Forged Beyond

Get Up

After twenty-five minutes, Sakura and Sasuke returned to the common room, their arms weighed down by stacks of novels—every single one penned by Jiraiya. The bindings were worn, the covers unmistakably familiar. Some of the titles were even banned in certain villages, but right now, none of that mattered.

Sasuke dropped his stack on the wooden table first, the books landing with dull thuds. Sakura followed, setting hers down more carefully before wiping her hands on her pants. The sheer number of volumes was almost overwhelming.

She turned to Sasuke and muttered, almost absentmindedly, "You realize all of these are 18+, right?"

Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact—completely unflustered, as if the thought didn't even phase her.

Sasuke snorted, rubbing the back of his head. "That's the last thing we should care about right now." He leaned against the table, his tired gaze flickering toward her. "Sixteen and eighteen isn't that far off."

She hummed in agreement, already flipping open the first book.

It was time to start decoding.

The numbers from Jiraiya's message repeated in Sakura's head as she turned the pages.

"9, 31, 8, 106, 7, 207"

They had to mean something.

Sasuke sat across from her, a book open in his lap. He had never actually read Jiraiya's work—he found it a waste of time—but he had heard enough from Kakashi to know the general contents.

This wasn't just about searching the words inside.

This was about a pattern.

Sakura, her medic brain working at full speed, had already started marking pages with small slips of paper.

"The way it's structured... it's the same as old war ciphers," she murmured, mostly to herself. "A book-based key system."

Sasuke nodded, following along. "Each number corresponds to a specific page, line, and word in the book. Jiraiya must've used one of his novels as the key."

Sakura flipped through another volume. "But which one? We have at least twenty-five different titles here."

Sasuke exhaled sharply, his fingers tapping against the table as he thought. Then his gaze hardened.

"He wouldn't make it complicated."

Sakura lifted her eyes.

Sasuke's expression was sharp, his voice steady. "Jiraiya was unpredictable, yeah, but he wasn't reckless. If he left a message this important, he wouldn't bury it too deep. He'd pick something Naruto would understand—something connected to him."

Sakura's mind raced. Something Naruto would understand.

And then—

"Make-Out Tactics."

The book Jiraiya was still writing before his mission.

Sakura grabbed it immediately, flipping to the first number in the sequence: page 9.

Her eyes darted across the text, scanning each line carefully. Until they saw the first letter of each page number

"...first word," Sasuke reminded her.

She found it.

"The."

She moved to the next: page 31, first word.