The order to disperse was a death knell. I walked back to my "room"—the cold, sterile mockery of my childhood—in a daze. My mind was a roaring, chaotic void. They were separating us. They were sending Judai into the clutches of the one man guaranteed to treat him as nothing more than a fascinating, expendable science experiment.
I began to pack my mission gear with numb, mechanical efficiency. Spools of my specialized chakra-infused wire, as thin as silk and as strong as steel. Pouches of senbon, some coated in paralytic agents, others sharpened to a monomolecular edge. Vials of Nonō-sensei's expertly crafted poisons and their corresponding antidotes. Bandages, blood-clotting agents, soldier pills. I was a walking arsenal of death and healing, a perfect contradiction forged in Root's crucible. Each item I packed was a reminder of what I had become, and each one felt like a stone pulling me further into the abyss.
The door to my cell slid open without a sound.
I didn't need to look up. I knew that silent, dead-eyed presence. It was Shin. He stood there, a 23-year-old man who looked like he had never experienced a single moment of joy in his entire life. His face was a blank slate, his posture radiating a cold, indifferent authority.
"Follow me," he commanded, his voice as flat and gray as the stone walls around us.
I didn't ask why. In Root, you don't ask questions. You just obey. I secured my pack and followed him through the labyrinthine tunnels. He led me not to a briefing room or a training hall, but to a small, rarely used chamber near the archives. The sign on the door read "Personnel Identification & Record Finalization." It was a bureaucratic tomb, the place where a Root agent's old life was officially cataloged and buried forever.
Inside, the room was stark and utilitarian. A single metal table, a chair, and a large, bulky camera apparatus on a tripod. And standing by the far wall, his back ramrod straight, his expression as vacant as ever, was Judai.
My breath caught in my throat.
"Lord Danzō has granted you a final dispensation," Shin said, his voice devoid of any inflection. "You have five minutes to finalize your operational synchronicity before deployment to your separate fronts." He gestured to Judai. "Begin."
He didn't leave. He stood by the door, his arms crossed, a silent, masked warden observing his prisoners' last moments together. The old Machi would have been furious, self-conscious, defiant. The new Machi didn't care. His presence was irrelevant. The only thing in the world that mattered was the boy standing in front of me.
I didn't waste a second. I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in the rough fabric of his black uniform jacket. I hugged him tightly, desperately, trying to pour all of my fear, my grief, my unwavering loyalty into that single point of contact.
For a moment, he was just a statue, rigid and unresponsive in my arms. But I held on, my own body trembling.
"Listen to me, Judai," I whispered into his chest, my voice a raw, urgent torrent of words. "I don't care what they've done to you. I don't care what they've put in your head. You are still you. You're still the idiot who loves dango and makes terrible jokes. You're still my best friend. Do you hear me?"
I pulled back just enough to look up at his face. His blue eyes are now a dark sun yellow were still empty, but I focused on them, trying to bore through the layers of conditioning with the force of my will alone.
"We are going to survive this," I promised, my hands gripping his arms. "You're going to survive Orochimaru. I'm going to survive the desert. And when this stupid war is over, we are going to find each other. We're going home. Both of us. That's a promise. That is our new mission. Do you understand?"
He didn't speak. He didn't nod. But I saw it. A single tear, tracing a clean, silent path from the corner of his eye down his impassive cheek. It was a glitch in the machine. A ghost of the boy I knew, crying out from the drowning deep. It was everything.
"Time."
Shin's voice was a blade that severed the moment.
I stepped back, my heart feeling like a lead weight in my chest. Five minutes. It wasn't enough. A lifetime wouldn't be enough.
But before we could be led away, Shin moved. He stepped toward the camera, his movements precise. "One final record is required," he said. He held up the camera, its single glass eye staring at us. "A photograph. For identification purposes."
A cold dread washed over me. This wasn't standard procedure. A creepy, unnatural smile touched Shin's lips, a grotesque twisting of his features that sent alarm bells screaming in my head. This was something else. A memento? A threat?
"Fox, stand here," he commanded, positioning Judai against the blank wall. The flash was blinding. "Cat. Your turn."
I stood where Judai had been, the ghost of his presence still lingering in the air. Another flash.
Shin worked the camera with practiced efficiency, and a few moments later, two small, square photographs emerged. He took them and walked toward us. He handed me the picture of Judai. His face was a perfect, blank mask, his eyes empty voids. It was a picture of a stranger. He then handed the other photograph, the one of me, to Judai.
Judai took it, his fingers closing around the small square of paper. He just held it, his gaze fixed on it, but I knew he wouldn't know what to do with it. On a mission, a loose piece of paper was a liability. It could get wet, lost, or worse, found. They were giving us these pictures, these memories, knowing we couldn't possibly keep them. It was another one of their cruel, psychological games.
I would not let them win.
"I need his," I said, my voice sharp and demanding.
Shin tilted his head. "Explain."
"He will lose it," I stated, stepping toward Judai. "His conditioning makes him prioritize the mission above all else. A personal item is a non-essential. He will discard it at the first sign of inconvenience. I will not allow that." Before Shin could object, I gently took the photograph of myself from Judai's unresisting hand. Now I had both.
Thinking fast, my mind racing through my inventory, an idea sparked. It was crazy, born of desperation and the skills they themselves had hammered into me.
I pulled a kunai from my thigh pouch. The blade was a familiar, comforting weight in my hand. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I unspooled a length of my chakra-infused wire, pulling it taut between my fingers. It hummed with contained energy, a razor's edge finer than any blade.
With surgical precision, I used the wire to slice into the center of the kunai's ringed handle, carving a small, perfectly square recess into the solid steel. I then took the photograph of Judai, trimmed it down with the same wire, and fitted it perfectly into the recess.
Next, I reached into one of my medical pouches and pulled out a small, curved glass lens from a diagnostic scope—essentially a small, durable tube. It was meant for examining wounds, but I saw a new purpose for it. Again, my wire became a master craftsman's tool. I sliced a thin, perfectly curved disc from the glass tube. It fit precisely over the photograph in the kunai's ring, a clear, protective cover. A perfect, makeshift picture frame.
Finally, I took another length of wire, looping it through the kunai's ring, twisting and braiding it with practiced speed until it formed a strong, thin, and durable chain.
The entire process took less than sixty seconds. It was a blur of focused, desperate creation.
I stepped in front of Judai, my heart hammering. "Don't move," I whispered. I gently placed the makeshift necklace around his neck, tucking the kunai with his own face on it under the collar of his uniform. It lay flat against his chest, hidden and safe. "So you don't forget," I murmured, my fingers brushing against his skin.
Then, I did the same for myself, creating an identical necklace with my photograph of him. The cold steel of the kunai against my own skin was a strange comfort, a physical reminder of my promise. His face, hidden against my heart.
Shin had watched the entire process in absolute silence. I had taken an extra minute, a flagrant breach of his rigid timetable. I expected a punishment, a harsh reprimand.
"It is done," I said, turning to face him, my chin held high in defiance.
He just stared at us, his head tilted in that unnerving way of his. He should have been angry. He should have been enforcing protocol. But he just... watched. I had no idea why he had allowed it. Was it possible that even he, the perfect Root soldier, felt a flicker of something? Pity? Respect? Impossible. It had to be a tactical calculation I couldn't comprehend.
He finally broke the silence. "Your departure time has not changed. Move out."
He turned and strode from the room, leaving Judai and me alone for one final second. I looked at Judai, at the kunai resting against his chest. He looked at the one against mine. For the first time, his vacant eyes seemed to focus, just for a moment, on the memento.
Then he turned and followed Shin, his leash now adorned with a single, defiant link to the boy he used to be.
(Shin's Perspective - Hallway)
Shin walked down the cold stone corridor, his footsteps the only sound. His mind, usually a clean, orderly slate of mission parameters and tactical assessments, was... cluttered.
Deviation from protocol: One minute, fourteen seconds.
Reason: Unsanctioned creation of personal mementos.
Action Taken: None.
The logic was faulty. The girl's actions were sentimental, a clear violation of core Root doctrine. The boy's passive acceptance was a failure of his conditioning. He should have stopped them. He should have confiscated the items. It would have been the efficient, logical thing to do.
So why hadn't he?
He couldn't explain the impulse. It was an anomaly, a glitch in his own perfect conditioning. Watching the girl, her hands moving with the precision of a master surgeon and the desperation of a cornered animal, crafting a promise out of steel and paper... it had triggered a response that was not in his training manuals. He had no idea why he had allowed it. Was he forming an attachment to these two chaotic, broken children?
Impossible. He purged the thought. It was an emotional contagion. A flaw.
He would report the incident to Lord Danzō, of course. He would report it in full detail, as was his duty. Lord Danzō would likely find it amusing. A child's desperate attempt to hold onto a ghost. It didn't matter in the grand scheme. Danzō's plans were absolute. The war would grind them down. The necklaces would eventually be just another piece of metal on a corpse.
And yet... as Shin walked toward Danzō's chambers to deliver his report, he could still feel the phantom weight of the girl's defiant gaze. It was a feeling he could not categorize. And that, more than anything, was deeply unsettling.