Your votes keep this climbing.
Thanks!
“Huff…
huff…”
Anko Mitarashi braced against a gnarled old tree, panting hard.
Her chest heaved.
Sweat ran from the tips of her hair down her neck, finding the gaps in her fishnet suit.
“Finally lost him.” She drove her fist into the trunk and knocked loose a few cobwebbed leaves.
“What the hell is even happening right now?”
The whole thing was insane.
A’s burning gaze, his blunt words bordering on outright arrogance, were still circling in her head, vivid and relentless.
She was half-convinced she’d imagined all of it.
“Wait.
Am I under a genjutsu?”
Her head snapped up, dark pupils contracting on instinct.
The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
She sucked in a breath and flew through seals.
“Genjutsu: Release!”
Chakra surged through her like a tide.
She stared at the scene before her, braced for the world to crack and splinter, for the illusion to break.
Nothing happened.
She tried again.
And again.
The damp earth still smelled sharp in her lungs.
The canopy overhead still swayed, blocking out the sky.
The world refused to be anything other than real.
Anko closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips into the bark.
The rough, undeniable texture left no room for excuses.
She had to accept it.
All of it was real.
That insufferable Fourth Raikage had genuinely, seriously declared he was taking her back to Kumogakure to be his wife.
Just as her thoughts unraveled into noise, a low voice cut the air right beside her ear.
“Done running?
Out of steam already?”
Anko spun like a startled cat.
Chakra burst from her feet and she flickered backward several meters, every nerve on fire.
A stood leaning against another tree a short distance away, arms crossed, a teasing smirk at the corner of his mouth.
Azure lightning crackled and snapped around his body, restless and alive.
“What do you want?
Are you ever going to quit!?” Her almond eyes blazed with fury.
A pushed off the tree and walked toward her.
Unhurried.
“Haven’t I already told you?” He raised an eyebrow, his gaze sliding over her without a trace of restraint.
“I’m taking you back to Kumogakure to be the Raikage’s wife.”
“That’s insane!
Stay back!” Anko’s jaw locked, a vein throbbing at her temple.
“Fourth Raikage, are you seriously trying to cause trouble in Konoha?”
A’s pace didn’t falter.
“Trouble?
I’m the leader of a hidden village.
I can’t come to Konoha to pursue love?
Hiruzen Sarutobi isn’t going to blow up our alliance over something like this.”
“So you really think I’ll just roll over.” Her eyes went cold.
“Fine.
Come ahead.
Even if I go down today, I’m taking a piece of you with me.”
The words were barely out before her fingers were already moving, her expression locked and precise.
Tiger.
Rat.
Ram.
Rat.
Tiger.
“Hidden Shadow Snake Hands!”
Four or five slender brown snakes shot from her sleeves, tongues flickering, driving straight for him.
“Tsk.” A watched them come.
“A comedy technique.
Go sit next to Amaterasu.”
BZZZT,
He shaped his palm into a blade.
Chakra flooded down his right arm like a current, and the azure lightning blazed outward in an instant.
“Lightning Style: Horizontal Chop!”
A dazzling flash.
The snakes never reached him.
Their heads were severed before they could close the distance, and foul black blood scattered across the dirt like rain.
Anko had no time to react.
Blue light blinked at the edge of her vision, and A’s towering frame was already right in front of her.
“You—”
The lightning around him died.
His right hand closed around both her wrists in one grip and drove her back hard against the rough tree trunk.
Her spine hit the bark and she grunted in pain.
Hands locked, her last trump card was completely out of reach: the Twin Snakes Mutual Death.
“Bastard!” She threw herself against his grip.
Her fishnet suit scraped audibly against the bark with every lunge.
“Let me go!”
A didn’t budge.
He looked down at her furious face, something unreadable behind his eyes.
“What, were you really planning to drag me down with you?” His warm breath spread against her ear, and a shiver moved through her whole body before she could stop it.
“I’ll kill you, I swear—” Just as Anko, burning with rage and humiliation, was winding up to really let him have it, A brought his left hand out from behind his back.
Three-colored dango glistened in the afternoon light.
Their sweet smell cut straight through the blood and forest air, strange and completely out of place.
Anko stiffened.
She stared at the large “bouquet” of three-colored dango skewers bundled together like flowers, and forgot entirely to struggle.
“Made a special trip.
Got them strung fresh for you.” A held the dango bouquet up with a grin.
With his speed, slipping out to buy dango, getting them strung, and circling back to find her had taken almost no effort at all.
[Think you can lose me, the Raikage?
You really got the legs for that, little sis?] He was deeply pleased with himself.
Did she have any idea what it meant to run from the fastest man in the shinobi world right now?
Anko stood completely still.
The fury on her face simply froze.
Then her cheeks went red.
It happened fast, spreading from the tips of her ears all the way down her neck, visible and unstoppable.
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Her heart felt like an overturned spice jar, embarrassment and irritation and something she couldn’t name all mixed together with nowhere to go.
“Who gives someone dango as flowers!” She finally found her voice and turned her head away, though her eyes slid right back to that ridiculous bouquet anyway.
A looked genuinely puzzled and scratched the back of his head.
“Don’t you like three-colored dango?
I asked around Konoha for a long time.
Everyone said you love this stuff.” He was frighteningly earnest about it, as though presenting dango as a declaration of love was the most natural thing in the world.
(What was even going on in that head of his?)
Anko bit her lip.
Her mind was a complete mess.
Whatever rage had been burning through her chest had nowhere left to go.
It simply vanished.
After a long, loaded silence, she finally muttered something barely above a whisper.
“Even if I like them, this isn’t how you give them…”
She’d practically breathed it.
But A was close enough that he caught every word.
“Oh?” His mouth curved at the corner.
He leaned in closer, his face nearly touching hers.
“Then how should I do it?
Teach me.
Next time I’ll make sure you’re satisfied.”
The shock of it made her heart stutter.
She shoved at him instinctively and found, too late, that her wrists were still locked in his grip.
“Y-you!
Let go of me first!”
A looked at the small curve of her ear, leaned down, and bit it gently.
The sensation jolted through her and she shivered.
“No.” His voice was easy, unbothered.
“If I let go, you’ll run.
And I can’t catch you.”
He was completely shameless about it.
Anko threw herself against his hold.
“If you don’t want to let go, just say so.
You think I’m a three-year-old?”
“Alright.
I don’t want to let go.”
“You—!”
➤ Next: The Mysterious Woman, Team 7’s Crisis
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✨ 4 new chapters released every single day.