(1st Person - Machi's POV)
The feast was a silent, joyless affair. We, the "graduates," sat at long stone tables, shoveling food into our mouths with mechanical efficiency. The rich flavors of roasted pork and sweet rice balls tasted like ash on my tongue. Across from me, Judai ate with the same detached precision, his movements clean, his expression blank. He was fueling the machine. That's all.
After the meal, the hawk-masked jonin dismissed us. "Be back by dawn," he'd said. Most of the other new recruits, the other ghosts, simply filtered back toward the barracks. Their "leave" was nothing more than a change in location within the dungeon; they had nowhere else to go. Their old lives had been burned away.
But I did. I had a home. And more importantly, Judai had a home, even if it was just a dingy, empty apartment.
I stood up and walked over to him. He didn't look up until I was standing directly in front of him. His blue eyes were voids.
"Let's go," I said, my voice sounding louder than I intended in the quiet hall.
He didn't respond. He didn't move. He just stared through me. My heart ached. The old Judai would have already been halfway out the door, yelling about dango or complaining about my bossiness.
My hand trembled as I reached out and took his. His skin was cool to the touch, his hand limp in mine. I squeezed, trying to send some warmth, some life, into him. There was no response.
"Come on," I said again, my voice softer this time, and gently tugged.
For a moment, he resisted. Then, something seemed to click into place. He stood up, his movements stiff and obedient, and let me lead him out of the hall. I had to drag him by the hand at first, his feet shuffling on the stone floor. Eventually, he just followed, a silent, black-clad shadow trailing in my wake.
Emerging from the hidden entrance into the pre-dawn light of Konoha was a shock to the system. After months of stale, recycled air and flickering torchlight, the cool, damp air of the world above felt impossibly fresh. The sky was a pale, bruised purple, the first hints of sunrise painting the eastern horizon. The village looked the same, but it felt... different. Or maybe I was the one who was different. The familiar storefronts, the quiet residential streets—they seemed like a scene from someone else's life, a life I could no longer touch.
My feet, acting on instinct, led us to the dango shop. It wasn't open yet, but we sat on the bench outside, just as we used to.
"I'll buy you dango," I said, trying to force a cheerful tone. "As much as you want. My treat."
No response. He just sat there, staring straight ahead, his hands resting on his knees.
I kept talking to him as we walked later, my voice a nervous chatter filling the silence. I told him about the other recruits, about the food, about how stupid our new masks looked. Anything to fill the void he left behind. He gave me nothing. No nods, no grunts, not even a flicker of acknowledgment. It was like talking to a wall. A walking, breathing wall that used to be my best friend.
Desperation began to claw at my throat. I had to try something, anything, to get a reaction. I had to see if he was still in there. I leaned in close, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"You know," I began, "I've been thinking about your goal. Your dream for the future. You never did get to see your grand plan come to fruition. All those kunoichi in yoga pants."
I watched his face, searching for any sign. For a split second, I thought I saw it. The corner of his eye twitched, a tiny, infinitesimal movement. But it was there. My heart leaped.
I pressed on, feeling a blush creep up my neck at my own boldness. "These new pants are pretty tight, you know," I said, gesturing to my own black uniform pants. "Not yoga pants, but close. I bet you'd like them if you actually bothered to look." I leaned closer. "I could even… let you get a feel."
Nothing. The flicker was gone. His face was a blank canvas again.
I was getting more and more embarrassed, my own words making me cringe. The streets were busier now, and I could feel the strange looks from passersby. They probably thought I was some degenerate, hitting on a boy who clearly wasn't interested. I felt a flash of bitter irony. This was how people used to look at Judai. Now it was my turn. It felt weird. It felt wrong.
"My, what a bold young couple," a woman at a nearby vegetable stall commented to her friend, her voice dripping with disapproval. "No shame at all."
My face turned a shade of crimson I didn't know was possible. Couple?! We haven't even been on a date!
Judai remained silent, but his hand, which had been resting on his knee, was now clenched into a tight fist. He had heard. He understood. The conditioning was strong, but it wasn't absolute. He was still in there. Somewhere.
I had found a crack in the wall. It was a tiny, insignificant crack, but it was a start. And I would hammer away at it with every ounce of my being until the whole damn thing came crumbling down. A new mission had formed in my mind, one that had nothing to do with Root or Danzō. I was going to get my best friend back. No matter what it took.
I finally broke. The desperation, the frustration, and the soul-crushing grief of it all just came pouring out. "Judai, say something! Please! Yell at me, call me a Snot-bubble ugly girl, punch me! Anything! Just be here!"
He slowly turned his head and looked at me. The emptiness in his eyes seemed to deepen, and for a horrible moment, I thought he was going to attack me, that his conditioning would see my emotional outburst as a threat.
But instead, his lips parted. His voice, when it came, was a dry, unused rasp.
"The mission," he said, each word sounding like it was carved from stone. "The mission is absolute. Emotion is a flaw."
He stood up, turned, and began walking back in the direction of the Root entrance, his movements steady and purposeful. He was leaving me. He was going back to the darkness.
I sat there on the bench, watching him go, my heart shattering into a million pieces.
"No!" I cried, scrambling to my feet. I started to run after him, to grab his arm, to drag him back into the light even if I had to do it kicking and screaming. But then, in the corner of my eye, I saw it. A flash of sun-blond hair and a shock of gravity-defying silver, walking down a street bathed in the warm, orange glow of the setting sun.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
It was our former sensei, Minato. And beside him, looking up at him with that quiet, smug little corpse-face, was Hatake Kakashi. They weren't holding hands, but they might as well have been. The setting sun cast them in a golden, idyllic light, a perfect picture of a master and his golden boy. They were laughing, Minato saying something that made Kakashi's single visible eye crinkle at the corner like he just told the world's most self-important joke.
Then, a fragment of conversation from a passing pair of chunin drifted to my ears.
"...heard the Hokage assigned him to Minato-sama personally..."
"...a private student. Of course. You can't let a talent like the White Fang's son languish..."
"...a true prodigy..."
The world narrowed to a single, blood-red point.
It was their fault.
It was all their fucking fault.
First, Kakashi. That smug, half-lidded sewer rat with a superiority complex. That "prodigy." That stiff-jawed little bastard with a stick so far up his ass it probably poked out his skull. His selfish, cold-blooded bullshit is what cost us everything. That walking trauma response masquerading as a shinobi never even tried to be a teammate—just looked down his nose like we were the gum under his sandals. And now look where that got us: dumped into the meat grinder, prime recruits for Danzō's goddamn child soldier mill.
Then my eyes locked onto Minato. Oh, Minato. Pretty-boy sunshine wrapped in war crimes. That soft-spoken, doe-eyed coward. That lying, smiling bastard with golden hair and a heart full of fuck-all. "Kind." "Gentle." The Yellow Flash my ass—more like a spineless, golden-haired cheerleader for Konoha's hypocritical crap-fest. Failed us with a smile and a pat on the head, then swooped in and snatched up the little tin soldier that got us canned in the first place. Took him under his wing like nothing happened, like we were just broken toys left on the battlefield.
These two. These two festering asswipes. They took Judai. My best friend. My brother. The only person who kept me anchored while the rest of this village tried to grind me down. And they broke him. They turned him into that... that empty, silent thing. That puppet wearing his skin.
A rage I didn't know I was capable of boiled over inside me, hot and alive, a dragon roaring in my veins. All I wanted was to walk up and ram my kunai so deep into Kakashi's other eye he'd shit lightning. I wanted to rip the mask off Minato's smiling face and show the village what a hollow, backstabbing coward looked like under the golden halo.
But I didn't.
One: Minato could end me in half a second. No contest. I'd be a twitching smear on the pavement before I could even spit the first curse.
And two—the one that tasted like bile in my mouth—they were comrades. That word, once warm and full of meaning, now felt like a leash wrapped tight around my throat.
So I stood there, fists clenched, jaw grinding like I could break my teeth, shaking with fury. And I made a vow. Not some cute, sentimental oath. A promise, like a blade between my ribs.
I would get my revenge.
I'd get strong enough, dangerous enough, crazy enough to carve my truth into the bones of this village. To make them remember what they did. To make them pay.
One day.