The roar of the waterfall didn't stop once we hit the bank. It stayed in my ears—a heavy, churning white noise that muffled the world. I knelt on the river-slicked volcanic rock, my fingers pressed into the dark green fabric of Todoroki's sleeve.
My hands were useless. They shook with a rhythmic, violent tremor I couldn't suppress, the cold shock of the river having stolen the fine motor control from my fingers. I tried to loop a thread of chakra to knit the jagged tear in Todoroki's shoulder, but the light flickered and died.
Zzzz-pt.
A surge of nausea hit my throat, the adrenaline dump leaving me lightheaded and hollow.
Beside me, Naruto's teeth were a frantic percussion—chatter-click-chatter. He was hunched over, his wet orange jacket writhing—shlup-shlup—as he shivered.
"It should be safe... to move," Todoroki said. His voice was brittle, his jaw locked tight against the cold. He scanned the river, eyes tracking the empty teal water where the boat had been. He looked back toward the forest—a wall of Sakhalin firs bleeding into a silver-grey maze of fog. "Unfortunately, this trash—" he jerked his chin at Gantetsu, who sat motionless on a mossy mound, "-seems to have gotten us lost."
"Noooo!" Naruto ruffed his hair, spraying cold droplets. "I'm wet! I'm hungry! I wanted to fight bad guys, this sucks!"
I stood up, my knees letting out a sharp crack. My calves burned, the muscle fibers tight and protesting the sudden transition from freezing water to a vertical climb. I yanked my navy gaiter higher, the wet fabric sticking to my face with a suffocating suction.
"This is your fault," I muttered, my voice sounding flat and distant in my own ears. I flicked Naruto's headband.
Tink.
"You jinxed us."
"No! You probably called the wire-guy cute so he followed us!" Naruto rubbed his head, his face a purple-tinted scowl in the twilight.
"What?!" I grabbed his cheeks, squeezing the cold, rubbery skin. I could feel his pulse racing under my palms—hyper-vigilance masking the exhaustion. "You were there! He was trying to turn us into a meat-platter!"
"Owww! Joking! Just joking!"
Todoroki let out a long, weary groan, his fingers white-knuckled on the hilt of his chokutō. "Of course. I get stuck with the children."
"I can lead us back," Gantetsu said.
The baritone of his voice was too steady. I watched his respiratory rate; it hadn't spiked once since we hit the shore. He sat there with the iron shackles resting heavily on his knees, a silent monolith in the mist.
We moved into the thicket, and the world immediately narrowed. I stumbled over a protruding root, my foot misjudging the elevation by two inches. I started to calculate the distance back to the village—six miles, at four miles an hour, plus elevation...—but the numbers dissolved before I could sum them. I shook my head, my vision swimming.
"Stay sharp," Gantetsu murmured. "The Shinobazu don't just hunt. They build."
The bamboo was rimed with frost, clicking like skeletal fingers—scritch-clack, scritch-clack—whenever the wind caught the stalks. Naruto stopped suddenly, head cocking to the side. "Wait... do you hear that? The clicking, it's—"
I didn't hear anything but the wind. My ears were still ringing from the falls.
"Wire," Gantetsu interrupted, his hand raised.
Naruto was already lunging for a cluster of dark, frosted berries hanging from a low branch. "Food!"
"Naruto, don't—"
Gantetsu moved with a sudden, heavy grace. He "accidentally" stumbled, his shoulder catching Naruto in the chest. Naruto tripped, his hand flailing and snagging a nearly invisible line rigged between the bushes.
THWIP-SPLAT.
A cloud of purple sludge detonated from the bush, coating Naruto in a thick, pressurized slime that smelled of fermented sugar and sharp vinegar.
"My eyes! I'm blind!" Naruto thrashed, wiping at his face.
"It's a marking trap, Naruto," I said, my heart rate finally beginning to level out. I noticed Naruto was shaking less now; the humor was a coping reflex, a way to vent the pressure of the shipwreck. "You probably called the berries cute so they followed you."
We kept moving, but the forest floor had become a minefield. Gantetsu kicked a stone into a patch of grass—plink-thud. The earth swallowed the rock instantly, revealing a pit trap. Todoroki tried to pivot away, but his ankle twisted on a loose stone. He let out a sharp, hissed breath. I watched him limp for the next twenty paces, his weight shifting awkwardly to his left side. The silence between us lengthened, heavy and sharp.
A mile deeper, I signaled a halt. I pointed to a Sakhalin fir riddled with perfect, dark circles. "Woodpecker holes?"
"Darts," Gantetsu noted. "Pressure plates in the roots. Circle wide."
As we looped around the tree, Naruto leaned toward me. "He's actually helping us," he whispered. "Todoroki's being a jerk, but Gantetsu's keeping us from getting spiked."
Todoroki heard it. He stopped in a clearing. He didn't turn immediately; he stood perfectly still for three seconds, his breath catching in a ragged, hitching rhythm.
He spun on Gantetsu, his weight shifting unsteadily on his injured ankle, a wince cutting through his expression. "Helping? You think this monster is helping?"
The moisture from the fog clung to my lashes, turning the trees into blurred, grey ghosts. The metallic scent of iron from Todoroki's silver-gray bracers seemed to sharpen as he gripped his sword. He was breathing in short, shallow bursts. His fingers were wrapped around a charm hanging off the hilt of his sword I only now noticed: a small wooden fish, half brown and half charred black.
"This man kidnapped my younger brother, Akio, after his crew slaughtered our parents," Todoroki said, his voice trembling with a decade of bile. "They had already committed several robbery-homicides before they landed on my home."
Gantetsu didn't look up. He flinched at the name Akio—a micro-spasm of the eyelid.
For a moment, he wasn't in the clearing with us.
"I watched him carry Akio away into the dark," Todoroki whispered. "The Shinobazu obliterated my world."
I looked at Gantetsu, my stomach still feeling hollow from the chakra drain. "Is it true?"
"Yes," Gantetsu whispered. There was a half-second processing delay.
"Why?" Naruto stepped forward, his fists balled. "Why did you take his brother?"
Gantetsu stared at the glowing white lichen on a fallen log, refusing to answer.
"Tell us! Why hide it?!" Naruto waved his arms. "If you're such a big-shot bandit, why aren't you laughing? Why are you saving us from pits?"
Gantetsu's silence wasn't the silence of a killer. It was leaden.
"I abandoned them," Gantetsu finally said. The words seemed to cost him physical energy, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his chains. "I turned myself in. That is why I was in that cell."
A heavy, airless silence followed. I watched a bead of moisture roll down Gantetsu's temple. Naruto's hands slowly unclenched, his eyes darting between the prisoner and the swordsman.
"Is this true?" I asked Todoroki. "Did he turn himself in?"
Todoroki spat on the moss, his expression pinched with disgust. "Yes. But so what? He's a criminal. A murderer."
"No," Gantetsu said. He looked Todoroki in the eye for the first time. "They didn't come to the river to rescue me. They came to find out where I put the money I stole from the Shinrin mansion. They came to kill me once I told them."
Naruto's eyes shifted to Todorki and my hand instinctively touched my pouch.
I looked at the giant man, then back at Todoroki.
The "Forest Swordsman" hadn't loosened his grip on the chokutō; it had tightened. Yet Gantetsu refused to break the mutual gaze.
My chakra pool felt unstable, my hands steadier but still weak as the logic of the mission shifted beneath my feet. I tried to reach for my Fūma kunai, but my fingers were stiff with cold, the joints refusing to flex.
"Todoroki..." I whispered, my hand twitching toward my gaiter. He wasn't just a guard anymore; he was a hunter who had finally cornered his prey. "I don't think you're right about him."
The bamboo clicked louder as the fog thickened, visibility narrowing until the forest edge was a wall.
My ears were ringing, but the air grew still and freezing—a silver-grey maze swallowing the clearing.