The world sounded like it was being chewed on.
Above us, the ceiling groaned—a deep, tectonic screech of timber snapping under the weight of something that had no business existing on top of a building. Dust rained down in thick, choking curtains. It tasted like old limestone and centuries of neglect.
"Move, move, move!" Naruto yelled, his voice barely cutting through the roar.
I didn't need the encouragement. My feet were already scrambling for purchase on the tilting staircase. The entire east wing of Tanzaku Castle was listing to the side like a sinking ship, pushed by the massive coils of the purple snake crushing the life out of the keep.
I gripped the railing. It vibrated so hard it made my teeth hurt.
My sensory perception was useless. Usually, chakra looked like colors to me—neon spikes for panic, muddy darks for pain1. Right now? It was just static. White noise. The sheer volume of chakra being thrown around by the three monsters outside was washing out everything else. It felt like trying to hear a whisper while standing inside a jet engine.
We hit the landing and skidded around a corner. A chunk of masonry the size of a vending machine slammed into the floor behind us, punching a hole straight through to the basement.
Naruto didn't even flinch. He just kept running, orange jacket flashing through the gray dust like a signal flare.
I scrambled after him, but for a second, the sheer scale of it choked me.
Up there, Orochimaru was laughing at the sky. Tsunade was punching history into gravel. Jiraiya was riding a toad the size of a mountain.
They were giants. They were the kind of people who got chapters in history books. They got statues carved into mountains. They broke things, and the world rearranged itself around the wreckage.
And me?
I vaulted over a splintered beam, my breath hitching in my chest.
I was just trying not to get stepped on.
My pockets were full of paper tags. My hands were stained with ink. I didn't have a giant toad. I didn't have a demon fox. I had a notebook and a lot of anxiety.
Big things get remembered, a bitter voice whispered in the back of my head. Big things change the world. You're just running in the cracks.
The floor lurched again. Naruto grabbed the back of my vest and hauled me upright before I could slide into a wall.
"Upstairs!" he shouted, pointing toward the main keep. "If we get high enough, maybe we can knock the snake off!"
I looked at him. He really believed that. He believed we could just run up there and shove a kaiju.
I wished I had his blindness. I just saw the math. And the math said we were ants fighting a boot.
Naruto slammed his shoulder into the heavy oak door, bursting out onto the third-floor landing. The air here was clearer, but the noise was worse—the hissing of the giant snake was loud enough to rattle his bones.
He looked around wildly. The hallway was wide, lined with suits of armor that were currently rattling like they were haunted.
He needed something big. He needed something loud.
He spun on his heel to face Sylvie. She was leaning against the wall, adjusting her glasses, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath2. She looked pale. Smaller than usual.
"Sylvie!" Naruto shouted. "This place—it's got plumbing, right? Like, big pipes?"
She blinked at him, confused. "Probably? It's a castle, Naruto. It mostly has buckets."
"But water!" He gestured frantically with his hands, miming a massive wave. "You do the water thing! If we get to the roof, can you summon a flood? Like—WHOOSH—and wash the snake off the tower?"
He had the image in his head perfectly. Sylvie slamming her hands down, a massive tidal wave erupting from the windows, crashing into Manda and knocking the purple jerk into the forest. It would be awesome. It would be just like the Toad Boss.
Sylvie stared at him. Her expression went flat.
"A flood," she repeated.
"Yeah! A huge one! Like the mist guy, Zabuza!"
"Naruto," she said, her voice tight. "I can't make a flood."
Naruto stopped bouncing. "Huh?"
"I can't generate water," she said, pushing off the wall. She held up her hands, showing him her empty palms. "I need a source. And even if I had one... I can't move that much volume. I'm not Zabuza. I'm not the Second Hokage."
She looked down at the floor, at the dust swirling around her sandals.
"I can make a puddle," she said quietly. "If the conditions are right. Maybe a damp spot."
Naruto stared at her.
A puddle.
The monsters outside were crushing buildings. Orochimaru was laughing. And Sylvie—his teammate, the smartest person he knew—was talking about puddles.
It wasn't disappointment in her. It was a sudden, hot flash of anger at the world.
"That's it?" Naruto snapped.
Sylvie flinched. She pulled her arms in, crossing them over her chest like she was trying to hide.
The motion made the anger spike hotter. It wasn't aimed at her, but it was coming out that way. He stomped his foot.
"Why is Anko-sensei teaching you weird tricks?" he shouted, waving his arms at the collapsing ceiling. "Kakashi-sensei taught Sasuke the Chidori! Pervy Sage is teaching me the Rasengan! Those are finishers! Those are big!"
He pointed at Sylvie, frustration boiling over.
"Anko-sensei keeps giving you tags and... and wire! She should be teaching you how to wreck stuff! She should be making you strong!"
The words hung in the dusty air.
Sylvie didn't yell back. She didn't make a snarky comment. She just went very, very still. Her face didn't look angry. It looked resigned. Like he had just confirmed something she'd been telling herself all day.
I'm weak.
Naruto saw the look and felt his stomach drop through the floor.
Crap.
"No," Naruto stammered, stepping forward. "No, that's not—I didn't mean—"
He gritted his teeth. Why was talking so hard? Why did words always come out wrong when it mattered?
He grabbed her shoulders. She stiffened, but she didn't pull away.
"I'm not saying you're weak," Naruto said fiercely, shaking her slightly. "I'm saying she should know better! You're Sylvie! You figured out Haku's mirrors! You saved me in the Forest of Death!"
He looked her dead in the eye.
"You're way stronger than a puddle," he insisted, his voice cracking with the intensity of his belief. "You're gonna be amazing. And if Anko isn't showing you how to be a giant yet, then... then she's blind! But you gotta believe it, okay? Because I do!"
Sylvie stared at him. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses.
For a second, the roar of the battle outside faded.
"I believe it," Naruto said again, softer this time. "So don't you dare look at the floor."
Sylvie swallowed. She took a breath.
"It's not a puddle," she whispered. "It's a domain."
"Exactly!" Naruto grinned, though he had no idea what that meant. "A domain! That sounds way cooler! Now let's go kick a snake!"
"A domain," Naruto repeated, testing the word. He grinned, and for a second, the crushing weight of the castle felt lighter. "Yeah. That sounds tough. Do that."
He let go of my shoulders. The heat of his hands lingered on my vest, a phantom weight.
I looked at him, really looked at him. His face was streaked with soot, his whiskers stood out against his pale skin, and his eyes were burning with that impossible, infinite energy.
He hadn't apologized for snapping. He hadn't said, It's okay that you're weak, Sylvie. He hadn't offered to carry me or hide me.
He had looked at my limits and said: I don't believe you.
He wasn't offering reassurance. He was offering expectation. He was looking at me—the girl with the small chakra reserves, the girl with the ink stains, the girl who was terrified of giants—and deciding that I was someone who could stand next to him.
It was terrifying. It was heavier than the ceiling.
But it also made something click deep in my chest.
I looked at my hands. They were trembling, but not from fear anymore.
What if chakra isn't just output? I thought, the idea sharp and sudden. The giants outside... they win by pouring more power into the world than it can hold. They break things.
But I wasn't a giant. I couldn't pour.
What if it's refusal?
What if I didn't need to drown the snake? What if I just needed to refuse to let it move where it wanted?
I adjusted my glasses. The static in my vision cleared, just a fraction.
"Okay," I said. My voice was steady. "Let's go."
We didn't get three steps before the hallway lurched violently to the left. A support beam groaned and sheared in half, dropping a curtain of dust between us and the stairs.
"Crap!" Naruto yelled. "We need backup! We need something big!"
He didn't hesitate. He bit his thumb, hard, and slammed his hand onto the tilting floorboards.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
I braced myself, half-expecting another mountain-sized toad to crush us both. I expected Gamabunta's blade or a massive webbed foot.
Instead, there was a small, polite poof.
When the smoke cleared, a small orange toad sat on the floorboards. He blinked up at us, looking bored.
"Yo," Gamakichi said.
Naruto stared at him. "Gamakichi?! I meant to call the Boss!"
"Pops is busy," Gamakichi deadpanned, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling with a thumb. "Fighting a giant snake. You might have noticed the noise."
Naruto groaned, grabbing his head. "But we need help! We're gonna get squished!"
Gamakichi ignored him. He turned his bulbous eyes toward me. He looked me up and down, taking in the pink ribbon, the glasses, and the dusty combat gear.
"Who's this?" the toad asked. "She's cute."
Naruto froze.
His face went from pale to tomato-red in a time that defied physics. His arms started flailing in a panic that had nothing to do with the collapsing castle.
"SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" Naruto screamed, his voice cracking three times.
Gamakichi blinked, looking genuinely confused. "Wh—that's not what I said. I just said she was—"
"SHE'S JUST SYLVIE!" Naruto shouted, shaking his head so vigorously I thought it might fly off. "SHE'S A TEAMMATE! IT'S NOT LIKE THAT! SHUT UP! JUST PROTECT SYLVIE-CHAN!"
"Okay, okay, geez," Gamakichi muttered. "Touchy."
Naruto didn't wait for a rebuttal. He spun around, pointing down the hall where the rubble had cleared slightly.
"I'm gonna go find Anko-sensei and the four-eyed jerk!" he yelled. "You guys catch up! Don't die!"
And then he bolted. He sprinted away, leaving a trail of dust and unresolved teenage panic in his wake.
I stood there for a second in the silence.
I looked down at the toad.
Gamakichi looked up at me. He let out a long, suffering sigh.
"At least you only deal with it when he summons you," I said.
"Fair point," Gamakichi croaked. He hopped closer to my boot. "So, Boss Lady. What's the plan? You got snacks?"
"No snacks," I said, pushing off the wall. "Just a lot of stairs."
I started running, Gamakichi hopping alongside me with surprising speed. He wasn't big, and he wasn't a tank, but having him there—a steady, rhythmic thump-thump-thump beside me—felt grounding.
We rounded the corner and found the central spiral staircase. It wound upward into the gloom, circling a central open shaft that dropped all the way to the foundation.
I paused, looking at the curve of the stone.
It was a spiral. A funnel.
My "puddle" jutsu—the Stillwater Domain —required a contained space to work best. It worked by dampening motion, by equalizing force.
I looked at the stairs. I looked at the shaft.
If I couldn't make a flood... I could make a slide.
"Gamakichi," I said, a plan snapping into focus. "Do you have sticky feet?"
"I'm a toad, lady. Sticky is kind of my brand."
"Good," I said, pulling a stack of tags from my pouch. "Because we're about to make this floor very, very unreliable."