with Tazuna and guard him. I'll cover the rear."
Sasuke scoffed. "Like I'm letting the dobe show me up."
His chakra said otherwise—it was tired and frayed—but he pushed off the pillar anyway, jaw clenched.
Kakashi didn't argue. He just started walking.
We crossed the bridge faster than we should've, stumbling and half-running, the fog thinning more with each step. The closer we got to the village, the clearer the shouting became.
"Shut up and hand over your valuables!"
"This place belongs to Gato's men now!"
"You think your precious bridge-builder's gonna save you? He's not even here!"
There was laughter, ugly and thin. A baby cried. Someone begged.
Naruto's chakra spiked hot.
My stomach knotted. This was the part, back home, where I'd pause the episode and take a breath before the hopeful music kicked in.
Out here, we didn't have a soundtrack. Just our feet on stone and the sharp taste of adrenaline in my mouth.
We cleared the last rise and saw the village square.
Gato's remaining hired muscle had cornered a bunch of villagers near the docks—a loose ring of maybe twenty, thirty men with weapons and cheap armor, trying to look scarier than they actually were. A couple had already grabbed crates, bags, whatever they could carry.
In front of them, blocking the path to Tsunami's house, stood one small, shaking boy.
Inari wore his stupid little hat. His eyes were huge. His legs were trembling hard enough to rattle his whole body.
He had my charm hanging from his belt, tied with careful knots. The inked spiral stared back at me from across the square.
One of the thugs laughed. "Move it, brat, before I—"
"No!" Inari yelled. His voice cracked on the word. "This is our home! We're not scared of you anymore!"
That wasn't true; I could feel his fear from here. It buzzed off him like static. But underneath it was something solid and bright and furious.
Tsunami stood behind him, hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wet. Other villagers clustered around her—men and women with tools instead of kunai, mismatched bits of armor, faces drawn and tired.
One of the thugs stepped forward, hefting his club. "You think you can stop us, little hero?"
Inari flinched.
Naruto took a step forward on instinct.
Kakashi's hand landed on his shoulder again, gentler this time. "Wait."
"What?" Naruto hissed. "He's gonna—"
"Look," Kakashi said quietly.
We looked.
Inari swallowed. His knees wobbled. For a second, it really did look like he was about to bolt.
Then he grabbed the charm at his belt like it was something real instead of ink on paper and shouted, voice breaking with sheer terror,
"Everyone! Please! Help me! If we don't stand up now, nothing will ever change!"
The square went very still.
The villagers looked at each other. They looked at the thugs. They looked at the tiny boy shaking so hard his hat almost fell off.
Slowly, one of the men stepped forward. An older guy with a bandaged arm and lines around his eyes. He held a hoe like a spear.
"Inari's right," he said. "We've been scared of Gato for too long."
A woman with a laundry basket set it down and grabbed a broken plank. "My husband's gone because of that bastard," she said. "I'm done hiding."
It snowballed.
One by one, people moved to stand beside Inari. Behind him. Around him. Tools turned into weapons. Rocks were picked up. Someone produced an old hunting bow that looked like it had been in a closet for a decade.
The thugs faltered.
"Hey—hey, back off!" one of them barked, suddenly less sure. "We're armed! We're—"
"You're outnumbered," the older man said flatly. "And your boss is dead."
Not technically public knowledge yet, but I didn't feel the need to correct him.
"Naruto," I said, very quietly, "I think they've got this."
He stared, wide-eyed, as Inari stepped forward again, clutching his charm so tightly his knuckles went white.
"We're not tools," Inari shouted. "We're people! This is our home!"
That hit weirdly close to home for reasons I did not have the bandwidth to unpack.
Then the village moved as one.
It wasn't pretty. There was a lot of screaming and flailing and totally incorrect weapon form. But thirty half-armed, genuinely pissed-off villagers versus a couple dozen mercenaries whose paycheck had just evaporated?
The mercs broke faster than I expected.
A few tried to fight and got dogpiled. Most took one look at the wave of humanity coming at them and booked it for the boats.
Within minutes, they were scrambling to untie ropes, pushing each other out of the way, arguing over whatever loot they'd managed to grab. A couple jumped straight into the water to swim for it rather than face another day in Wave.
On the shore, Inari dropped to his knees, shaking with delayed terror and adrenaline.
Tsunami ran to him and scooped him up, hugging him so hard I heard the breath leave his lungs. Villagers cheered, cried, laughed in that hysterical, too-loud way that only happens when you don't die.
Beside me, Naruto made a soft, strangled sound.
"You see that?" he breathed. "He did it. That crybaby actually—"
"He's not a crybaby," I said, but there was no bite in it.
His chakra felt like a sunrise—tired, aching, but filling with warm, stunned pride.
Kakashi's eye crinkled above his mask. "Looks like Wave has its own heroes," he murmured.
Sasuke snorted quietly. "Tch. Took them long enough."
His chakra, though, flickered in a way that said he was impressed and annoyed about it.
I watched Inari cling to his mom and felt something unknot in my chest.
The little charm on his belt had no actual chakra effect. I hadn't had the reserves or the skill to make it do anything more than tingle if you held it long enough.
But sometimes the magic wasn't in the ink. It was in what people decided it meant.
"Good job, kid," I whispered, so quiet only the fog and whatever gods handled narrative symmetry could hear me. "You did the thing."
We buried Haku and Zabuza on a rise overlooking the bridge.
"Buried" was generous. It was more like "assembled a respectful pile of rocks and made sure nothing hungry could get to them easily." We didn't exactly have a full mortuary team on hand.
Tazuna insisted on helping, even though his hands shook. Naruto helped too, with a kind of solemn determination I hadn't seen on his face before. Sasuke limped through it, breath hissing every time he bent, but never said a word about stopping.
Kakashi did most of the heavy lifting, both literal and metaphorical.
When the cairns were finally done—two side by side, rough and uneven but solid—everyone stepped back.
The fog had thinned to a light dampness in the air. The bridge stretched out behind us, clean lines and fresh stone. Below, the sea lapped quietly at the pillars, like it hadn't just seen a small, contained tragedy.
Naruto stood in front of Haku's cairn, fists clenched at his sides.
"He was my enemy," Naruto said, voice thick. "But he… he was also just… human. You know? He had dreams and—and a stupid mask and he liked herbs and—"
His words tangled. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his arm.
Kakashi watched him with that tired, patient look he saved for students who were learning a lesson he couldn't teach on a blackboard.
"There are many kinds of shinobi," Kakashi said quietly. "Many kinds of monsters. And many kinds of tools."
Naruto flinched at the word "tools."
"He wasn't just a tool," Naruto said fiercely. "Even if he thought he was. Even if that jerk treated him like one. He was… he was precious."
"Yeah," I thought. "He was."
I already knew that, from the way Haku's chakra had wrapped around Zabuza like silk around a blade. From the way his voice had gone soft when he talked about being "useful." From the way he'd stepped between us and Zabuza's dreams without hesitation.
I didn't say any of that out loud. This was Naruto's moment, not mine.
Instead, I walked forward when it felt like the space was empty enough and knelt by Haku's cairn.
My hands shook as I set the small stone I'd been working on at the base.
It wasn't much. Just a palm-sized rock I'd smoothed down and then carefully inked with a simple spiral. Not the Leaf symbol—this wasn't about the village. Just a curve turning inward, and then back out again, like a path that led somewhere instead of a circle that trapped you.
No chakra. No function. Just lines.
"A gravemarker you drew yourself," my brain supplied. "Welcome to your new hobby: memorial design."
"Is that one of your seals?" Naruto asked hoarsely, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
"Not really," I said. "It doesn't do anything. It's just… a sign. Just in case he still has somewhere to look from."
"Do you really think he can… see it?" Inari asked softly from behind us.
His eyes were still red. The charm at his belt was stained with dirt now, but he hadn't taken it off.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But if souls stick around anywhere, it's probably here."
On a hillside above a bridge that changed everything. Wrapped up in the memory of a boy who'd given his life to protect someone who only learned how to say "thank you" at the very end.
The breeze shifted. For half a second, I could've sworn the air felt… lighter. Less crowded. Like two presences had finally stopped pacing and laid down.
Probably imagination. Probably trauma.
I stood up anyway.
Tazuna cleared his throat, voice rough. "Zabuza Momochi," he said slowly, like the name was a rock in his mouth. "You were a demon. You killed my men. You… also killed Gato."
He looked at the second cairn for a long moment.
"I won't forgive what you did," he said. "But I'll be damned if I forget what you did at the end."
Naruto sniffed. "That sounds… fair, I guess," he muttered.
Kakashi's eye crinkled slightly. "The world is complicated like that," he said.
No one argued.
Tazuna finished his bridge a week later.
A miracle, according to the villagers. Pure stubbornness and sheer spite, according to Tazuna. The man worked like someone had insulted his ancestors and the concept of structural integrity in the same sentence.
We helped where we could.
Naruto carried supplies and complained loudly. Sasuke did precision work and pretended he wasn't enjoying using his hands for something that wasn't violence. I patched blisters and bruises and occasionally reinforced a rope with a little chakra if it looked dodgy.
It was… weirdly peaceful.
Wave slowly started to look different around the edges. People walked a little straighter. Shops opened shutters that had been nailed shut for months. Kids played closer to the docks without their parents yanking them back in terror.
Hope had weight to it. A color. I saw it everywhere.
On the day Tazuna laid the final stone, half the village gathered on the shore to watch.
The bridge stretched out behind him, solid and gleaming in the weak sunlight. The fog had pulled back like a curtain, giving us a clear view for the first time since we'd arrived.
Tazuna wiped his hands on his pants, took a deep breath, and turned to face the crowd.
"Well," he said. "There it is. We did it."
The villagers cheered. Kids waved. Someone started crying again, but this time it sounded like relief instead of despair.
Naruto puffed up like a frog.
"Pretty great, huh?" he said, elbowing me. "I mean, obviously he couldn't have done it without my help."
"Your help," I repeated, watching three builders haul away the last of the scaffolding Naruto had broken twice.
"Yeah!" Naruto grinned. "I totally inspired everyone with my coolness!"
"You fell off the bridge three times," Sasuke said, deadpan. "Once into wet concrete."
"That was on purpose," Naruto protested. "To test it."
I snorted. "Sure. Very scientific."
Tsunami stepped forward, smiling tiredly. Inari clung to her side, the courage charm now tied around his wrist like a bracelet, the ink faded and smudged from being touched too much.
"So," a woman in the crowd called, "what are we going to call it?"
There was a hum of curiosity. People turned to Tazuna, who suddenly looked like he'd rather wrestle Zabuza again.
"I, uh…" he said. "I hadn't really… thought about…"
"Name it after yourself!" one man shouted. "You're the one who built it!"
"Yeah!" another agreed. "The Tazuna Bridge!"
Tazuna grimaced. "That sounds stupid," he muttered.
"Naming things after yourself is lame," Naruto announced, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Right, Kakashi-sensei?"
Kakashi pretended to ponder. "Well, the Fourth Hokage didn't name the village after himself, so I'd say you have a point."
Naruto beamed like he'd just won a philosophical debate.
Tazuna squinted at Naruto, then at the bridge, then at the boy again.
A slow, fond sort of exasperation crossed his face.
"Fine," he said. "Then how about this."
He cleared his throat, raising his voice.
"We'll call it the Great Naruto Bridge," he declared. "After the biggest idiot with the biggest guts I've ever met."
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Naruto's jaw dropped. "Huh?!"
Then the crowd erupted.
A few people laughed. More cheered. A couple shouted "Naruto! Naruto!" because they were absolutely the type to latch onto a chant.
Naruto turned bright red all the way to his ears.
"W-why me?!" he yelped. "I mean, it's a cool name, I guess, but—"
"You're the one who stirred things up," Tazuna said, grinning. "If you hadn't been here, I don't think any of this would've changed. You gave us the guts to fight. You and your… terrifying amount of yelling."
Naruto blinked fast. His chakra flared high and loud, a tangle of embarrassment and pride and disbelief.
Kakashi ruffled his hair, ignoring Naruto's squawk of protest. "Looks like you've left your mark on more than monuments now," he said.
I leaned on the railing, watching Naruto sputter under the attention, and felt something warm loosen in my chest.
"Ink washes off," I thought. "This won't."
"I do all the careful patching up," I said aloud, "and you get a whole bridge named after you. Again."
Naruto spun on me. "Hey! When did I get something named after me the first time?!"
"The mustache," I said. "The Third's statue will never be the same."
"That's not—"
He flailed, then laughed, because he couldn't not.
Honestly? I was glad. Let the world remember him. Let it carve his name into stone and tell stories about the loud blond kid who wouldn't let them stay afraid.
If anyone deserved that, it was him.
We left Wave in the early morning.
The fog had thinned to a gentle haze that made everything look softer. The Great Naruto Bridge stretched behind us, solid and complete, connecting a once-hopeless country to the rest of the world.
Inari ran after us until the edge of the village, panting, hat askew.
"Wait!" he shouted.
Naruto turned. "Huh?"
Inari skidded to a stop in front of him, sucking in air.
"Th-thank you!" he blurted. "For… for everything. For not giving up. For… for showing me I didn't have to be a coward."
Naruto scratched the back of his head, suddenly flustered. "I mean, I just did what anyone would've done, y'know? It was nothing, really—"
"It wasn't nothing," Inari said fiercely. "You changed things."
Naruto froze for a second, eyes wide. Then he grinned, big and bright and a little sheepish.
"I'm gonna change the whole world," he said. "Starting small is fine."
I choked on a laugh. "Modest," I muttered.
Inari turned to me then.
"Thank you," he said again, quieter. He tapped the charm at his wrist. "This… helped."
"It's just a doodle," I said.
He shook his head. "It reminded me," he insisted. "When I was scared."
I opened my mouth to argue, then stopped.
"Then I'm glad," I said simply. "Keep it, if you want. Or draw your own later. Just… don't stop reminding yourself."
He nodded, serious in a way little kids shouldn't have to be.
Tsunami called him back a moment later. He ran to her, waving until we were out of sight.
The road back to Konoha felt different.
Naruto walked ahead, hands clasped behind his head, humming something off-key. Every so often he'd punch the air and shout, "Believe it!" like he was practicing for a future where the whole world listened.
Sasuke walked a little behind him, quieter than usual. His chakra was tight and thoughtful, circling around itself. I caught him looking at Naruto's back once, expression unreadable.
Kakashi brought up the rear, Icha Icha held at a comfortable "I'm reading but also watching you" angle. His chakra felt… drained, but steadier. Like he'd filed the mission away under "things that hurt" and "things that mattered" at the same time.
I walked somewhere between Naruto and Sasuke, a half-step off to the side.
My fingers were still stained—ink under the nails, faint smears of dried blood in the creases. My arms ached from bandaging, from hauling, from drawing too many seals too fast.
The forest on either side of the road was lush and green, sunlight filtering through the leaves in warm patches. It smelled like earth and growing things. Not like the woods where I'd died the first time.
"In my first world," I thought, watching Naruto argue with Sasuke over who'd landed the cooler hit on Haku, "I bled out alone in a forest and no one knew what that meant until it was too late."
Here, people died on bridges with someone holding their hand. People changed their minds at the end. Kids cried and then stood up anyway. Whole villages shifted from terror to hope because one idiot in orange refused to back down.
It wasn't better. Not exactly. The violence was bigger here, the stakes higher, the monsters both literal and metaphorical. The world chewed people up and spat them out with impressive efficiency.
But…
"Maybe," I thought, flexing my ink-stained fingers, "I can make some of it less awful."
Maybe I could be the hands that caught people before they shattered, the lines that stitched things together instead of just holding them in place. The one who made sure Naruto's bridge-building wasn't just metaphorical.
Naruto tripped over a rock, windmilled his arms, and barely kept his feet.
"I meant to do that!" he shouted.
Sasuke scoffed. "Idiot."
Kakashi turned a page.
I smiled to myself and kept walking.
The road ahead was long. There would be more forests, more bridges, more bodies. More kids who thought they were tools and men who called themselves demons and people who believed they were alone.
I'd already died in the wrong forest once.
This time, I planned to do something about it.