"Have you become clean air,
bread and medicine for your friend?
Some are unable to free themselves from their own chains,
yet they save their friend."
— F. Nietzsche.
July 17, 1056
18:56
A scream. A soul-piercing scream punctured my consciousness, making me snap my eyes open instantly. I tried to sit up, struggling to understand what had happened, but a savage pain shot through my body, forcing me to fall back. My head was splitting, and my neck burned like fire. Breathing heavily, I clutched my head.
"So much for a fight with a legendary Sannin. Beaten like a weakling who can't put up a decent fight. And this is only the beginning. It will only get harder from here. The battles will be even bloodier and longer," the thoughts raced through my mind after a second of confusion. Managing to stand on trembling legs, I looked around. Naruto was lying nearby, seemingly asleep. That meant he and Sasuke hadn't reached the tower and hadn't reported that Orochimaru was at the exams. It followed that they had turned back and gotten involved in a fight with the snake Sannin.
I looked at my friend's serene face and was glad he was relatively intact, but where was Sasuke? What had happened to him?
Scanning the roots of the massive tree we were under, I didn't give them much thought. Right now, the first thing on my mind was Sasuke's location. He wasn't nearby; it was just me and Naruto. I formed a sealing mark to scan the area and discovered that the Uchiha was several hundred meters away from me. Beside him were four other signatures of unknown chakra.
I tried to create five clones to move Naruto to a safe place, but I only managed to create two. Was it really because of that damn sealing mark? I couldn't even properly control my chakra! And every time I used it, a sharp pain flared in the spot where sharp teeth had pierced my flesh.
If I were stronger, this wouldn't have happened; if I were smarter and quicker, I wouldn't have allowed it. Once again, I realized that my training must be even more effective. My strength was insufficient. Perhaps I was at the Chunin level now, but life was persistently showing me how weak I was. If I truly wanted to save my friends, I needed to become even stronger.
Breaking into a run, I headed toward the Uchiha despite the pain in my body. I had to help my friend as quickly as possible and return to Naruto. I couldn't leave him with just clones. If there weren't so many enemies near Sasuke, I would have taken the Uzumaki with me, but in this situation, I couldn't risk him.
Yes, I was of little use right now because of this pain throughout my body—I probably wouldn't last a minute in battle. But I would never abandon a friend in trouble.
A few moments later, I was standing on a tree branch, watching Sasuke on a neighboring tree. Clutching a kunai in his hand, he was moving toward ninja from the Village of Sound. Not far away, two other shinobi from the same village lay unconscious.
But the most interesting and seemingly out-of-place person here was Kabuto, who stood behind Sasuke and didn't interfere.
I grit my teeth and clenched my fists tight. No. It wasn't about Kabuto being here. And it wasn't about the Sound shinobi attacking my friend! Without taking my eyes off him, I stared at the black pattern covering Sasuke's body. The sealing mark! Damn you, Orochimaru! You did it after all! You placed the sealing mark! A terrible chakra emanated from the Uchiha, which I could see but couldn't feel. Maybe I couldn't feel it because I had a sealing mark myself?
"Sasuke! Stop!" I shouted to my friend, straining my throat, but he didn't hear me. I felt his bloodlust. I felt it on my skin. He wanted to kill them all. I didn't know what had happened here before, but I could guess from the screams. "Stop, please!"
He stopped and looked back only when I ran up to him and grabbed his arm. The hatred burning in his eyes began to fade, and the black pattern started to disappear. Had he actually managed to suppress the sealing mark?
"Ari?" he whispered and, unable to stay on his feet, fell. "What is this?"
My friend looked at his hands with surprised eyes. I still hadn't recovered from that look. In that moment, so much hatred had burned in his eyes that it made my blood run cold. Where did it come from? Why? Was it really because of the sealing mark? Sasuke had never been like the Sasuke from the anime; his eyes were always more alive, happier. Without hatred, without envy, without the desire to kill someone or take revenge. But just now, it was as if the person who spent the entire second half of the anime running around with a desire to smear someone against a wall had looked at me.
"Sasuke Uchiha, you are too strong; we can't handle you. I suggest an exchange: you let us go, and we give you the scroll," the man in front of us said. He placed a Scroll of Heaven on the tree, took his comrades, and left.
"Are you alright?" we heard Kabuto's voice behind us and looked around.
"Perfectly fine, don't come any closer!" I pulled out a kunai and dropped into a boxing stance.
"Your name is Ariza, right? I remember you from the first stage," he said, adjusting his glasses.
"Lower your weapon, Ari," Sasuke said unexpectedly, picking up the Scroll of Heaven and putting it in his pouch. "If he wanted to kill us or take the scroll, he would have done it already."
"Sasuke is right, I don't need your scrolls," he pulled out a Scroll of Heaven and a Scroll of Earth from his pouch and showed them to us. "And if I wanted to kill you, I would have just left you lying unconscious in the forest yesterday. In the conditions of this jungle, you wouldn't have lasted long."
"Kh... Fine," I put the kunai back in its pouch. So, he was the one who carried us all to shelter. "Then what do you want from us?"
"I don't need anything from you. Yesterday I got separated from my team, and we agreed to meet at the tower, so I was heading there until I saw you lying unconscious in the forest."
"And you decided to help us?" Sasuke asked, clearly not trusting this "genin."
"I didn't want to leave comrades from the same village to their fate. And I don't want to do it now. Think about it: you two are in no condition to fight, you're wounded, and the battle that just happened might have attracted uninvited guests," he looked around. "We'd better leave."
He spoke so convincingly and provided such logical arguments that we couldn't refuse. I knew he would be gathering information on us, but there was nothing I could do. If we were attacked now, at least the three of us could defend ourselves. In the end, it was our protection in exchange for information about us. Damn, he had thought everything through so carefully!
"Hm... You're right, let's go," Sasuke agreed, and we went to get Naruto.
July 18, 1056
00:15
"We're running out of supplies," Sasuke said, taking out the last two packets of dried meat.
It was already night, so we stopped to sleep in a cave and heal our wounds. We had found a deep and winding cave, so we could safely light a fire without fear of being discovered. To ensure other teams didn't notice the entrance, we camouflaged it and set traps. Of course, even that didn't always help, so we agreed to take turns guarding the entrance, switching every two hours. Currently, Kabuto was on watch, having volunteered to go first. The Uchiha would go second, and I would be third.
"At dawn, we'll need to go out for food and water," I finished for Sasuke, and he nodded. "Do you think Naruto will wake up soon?"
"Yeah. It's Naruto," Sasuke characterized him briefly and started eating.
"I see. And what happened after..." I trailed off, not knowing what to say next. After all, I didn't really want to tell him about the sealing mark. It would be better if my friends didn't find out about it at all. "After I lost consciousness?"
"When Naruto and I came back, we saw you and the Sannin. You were lying unconscious, and Orochimaru was burning that Scroll of Earth we took from the other team. I don't know what happened to Uzumaki, but he became too aggressive, the nature of his chakra changed, and he looked more like a beast. We fought Orochimaru until he bit me on the neck. After that, I don't remember anything," he said, looking thoughtfully at the fire and keeping his hand on his neck. If it were up to me, I'd be touching my sealing mark right now too. It hurt terribly. But I couldn't do that, or I'd just expose myself. "And why did you lose consciousness? For a second, I even thought he'd killed you," he said with a hint of sadness and anxiety.
I pursed my lips and moved the wood with a stick so the fire wouldn't go out.
Back then, in my subconscious, I really thought the end had come. I had only thirteen seconds to save myself. Too little, considering I didn't have a single idea on how to survive.
And I probably 100% would have died if, at the tenth second, the computer hadn't asked me for a six-digit password. I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed the first opportunity. The only six-digit code I knew was the one I'd seen that same morning in an unknown scroll. When I entered it, the computer informed me that the door was open.
By the sixth second, I was already at that door I'd recently found locked. Only this time, the door to the room was open. There, I found another empty scroll. There was truly nothing written on it. And in that moment, I gave up. I didn't know what else to do. Four seconds remained. Only four seconds and that was it. For one last look, I wanted to see what had happened in the chakra room. I managed to run there in three seconds. And what I saw there shocked me: two chakras—purple and light blue—were mixing and churning. As if fighting each other. And in the middle floated a real, massive white serpent.
I had one second left. An empty scroll in my hands. And in my soul, all hopes had already died. I gave up... I just gave up.
The last thing I remember is throwing the scroll into the chakra pool and swearing loudly.
Of course, that scroll didn't even scratch the serpent. The serpent just managed to dodge, and the scroll went to the bottom.
How I survived is still not clear to me. How that scroll is connected to the one at my home, I don't know either. And as for how the computer in my subconscious knew those six digits, I don't even have a guess.
But despite all the mysteries, those thirteen seconds remain the most "eventful" in my life. And soon I will visit my subconscious again to find answers to my questions.
"So, why did you lose consciousness?" Sasuke asked again, a bit more insistently.
My silence was clearly making my friend tense.
I looked up at him, held his gaze for a second, and lowered my head. I felt guilty. Either because I couldn't protect my friends, or because back then, in my subconscious, I had given up. I sighed quietly and looked at the flames. For some reason, I was sure that if my friends were in my place, they wouldn't have lost faith or hope. They would surely have believed in their victory until the end—Naruto certainly would have.
"I... you see, Sasuke, I make a lot of mistakes," I squeezed the stick until it cracked, "I don't have the right to make them," the stick snapped in my hands, and I threw it into the fire. "Because the price of my mistakes is too high."
"You're exaggerating. Just look at this moron," he nodded toward Naruto, who was currently sleeping on a futon to our right and muttering something under his breath, "he's one big walking mistake. He has so many weaknesses you'd lose count. And when he makes mistakes, he doesn't take them as critically as you do. These words might surprise you, but you'd be better off taking a page out of Naruto's book," he smiled slightly, adding some color to the heavy atmosphere.
Maybe Naruto was a moron, but unlike me, he never gave up!
"Maybe you're right," I smiled for show, though it came out crooked, and continued in my thoughts: "It's just that for one of my mistakes, this whole world might pay."
"Come on," my friend smiled even wider, which surprised me; he rarely showed emotion. He walked around the fire and, sitting down beside me, pulled me close. No, he would never become an avenger, I believed that. I couldn't imagine the Sasuke who was smiling and hugging me now as some evil bastard. I just couldn't! "People make mistakes often. You told me yourself that you have to learn from your mistakes and move on."
I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from hissing in pain. Besides the burn and the sealing mark, I had several dislocations, fractures, and cracks that kept reminding me of their existence.
"Heh, you're like a different person," I smiled through the pain, more sincerely this time, and my heart felt warmer.
"Hn. It's your fault," he assured me and buried his nose in the top of my head. "Go to sleep."
"I won't argue with that," I murmured in his warm embrace. I wondered how I was supposed to sleep when every cell in my body ached.
And if I thought about it, Sasuke was probably experiencing similar pain, even though I'd given everyone medical aid. If I could, I would have used the Mystic Palm Technique, but that required chakra control, which I lacked because of the sealing mark, and concentration, which I lacked because of the pain.
At dawn, we agreed that I would go with Kabuto for water and food, while Sasuke stayed in the cave with Naruto, who hadn't woken up yet. Of course, the Uchiha was clearly against this arrangement. Like me, he didn't trust this man, but in the end, he agreed, telling me that if anything happened to me, he'd turn the guy into a meat patty.
When Naruto woke up, we'd have to go looking for opponents, since we only had two Scrolls of Heaven. If Orochimaru hadn't destroyed the Scroll of Earth I was carrying, or if that Sound shinobi had given us a Scroll of Earth instead of Heaven, we could have headed straight for the tower now. But apparently, luck wasn't on our side.
We went out with our new "ally" to a large forest clearing and split up. He went for food, and I went for water.
I approached a small stream by the forest and knelt down. This water made me suspicious, so I didn't rush to fill my flask. I went upstream until I noticed a deer fawn. Hiding in the bushes, I watched the fawn drink from the stream. At first, nothing happened, but after a few minutes, the animal began to act strangely and then collapsed.
"I wonder if that's a sleeping potion or poison?" the question arose as I approached the fawn. It was a pity I wasn't very good at this; Naruto, strangely enough, always had scrolls with poisons or techniques.
A loud girl's scream interrupted my thoughts.
I immediately formed a sealing mark to sense who was screaming and where. As I understood it, there was a large chakra source nearby, seemingly belonging to a girl. There was no one else around. The question immediately arose: "Why scream?" After all, any loud sound could attract opponents. Though, maybe that's what she wanted?
I decided not to go there myself and sent a clone. Its goal was to find out if she had a Scroll of Earth. If she did, I would act differently.
In the ten minutes the clone was gone, I managed to find and collect clean water in the flask. And when the memories returned, I realized it was Karin screaming because a huge bear had attacked her. My clone, of course, saved her and made sure she didn't have a Scroll of Earth. The double talked to her and learned that the only scroll was carried by her teammates, but they had been killed yesterday. She was lucky; Uzumaki vitality had helped her stay in this world. The clone provided the necessary medical aid and dispersed.
"So that's how it is," I sighed and headed toward Kabuto, who was nearby.
"I caught eight fish," the spy smiled sweetly when I approached him and showed his catch, "I think it'll be enough for all of us."
"I agree, let's go back," I nodded.
"Wait," he said and began looking around, "don't you notice anything?" he asked what seemed to be a rhetorical question. I began to quietly scan the area without a sealing mark.
"I do. We're surrounded," I replied briefly. Damn! How could I have missed them?
"Shall we fight?" he asked, and we stood back-to-back.
"No," I knew who had surrounded us. It was Jiro, Sakura, and Makoto, hiding in different bushes, thereby encircling us. I had to talk to them. I didn't think they'd attack right away; we were former classmates, after all. "I know who it is, wait for me here," I said, handed him the water flask, and headed into the bushes where Jiro was.
"If anything happens to you, I'm sure your friends will kill me."
"Pff," I smirked crookedly before disappearing into the bushes.
Not ten seconds had passed before I felt a sharp kunai at my neck. Jiro was standing to my right, and not to be outdone, my cold weapon was positioned near the Uchiha's stomach. I only had to move my hand, and he'd be short a liver.
"Hello, Jiro," I greeted him affectionately.
"Hello, Ariza, a wonderful morning, isn't it?" he said softly.
"I can't disagree. How's the exam? Enjoying it?" I smirked. We weren't having polite conversation right now; we were stalling for time.
"The exam is wonderful, I've become stronger and learned a lot of new things," he looked at me so mysteriously that for a second, I thought devils were dancing in his eyes. Yes, exactly those devils that usually rub their palms together in anticipation of something grand.
"I'm happy for you. Have you forgotten that we agreed to meet after the exam?"
"Thank you, I remember, but where exactly shall we meet?"
"I suggest near the residence at 17:00 the day after the exam, which is July 22."
"Agreed. Then let's get down to business: what scrolls do you have?" he said in a more serious tone. "I have two Scrolls of Earth."
"My team has two Scrolls of Heaven," I smiled slightly, and we turned toward each other without lowering our kunai. "Exchange?" Jiro nodded, and we both reached into our pouches for our scrolls.
We only lowered our weapons once we had exchanged. There it was... the lack of trust between us. I bet if I were exchanging scrolls with Hinata, I wouldn't even have thought of pulling out a kunai.
"I hope to see you in the third stage," he said.
"Likewise, bye," I put the scroll in my pouch so Kabuto wouldn't see and was about to leave the bushes, but stopped to say: "Thank you."
"And thank you, see you soon," he said to me, and we bumped fists before parting.
"Did everything go well?" Kabuto asked, narrowing his eyes as I approached him. It was good that he wasn't pushy and didn't grill me about who I'd met or what I'd done.
"Yes, everything was great, shall we go?" I took the water flask from him and was ready to leave.
"Of course, but first I want to know something from you..." he adjusted his glasses and smiled slyly. "Why are you hiding from your friends that you have the same sealing mark as Sasuke?"
"How did you..."
***
Read the story months ahead of the public release — early chapters are available on my Patreon: Granulan