The Forest of Death exhaled, and Anko's neck caught fire.
It hit so hard her hand flew up on reflex, fingers digging into the pale skin just above her collar. The three tomoe-shaped marks there burned, not like chakra strain, not like poison.
Like teeth.
"...You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
Around her, the proctor patrol moved on, flitting through branches, checking seals, watching for cheating. Someone called her name. She waved them off without looking, glued to the sick, crawling sensation blooming under her palm.
The curse mark throbbed again. In the distance, deep in the green, the air twisted.
She knew that feeling.
Ten years fell away in a heartbeat: laboratory air, too clean, too cold. A man's voice praising her "potential" the way one might praise a particularly sharp knife.
Anko's lip curled.
He was here.
"Finish the sweep without me," she called, already moving. "Got a…personal errand."
Nobody argued. Nobody grabbed her arm. The village liked pretending she wasn't a problem unless she exploded on paperwork.
Fine by her.
She launched herself into the canopy and ran.
Branches blurred under her feet. She moved the way only someone raised half-wild in this exact training ground could—skimming bark, sliding across moss-slick trunks, using every knot and branch as if she'd carved them herself.
The curse mark flared with each leap, tugging her in a direction no compass could read.
"Of course you'd pick my exam," she said under her breath. "Couldn't send a postcard like a normal war criminal."
The trees thinned ahead into a small clearing. Her mark seared.
He was there before she saw him.
To anyone else, he might have looked like just another foreign jōnin standing in the open, headband scratched, Kusa flak vest sitting wrong on borrowed shoulders. Calm smile. Harmless posture.
Anko saw the way the air bent around him.
The way birds had stopped singing.
She dropped to a low branch at the edge of the clearing, kunai already loose in her hand.
"Orochimaru," she said.
He turned toward her, lazy as a cat. The borrowed face smiled wider.
"Anko," he replied, voice smooth. "You've grown."
"Yeah," she said. "Into a proctor. For the Chūnin Exams. For Konoha."
She let all three words land like shuriken.
He chuckled, a dry, pleased sound. "So I see. They keep my little experiment on a leash now. How…practical of them."
Her jaw tightened. She jumped down, landing between him and the nearest tree like she could cut off his escape through sheer stubbornness.
"You're not getting out," she said. "Not this time."
"Mm." His tongue flicked over lips-that-weren't-his. "My, my. Listen to you. Back then, you couldn't even scream properly."
The mark on her neck pulsed hard enough to blur her vision. She forced herself not to flinch.
Back then, she'd been a weapon. Sharpened by one hand, then thrown at the feet of another village when the wielder got bored.
Konoha had picked her up, wiped her off, and stuck her in a drawer labeled "dangerous but handy." Let her teach, let her patrol. Never talked about the brand on her neck unless it was in hushed voices behind a file.
Human weapons were fine as long as they were pointed the right way.
She spun the kunai around her fingers once, a little flourish to keep her hands from shaking.
"You're underestimating me," she said.
"I'm remembering you," he corrected softly.
Her stomach turned.
"Kids are in here," she snapped. "My kids. You're not touching them."
"Touching?" Orochimaru repeated, savoring the word. "No. No. I'm choosing."
His eyes went flat and hungry when he said it. The same look he'd used on scrolls and specimens.
Anko stepped in.
There was no point in trading more words. Words had never stopped him. Only death would.
Hers would do.
Her free hand snapped up, fingers flying through a short, brutal sequence of seals she could have done in her sleep. The ink-black snake tattoo coiled around her arm writhed, chakra flooding it in a rush.
"Shoumetsu no Kinjutsu," she hissed. "Twin Snakes Mutual Death."
She was on him before he finished blinking, grabbing his wrist with her tattooed hand, kunai hand locking onto his other. The second snake pattern slithered up the blade, heads meeting, mouths opening.
The jutsu surged, hungry for blood—hers and his.
"Got you," she said.
For a heartbeat, it felt like she had.
Then the skin under her fingers…slid.
His flesh went soft and slack, like rotted bark. The "body" she held split down the center, peeling away in a wet, obscene shuck. Pale skin sloughed off into her arms, empty, already cooling.
She was hugging a shed.
The snakes bit down. The jutsu triggered.
The husk crumbled into dust around her.
Anko hit the ground hard, coughing through a cloud of fake skin and wasted chakra.
"Orochimaru!"
"Careful, Anko," his voice crooned from somewhere behind her. "You'll hurt yourself."
She spun.
He leaned against a tree trunk higher up, half his torso sliding out of the bark like it was water. The Kusa face was gone; his own pale, slit-eyed one smiled down at her, framed by dark hair and a halo of broken leaves.
Her curse mark throbbed in time with his amusement.
"You always were eager to die for something," he said. "For me. For them. For that doddering old Sarutobi."
He said the Third's name like a joke.
Anko's hand tightened on her kunai until the hilt bit skin. "You don't get to say his name."
"I've said all of them," he mused. "Hashirama. Tobirama. Hiruzen. Hokage is just…a position. A mask people put on a tool."
His gaze dropped past her, into the deeper forest. She knew that look, too—the inventory glance. Browsing.
"This time, though," he went on, "I'm not interested in decrepit relics."
"Then leave," she snapped. "Get out of my village."
He laughed.
"Your village," he echoed. "How loyal you are. Even after they tried to smother the mess I made of you under a flak jacket and a job."
He tilted his head, curious. "Tell me, do they ever ask how it feels? Or do they just enjoy pointing you at exams and enemies, hoping the mark behaves?"
Anko swallowed the answer before it could claw its way out.
She thought of Sarutobi's lined face, the way he looked at her with apology instead of solutions. Of ANBU eyes sliding away from her neck. Of parents pulling their kids a little closer when she walked by.
"Don't worry," Orochimaru said, as if he'd heard it anyway. "This time I'll be more precise. The Uchiha boy has…excellent potential."
Her throat went dry. "What did you do."
He smiled, slow and satisfied. "Sasuke, was it? So eager. So angry. The mark suits him. He burned beautifully."
A ghost pain flared under her own curse.
"You're not taking him," she said.
"Taking?" He shrugged one shoulder, boneless. "I've only extended an offer. Power. Choice. Something your village never gave you. Or him."
His tongue darted out, inhumanly long, tasting the air again. "There was another one in that classroom too, you know. The little ink-stained girl with the old eyes." His voice went thoughtful. "You're breeding such interesting failures these days."
Anko's vision narrowed.
If he put a mark on that kid—
She hurled her kunai, already moving to follow, a snarl tearing free of her throat.
Metal sank into bark. The trunk cracked.
He was gone.
Only his voice lingered, curling through the leaves.
"Don't worry, Anko. I won't break all your toys. Some of them are more fun when they think they're free."
The trees swallowed the last syllable.
Silence rushed back in, too loud.
Anko stood there, chest heaving, the scorched pattern on her neck pulsing like a second heart. Her failed suicide jutsu buzzed empty in her veins. Bits of fake skin still clung to her sleeves.
Human weapon.
That's what both of them had tried to make her. Orochimaru by carving a brand into her flesh and pouring jutsu into the wound. Konoha by filing down the edges and stamping her with a leaf.
She dug her nails into her own arm, feeling the snake tattoo flex.
Somewhere out there, a boy was lying in the dirt with a fresh version of her curse burned into his neck. Maybe a girl with ink on her fingers was already trying to patch him with seals she didn't understand.
Anko bared her teeth at the empty trees.
"You're not getting them," she said, voice low. "Not all of them. Not this time."
The curse mark burned in ugly agreement—or protest. It didn't matter.
She launched herself back into the branches, cutting through the forest toward the flare of new, unstable chakra like a guided missile that had finally picked its own target.
By the time the sun finally bled out behind the mountains, Konan was already above the trees.
The forest thinned into a rocky ridge, and she climbed it in a few light steps, sandals finding the old rain grooves worn into the stone. At the top, the world opened.
Konoha lay below them like a bowl of embers.
From this distance, the walls were a dark ring. Inside, lanterns and windows made soft constellations. The Hokage Monument watched over it all, faces pale in the moonlight. The barrier around the village hummed faintly against her skin, a dome of chakra breathing in time with thousands of sleeping civilians.
A river cut silver through the dark, sliding past the walls and into the forest. Paper butterflies drifted along its surface, keeping pace with the current.
They came to her when she raised her hand.
The butterflies shivered into the air, caught a nonexistent breeze, and fluttered up the cliff. Each one landed on her outstretched fingers, dissolving into thin sheets that folded themselves neatly along her sleeves, her collar, her hair.
Ink bled up out of them as they sank into her skin. Patrol routes. Barrier formulas. Turnover rotas for ANBU shifts. The smell of ichiraku broth and cheap perfume from a civilian clerk's desk. Snatches of gossip from the mission room.
Konoha told so much truth to pieces of paper.
The ridge behind her rustled once.
"You're early," she said, without turning.
Sasori came out of the trees like part of the trunk deciding to move. The body he wore tonight was small—red-haired, boyish—but the joints didn't creak, and the eyes didn't blink more than they had to.
He stepped up beside her, hands in his pockets, gaze on the glowing village below.
"Your butterflies move faster than mine," he said. "I had to wait until my asset's shift ended."
"Which one?" Konan asked.
"The one guarding the warehouses near the south wall," Sasori said. "Nice, obedient fellow. No one looks twice at him."
He smiled faintly, the way other people smiled at keepsakes. "I left something of myself in his spine. If we need a door there later, he'll open it."
She nodded once. A sleeper puppet. Konoha would step around the man for years without seeing the strings.
"What about the others?" she asked. "Tunnels. Watergates."
Sasori tilted his head, thinking in maps and defensive lines.
"There are three routes that bypass most of their seals if you time it with the patrol rotations," he said. "All of them narrow. All of them crowded with civilians at the wrong times of day." A little annoyance crept into his voice. "Too many bodies in the way. It's inelegant."
"Crowds are a shield," Konan said. "They know they're vulnerable."
"They believe they're permanent," Sasori countered. "That's a different kind of weakness."
A heavier tread announced the third member of their little constellation.
Kakuzu emerged from the treeline with none of Sasori's subtlety, cloak brushing the undergrowth, mask hiding most of his face. He walked like someone who didn't need to care who heard him.
Behind him, the river muttered on.
"You two started without me," he said. The disapproval was genuine.
Konan glanced at him. "You were busy counting, weren't you."
He snorted. "Someone has to."
Coins clinked softly when he shifted his weight. He must have gone through the betting dens near the exam hall, listened to odds, watched money change hands.
"Fire Country is rich," he said. "They waste funds on pageantry and gambling, but the mission board is full. Steady contracts from the daimyō. Outsourced security deals with minor nations. As long as that pipeline stays open, this village will keep getting back up when you knock it down."
"And if it closes?" Sasori asked.
Kakuzu's eyes narrowed behind the mask. "Then their walls will rot from the inside. Mercenaries go where they're paid. Soldiers too. Even loyal ones have families who like to eat."
Konan let the river's hiss fill the silence for a moment.
Barrier, routes, money. Flesh, stone, numbers. All the different ways a village told you where to cut.
She remembered the sealed room beneath the administration tower. The stale air. The way the barrier's hum didn't reach quite that deep.
The old man in bandages leaning on his cane, one eye and half his face hidden.
Danzō had not bowed. Men like that didn't, not unless someone was watching. He'd simply looked at them like they were another tool he might test, then guided them through deals with that dry, patient tone that made betrayal sound like patriotism.
"Intel on the other hosts, as promised," he had said, sliding scrolls across the table. "Their names. Their habits. Their villages' blind spots."
In return, he had wanted pieces of them.
Not outright. Never that crude. He'd asked Sasori about the theoretical limits of human modification. About how much of a body you could replace before it stopped being itself. About loyalty and strings.
He'd asked Kakuzu how long a heart could be kept beating outside its original owner. How many times it could be reused. Whether there was a way to graft one man's chakra system onto another.
And he had asked for a favor. Quiet. Off the books. A noble in a border town who had become inconvenient for Fire's long-term stability. An accident, a bandit raid, something that wouldn't point back to Konoha's elders.
"We're the same," Danzō had told them, that single visible eye calm. "We do what must be done in the shadows so our villages can live in the light."
Konan had said nothing. She knew exactly how different they were.
Now, above the sleeping village, she let herself breathe out.
"He gave us partial barrier formulas," she said aloud, for the others' benefit. "Old ones. Some still in use. Enough to see how they repair fractures, if not enough to rebuild it ourselves."
Sasori made a soft sound of contempt. "He kept the best pieces."
"As did we," Kakuzu said. "I gave him theory, not practice. If he wants more than stories, he can pay double."
Konan watched the village lights flicker.
"Did you confirm it?" Sasori asked her quietly. "The vessel."
"Yes," she said.
She had seen the boy in the crowd outside the exam hall, loud and bright as a flare, arguing with a pink-haired girl and a dark-eyed Uchiha. She had watched him at Ichiraku, chopsticks moving like his hands didn't know how to be still, laughter spilling too easily.
She had felt the way the air shifted when he passed. The way something old and hateful flexed and then quieted again inside his small frame.
"He's younger than I expected," she said. "Smaller. Not well shielded by their defenses." She thought of the Third Hokage at the front of the exam briefing, shoulders bowed. "The old one tries to watch him. But his real armor is…elsewhere."
"Bonds," Sasori said, the word mildly distasteful.
Konan nodded. "The girl. The Uchiha. A few others circling the edges. They stand between him and the world without realizing it themselves."
"Then we break them first," Sasori said.
She let that sit. It was the efficient answer.
It was not necessarily the correct one.
"Leader will decide the order," she said instead. "Our task was to measure the storm, not chase the lightning."
At the mention of him, all three of them shifted, a subtle recalibration. The man in the tower of rain. The one who could make entire countries feel like the world had narrowed to a single god's heartbeat.
Konan reached into her sleeve and drew out a square of paper that had not been there a moment ago.
It unfolded as it left her fingers, growing, sprouting wings and a tail. Seal script flowed over it in tight, black curves—summarized routes, patrol gaps, names, impressions.
She whispered to it once.
The bird flared, then burst.
A cloud of smaller paper shards spiraled up, catching moonlight, coalescing into a flock. They climbed into the sky in a wide arc, then narrowed to a single point high above, vanishing into nothing.
Far away, rain would strike a different rooftop a fraction harder. A man would close his eyes and see what she had seen.
"We've seen enough," Konan said softly, more to herself than to the others. "This village believes it is safe."
"Good," Sasori murmured, watching the last scrapes of paper dissolve into the night. "Art is most beautiful when it destroys an illusion of permanence."
Kakuzu grunted. "Just remember that illusions pay well," he said. "A village this fat on contracts is worth more to us alive than as rubble. For now."
"For now," Sasori echoed, amused.
Konan looked one last time at Konoha.
Children were bleeding in its forest. Old scars had been torn open. Somewhere in the branches, a girl with ink on her fingers was refusing to leave two unconscious boys behind.
The village glowed and hummed and slept, unaware that three shadows on a cliff had weighed its defenses and found them wanting.
Konan turned away first.
Paper rustled around her as she stepped back from the cliff's edge, her cloak drinking in the night. Sasori followed, footsteps light, already thinking about how to pose the Leaf's fall one day. Kakuzu came last, counting profits in his head, always.
Above them, the sky stayed empty and quiet.
Somewhere beyond sight, rain began to fall.