The silence was louder than the fighting.
Naruto stood in the center of the crater, his legs shaking. The adrenaline was draining out of him like water from a cracked cup, leaving him lightheaded and heavy all at once. His own heartbeat thumped sluggishly in his ears, sounding like a drum with a loose skin.
Tsunade walked toward him. She wasn't glowing with the Creation Rebirth anymore, but she still felt huge. She stopped in front of him, her shadow stretching long over the broken earth.
"You won," she said. Her voice was rough, like gravel tumbling down a hill.
Naruto grinned. It hurt his face. "Yeah. I told you. I never go back on my—"
He flinched as she reached out.
She didn't hit him. She reached up to her own neck. With slow, deliberate movements, she unclasped the crystal necklace—the one worth three mountains, the one that supposedly cursed everyone who wore it.
The First Hokage's necklace.
She held it out. The crystal caught the sunlight, flashing a deep, calm blue.
"One week," she murmured, looking at the stone, then at him. "You really are a fool."
She leaned forward.
Naruto froze as she placed the necklace around his neck. It was heavy. It felt cold against his skin, humming with a chakra that felt ancient and dense. It settled against his sternum with a thud that resonated through his ribs, less like jewelry and more like a second heart that wasn't his own.
Then, she pulled him closer. She kissed his forehead.
It wasn't a grandma kiss. It wasn't a romantic kiss. It felt like a seal being applied. A point of absolute pressure that burned hotter than the Rasengan, branding the promise directly into the bone of his skull. It was fierce and brief, a transfer of weight from one generation to the next.
"Become a good man," she whispered. "And a good Hokage."
She pulled back.
Naruto touched his forehead, his eyes wide. He didn't have a comeback. He didn't have a joke. He just felt the weight of the necklace settling against his collarbone, and for the first time, he understood that the bet wasn't about money.
It was about permission to live.
The battlefield was dissolving into steam and goodbyes.
I sat on a piece of rubble, watching the massive form of Katsuyu begin to break apart. The giant slug didn't just vanish; she dispersed, turning into thousands of smaller slugs that began to fade into white smoke, returning to the Shikkotsu Forest.
The air pressure popped with thousands of tiny implosions, a sound like bubble wrap snapping in reverse as the mass vacated reality.
But one wasn't fading.
The small division I had saved in the stairwell—the one that had clung to my back like a terrified backpack—was currently refusing to merge with the main body.
It was about the size of a cat, white with blue stripes, and it was vibrating with an energy that I can only describe as "toddler on espresso."
Her chakra felt fizzy, a carbonated buzz that prickled against my sensory range like lemon-scented static electricity.
"Mew! Mew!" it squeaked, rubbing its face against my vest. It bounced in place, its eyestalks wiggling chaotically.
I looked up at the main body of Katsuyu, who loomed over us like a skyscraper made of polite slime.
The smell of ozone and wet earth coming off her was so strong I could taste it on the back of my tongue.
The giant slug sighed. It was a sound like wind moving through a cavern. Her massive eyestalks rolled, looking from the bouncing mini-slug to me.
"She has become... attached," the giant Katsuyu's voice echoed in my head. "My smaller divisions are impressionable. They lack the collective restraint of the whole."
It didn't enter through my ears; it bloomed at the base of my neck, cool and sterile, smelling faintly of antiseptic. I looked down at the little slug. It trilled at me, doing a little hop- it was pure, unadulterated chaos wrapped in a cute package. It reminded me of Naruto.
"I cannot reabsorb her in this state," Katsuyu continued, sounding exhausted. "She is vibrating at a frequency of pure excitement."
Tsunade walked over, wiping dust from her hands. She looked at the tiny, bouncing slug, then at the massive summons.
"Just disperse her forcefully, Katsuyu," Tsunade said.
The little slug stopped bouncing. It shrank back against my leg, letting out a high-pitched, tragic whine.
I felt a spike of protective instinct hit me in the chest.
"No!" I said, scooping the slime-cat up. It was cold and squishy, like holding a bag of jelly. A dense, shifting weight that seemed to hold its own internal temperature, completely indifferent to the thermodynamics of the outside world. "She helped! You can't just pop her!"
Katsuyu's massive head lowered until she was eye-level with me.
"Very well," the great slug intoned. "If she remains, she requires a designation separate from the Hive. Give her a name. She will be your responsibility, summoner-in-training."
Tsunade blinked. "Summoner-in—? Katsuyu, I haven't agreed to train her."
"You will," Katsuyu said simply. "She understands the weight of the flood."
I ignored the Sannin's sputtered protest. I looked down at the little slug in my arms.
"Hmm," I said, thinking fast. "If your mom's name is Katsuyu..."
"Tsuyu!" the little slug chirped.
A lightbulb flashed in my head. It was stupid. It was perfect.
"Her name is—" I stepped forward, lifting the slug up like a prize. "Tsuyuyu!"
The little slug wiggled happily. "Tsuyuyu!"
Tsunade made a face like she had bitten into a lemon. Her nose wrinkled, a physical rejection of the whimsy occurring in the middle of a disaster zone.
"Ehhhh..."
Katsuyu seemed to radiate amusement. "Acceptable. Come now, little one. You can play with your friend later."
Tsuyuyu nuzzled my cheek, leaving a trail of slime, then hopped down and bounced after the giant slug, squeaking all the way. The sound was wet and rhythmic, squeak-plap, squeak-plap, fading into the white mist.
I stood there, wiping slime off my face, grinning so hard my cheeks hurt.
Naruto leaned in slowly from my left. He pointed a finger at me.
"You got hugged by a slug," he observed.
"I did," I said, watching the summons prepare to leave. "And she has a name now."
"Tsuyuyu?" Naruto snickered. "That sounds like sneezing."
"It sounds like family," I corrected. Messy, loud, and sticky enough that you couldn't scrape it off even if you tried.
I watched Tsunade watching us. She looked tired, battered, and old. But she wasn't looking at the ground anymore. She was looking at Naruto's back, and at my messy, slime-covered vest.
She hadn't chosen Naruto because he was strong. She chose him because he believed that broken things could be put back together.
Belief is infrastructure, I realized, the thought settling into the foundation of my mind. You build it, and it holds the weight when the sky falls.
As the massive cloud of smoke began to engulf the giant summons, marking the end of the battle, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
Gamabunta, the giant toad boss who had spent the last hour grumbling and slicing buildings, was fading away. He was turned slightly away from us, pretending to check his blade. The white mist was already curling around his warts, softening the jagged edges of the war-god into something almost nostalgic.
But as the smoke curled around his face, he cracked one yellow eye open, looking at Katsuyu, then down at the three of us standing in the wreckage.
He puffed his pipe, a small cloud of smoke joining the mist.
"Children, eh?" he mumbled, a deep, raspy chuckle shaking his chest.
And with a final POOF, the monsters vanished, leaving us to inherit the earth.