Chapter Text
<Sylvie>
The training ground didn't look like a village; it looked like a grave marker for one.
Block after block of identical sandstone cubes rose from the desert floor, their windows merely square abysses of shadow. There was no glass to catch the sun, no doors to bar the entry—just the howling wind of the Demon Desert whistling through the hollowed-out chambers like a flute made of bone.
A loose shutter banged against a wall somewhere deep in the grid—clack-clack-clack—a lonely, rhythmic spasm in the otherwise dead silence.
It was a city of bones, designed for one purpose: to teach them how to kill in the comfort of someone else's home.
Sylvie stepped off the transport carriage, shielding her eyes. The heat haze distorted the straight lines of the buildings, making them waver like a mirage.
I rubbed the grit from my eyelashes, the dry air already turning the moisture in my eyes to a sticky paste.
"It's... quiet," she whispered.
Real cities hummed. They smelled of cooking fires, unwashed bodies, and trash. This place smelled only of ozone, dry dust, and the absence of life.
It was the smell of a kiln before the pottery is put in—baked earth, stale air, and absolutely no humidity.
"It's a MOUT facility," Anko-sensei said, walking up beside her. "Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Suna built it to simulate invading Earth Country."
On the high perimeter walls, the observers took their positions. Kakashi sat on the edge, reading his book. Asuma lit a cigarette. Gaara stood in the center, his arms crossed, watching the grid with the impassive judgment of a king on a throne.
Baki, the stern Suna councilor, stood before the assembled Genin and Chunin.
"This is not a spar," Baki barked. "This is a coalition drill. In the field, squads are broken. You must learn to fight with strangers."
He unrolled the scroll with a sharp snap, the parchment crisp and dry, the sound echoing off the perimeter walls.
He read from a scroll.
"Team A: Naruto Uzumaki. Temari. Neji Hyūga."
"Team B: Shira. Tenten. Sasuke Uchiha."
Naruto blinked. He looked at the lineup of remaining ninja waiting for the second round.
Temari. Tenten. Ino. Sylvie. Yome. Sen.
He started counting on his fingers.
"One... two... three..." Naruto muttered, his brow furrowing. "Six... that's more than the fingers on one hand! That's too many girls!"
He looked panicked. He looked at Sasuke, who was ignoring him. He looked at Neji, who was meditating. Then he looked back at the wall of kunoichi.
Six pairs of knuckles cracked in unison. Temari rested her hand on her fan. Tenten spun a kunai. Yome adjusted her goggles ominously.
The sound of knuckles popping rippled down the line like a domino effect of impending violence.
"—that's not enough girls!" Naruto corrected loudly, laughing nervously, sweat pouring down his face. He swallowed audibly, his Adam's apple bobbing as he realized the sheer kinetic potential aimed in his direction.
"More girls! We need more! Haha!"
"Get in the grid," Baki ordered.
The match began with silence.
Team A (Naruto, Temari, Neji) entered from the South Gate.
Team B (Shira, Tenten, Sasuke) entered from the North.
They vanished into the labyrinth.
Their footsteps were swallowed instantly by the soft sand accumulated in the fake streets, leaving only the whistling wind behind.
Sylvie watched from the monitor station next to Gaara. The screen showed the grainy, black-and-white feed from cameras hidden in the fake streetlamps.
Static washed over the screen—bzzzt—before resolving into a grainy image, the tech struggling against the heat interference.
"Tenten is moving high," Sylvie noted.
On the screen, Tenten was sprinting across the flat rooftops. She stopped at an intersection. She realized something. She tapped the wall with her kunai. Clink.
It wasn't wood. It was hardened concrete.
Tenten grinned.
She reached into her scroll.
"Twin Rising Dragons!"
She unleashed a storm of kunai. But she didn't aim at Naruto, who was running down the street below. She aimed at the walls.
PING. PING. ZING.
The kunai bounced. They ricocheted off the angled sandstone, turning the straight alleyway into a geometry puzzle of death.
Sparks flew where the steel kissed the stone—zing-flash—smelling sharply of flint and burning metal.
"Whoa!" Naruto yelled on the screen, ducking as a kunai sparked off the wall next to his ear. "Where is she?!"
"Above!" Temari shouted, unfurling her fan.
But before she could swing, the wall next to her exploded.
BOOM.
Neji Hyūga stepped through the dust. He hadn't used a door. He had used Air Palm to blast a hole straight through the building.
"I see him," Neji stated calmly, ignoring the debris settling on his shoulders.
Pulverized concrete dust drifted off his coat like dandruff, coating the floor in a fine gray mist.
His Byakugan was active. He was looking through two buildings, straight at Shira’s chakra network.
"Target locked."
Neji thrust his palm forward. An invisible cannonball of air tore through the next wall, aiming for Shira.
Shira—a boy with thick eyebrows and no ninjutsu—didn't see the attack. He heard it. The change in air pressure.
The hair on his arms stood up as the static electricity spiked, a split-second warning before the sonic boom.
He dropped. The air blast took off the top of a fake chimney behind him.
"Seven Heavens Breathing Method," Shira whispered. His muscles bulged. He vanished in a blur of speed that rivaled Rock Lee.
"They're herding them," Sasuke’s voice crackled over the comms.
Sasuke stood on a water tower, watching the chaos. He signaled to Shira.
"Drive them into Main Street. The vacuum."
His voice sounded tinny and distorted over the radio, fighting against the interference of the wind.
Shira and Tenten pushed hard, forcing Team A to retreat into the central avenue—a long, narrow canyon of high walls.
"Now!" Sasuke yelled.
He leaped down, weaving signs. "Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!"
A massive sphere of fire roared down the street.
"Wind Style!" Temari yelled, seeing the trap. She planted her feet. She swung her fan. "Great Scythe Weasel!"
A tornado erupted from her fan.
It hit the fireball.
Normally, the wind would disperse the fire. But here? In the narrow street? The walls contained the pressure.
The fire didn't billow; it compressed, turning from orange to a blinding, superheated white that bleached the color from the monitor.
The Venturi Effect kicked in. The wind accelerated. It caught the fire and turned it into a high-velocity plasma cannon.
The sound changed from a roar to a high-pitched scream—SHREEEEE—as the air was forced through the narrow gap faster than the speed of sound.
But Naruto...
Naruto had tried to charge in with Shadow Clones.
"Naruto, move!" Neji yelled.
Too late.
The wind tunnel caught the clones. It caught the real Naruto.
"I'M SORRRRRYYYYYYY!"
Naruto’s scream Doppler-shifted as he was launched. He flew past Sasuke—who looked genuinely terrified by the velocity—smashed through a fake storefront, punched through the back wall, and tumbled into a pile of sand three blocks away.
VROOOoooom.
The sound was indistinguishable from a mortar shell whistling past, followed by the wet thump of a body hitting a dune.
CRASH.
Dust billowed. Silence returned to the training ground.
"Match ends in a draw," Gaara announced over the PA system. "Due to... excessive collateral damage."
Sylvie looked at the screen. Naruto’s legs were sticking out of the rubble, twitching.
A single cloud of dust rose from his impact crater, perfectly mushroom-shaped, marking the landing zone.
"They need work," Anko noted dryly. "But the geometry was solid."