The hallway didn't just shake; it convulsed.
A massive impact from outside—probably that damn toad slamming into the foundation—threw Anko sideways. She caught herself on a tapestry, her boots skidding on the stone floor. Dust rained down in a thick, gray curtain, coating her tongue with the taste of pulverized history. It tasted like ash and old blood, a flavor she hadn't realized she'd memorized until it hit the back of her throat.
Kabuto Yakushi stood at the end of the corridor, adjusting his glasses. He wasn't even sweating.
"You're slowing down, Anko-sensei," Kabuto said, his voice polite, clinical. "The Cursed Seal is getting heavy, isn't it? It remembers its master is close."
Anko spat a glob of blood onto the floor. The mark on her neck was burning like a coal, pulsing in time with the monstrous chakra she could feel radiating from the roof. It wasn't just pain; it was a directional pull, a hook buried in her nervous system trying to drag her upward to heel at his feet.
"Shut up," she snarled. "I'm going to peel that smirk off your face."
She lunged.
She didn't run; she flickered. She closed the distance in a heartbeat, ducking under a swipe of Kabuto's chakra scalpel that would have severed her hamstring. The blue energy hummed past her ear, smelling sharply of ozone and sterile hospital cleaners. She spun, using the momentum to slam her elbow toward his ribs.
Kabuto blocked it, but the force slid him backward.
Anko didn't let up. She flicked her wrists.
"Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!"
Four large snakes erupted from her sleeves, their jaws unhinged, fangs dripping with venom. They lashed out, seeking to bind Kabuto's limbs and sink their teeth into his throat. It was a technique designed for capture and torture. It was a technique designed by him.
Even casting it made her stomach turn, the chakra molding in her arms feeling slick and cold, a violation of her own biology that she had turned into a weapon.
Kabuto danced back, severing two of the snake heads with surgical precision. But the other two caught his ankle, tripping him.
He hit the floor but rolled instantly, coming up in a crouch. He looked at the severed snake heads twitching on the stone, then up at her. He smiled, and it was the coldest thing in the burning castle.
"Funny how his techniques still feel like home, isn't it?" Kabuto asked softly.
Anko froze. The snakes retracted into her sleeves with a wet slither. The sensation made her skin crawl. She rubbed her wrist against her hip, a frantic, unconscious motion to wipe away a slime that wasn't there. It felt like stuffing a piece of Orochimaru back inside her own body.
"I made them mine," Anko hissed, but her voice wavered.
"Did you?" Kabuto tilted his head. "Or are you just keeping his seat warm until he finds a better vessel? Like Sasuke. Like me."
The castle groaned again, a deep, structural scream that vibrated through the soles of Anko's boots.
Focus. Kill him.
She reached into her pouch and threw a spread of kunai. Kabuto dodged left—exactly where she wanted him.
It was a trap she used to teach genin. Simple. Brutal.
The kind of ugly, low-rank trick that killed flashy geniuses who forgot to watch their feet because they were too busy looking at the stars.
The kunai weren't meant to hit; they were anchors. Thin, nearly invisible wires trailed from the handles. As Kabuto sidestepped, Anko yanked the leads. The wires snapped taut, wrapping around Kabuto's torso and pinning his arms to his sides against a stone pillar.
"Gotcha," she growled.
She bit the wire, holding it taut in her teeth, and flashed through the hand seals. Tiger. Dragon.
She took a breath. Her lungs filled with heat. She could end it right here. One burst. Burn him to ash before he could cut the wires.
"Fire Release: Dragon Fire Technique!"
The chakra built in her chest, roaring to be let out. The fire traveled down the wire, a guided missile of incineration.
But then she looked at him.
Kabuto wasn't struggling. He was staring at her. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and for a split second, the glare hid his eyes. He looked young. He looked... tired.
A flash of memory superimposed itself over his face.
She saw Sylvie, ink-stained fingers trembling as she tried to learn a seal.
Pushing up those black glasses with a desperate, stubborn refusal to admit she was terrified of the power she was being asked to hold.
She saw Naruto, grinning desperately to hide how lonely he was.
She saw Sasuke, terrified and angry in a hospital bed.
She saw herself, ten years old, looking up at a pale man who promised to make her strong.
The memory wasn't sepia-toned; it was sharp, high-definition, and suffocating, the feeling of being a "warning label" before the ink had even dried.
Is he just another one?
The thought hit her like a physical blow. Is he a monster, or is he just what happens when Orochimaru gets to keep the student?
Did he ever have a family before he had a master?
Anko hesitated.
It was a fraction of a second. A micro-flinch of empathy in a killer's instinct.
But a fraction was all Kabuto needed.
He didn't cut the wire. He dislocated his own shoulder with a sickening pop, sliding his arm free of the bind just as the fire roared down the line. He didn't even grimace. It was purely mechanical, like watching a puppet unlatch a broken hinge to keep moving.
The flames slammed into the pillar.
BOOM.
The stone exploded. Smoke and fire engulfed the corridor, scorching the walls black.
Anko skidded back, shielding her eyes. "Damn it!"
When the smoke cleared, the pillar was slag. The wire was melted.
But Kabuto was gone.
Anko stood there, chest heaving, the heat of the failed jutsu stinging her lips. She stared at the empty space, the ghost of her hesitation hanging in the air like poison.
"Soft," she whispered to herself, furious. "You got soft, Anko."
The word tasted like sugar and knives, a sweetness she didn't deserve and a blade she had turned on herself.
She punched the wall, cracking the stone, and ran into the smoke.