**The Safehouse – Moments Before Collapse**
Konan's paper lattice glowed like captured starlight over the *Tenchi no Kōsoku* array. The *scrabbling* of salamanders on the ceiling became frenzied—Hanzo's summons smelled blood. *My* blood, black and thick as oil where it dripped onto the sealing formula.
*"Choose!"* Konan demanded again, her voice stripped raw.
The scroll's words burned in my mind:
> **Sacrifice the Anchor's medium OR the Drifter's stability.**
Option 1: Konan becomes ordinary.
Option 2: I become a bomb.
Then I saw it—Jiraiya's tiny marginalia, blurred by what might've been sake stains:
> *"Unless Anchor and Drifter synchronize chakra signatures. Risky. Untested. DON'T TELL OROCHIMARU."*
---
### **The Third Option**
"Together!" I choked out, slamming my bleeding palm onto the array's central glyph. "Synchronize with me!"
Konan's eyes widened. For a heartbeat, hesitation. Then her hand clasped over mine.
**Pain.**
Not the crushing weight of gravity—this was *unraveling*. My chakra pathways tore like wet paper as her pure, precise energy flooded in. Her paper wings disintegrated mid-flight, swirling into a vortex around us.
*Her sacrifice:* Control.
*Mine:* Stability.
The array ignited.
---
### **Gravity's Embrace**
The world inverted.
Konan gasped as crystalline lattices bloomed across her skin where mine receded. My bleeding slowed, but her fingers turned translucent—flecked with starlike points of condensed gravity.
**Symbiotic Bond Formed:**
- **Konan's Paper** now carries micro-gravity wells (folds space, cuts deeper).
- **Yuki's Bloodline** stabilized by her chakra regulation—but *dependent* on her proximity.
- **Cost:** Shared pain. Shared exhaustion. One cannot bleed without the other feeling it.
Above us, the ceiling exploded.
---
### **Hanzo's Wrath**
The giant salamander's maw descended, acid dripping. Its handler—a masked hunter—raised a chain-sickle.
Konan moved without thought.
A single sheet of paper shot from her fingertips. Not fluttering—*warping*. It sliced through the salamander's armored hide like it was mist, then *imploded* the hunter's torso into a fist-sized singularity. Blood misted the air.
Silence.
Konan stared at her hands. The paper swirling around her now pulsed with dark light.
"*What have we done?*" she whispered.
---
### **Nagato's Gaze**
**Miles Away – Rain-Soaked Forest**
Nagato jolted awake, Rinnegan swirling violently.
"Yahiko!" he gasped, clutching his chest. "Something's wrong… Konan's chakra… it's *heavy* now. And there's… *gravity* where there shouldn't be."
Yahiko frowned, sharpening his kunai. "Hanzo?"
"Worse," Nagato breathed. "It feels like… a wound in the world itself."
---
### **Aftermath: Fragile Balance**
Back in the ruined safehouse, Tsutako bandaged our *linked* hands. The crystallized fractures on Konan's skin mirrored the faded scars on mine.
"You're fused," Tsutako stated grimly. "Not just chakra. Your life forces are braided. If one dies…"
Konan wouldn't look at me. Her new paper—darker, sharper, humming with contained pressure—drifted like mourning crepe around her.
I touched a floating shard. It didn't cut. It *bent* light around its edge.
Hanzo didn't just want my bloodline now.
He'd want *this*.