The first thing I learn about losing an arm is that my body keeps trying to use it.
A phantom itch crawls through fingers that aren't there. A pulse beats in a wrist that ended in dirt. When I flinch, pain doesn't just answer—it *confirms* the lie, as if agony itself insists the limb still exists and I'm the one being unreasonable.
My eyes open to white.
Not clean white. Hospital white—washed too many times, stained with old panic. The air reeks of antiseptic and bitter herbs. Something drips nearby at a steady pace, slow enough to drive me insane if I let myself count.
I try to lift my hand to my face.
Only my right arm moves.
The blanket rises, falls, and then I see it again: the flat space on my left side, the neatly pinned empty sleeve, the bandages wrapped around my shoulder like someone tried to package the damage into something acceptable.
My throat tightens until breathing feels like swallowing shards.
This isn't a scene that gets fixed off-screen.
This is permanent.
A shadow stands at the foot of the bed.
An animal mask. Black eyeholes. No expression. No human cues. Just the sense of a person who learned how to erase themselves until only duty remains.
ANBU.
The word tastes wrong in my head, like chewing foil. Elite. Secret. "For the village." The people who don't exist in daylight.
"You're awake," the mask says.
His voice is calm in a way that doesn't soothe. It's the calm of a knife sitting still because it doesn't need to hurry.
I swallow. It hurts.
Questions stack behind my teeth—Where's Iruka? Is Naruto safe? Did Mizuki die? What did I change?—but the moment Naruto's name rises in my mind, that familiar pressure slides around my ribs.
Not choking. Not yet.
A warning touch. A leash brushing my skin to remind me it's there.
I force the questions down.
The ANBU doesn't move. He waits like time belongs to him.
Finally, he speaks again. "Stand."
A laugh escapes me—thin, involuntary, almost hysterical. "I can't."
Two more presences appear without sound, as if the room grows them. Different masks, same emptiness. They don't look at my face. They look at my wrists, my shoulders, my throat. Points of control.
One grips my remaining wrist. The other grips my upper arm—too close to the bandaged stump—and lifts.
Pain flares white-hot. My vision fuzzes at the edges.
"Care," the first one says, like it's an optional courtesy.
They swing my legs off the bed. The floor is cold under my feet. My knees wobble immediately. Someone slaps sandals onto me with quick, practiced motions.
A paper tag presses against my chest.
It sticks.
Ink bites my skin with a faint sting, and something inside me dims—like a room's lamps turning down. My breathing becomes shallow without my permission.
A restraint seal.
Of course.
I'm not a patient anymore.
I'm a liability.
They don't blindfold me right away. They escort me past a half-open curtain where I glimpse another bed, another bandaged body, a medic pretending not to see. The corridor smells cleaner than the room, but underneath it is the stubborn iron scent of blood the disinfectant can't fully erase.
My own.
I try not to look at the empty sleeve. Every glance makes it more real.
We pass a window. Dawn light pours in soft and indifferent. Somewhere out there the village is waking, eating breakfast, arguing, laughing. Somewhere out there Naruto Uzumaki is still alive, still moving forward, still protected by something I can't touch.
And I am being escorted like contraband.
A hand covers my eyes.
Cloth tight. Rough fibers against my lashes.
The world becomes sound and scent and the pressure of gloved fingers steering my body.
"Do not speak," the first mask says. "Do not resist."
They lead me down turns I can't map. My footsteps are loud in the corridor; theirs are barely there. That imbalance needles me. Even my *movement* feels like a mistake.
Down stairs. Cooler air. Stone replacing wood. The smell shifts—mold, old paper, ink trapped in walls. Water running somewhere unseen. A place built to store secrets and break people quietly.
They lift me.
Wind hits my face. Sudden speed. Roof-to-roof travel, the soft impacts of landings transmitted through bodies that don't sway.
My stomach lurches. Nausea climbs.
I bite it down hard. Vomiting would be weakness, and weakness here isn't pitied—it's used.
As we move, my mind scrambles for anchors.
Canon, I think. Stick to canon.
Naruto stole the Scroll. Naruto learned shadow clones. Naruto survived Mizuki. The story corrected itself with brutal efficiency.
*Fate protected him.*
A kunai meant for his throat slid sideways into my ribs.
A shuriken meant for Iruka's back found my arm instead.
Not luck.
Law.
And the worst part is the conclusion I can't stop circling:
If I'm still alive, it isn't because the world cares about me.
It's because someone decided my survival is useful.
We drop down. Stone underfoot again. Underground cool seeping through cloth and bandage.
The blindfold is removed.
Lantern light stabs my eyes. I blink rapidly, tears springing from reflex. I'm in a corridor with wooden doors and plaques in clean calligraphy. No windows. No breeze. The air feels trained.
Words flash by as they march me forward: **Archives.** **Interrogation.** **Sealing.**
My mouth goes dry.
At the end is a room with a single table and two chairs.
One chair is occupied.
The Third Hokage sits like a man who hasn't slept properly in years. Not frail—just heavy with the weight of being the final barrier between a village and its own darkness. His pipe rests in his hand like a habit he uses to keep his fingers from shaking.
Sarutobi Hiruzen looks up as they bring me in.
His gaze lands on my bandaged shoulder, the empty sleeve, the dried blood stains that didn't wash out completely. Something flickers across his face—tight, controlled, gone too quickly to name.
Not horror.
Something like… responsibility.
"Sit," he says.
ANBU push me down before I can try to do it with dignity. The chair scrapes. My stump throbs. Phantom fingers curl and find nothing.
Hiruzen sets his pipe down carefully, like he's making a point about control.
"You were found near the Scroll of Seals," he says.
His voice is even. Not soft. Not cruel. Administrative—because if he lets emotion in, the village collapses.
"You were injured during the confrontation between Umino Iruka and Mizuki," he continues. "And you attempted to warn Iruka beforehand."
Attempted.
That means Iruka lived long enough to talk. Relief sparks in my chest and immediately turns sour. Relief doesn't regrow my arm.
Hiruzen watches my face, reading reactions like they're ink on paper.
"What is your name?" he asks.
My name.
My real one belongs to a world that can't reach me. Saying it feels like tearing open a seam in reality.
This body's name is slippery, half-buried under pain and panic, but it's there.
"I… Souta," I manage. My voice is raw.
Hiruzen nods once, accepting it the way you accept a label on a file folder.
"Souta," he repeats. "Tell me why you were there."
My mind runs fast, weaving around landmines.
Do not mention the future.
Do not mention that you *knew*.
Do not say "Naruto" like it's an invocation.
The pressure around my ribs stirs faintly as if reality leans closer to listen.
"I saw Mizuki-sensei talking to Naruto," I say carefully. "Near the swing. Naruto looked… desperate. Mizuki looked… wrong."
The words feel too small for what happened, but small is safer.
Hiruzen's eyes narrow slightly. "So you suspected."
"Yes," I whisper. "I thought he would use Naruto."
"And the Scroll?" Hiruzen asks.
Pain flickers behind my eyes when I try to connect the dots too cleanly. My stomach twists.
I keep it human. Plausible.
"I heard the word 'scroll,'" I say. "A 'test.' Naruto got excited. I thought… it was bait."
Hiruzen is quiet for a beat, and in that silence I hear my own pulse thudding like footsteps in a hallway.
"You went to Iruka," he says.
I nod, too fast. "I tried to warn him. I— I couldn't say it. I wrote it down."
His gaze drops briefly, as if he can still see the note in his mind.
"And yet you were in the forest," he says.
I swallow hard. "I followed. I didn't want him to be alone."
The words come out smaller than my shame.
Because the truth underneath them is uglier: I tried to step into the scene, and the scene punished me for it.
Hiruzen leans back slightly. His chair creaks. It's the only casual sound in a room designed to erase casualness.
"You did not steal the Scroll," he says.
It isn't a question.
"No," I say immediately. My throat feels tight.
He studies me. Not like ANBU do. Like someone deciding whether you're still a person.
"You lost an arm," Hiruzen says.
The bluntness hits harder than sympathy would.
My gaze drops to the tabletop. Wood grain. Tiny scratches. A knot near the edge.
Anything but the empty sleeve.
"I know," I whisper.
A beat passes.
"It will not be restored easily," Hiruzen says. "Not without cost."
The last shred of childish hope in me—some secret medical miracle, some hidden canon loophole—dies quietly. It doesn't scream. It just… stops.
My breath trembles. I hate it.
Hiruzen's voice stays steady. "Souta. Do you understand why ANBU brought you here?"
Because I'm close to the Scroll, I think. Because I wrote a warning that worked. Because I moved wrong in a world that tracks wrongness like scent.
"No," I say instead. "Not really."
"Because you predicted an internal betrayal," he replies. "Because you were near a forbidden object. And because your behavior does not match what we know of you."
The statement chills me more than the missing arm.
A file exists. A pattern. Someone in this village knows what "Souta" is supposed to be, and I am not matching it.
Hiruzen's eyes sharpen.
"Are you a collaborator of Mizuki?"
"No!" The denial bursts out. Pain pricks behind my eyes as if even panic has consequences.
Hiruzen doesn't flinch. "A spy from another village?"
"I'm not," I say, slower this time. "I swear."
He watches me for a long moment.
Then, softly: "There are methods to verify truth."
My stomach drops.
Yamanaka. Genjutsu. Techniques that don't care whether I can survive what they uncover.
My mind flashes with images that aren't memories—panels, episodes, scenes I shouldn't possess. If someone digs and sees *that*, I won't be a child in danger.
I'll be an anomaly worth owning.
I force myself to breathe.
Hiruzen's gaze drifts past me toward the door.
"Bring him," he says.
My blood turns cold.
The door opens.
Footsteps enter—measured, unhurried, confident enough to be slow.
No mask.
And that lack of disguise feels worse than any animal face.
Danzo Shimura walks in like the room belongs to him already. His visible eye is flat. His bandaged arm rests against his side like a secret wrapped and waiting.
He doesn't look at Hiruzen first.
He looks at me.
Not with curiosity.
With assessment.
Like I'm a tool with an interesting flaw.
"Hiruzen," Danzo says, voice polite in the way a blade can be polished. "Hokage-sama."
Hiruzen's jaw tightens. "Danzo."
The air between them stiffens, invisible and heavy. Old arguments. Old compromises. A friendship that turned into a border war.
Danzo steps closer to the table. His gaze drops to my empty sleeve.
"You intervened," he says.
I don't answer. My tongue sticks to my mouth.
"You predicted a betrayal," Danzo continues, soft and certain. "You acted before those around you."
Hiruzen's voice hardens. "This child is under my authority."
Danzo doesn't look away from me. "And this child is a potential leak, a potential asset, and a potential threat."
Hiruzen exhales slowly through his nose. His fingers tap once on the table—small, controlled, the only sign he's restraining something.
Danzo's gaze lifts back to my face.
"You are frightened," he says, almost kindly.
Kindness from Danzo is just another restraint tag.
He continues, "Fear is useful. It makes you careful. It makes you survive."
The pressure around my ribs stirs again, faint. Reality listening.
I think of Naruto.
Naruto—loud, desperate, alive. Protected by the story's brutal insistence.
He gets to be the axis.
I get to be the splatter zone.
And here's the part that claws at me: even if I keep my head down, even if I never go near Naruto again, my knowledge is still in me like contraband under my skin. I will always be one wrong sentence away from becoming someone's property.
Danzo turns his head slightly toward Hiruzen, speaking like they're discussing an inventory list.
"He noticed the manipulation. He warned Iruka. He moved to intervene."
"He was injured," Hiruzen cuts in. "That is not proof of allegiance to anyone."
Danzo's visible eye narrows. "It is proof of willingness."
He looks at me again. "Willingness can be shaped."
My stomach turns.
Hiruzen's posture stays upright, but his eyes soften by a fraction when they land on me.
For a heartbeat, I see the moral compass people talk about—the Hokage who believes in the village as family.
But I also see the rule behind it: even Hiruzen protects the village first. He will choose Konoha over one nameless boy every time, because that is what being Hokage *means*.
Danzo reaches into his sleeve and withdraws a small paper tag inked with sealing script.
My skin crawls.
Hiruzen's voice sharpens. "Danzo. Do not."
Danzo doesn't stop moving. "This is not harmful," he says, and the lie is so smooth it might even be true in his mind. "It will ensure he does not leave before we understand what he is."
Behind me, an ANBU shifts—so slight I feel it more than hear it. A quiet preparation. A hand ready to pin my head if I jerk.
I want to run.
I can't.
My legs are weak, my balance shot, my shoulder screaming, and even if I stood, three masked shadows would put me down in a breath.
Danzo steps closer until I can smell him: old cloth, ink, medicinal antiseptic that never fully washes out. The scent of a man who lives in places like this.
"In this village," he murmurs, "those who know too much are either buried… or bound."
The tag hovers near my throat.
And the story—fate, reality, whatever bent steel away from Naruto—does nothing.
It doesn't warp the paper aside.
It doesn't choke Danzo.
It doesn't protect me.
Because I'm not the chosen one.
I'm not even important enough for the universe to bother killing cleanly.
I'm just… convenient.
Danzo's voice lowers. "Choose."
The word lands like a stone in my stomach.
"Voluntary service," he says, "or involuntary containment."
Hiruzen's eyes flash. "You're forcing a child—"
"I am offering him a future," Danzo replies, still calm. "A structured one."
His gaze pins me. "Souta."
Hearing my name from him feels like a hook sinking into flesh.
"If you accept," Danzo says softly, "you receive protection. Training. Purpose. You become useful—so you survive."
Protection.
I remember what protection felt like around Naruto. Warm and dense, like the world itself leaning toward him.
Danzo's protection isn't that.
Danzo's protection is a leash held by a hand that never loosens.
My mind scrambles for a plan that doesn't exist.
If I refuse, I get sealed anyway—only tighter, harsher, with less room to breathe.
If I accept, I buy time. Time to learn the rules. Time to hide what I know. Time to become less breakable.
Time is the only currency I have.
I look down at the empty sleeve.
My missing arm throbs like a verdict.
I try to imagine living like this while being hunted by suspicion. I try to imagine surviving Danzo without agreeing to anything. I can't.
My throat burns.
I lift my gaze to Hiruzen.
He looks like he wants to pull me out of the room by force and pretend the village is kinder than it is.
He doesn't move.
He can't—not without tearing open the compromises holding Konoha together.
The truth is suffocating: even the Hokage cannot simply save me from the shadows inside his own village.
Danzo's seal tag trembles a millimeter closer.
"Answer," Danzo says.
The pressure around my ribs stirs faintly again, not stopping anything—only reminding me that Naruto's protection is not mine to borrow.
I swallow.
And I choose the only move that lets me keep breathing.
"I…" My voice breaks. I force it steady with sheer spite. "I accept."
Danzo's eye doesn't widen. He doesn't smile.
But something in the air shifts, like a lock turning.
"Good," he says.
The paper touches my skin.
Ink bites cold.
For an instant, I feel the seal sink beneath the surface like a brand sinking into meat—ownership made physical.
My vision blurs.
Danzo's voice is the last clear thing I hear.
"Then you belong to Root now," he murmurs. "And you will learn what to do with what you know."
The room tilts.
My stomach drops as the meaning catches up: I didn't just choose survival.
I chose a cage with training wheels.
And somewhere, far away in the daylight, Naruto Uzumaki keeps moving forward—protected by fate—while I fall into the part of the story that eats background characters alive.
The darkness closes in, and my last thought is sharp enough to cut:
If I can't steal the spotlight…
…I'll have to survive in the shadows without letting them realize I'm holding fire.