The sun had cleared the horizon line, turning the sky from a bruised purple to a pale, unforgiving blue.
We were still at the gate.
"This is ridiculous," Sasuke muttered. He was sitting on the ground now, sharpening a kunai with a rhythmic shrrk-shrrk sound that was slowly driving me insane.
"Maybe they're testing us!" Naruto suggested. He was hanging upside down from the gate's support beam, face red. "Maybe the test is... patience!"
"If the test is patience, I have failed," I said.
I was leaning against the guard post, eyes closed, counting prime numbers to keep my anxiety from spiraling. My chakra felt jumpy. Not just the low-level hum of mission start, but something spikier.
It felt like the air before a thunderstorm.
"Yo."
I snapped my eyes open.
Anko Mitarashi materialized on top of the gate post. No smoke, no leaves. She just stepped out of the air like she'd been standing in a fold of reality the whole time.
She looked... awake.
Too awake.
She wasn't wearing her usual trench coat. She was in full mesh armor, a flak jacket zipped to her chin, and thigh guards. She had a senbon between her teeth, but she wasn't chewing it. She was holding it perfectly still.
"Anko-sensei!" Naruto dropped from the beam, landing in a crouch. "You're late! Where's Pervy Sage?"
Anko didn't look at him. She was scanning the tree line. Her eyes were hard, flat, and totally devoid of the sadistic humor she usually wore like makeup.
"Jiraiya is... detained," Anko said. Her voice was clipped. "Change of plans, ducklings. We aren't walking."
Sasuke stood up, putting the kunai away. "What's going on?"
"We're waiting for clearance," Anko said. "The perimeter sensors just tripped a ghost signal in Sector 4."
"Ghost signal?" I asked.
"It means something crossed the barrier without breaking it," Anko said. She looked down at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine tension in the set of her shoulders. "Something that knows the codes. Or something that doesn't need them."
My stomach dropped.
I clutched the strap of my bag—the heavy canvas one filled with Raidō's guilt-trip supplies.
"Is it... Orochimaru?" I whispered.
Anko's hand went to her neck, hovering over the curse mark.
"No," she said. "He feels like sludge. This feels..." She scowled. "Cleaner. Sharper."
Whoosh.
A blur of gray and porcelain landed on the gate beside her.
It was an ANBU captain. Bear mask. His vest was stained with something dark that hadn't dried yet.
"Mitarashi," the ANBU barked. He was breathing hard. "Code Red. Intruder confirmed inside the village walls. Jōnin interception in progress near the canal."
"Who?" Anko demanded.
"Unknown," Bear said. "Two targets. Cloaks. Red clouds. They engaged Asuma and Kurenai. It's... bad."
Red clouds.
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
Sasuke went rigid. The air around him froze.
I felt it too. The sudden, suffocating pressure of a name we hadn't said out loud in years.
"Akatsuki," Sasuke whispered.
It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.
Anko moved. She didn't look at us. She looked at the ANBU.
"Where?"
"Sector 4. Tea District Canal."
Anko spat the senbon onto the ground.
"Stay here," she ordered us. Her voice was a whip-crack. "Do not move. Do not follow. This is above your pay grade. This is above my pay grade."
"But—" Naruto started.
"STAY!" Anko roared.
Her killing intent flared—purple, toxic, terrifying. It pinned Naruto to the spot.
"If you move," she hissed, "you die. That isn't a threat. It's a forecast."
Then she vanished.
She didn't use a shunshin. She just launched herself off the gate with enough force to crack the wood, streaking toward the village interior like a missile.
The ANBU captain hesitated, looked at us, then leaped after her.
We were left alone in the dust.
The silence was heavy.
"Red clouds," Sasuke said again.
His voice sounded strange. Hollow. Like it was coming from inside a tunnel.
He turned toward the village.
"Sasuke," I said. "Anko said stay."
"He's here," Sasuke said.
He wasn't listening to me. He wasn't even seeing me. His eyes were wide, fixed on the smoke rising from the Tea District. The Sharingan spun to life, not with anger, but with a terrifying, blank focus.
"Sasuke!" Naruto yelled. "Wait! We can't just—"
Sasuke ran.
He didn't run like a ninja. He ran like a child chasing a nightmare.
"Dammit!" I screamed.
I grabbed my bag.
"Naruto! Let's go!"
"But Anko said—"
"Anko is going to need backup!" I lied. "Or a medic! Or someone to drag Sasuke's corpse out of the fire! Move!"
We ran back into the village, toward the smoke, toward the ozone smell that was getting stronger with every step.
The road trip was cancelled.
The war had come to us.
The Fire Daimyō's temporary council chamber smelled of old paper and stale arguments.
Kakashi Hatake sat at a desk that was too small for him, staring at a requisition form for lumber. He had been staring at it for twenty minutes.
"—and furthermore," Homura was saying, pacing back and forth in front of the window, "the budget allocation for the ANBU retraining program is simply excessive. We cannot prioritize black ops when the academy roof is leaking."
"Security is paramount," Koharu countered from her seat. "But we must be efficient. Kakashi, have you reviewed the personnel files for the new chunin rotations?"
Kakashi blinked slowly.
"Mmh," he said.
He hadn't. He had been counting the number of knots in the floorboards. (Forty-two).
He felt like a wolf trapped in a petting zoo.
His vest felt tight. The air in the room was stagnant, recycled by politicians who thought breathing was a negotiation tactic.
He missed the field. He missed the rain. He missed the simple, binary logic of kill or be killed. Here, the threat was death by boredom, and there was no jutsu to counter it.
He shifted in his chair. The wood creaked loudly.
Homura stopped pacing. He glared over his spectacles.
"Are we boring you, Acting Commander?"
"No," Kakashi lied smoothly, giving his best eye-smile. "Just… stretching. My leg is asleep."
"Pay attention," Homura snapped. "This is the governance of the village. It requires focus."
Kakashi sighed internally.
He looked out the window. The view was nice. You could see the Hokage faces. You could see the red roofs. You could see the birds circling over the river.
Wait.
Kakashi's eye narrowed.
The birds weren't circling. They were scattering.
Something had disturbed them.
He extended his senses. It was a reflex, a habit honed by two wars and a lifetime of paranoia. He pushed his chakra net out, skimming the rooftops, feeling for the pulse of the village.
He felt the usual noise. The market. The construction crews. The academy.
Then he felt the void.
It was a cold spot in the sensory map. A place near the Tea District where the chakra didn't just stop—it was being eaten.
And right next to it, two flares of familiar chakra were spiking in panic.
Asuma. Wind nature, sharp and desperate.
Kurenai. Genjutsu threads, snapping like dry twigs.
And then, a third presence.
Heavy. Wet. Like a shark moving through deep water.
And a fourth.
Kakashi went cold.
He knew that fourth presence. He knew it like he knew the ache in his own left eye. It was fire that burned cold. It was blood that never dried.
Itachi.
Kakashi stood up.
The chair scraped against the floor with a screech that made Koharu flinch.
"Kakashi!" Homura barked. "Sit down! We are not finished discussing the lumber tariffs!"
Kakashi didn't look at them. He was already moving, his hand going to the kunai pouch on his leg, his body shifting from bored bureaucrat to Jōnin Commander in a heartbeat.
"I have to go," Kakashi said.
"Go?" Koharu stood up, outraged. "Go where? You are the proxy Hokage! You cannot just leave a council meeting because you are restless!"
Kakashi walked to the window. He threw the latch.
"Emergency," he said.
"What emergency?" Homura demanded. "The alarms haven't sounded!"
"They won't," Kakashi said grimly. "By the time the alarms sound, it will be too late."
He climbed onto the sill.
"Kakashi!" Koharu shrieked. "You need to sign this budget!"
Kakashi looked back at them. At the stacks of paper. At the dusty curtains. At the empty chair where Hiruzen used to sit.
"Sign it yourself," Kakashi said.
He dropped out of the window.
The wind hit his face, smelling of ozone and ozone and memories he had tried very hard to bury.
He hit the roof below running, his hitai-ate already coming up to uncover the Sharingan.
Don't be dead, he thought, pushing speed into his legs until the tiles blurred beneath him. Asuma. Kurenai. Don't be dead before I get there.
He wasn't the Acting Hokage anymore.
He was the Copy Ninja.
And he was late.