The laws of physics didn't just break in Ichiraku Ramen; they filed a formal noise complaint and quit.
Toki-soba didn't chew the "Infinite Rice Cake." He didn't swallow it. He simply advanced upon it like a slow-moving event horizon.
ZHORP.
The sound was wet and electric. The massive, pulsating blob of Earth-Style mochi vanished into his mouth, inch by inch. But because Tsubuan's jutsu was still active—still expanding the dough aggressively—the mochi was trying to grow while it was being teleported.
The result was a gravitational argument.
ZZZ-POP. ZZZ-POP.
Sparks of black lightning danced around the kid's jaw. The air pressure in the shop dropped so sharply my ears popped.
"Grandma!" Anko screamed, dropping her dango stick into the dirt. She grabbed the doorframe to keep from being sucked toward the counter. "You created a singularity! You can't feed a paradox to a civilian!"
"It builds character!" Tsubuan shrieked, clutching her mallet, her white hair whipping around in the sudden vacuum wind. "Eat it, boy! Conquer the starch!"
"I... I can't look away," Chōji whispered.
I looked at the Akimichi. He had stopped eating. His chopsticks were trembling, hovering over his ninth bowl. He wasn't full—I knew for a fact his stomach had expanded to the size of a rain barrel—but his eyes were wide with existential terror.
"It's not food," Chōji murmured, staring at the void inside Toki-soba's throat. "It's nothingness. I can eat matter, Sylvie. I can eat mass. But I can't eat a mathematical impossibility."
CLATTER.
Chōji dropped his chopsticks. He slumped forward, defeated not by calories, but by philosophy.
Toki-soba didn't care. He inhaled the last of the mochi.
GLOMP.
The vibration stopped. The wind died.
For a second, there was silence. Just the bubbling of Teuchi's broth and the heavy breathing of a room full of traumatized ninja.
Toki-soba blinked. He patted his flat stomach.
"Kaedama," he squeaked. Refill.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. It wasn't the static electricity this time. It was instinct.
I felt a wave of Killing Intent wash over the stall so potent it tasted like rusted iron in my mouth. It was the feeling of a predator dropping from the sky to snap a rabbit's neck.
BOOM.
The entrance of the stall exploded inward. The curtains whipped back as a figure slammed into the pavement, cracking the stone tile.
"NO ONE MOVE!"
I froze. My charcoal stick snapped in my hand.
Kakashi Hatake stood in the entrance, crouched low, a kunai drawn in a reverse grip. He wasn't the lazy sensei reading porn. He was the ANBU Captain. His killing intent flooded the small shop, suffocating the festival noise outside.
Under his tilted hitai-ate, I could see the muscle twitching—he was seconds away from revealing the Sharingan. He scanned the room, looking for a war criminal, for an S-Rank threat, for the end of the world.
He found:
Naruto, frozen mid-chew, a single noodle hanging tragically from his left nostril.
Chōji, contemplating the void.
Me, holding a broken piece of charcoal like a shank.
Teuchi, dropping a ladle into the broth with a plop.
And at the end of the counter, a small, skinny child looking bored.
The steam cleared. The killing intent evaporated, replaced by a thick, awkward silence.
Kakashi blinked. He stood up slowly, keeping his hand near his pouch. He looked confused. Disturbed, even.
He reached up and touched the covered eye, his fingers brushing the scar.
"My eye..." Kakashi muttered, his voice rough with adrenaline. "It reacted to a massive space-time distortion. I thought... I thought it was an enemy attack."
He looked at the empty plate where the infinite mochi had been. He looked at Toki-soba. He sniffed the air, smelling the lingering ozone and sweet bean paste.
"But..." Kakashi tilted his head, visible eye narrowing. "It's reacting to... glutinous rice?"
He looked like a man who had tried to solve a calculus equation and found the answer was "pudding."
Toki-soba froze.
He looked up at the silver-haired scarecrow man. He didn't see a friendly Jōnin. He saw the vest. He saw the hitai-ate. He saw a man who definitely knew the penal code for "Illegal Use of Spatio-Temporal Ninjutsu in a Commercial Zone."
Toki-soba didn't wait for the lecture.
His eyes went wide. He dropped the chopsticks. Clatter.
He leaped from the stool. His skinny legs, which looked like they couldn't support a grasshopper, suddenly turned into a blur of frantic, kinetic energy.
"NIGE-ASHI NO KATA!" he shrieked. Form of the Running Legs!
It was a technique of pure cowardice. He kicked off the counter, scrambling over Naruto's head, bouncing off Chōji's shoulder, and hit the ground running.
His feet moved so fast they created a cartoonish wheel of motion. Zip-zip-zip-zip-zip!
"MY SOUP!" Teuchi yelled, diving to cover the pots as a shockwave of wind hit us.
Toki-soba vanished in a cloud of dust so thick it coated the entire shop in a layer of grit. He was gone before the dust even hit the floor.
Silence returned to Ichiraku Ramen.
Naruto sneezed, finally dislodging the noodle from his nose. "Hnh? Wif out da vegetables?" he asked, his mouth still full.
Kakashi sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to deflate his entire body. He reached into his pouch and pulled his orange book back out, dusting a layer of grit off the cover.
"Well," Kakashi muttered, opening to his lost page. "I suppose 'Survival' is the most common nature in the Leaf. Even for brats."
He looked at Teuchi. "I'll have the usual. And... maybe a mochi. I'm suddenly craving carbs."
I stood up. My glasses had slid down to the tip of my nose. I was shaking.
I pointed a charcoal-stained finger at the settling dust cloud where the kid had vanished.
I tugged on Naruto's orange sleeve violently.
"He copied us!" I yelled, my voice cracking with indignation. "That's our form! Naruto, did you see that?! He's using your move! That was the 'Running Away' Jutsu! We have a copyright on that!"
Naruto swallowed the massive mouthful of noodles. He burped, vibrating the counter.
"I thought it was cool," Naruto grinned, holding up his empty bowl. "But hey... since Chōji stopped eating and that kid ran away... that means I win, right?"
Teuchi looked at the exhausted supplies. Tsubuan looked at her defeated mochi plate. Anko looked at the bill she was definitely not paying.
"Yeah, kid," Teuchi sighed, wiping sweat from his forehead. "You win."
I slumped back onto my stool, opening my sketchbook to a fresh page.
"It's plagiarism," I muttered, sketching the back of the fleeing noodle-kid. "I'm going to sue him."