The abandoned city of Sora-ku was a skeleton picked clean by time.
Sasuke Uchiha walked down the center of what used to be a bustling thoroughfare. Now, it was a canyon of crumbling concrete and rusted rebar. The wind howled through the hollowed-out windows of the skyscrapers, creating a low, mournful whistle that sounded like the city was breathing through a crushed throat.
Loose metal siding banged rhythmically against a skyscraper forty stories up—clang... clang... clang—a lonely, industrial metronome marking time.
He didn't look at the ruins. He looked straight ahead.
He had left the Habaki Uchiha card on his floor. He hadn't touched it. He hadn't thrown it away, but he hadn't put it in his pocket either. It was just... there. A reminder that people were thinking about him.
Distractions, Sasuke thought, his hand brushing the pouch at his hip. I don't need reminders. I need steel.
The pulverized concrete crunched under his sandals—grit-crunch—sending up puffs of grey dust that smelled of ancient dry rot.
A shadow detached itself from a pile of rubble.
"You walk loudly for an Uchiha," a voice purred.
Sasuke stopped. He didn't reach for a weapon. He knew the voice.
A calico cat wearing a small, ragged vest sat on top of a rusted vending machine.
Her claws scraped against the oxidizing metal—skreee—sending flakes of orange rust drifting down like snow.
Chainya.
"And you smell like a wet dog, Chainya," Sasuke retorted, his voice flat.
The cat narrowed its green eyes, flicking its tail. "Rude. Just like your brother. Follow me, Young Master. She is expecting you."
Chainya turned and leaped into an alleyway that was barely wide enough for a human. Sasuke followed, the shadows swallowing him whole.
The temperature dropped ten degrees instantly, the air in the alley damp and smelling of wet fur and mildew.
Nekobaa's shop wasn't a building; it was a burrow.
Located deep in the sublevels of a collapsed department store, the space was a chaotic hoard of ancient weaponry, scrolls, and cat towers. The air was thick, warm, and smelled aggressively of dried bonito flakes, mothballs, and gun oil.
A low, vibrating hum filled the room—the collective purring of two dozen cats hidden in the shadows, sounding like a idling engine.
Nekobaa sat on a pile of cushions in the center of the room. She was tiny, shriveled, and draped in layers of patterned heavy fabric. Her hair was a white frizzy cloud, and her eyes were sharp beads of obsidian buried in wrinkles.
Her pipe made a wet, sucking sound—sppp—as she inhaled, the glowing ember illuminating the bottom half of her face in harsh orange light.
Two cats—Hina and Momo—were curled up on her lap, asleep.
"Sasuke," Nekobaa croaked, taking a drag from a long, thin pipe. Smoke curled around her head like a halo. "You're getting taller. You have his eyes."
Sasuke stiffened. "I'm here for supplies. Not nostalgia."
"Is that so?" Nekobaa cackled softly. "I thought maybe you were here to finish the collection. The 'Paw Encyclopedia' is still sitting on the shelf, collecting dust. There are still many prints to find, little kitten."
Sasuke felt a flash of irritation hot enough to burn.
The Paw Encyclopedia. Itachi's game. A stupid, childish scavenger hunt designed to keep his annoying little brother busy while the prodigy bought weapons for the coup.
"I am not a child," Sasuke said, his voice dropping an octave. "And I am not playing games. I need wire. High-tensile. Chakra-conductive. And the wrist mechanism."
Nekobaa studied him. She saw the burns on his left arm from the Raiga fight. She saw the tension in his shoulders. She saw the darkness that was slowly eating the boy she used to give candy to.
"Tamaki," Nekobaa called out, not looking away from Sasuke.
A girl popped up from behind a stack of crates. Tamaki. She had long brown hair and looked terrified, clutching a kitten to her chest.
"Fetch the Type-4 Wire," Nekobaa ordered. "And the hidden shuriken rig. The one we designed for the ANBU black ops."
Tamaki's sandals slapped frantically against the floorboards—pat-pat-pat—fading into the back room.
Tamaki nodded frantically and scrambled off into the back room.
"You are arming yourself for something heavy," Nekobaa noted, tapping ash from her pipe. "That burn on your arm... lightning?"
"Raiga Kurosuki," Sasuke said. "He's dead."
"I see." Nekobaa reached into her robes and pulled out a small jar of green ointment. She tossed it to him. "Aloe and crushed medicinal herbs. It stops the scarring. Use it."
Sasuke caught the jar. "Put it on my tab."
"Your tab is getting long, Uchiha."
Tamaki returned, breathless, holding a bundle wrapped in oilcloth.
Sasuke took it. He unwrapped the mechanism. It was a masterpiece of engineering—a spring-loaded bracer that could deploy shuriken instantly, without hand signs. Alongside it were spools of wire so thin they were invisible in the dim light, but strong enough to slice through bone.
Tamaki set down one last item with a heavy clang—a massive "Shadow Windmill" shuriken, its four curved blades folded in a cross of dull, lethal steel.
"The Fūma clan in the Rice Fields forges these," Nekobaa murmured, watching him run a gloved hand over the cold metal.
"They claim to be distant kin to the Uchiha. A lost branch of your family tree."
Sasuke didn't even blink at the history lesson; he snapped the mechanism shut with a violent clack and shoved it into his back holster. "I don't care about withered branches."
Sasuke ran a thumb over the wire; it hummed with a high-pitched frequency, singing faintly against his skin.
Perfect, Sasuke thought. Efficiency.
He began to pack the gear into his pouch.
On the floor, near a heater, a pile of blankets shifted.
A brown tabby cat stretched, yawning wide enough to show all its teeth. It wore a blue kimono vest.
Denka.
The cat blinked its yellow eyes, focusing on Sasuke.
"Oh," Denka rumbled, his voice drowsy. "It's you. The Uchiha boy."
Sasuke ignored him, cinching his pouch shut.
"I just saw your squad mate," Denka noted, scratching his ear with a hind leg. "The girl with the pink hair. In Konoha."
Sasuke froze.
"She held the door for me," Denka continued, sounding appreciative. "Very polite. Good instincts. She's pretty nice, for a human."
The cat looked at Sasuke, waiting for a confirmation. A shared nod of camaraderie.
Sasuke stood up. The shadows of the shop seemed to cling to him.
He thought of Sylvie. He thought of the way she had looked at the pile of ash that used to be Raiga. He thought of the horror in her eyes. He thought of the card she had left in his mailbox.
Nice, Sasuke thought. Nice gets you killed.
He looked down at the cat with cold, Sharingan-black eyes.
"She is my squad mate," Sasuke said, his voice devoid of warmth. "Not my friend."
The leather of his gloves creaked loudly—errrk—as his fists clenched, the only betrayal of his composure.
The shop went silent. Even Tamaki stopped breathing for a second.
Denka stared at him. The cat stopped scratching. A shiver seemed to run through the tabby's small body—not from cold, but from the sudden drop in emotional temperature.
The fur along Denka's spine stood straight up, crackling with static electricity.
"Whatever you say, kid," Denka muttered.
The cat curled back into a ball, burying his nose in his tail, turning his back on the Uchiha.
"I'm leaving," Sasuke announced to the room.
"Don't get lost," Nekobaa murmured, closing her eyes. "Though I think you already are."
Sasuke turned and walked out of the burrow, back into the dead city, alone.
The heavy iron door of the burrow slammed shut behind him with a dull thud, cutting off the warmth and leaving him in the howling wind.