Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

I was eight years old the first time I died.

Technically, I was in second grade. Practically, I was somewhere in the woods behind my cousin's house, staring at the underside of a fallen log and trying very hard not to throw up at the sight of my own blood.

There was a lot of it.

"Okay," I whispered, because no one else was there to say it. "This is… not great."

The day had started normally enough: bored adults, a backyard cookout, and my cousin daring me to follow him into the trees because only babies stayed near the house. I wasn't a baby, so I went. Obviously.

The plan had not included the part where the old, half-rotten plank bridge over the creek decided to retire the second I stepped on it. Wood splintered. I fell. Something sharp tore into my leg on the way down.

Then there was mud and pain and the realization that I'd landed on something jagged enough to make the world go white around the edges.

By the time I dragged myself out of the water, my left leg looked like special effects from a horror movie. My cousin was gone—either he hadn't noticed I'd fallen, or he'd panicked and run back without me. Neither option made me feel better.

I tried to shout. My voice came out small and thin and got swallowed by the trees.

So I did what any sensible person in a small body would do: I crawled for a while, then collapsed next to a log and decided to take a quick break from existence.

The air smelled like wet dirt and leaves. The sky between the branches was bright and uncaring. My leg throbbed in time with my heartbeat, except the beats were getting slower, like someone was turning a volume knob down.

This is bad, I thought, with a dry, detached clarity. Like… capital-B Bad.

I knew enough to realize that losing a lot of blood in the middle of nowhere wasn't something you just walked off. I wondered how long it would take someone to notice I was missing. An hour? Two? By then…

My fingers were going numb. That seemed rude.

I stared at my hand, fascinated by how distant it looked. Pale, smeared with red, a little too thin. It didn't feel like it belonged to me. Honestly, most of my body felt like that on a good day—like I'd been issued the wrong model by mistake—but today the disconnect was literal.

The edges of everything blurred.

Somewhere far away, someone might have been calling my name. The sound wobbled, stretched, then snapped.

For a second, there was just… drifting. No forest, no log, no weight. Just the sense of falling without moving, like when you miss a step in a dream and your stomach drops out—but stretched into forever.

Colors smeared together. Green, gray, something gold. I caught quick, disjointed flashes as if somebody was flipping through channels on a TV: a stone cliff with massive faces carved into it; paper slips with squiggly writing fluttering in the wind; a spiral symbol, simple and bold, like a doodle in the margin of a notebook.

Then pain slammed back in.

Not the sharp, tearing pain from before. This was hot and buzzing, spreading from my chest out through limbs I hadn't realized I'd gotten back. My heart hammered hard enough to hurt. Air scraped into lungs that felt wrong and right at the same time.

Voices crashed over me.

"—still alive, somehow."

"Energy response is stabilizing. Keep pressure on the wound."

"Poor kid. No ID, no guardian… another stray, just what we needed."

A bright light cut into my eyes. I squinted, tried to flinch away, found I couldn't move much. Everything felt heavy. My leg hurt in a way that said "stitched" instead of "open," which was an improvement, but the rest of me buzzed with leftover terror and something else—like my skin didn't quite fit.

I blinked up at a ceiling made of clean white plaster, not peeling farmhouse paint. The air smelled like antiseptic and herbs, not damp leaves.

A shape leaned over me—someone in a green vest over dark clothes, with a cloth band tied across their forehead. On the metal plate in the center of that band was a carving: a stylized leaf, spiraling inward.

"Hey," the person said. Their voice was calm, but their eyes were tired. "You're awake. Try not to move too much."

Their features were sharp, their hair pulled back. A mask hung loose around their neck.

"Where…?" My voice came out croaky, like a frog who'd smoked half a pack.

"You're in Konoha Hospital," the stranger said. "You were found near the village border. Badly injured, severe blood loss. Lucky for you, a patrol was passing by."

Konoha?

The word meant nothing to me. It sounded Japanese, maybe? But the architecture outside the window didn't look like any city I knew.

My chest tightened. For a second, I thought I might be having a panic attack. Or another heart attack. Or both.

Brain damage, I reasoned, desperate for logic. Oxygen deprivation. I'm hallucinating.

The person—a doctor? A soldier?—checked a clipboard, then frowned slightly.

"We still don't have a name for your file," they said. "Do you remember it?"

That caught me.

I knew my name. My old name. It sat heavy on my tongue, wrong in a way I'd never had words for but had learned to live with. But saying it here, in this strange place that smelled like herbs and ozone, felt like dragging that wrongness over the edge with me.

The nurse looked down and started writing something, muttering under her breath, "She appears to have some issues with memory recall..."

She? I thought. She...?

My gaze drifted, unfocused, to the window beside the bed.

Beyond the glass, over the rooftops of a village that looked half-traditional and half-industrial, a massive mountain loomed. Carved into the rock face were four gigantic heads. Stern, stoic men staring down at the streets below.

It looked like Mount Rushmore, if Mount Rushmore had been carved by someone who really liked anime.

My heart did something weird and complicated. It wasn't fear. It was... possibility.

I swallowed.

"…Sylvie," I said, before I could overthink it. The name slid out smooth, like it had been waiting in the back of my throat this whole time. "My… my name is Sylvie."

The medic blinked, then wrote it down without comment.

"Well then. Welcome to Konoha..." The nurse fumbled with the sounds of the name, as if it didn't quite fit their tongue. "Sylvie."

They moved on to check something by my bedside. I stared at my hands.

They were small. Smaller than I remembered. The skin was paler, smoother. The angles… different. The proportions of my wrists, the way my fingers tapered. My arms disappeared into a hospital gown that hung off me like a sheet, but I could feel the shape of my body underneath it in a way that made my brain stutter.

Girl, a part of me whispered, with a stunned, quiet certainty.

I should have freaked out about that. Another day, another life, I probably would have. But I'd already bled out in a forest and woken up in a place where people carved giant heads into mountains. The usual hierarchy of concerns had been thoroughly scrambled.

So I did what I always did when reality got too big: I shoved the feeling into a labeled mental box—Deal With This Later—and slammed the lid.

Something cramped low in my chest anyway, a knot of nerves and… relief? I ignored it as best I could.

"Any headaches? Dizziness?" the medic asked.

"Uh. All of the above," I said. My voice sounded higher than I remembered, too. Of course it did.

They made a face that said "standard" and "problem" at the same time, then gave me the usual instructions: rest, don't try to get up alone, someone will bring food, blah blah, if you see double call for help. Then they left, closing the door softly behind them.

The room went quiet.

I lay there, listening to the faint sounds of the hospital—footsteps, distant voices, the clink of metal. Underneath it all was something subtler, like static on a radio just off-station. A sense of… pressure. Presence. As if the air itself was crowded.

Maybe that was just blood loss and panic. Maybe it was the medication. I didn't have a manual for "you have woken up in a foreign country with a new body."

My eyelids drooped.

The door to my room banged open.

"Hey, hey, you can't just—"

"I just wanna see—!"

A nurse's protest cut off as a small shape darted past her and skidded to a halt beside my bed.

He was shorter than me by a little, all sharp angles and messy blond hair, blue eyes too big for his face. His clothes were scuffed. Band-Aids crisscrossed his cheeks like he collected minor injuries as a hobby. A pair of ragged goggles hung around his neck.

For some reason, just having him that close made the air feel louder. Not sound—something else. Like standing near a generator you couldn't quite hear, only feel buzzing in your bones. It made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Whoa," he said, eyes wide. "You're the new kid they found! They said you almost died. That's so cool!"

I stared at him.

Cool?

"I—" My voice cracked. I coughed, tried again. "I almost died. That part wasn't the cool bit."

He grinned, unbothered. He had weird markings on his cheeks—three on each side. Like whiskers.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto!" he declared, too loud for the tiny room. "Believe it!"

The nurse groaned like she'd heard that line a hundred times already.

Despite everything—the pain, the terror, the confusion of waking up in a place that shouldn't exist—I felt a laugh try to climb up my throat. It came out as a broken little huff, but it was something.

"I'm Sylvie," I managed. My voice shook, but I met his eyes. "Nice to meet you."

His grin somehow got brighter. For a split second, the exhausted, empty parts of me warmed under it, like someone had cracked a window in a stuffy room and let real air in.

I looked past him, out the window, at the strange stone faces watching over the village.

I had died in the wrong forest. Somehow, I'd ended up... here. Wherever here was.

And looking at this loud, strange kid with the buzzing energy, I had the terrible, exhilarating feeling that things were only going to get more complicated from here.

Several years would go by and the orphanage was… fine.

It was a building. It had beds, food, chores, and rules. It was better than bleeding out in the woods, but worse than having actual freedom.

The kids here moved like they were waiting to be yelled at. Flinch first, talk second. I recognized the posture; I'd grown up in it. It was a universal language.

If this was the "good" outcome for a stray kid in this weird military-run village, I wondered what the bad outcome looked like. I didn't have any illusions left about finding a loving family, but maybe, just maybe, I could make sure I wasn't the only one surviving it alone.

Chapter Text

(4 years later...)

<Sylvie>

By the time the adults noticed, it was already too late.

Naruto had given the Third Hokage—the current boss of this military city-state—a handlebar mustache.

From my angle in the alley, leaning against a crate with my paint-stained hands jammed in my pockets, I could just see the old man's stone face looming over the village. A bright, aggressive orange streak now zigzagged across his stone cheeks.

"That line is crooked," I called up.

Naruto, dangling halfway down the nose of the Fourth one (the spiky-haired guy I'd decided was the best-looking of the bunch), twisted to glare at me. "No, it's not!"

"It is," I said. "Your symmetry is a war crime."

"I'll show you a war crime!" he yelled back, and slapped more paint across the stone nostril.

I sighed, but there was a smile tugging at my mouth.

This was, objectively, a terrible idea. Defacing government property in a village run by super-powered assassins was high on the list of "How to Die Twice." But it was also the most fun I'd had all week.

The box of paints sat open beside me—a beat-up metal lunch tin I'd salvaged from the orphanage trash. Half the colors were things I'd mixed myself from cheap pigment and whatever I could scrounge: crushed berries, charcoal, and a suspiciously nice red I was pretty sure had started life as fabric dye.

Naruto had looked at it like treasure when I'd pulled it out that morning.

"If you're going to be a delinquent," I'd told him, very solemn, "at least have decent color theory."

That had been all the encouragement he needed.

I dipped a brush into a jar of dark blue and flicked it thoughtfully against the crate. Up above, Naruto whooped and went to town on the Second Hokage's hairline.

From here, the faces of four dead-or-retired dictators became clowns. It made them feel less oppressive. Less like giant stone gods watching us starve in the orphanage.

A faint clink of metal reached my ears. Armor.

I froze, then glanced toward the main road.

Two men in green flak jackets were jogging along the street, heads tilted back as they pointed up at the mountain. One of them swore loudly.

Ah. There it was. The consequences.

"Showtime," I muttered.

I snapped the tin shut, wiped my fingers on the inside of my shirt—stains added character—and pulled a small paper slip from my pocket.

The ink pattern on it was simple: a spiral and three dots. My best attempt at reverse-engineering the "exploding tags" I'd seen in a textbook, but swapped with a chemical compound I'd mixed from fertilizer and sugar.

"Don't embarrass me," I told the paper under my breath.

Then I flicked it into the alley mouth.

The tag hit the cobblestones. I channeled that weird, buzzing energy in my gut—chakra, they called it—into the ink.

Fwoom.

It flared and spat out a thick puff of greasy gray smoke that rolled across the street.

"HEY! YOU THERE!"

"Crap," I said, and bolted out the other side of the alley.

Behind me, someone shouted about brats and vandalism. The smoke wasn't enough to fully hide me—I was an eight-year-old with a chemistry set, not a ninja—but it was enough to make the soldiers hesitate, cough, and pick the wrong direction for a few precious seconds.

Which was the point.

On the mountain, Naruto saw the commotion and laughed like a maniac.

"SYLVIE, THEY SAW IT!" he hollered, voice echoing over the village. "I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA BE AWESOME!"

"Yes, congratulations, you've successfully alerted the authorities," I muttered, skidding around a corner. "You loud little idiot."

I wasn't actually trying to get away. Not really. In this village, the adults could jump over buildings. If I outran them, they'd just ask how a random orphan girl had the cardio of an Olympian.

I just needed to make it look like I tried.

Thunk.

A blackened steel knife slammed into the wooden crate right in front of my nose.

I yelped, skidding to a halt, and threw my hands up. I might be reincarnated, but I wasn't stupid.

"STOP!" a voice barked.

I let myself be grabbed by the back of my collar and dragged along, grumbling.

Up on the mountain, Naruto kept painting until a third voice—this one older, and sounding very, very tired—boomed out over the training grounds.

"UZUMAKI NARUTO!"

Even from down here, I could feel the way the air shifted. It was like static electricity spiking before a storm. Naruto froze.

I winced in sympathy.

…Yeah. We were dead.

They tied him to a post.

Technically, it was just a log in the Academy courtyard, but the vibe was distinctly "public shaming." Naruto squirmed against the rope, scowling murder at everyone who walked past. The other kids shot him looks ranging from disdain to fear.

I sat at my desk inside, chalk dust already on my fingers, listening to our teacher, Iruka-sensei, lecture us about respect.

"…and the Hokage faces are a symbol of our village's history," Iruka said, tapping the blackboard hard enough to make the chalk squeak. "Not a blank canvas for certain students to scribble on."

His eyes flicked to the empty seat next to mine, then to me. My hands, my shirt, my ink-stained nails.

He sighed deeply.

"Sylvie."

"Yes, Iruka-sensei?" I said, doing my best 'innocent victim of circumstance' face.

It didn't work. He wasn't stupid.

"Why," he asked, in the weary tone of a man who didn't get paid enough for this, "did you think helping Naruto with this was a good idea?"

Technically, no one had seen me holding a brush. But Naruto hadn't kept his mouth shut, and my paint tin was currently in police custody.

I fiddled with my pencil. "Because he was going to do it anyway," I said finally. "I just… wanted to make sure the color palette wasn't a total disaster."

A few kids snickered.

Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You're both staying after class for cleanup duty. And no recess for a week."

I winced. "Yes, sensei."

He moved on, mercifully shifting the lecture to the history of the First Hokage—the guy with the long hair on the mountain. I tuned it in and out, scribbling notes in the margins of my book. Not history notes. Geometry. The angles of the ink on the paper tags.

Outside, through the window, I could see Naruto tied to the post, swinging his legs and yelling at the clouds.

I didn't know why everyone hated him. I mean, sure, he was loud. He had no impulse control. He smelled like ramen broth and dirt. But in the orphanage, the matrons looked at him like he was a bomb waiting to go off.

I looked at my own hands. Pale, weird, constantly stained with ink. They looked at me like I was a ghost.

At least Naruto was loud about his weirdness. I respected that.

When class finally ended, the other kids bolted for the door. I took my time packing my bag. There was no point rushing toward manual labor.

Outside, Naruto looked up as I stepped into the sunlight.

"Sylvie!" he shouted, brightening immediately. "Hey! Did you see it from down here? Was it awesome? It was awesome, right?"

His cheeks were smudged with dried paint. The ropes around his torso had a couple of frayed spots where he'd clearly tried to wiggle free and failed.

I couldn't help it. I smiled.

"You gave the Third a serial killer smile," I said. "It was very avant-garde."

"Ha!" He beamed, then pulled a face. "Iruka-sensei is so mad, though. He said I disrespected the village. I didn't! I just… improved it."

"That's my line," I said dryly.

Iruka appeared behind me like he'd teleported, hands on his hips.

"Speaking of improvements," he said. "You two are going to clean every bit of that paint off the monument before sundown. Maybe then you'll appreciate how much work went into carving those faces."

Naruto groaned. "But Iruka-sensei—!"

"No buts," Iruka snapped. "Actions have consequences."

He untied Naruto with a few quick motions, then thrust a bucket and scrub brush into each of our hands.

"C'mon," Naruto said, rubbing his wrists and stomping toward the path up the mountain. "It'll be fine. We'll just… scrub really fast!"

"That's not how scrubbing works," I muttered, but followed.

Iruka fell into step behind us, clearly planning to supervise. Wise choice.

As we started up the winding path that led to the top of the cliff, Naruto glanced sideways at me.

"Hey," he said, suddenly quieter. "Thanks. For the paint. And the, y'know… helping."

His ears were a little red. It didn't match the loud grin he tried to plaster over his face.

I shrugged, shifting the heavy bucket in my hands.

"Better than sitting in class," I said. "Besides, if the village is going to treat us like delinquents, we might as well be good at it."

"Heh." He laughed, the sound bouncing off the stone walls. "Yeah! We're the best delinquents!"

Konoha spread out below us as we climbed—the tiled roofs, the busy streets, the people who barely glanced up at two orphans trudging toward their punishment.

Somewhere under all of that was a reason why the adults looked at Naruto with cold eyes. Somewhere under all of that was the reason I had memories of a world with cars and airplanes.

I didn't know the answers.

But walking up that mountain with Uzumaki Naruto complaining about elbow grease, listening to him plan his next "masterpiece," the alien world felt a little less lonely.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The chalkboard had stopped being the enemy and gone back to being just a chalkboard when Iruka finally let Naruto back inside.

Naruto, tragically, had not stopped being Naruto.

He stomped into the classroom like he'd been personally wronged by the concept of architecture, throwing himself into his seat in the back row. The desk rattled. A couple of kids jumped. Someone muttered, "Here we go," under their breath.

From my spot near the windows—third row, girls' side—his energy felt like it always did when he was mad. I didn't have a name for it yet, not really, but I could feel it buzzing against my skin. It felt like a bonfire someone had poured too much gas on—bright, unstable, sloshing right up to the edges and looking for something to burn.

"Uzumaki Naruto," Iruka said warningly, without even turning around.

"What?" Naruto complained. "I just sat down!"

Iruka wrote something about the First Hokage on the board with unnecessary force.

On Naruto's other side, the dark-haired boy—Sasuke—sat like he'd been carved out of stone: straight-backed, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded. His energy was different. If Naruto was a bonfire, Sasuke was a furnace someone had slammed the door on. Tight. Hot. Coiled in on itself.

My own desk was a disaster—in a controlled way. Textbook open, actual notes on one side, doodles creeping down the margins like ivy. Little geometric designs wound around the kanji for "fire" and "water," spirals and interlocking lines that might do something one day if I ever figured out the logic behind them.

"Pssst."

A pink-tipped pencil poked the edge of my paper.

I glanced sideways.

Yamanaka Ino had somehow achieved maximum elegance while slouched at her desk. Her hair was pulled back with a neat clip; her writing was tidy and slanted. Her energy felt like a sharp, clear pool—surface-bright, with things moving thoughtfully underneath.

She tilted her head toward the back of the room.

"So," she whispered, lips barely moving, "how bad was it?"

Naruto chose that moment to lean back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk, earning himself another "Naruto!" from Iruka. He flailed, overbalanced, and almost fell. The room tittered.

I kept my voice low. "Define 'bad'."

"On a scale from 'mildly scolded' to 'lifelong ban from the market district'?"

I thought of Iruka's headache face, the buckets of soapy water, the climb up the mountain, Naruto nearly slipping off the Third's nose twice.

"Mm. Somewhere between 'irreparably disappointed' and 'personally offended on behalf of the government.'"

Ino covered her mouth, shoulders shaking.

"Serves him right," she said, once she'd wrestled the laughter down. "Drawing that mustache on the Third was a crime."

"It was a conceptual statement about the burden of leadership," I said. "You just don't understand his creative vision."

She snorted. "Please. Naruto's 'creative vision' is 'what if I made this worse and louder?'"

She wasn't wrong.

Iruka cleared his throat pointedly. We both dropped our eyes to our workbooks like model students.

"…and so," he said, tapping the page with his chalk, "the First Hokage founded the village with the goal of bringing peace to the warring clans—"

My attention drifted.

Information was important and I wasn't about to flunk out of the Academy. Losing my spot here meant going back to being a civilian orphan with no future, which wasn't an option. But my brain kept wandering away from the words to the people saying them.

Hinata, two rows ahead, shrank into her seat like she was trying to fold herself into a pocket. Her energy flickered and dimmed every time Iruka called on someone.

Kiba was the opposite. Even with his head on his desk, he radiated loud heat, the kind of restless sharpness that made dogs excited and teachers tired. The puppy on his head yawned, their energies overlapping like two versions of the same song.

And then there was the sleepy kid, Shikamaru.

He was slouched so low in his seat he was practically melting, eyes half closed. From the outside, he looked like he might drift off at any second. From the inside, he felt like a river with deep, slow-moving currents—calm on top, surprisingly heavy underneath.

At lunch, the Academy loosened its tie a little.

Kids poured out into the courtyard in noisy clusters, bento boxes in hand. I ended up on a low wall under one of the scraggly trees with Naruto, because apparently, shared trauma (cleaning graffiti) creates bonds. He ripped open his lunch like it had insulted him.

"Iruka-sensei is such a drag," he said around a mouthful of rice. "History this, treaties that. Who cares what a bunch of dead guys signed a million years ago?"

"People who don't want to die in wars," I said. "Also people who like not being on fire."

He made a face and kicked his legs. That buzzing energy moved around him—restless, bright, like a storm cloud made of orange paint.

I was halfway through my own onigiri when my weird sense prickled.

Someone small, fast, and overly determined was moving through the crowd like a guided missile. Their energy was sharp and young and trying way too hard to be sneaky.

I turned my head just in time to see a blur of beige and a long blue scarf bolt past.

The blur tripped on absolutely nothing, face-planted, and slid in the dirt.

Naruto burst out laughing. "PFF—ha! You good there, little guy?"

The kid sprang back up like a rubber ball. He couldn't have been more than… eight? Brown hair stuck out from under a too-big helmet with goggles. His cheeks were smudged with dirt and pride.

"I-I totally meant to do that!" he blurted, then frozen when he actually focused on Naruto. His eyes went wide. "You're Uzumaki Naruto!"

Naruto blinked. "Yeah? And you are…?"

The kid straightened, puffed up, jabbed a thumb at his chest.

"I'm Konohamaru!" he declared. "Grandson of the Third Hokage! But don't call me 'Honorable Grandson' or I'll kill you."

That last bit came out with the exact intonation of someone quoting themselves from a hundred tantrums.

I almost choked on my rice. Grandson?

Konohamaru's energy jittered impatiently, like it was trying to climb out of his skin. He kept cutting glances toward the red tower where the Hokage's office sat, visible over the rooftops.

"Okay, Konohamaru," Naruto said, grinning. "Why were you sprinting like a weirdo?"

Konohamaru's ears went pink. "I—I was going to challenge Gramps. I mean… the Hokage. Again." He scowled. "But I slipped. Stupid floor."

"The ground hates all of us," I said solemnly. "Equal opportunity."

He only then seemed to realize I existed. His gaze flicked to me, then to my forehead (bare of any headband), then down to the ink stains on my fingers.

"And you are?" he asked, slightly suspicious, like I might be a secret guard in disguise.

"Sylvie," I said. "Random orphan. Resident Naruto-enabling committee."

Naruto elbowed me. "Hey! I don't need enabling!"

"That's exactly what someone who needs enabling would say."

Konohamaru watched us bicker, eyes shining in that way kids get when they've just realized older kids are actually idiots.

Then he leaned forward. "Boss," he said.

Naruto jerked. "Huh?"

"Teach me," Konohamaru said, dead serious. "You painted the Hokage Monument. You don't care he's the Hokage. You talk to him like he's just some old man. Nobody else does that. So… teach me how to beat him."

There it was: the little tangle of envy and resentment in his chest whenever he said "Hokage." Big shadow, small kid.

Naruto scratched his cheek. "Heh. I get that," he said, voice softer. Then he brightened. "All right! I'll teach you."

Konohamaru lit up. "Really, Boss?!"

"Boss?" I repeated, amused.

Naruto straightened, puffing his chest out like a pigeon. "Yeah, that's right. From now on, I'm your boss. Lesson one: you can't beat the Hokage by tripping on the ground."

They were about to devolve into a slap-fight when a new presence approached—smooth, controlled, and deeply annoyed.

"Konohamaru-sama!" a voice snapped.

A man in dark clothes and a standard-issue flak vest marched toward us, sandals clicking on stone. Dark glasses, tight ponytail. His energy felt like a walking lecture.

He stopped, hands on his hips.

"There you are," he said. "I turn my back for one moment and you're fraternizing with… with this delinquent again."

Naruto bristled. "Delinquent?!"

"Ebisu-sensei," Konohamaru groaned. "I told you not to call me '-sama' in front of people."

"I am your elite private tutor," the man, Ebisu, said without a trace of irony. "It is proper to address the Hokage's grandson with respect."

He gave Naruto a once-over like he'd found something moldy in the fridge.

"And it is proper," he added, "to keep him away from bad influences."

His gaze flicked to me, clearly lumping me into the "bad influence" bucket by proximity.

I smiled, sharp and sweet. "Hi," I said. "Random orphan. Zero political power. I have a name too, but by all means, keep objectifying us."

His mouth pinched.

"Uzumaki Naruto," he said, as if reciting a wanted poster. "Perpetual Academy failure. Repeated vandalism. Chronic disrespect for authority. A boy like you will never become Hokage."

Naruto flinched. Just a tiny twitch around the eyes. But his energy spiked like someone had jabbed it with a needle.

"You don't know that," he said. "I'll show all of you. I'll—"

"Konohamaru-sama," Ebisu cut in, turning away from Naruto as if he'd ceased to exist. "We are going. Now."

My fingers curled around my bento box.

"I don't know," I said lightly. "Naruto seems pretty good at dragging people up, actually."

Ebisu's lip curled. "You children don't understand how the world works," he said. "Status exists for a reason. Talent exists for a reason. Hokage is not a title for clowns and strays."

My ears buzzed. Stray.

Naruto was shaking now, just a little. Anger rolling off him like heat.

"Take it back," he said.

Ebisu ignored him, putting a hand on Konohamaru's shoulder. "Come, Konohamaru-sama. We'll work somewhere you won't be corrupted by—"

Naruto moved.

It wasn't the wild, flailing charge he'd used on the training field. It was faster—offense braided with spite.

"Heh," he said, backing up a step and folding his hands into a seal I'd only ever seen doodled in the margins of dirty comics and prank scrolls. "If I'm a clown anyway… might as well use my best gag."

My brain took a second to catch up.

Wait. No. He wouldn't—

"Don't tell me you're going to—" I started.

Naruto grinned, sharp and wicked.

"Sexy Jutsu!"

He slammed the last hand sign.

Chakra flared, hot and ridiculous, and smoke exploded around him.

When it cleared, Naruto wasn't there.

In his place stood a tall, curvy girl with long blonde hair spilling down her back in soft waves. Same bright blue eyes, now framed by thick lashes. Same grin, turned devastating. The standard censoring smoke curled around her at strategic points, but there was enough visible skin to make the point extremely clear.

She giggled—high, breathy, weaponized.

"Ebisu-sensei," she cooed, leaning forward just enough that physics had a panic attack. "Isn't it lonely~ doing private lessons all day?"

My jaw dropped.

Konohamaru shrieked, "WHOA—BOSS?!"

Ebisu made a strangled noise.

For a split second, the entire courtyard seemed to pause. Even my chakra sense kind of blue-screened.

Because, sure, I knew about the Transformation Jutsu. I'd read the textbooks. I knew ninjas could look like other people.

But knowing it and seeing it from three meters away, in real air, as someone whose whole brain was already a tangled ball of gendered wires, were very different things.

My thoughts did a hard crash and reboot.

Transformation can do that? my brain screamed. It's that complete? That seamless?

There was a dizzy, lurching moment where my body felt both too real and not real enough. Naruto had just flipped a switch and became, effortlessly, something I wanted so badly it hurt to look at.

Shock hit first—sharp, electric.

Right behind it: envy. Hot and sour and ridiculous, because it was a joke, it was a gag, it was meant to humiliate an uptight tutor, not rip open my carefully labeled "Deal With This Later" box and dump it on the floor.

I must've made some kind of face, because Konohamaru glanced at me and then did a double take.

"Uh, Sylvie?" he whispered. "You okay? You look like you ate a ghost."

"Working on it," I croaked.

Ebisu, meanwhile, was losing a battle with his own circulatory system.

He stumbled back, glasses slipping down his nose, red gushing out in a nosebleed so over-the-top it would've looked fake on stage.

"Th-this… this vulgar… forbidden…" he choked, swaying. "Such… powerful… indecency—!"

He toppled backward in a perfect faint, hitting the ground with a thud.

The sexy version of Naruto dispelled in a pop of smoke, leaving regular, sweaty, smug Naruto in his place.

He planted his hands on his hips and cackled.

"Hah! That's what you get, you stuck-up glasses freak!"

Konohamaru stared at him, eyes like dinner plates. "That," he breathed, "was the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life."

"Right?!" Naruto beamed. "One day I'll make a whole new version and knock the Hokage flat too."

Konohamaru clenched his fists, trembling with religious fervor. "Teach me, Boss," he begged. "Teach me the forbidden art."

"Nope," I said automatically.

They both turned to look at me.

"That's a war crime," I said. "On at least three levels. The world is not ready for two of you doing that."

Naruto pouted. "C'mon, Sylvie, you gotta admit it was awesome."

"I will admit it was effective," I said. "I will also admit I am going to be unpacking my reaction to it for approximately the rest of my life."

He blinked. "Huh?"

"Nothing," I said quickly. "Just processing the fact that transformation jutsu is apparently… that flexible."

I glanced at my own hands. At the way my hospital gown had fit months ago. At the way this body still felt like a borrowed outfit, even when it was right.

A little tremor ran through me.

Naruto, mercifully oblivious, slung an arm around Konohamaru's shoulders.

"Lesson two!" he declared. "If someone tells you you can't be Hokage, you ignore them and get stronger anyway."

Konohamaru nodded, deadly serious. "Right!"

"And lesson three," Naruto added. "Sometimes, to shock the world… you gotta be a little pervy."

"Do not make that your life motto," I said. "Please."

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The candle was definitely judging me.

It guttered in the corner of my room, wax puddling like a tiny melted corpse, while I hunched over my notebook with ink-stained fingers and a brain that would not shut up.

The dorm room the orphanage gave us was small but neat: narrow bed, tiny desk, window that leaked moonlight. Everything beige, like the caretakers thought neutral colors would prevent emotional damage.

Joke's on them.

I tapped the end of my brush against my glasses and frowned down at the page.

A neat, proper seal array sat in the center—a basic storage formula, the kind Iruka had praised that afternoon. Tight circles, four cardinal points, little anchors for chakra. Efficient. Safe. Boring.

Around it, the margins were chaos.

Self. Change. Body. Truth.

My attempts at the kanji crawled along the edges in uneven rows, little soldiers with broken legs.

自

変

体

真

I'd written them, crossed them out, written them smaller, tried to sneak them into sub-arrays, then angrily scrubbed them into gray smears.

"Stop looking at me," I muttered at the page.

Obviously, it didn't.

My hand moved anyway, brush gliding in automatic little loops as I sketched a new circle on the next sheet. Habit. Muscle memory. The first thing I'd really owned in this world: ink + chakra = something that listened to me.

Most days, that felt like a miracle. Tonight it felt like a dare.

Naruto's stupid Sexy Jutsu kept punching my brain from the inside. The way he'd just—poof—flipped his body like a card trick, grinning through the smoke, not a trace of shame.

Like shifting shapes was as casual as changing clothes.

I swallowed.

My brush hesitated above the paper.

"What if…" I whispered, which were probably the most dangerous two words in any language.

I knew Transformation was supposed to be an illusion. A thin layer of chakra that tricked the eye. But I also knew seals could bind things. Anchor them.

If you were smart.

If you were stupid, you got "explodes in your face" or "your arm forgets how to be an arm."

The brush touched down anyway.

Circle. Four points. Connecting lines.

I added a tiny auxiliary ring, like a satellite. Labeled it 自 in the narrow space.

Self.

My fingers trembled.

Okay. Hypothetically. If you made a seal that latched onto your own chakra signature—your "self" pattern—and then cross-linked it with a continuous transformation matrix, you could maybe—

"Lock it in," I said under my breath. "Make it real."

Make me real.

My chest tightened. The room seemed to shrink around me, walls pressing in, memories pressing harder.

Old memories, from the Before. Hands grabbing the back of my neck. Voices hissing what are you like it was a crime. Mirrors avoided like landmines. Clothes two sizes too big so no one had to see.

I blinked hard until the candle smear on my glasses turned back into a flame.

"Bad idea," I told the paper. "Terrible, terrible idea."

The brush hovered anyway, inching toward the center of the array.

傍 — Body.

変 — Change.

真 — Truth.

If I got it right, I could anchor this body, this shape, this self. Tell the world: this is not a costume, this is not temporary, this is not negotiable.

If I got it wrong…

I pictured my chakra snarling into a knot. Muscles spasming. Skin not matching the map underneath. Getting hauled into the hospital and having to explain why my soul had tried to jailbreak through a seal designed by an eight-year-old amateur.

Hubris, my brain offered primly. Classic cautionary tale stuff. Girl flies too close to the sun, falls, breaks her everything.

Also extremely, soul-breakingly tempting.

I drew one more line.

It almost completed into something like a stabilization loop—half self, half body, feeding back into the center. A "stay like this" command.

My hand started shaking so hard a droplet of ink splattered right across the middle.

"Shit—"

I jerked back, heart slamming, brush clattering onto the desk. The half-formed seal stared up at me with a bleeding black eye.

For a second, the air felt thick with wrongness. Not real chakra, just… the knowledge that if I pushed even a little further, I'd be testing something I absolutely wasn't ready for.

I pressed my hands flat on the desk until my knuckles went white.

"Okay," I said out loud, to the room, to the candle, to myself. "New rule. No experimental soul surgery after midnight."

My laugh came out thin and jagged.

I flipped the page over so I didn't have to look at it and grabbed a fresh sheet. This time, I forced my brush to draw something safe. A simple tag. Explosive, yes, but predictable—tiny controlled burst, not existential detonation.

Seal for "push." Seal for "stop." Seal for "heal bruises," the one I'd been trying to improve so Naruto didn't have to pretend he didn't care when he tripped over his own feet during training.

Useful things. External things. Things that weren't my reflection on a page.

My chakra pulsed faintly in my fingertips, eager to be used, to flow into the ink and animate the shapes. I held it back. I didn't activate anything. Not tonight.

The candle hissed as a bit of wax fell, collapsing the wick slightly.

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my face, leaving a streak of ink on my cheek. My glasses were smudged; the world blurred at the edges.

"What if it fades?" I asked the ceiling quietly.

This body. This voice. This chance.

What if someone decided it was all a fluke and took it away?

My heart did that awful drop again. I had no guarantee. No contract. Just… waking up one day and discovering I'd been slotted into a life where people called me "she" without flinching.

It still felt fragile. Like smoke. Like breathing too hard might break the illusion.

I clutched my hitai-ate where it lay on the desk, thumb tracing the spiral of the Leaf. The metal was cool and solid under my skin.

"This is real," I whispered. "I'm real."

No seal. No jutsu. Just words.

They felt small. They were all I had.

Ink-stained fingertips, light brown hair falling into my eyes, glasses sliding down my nose, oversized clothes hanging off a body that finally felt like it belonged to me.

I almost reached for the half-finished self-henge array again.

Instead, I blew out the candle.

Darkness surged in, soft and absolute. Moonlight painted a pale square on the floor. My eyes slowly adjusted.

In the quiet, with no brush in my hand, it was easier to choose not to tempt fate.

"I'll get strong first," I told the dark. "Smart first. Live first."

Then, maybe, someday, I'd earn the right to write seals about truth and self and body.

For now, I shuffled to bed, leaving the dangerous page buried under safer diagrams.

Behind my closed eyes, Naruto exploded into a cloud of smoke again, reappearing in that ridiculous girl form and cackling.

"Must be nice," I mumbled into my pillow.

Sleep finally dragged me under.

On the desk, unseen, the half-finished array dried into permanent hesitation—one ink-black loop short of rewriting the girl who'd drawn it.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Graduation day smelled like chalk dust and high-stakes desperation.

Iruka-sensei had lined us up outside the classroom, clipboard in hand, expression set to "stern but please don't make me fail you." One by one, kids went in, performed the jutsu, and came out wearing either a shiny new forehead protector or a look that said "well, there's always next year."

I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake the stiffness out.

The energy under my skin—chakra—hummed. It felt thin but sharp today, like a wire pulled tight. I'd been drilling the Clone Jutsu for weeks. My control was good because I treated it like math: input A plus hand sign B equals Result C. My stamina, however, was trash. If I messed up the equation, I didn't have the battery life to run it again.

"Inuzuka Kiba," Iruka called.

Kiba swaggered in with his puppy perched on his head like a judgmental hat. A moment later we heard Iruka's approving, "Good, next!" and Kiba came out grinning with a metal plate hanging around his neck.

Show-off.

"Yamanaka Ino."

Ino took a breath, squared her shoulders, and went in. She emerged a minute later, hair swishing, looking terrifyingly competent. She caught my eye and flashed her forehead protector.

Told you, she mouthed.

I smiled back and tried not to think about the fact that my stomach felt like it was full of bees.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

Naruto jerked like he'd been poked, then puffed up his chest.

"Watch this," he whispered to no one in particular, then marched inside.

The door slid shut behind him.

Even through the wall, his energy was impossible to miss. It was loud, jittery, bouncing off the edges of the room. I couldn't hear the words, but I could feel the pattern through my weird synesthesia sense. Iruka's steady, solid presence. The other teacher, Mizuki, who felt smoother, cooler. And Naruto's wild excitement.

Then, I felt Naruto try to mold the energy.

I winced.

His energy didn't flow; it surged. It was like watching someone try to fill a water balloon with a firehose. It spiked, chaotic and massive, and then… collapsed.

A beat later, Iruka's voice floated through, tight and forced. "Next time, try to make it look less… dead."

My turn was coming up fast.

"Sylvie," Iruka called.

My feet moved before my brain caught up. The classroom felt smaller than usual, like the walls had inched in just to watch.

Iruka stood at the front with the clipboard. Mizuki lounged nearby with an easy smile and eyes that didn't quite match it.

Naruto's "clone" lay on the floor beside him. It was a disaster. Pale, squashed, half-formed. It looked like someone had tried to make a person out of melting wax and gave up halfway through.

"Okay, Naruto, step aside," Iruka said, rubbing his temples. "Sylvie, you're up. Show us the Clone Jutsu."

Naruto shuffled to the side, shoulders hunched, eyes flicking between me and the puddle-person on the floor. His energy buzzed with embarrassment, anger, and that familiar burn of I really tried, why wasn't it enough?

I swallowed, moved to the center of the room, and brought my hands up.

Ram. Snake. Tiger.

My fingers moved through the signs, muscle memory carrying them. I pulled my chakra up, careful and controlled. I didn't try to force it. I treated it like a chemical reaction—precise measurements only.

The world narrowed to breath and shapes and the feel of energy pushing against the edges of my skin.

"Clone Jutsu," I said, and released.

There was a pop and a brief, dizzy lurch in my head.

Then another me stood at my side—slightly fuzzy around the edges, but upright. It blinked once, swayed, and held.

My legs, on the other hand, immediately filed a formal complaint.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

If this were only about math, I thought, as black spots danced at the edge of my vision, I'd be valedictorian. But no, it has to be about not passing out, too.

Iruka stepped forward, examining the clone. He prodded it once, then nodded.

"Good. Solid enough for Academy standards," he said. "You pass."

Relief washed down my spine, hot and cold all at once.

Iruka clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You always notice what other people miss, Sylvie. That's a skill, too. Don't undersell it." He motioned for me to go, but I hesitated.

Behind him, Mizuki smiled at me—polite, professional.

His energy felt... weird. Smooth. Slick. Like oil floating on top of water. It wasn't hostile, exactly, but it made the hair on my arms stand up in a way I didn't like. I ignored the little twist in my gut.

Iruka scribbled something on his clipboard, then looked at Naruto.

The change in his expression hurt to see. He didn't want to say what he had to say. But he said it anyway.

"Naruto," Iruka began, voice softening. "You put in a lot of effort. But your clone… it's not up to standard. I can't pass you like this."

Naruto's hand clenched around the edge of his desk. His eyes went wide, then dropped to the floor.

"What?" he said. "But—I tried! I—"

Iruka flinched, just a little. "You'll have another chance next year."

Next year. In a room full of kids already wearing forehead protectors, that sentence might as well have been a death sentence.

Naruto laughed. It was a brittle, cracking sound.

"Yeah," he said. "Next year. Sure."

His energy flickered wildly, then flattened. Not calm. Not fine. Just… numbed out.

I wanted to say something. Anything. I also wanted to stay very, very quiet and not draw any more attention to myself than I already had.

"Iruka, maybe—" Mizuki started, his voice smooth.

Iruka shook his head. "We'll talk about it later. For now… Sylvie, you may go. Naruto, wait outside until we're done."

I bowed and backed out of the room, my clone dissolving into smoke as my concentration slipped.

In the hallway, kids clustered in little celebratory knots, comparing metal plates and making big plans. Some wore theirs proudly on their heads. Others had them tied around necks or arms, experimenting.

I ducked past them and out the back door.

The old swing set creaked softly in the breeze.

Naruto was already there, of course.

He sat hunched on the swing, rope gripped tight in both hands, forehead bare. The late-afternoon light cut sharp lines across his face. From a distance, he looked… quiet. Too quiet.

Naruto, alone on that swing, looked like a crime scene.

It hit me sideways: last time I was in a forest, I'd died alone. Before that, I'd just practiced for it—long walks to get away from shouting, sitting under trees until the sky went dark and nobody came looking.

This village had a hero die to save it, and their response was to make his kid practice being alone for twelve years.

I walked over and plopped down on the swing next to his. The chains rattled.

He didn't look at me.

"Congratulations," he muttered. "You did it. Bet you're happy to finally get away from this place."

"Ecstatic," I said. "Can't wait to trade these desks for life-threatening missions and probable trauma."

He snorted, but it was half-hearted.

Up close, his energy felt… wrong. Not the usual loud chaos. More like it had imploded, all the color sucked to the center.

No kid in this world gets left in the metaphorical woods again, I decided. Not if I can reach them in time.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out the little paper bag I'd been saving from lunch. The dango inside had cooled and stuck together, but sugar was sugar.

"Here," I said, holding it out.

Naruto eyed the bag like it might explode.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Poison," I said. "Obviously. Eat it."

He rolled his eyes but took the bag. When he opened it and saw the skewers, his expression cracked just a little.

"You saved this?" he asked.

"Yeah. I wasn't hungry."

"Liar."

"Maybe," I said. "Shut up and eat."

He did, shoulders curling in slightly as he bit off a piece. For a moment we just sat there, chewing in silence.

Around us, the Academy yard buzzed with distant noise. Laughter, footsteps, the occasional shout. None of it seemed to touch the little bubble around the swing.

"So," Naruto said eventually, voice low. "You passed because you're smart, huh?"

I blinked. "That what you think?"

He shrugged, not looking at me.

"You always get good scores. Iruka's always talking about your neat chakra control, and your weird seals, and how you actually listen to the lectures." His mouth twisted. "I'm just… me."

Just the kid the village decided to hate for no reason I could figure out, I thought, but didn't say.

Instead, I leaned back, letting the swing creak.

"You're not wrong," I said. "I am smart. And my chakra control is good. And it still almost knocked me on my ass to make that clone."

He glanced at me, suspicious.

"I get tired faster than you," I went on. "I knew exactly what I was doing and it still felt like someone reached into my chest and squeezed. If this test was only about control? I'd ace it. But it's not. It's about control on fumes. That's a different game."

He made a face. "Is this supposed to make me feel better?"

"Kind of?" I picked at a splinter on the swing's seat. "Look. The Academy tests don't measure everything. They're good at catching kids like me—people who can follow instructions, who can mold chakra carefully, who know how to take notes."

I glanced at him, meeting his eyes.

"They're not great at grading 'refuses to stay down,'" I said. "Or 'will run into danger anyway.' Or 'has enough stubbornness to punch fate in the face.'"

Naruto blinked.

"You're strong in ways I'm not," I said, feeling the words settle between us. "They just haven't figured out how to put that on paper yet."

He stared at me for a long moment, like he was trying to decide if I was messing with him.

"…That's dumb," he said finally.

"Yeah," I agreed. "It is."

We swung gently for a bit. The dango bag crinkled as he fished out another skewer.

"If I'm so 'strong,'" he said around a mouthful, "how come I still failed?"

"Because the Clone Jutsu sucks," I said promptly. "And because no one bothered to teach you a version that matches how your energy works."

He frowned, confused.

"Some people are better at big tricks," I said. "Some are better at precise ones. You're a big trick person trying to fit into a precise trick box. That's on them, not you."

He chewed slower, thinking.

"…So what, I'm just supposed to wait around until someone gives me a test I'm good at?" he grumbled. "That sounds stupid too."

"It is," I said. "Or—and hear me out—you could keep being annoying until someone notices they're using the wrong ruler on you."

A little spark lit in his eyes.

"Annoying is my specialty," he said.

"I know," I said. "Tragically."

He laughed, really laughed this time, and the tight, flat feeling around his energy loosened. Color seeped back in around the edges.

The sun slipped lower, turning the monument on the mountain gold in the distance. From here, you could still see faint smudges where paint had once been.

Naruto finished the last of the dango and licked his fingers.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

"For the sugar? Or the pep talk?" I asked.

"Both," he said. "But mostly the sugar."

"Obviously."

He kicked off the ground, making his swing sway higher.

"I'm still gonna be Hokage," he said suddenly, like daring the world to argue. "Even if I have to repeat a stupid year. Even if everyone thinks I'm an idiot. I'll show them."

I looked at him—the scuffed clothes, the bandaged cheek, the grin that refused to stay dead—and believed him. Not because of a prophecy or a story, but because he was the kind of person who would drag himself up out of any crater just to yell at the sky.

"Yeah," I said softly. "You will."

And when he did, maybe I'd be there too—ink on my fingers, seal tags in my pouch, doing my best to make sure we both survived long enough to see it.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Cleaning chalkboards was a stupid use of a ninja's time.

I knew that, Iruka knew that, and the chalk knew that. It clung to the board like a stubborn ghost, smearing into gray clouds instead of disappearing, turning my hands white up to the wrists.

"Don't just smear it around, Sylvie," the substitute teacher snapped from the doorway. "Use some elbow grease."

He wasn't Iruka. Iruka had been called away after the exams, leaving us in the care of Chunin Backup Option #3: a narrow-faced man with a perpetual frown, a hitai-ate worn too tight, and the sort of aura you'd expect from someone who graded on a curve just to watch you suffer.

"Yes, sensei," I said, through gritted teeth.

My arms already ached from the clone test. Chakra control: good. Stamina: garbage. Now I was adding "manual labor" to the list of things my muscles were filing formal complaints about.

The classroom had mostly emptied out. The newly minted genin had scattered to go brag to their parents and siblings about their shiny new headbands. A couple of other kids were stuck cleaning desks or sweeping, all of us united in the glorious camaraderie of "congratulations, you passed, now scrub."

Outside, through the open window, the schoolyard spread out in sun and dust.

Naruto sat on the old swing, alone.

From here, he was just a small, orange shape framed by the metal chains. His head was down, shoulders hunched. The wind tugged at his bright blond hair.

His energy felt like a dull, muddy swirl. I hated it.

He should've been pacing, yelling, flailing his arms about how "next time I'll show them!" Instead he was… quiet. Like someone had turned the volume down on a song that was supposed to be loud.

My fingers tightened around the eraser.

Someone moved across the yard, cutting through the sunlight.

I recognized Mizuki by his silhouette first: tall, athletic, headband worn just so, flak vest neat, posture relaxed. Textbook "trustworthy upperclassman." The Academy moms probably loved him.

He walked over to Naruto, the lazy curve of his energy sharpening as he went.

"Hm," I muttered.

"What was that?" Backup Sensei snapped, not looking up from his paperwork.

"Nothing," I said.

It wasn't nothing.

From inside the classroom, I couldn't hear the words. I could see the angle of Mizuki's body, though—half-turned, casual, creating just enough distance to make Naruto look up to him instead of feeling crowded. I could see Naruto's flinch when Mizuki said something soft and earnest, the way his shoulders hunched more, then relaxed, then hunched again.

But more than that, I could feel the shift.

Whatever sense had followed me from my old life into this one didn't give me dialogue. It was more like… textures.

Iruka's energy was steady, warm, a little tired. Even when he was yelling, there was a solidity to him. The emotional equivalent of good bread.

Mizuki's, up close, was different. Smoother. Too smooth. Like water over oiled stone.

Right now, standing in front of Naruto, it sharpened—focus narrowing, attention honed in hard. It felt… hungry. Not the "I want lunch" kind. The "I want something out of this" kind.

Teachers didn't usually feel like that around Naruto. Annoyed? Sure. Exasperated? Constantly. But not… eager.

Naruto's energy, in contrast, was a whirlpool starting to spin faster. Hope, confusion, and desperate need all tangling together.

I wiped the same spot on the chalkboard three times, then gave up pretending.

"Sensei," I said, turning toward the doorway. "Can I—"

"No," he said automatically. "You are on cleaning duty for the monument incident and for backtalk in class. You will finish the board and the erasers before you leave."

"It'll just take a second," I said. "I think Mizuki-sensei is—"

He did look up then. His eyes were flat.

"Mizuki is another instructor," he said. "What he does with Uzumaki is none of your business."

Something sour twisted in my gut.

"It's just that his chakra feels—" I stopped myself.

Normal kids didn't talk about "how someone's chakra felt," not like that. At least not yet. I was already weird enough, with my doodles and seals and "accidentally" being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Feels what?" the teacher asked, voice gone even flatter. Daring me.

Like oil. Like lies. Like the first time you realize a grown-up is smiling with their mouth and not their eyes.

"Off," I said finally. "He feels… off around Naruto."

The teacher stared at me for a long, unpleasant second.

"Do you think you understand the chakra of a chunin better than your instructors?" he asked.

"That's not what I—"

"Enough," he snapped. "You are an orphan with no clan, no formal specialty, and barely enough chakra to pass Academy techniques. You are not a sensor. Don't pretend you are."

The words hit harder than I wanted them to.

"I just—"

"And you are not," he added, under his breath but not quite quiet enough, "even a real Konoha ninja. So stop acting like one."

The words landed harder than a slap ever would have. Not a real ninja. Not a real anything. Just an orphan the village could warehouse and ignore.

That was how it happened, wasn't it? First you're "not real," then nobody listens when you say something's wrong, then some kid bleeds out in a forest because the adults decided their pride was more important than his life.

Heat flushed up my neck. I stared at him, mouth half open.

Not a real Konoha ninja.

I got it. I did. I wasn't born here, not to this village, not to its clans or its bloodlines. As far as the paperwork was concerned, I had been scooped off the forest floor from nowhere. A stray.

Fine, I thought, a sudden, cold clarity settling over me. If I'm not a 'real' Konoha ninja, then my loyalty will be to the kids bleeding for this village, not its pride.

But I'd still bled here. I'd still learned here. I'd taken the same stupid tests, thrown the same kunai, scrubbed the same chalkboards.

Something ugly curled in my chest.

"Yes, sensei," I said, because arguing would get me nowhere.

I turned back to the board and started erasing harder than strictly necessary.

Outside, Mizuki leaned closer to Naruto, voice low and persuasive. Naruto's chakra flared, pain and anger and hope tangled together.

My throat felt tight.

Here, my hands were full of chalk dust. The only pause button was the chunin behind me who'd already decided my input didn't matter.

I tried again, one last time.

"What if he's—" I said.

The teacher dropped his papers on the desk with a slap.

"Sylvie," he said. "I don't know what kind of tricks you think you're playing, but accusing a fellow instructor of… whatever it is you're hinting at? That is not something a student does. Do you understand me?"

I swallowed.

"Yes," I said. "I understand."

He watched me a moment longer, then picked up his grading again.

"That boy is trouble," he muttered, almost to himself. "If Mizuki can knock some sense into him, let him. Konoha has been too soft already."

My fingers dug into the eraser until my nails hurt.

Trouble.

They meant Naruto.

They hadn't said it explicitly, but they didn't have to. I heard it in the way adults sighed when he walked by. In the way shopkeepers "forgot" his orders. In the way other kids' parents yanked them closer whenever the blond boy got too near.

They were all blind to the fact that their "trouble" was holding something heavy in his gut and still managed to laugh like the world wasn't stacked against him.

Out in the yard, Mizuki stepped back, his smile soft and encouraging. Naruto looked up at him, eyes wide, expression torn between suspicion and desperate belief.

I didn't know what Mizuki was saying. I couldn't hear the promise. But I felt the hook sink in.

Naruto nodded.

Mizuki straightened, patted his shoulder, and walked away, satisfaction smoothing his energy out until it was bland again. Like nothing had happened.

My stomach dropped.

The swing creaked as Naruto stood up.

He didn't look back at the building. He didn't look up at the monument or down at the village streets. He just shoved his hands into his pockets and stalked off with a set to his shoulders I recognized: the "I've made a decision and nothing you say will change my mind" walk.

I'd seen it when he decided to paint the mountain. I'd see it again a hundred times in bigger, worse situations.

Now, it scared me more than the masks had the day I woke up here.

The eraser squeaked across the board.

I could've tried to run after him. Could've thrown the eraser down, sprinted past the teacher, and yelled something—anything—out the window.

But the chunin was watching me like a hawk. And Naruto was already gone. And I was just a kid with ink on her fingers and no authority.

So I swallowed my protest. I erased the rest of the chalk.

Didn't mean I had to like it.

By the time the sky started to darken, the board was clean, the erasers were beaten senseless, and the teacher finally dismissed me with a curt nod.

"Go home," he said. "And stay out of trouble."

"Sure," I said. "That's realistic."

I stepped out into the cool evening air and felt the whole village humming. Lights in windows. Voices drifting from open doors.

Somewhere far off, a spike of chakra flared stronger and brighter than anything an Academy student should've had access to.

I winced, adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder.

"Okay," I muttered to myself. "So Naruto is up to something stupid, Mizuki feels like a used car salesman, and the adults are useless. Fantastic."

I started walking.

If they wouldn't listen to me as a ninja, fine. I'd become the kind of ninja they couldn't afford to ignore—someone whose whole job was making sure this place stopped eating its children.

Naruto might be the one who would change things. But someone had to be there with bandages and a bad attitude when the dust settled.

Chapter Text

<Naruto>

The forest was quiet except for Naruto's own wheezing.

He slammed his palms together again, fingers numb and clumsy.

"Shadow… Clone… Jutsu!"

Smoke burst around him, harsh in the moonlight.

When it cleared, there was… something on the ground in front of him. It had his hair. Sort of. Its limbs were wrong, its eyes were rolled back, and then it popped like a soap bubble and vanished.

Naruto cursed and dropped to one knee.

His arms shook. His shirt clung, damp with sweat. The giant scroll he'd stolen lay open in front of him, its inked warnings and diagrams staring back like they were mocking him.

He glared at it.

"I did it," he muttered. "Once. I know I did."

He had, too. The first time he'd tried, fueled by panic and stubbornness, there had been three clones for a second. They'd fallen over like drunks and hit each other in the face, but they'd been real. Sort of.

Since then? Nothing but half-formed messes.

Naruto clenched his fists.

"If I get this jutsu," he told the trees, "Iruka-sensei has to pass me. Mizuki-sensei said so."

The name tasted weird in his mouth. He shoved that feeling away.

He could see it so clearly in his head: Iruka putting the hitai-ate on him, saying he was finally a real ninja. Everyone else having to shut up about him being dead last.

He pushed himself back to his feet.

"One more time," he growled. "No—ten more times!"

He slammed his hands into the seal again.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

<Sylvie>

By the time I realized exactly how bad things were, the whole building was buzzing.

"Uzumaki Naruto stole the Forbidden Scroll—"

"—Hokage-sama says keep civilians away from the north forest—"

"—if ANBU find him first, it's going to be—"

I stepped out of the orphanage hallway just in time for two chunin to barrel past, talking too loud and too fast.

The words "Naruto" and "Scroll" hit my brain like a cold bucket of water.

"What," I said to nobody.

They didn't slow down. One of them added, "Iruka-sensei went after him already," and that was enough.

I grabbed my sandals from beside the door and jammed them on as I ran.

The smart move would've been to stay put. Let the professionals handle it. Trust the system.

I'd seen the system here. It left Naruto alone on swings and shrugged at Mizuki's oil-slick energy and told me I wasn't "a real Konoha ninja anyway."

So: no.

The village blurred past—dark streets, shuttered stalls, the distant glow from the red tower. I cut through alleys and hopped a low fence, lungs already burning. I did not have a runner's body. I had a "sits cross-legged and paints for three hours" body.

Too bad.

The closer I got to the tree line, the clearer the hum of energy became, and the more intensely my heart raced. Dozens of signatures flared and shifted as ninja fanned out in search patterns.

Beneath all that, two points stood out to my weird sense.

One was Iruka: steady, warm, pulsing with worry.

The other was Naruto: bright and jagged and exhausted.

I followed the line between them.

Branches clawed at my sleeves as I shoved through undergrowth. My sandals slid in damp leaf litter more than once. I nearly ate dirt twice. I couldn't stop, no matter how much my legs ached to reverse direction.

"Great," I panted. "This is just like the last time I almost died in a forest. Love the symmetry for me."

Voices filtered through the trees ahead.

"…you found me… "

"…did you do all this…?"

I slowed automatically, forcing my breath quieter, and edged up behind a trunk at the edge of a small clearing.

Naruto knelt in the middle of it, scraped up and panting, a massive scroll lying open beside him. Dozens of shallow craters pocked the ground around him like bite marks.

Iruka stood a few steps away, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, vest torn where something sharp had grazed him. He looked furious and terrified in equal measure.

"Yeah," Naruto said, grinning weakly. "I learned a jutsu from the scroll in only a couple hours. Pretty impressive, right?"

I could barely see him from my angle, but his energy felt like it was holding itself together with duct tape and spite.

Iruka opened his mouth to answer.

A sharp whistling sound cut through the air.

"Iruka, get down!"

Mizuki dropped from the trees like a knife.

Everything happened too fast and too slow at the same time.

Iruka shoved Naruto out of the way and took the hit himself, a spray of kunai burying in his back with a wet sound I felt in my teeth. Naruto hit the ground and rolled, scrambling for cover.

Mizuki landed on a branch above, a massive shuriken strapped to his back.

I slapped a palm over my mouth to stop the noise that wanted out.

"Oh, come on," I whispered.

My brain skidded. The smell of blood, the ragged drag of Iruka's breathing, the way Naruto's energy spiked with white-hot panic—

"Why, Mizuki-sensei?" Naruto shouted. His voice cracked. "What are you doing?!"

Mizuki smiled down at him, too wide, all teeth.

"Give me the scroll, Naruto," he said. "Iruka has been lying to you from the start."

My fingers dug into the tree bark.

Here it comes. Whatever dark secret the adults had been hiding.

Iruka staggered to his feet, blood soaking through his vest.

"Don't listen to him, Naruto!" he shouted. "Run!"

Mizuki laughed.

"You think he'll trust you once he knows?" he sneered. "Once he finds out what you really are?"

My stomach twisted. I wanted to scream.

"Thirteen years ago," Mizuki said, eyes locked on Naruto, voice dripping poison, "the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked this village. It killed hundreds of people—"

"Naruto, stop listening!" Iruka yelled.

"—and the Fourth Hokage couldn't kill it. So he sealed it away…" Mizuki's smile hit something ugly. "…inside a newborn baby. Inside you."

The forest went very quiet. Even the bugs seemed to shut up.

Naruto's energy didn't spike this time. It didn't flare or crackle or explode.

It dropped.

One second it was that familiar, restless blaze; the next it was gone, like the bottom had fallen out of him and everything inside had just… dumped into a void.

I'd felt him scared before, angry, lonely, humiliated. This was different. This was hollow.

He stared up at Mizuki, face ashen.

"That's why everyone hates you," Mizuki went on, relentless. "You're the fox that killed their families. You're a monster."

Iruka flinched like he'd been stabbed again.

"That's enough!" he shouted. "Naruto is not the fox!"

Words, even true ones, felt so small against the weight of that secret.

My nails bit into my palm hard enough to hurt. I needed to do something.

I'd been practicing a barrier seal. It was half-baked, a clumsy ring of ink lines meant to block simple projectiles for a few seconds. On paper, it worked. Once.

This was not paper. This was a chunin with a giant shuriken and a murderous grudge.

But his chakra was coiling to strike, and Naruto was frozen, and Iruka was bleeding out on his feet.

Any plan I made in the next five seconds was going to be bad.

"Fine," I whispered. "Stupid option it is."

I fumbled in my pouch for a folded tag, fingers slick with sweat, and pressed my back harder into the tree for cover.

The pattern on the paper was rough: a circle, a spiral, four anchoring marks. I fed a thin trickle of chakra into it, ignoring the way my hands shook.

"Please don't explode in my face," I muttered.

Out in the clearing, Mizuki hurled his shuriken. It spun toward Naruto, whistling through the air.

"MOVE!" Iruka screamed.

"Naruto!" I yelled, because subtlety had clearly already left the building.

I slapped the tag to the ground at my feet and slammed my hand over it.

"Barrier Mark!" I hissed.

The seal flared to life—too bright, too fast. A flickering dome of chakra shivered into existence around me and… about two feet of leaf litter.

The shuriken sailed majestically past, unaffected.

A shockwave of misfired chakra slammed into my chest.

I choked and dropped to my knees as the barrier collapsed on itself, static crawling over my skin like ants. For a second, my vision went white around the edges.

"Okay," I wheezed. "That… was not it."

So much for playing backup hero.

The combo flare and yelling had jerked Naruto out of his stunned freeze for a heartbeat. He flinched sideways on instinct, buying Iruka enough time to take the hit instead—the shuriken struck Iruka, sending him crashing into a tree.

My attempt at interference fizzled into nothing but a headache and singed leaves.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Naruto stared at Iruka, shaking.

The teacher was slumped against the base of the tree, the massive shuriken lodged in his back. Blood stained the green vest dark, almost black in the moonlight.

"Why?" Naruto whispered. "Why would you—after what he said—why would you protect me?"

Iruka smiled. It was pained and fierce.

"Because you're not the fox," he said. "You're Naruto."

Mizuki scoffed from the branch above, but there was an edge of frustration in his voice now.

"Touching," he said. "But you really think he'll believe you over me? You've treated him just like everyone else has. Like a nuisance."

Iruka's expression twisted.

Naruto's energy flickered wildly, erratic and raw. Panic. Anger. A hurt so deep it scraped along my own nerves even from where I was kneeling in the dirt.

Iruka took a breath. He started talking.

About himself. About being alone. About watching the village treat Naruto the same way they'd treated him after the attack—only worse. About bad grades and stupid stunts and how Naruto's pranks were his way of saying "look at me, I'm still here."

Every word hit something in the air.

Just one tired teacher bleeding in the dirt, telling a lonely kid the truth.

Naruto's energy flushed with something new. It didn't erase the hurt—in what world would that be possible?—but it cut through the numbness like a blade.

Mizuki snarled.

"That's enough," he spat. "Give me the scroll, Naruto, and I might let Iruka die quickly."

He launched himself down, chain whipping.

Naruto moved.

One second he was shaking in the dirt, the next he'd yanked the scroll away and bolted into the trees.

Mizuki cursed and took off after him, branch to branch.

Iruka slumped, panting.

I forced my legs to cooperate and staggered out of my pathetic scorch circle, around the tree, and into the clearing.

He turned his head at the sound and blinked at me, dazed.

"Sylvie?" he rasped. "What are you… doing here…?"

"Poor life choices," I said, dropping to my knees beside him. "Hold still."

The giant shuriken in his back had gone deep but not—judging by the way he was still moving and yelling—immediately fatal. I put shaking fingers on the ground beside him and pushed a weak diagnostic pulse of energy through, the way I'd practiced on tree stumps.

The feedback was fuzzy, my own earlier backlash making everything feel off, but I caught enough: torn muscle, lots of blood, no obvious lung puncture.

"Okay," I muttered. "Messy but fixable. Great."

I tore a strip from the bottom of my shirt and pressed it down hard around the wound to slow the bleeding. Iruka hissed through his teeth but didn't pull away.

"Uzumaki…" he started.

"Is currently running for his life," I said. "And, if we're very lucky, toward finally getting the kind of wake-up call that sticks."

Iruka managed the barest huff of a laugh. It sounded like it hurt.

"Can you… get help?" he asked.

"Already on it," I lied. "But you're not dying before Naruto gets back, so don't get any ideas."

He gave me a look that said "you are a child" and "thank you" at the same time.

The forest shook.

Chakra flared ahead—Naruto's, wild and huge, like a fire finally finding dry kindling. Mizuki's flickered, surprised.

I helped Iruka push himself up against the tree so he could see.

"Naruto!" he shouted, voice raw.

Through the trees, we caught flashes: Naruto, defiant, clutching the scroll; Mizuki, mocking him; the moment Naruto stepped in front of Iruka and squared his shoulders like he'd just decided something that would change everything.

Then Naruto's hands came together in a familiar seal.

Something in the air snapped.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" he roared.

The chakra hit like a thunderclap.

For a heartbeat, the clearing ahead was nothing but light and smoke. Then the smoke ripped away and there were Narutos everywhere—on branches, on the ground, clinging to trunks, filling every inch of available space with orange and sheer murderous intent.

Iruka's jaw dropped.

Mizuki's face went from smug to horrified in record time.

"W-what is this?!" he stammered. "They're just illusion clones—!"

The nearest Naruto punched him in the face.

He went flying.

"All of these," Naruto yelled, voice echoing weirdly from a dozen throats, "are real!"

They dogpiled him.

It wasn't a fight so much as a karmic beatdown. Dozens of fists and feet and forehead protectors hammered into Mizuki until the ground itself gave up and made a Mizuki-shaped crater.

When the last clone popped out of existence, the original Naruto stood in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving, eyes blazing.

For a second, no one moved.

Then I exhaled. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath.

"…Okay," I said softly. "Yeah. That counts as extra credit."

Naruto stumbled back toward us, the scroll dragging behind him. As he got closer, the adrenaline started to drain out of his energy, leaving everything shaky and raw.

His hands were trembling.

I pushed myself upright and stepped forward to meet him.

Up close, he looked smaller again. The big, triumphant pose didn't quite hide the way his mouth kept twitching like he wasn't sure whether to smile or cry or throw up.

"Hey," I said, gently. "You did it."

He blinked at me like he'd only just noticed I was there.

"Sylvie?" he croaked. "What are you—?"

"First aid," I said. "And bad decisions. It's a theme tonight."

His laugh broke halfway through.

Iruka pulled himself up a little straighter as Naruto reached him.

"Come here," he said quietly.

Naruto hesitated, then knelt.

Iruka's hand shook as he reached up, fumbling with something. For a second I didn't understand—then I saw the hitai-ate.

Iruka untied his own forehead protector and pressed it into Naruto's hands.

"Close your eyes," he said.

Naruto obeyed, baffled.

Iruka tied the metal plate around his forehead with careful fingers, knotting it in the back.

"Congratulations," he said, voice thick. "You graduate. From now on… you're a ninja of Konoha."

Naruto's eyes snapped open.

He reached up and touched the plate like he didn't quite believe it was real.

"I…" His throat worked. "I… did it?"

Iruka smiled, tired and proud and hurting.

"Yes," he said. "You did."

Something in my chest twisted.

I was genuinely, fiercely happy for him. I'd watched him get kicked over and over by a system rigged against him, and now he'd forced it to acknowledge him on his own terms. He deserved this more than anyone I'd ever met.

Underneath that joy, though, a tiny, sharp sting pricked.

He'd gotten there first.

We'd started from roughly the same place—two strays in a village that didn't quite know what to do with us—and he was the one kneeling in the leaf litter with the hitai-ate gleaming on his forehead.

The thought flashed across my mind, quick and ugly.

What about me?

Guilt hit immediately after.

I shoved the feeling down hard. This moment wasn't about me. It was about the idiot who'd just nearly died twice and somehow turned it into a miracle.

"Nice," I said, because my mouth needed to do something. "Looks better on you than the Third's mustache."

Naruto snorted a wet laugh and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Of course it does," he said. "I've got a cool forehead."

"Debatable," I said.

His energy was still vibrating, too fast and too high. The revelation about the fox hadn't disappeared just because he'd punched Mizuki into a crater. It hung under his skin like static, waiting.

"Hey," I said more softly. "Can I…?"

He looked at me, confused but trusting. "What?"

"Just… breathe for a second," I said. "Humor me."

I pressed my hands together—two simple seals, the ones I'd been practicing for weeks.

"Calm Stroke," I murmured.

I set my right hand lightly on his shoulder, just above the hitai-ate knot, and let a thin trickle of energy flow down my arm. With my thumb, I traced a slow, looping spiral between his shoulder blades, drawing the pattern I'd sketched a hundred times on paper.

In, out. In, out.

Naruto's breathing, which had been stuttering and uneven, hiccuped—then started to match the rhythm of my hand. His shoulders lowered a fraction. The wild jitter in his energy smoothed, just at the surface.

The pain didn't go away. The hurt was still there, raw and ragged. This wasn't a fix. It was just… a hand on the back of his neck, a reminder that the world existed outside his head and he was still in it.

"That's it," I said quietly. "In. Out. You're here. You're you. The fox is a tenant, not the landlord."

He huffed another tiny laugh at that, breath catching.

Iruka watched us, dark eyes sharp despite the blood loss. I saw something flicker there when he glanced at me—a quick flash of understanding, then concern when my own hand trembled from energy fatigue.

He didn't say anything.

Naruto's breathing finally evened out. I let the technique fade and pulled my hand back, fingers tingling.

"Better?" I asked.

He nodded once, fiercely.

"Good," I said. "Because you're going to need that lung capacity to argue with literally everyone about this later."

He grinned, crooked and determined.

"You kidding?" he said. "I'm gonna make them all acknowledge me. Fox or no fox. I'll be Hokage, and then they'll have to look at me."

"Terrifying," I said. "Can't wait."

Somewhere above the trees, ANBU masks flickered between branches. The search net was closing in; the adults were finally about to arrive and wrap this whole disaster in red tape and paperwork.

For a last, suspended moment, it was just the three of us in the clearing: a wounded teacher, a boy with a demon in his gut and a hitai-ate on his head, and a stray girl with ink on her fingers and way too many feelings she didn't have time to process.

Naruto touched the metal plate again, smiling like the world had cracked open in the best possible way.

I smiled back, the sting in my chest settling into something softer.

He'd gotten there first.

Good.

Somebody had to lead.

Naruto was still grinning at his hitai-ate when the first ANBU dropped into the clearing proper, mask tilting toward Iruka's bloodied vest. More shadows followed, then the rustle and clink of practical adults: stretcher, bandages, the sharp snap of orders.

The spell of the moment shattered, but the echo of Calm Stroke was still running down my arm like static.

"Genin Uzumaki. Civilian girl. Report," one of the masks said.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

Right. Chakra. That… uses energy. Who knew.

Iruka covered for us, voice hoarse but steady as he walked them through the cliff-notes version of events. Naruto jumped in halfway through to loudly correct every detail that undersold him by even half a dramatic flourish.

I let him. I focused on keeping my hand from shaking.

The tingling in my fingers had worsened into a full pins-and-needles burn, like I'd fallen asleep on my own arm for an hour and then tried to write an exam with it. My vision fuzzed at the edges, white snow creeping in. Every heartbeat felt slightly delayed, like my blood was buffering.

When the med-nin finally finished wrapping Iruka's arm and declared him "stable for transport," one of the ANBU jerked their chin at the tree line.

"Let's move. Hospital for him. The brats can walk."

"Hey!" Naruto complained automatically. "I'm not—"

"Fine," I said, before he could pick that fight. My voice sounded weirdly far away. "Walking sounds great."

I pushed myself up from the ground. My knees almost forgot their job.

The world did a slow, lazy tilt. For a breathless second, the forest and the sky traded places.

A warm hand clamped around my elbow.

"Whoa." Naruto's face swung into my field of vision, way too close and very, very real. His eyes were wide—not the manic shine from before, but something smaller and sharper. "Hey. Hey, Sylvie. You good?"

"Yep," I lied cheerfully, because habits die hard and denial is free. "Totally fine. Just… gravity check. Making sure it still works."

His grip tightened when I swayed again.

Iruka noticed, of course he did. He took a half-step toward us, then faltered when his freshly bandaged arm protested. For a second he looked like a teacher torn between two kids and only one functional limb.

"I've got her," Naruto said, fiercely, without looking away from me.

That… shut Iruka up. He gave a small nod instead and let an ANBU guide him toward the path.

I tried to straighten my spine and pretend I wasn't using Naruto as a very loud, very orange crutch.

Did not go great.

Every step made the deep ache spike higher up my arm, into my shoulder, into the base of my skull. Calm Stroke was supposed to be a light technique—a gentle ripple on the surface, not a whirlpool—but this had been the first time I'd pushed it that hard on someone who had a demon's worth of extra nonsense thrumming in their coils.

Apparently my circuits had notes about that.

"You're… doing a wobble," Naruto muttered, low enough that the adults ahead of us couldn't hear. "You never do a wobble. You're like—" he made a vague, frustrated gesture with his free hand, "—annoyingly stable."

"Rude," I said faintly. "I'll cry later."

"You better not," he said. "'Cause you yelled at Iruka-sensei for trying to apologize, and you did the hand thing, and you said the fox was just a tenant, and…" He trailed off, frowning, words bottlenecking. "You don't get to do all that and then just fall over."

The forest path blurred for a second. I blinked hard until the trees reassembled properly.

"Newsflash," I said. "I am, tragically, made of meat."

He snorted. "Yeah, well. Even meat's gotta take a break."

We walked a few more steps in companionable staggering.

He shifted my arm across his shoulders without asking, tucking himself under my weight with clumsy care. It was the same way I'd seen him shoulder Iruka earlier, only this time his jaw was set, eyes cutting sideways to check my face every few seconds like he could brute-force me into staying conscious through sheer stubbornness.

"You're allowed to be tired, y'know," he said, quieter still. "You don't always have to be the one… doing the talking thing. Or the… brain stuff." He grimaced, hunting for the word. "The… therapist-ing."

"That's not a verb," I muttered, though my throat went tight in a way that had nothing to do with chakra.

"Whatever." His ears went a little pink anyway. "I just— I don't want you to…" He groped for it, fists clenching. "You helped. A lot. So you're not allowed to pretend you're fine and then faceplant in the street. That's a rule now. Hokage decree."

"You're not Hokage yet."

"Future Hokage decree."

I huffed, almost a laugh. It came out more like a wheeze.

"Bossy," I said.

"Yeah," he said, and this time his smile was small and lopsided and entirely for me. "Guess somebody's gotta lead."

The words landed in my chest like an echo, overlapping perfectly with the thought I'd just had in the clearing. For a second, the ache and the static and the terror of what we'd just done all layered over each other into something almost bearable.

Maybe leading didn't always mean marching ahead with a banner. Maybe sometimes it was just… taking turns not falling over.

"Okay, future Hokage," I said softly. "New rule accepted."

"Good." He squeezed my hand once, quick and awkward. "Now focus on walking. I'll handle the not-falling part."

I let my weight lean into him a little more than strictly necessary.

Naruto, hitting a small hop with one foot every step, walked along beside me, one hand on his brand-new forehead protector like he was afraid it would vanish if he stopped touching it. "I'm gonna be Hokage," he continued muttering.

"Yeah," I murmured. "Somebody has to change things from the top."

For the first time since I'd woken up in the wrong forest, it wasn't just me holding someone else together.

This time, somebody held on to me.

I think it was there that I decided: if Naruto was going to be the sun this village revolved around, I could live with being the shadow that made sure nobody fell through the cracks and disappeared into the dark the way I did.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The classroom was vibrating when Iruka walked in with the clipboard.

Not literally. That would've involved explosives, and Naruto hadn't had time to get any. But the mood was buzzing—whispers, bouncing legs, pencils tapping. Half the class was already wearing hitai-ate even though they weren't officially on any team yet. Show-offs.

I had mine in my lap, fingers worrying the metal plate.

"Settle down," Iruka said, which did absolutely nothing for the first three seconds. Then he cleared his throat in That Way, and the noise dropped by half.

"Today," he said, "I'll be assigning you to your jonin instructors and three-man cells."

Naruto made a quiet, excited strangled noise from the back.

I was on the girls' side near the window, as usual, desk cluttered with doodles in the margins of my history notes. Ino sat on my right, posture perfect and eyes bright. Hinata was further up, trying to disappear into her collar. On the boys' side, Kiba was vibrating, Shino was a calm silence next to him, and—

My gaze snagged on Shikamaru.

He was slouched low in his chair, arms folded behind his head, looking like he'd nap through his own execution. His energy, though, did that weird thing I'd noticed: slow and deep, like a river pretending to be a pond. No spikes, no jitter, just… steady thinking.

I caught myself staring and yanked my eyes back to Iruka.

"Teams will be formed to balance strengths and weaknesses," Iruka went on. "You'll be spending a lot of time with each other, so try not to drive your teammates—or your jonin—insane on the first day."

Half the class glanced at Naruto automatically.

Naruto scowled. "Why's everyone looking at me?!"

"Because you keep yelling during announcements," I whispered back.

"Shh," Iruka said, not unkindly. Then he checked the clipboard.

"Team 8: Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Hyuga Hinata. Your jonin instructor will be Yuuhi Kurenai."

Hinata made a tiny squeak. Kiba whooped, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Shino adjusted his glasses like someone had just told him the weather report.

Kiba leaned over Hinata. "We're gonna be awesome," he whispered. "Right, Hinata?"

She nodded so fast I worried about whiplash.

"Team 10," Iruka continued. "Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino. Your jonin instructor will be Sarutobi Asuma."

Choji smiled, already halfway into a chip bag. Ino straightened like someone had just called her onstage. Shikamaru groaned audibly.

"What a drag," he muttered.

His energy rippled in this resigned, amused way that made the corners of my mouth twitch. I'd seen them together enough to know that trio made sense: one brain, one tank, one social assassin. Neat little clan set.

Which meant…

"And finally," Iruka said, "Team 7."

My fingers dug into the edge of my hitai-ate.

"Uzumaki Naruto."

Naruto fist-pumped like he'd just been pronounced god-king of the classroom. "Yesss!"

"Uchiha Sasuke."

Half the girls in the room sighed. Sasuke didn't react beyond a faint tightening around his eyes, energy compressing like a spring. Classic.

"And Sylvie."

For a second, it felt like the air stopped.

Then Naruto jumped to his feet so fast his chair skidded. "EHHH?! Why do I have to be with him and her?!"

"Wow," I said, deadpan. "Honored to be included."

Sasuke made a noncommittal "hn," which was the Uchiha version of a full emotional breakdown. His energy didn't spike or dip; it just… cooled. The vibe was pure "don't talk to me or I'll set you on fire by accident."

Outwardly, I was playing it for laughs. Inwardly, I could already see the shape of the trap: if I ended up standing between them, I'd spend all my time translating, soothing, redirecting—being the buffer between fire and dynamite. That played right into my skill set, sure, but it also meant it'd be way too easy to turn into Team 7's emotional shock absorber instead of an actual person with her own trajectory. I made a quiet, private promise to myself: help them, yes, but don't disappear into the space between them.

But it was going to be exhausting. I was already tired in advance.

Iruka moved on to jonin assignments. "Team 7's instructor will be Hatake Kakashi."

There was a little rustle at that. Even I only knew the name in vague, whispered terms: Sharingan Kakashi, elite jonin, habit of being late and terrifying.

"Cool," Naruto said, immediately forgetting his earlier complaint. "Bet he's awesome."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Sharingan…"

I did the mental math of "copy ninja + me + Naruto + Sasuke," and felt a headache forming preemptively.

"Teams will meet their instructors after lunch," Iruka finished. "Until then, stay in your classroom."

Chairs scraped. Conversations bubbled up. Iruka started collecting stray papers and mercifully pretended not to notice Naruto's chair was now slightly more broken than it had been this morning.

Ino turned to me the second his back was fully turned.

"Are you kidding me?" she hissed. "You, Naruto, and Sasuke? That's so unfair."

"Unfair how?" I said. "From a fatigue perspective, I agree."

She waved a hand toward the back where Naruto was loudly complaining to no one in particular and Sasuke was pointedly ignoring him.

"You get both the cool idiot and the hot idiot," she said. "Some of us have to make do with one."

I blinked at her. Then I looked back at them.

Naruto was currently trying to balance his hitai-ate on his nose.

Sasuke was staring out the window like he wanted to challenge the sun to a duel.

I turned back to Ino.

"…Which is which?" I asked, genuinely.

She slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh.

"You are impossible," she said, eyes crinkling. "Naruto's the cool idiot, obviously. Sasuke's the hot idiot."

I squinted thoughtfully. "Counterpoint: Naruto is many things, but 'cool' is not on the list."

"He's cool in a dumb way," she said. "Like, he says what he thinks, he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him, he's loud. That's cool."

"That's also a cry for help, but sure."

"And Sasuke—" She eyed him, then lowered her voice. "Look at him. He's like… brooding pretty. It's the hair. And the eyes. And the… everything."

"Walking unresolved trauma," I reminded her.

"I never said my taste was healthy," she shot back.

We both snorted.

As the buzz of conversation swelled, my gaze drifted back to the other side of the room—past Naruto trying to get Sasuke to high-five him ("Don't touch me." "C'monnn, we're teammates now!"), past Kiba mock-growling at Hinata, to where Shikamaru was still slouched in his chair.

He was staring up at the ceiling now, lips moving faintly like he was already running scenarios about his new team. His energy had settled again into that lazy-deep flow, barely disturbed by the news.

Something about it tugged at me. The way he wasn't loud in my senses, but he was present. Solid in a way that felt… safe? No, that wasn't quite it. Predictable. Like if the whole room suddenly caught fire, he'd sigh, say "what a drag," and already have three exit plans.

I realized I was staring again when Ino's eyes flicked from my face to where I was looking, then back.

Her expression did something sly.

"Oh," she whispered.

"…Oh what," I said, suspicious.

"You're looking at Shikamaru like he's a puzzle you want to solve and also possibly climb," she said, way too pleased with herself.

My brain shorted out for a second. Heat rushed up my neck. "What?! No. I just—he's—his chakra is—"

"He's lazy and smart and you're doomed," she said. "Admit it."

"I do not have a type," I said, which was exactly the kind of sentence people with a very specific type said.

She leaned closer, voice dropping even lower. "You wanna trade?"

For half a heartbeat, the image flashed in my head: me on Team 10, across from Shikamaru and Choji, planning things in quiet voices while Ino went off to survive Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi alone.

My stomach did a weird, swoopy thing.

I imagined Naruto's face if I wasn't on his team. The empty space next to him in missions. The way he'd probably say "it's fine" and mean "it hurts" for weeks.

The swoop turned into a knot.

I shook my head, harder than necessary. "No," I said. "I'm not abandoning him to that."

Ino's grin softened into something more fond. "Yeah," she said. "Didn't think so."

She bumped my shoulder. I bumped hers back.

Still, when I risked another glance toward Shikamaru, my cheeks felt hot.

"Stop staring," Ino whispered, sing-song. "You're so obvious."

"I will personally seal your mouth shut," I hissed back.

"Promises, promises."

At the back of the room, Naruto threw an arm dramatically around Sasuke's shoulders and announced, "We're gonna be the best team ever!"

Sasuke shrugged him off like he was shaking off a mosquito. "Don't touch me."

"See?" Ino whispered. "Cool idiot. Hot idiot."

I looked at them, then at my hitai-ate, then at Shikamaru's lazy profile and Choji's crunching and the way Iruka watched all of us like a tired, worried parent.

Somewhere outside this classroom, real missions and real danger were waiting. Somewhere down that road, people were going to get hurt. People would probably die.

Right now, though, we were just kids in a sunlit room, arguing about who got stuck with which idiots.

And me?

I was the ink-stained maybe-girl who'd somehow ended up slotted between a hedgehog and a hard place, blushing over a genius who thought teamwork was "troublesome."

This world was the kind of mess I loved.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Then the classroom emptied like someone had pulled a plug on a bathtub full of loud idiots.

Naruto sprinted out first, still arguing with thin air about how he was definitely going to be Hokage. Sasuke followed at a civilized walk, like he was too cool to acknowledge gravity.

I lingered.

My hitai-ate felt strangely heavy on my forehead. It still smelled faintly like metal dust and Iruka's chalk hands.

"Hey. Sylvie."

Iruka's voice cut through the leftover chatter.

I turned to see him by the door, clutching a small wrapped parcel and a stack of papers. His expression was that special blend of tired and soft that he reserved for kids who were probably about to make his life harder.

"Yes, sensei?" I tried to sound like a Responsible Kunoichi™ and not the girl who had nearly stabbed herself with a brush this morning.

"Can you run something down to the supply office for me?" he asked, holding out the parcel. "The mission office is swamped. They need these requisition forms delivered. It's… technically not an official mission," he admitted, a little sheepish, "but you'd be doing me a favor."

My heart did a weird little stutter.

Not a mission-mission. Just an errand. But it was still leaving the academy with a task and coming back with results.

"I can do that," I said, maybe too fast.

His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile but knew that would be encouraging my nonsense. "Straight to the supply office by the east wall. Don't open it. Don't get distracted. Just go there and come back. Got it?"

So: no detours, no doodling in the margins of reality. Fine.

"Got it," I said, taking the parcel. It was light—paper and maybe a couple of tiny metal weights. The twine scratched against my fingers.

For a second, Iruka's gaze softened even more. It made something in my chest ache. "You're doing well," he said, almost under his breath. "Don't overthink it."

Too late.

"I'll be back soon," I said, and escaped before I could turn into a puddle.

Konoha in late afternoon was obnoxiously pretty.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, dappling the streets. The air smelled like dust, grilled meat, and ink—the good stuff, not the cheap watery garbage I'd used before.

Before felt foggy now, a smear of shouting and slammed doors and never being the right shape, the right anything.

This life didn't fit perfectly either. My shirt was a knock-off school uniform with pink trim, one size too big. My shorts were dark pink and slightly baggy, held up by a black belt I absolutely did not fill out.

But my hitai-ate sat on my forehead, solid and real.

I walked.

Parcel tucked under one arm, glasses sliding down my nose, I mentally traced a little seal design in my head—tiny, useless chakra diagram to keep my brain occupied. A spinning circle of ink lines. Nothing powerful. Just the fantasy of control.

"—telling you, keep your son away from him."

The words snagged my attention like a hook.

I slowed without meaning to.

Two civilians stood at the corner where the street narrowed toward the east wall: a woman adjusting a basket on her hip and another woman with a small boy half-hiding behind her skirts. The boy had a wooden kunai, the sort sold to kids playing ninja—rounded tip, chipped paint.

I didn't mean to listen. Eavesdropping was rude. My feet kept me in earshot anyway.

"That demon brat's always shouting at the Hokage monument," the first woman said, wrinkling her nose. "Doesn't know his place. My husband says they should have gotten rid of him years ago."

I froze.

The parcel in my arms suddenly felt heavier.

The other woman shifted uncomfortably. "He's… still a child," she said.

"A child?" The first woman's voice went sharp. "You know what lives inside him. You've heard the stories. The Fourth died for this village and they let that thing run around like nothing's wrong. You want your boy playing with a monster?"

The little boy looked up, big eyes blinking, uncertain. "Mom? The yellow-haired loud one?"

She snorted. "Exactly. If you see him, you stay away. You hear me? He's dangerous. He's—"

I moved before I decided to.

My sandals scuffed on the packed dirt as I stepped into their line of sight, parcel hugged to my chest like armor. My heart hammered so hard I thought they might see it through my shirt.

"Excuse me," I said.

Both women turned, startled. Their eyes flicked to my hitai-ate.

Oh. Right. I was wearing the village's logo on my forehead like a flashing sign that said Has Opinions Now.

"Y-Yes?" the boy's mom asked, brow furrowing.

I swallowed. My mouth went dry. Every instinct screamed don't start anything.

Different world, same fear.

But Naruto's grin flashed in my mind's eye. Him yelling "Believe it!" like the universe had personally doubted him. Him slamming his hands on the desk and declaring he'd be Hokage, and the room laughing like it was a bad punchline.

My fingers dug into the parcel's paper.

"He's a boy," I said, voice coming out quieter than I wanted. "Not a demon."

The first woman's lips pressed into a thin line. "You don't know what you're talking about, little kunoichi."

"Yeah," I said, even though my legs trembled. "I probably don't know a lot of things. But I know Naruto. He's loud. He's annoying. He eats like a black hole. He trips on flat surfaces. He… tries really hard." My throat tightened. "He's a boy. That's all."

Silence.

The little boy stared at me like I'd just performed a jutsu. His wooden kunai dangled forgotten from his fingers.

"Come along, Daichi," his mother muttered finally, grabbing his hand. Her voice went cold and brittle. "We don't argue with shinobi."

The other woman opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then closed it. Her gaze met mine for a heartbeat—complicated, uneasy—and then she turned away too.

They walked off, skirts whispering, conversation dissolving into a low hiss I couldn't quite hear.

I stood there, breathing hard like I'd just run laps.

Nobody clapped. Nobody told me I was brave. The village didn't stop, shocked by my moral clarity. A dog barked somewhere. A vendor shouted about dumplings. A breeze tugged at my hair.

My hands shook.

I looked down at them, surprised to see the tremor. Back then, if I'd talked back like that, there would've been shouting, broken things, guilt trips that lasted days.

Here, there was just… distance. Cold looks. Weight in the air that said know your place.

The problem was: I didn't. Not really. I was a half-formed person wearing a forehead protector and pretending that meant something.

My stomach twisted.

"What are you doing?" I muttered at myself. "Congratulations, you annoyed a bigot. Gold star."

The parcel crinkled in my grip. I forced my fingers to relax before I actually ripped it open and ruined Iruka's day.

A tiny pulse of energy slid down my arms, instinctive, like the faintest brush of watercolor across paper. My emotional sense—if you could call it a "technique" yet—picked up the lingering smear those women left behind.

Sour yellow-green. Bitter orange. Fear wrapped in righteousness.

It clung to the spot like old cigarette smoke.

I took a step backward, then another.

No seals. No ink. Just… retreat.

Because as much as I wanted to scream at all of them—He's saved me already and he doesn't even know it, how dare you—all I really was right now was a baby ninja with a kind-of-problematic fashion sense and a crush on teamwork charts.

I turned and kept walking toward the supply office.

Each step felt slow and floaty, like I was moving through honey. My glasses slipped further down my nose; I pushed them back up with a knuckle, because if I lost those, then I was really doomed.

"He's a boy, not a demon," I whispered again, just for me this time.

The words steadied me, tiny anchors in my chest.

Naruto didn't need to know I'd said it. He had enough heroic speeches to make on his own. Big flashy ones, shouted from rooftops.

This was… smaller. Quieter. The kind of resistance that didn't earn applause.

But as the supply office came into view—a squat building nestled against the east wall, crates stacked outside like Tetris blocks—I realized something:

For the first time in both of my lives, I'd talked back to an adult and nobody had hit me.

The world hadn't ended.

I was still shaking, yeah. My heart still pounded. The ghost of that woman's glare still burned on my skin like a bruise.

But I was walking under my own power. Parcel intact. Hitai-ate catching the sun.

Maybe that was what being a ninja actually meant, underneath the cool jutsu and dramatic poses.

Not giant battles. Not legendary techniques.

Just deciding who someone was—and saying it out loud—even when everyone around you called them something else.

I reached the door, knocked, and shoved my expression into something approximating "competent professional."

"Delivery from Iruka-sensei," I said when a harried chūnin opened up.

He blinked at me, then at the parcel, then grunted. "About time someone sent these. Good work."

Good work.

Two stupid little words. No big deal.

My throat still tried to close around them.

"Thanks," I managed.

On the walk back, the village looked the same. Same sunlight, same leaves, same kids running past shouting about which Hokage was the strongest.

But deep down, something tiny and stubborn had rewired.

Not a seal. Not a technique.

Just a choice I'd already made and now couldn't unmake:

If this world was going to try and eat Naruto alive, it was going to have to go through me too.

And I was very, very good with ink.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

I already knew our jonin sensei was going to be a problem.

First clue: he was late.

Second clue: he was more late than Naruto.

"Where is this guy?" Naruto groaned, face mashed against the desk. "He's a jonin, right? Jonin are supposed to be cool. Cool people aren't late."

"Cool people are always late," I said, shading a tiny doodle in the corner of my notebook. "They weaponize everyone else's time."

He lifted his head just enough to squint at me. "What does that even mean?"

"You'll understand when you're older."

Naruto paused, stuck in thought; or rather, stuck like a boot in mud desperately trying to get free.

"What does THAT mean?!"

Across the room, Sasuke sat with his arms crossed and his eyes closed like he was meditating on vengeance or whatever he did for fun. His energy felt compact and sharp, like someone had wound him up tight and forgotten to let go.

Naruto's, by contrast, buzzed restlessly against my senses. He'd been vibrating since Iruka announced the teams.

Team 8, Team 10… Team 7: Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, Sylvie.

Naruto had yelled. Sasuke had grunted. I had sighed and quietly rearranged my mental predictions for "ways I might die before twenty."

Now we were stuck in an empty classroom, waiting for a jonin who existed only as a concept and a growing sense of insult.

Naruto suddenly straightened. "Okay, that's it. If he's gonna be late, we're at least gonna get something out of it."

My stomach did a familiar, preemptive "oh no."

"Define 'something.'"

He'd already hopped up, dragging a chair to the door. "Help me with this."

"Absolutely not," I said, which in Naruto-speak means "I will help you in approximately ten seconds."

He teetered on the chair, chalkboard eraser in hand. "I'm gonna balance it right here," he said, pressing it carefully on top of the door frame. "So when he opens it—"

"Chalk explosion," I finished. "Classic."

"Exactly."

I put my pencil down and walked over because someone in this room had to care about basic visual standards.

The eraser was crooked. Of course it was.

"If you're going to die," I said, reaching up to nudge it into place, "at least make the prank clean."

He grinned down at me. "Knew you'd help."

"I'm an accessory to so many crimes already," I said. "What's one more?"

We got it balanced so the chalk dust sat in a nice, even layer. Symmetrical. Elegant. Lethal, in a "mild eye irritation" kind of way.

Naruto hopped down, chair scraping. "He's gonna freak out," he said, practically glowing. "He'll be like, 'wahh, my hair,' and then we'll know if he's cool or not."

"Sasuke," I called, turning back toward the rows of desks. "Your thoughts on committing instant career suicide?"

Sasuke cracked one eye open, glanced at the door, then at Naruto, then at me. His energy didn't shift at all.

"Hn," he said. Translation: "If you get executed, I'm not cleaning it up."

Naruto flopped back into his seat, humming with anticipation. I slid into mine, heart beating a little faster than I wanted to admit. Pranks with Naruto always did this—like standing on the edge of a high diving board made of bad decisions.

We waited.

The clock ticked. Dust motes drifted. Naruto crumpled and uncrumpled a scrap of paper so many times it looked like it had survived a war.

"Sylvie," he muttered eventually, "what if he never shows up?"

"Then we've learned an important lesson about adult reliability," I said. "And about how long chalk dust can cling to a door frame."

He made a face. "You talk weird."

"You're welcome."

The handle finally clicked.

Time slowed down in that hyper-specific way it does right before something terrible and hilarious happens.

The door slid open.

The eraser dropped.

White dust exploded down onto a shock of silver hair and a relaxed-looking forehead protector.

The man in the doorway froze, half-stepped into the room, eraser now perfectly balanced on his head.

Naruto broke first. He wheezed, clutching his stomach. "PFF—HAHA—LOOK AT HIS—"

I bit my tongue to keep from joining him. The new guy was tall, slouchy, and had one visible eye currently half-lidded in the universal expression for "I already regret coming here."

He lifted a gloved hand, plucked the eraser off his head, and regarded it like it had personally betrayed him. Chalk dust sprinkled onto his flak vest.

"…First impression," he said mildly, "you're all idiots."

Naruto only laughed harder. Chalk puffed off the man's hair as he ruffled it absently.

He looked at Naruto. "I dislike you."

Naruto's laughter hiccuped. "Wha—? Hey!"

Then the man's eye slid to me.

Up close, his chakra felt… strange. Lazy on the surface, like still water in a pond. But underneath, something deep and fast moved, like a current you only saw when it dragged a log under.

He had the same slouch Shikamaru did, the same "I could not care less" posture. But Shikamaru's energy was quietly calculating. This guy's was tired. The kind of tired that didn't go away with a nap.

"Hmm," I said under my breath. "Laid-back? Appears to take nothing seriously but definitely does? Suspicious."

His eye narrowed just a fraction.

"Everyone meet on the roof," he said, as if no prank had happened at all. "I'll be waiting."

He vanished in a blur of leaves.

Naruto stared at the empty doorway, then at me.

"…Did we win?" he asked.

"I don't think we were playing the same game he was," I said.

Sasuke stood, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable. "Come on," he muttered. "We're wasting time."

He headed for the stairs.

Naruto scowled, then shoved his hands behind his head and followed. "Man, I can't believe our sensei's a grumpy old scarecrow," he said. "I thought jonin were supposed to be cool."

"You're just mad he didn't scream," I said, grabbing my bag.

"That was premium prank work!" Naruto protested as we climbed. "You saw that eraser drop!"

"I saw gravity do most of the work, yeah."

"Traitor."

I smiled, despite myself, and kept climbing.

If this was how Team 7 started, I had no idea how we weren't all dead by thirteen.

<Kakashi>

Kakashi got to the roof first, mostly because it would have been embarrassing if he hadn't.

He leaned against the railing, hands in his pockets, face tilted up to the sky. From here he could see the village spread out below—the red tiles, the winding streets, the Hokage Monument still faintly scuffed where someone had once painted a truly unfortunate beard.

That "someone" currently had chalk in her hair.

Interesting.

He'd read the files. Uchiha Sasuke: sole survivor of the Massacre, top of the class, Sharingan potential. Uzumaki Naruto: orphan, discipline problem, jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails.

And Sylvie.

No clan. No family. No birth records.

Found half-dead near the village border years ago, chakra pattern initially flagged as "unusual" by the medics and then promptly buried under a stack of more pressing crises. An orphanage kid who'd somehow acquired ink skills, fuinjutsu basics, and a reputation for getting dragged into Uzumaki Naruto-related nonsense.

Kakashi had met a lot of unusual kids in his life. They rarely stayed "unusual orphan in the background" for long.

The door to the roof banged open.

Naruto burst out first, of course, arms flung wide. "We're here!"

"Yes," Kakashi said. "I can see that."

Sasuke followed, quiet and efficient, gaze sweeping the roof once before settling on Kakashi with measured hostility. His chakra was a compact ball of pressure, like a storm that hadn't decided where to break.

Sylvie came last, closing the door behind her with more care than necessary. She hovered a little closer to Naruto's side than Sasuke's, eyes flicking between Kakashi and the village below, as if measuring something only she could see.

Up close, her expression was calm, but her energy had an edge. Precise, too controlled for a kid her age.

"Okay," Kakashi said. "Let's start with introductions."

Naruto frowned. "Introductions?"

"Name, likes, dislikes, dreams for the future." Kakashi shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. "That sort of thing."

"Why don't you go first, sensei?" Sylvie asked pleasantly.

He eyed her over the mask. "I'm your teacher," he said. "You go first."

"I want to build a world where kids don't have to be strong just to survive being small. Where no one ends up alone because the adults screwed up."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. Sasuke scoffed.

Naruto stood up and yelled, "Yeah! And I'll be the Hokage of that world!" Then he turned and pointed at Kakashi. "You just don't want to say anything!"

Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe."

He watched them squirm for a moment longer, then decided he'd had enough fun. …For now.

"Fine," he said. "I'm Hatake Kakashi. I have no intention of telling you my likes and dislikes. My dreams for the future… I haven't really thought about." That was a lie, but they didn't need to know that. "As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies."

Naruto, Sylvie, and even Sasuke stared at him.

"…That told us nothing," Sylvie said.

"Exactly," Kakashi replied. "Your turn."

He nodded at Naruto.

Naruto hopped to his feet like he'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto!" he announced, loud enough for half the district to hear. "I like instant ramen, and the ramen Iruka-sensei buys me, and pulling awesome pranks—"

Kakashi pictured the eraser, the paint on the Hokage Monument, the long list of property damage in Naruto's file.

"Yes," he said dryly. "That checks out."

Naruto barreled on. "I hate people who look down on me! And my dream is—" He jabbed a thumb at his chest. "To become Hokage! Then everyone will have to acknowledge me!"

His chakra flared with the declaration, bright and raw. For a second, Kakashi saw a flash of the Fourth's stubborn set of the jaw, the previous jinchuriki's blazing eyes.

He looked away.

"Next," he said, nodding at Sasuke.

Sasuke didn't stand. He just uncrossed his arms, eyes hard.

"I'm Uchiha Sasuke," he said. "There are many things I dislike… and not many I like."

Naruto made a face.

"I don't have time for hobbies," Sasuke went on. "And my dream…" His fingers curled slightly. "No. My ambition is to kill a certain man."

The air went colder.

Kakashi studied him for a moment, then mentally filed away: "Obsessed avenger," underlined twice. Not exactly subtle.

He turned to Sylvie. "You're up."

She hesitated, then pushed herself to her feet, dusting chalk off her skirt.

"I'm Sylvie," she said. "No last name. Yet."

Naruto blinked at that. Sasuke didn't, but his focus sharpened a fraction.

"I like… learning," she continued. "Ink. Seals. Good food." She shot Naruto a look. "Not dying in dumb ways."

"Boring," Naruto muttered, but there was no real heat in it.

"I dislike bullies," Sylvie said, voice flattening slightly. "And adults who hide behind 'we're doing this for your own good.'"

Kakashi felt the hairs on the back of his neck twitch. That phrasing…

Her chakra didn't spike, but it tightened, like she'd stepped on an old bruise.

"And your dream?" he asked lightly.

She looked past him, out over the village.

"I want to figure out how this world's rules actually work," she said. "And… maybe bend them a little, so fewer kids get crushed under them."

Naruto stared at her. Sasuke's eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, thoughtful.

Kakashi's easy slouch didn't change. His chakra, however, prickled.

'This world's rules,' huh? he thought.

Not "this village's." Not "this country's." This world.

He'd heard similarly odd turns of phrase from missing-nin who'd spent too long at the borders, from people who'd seen too much war, too young.

Nothing in her file mentioned travel. Nothing in her file mentioned much of anything.

Interesting.

Aloud, he just nodded. "Ambitious," he said. "Borderline troublesome."

Sylvie smiled, thin and crooked. "So I fit right in."

Naruto snorted. "Yeah, you do."

Kakashi let his eye crinkle. "Well. Now that we've all shared our hopes and dreams, I have good news."

Naruto leaned forward, practically bouncing. "We get a mission?"

"We're going to… have a survival exercise," Kakashi said.

Naruto's face fell. "That's not good news!"

"Out of the twenty-seven graduates," Kakashi continued, cheerfully ignoring him, "only nine will actually become genin."

Naruto, Sylvie, and Sasuke all froze.

"Wait," Sylvie said slowly. "I thought we already graduated."

"You all passed the Academy's test," Kakashi said. "Now you'll take mine."

He pulled three bells from his pouch, letting them jingle softly.

"Meet me at Training Ground Three tomorrow morning at five. Don't eat breakfast."

Naruto squawked. "Five?! Why so early?!"

"Because I said so," Kakashi replied. "Oh, and bring everything you've got. This exercise has a… high failure rate."

He tucked the bells away and stepped onto the railing.

Naruto pointed furiously. "You can't just—hey! Come back and explain—"

Kakashi gave them a lazy wave.

"See you brats tomorrow," he said, and vanished in a puff of leaves.

<Sylvie>

I stared at the empty spot where our new sensei had been.

"So," I said. "Our jonin is a cryptic scarecrow man with no clear hobbies who schedules tests at five in the morning."

Naruto groaned and collapsed onto his back. "He hates us already," he moaned. "We're doomed."

Sasuke stood, gaze still on the skyline where Kakashi had disappeared. "If we can't handle one jonin's test, we're not worth much anyway," he said.

Naruto shot up. "Speak for yourself, teme! I'm gonna pass no matter what! Then I'll become Hokage and rub it in his face!"

I rubbed my temples. "I'm going to need more ink."

Naruto blinked. "For what?"

"For when this inevitably turns into some kind of psychological torture exercise disguised as 'team training,'" I said. "I'd like to have at least three smoke tags ready."

He grinned. "Nice. We'll prank him again!"

"Or we'll die trying," I said. "Either way, it'll be an experience."

Sasuke started toward the stairs. "Don't be late tomorrow," he said without looking back.

"Don't tell me what to do," Naruto muttered.

I watched them both—the walking trauma project and the emotional supernova—heading down into the village that had made us all, one way or another.

The jonin's chakra signature was already long gone, but the faint itch it had left behind stayed.

Laid back. Tired. Dangerous.

And, annoyingly, kind of exactly the sort of person we probably needed.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed them.

Whatever this bell test was, it was clearly more than just snatching toys from a jonin.

But then, nothing in this world was ever just what it looked like on the surface.

And I was very, very good at reading between the lines.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

When Kakashi-sensei finally showed up, I'd written "I will not die stupidly" twenty-three times on the inside cover of my notebook.

It was either that or start diagramming ways he might murder us with household objects.

The training field was deceptively pretty in the morning. Grass still damp, sunlight slanting through the trees, birds doing their best "this is a peaceful pastoral fantasy" impression. It clashed horribly with the man leaning against a post, nose buried in a tiny orange book.

Naruto stomped ahead of me, already yelling.

"You're LATE!" he shouted, jabbing an accusatory finger. "We were supposed to meet at six! Do you know what time it is?!"

Kakashi peeked over the book with one exposed eye. "Mm," he said. "Adorable that you assume I can tell time."

I stopped a few steps behind Naruto and Sasuke, hands tucked into my pockets. My clothes were still Academy-standard, but my gear pouches were new and stiff against my thighs. Hitai-ate tied at my forehead. Real ninja now. Allegedly.

Kakashi closed the book with a soft snap and straightened.

"So," he said. "You all ate breakfast like I told you not to, right?"

Naruto flinched. "Hah? Of course I did."

I did not flinch, because I had, in fact, listened when a jōnin told me not to do something in an ominous voice. My stomach had started a small protest march about that decision twenty minutes ago.

Sasuke didn't react at all. Which meant he'd probably gone with "light, efficient meal, just in case." Annoying overachiever.

Kakashi's eye crinkled. "Good," he said, sounding like he meant the opposite. "You're going to regret that."

He reached into his pouch, and my hand twitched toward my own out of reflex. Flak vest plus "mysterious grabbing motion" usually equaled bad day.

What he pulled out, though, wasn't a weapon.

Two tiny silver bells chimed softly in the morning air.

Naruto squinted. "…What are those for?"

Kakashi hooked them to his belt, metal glinting against dark fabric.

"Today's test is simple," he said. "Take these bells from me by noon. Whoever gets a bell… passes."

He let that hang for a beat, then smiled—lazy, cheerful, absolutely not nice.

"And whoever doesn't," he added, "goes back to the Academy."

Naruto screeched.

"WHAT?!"

He lunged like he might grab Kakashi by the vest, then remembered who he was dealing with and stalled halfway, hovering there like an outraged pigeon.

"You can't do that! We already graduated!" he protested. "We took the test and everything!"

"Mm," Kakashi said. "That just proved you can make an underwhelming clone. This proves you can stay alive around an enemy."

The word enemy landed heavy.

Sasuke's eyes had narrowed the second the bells appeared. Now they sharpened further, flicking from Kakashi's posture to the trees, the open ground, back to the bells. You could practically see him mapping angles and routes.

"…There are only two," Sasuke said.

Kakashi tilted his head. "Good eyes."

"So one of us fails no matter what," I said.

My voice sounded steadier than I felt. Inside, my brain was already spinning up into "test design analysis" mode.

Two bells. Three students. One elimination slot built into the rules. Manufactured scarcity. Classic psychological warfare.

Naruto's chakra spiked like a shaken soda bottle.

"You're kidding, right?" he said. "Right?! That's a joke, isn't it? Tell him, Sylvie, this is a joke—"

"I don't think he's joking," I said.

Naruto spun on me like I'd personally betrayed him. "Whose side are you on?!"

"The side that doesn't want to die because our sensei thinks natural selection is fun," I said. "Calm down. Freaking out is exactly what he wants."

Kakashi watched us bicker, amusement humming off him. On the surface, his energy was as lazy as his posture—soft, diffuse, composed entirely of "I nap through meetings." Underneath, though, something denser. Sharper. Weight earned in battlefields.

Naruto jabbed at the bells. "So we just have to take them from you, right? Easy! I'll grab one, Sasuke will… I dunno, brood menacingly, and Sylvie can do… seal stuff!"

"Bold of you to assume my seals are combat-ready," I muttered.

Sasuke gave us a sideways look. "You're both idiots," he said. "I'll just take them myself. Then I don't have to deal with either of you."

Naruto bristled. "Oh yeah?! You think you're better than us?!"

"Yes," Sasuke said flatly.

Naruto surged forward. I snagged his sleeve before he could swing.

"Maybe don't attack your teammate at the start of the survival exam," I hissed. "Just a thought."

"Survival?" Naruto echoed, going a bit pale.

Kakashi clapped his hands once, a lazy sound that somehow sliced the air into focus.

"You're missing the point," he said. "Right now, all I see are three brats who think being ninja means 'doing whatever you want loudly.'"

"Hey!" Naruto protested.

"Some of you," Kakashi added, eye sliding to Sasuke, "are talented but arrogant."

Sasuke's jaw ticked.

"And some of you," he finished, gaze landing on me, "are busy analyzing the test instead of preparing to take it."

My cheeks warmed. Called out in 4K.

"Anyway," Kakashi said, unbothered by my incipient identity crisis. "Rules."

He raised a hand and ticked them off.

"You can use any weapons or techniques at your disposal. Try not to crater the training field; the Hokage complains when I ruin the landscaping.

"Rule two: You attack with intent to hit me. Holding back will only get you hurt.

"And rule three: if you don't get a bell by noon, you go back to the Academy. No matter how many of you that is."

He nodded toward a lonely training post.

"The one who fails gets tied to that and watches the others eat lunch."

My empty stomach chose that exact moment to gurgle.

Naruto's head snapped toward me. "Traitor! You ate breakfast and you're hungry?!"

"I thought 'ominous warning from high-level ninja' meant 'listen,'" I said. "Sorry for assuming."

His betrayal was theatrical. "We were supposed to suffer together!"

"We're going to be suffering plenty together," I said. "Relax."

Kakashi set a kitchen timer on a nearby stump like this was the world's most stressful picnic.

"You have until then," he said, bells chiming faintly as he moved. "Come at me with the intent to kill."

Naruto choked. "K-kill?!"

My heart did a weird skip. Surely that was figurative.

Probably. Hopefully.

Kakashi's energy didn't twitch. His eye curved in that not-smile.

"Those who are late don't survive on missions," he said quietly. "Those who hesitate don't make it home. And those who can't handle a little pressure…"

He let the sentence trail off.

"Maybe they're better off doing D-rank chores for the rest of their lives."

Naruto bristled. "I'm not gonna be stuck catching cats forever!"

"Big talk from someone who couldn't make a decent clone," Sasuke muttered.

"You wanna go, bastard?!"

I stepped between them again, automatic. "Later. You can punch each other after we're not at risk of being demoted."

Kakashi's gaze lingered on us. Measuring.

Manufactured scarcity, forced conflict, threat of demotion. There were about six different lesson plans embedded in this, and none of them were actually about the bells.

You don't give three fresh genin a rigged setup like that just to see who wins. You do it to see if they turn on each other.

"Good instincts," Kakashi said. "They show up sometimes."

He pointed at the timer.

"You've got a few minutes to get ready. Use them well."

He raised his hand.

"Start—"

The air changed.

Sound dipped. Pressure shifted. My chakra sense scrambled for something—movement? Genjutsu? He hadn't even done hand signs—

"—now," he finished.

And vanished.

Not a blur. Just gone.

Naruto yelped. "HEY! That's cheating!"

"Basic rule of not dying," I said, already grabbing his sleeve. "When the jōnin disappears, you disappear."

Sasuke was, predictably, already gone. Smug cat energy.

I dragged Naruto toward the nearest clump of trees.

"Move first, freak out later," I said. "Come on."

We ducked behind the tree line. The training field stretched out in front of us, all innocent grass and sunshine, like it wasn't about to be our collective graveyard.

Naruto peered around the trunk. "Where'd he go?"

"Everywhere," I said. "Now shut up a second."

I pressed my back to the bark and let my eyes half-close, reaching with the strange chakra sense that had been tuning itself sharper ever since I woke up in this world. Morning energy buzzed all around—bugs, birds, tiny things. Background noise.

Somewhere in that noise, a human presence was masking itself very, very well.

I felt nothing.

Which was, honestly, the scary part.

"He's masked completely," I muttered. "Great. Love that for us."

Naruto's expression flickered between fear and excitement like a glitching lantern.

"So what do we do?" he whispered. "Charge in? Shadow Clone? Dig a pit? I could dig a pit. Believe it."

"We plan," I said. "Or at least fake it convincingly."

He sagged. "Planning is boring."

"Planning is how you don't die in the first five minutes," I said. "Sit."

I crouched and scraped a stick through the dirt: three messy circles for us, a big X for Kakashi, scribbles for trees. Barely a diagram, but it gave my brain something to hang onto.

"Reality check," I said. "We're up against a jōnin. Those are the scary ones with whole war stories attached. We're… us."

"Hey," Naruto objected. "I'm awesome."

"You're very something," I said. "You're also made of chakra napalm with bad impulse control. Sasuke's a bloodline prodigy with a grudge. I have paper, ink, and anxiety."

Naruto frowned at the dirt. "You've also got the—" he wiggled fingers near his head "—weird feel-y sense."

"Technical term acknowledged," I said. "Point is, none of us are soloing a jōnin."

"So we just give up?"

"No," I said. "We cheat."

He paused. "…Okay, that sounds better."

I tapped the X.

"He wants us to turn on each other," I said. "Two bells, three kids. Built-in failure slot. He's testing if we'll throw each other under the kunai. And knowing him, if we do that, he'll probably fail us anyway."

Naruto squinted. "So the test is actually… not the test?"

"Welcome to ninja school," I said. "We just spent years taking written exams that weren't actually about the questions. Same thing now, plus higher risk of dismemberment."

He made a complicated face.

"So… teamwork?" he tried.

"I'm saying," I said, "that if we don't at least try working together, we're handing him exactly what he wants."

Naruto glanced in the direction Sasuke had vanished.

"You really think Mr. I-Hate-Everything is gonna go for that?"

"Honestly? No," I said. "Which is why we don't ask his permission to factor him into the plan."

He blinked. "That sounds like something a villain would say."

"We are literally child soldiers," I said. "Villainy is a sliding scale."

Naruto snorted. Some of the tension leaked out of his shoulders.

"Okay," he said. "So what's the plan?"

I pointed at his circle.

"You are distraction," I said. "Loud, bright, impossible to ignore. You get in his face, make him commit to you."

He puffed up. "I can do that."

"I am extremely aware," I said. "Sasuke is the hit-and-run finisher. If he sees Kakashi focus on you, he'll take the opening. Probably with fire."

Naruto's eyes gleamed. "Big boom."

"Exactly. I stay at the edges," I said. "Traps, seals, support. If we can't outrun him, maybe we can trip him. Worst case, I make the terrain annoying."

"Annoying is my territory," Naruto said.

"Consider this joint custody," I said.

He leaned over the sketch, thinking hard enough I could almost hear the gears.

"So I charge," he said slowly. "He focuses on me. Sasuke hits from behind. You… magic sticker the ground."

"More or less," I said. "We won't get a perfect setup, so we stay flexible. But if we all try to work toward the same opening, we at least have a shot at grabbing a bell without dying stupidly."

Naruto's gaze slid toward the clearing again.

"We're getting all three bells," he muttered.

"There are only two," I said automatically.

"Don't care," he shot back. "Somehow, some way, we're not leaving anyone behind. I'm not letting either of you get sent back."

I opened my mouth to say that wasn't how math worked… and shut it again.

The story had a way of bending around him. If anyone was going to snap the test over his knee out of sheer contrariness, it was Naruto.

"Fine," I said. "Aim stupidly high. Worst case, we find the edges of the rules. Best case, we annoy a jōnin."

He grinned, feral and bright.

"YEAH!"

A crow took off in the distance, startled by nothing. Chakra brushed the edge of my senses—there and gone.

"He's watching already," I said quietly.

"Good," Naruto said, baring his teeth at the trees. "Then he'll see when I kick his butt."

"Try not to die before your dramatic speech," I said. "It'll ruin the effect."

He flashed me a thumbs-up.

"Believe it."

I stared at our messy dirt plan. Naruto: chaos engine. Sasuke: precision strike. Me: ink and paper.

It wasn't much. But it was more than "everyone runs in screaming."

"Okay," I said, standing. "You circle east and find a good ambush spot. I'll start setting some surprises where he keeps looping. If you see Sasuke, tell him we're coordinating whether he likes it or not."

Naruto smirked. "He's gonna be so mad."

"Angry people make mistakes," I said. "We will lovingly weaponize his trauma later. For now, move."

He slipped off through the trees, surprisingly quiet when he remembered he was actually a ninja.

I wiped the diagram away with my foot and pulled a small brush from my pouch. My fingers already itched with phantom ink lines, seals and spirals and "please don't blow up in my face."

We had a jōnin to mildly inconvenience.

We had each other.

We even had a plan.

Which meant, obviously, that the universe was about to set it on fire.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Naruto lasted about eight seconds.

That was roughly how long our beautifully half-baked plan survived contact with reality.

He was supposed to wait for my signal. For Sasuke's first move. For anything.

Instead, Naruto exploded out of the bushes with a scream like a banshee, kunai raised.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI, I'M GONNA KICK YOUR—"

Kakashi didn't even put his book away.

One sidestep, one lazy grab, and Naruto ate dirt so hard I felt the impact in my own teeth.

"Too slow," Kakashi said, sounding faintly bored.

From my perch in the tree line, all my careful thoughts about optimal timing died in a small, strangled noise.

Naruto spat mud and fury. "SHADOW CLONE JUTSU!"

Four Narutos popped into existence, all yelling mostly vowels.

"Loud," Kakashi observed.

He caught one clone by the ankle and used him as a club on the others. Ten seconds later, three puffs of smoke and one pained groan marked the end result.

The real Naruto ended up upside-down, trussed to a tree branch like an angry orange wind chime.

"Ninja use any advantage," Kakashi said, poking him casually in the forehead. "Remember that."

Naruto swung and cursed. None of it helped.

I watched from my hiding spot, stomach twisting. Humiliation had teeth, and it was currently gnawing on my teammate.

"You're just going to spectate forever?" I muttered at myself. "Or do something useful?"

Useful meant not repeating his mistakes.

I slipped away, keeping my chakra as small and tidy as I could, circling the clearing until I felt a sharp, familiar presence: Sasuke.

He'd set up opposite Kakashi, half-hidden in shadow, posture loose in that controlled way that screamed "predator pretending to be bored." Kakashi stood in the open now, book finally tucked away, bells chiming softly when he shifted his weight.

"This is taking longer than I thought," Kakashi mused. "Maybe they really are just Academy brats."

The air warped.

Sasuke moved.

A shuriken whistled past Kakashi's head, forcing him a step to the side—

"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!"

Heat washed across my face even from the trees as Sasuke's fireball roared across the clearing.

My brain stalled. He just breathed fire. I knew, intellectually, that chakra could do that. I'd seen the diagrams. But seeing a twelve-year-old boy exhale a literal inferno was different. It was terrifying.

For a heartbeat, Kakashi's silhouette was swallowed in orange.

When the flames cleared, scorched dirt smoked where he'd been, and a log dropped from the branches with a dull thud. Substitution.

Kakashi reappeared behind Sasuke, impossibly casual.

His hands formed a shape that looked… ridiculous. Like a hand sign for a children's game.

"Hidden Leaf Secret Taijutsu—"

Sasuke half-turned—

"Thousand Years of Pain."

There are some things you can only ever describe as a war crime on dignity.

Kakashi jabbed his fingers. Sasuke shot into the air with murder in his eyes, landed in a skidding crouch, and managed not to faceplant purely through spite.

"No bells," Kakashi said cheerfully. "No points."

Sasuke's energy flared hot and sharp, ragged around the edges.

"You won't catch a jōnin with one flashy trick," Kakashi added. "Or even two."

His gaze brushed past my hiding place like a spotlight, and then he melted back into the trees.

Naruto had gone loud and straight and gotten tied up.

Sasuke had gone big and clever and gotten outplayed.

That left me.

Fantastic.

The thing about fuinjutsu—sealing techniques—is that it does not care how stupid you look while setting it up. Punching through trees is glamorous; smearing ink on roots is not. But ink remembers things, and I was very invested in being remembered as "alive."

I picked a shallow dip in the ground along the path Kakashi kept unconsciously circling toward.

First: a smoke tag. Plain paper on a buried root, a simple spiral seal, primed with just enough chakra to go whoosh instead of crater. Surprise fog machine.

Second: a sticky patch. A wide, dark circle of ink on hard-packed dirt, with an adhesion seal curling around the edge. My very own embarrassment field.

Last: a tiny tag, delicate lines looping inward—a hacked-together gravity nudge meant to tug at the bells if I could stick it to his belt. Working title: Please Work Just This Once No Jutsu.

By the time I crawled into the branches above my little hazard course, my hands were trembling with chakra fatigue. The pleasant, "wow I sure did study too long" kind, not the "about to black out" kind. Yet.

Kakashi wandered into range a few minutes later, hands in his pockets, like this was a stroll and not the exam his students' futures balanced on. Somewhere, his kitchen timer ticked toward noon.

"I wonder if they've figured it out," he said to no one. "Or if they're still thinking like Academy students."

He stepped around the smoke tag. Then over the sticky patch. Not even close.

Right. Jōnin. Of course he'd seen the whole layout.

"Plan B it is," I whispered.

I flicked the tiny gravity tag toward his hip. It brushed his vest. My chakra reached—

Kakashi stopped. The air sharpened.

"Oh?" he said pleasantly.

His hand snapped back, catching the tag like I'd tossed him a pen. Then he looked up, directly into the tree where I suddenly regretted all of my life choices.

"Fuinjutsu," he said, tone turning crisp. "At your age? Ambitious."

I tried to flee.

He was faster.

A tap on my shoulder from behind. "A ninja should watch their surroundings," he said.

I screamed internally and spun—straight into the edge of my own sticky circle.

The seal activated instantly, eager to demonstrate that it definitely worked on something.

I hit the ink face-first. One hand glued, one knee stuck, half my dignity evaporating on contact.

"Messy execution," Kakashi observed.

"Ha ha," I said into the dirt. "You're hilarious."

"I like the structure," he said. "Traps, seals, misdirection. But you telegraph your chakra. And you're relying entirely on technique against someone who has seen that exact trick a hundred ways already."

"Sorry I'm not a genius with a thousand years of combat footage," I muttered, struggling against my own seal.

"You're low on reserves," he noted.

"Incredible deduction."

"Don't push yourself just to impress anyone," he said mildly. "You'll only get yourself killed."

The casual way he said it lodged somewhere cold in my ribs.

"Wasn't trying to impress you," I said. "I just really, really wanted to wipe that lazy look off your face."

His visible eye curved. Hard to tell if that was "impressed," "amused," or "this child is an idiot."

Possibly all three.

He flicked my tag onto the ground beside me, turned, and headed back toward the clearing.

Eventually, I managed to release the adhesion seal and peel myself upright. My hands, knees, and pride were all varying shades of ruined.

"At least the ground and I are close now," I muttered, limping after him.

By the time I reached the main training spot, Kakashi had escalated from individual bullying to group performance review.

Naruto was tied to the central post now, rope digging into his arms, still a bit wobbly from inverted blood flow. Sasuke leaned against a tree, arms crossed, murder tamped down into elegant irritation.

Kakashi glanced at my ink-stained everything. "Sylvie. Nice of you to drop in."

"I left a very strong impression back there," I said. "The earth will never forget me."

He ignored the joke.

"Individually…" He ticked us off on his fingers. "Naruto rushes in without thinking and gets caught. Sasuke bets everything on one big jutsu and gets punished. Sylvie relies on traps and finesse alone and gets herself stuck."

No bells. No lunch. No praise.

"No teamwork," he finished. "At this rate, none of you are passing."

My stomach answered with a miserable growl. Naruto winced in sympathy. Sasuke's eye twitched.

Kakashi sighed. "I'll give you one more chance this afternoon. Think about what you did wrong."

He vanished again, more habit than show-off.

Silence settled around the three of us. Naruto's gaze kept flicking from Sasuke to me to the empty air where our sensei had been.

"…So we bombed it," he said finally.

"Spectacularly," I said.

Sasuke snorted softly. "Speak for yourself."

"You got a finger up the ass," I pointed out. "You're on the scoreboard with us."

His energy spiked, then smoothed. "Next time, I won't give him that opening."

"Next time," I said, "we don't give him the chance to treat us like three separate solo attempts."

Naruto frowned. "We tried planning."

"We sketched something and then you sprinted at him like a sugared-up raccoon," I said.

He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it, cheeks puffed. "…Okay, yeah. A little bit."

"A lot bit," I said.

That was when Kakashi reappeared, this time carrying the real horror: lunch.

Bento boxes. Three of them.

Naruto's eyes went huge.

"New condition," Kakashi said. "Uzumaki Naruto attacked without thinking and got captured first. As punishment, he doesn't get lunch."

Naruto's head snapped up so fast the rope creaked. "WHAT?!"

"You two may eat," Kakashi went on, looking at me and Sasuke. "If either of you shares so much as a bite with him, you all fail and go back to the Academy."

The words hit like a kunai between the ribs.

"That's messed up," I blurted.

"Is it?" Kakashi asked mildly. "On missions, resources are limited. You can't waste food and chakra on someone who can't keep up."

Naruto sagged against the post. "I can keep up!" he yelled. "Tie me to two logs, I'll still beat these losers!"

"Rude," I said automatically.

Kakashi just told us to "use this time to think" and wandered to a nearby tree, settling with his book in that relaxed way that meant "I can see everything."

Sasuke and I sat down across from Naruto and opened our lunches. The smell hit like a trap. My hands shook a little around my chopsticks.

Naruto watched every movement like a starving fox pup.

"I'm fine," he said, in the tone that meant absolutely not fine. "I've gone without food before. Lots of times. I'm used to it."

His energy twisted, thin and brittle around that confession.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "That's exactly the problem."

Logically, the correct move was obvious: follow orders, keep the food, pass the test. Emotionally, my soul was standing on a table screaming absolutely not.

Sasuke started eating with tight, controlled movements. "You're making that weird thinking face again," he said. "Eat. It's annoying."

"I always make a weird thinking face."

"Exactly."

I forced a bite down. It tasted like rice and guilt.

Naruto tried to look anywhere but at our food and failed. His chakra—usually loud and sprawling—had curled in on itself, just a small, stubborn flame.

"If this was a real mission," I said slowly, "and Naruto was hurt, you'd expect us to help him, right? Not step over him because 'orders'?"

Kakashi did not answer. Page turned. Wind rustled.

My arm moved before my brain finished the argument. I held up a rice ball.

"Open," I told Naruto.

He swallowed. "S-Sylvie, he'll fail us—"

"He already knows everything that's happening," I said. "You're allowed to need things." I nudged the food closer. "Mouth. Use it."

He stared at me like I'd handed him the nuclear codes. "If we fail because of this," he muttered, "I'm haunting you."

"Great," I said. "You can rattle cupboards and complain about ramen quality."

A laugh flickered across his face. He leaned forward and took a bite. His energy flared a little warmer, a little less hollow.

"You're an idiot," he said around the next bite. "A nice idiot, but an idiot."

"Eat your crime," I said. "If we're going back to the Academy, I want you conscious enough to yell about it."

Sasuke's bento slid just slightly closer to Naruto's reach.

"I don't remember agreeing to a team suicide pact," he said dryly.

"That's a dramatic way to say 'thanks for sharing,'" I said.

He clicked his tongue. "I'm not letting dead-last drag us down by fainting from hunger. If I'm going to beat him, I'll do it when he's actually trying."

Naruto's grin came back in pieces. He took a bite from Sasuke's box too, eyes bright and suspiciously damp.

For a few minutes, we just existed there: Naruto tied to a post, Sasuke pretending not to care, me feeding contraband carbs to our loudest link. Our energies tangled in the air—wild orange, hot blue, ink-smudged gray. Not blended. But touching.

The air snapped.

The book vanished. Kakashi stood in front of us, presence suddenly heavy.

"So," he said. "Enjoying your lunch?"

Naruto froze with rice on his cheek. Sasuke went still. My heart tried to bail out through my ribs.

"This is a direct violation of my orders," Kakashi went on, calm as ever. "And you remember what I said would happen."

"If we feed him, we fail," Naruto said hoarsely.

"Correct," Kakashi said. "So why did you do it?"

Naruto inhaled to take the blame. I talked over him.

"Because it was a bad rule," I said. "You don't let your teammate pass out when you can fix it with a rice ball."

Kakashi's gaze locked onto me. "So you believe you know better than your commanding officer?"

"I believe," I said, voice shaking but not stopping, "that if this were a real mission, and Naruto got hurt, you'd expect us to help him. Not abandon him because 'orders.'"

Sasuke snorted. "I'm not abandoning my teammates," he said. "Even the loud ones."

"HEY," Naruto protested automatically.

Kakashi watched us for a long, slow beat. His energy shifted, something old and tired stirring under the surface.

"If I wanted to test your individual skills," he said quietly, "I would've done that directly."

He stepped forward. Shadows stretched long.

"Those who break the rules…" His voice dropped. "Are scum."

Right. I'd grown up under rules like that—don't talk back, don't make trouble, don't tell. Rules that kept adults comfortable while kids learned how to disappear.

Leaving Naruto tied up and hungry because an authority figure said so wasn't discipline. It was the same cruelty in a flak jacket.

Naruto's breath hitched. Sasuke's shoulders went rigid.

"But those who abandon their comrades," Kakashi continued, gaze sweeping over us, "are worse than scum."

The clearing went very quiet.

Naruto swallowed. "I broke the rule first," he blurted. "If you're gonna fail anyone, fail me, not them—"

Kakashi lifted a hand.

"You," he said, pointing at Naruto, "broke the rule because you were worried about hurting your teammates. You pushed them to eat."

Naruto blinked. "I… I mean, yeah, but—"

"You," he said to Sasuke, "backed them up, knowing the consequences."

Sasuke looked away. "I told you. I refuse to lose to him because he's half-dead."

"And you," Kakashi said, eye landing on me, "recognized an order that clashed with your values and chose your comrades anyway."

"That's a poetic way to say 'fed the loud boy,'" I muttered.

His eye curved. "I'm a poetic man."

His energy finally eased, heavy tension bleeding out of the air. He stepped back, taking us all in. There was a faint, unreadable warmth at the edges of his presence now.

"Team Seven," he said. "You pass."

My brain glitched out. I suddenly understood how Naruto felt sometimes.

"WE PASSED?!" Naruto screamed. "WE'RE A TEAM!! BELIEVE IT!"

"Don't yell," Kakashi sighed. "You'll scare the wildlife."

Sasuke's mouth twitched upward before he smoothed it out. My knees went watery, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been strangling.

"We really passed," I whispered.

Kakashi untied Naruto, who tried to sprint immediately and nearly ate dirt again. I grabbed his arm.

"Easy," I said. "If you faceplant now, I'm telling everyone you tripped the second you became a genin."

"I gotta do something cool first," he grinned.

"Please don't interpret 'cool' as 'reckless self-endangerment,'" I said.

"No promises!"

Kakashi shoved his hands back into his pockets like this hadn't just been an emotional demolition derby.

"Those who break the rules are scum," he repeated. "But those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum. I won't pass a team like that."

He looked at us—at the ink on my hands, the rope marks on Naruto's arms, the dust on Sasuke's knees.

"Starting tomorrow," he added lightly, "your real missions begin."

Real missions. Real danger. Real paperwork.

As we packed up the empty bento boxes and trailed after him toward the village, something solid settled in my chest.

The lesson wasn't "obey orders no matter what."

It was this: skills matter, missions matter, rules matter—but people matter more.

I could work with that.

Konoha had absolutely no idea what it had just cleared for active duty.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Tora the cat was an S-rank demon wearing a bell.

Officially, Tora was a pampered pet with a tracking ribbon and a "gentle temperament." Unofficially, I was on my fourth sticky-ink tag of the week and my patience had spiritually flatlined.

"Okay," I muttered, pressing the paper to the wall of a narrow alley. "Tag number four. If this doesn't work, I'm declaring war on the Daimyō's wife."

The seal flared faintly under my palm as my energy sank into it. When I pulled my hand back, the patch of brick just above ground level felt subtly wrong—tacky, like paint that hadn't dried.

"SYLVIE!" Naruto's voice echoed somewhere ahead. "HE WENT THIS WAY!"

No kidding.

I shoved my glasses up my nose and jogged toward the sound, sandals slapping the cobbles. My light brown hair stuck to the back of my neck in sweaty curls. The fake schoolgirl top—white with pink trim, one size too big—flapped annoyingly around my hips, and my dark pink shorts kept trying to slide down despite the black belt cinched tight.

Note to self: next mission pay goes to clothes that actually fit.

We burst into the alley at the same time, from opposite ends. Naruto skidded around the corner, wild blond spikes, orange eyesore of a jacket, arms out like he could just grab air and have it turn into cat.

"I SEE YOU, YOU FURRY MENACE!" he shouted.

Tora streaked past me in a blur of white and brown and homicidal intent. The cat had that special, vibrating fury only rich people's pets and feral gods possessed.

"Left wall!" I yelled.

Tora leapt, aiming for his usual escape route: a neat little series of crates leading up to a windowsill. Instead of launching off the brick, he hit my seal.

There was a tiny, satisfying sound when his paws met chakra-infused ink. Shlp.

Tora stuck.

For half a second.

Then all hell broke loose.

The cat twisted, hissed, and detonated into pure weaponized fluff. He ripped free with the kind of strength you only got from generations of inbreeding and rich-person food. Naruto lunged, arms outstretched—

"GOTCHA—OWOWOWOWOW—"

He did, technically, catch Tora.

Tora also caught him. With every single claw.

By the time the dust settled, Naruto had the cat in a victory grip and approximately thirty new scratches on his face, arms, and stomach. Tora looked like someone had personally insulted his ancestors.

"All part of the plan," Naruto wheezed, staggering toward me. "Totally worth it."

I winced and reached for my little medical pouch. "Hold still," I said.

He grinned. "You gonna heal me with your weird art jutsu?"

"Going to try," I corrected.

"Emphasis on 'try.'"

I dabbed ointment on the worst of the scratches and pulsed a bit of energy under the skin, coaxing the torn tissue to knit a little faster. It was basic, clumsy stuff—couple of Academy-level techniques plus anything I'd spied from hospital medics—but it helped.

Naruto flinched and yelped. "IT BURNS—WHY DOES IT BURN?!"

"Because infection is worse," I said sweetly. "And because Tora hates you on a spiritual level."

The cat hissed in agreement.

We did that dance a lot.

Catching Tora. Returning Tora. Listening to the Daimyō's wife sob about "my precious angel." Watching Naruto get emotionally and physically mauled by six kilos of cat.

Between that, we got the full buffet of D-rank misery.

We weeded a field for an old farmer whose energy felt like dry soil and disappointment. Naruto complained the entire time.

"Why are we doing this?" he groaned, yanking a stubborn root with all the subtlety of a demolition jutsu. "I'm gonna be Hokage, not a gardener!"

"You're not even doing it right," I said, kneeling nearby. Sweat dripped down my temple. My glasses kept sliding. My hands ached. "You're just ripping the tops off. They'll grow back."

"They fear me too much to grow back!"

"Plants don't have fear, Naruto."

"Then what do they have?"

"Better work ethic than you."

He sputtered. "HEY—"

I sat back on my heels and squinted at him. "Serious question, Loud Menace. Why aren't you just using clones for this? I've seen you deck a teacher with one. Pretty sure you could bully a few weeds."

Naruto froze, mid-yank. "…I tried."

I raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"And the stupid farmer yelled at me!" he burst out, pitching his voice into a cranky old-man impression. "'No weird ninja tricks in my field, you'll bruise the soil, kids these days don't know the value of hard work—'"

From a few rows over, the old man grunted, which I chose to interpret as confirmation. The energy around him crunched like dry leaves.

"Also," Naruto added, muttering now, "Kakashi-sensei said if I used Shadow Clones to cheat on 'endurance missions' he'd just make me do more of them. 'Train your actual body, Naruto.'" He mimicked Kakashi's bored drawl with impressive accuracy.

That tracked, unfortunately. Kakashi did have "90s dance instructor" (but a ninja) energy when he felt like it.

"So if I use clones, I get yelled at, and then I still have to pull weeds, and then I'm tired twice," Naruto finished, scowling at the dirt like it had personally betrayed him. "It's discrimination."

"Against laziness," I said. "A tragic injustice."

Sasuke, a few rows over, methodically pulled weeds with the blank focus of someone who had decided to be good at everything out of spite. He didn't complain once.

Which was somehow worse.

"Why are you good at this?" I asked him, wiping dirt on my already ruined shorts.

He shrugged without looking at me. "You either do the job right," he said, "or you do it again."

Naruto groaned into the soil. "Why are both of you like this."

We walked twelve dogs at once. Naruto got dragged down the street like a kite tail. I layered tiny reinforcement seals over the cheap leashes, trying to make sure they didn't snap when the biggest one decided to go to war with a squirrel. Sasuke, of course, somehow had three obedient pups trotting in perfect formation at his heels like he'd bribed them with the promise of vengeance.

We cleaned a whole neighborhood's worth of trash out of a canal. Naruto threatened to unleash a "Massive Water Style: Screw This Jutsu" and almost fell in twice. I used it as chakra endurance training, cycling energy through my hands to lift heavier loads, trying not to throw up when my reserves burned low. My knock-off uniform was soaked and smelled like pond. Sasuke glared at a soda can stuck in the reeds until it seemed to move out of sheer fear.

We babysat.

That one was the worst.

The mission sounded easy: "Supervise three civilian children for the afternoon." How hard could it be?

By the time the parents came home, one kid had a self-inflicted haircut, another had attempted to climb the bookcase "like a ninja" and nearly face-planted, and the youngest had somehow gotten hold of my ink and painted the words "BUTT" and "POOP" across an entire wall.

Naruto thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

Kakashi made us repaint the wall.

"It's good teamwork practice," he said, lounging on the porch, nose in his orange book. "And handwriting practice, Sylvie."

"I hate everything," I muttered, scrubbing.

After about a week of this, Naruto snapped.

We finished returning Tora (again), battered and bleeding (again), and filed into the Hokage's office to report.

The Third Hokage sat behind his desk, pipe in hand, mountain of paperwork around him. He looked at us over steepled fingers, eyes mild.

"Tora has been safely returned, I see," he said.

Tora, nestled in the Daimyō's wife's arms, shot us a look of pure malice.

Naruto twitched.

"That's it!" he exploded. "I can't take this anymore!"

"Naruto—" Kakashi started.

"No!" Naruto stomped forward, claws and bandages and all. "I'm not gonna become Hokage by chasing a stupid cat and cleaning trash and babysitting demons in toddler form! We're Genin now! We should be doing real missions!"

"Demons is harsh," I said mildly. "They were more like very tiny bandits."

Naruto pointed at the Hokage with all the righteous fury of a kid calling out a teacher.

"Old man!" he shouted. "Give us a real mission! Something exciting! Dangerous! Cool!"

The Daimyō's wife squawked. "How dare you speak like that in front of—"

I stepped forward, heart thudding but mouth already open before my risk assessment caught up.

"Lord Hokage," I said, bowing as respectfully as I could manage in a shirt stained with alley dust and cat hair. "With all due respect… at this point, I know more about that cat's escape routes than actual field work."

Sarutobi's gaze slid to me. It was heavy, thoughtful, weighing more than my actual weight by a factor of "being in charge of a village."

I swallowed, but kept going.

"I understand we're new," I said. "I get the need to build discipline. But we have been training. We've passed Team 7's test. Naruto and Sasuke both used real combat techniques against Kakashi-sensei. Sir."

Behind me, I could feel Naruto's energy bounce between "angry" and "hopeful" like a pinball.

Kakashi lifted a hand, half-heartedly, like he was supposed to be shutting this down on principle.

"Now, now," he said. "Missions are assigned based on rank and—"

"You didn't exactly hold back on the bell test," I said under my breath.

His visible eye curved. Traitor.

The Hokage watched all three of us for a long moment.

Naruto, radiating indignation and raw longing. Sasuke, arms crossed, silent, but with that razor-wire tension that said he wanted a mission where he could actually hit something. Me, standing between them in my too-big, too-bright clothes, ink stains on my fingers, deliberately not fidgeting. Kakashi, hands in his pockets, pretending to be bored and failing to hide how he was watching us too.

Sarutobi exhaled slowly, smoke curling from his pipe.

"It's true," he said at last. "You've been performing well on your… less glamorous assignments."

Naruto perked up. "So you'll—?"

The Hokage's eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in calculation.

"Perhaps," he said, "it's time we evaluated your capabilities on something… a bit more challenging."

A little thrill ran down my spine.

This was it. Probably.

Sarutobi set his pipe down and reached for a scroll.

"Kakashi," he said. "I believe I have a C-rank mission suitable for your team."

Naruto whooped so loudly the windows rattled. Sasuke's mouth didn't move, but his eyes sharpened.

I pushed my glasses up, heart pounding, and tried very hard not to grin like an idiot.

Boring side quests were over.

Here it was. The moment the training-wheels missions ended and something real began. The kind of mission that would teach us about the world, about ourselves, about what it meant to be shinobi in a place that pretended war was over.

Chapter Text

<The Third Hokage>

After the children and the bridge builder were gone, the tower finally remembered how to be quiet.

The door clicked shut behind Kakashi's retreating students; their chakra signatures receded down the stairs—Naruto's bright and jagged, Sasuke's tight and coiled, Sylvie's strange, layered thing that never quite behaved like anyone else's.

Hiruzen Sarutobi let his shoulders sink a fraction. The pipe sat warm in his hand. The office still smelled faintly of damp fur and alley dust.

Kakashi hadn't left with them.

He lingered by the window instead, one hand in his pocket, the other raising that ridiculous orange book halfway before he seemed to think better of it and tuck it away. He watched the street below with his usual slouch, but the line of his back was too straight to count as relaxed.

"Excited kids," Kakashi said at last. "Terrifying force of nature, really. You just gave them exactly what they wanted."

Hiruzen made a noncommittal sound and set the pipe in its stand. "Within limits."

"Mm. Limits." Kakashi's visible eye curved, faintly amused, faintly something else. "You know Naruto yelled something like that at me the first day we met. 'I'm gonna be Hokage, believe it,' and so on. I suppose this is what passes for consistency."

Hiruzen's gaze drifted to the door.

The echo of Naruto's voice still hung in the wood. Old man! Give us a real mission!

"I expected this confrontation eventually," Hiruzen said. "I did not expect… assistance." His mouth twitched. "From a girl covered in cat hair, lecturing me about field experience."

Kakashi huffed, the ghost of a laugh. "Sylvie does seem… committed to editing reality to her liking."

He said it lightly, but the phrasing lodged under Hiruzen's ribs. Editing reality. The girl did talk about the world as if it were a story she could revise, and herself as both character and commentator. Disconcerting, in someone her age.

Useful, in moments like today.

Hiruzen reached for a file on the edge of his desk—not Naruto's thick, flagged dossier, but a thinner one. He opened it.

Subject: Unknown Orphan (Designation: Sylvie). Origin: Unverified. Skills: Fuinjutsu aptitude (self-taught), Analytical intelligence (high).

There were notes from Iruka in the margins. Observant. Protective of Uzumaki Naruto. Shows an unusual understanding of chakra theory despite low reserves.

And now, a mental note to add: Unafraid to challenge authority if she believes the logic is sound.

"She is an anomaly," Hiruzen murmured.

"She's a stray," Kakashi corrected, turning from the window. "Found in the woods, no memory, no clan. We have a lot of those after the wars. She just happens to be one who decided ink was more interesting than kunai."

"Most strays don't develop functional sealing arrays without a teacher," Hiruzen pointed out. "And most academy students don't stand in this office and demand better treatment for their teammates."

Kakashi tilted his head. "You like her."

"I am intrigued by her," Hiruzen said. "She has no reason to be loyal to this village. We gave her a bed in an orphanage and a uniform that doesn't fit. And yet, she places herself between Naruto and the world as if it is her personal duty."

He tapped the file.

"Keep an eye on her training, Kakashi. Her reserves are low, which will limit her ninjutsu, but her mind is sharp. If she survives this mission…"

He let the thought trail off. He had seen many sharp minds broken by the reality of the shinobi world.

"If she survives," Kakashi finished, "you think she has potential."

"I think," Hiruzen said, "that Naruto needs an anchor. Sasuke needs a conscience. And Sylvie… Sylvie seems determined to be both."

He closed the file.

"If she returns, bring her to me. I may have… some old scrolls she would find interesting. It has been a long time since I had a student who appreciated the theory as much as the practice."

Kakashi's eye widened slightly. "You're going to tutor her?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Hiruzen said, picking up his pipe. "First, let's see if she can survive a C-rank escort without getting eaten by bandits."

Kakashi straightened from his lean, hand lifting in a casual salute. "I'll keep them alive, Hokage-sama. And… I'll try to keep them happy, too. No promises about the cat, though."

"Keep Tora away from them," Hiruzen said. "For the village's sake."

Kakashi's eye curved. "We'll be out of your hair, then."

He flickered away in a swirl of displaced air, leaving the office finally, truly empty.

Hiruzen sat alone with the paperwork, the pipe, and the faint echo of young voices demanding more from him than quiet regret.

He reached for the next scroll—not to bury himself in it, but to start signing different orders.

Stories, Sylvie had once said in that odd, earnest way of hers, don't fix what's already happened. They just decide what happens next.

"Then let's choose better, this time," Hiruzen murmured to no one, and began.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The air in the Hokage's office always smelled like ink, tobacco, and high-stakes bureaucracy.

I stood next to Naruto in front of the Third's desk, trying not to fidget in my too-big clothes. The knock-off sailor top hung off one shoulder if I wasn't careful, the dark pink shorts kept threatening to slide south even with the black belt, and my light brown hair was frizzing out from dried canal water and cat fur. My glasses slid down my nose again.

Naruto bounced on his heels beside me like a hyperactive metronome.

"So?!" he demanded. "You said we could get a better mission, right? Something real this time?"

Behind us, Kakashi-sensei lounged with his hands in his pockets and his orange book out, eye curved in lazy amusement. Sasuke stood on Naruto's other side, arms crossed, looking like he'd rather die than admit he cared about the answer.

The Third Hokage tapped the end of his pipe on an ashtray, regarding us over steepled fingers. Deep lines cut into his face, but his energy felt steady—heavy, patient, like an old tree that'd seen too many storms to bother being impressed by a fresh breeze.

"I did say," he replied, "that we might test your team on something more challenging than chasing cats."

Naruto flinched at the word "cats." Tora-related trauma ran deep.

Sarutobi turned to one of the chunin standing by the wall. "Bring in our client."

Client.

My stomach did a small, anticipatory flip.

Here it was. The mission that would teach us about the world, about what "shinobi" actually meant beyond training grounds and classroom drills.

The chunin opened the door.

In lurched a middle-aged man with white stubble on his chin, a faded bandana on his head, and a bottle of sake dangling from his hand like it belonged there more than the hand did. His clothes were worn, patched in places but sturdy.

His energy… crackled.

Not in the way Naruto's did, loud and wild and bright. Tazuna's felt like a frayed wire behind drywall—strained, buzzing, one bad jolt away from snapping.

He took one look at us and stopped in the doorway.

"These are my bodyguards?" he said, voice rough with booze and irritation. "A scarecrow and three snot-nosed brats?"

Naruto detonated on cue.

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SNOT-NOSED?!" he yelled, jabbing a finger at his own chest so hard his bandages crinkled. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage! I'll protect your scrawny old butt just fine!"

"Future Hokage," Tazuna repeated flatly. "In those ridiculous clothes."

Naruto puffed up. "HEY! MY CLOTHES ARE COOL!"

"To children, maybe," Tazuna muttered, taking a swig from his bottle.

I watched him over the rim of my glasses, squinting past the alcohol stink to get a better read on his energy.

He was scared.

Not normal "I'm a civilian meeting ninjas" nervous. The strain ran deeper than that, dragging at his aura like a physical weight. His fear spiked whenever he glanced at the Hokage, then dipped in a weird, guilty way when he looked at us.

Under all the bluster and cheap insults, Tazuna was terrified we weren't enough.

He thinks he's lying to us already, I realized with a jolt. And he hates that he has to.

"Lord Hokage," Kakashi said mildly, cutting through Naruto's shouting. "Could you clarify the mission parameters?"

Sarutobi nodded.

"This is Tazuna," he said. "A master bridge builder from the Land of Waves. Your mission is to escort him safely back to his country and protect him until he completes building a bridge that is of critical importance to his people."

C-rank escort. Bridges. Land of Waves.

My heart did another flip, half excitement, half dread. The shape of it clicked into place in my head like logic puzzle pieces: small, 'safe' missions had a way of turning into the kind that left names on monuments. I didn't know the details, obviously. I just knew how easily things went wrong in this world—and how much any real mission meant to Naruto.

Tazuna squinted at us again, skepticism dripping off him like spilled sake.

"Protect me, huh?" he said. "From bandits? Thugs? What happens if we run into something worse? Are these kids going to cry at them?"

"I don't cry," Sasuke said coolly.

Naruto jabbed a thumb at himself. "We can handle it! I beat that jerk Mizuki, remember?"

Tazuna blinked. "Who?"

"Traitor chunin, tried to steal the scroll, almost killed Iruka-sensei?" Naruto rattled off, as if that cleared anything up. "I CREATERED HIM."

"Cratered," I corrected under my breath.

"Exactly!" Naruto said, mishearing me entirely. "I did a crater."

Tazuna stared at him like he was assessing whether Naruto's skull contained a brain or a raccoon.

"Look," I cut in, before Naruto could start re-enacting the fight with interpretive flailing. "We're Genin, not Academy students. We've trained under Kakashi Hatake." I tipped my head toward our jonin, whose reputation was mostly rumors to me, but clearly carried weight. "We're not helpless."

Tazuna snorted. "You look like you're playing dress-up."

I glanced down at myself.

Okay, fair. The too-big not-quite-uniform, the ink stains on my fingers, the glasses slipping constantly… I did look like a background character in a school play who'd wandered into the wrong story.

But underneath that, I was chakra and seals and the memory of dying once already. I wasn't planning on doing it again.

"The mission parameters are clear," Kakashi said, reining things back. "Escort to Land of Waves, guard duty during construction, defense against bandits or low-level enemy ninja at most. C-rank."

Underneath his bored tone, I could feel the way his energy tightened at the edges. He knew as well as I did: civilians didn't usually come all the way to a Great Ninja Village just to hire a basic babysitting squad for a construction job.

Sarutobi held Tazuna's gaze a little too long.

"Is there anything else you wish to disclose about the threats you face?" he asked, voice mild. "We assign missions based on accurate information, Tazuna."

Tazuna hesitated.

His energy spiked, fear flaring bright, then dampening down under a layer of stubbornness and shame.

"Well," he said. "There may be… some bandits you could call… unusual."

Suspicious. Very suspicious.

"If this were truly B-rank or above," the Hokage said, "the cost would be significantly higher."

He didn't say: and you look like you can barely afford that bottle of sake.

Tazuna's shoulders hunched a fraction.

"It's a poor country," he said roughly. "We don't have much. But this bridge… it's our hope. If I don't finish it…" He trailed off. The fear in his energy twisted into anger, then back into fear, like he was caught in his own loop.

I muttered, mostly for myself, "He's way more scared than a normal drunk grandpa."

Naruto looked at me. "Huh?"

"Nothing," I said under my breath. This is not staying C-rank. No way.

Sarutobi sighed, the kind of quiet, resigned sound that came from years of making choices where every option got someone hurt.

"Kakashi," he said finally. "You are an experienced jonin. Do you feel your team can handle potential… complications?"

Kakashi didn't answer right away.

For a moment, his lazy-surfaced energy went very still, like deep water during a pause in the wind. He glanced at us.

At Naruto, vibrating with eagerness and stupid, sincere bravery.

At Sasuke, tense and hungry for something real to fight.

At me, glasses slightly askew, fingers ink-stained, heart pounding way too hard for someone trying to look calm.

His eye curved.

"They'll do," he said.

Naruto punched the air. "YEAH!"

Sasuke sniffed. "Obviously."

I exhaled, tension and excitement tangling in my chest.

"Then it's settled," Sarutobi said.

He straightened, all the warmth of the "kind old grandpa" aura fading, leaving behind the leader of a military dictatorship.

"Team 7," he intoned. "You are hereby assigned a C-rank mission: escort and protect Tazuna of the Land of Waves until his bridge is complete."

We bowed.

Naruto nearly toppled forward from sheer enthusiasm. "We won't let you down, Old—uh, Lord Hokage!"

"See that you don't," Sarutobi said, a hint of a smile returning at the corners of his mouth.

Tazuna drained the last of his sake and set the bottle down with more force than necessary.

"Fine," he grumbled. "You kids better not die on me. It'd make the bridge look bad."

"WE'RE NOT GONNA DIE!" Naruto shouted. "We're gonna show you how awesome we are!"

My heartbeat stuttered at the word "die," but I shoved the flash of memory—mud, blood, a log in the woods—back into its box.

"Come on, Naruto," I said, nudging him toward the door. "We need to pack. You can yell at him on the way."

"I'm not yelling," he protested, already yelling. "I'm just very passionate!"

"About screaming," Sasuke muttered.

We filed out of the office, Kakashi bringing up the rear like a bored scarecrow with a hidden kill count.

As the door swung shut behind us, I glanced back once.

The Third watched us go, pipe smoke curling around him, eyes sharp and sad. Tazuna stood stiffly by the desk, shoulders tight with secrets he couldn't afford to tell us.

In the hallway, Naruto spun around, walking backwards so he could talk with his whole body.

"Did you see that?" he crowed. "Our first real mission! We're leaving the village! We're gonna go to another country! This is gonna be so cool!"

His energy flared bright and hot and wild, joy drowning out the scraps of leftover frustration.

I smiled despite myself.

"Yeah," I said. "Cool."

And terrifying. And important.

I adjusted my glasses, tightened my grip on my pouch of ink and tags, and told the nervous part of my brain, You survived one stupid forest. You can survive this.

Probably.

Maybe.

"Hey, Sylvie," Naruto said, falling into step beside me. "Race you to the gate once we're packed?"

"Absolutely not," I said.

"Yes," he translated, and took off running anyway.

Sasuke sighed, then followed at a slower pace.

Kakashi drifted along behind us like a shadow.

I walked in the middle, heartbeat loud in my ears, thinking of bridges and bandits and how many ways a world could break people even when they meant well.

This is not staying C-rank, I thought again, with grim certainty.

But then, neither was I.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

If you squinted, our first “real” mission looked almost like a family walk.

Kakashi strolled at the front with his nose in that orange book. Tazuna shuffled beside him, smelling faintly of old sake and sawdust. Naruto, Sasuke, and I trailed behind, three mismatched ducklings in too-big clothes.

My borrowed orphanage outfit—white knockoff schoolgirl top with pink trim, dark pink shorts, black belt—still didn’t quite sit right on my body. The sleeves slipped off my shoulders just enough to be annoying. My light brown hair kept catching the breeze and sticking to my glasses.

Naruto, on the other hand, owned his orange like it owed him rent.

“You’ll see,” he was saying, swinging his arms so wide I had to duck once to avoid getting smacked. “Once I become Hokage, they’re gonna have to give me way cooler missions than cat-chasing! We’re talking dragon hunting. Bandit king punching. Super-secret spy stuff!”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Because nothing says ‘stealth’ like that jacket.”

He stuck his tongue out at me.

Sasuke walked on my other side, hands in his pockets, eyes forward. He was pretending not to listen, which meant he was definitely listening.

“Hey, Sasuke!” Naruto called. “When I’m Hokage, you can be my underling!”

“Dream smaller,” Sasuke replied without missing a beat.

Naruto sputtered. “Wha—HEY!”

I snorted. “He’s right. You’d make a terrible underling.”

Naruto rounded on me. “Traitor!”

“I’m just saying,” I shrugged. “You’d accidentally set the mission scroll on fire because you got bored and started using it as target practice.”

“…Okay, that happened one time,” he grumbled, looking away.

“Once,” I said, “that I know of.”

His chakra flared—hot, embarrassed, annoyed. It made the air around him feel noisy. Sasuke’s was the opposite: dense, tight, coiled in that way that always made my fingers itch, like I could almost feel the pressure trying to leak out.

“Anyway,” I went on, because apparently I liked danger, “if we’re talking training, we should probably survive this mission first.”

Naruto puffed up. “We’re totally gonna survive it. It’s just a C-rank!”

“Sure,” I said. “Just an escort job. With a civilian client who is one hundred percent definitely not hiding anything.”

Tazuna glanced back at that, face creased into its permanent scowl. His chakra was strained and thin, stretched like old paper. Fear simmered underneath the fake irritation.

“Oi,” he said. “I told you brats already. I just need to get home and finish my bridge. Nothing dangerous about that.”

“Uh-huh,” I said again, more quietly this time.

Sasuke cut me a look. “Something to say, glasses?”

“Just thinking about resource allocation,” I said. “If nothing’s dangerous, why send a jonin with three fresh genin instead of, say, two chunin and a pack of bored dogs?”

He frowned, about to reply, then seemed to reconsider. His gaze slid forward to Kakashi’s back.

“Maybe the old man is just paranoid,” Naruto said. “Or maybe he heard I was so awesome I didn’t need D-ranks anymore.”

Kakashi didn’t look up from his book, but I saw the faint curve at the corner of his visible eye.

“Ah yes,” he drawled, “the Hokage definitely upgraded this mission because of your stellar track record with cats.”

“Shut uuuup,” Naruto groaned.

We walked.

The trees thickened slowly, Konoha fading behind us into a smear of rooftops and distant stone faces. The road was hard-packed and dry, dust puffing up around our sandals with each step.

Seal theory floated in the back of my head, bumping against the rhythm of footsteps. Weight distribution arrays, temporary adhesion marks, a disruption pattern I’d been working on that might be able to snap a rope if I tuned the push just right. I mentally sketched symbols against the inside of my eyelids.

“So,” I said eventually, mostly to annoy Sasuke, “how do you train when you’re not glowering at clouds?”

“I don’t glower at—” he started, then cut himself off. “Fire style. Speed drills. Shuriken work.”

“Wow, such detail,” I said. “Truly enlightening.”

He gave me a look that could have stripped paint.

“And you?” he asked coolly. “Aside from vandalism and mouthing off at teachers.”

“Ouch,” I said. But it warmed my chest a little that he’d noticed anything at all. “Fine motor drills. Calligraphy. Chakra control exercises on ink instead of leaves. I’ve been testing some simple seals—smoke tags, sticky patches. Little things.”

Naruto perked up. “Yeah! She made this tag that went boom at the Academy once! It was so cool!”

“It went pop,” I corrected. “Very small pop. Not a boom. Booms are a different category.”

“Still cool,” he said stubbornly.

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed, considering. “Fuinjutsu, huh.”

Uchiha and seals had a complicated history in the stories people told. Here, it just looked like a boy with a clan name and a teacher with a thousand secrets, and me in the middle, braid coming loose, fingers shaking. Maybe the stories lied.

Before I could answer, something ahead snagged at the edge of my senses.

The road curved slightly around a cluster of trees. Right in the middle of the path, sunlight glaring down, sat a puddle. Perfectly round. Perfectly still.

On a dry road.

My steps faltered for half a second.

Chakra brushed the back of my mind—thin, stretched, oddly muffled. Like someone holding their breath underwater.

“That’s wrong,” I thought. “That’s—”

“Keep walking,” Kakashi said lazily from the front, not turning around.

His voice was light. The feel of him shifted almost imperceptibly—attention sharpening even as his posture stayed slouched.

I swallowed and did as ordered.

We passed the puddle. My skin crawled. I almost reached for a tag, my fingers twitching near my pouch.

“Maybe it’s fine,” I told myself. “Maybe it’s just a weird puddle. Maybe the stories lied. Maybe—”

Two shadows exploded from the water.

Chains snapped around Kakashi before I finished thinking the word “maybe.” They wrapped him, iron links clanking, and the two figures in metal claws and banded masks yanked hard.

“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto yelled.

There was a wet, cracking sound and a spray of blood.

For a heartbeat, the world went white around the edges.

Too much blood. Woods. Water. My leg. The old log. Another forest, another lifetime—

I dragged myself out of the flashback by force.

Kakashi’s body hung limp between the two attackers, slashed and slack. The chain snapped away from the tree behind him and his weight sagged as if something vital had been cut.

“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto screamed again, voice cracking.

The two ninja turned toward us in unison. Their hitai-ate were slashed across, symbols scratched out. Hidden Mist. Their chakra felt cold and sharp, like rusted blades just before they cut.

“We’ve got one target left,” one of them rasped.

“Tazuna,” the other finished.

There was a rushing sound, and it wasn’t wind. It was Naruto’s chakra peaking into raw panic. He didn’t move. Didn’t attack. Didn’t even raise his hands.

He froze.

The chain whipped toward him.

“Move,” I snarled at my own legs.

They finally listened.

I shoved my hand into my pouch, fingers closing around the smallest disruption tag I had. Half-finished, lines a little crooked, anchor seal weaker than it should’ve been. I didn’t have time to be picky.

“Don’t embarrass me,” I hissed at the paper, and flung it at the segment of chain between the two brothers.

It stuck for half a second—ink bond flaring as my chakra smeared across it.

“Disrupt,” I whispered, forcing a pulse into the seal.

The tag popped.

Not big. Not dramatic. Just a hard, sharp push—the jolt of somebody kicking a table leg.

The chain jumped in their hands. One of the Demon Brothers staggered, claws scraping against each other with a grinding screech.

It was enough.

“SYLVIE!” Naruto yelped. The links holding him snapped tight again, biting into his clothes, and the brothers reoriented on him with a snarl.

“New plan,” I told myself. “Let the frontliners handle the stabbing.”

I grabbed Tazuna by the sleeve and yanked.

He wasn’t light. He also wasn’t a fan of being manhandled by a teenage girl in pink-trimmed hand-me-downs.

“Hey!” he barked. “What do you—”

“Move!” I snapped. “We’re the squishy ones!”

His chakra screamed fear even as his mouth kept arguing. I dragged him off the path and behind the nearest tree, heart punching at my ribs.

Behind us: chains, metal, the sound of Naruto choking.

I risked a glance.

Naruto was still bound, eyes wide and white-rimmed. Blood oozed where the links dug into his skin. The Demon Brothers loomed, claws poised to shred him.

Sasuke moved.

He was a blur of black and blue, closing the distance in a heartbeat. He stomped on the chain between Naruto and the brothers, pinning it to the ground. His hands flashed through signs.

“Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!”

Flame roared from his mouth, heat washing over the clearing. The brothers hissed and jumped away, the chain yanking Naruto off his feet and slamming him into the dirt.

I flinched. Tazuna swore, ducking lower behind me.

Smoke billowed. Metal gleamed. Sasuke followed up, darting in with a shower of shuriken; the claws sparked as they deflected, but he’d forced them off-balance, away from Naruto, away from us.

“Whoa,” Naruto croaked, stunned. He struggled against the chain again. It rattled, unforgiving.

My disruption tag had burned itself out in a smear of ash.

“That was your best version,” I told myself bitterly. “Remember that feeling.”

The brothers recovered quickly, flanking Sasuke. For a breath, it looked bad—two-on-one, blades and chains and nasty, practiced teamwork.

And then something in Naruto snapped.

“I—” he choked. “I… froze…”

His chakra twisted, self-loathing and terror tangling into a tight knot.

He stared at the chain around his hand. At Sasuke in front of him, fighting in his place. At Tazuna behind me, shaking.

“I… promised,” he whispered. “I promised I’d never back down…”

His fingers curled into a fist.

He stopped pulling away from the pain and pulled into it instead.

Before I fully processed what he was about to do, the kunai was in his free hand. He stabbed it through his own palm, straight into the chain.

Blood spattered the dirt.

My stomach lurched. Tazuna made a strangled sound.

Naruto screamed, but he moved—rammed his bleeding hand forward and used the pain like a lever. The chain jerked, slackening just enough for him to wrench himself free and lunge toward the nearest brother.

“You’re aiming at the wrong person!” he roared, tears and snot and fury all tangled. “If you want my team, you go through me!”

He kicked the ninja square in the face.

It wasn’t elegant. It didn’t have Sasuke’s form or Kakashi’s precision. But it was enough to send the man crashing back into a tree with a sick crunch.

Sasuke’s eyes widened for half a second, then narrowed again as he used the opening. He swept in, weapons flashing, catching the other brother before he could regroup.

And then Kakashi was just… there.

One moment, a corpse on the ground. The next, silver hair and hitai-ate and lazy eye smile, one Demon Brother pinned against a tree with a kunai at his throat, the other dangling from a branch like a badly hung decoration.

“Nice teamwork,” he said cheerfully.

I stared.

“T-that—” Naruto stammered, pointing at the blood-smeared spot where Kakashi had “died.” “You—You were—”

“A substitution,” Kakashi said. “Wood log, basic technique. You learned it at the Academy.”

Naruto made a strangled noise that might have been, “You let me think you died?!”

Kakashi’s visible eye curved. “And you’re still alive. So I’d say it was an effective lesson.”

If I’d had the breath, I would’ve yelled at him. Loudly. Instead, I just slumped back against the tree I’d been using as cover, my legs turning to overcooked noodles.

My heart was still racing. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. All I could see, overlaying the present, was red water and sharp wood and the feeling of life draining out of me in another world.

Too much blood.

Too much like the woods.

“Hey,” I muttered to myself. “This isn’t there. Different forest. Different death. Get it together.”

Naruto wobbled, staring at his bleeding hand like it belonged to someone else.

Kakashi tied up the Demon Brothers with casual efficiency, his whole demeanor back to “mildly interested scarecrow” like he hadn’t just set up a near-death scenario to test our reactions. Sasuke hovered nearby, jaw tight, eyes darker than usual.

Tazuna finally stopped shaking like a leaf. Barely.

“I told you,” Kakashi said, turning to the bridge-builder, “this mission is more than you requested.”

Tazuna swallowed hard. “I… I couldn’t pay for a higher rank. If I’d told the truth…”

We all looked at him.

Underneath the guilt and fear, his chakra had a rough thread of something else. Desperation. The kind that gambled with other people’s lives because there weren’t any easy options left.

“Later,” Kakashi said, voice flat. “We’ll discuss it later.”

His gaze flicked to Naruto’s mangled hand, then to me.

“Sylvie,” he said. “You’re up.”

“Oh,” I said faintly. “Right. Medical stuff. That’s me.”

My legs wobbled as I pushed off the tree and crossed the clearing. Up close, Naruto’s hand looked… bad. The kunai had gone straight through, tearing flesh on the way out. Blood soaked his sleeve, dripped down his wrist, spattered the chain links where they’d fallen.

“Cool,” I said, speaking directly to the universe. “Fantastic. Love this for us.”

Naruto blinked at me. “Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Show me.”

He held his hand out. It trembled, just a little. His chakra was still buzzing on the high edge of what he’d just done—pain and adrenaline and a tiny, fragile flicker of pride.

I took a steadying breath and let my training bubble up and over the panic.

“Okay,” I murmured. “We need to stop the bleeding first.”

I dug into my pouch for bandages. My fingers left faint smears of ink on the white cloth. Habit. Everything I touched ended up a little ink-stained.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Yes?” he said, incredulous.

“Good,” I said. “Means you didn’t cut through anything important enough to go numb. Hold still.”

He made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

I cleaned the wound as best I could with what we had—water, gauze, a tiny bit of basic antiseptic. The hole in his hand oozed stubbornly. I pressed a folded pad of gauze over it with my thumb, channeling just a trickle of chakra the way the med-nin had taught me: enough to encourage clotting, not enough to drain us both.

My hands shook.

Naruto frowned. “Hey. You okay?”

“Fine,” I lied. “You’re an idiot.”

He grinned weakly. “Yeah, but I’m a brave idiot.”

“That’s the problem,” I muttered, carefully wrapping the bandage around his palm, over and under, snug but not too tight. “You’re going to give me a heart attack before we even hit B-rank missions.”

His blue eyes watched my face, weirdly sharp for once.

“You were shaking before you even touched my hand,” he said quietly.

I flinched.

“I said I’m fine,” I repeated. “Don’t make this about me. You’re the one who stabbed yourself.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

For a moment, the bravado slipped. I felt the echo of his earlier terror, the way it had hollowed him out and then condensed into something else. The promise he’d made himself not to run.

“I froze,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Like… like when everyone in the village pretends I’m not there. Like that. I hate it. I hate that feeling.”

I finished the bandage and patted it once.

“I saw,” I said. “Then you moved anyway.”

He swallowed.

“I swear,” he said, louder now, like he was talking to the trees and the sky and anyone else listening. “I swear I’m never gonna back down like that again. I don’t care if I’m scared. I don’t care if I get hurt. I’m gonna keep moving. I’m gonna get stronger. Strong enough that nobody can ignore me, and nobody on my team has to die in front of me ever again. Believe it.”

The words hit the clearing like a thrown kunai.

Sasuke’s eyes flickered. Kakashi’s expression didn’t change much, but his chakra shifted—just a little warmer around the edges, like he’d been expecting this and was grudgingly impressed anyway.

My chest ached.

I reached up and, before I could overthink it, put my palm very gently against Naruto’s shoulder. Just below the hitai-ate he still hadn’t earned yet.

“Breathe,” I said softly. “In. Out. Slow.”

He blinked at me. “Huh?”

“Just do it,” I said.

His shoulders rose and fell as he inhaled through his nose. I let a tiny spiral of chakra flow from my fingers—simple, looping, threading across the muscles there. Not enough to mess with anything vital. Just enough to smooth the jagged edges of his panic, take the top layer off the adrenaline crash barreling toward him.

An early, clumsy version of Calm Stroke. No more than a B+ back rub with chakra frosting.

His next breath came easier. Some of the frantic buzz in his chakra settled.

“Better?” I asked.

“…Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “A little.”

“Good,” I said, and pulled my hand back before I burned out my own reserves entirely. “Try not to stab yourself again for at least an hour, okay? I’m on a chakra budget.”

He laughed, shaky but real.

Behind us, Kakashi finished securing the Demon Brothers and walked back over, hair somehow still perfect despite everything.

“Nice speech,” he told Naruto. “Scary follow-through. Try not to make self-harm your go-to strategy, though.”

Naruto flushed. “I had to do something.”

Kakashi’s visible eye creased thoughtfully.

“You did,” he said. “And you protected the client. That matters.”

Tazuna shuffled closer, looking at Naruto’s bandaged hand and then at Kakashi’s very-much-alive face.

“You kids are insane,” he muttered. “You know that?”

“We’re ninja,” I said. “It’s in the job description.”

We regrouped, the forest around us quiet again. The puddle that had ruined everything lay empty and harmless on the road, just water and dirt and bad memories.

As we started walking again, this time with Kakashi very much not reading his book, Naruto bumped his shoulder against mine.

“Hey,” he said. “Thanks. For the tag. And the bandage. And the… weird shoulder thing.”

“Just doing my job,” I said, staring straight ahead so he wouldn’t see the way my cheeks heated. “Try not to make me use all of it on day one.”

He grinned. “No promises.”

I sighed.

Somewhere in front of us, bigger storms were coming—and my traps were small. My chakra was limited. This world had stopped seemingly like a dream a long time ago; now it was the world I was from that seemed so...far away.

But Naruto had stood there, blood on his hand, and declared war on his own fear.

If he kept getting back up, I could at least make sure he wasn’t doing it alone.

“Fine,” I thought, glancing at his bandaged hand. “Be a brave idiot. I’ll be the ink-stained one keeping you in one piece.”

The road stretched ahead, puddle behind us, sky wide and uncaring overhead.

One mission down. A thousand complications to go.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time we stopped to catch our breath, my arms were buzzing and my legs felt like overcooked noodles.

The road had narrowed to a dirt path, trees crowding in on either side. Mist clung low to the ground, the kind that made your ankles feel like they were walking through someone else’s breath.

Naruto plopped down on a rock with a groan, cradling his bandaged hand like it had personally betrayed him.

“Man,” he complained, “I am so done with surprise murder puddles.”

“Bold of you to assume that was the last one,” I said, kneeling beside him. “Let me see.”

He hesitated, then held his hand out.

The gauze I’d wrapped earlier was already stained through in a few spots. Not terrible, but not great either. I peeled it back carefully, checking the puncture marks where he’d driven a kunai through his own palm to escape the Demon Brothers’ chain.

The skin around the wound was angry and red, but the bleeding had slowed. Good. Great. Fantastic. Ten out of ten, would prefer this to him being in two pieces.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, because that was easier than saying what I was actually thinking.

Naruto grinned weakly. “A super cool idiot.”

“Debatable,” I muttered, digging out fresh bandages from my pouch. My fingers were still shaking a little; I focused on the familiar motions, wrapping the cloth snugly but not too tight.

The forest felt different now. Before the ambush, it had been just… background. Trees, birds, distant bugs, like the kind of painted-on forest you hurry through in a game. After watching two grown men burst out of a puddle and go straight for our teacher’s spine, it all felt sharper. The rustle of leaves. The creak of branches. Every sound a possible threat.

“Are we gonna talk about how Kakashi-sensei died and then didn’t?” Naruto said suddenly. “Because that was messed up.”

“He didn’t die,” I said. “Substitution Jutsu. Log no Jutsu. Classic.”

“I that,” Naruto said. “Still messed up.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

A few meters away, Sasuke leaned against a tree, arms crossed, expression almost bored. His chakra wasn’t bored at all; it simmered, tight and alert. Tazuna hovered near him, clutching his bottle like a shield, eyes darting between us and the surrounding trees.

Kakashi stood a little apart, hands in his pockets, gaze on the path ahead. From the outside, he looked relaxed. From the inside, his chakra was edged and watchful, like a blade wrapped in cotton.

“Sensei,” I said. “We going to keep moving or…?”

“In a minute,” he said. “First, we need to clear something up.”

The lazy tone was still there, but there was steel under it now.

He turned his head toward Tazuna.

“About that mission ranking,” Kakashi added.

Tazuna flinched like he’d been caught stealing from the offering box.

—

<Kakashi>

Kakashi had given D-rank missions a lot of grief over the years, but they had one undeniable upside: D-rank missions did not usually come with hidden assassination contracts.

He watched Tazuna over the edge of his book—not that he was actually reading it. The bridge builder’s hands shook slightly around the neck of his bottle. The smell of cheap alcohol didn’t quite cover the sour tang of fear.

“That wasn’t a random attack,” Kakashi said mildly. “Those two were the Demon Brothers of the Hidden Mist. Chunin-level assassins. Famous, if you’ve been in the right trenches.”

Naruto sat up straighter. “Wait, were chunin?”

Kakashi ignored him for the moment.

“Our mission,” he continued, “was listed as C-rank. Bandits, maybe one or two small-time thugs. Not professional killers with poison chains and a reputation.”

He let that hang there.

Tazuna’s jaw worked. “So?”

“So,” Kakashi said, “this level of enemy is more in line with a B-rank. Possibly higher, depending on what else you’ve neglected to mention. And since I’m currently escorting one loud genin with more guts than sense, one traumatized avenger, and one civilian-born girl who just met her first real fight…” His visible eye curved. “I’d like to know what, exactly, you’ve dragged us into.”

Naruto bristled. “Hey! I have tons of sense!”

Sylvie, who was still carefully tucking the bandage end in place, muttered, “That’s a lie and you know it.”

He squawked in offense.

Kakashi didn’t correct her.

Tazuna’s shoulders slumped. The bravado he’d worn like armor when they left Konoha had worn thin during the fight. Up close, he looked… old. Lines carved deep around his mouth, dark circles under his eyes. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t come from one bad night, but years.

“I had no choice,” Tazuna said finally, voice rough. “If I told you everything, the mission would’ve been too expensive. They would’ve refused it. And then… Wave would be finished.”

Kakashi’s eye narrowed slightly. “Explain.”

Tazuna took a long swallow from his bottle, then lowered it with shaking hands.

“There’s a man,” he said. “Gato. He owns a shipping company. Supposed to be a legitimate businessman, but he’s scum. Smuggler, slaver, you name it. He set his sights on the Land of Waves. Bought out our leaders, our nobles, one by one. Anyone who resisted…” He made a cutting motion across his throat.

Naruto’s fists clenched.

“He took our trade, our money, our hope,” Tazuna went on. “Now everyone in Wave lives in fear of his thugs. People go missing. No one can afford to fight back. The only chance we have is the bridge I’m building. If we finish it, we get a route that doesn’t go through Gato’s ships. We can trade again. We can breathe again.”

He laughed bitterly. “So of course he wants me dead.”

Kakashi had heard variations of this story before. A warlord, a merchant turned tyrant, a country squeezed until hope went hoarse. It didn’t make it easier to hear.

“So you lied to get a cheaper guard,” Kakashi said. “Knowing full well that whoever took the job might be in over their heads.”

Tazuna flinched. “I didn’t know they’d send kids,” he shot back. “When they said ‘shinobi from the Leaf,’ I thought—” He gestured weakly at Kakashi. “More like you. Not… not them.”

He didn’t look at Naruto or Sylvie when he said it. That didn’t matter. Kakashi saw the way Naruto’s shoulders tensed, the way Sylvie’s mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line.

Sasuke’s expression didn’t change, but his chakra flicked sharper.

“So what?” Naruto burst out. “We’re just supposed to turn around now?”

—

<Sylvie>

My first impulse was to agree with Naruto just on principle.

My second impulse was to curl into a ball and have a small, quiet panic attack about getting murdered by a shipping magnate’s private assassins.

Instead, I took a slow breath and hit pause on both.

I could feel everyone, sharp and bright in my weird internal color palette. Naruto, loud and furious and terrified. Sasuke, tight and focused, anger hooked onto something cold and steady. Tazuna, worn thin and braced for rejection. Kakashi, all watchful calculation behind that slouch.

Kakashi didn’t answer Naruto right away. He looked at us instead.

“Naruto,” he said, “this decision isn’t just about you. If we continue, all of you will be in more danger than a brand-new genin squad normally faces. You froze back there.”

Naruto’s face flushed. “I—I know, but—”

“You rallied,” Kakashi continued. “You acted. That’s good. But mission-wise, you’re still barely out of the Academy. This isn’t a game. If we proceed, there’s a real chance someone dies. Maybe Tazuna. Maybe one of you.”

The words hit like a bucket of cold water.

Naruto’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed.

I stared down at my hands, flexing my fingers. There was a smear of Naruto’s dried blood on my knuckles, a flake of it caught under one short nail. For a second it overlapped in my head with another memory: my own blood in a different forest, soaking through denim and dirt.

I had done “bleed out alone” once. I was not interested in a sequel.

Tazuna hunched in on himself. “So that’s it, then?” he said quietly. “You’ll take your precious children and go home, and Wave… Wave can drown?”

Guilt stabbed me in the ribs.

Kakashi’s visible eye lowered a fraction.

“This mission was never approved as a B-rank,” he said. “By the rules, we’re obligated to return once the true parameters are known.”

“Rules,” Tazuna spat. “You talk about rules while my grandson goes to bed hungry? While my people are beaten in the streets? You think Gato cares about your rules?”

Naruto’s head snapped up.

“Then we’ll just beat him!” he shouted. “Rules or no rules! I don’t care if it’s B-rank or Z-rank or whatever stupid letter you want, I’m not turning back now!”

“Naruto—” Kakashi started.

“No!” Naruto planted his feet, shaking. “I already decided! I’m gonna be Hokage someday! You think Hokage runs away because things might get dangerous?”

There it was. That impossible, stupid, incandescent courage.

His chakra flared, bright and hot, blowing out the muddy fear like a storm.

I felt myself straighten before I decided to.

“Kakashi-sensei,” I said.

He looked at me. Really looked, not just a passing glance.

I swallowed, pushed on.

“I don’t… like this,” I admitted. “Any of it. Being lied to about the danger, being used, knowing there are people out there who think kids are acceptable collateral. I hate it.”

Naruto blinked at me, surprised. Sasuke watched without comment. Tazuna looked tired, like he expected me to side with Kakashi and call it practical.

“But,” I said, “we know too much now.”

Their attention sharpened.

“If we turn back, what happens?” I ticked points off on my fingers. “Gato keeps strangling Wave. Tazuna probably dies. His bridge doesn’t get built. The people there stay trapped. And Konoha…” I hesitated. “Either we go home and pretend we didn’t know any of that, or we report it and someone higher up has to decide if a poor country is worth angering a rich thug over. Do you trust the politics to go our way?”

Kakashi said nothing. The silence said enough.

“I’m not saying we charge ahead blind,” I added quickly. “But from a risk perspective? We’re already in it. We’ve already fought his hired killers. They know Konoha is involved now whether we finish the job or not. Turning back doesn’t reset anything; it just gives Gato a free win and makes us look unreliable.”

The word tasted bitter in my mouth.

Where I came from, we’d had whole histories of powerful people walking away from suffering because it was inconvenient. I hadn’t liked it then either.

Naruto stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “That’s what I said!” he said. “Kind of. Less… nerdy.”

“Thank you, Naruto,” I said dryly.

Sasuke snorted. “She has a point,” he said, finally speaking up. “If we run now, we’re just leaving loose ends. That’s sloppy.”

I glanced at him, startled. His chakra was a steady burn, more annoyed at the idea of unfinished business than anything else.

Tazuna’s eyes were shiny. “You’d… really still help us?” he asked, voice small.

Naruto puffed up. “Obviously! I’m not gonna let some jerk scare me off. Plus—” He jabbed his thumb at his chest. “I made a promise. Heroes don’t break promises.”

I winced internally at the word “hero,” but kept my mouth shut.

Kakashi exhaled slowly.

The scary thing was, none of us were wrong.

On paper, yeah, pulling back and letting a stronger squad take over made sense. Politically, walking away after seeing how screwed Wave really was felt like the kind of move history books side-eye. Morally? That was the one place the needle didn’t move.

That one wasn’t really up for debate.

Kakashi scrubbed a hand through his hair, then let it flop down again.

“All right,” he said, finally. “Let me make this clear. Continuing this mission means accepting that you may encounter enemies on my level or higher. I can’t guarantee your safety. I can only do my best to keep you alive while you learn how to keep yourselves alive.”

Naruto nodded fiercely.

“Fine by me,” Sasuke said.

My heart thudded hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.

“I don’t want to die in some ditch because of a drunk bridge builder,” I said. “But I also don’t want to go back to Konoha and spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to the people we left behind.”

Kakashi’s eye crinkled slightly.

“You all understand,” he said, “that you’re children, and this is not how C-ranks are supposed to go?”

“Then stop calling it a C-rank,” I muttered. “C-rank, my foot.”

Naruto snorted.

Kakashi sighed. “All right. Officially, the mission remains C-rank. In my report, it will be upgraded. I’ll take responsibility for continuing based on new information and the client’s circumstances.”

“You’ll… keep helping?” Tazuna asked, hopeful.

“We’ll escort you to Wave,” Kakashi said. “We’ll protect you as best we can. But if we’re forced into a situation I judge completely beyond what these three can handle, I will prioritize their lives. Understood?”

Tazuna nodded quickly. “Of course. Of course.”

Naruto opened his mouth—probably to argue about “prioritize their lives”—but I kicked his ankle lightly.

“Understood,” I echoed. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of being benched in some hypothetical worst-case scenario, but I preferred “alive and benched” to “dead and heroic.”

Kakashi straightened, rolling his shoulders like he was settling a new weight into place.

“All right then,” he said, clapping his hands once. “Break’s over. Form up around Tazuna. Eyes open. We proceed, but we proceed carefully. From here on out… assume nothing is safe.”

“Wow,” I said under my breath as I stood. “Love the motivational speech.”

Naruto grinned, something wild and excited sparking in his eyes despite the lingering fear.

“Hey,” he said, bumping his bandaged hand against my shoulder. “Real missions, right? This is what we wanted.”

“I wanted fewer puddles,” I said. “But sure. Let’s call this a win.”

We fell into formation: Tazuna in the middle, Kakashi up front with his book out, pretending not to be scanning every tree, Sasuke to the left like a silent, broody knife, Naruto to the right, practically vibrating. I took the rear, eyes and chakra sense stretched as far as I could stand without giving myself a headache.

The path curved ahead into mist and unknowns.

I tugged my glasses up my nose, wiped a flake of dried blood from my knuckle with my thumb, and followed.

If this was what being a real Konoha ninja meant—lies, danger, impossible choices, and still moving forward anyway—then fine.

I’d just have to make sure we didn’t break under the weight of it.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time we hit the fog, I already had a headache.

It wasn’t just the mist. Adrenaline always left this sour pressure behind my eyes, like my body was still waiting for the next sword to come out of nowhere.

And it wasn't the normal "Naruto has been yelling in my ear for twenty minutes straight" headache.

That was familiar, almost comforting. This one started behind my eyes and crawled down my spine, like the air itself was pressing in.

The little fishing boat rocked under us as we slid through gray mist. Water slapped against the hull in slow, miserable beats. I sat near the middle, knees tucked up, glasses fogging every three seconds.

Naruto was at the bow, of course, leaning so far forward I was ninety percent sure he was going to fall in.

"So this is the Land of Waves?" he shouted into the fog. "Where's the bridge? Where's the people? Where's the—"

"Inside voices," I muttered. "The mist can hear you."

He ignored me. Naturally.

Sasuke stood a few steps back from him, hands in his pockets, expression somewhere between bored and mildly offended by humidity. Kakashi leaned against the side of the boat like driftwood with a mask, reading one of his dumb books like we weren't surrounded by horror movie lighting.

His chakra felt… thinner than usual. Not gone, not weak—just stretched, like he'd spent something expensive and hadn’t gotten paid back yet.

I closed my eyes for a second and reached out with my chakra.

Konoha felt like sunlight through leaves—busy, bright, crowded with little sparks. This place was… not that. Everything around us was heavy and dim, like the colors had been washed out and left to dry in the rain. The faint signatures I could pick up from the shoreline felt thin and frayed, like people were burning their energy just on existing.

I opened my eyes and pushed my glasses up my nose. "This place feels like a group project where everyone already gave up."

Naruto twisted around. "Huh?"

"Nothing. Just… don't fall in. I'm not ruining my seals to fish you out."

"You totally would!" he said. "You're my teammate!"

"Yeah, yeah. I'd do it. I'd complain the whole time, but I'd do it."

He grinned, satisfied, and turned back to the fog.

Tazuna sat near the back of the boat, clutching a bottle and looking like he'd aged ten years since we'd left Konoha. His chakra had a constant jitter to it, fear picked into pieces and wrapped around cynical bravado.

"We're almost there," he said. "Try not to scream when you see how bad it is."

"Reassuring," I muttered.

Kakashi flipped a page. "Manage your expectations," he said mildly. "Always helpful."

The village finally appeared out of the mist like someone had drawn it with three pencil strokes and then given up.

Wooden houses sagged under patched roofs. Docks leaned at angles that made my knees hurt just looking at them. A couple of boats bobbed nearby, half-rotten. People moved along the shore like ghosts—heads down, shoulders slumped, eyes flicking up just long enough to register us before dropping again.

Naruto hopped off the boat first, hands on his hips, as if sheer enthusiasm could physically improve the economy.

"Wow!" he said. "This place is… uh…"

He trailed off.

"Rustic?" I offered, climbing onto the dock behind him.

"Depressing," Sasuke said flatly.

He wasn't wrong.

I watched a woman hauling a basket of fish walk past a group of men sitting on crates. They didn't catcall her. They didn't say anything. They just stared with the slow, resigned look of people waiting for bad news they'd already heard three times.

My chakra sense hummed with it. The whole place felt like a low, gray bruise.

We followed Tazuna through narrow streets. The smell of salt, fish, and cheap liquor clung to everything. Once, a kid watching from a window flinched when Naruto waved at him and vanished like a spooked animal.

Naruto frowned. "What's their problem?"

"They're scared," I said quietly.

"Of us?"

"Of everything."

Naruto opened his mouth to argue—then closed it again. He stared at the ground instead, jaw tight, like he was replaying something he didn’t like how it ended.

He made a face, but he stopped shouting for a whole thirty seconds. That's basically meditation for him.

Tazuna led us to a small two-story house near the edge of the water. It looked better maintained than most—clean doorframe, swept front step. When he slid the door open and called, "I'm home!" the warmth that hit me was such a contrast to the street it almost hurt.

"Tou-san?"

A woman stepped into view, wiping her hands on a towel. She had long dark hair, kind eyes, and tired chakra. The kind of tired that wasn't about sleep, but about holding everything together day after day.

"This is Tsunami, my daughter," Tazuna said, gesturing. "These are the ninja from Konoha."

"We're super strong!" Naruto said immediately, puffing out his chest. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage!"

"Tch," Sasuke said, which translated to "Uchiha Sasuke, deeply unimpressed."

I gave a small bow. "Sylvie. New genin, aspiring medical nin, one concussion away from quitting and opening an ink shop."

Tsunami blinked, then smiled faintly. "Thank you for coming all this way. Please, come in. You must be hungry."

Naruto practically teleport-shuffled out of his sandals.

The inside of the house was simple but clean. Worn floors. Low table. The faint, comforting smell of rice cooking.

We settled around the table while Tsunami brought out bowls. Naruto vibrated like a tuning fork.

As we ate, Tazuna explained more about Gato. We'd heard the basics already, but hearing it in this room, with the sound of the ocean just outside the window, made it land differently.

"He owns everything," Tazuna said. "The shipping, the merchants, the thugs. He squeezes us dry and throws away anyone who can't pay."

"Like a bandit king," Naruto said around a mouthful of food.

"More like a parasite," I said. "Bandits at least admit what they are."

Tsunami gave me a startled look, then nodded once.

Before anyone could follow that up, small footsteps thudded down the hall.

A boy padded into the room, maybe a few years younger than us. He had shaggy dark hair, a round face, and a hat pulled low over his eyes. I didn't need my chakra sense to feel the storm cloud around him, but when I checked anyway, it was all tightly coiled fear and bitterness, like a rubber band stretched too far.

"Inari," Tsunami said gently. "Say hello. These are the ninja protecting Grandpa."

Inari glanced at us. At our hitai-ate. At Naruto's wide grin.

Then he scoffed.

"What, those losers?"

Naruto choked. "Hey! I'm not a loser!"

Inari snorted and looked away. "You're just going to die like everyone else who tried to fight Gato."

The room went very still.

I watched the words hit Naruto like a physical blow. His chakra flared hot—anger, hurt, that old echoing loneliness. The expression on his face was one I recognized way too well: How dare you say out loud what I'm already terrified of.

He slammed his bowl down. "Listen, you jerk, I'm not gonna die! I'm gonna beat that Gato guy and then I'm gonna be Hokage and—"

"Enough," Kakashi said mildly, not looking up from his book. "You'll spill your rice."

"This isn't about rice!" Naruto snapped.

"Yes, but it will be if Tsunami has to clean it up," Kakashi replied. "Priorities."

Tsunami winced. "Inari, don't be rude. They came all this way."

Inari's shoulders hunched. For a second, his chakra flickered—shame, grief, something raw, then it snapped back tight.

"You don't get it," he muttered. "None of you get it."

He turned and stomped back down the hall.

Naruto half-rose to go after him. I slid a hand onto his arm.

"Let him sulk," I said quietly. "It's his house. He gets priority sulking rights."

"But—"

"Trust me. You don't want to argue trauma math with a kid who thinks hope is a scam."

He frowned at me, confused and annoyed, but he sat.

The rest of dinner went quieter.

Afterward, Kakashi claimed fatigue and vanished to "rest his chakra." Sasuke retreated to whatever brooding corner he'd decided was his. Naruto wandered outside to "get some air," which probably meant practice or yelling at seagulls.

I helped Tsunami with the dishes because if I sat still too long, my brain started replaying the look on Inari's face.

The kitchen was small, warm, and steamy. Tsunami washed; I dried.

"Thank you," she said suddenly. "For helping."

"It's fine. Consider it part of the mission. Threat level: soap bubbles."

She huffed a quiet laugh. "You're not what I expected from a kunoichi."

"That's good, right? Or bad? I can adjust my brand."

"You speak like…" She hesitated, searching for the word. "Like someone older."

"That's just what anxiety sounds like when you give it vocabulary," I said.

Her smile twitched again, then faded. "I'm sorry about Inari. He shouldn't have said those things to your friend."

"Naruto's heard worse," I said. "He'll get over it. Loudly. Possibly with more ramen."

She shook her head. "Inari used to be such a bright child. He believed things could change. That heroes would come." Her hands tightened on a bowl. "Then Gato took someone very important from him. From all of us."

I felt the ache in her chakra at that, deep and slow, like an old wound that never healed quite right.

"He's scared," I said softly. "Fear makes people say cruel things. Especially to people who still have the thing they lost."

She looked at me, surprised.

"Hope," I clarified. "He sees Naruto and it just… hurts."

Tsunami looked down at the soapy water. "You talk about feelings very easily."

"It's cheaper than therapy," I said. "Also, I cheat."

I tapped my temple, then my chest. "Little bit of weird chakra sensitivity. I don't read minds or anything," I added quickly. "I just… feel colors. Tones. Like emotional weather."

She blinked. "Emotional weather."

"Yeah. This place?" I gestured vaguely toward the village. "Gray overcast with a hundred percent chance of despair."

She gave a weak laugh. "You're not wrong."

I set the last bowl on the drying rack and leaned my hips against the counter.

"For what it's worth," I said, "Naruto wasn't lying. He really will fight for you. For this place. Even if it's stupid. Especially if it's stupid."

Tsunami's eyes softened. "You seem very sure."

"Trust me," I said. "Being stubborn is his primary skill."

She smiled, then bowed her head slightly. "I'm grateful you're here, Sylvie-chan."

I felt my face go warm at the -chan. It still did that sometimes. I wasn't sure if it would ever stop.

"We'll do our best," I said. "I can't promise it'll be enough. But we'll try."

It wasn't the heroic answer. It was the honest one.

Later, when the house had gone mostly quiet, I stepped out onto the small back porch. The air was cool and damp, the fog curling around the edges of the yard like it was trying to sneak inside.

I could hear Naruto somewhere up on the hill, shouting practice kiai into the darkness. Sasuke's chakra was a steady flame further off. Kakashi's was a dim, contained ember upstairs, dampened by exhaustion.

Inari's room glowed faintly with lamplight. His chakra was still that tight, bitter knot.

I thought about the first time I died. About lying in the woods, staring at my own blood, thinking no one was coming. The universe had decided something different for me, randomly, unfairly.

No one had done that for this village.

I dug around in my pouch, fingers brushing tags and ink sticks, until I found a blank slip of paper.

"Not real magic," I murmured to myself as I drew. "Just art therapy with extra steps."

I sketched a tiny, simple spiral—a leaf, a wave, a little rising sun. Nothing fancy. Just something that said, in shape language: It is possible for tomorrow to be slightly less awful than today.

I let a trickle of chakra soak into the lines. Enough to make it warm to the touch when held. A comfort seal. Placebo with extra glitter.

Padding quietly down the hall, I stopped outside Inari's door. I could hear faint sniffles.

I didn't knock. I just found a little nail by the frame and pressed the tag onto it. The paper fluttered once, then settled.

"Goodnight, small, angry child," I whispered. "May your emotional weather improve by, like, one percent."

Then I went back to my futon, lay down, stared at the ceiling, and listened to the ocean rage softly against the shore.

The Land of Waves felt like a story already halfway to tragedy.

But for the first time since I'd woken up in this world, I had the sense that maybe, just maybe, we'd get to nudge the ending.

Chapter Text

<Kakashi>

Kakashi had been in a lot of bad weather.

Snow that froze the breath in his mask. Desert wind that scraped the skin off your bones. The thick, metallic stillness in the air right before a lightning storm.

The fog on the lake in Wave Country was… different.

It wasn’t just sight it took. It swallowed sound, muffled chakra, turned everything soft and close and wrong. The little boat cut through it with barely a ripple, and the world shrank to wet wood underfoot, the faint splash of oars, and four heartbeats that were much too young for this kind of mission.

Five, counting the bridge builder.

Naruto sat on the prow, one foot up on the edge like he was starring in his own heroic painting. He had no business looking that proud on a glorified fishing skiff.

“I’m telling you,” Naruto said for the third time, voice too loud in the mist, “this is finally a real mission. Demon Brothers, boom, taken out.” He punched the air. “Next time some bandits show up, I’ll blow them away in one shot!”

Kakashi let his eye slide half-closed. “You mean after you check that they are, in fact, bandits and not, say, a village elder in an unfortunate coat.”

Naruto spluttered. “I know what bandits look like!”

“Mm.” Kakashi turned a page in his book. “Do you?”

Behind Naruto, Sasuke stood with his hands in his pockets and his weight balanced just-so, like he was always waiting for the next attack. The fog beaded on his dark hair and lashes. He hadn’t said much since the Demon Brothers—just brooded, analyzed, and occasionally shot Naruto a look that could cut through stone.

Sylvie sat closer to the center of the boat, one hand curled around the gunwale, the other resting on her knee. Her glasses were dotted with mist; she kept pushing them up with a paint-stained finger. A scroll case bumped against her hip with the rhythm of the oars.

She wasn’t talking either, which meant she was thinking. Or worrying. With Sylvie, the line was thin.

Tazuna hunched at the back, clutching his bottle like a life preserver. His breath smelled like stale alcohol and old fear.

“Hey, old man,” Naruto said, twisting around. “What’s Wave like? Is there, uh… ramen?”

Tazuna snorted. “You’ll be lucky if there’s anything left that Gato hasn’t taxed into the ground.”

Naruto frowned. “Who eats money?”

Kakashi turned another page and decided not to engage with that.

The mist thickened as they reached the center of the lake. It crawled along Kakashi’s skin, heavy and damp. His ninken hated this kind of weather—scents warped, sounds bounced. The perfect place to vanish. Or to kill someone who couldn’t see you coming.

He let his senses stretch anyway. Footing. Water depth. The kids’ chakra, bright and clumsy and human in the muffled gray.

Sylvie shifted suddenly. Kakashi caught the flicker at the edge of his vision: her shoulders tensing, the way her hand tightened on the wood. Her head turned, just slightly, toward the blank wall of fog on their left.

Naruto noticed nothing. Sasuke noticed Sylvie.

“What,” Sasuke said quietly.

Sylvie’s eyes were narrow behind her glasses. “Something… feels wrong,” she murmured. “Like the air is holding its breath.”

Kakashi agreed. He’d felt it a minute ago. But he’d learned a long time ago to let his students notice what they could before he stepped in. It told him useful things.

He heard it then—not with his ears, but with every instinct that had kept him alive past the age of twelve.

Killing intent.

It rolled over the boat like a cold wave, thick and suffocating. Naruto froze mid-gesture, mouth still open. Sasuke’s hand flew to a kunai. Sylvie’s grip slipped on the gunwale; for an instant, Kakashi thought she might actually throw up.

Tazuna went white.

“Down,” Kakashi snapped.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Fear did the work for him. The three genin ducked on reflex, more out of instinct than obedience. Kakashi was already moving.

The sword came first.

It split the fog with a whistle, a massive cleaver spinning end-over-end through the air. Naruto yelped and flung himself flat. The blade slammed into a thick tree trunk on the shoreline with a meaty thunk, burying itself deep enough to make the wood shudder.

The fog thinned just enough for them to see the man standing on the lake.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, wrapped in bandages from nose to chin. The bandaged bundle on his back had clearly been the sword’s former resting place. Now he stood on the water as if it were solid ground, arms folded, looking down at them like they were an interesting kind of insect.

Zabuza Momochi. Demon of the Hidden Mist.

Kakashi didn’t swear out loud. He did allow himself a moment of internal, resigned profanity.

“Which one of you,” Zabuza said, voice rough and amused, “is the bridge builder?”

Naruto pushed himself up, bristling. “Who the hell are you?!” he yelled.

Kakashi’s hand shot out, grabbing Naruto by the collar before he could launch himself off the boat and into an unmarked grave.

“Stay back,” Kakashi said, voice calm. “All of you.”

He stepped forward, putting himself between Zabuza and the kids.

The fog parted around Zabuza like it was afraid to touch him.

“I see,” Zabuza said, eyes sliding over Kakashi’s vest, his hitai-ate, his posture. “Konoha’s Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi.”

He said it like it was mildly interesting trivia. Kakashi felt Naruto twitch behind him.

“Whoa, he knows your name,” Naruto whispered, too loud. “That means you’re famous, right? That’s so cool!”

“Cool later,” Kakashi muttered. “Terrifying now.”

Zabuza’s gaze lingered on his covered eye. “They sent to babysit a drunk and three brats?” he drawled. “The Leaf must be desperate.”

“Sorry,” Kakashi said cheerfully. “We were out of babysitters, so you got me instead.”

He closed his book with one hand and slipped it back into his pouch.

“Naruto, Sasuke, Sylvie,” he said, tone dropping into the flat register that meant business. “Formation C. Protect Tazuna. Do not engage if you can help it. You are not ready for this opponent.”

Naruto made a strangled noise. “But—”

“Do not engage,” Kakashi repeated, and let a sliver of killing intent seep into his own voice.

Naruto swallowed hard. “Y-yeah,” he muttered. “Fine.”

Sasuke didn’t argue, but the angle of his jaw said he wanted to.

Sylvie said nothing. Her eyes were on Zabuza, wide behind her glasses. Kakashi could see the sheen of sweat at her hairline.

He stepped off the boat, chakra flowing to his feet. The lake’s surface accepted him with only a faint ripple.

“Momochi Zabuza,” he said. “Missing-nin of Kirigakure. Aoi-level threat in the Bingo Book.”

Zabuza’s bandaged mouth tugged into something like a grin. “Flattered.”

“Kids like yours,” Kakashi went on, “should be back at the Academy, learning not to scream when someone throws chalk at them.”

He tilted his head, letting the hitai-ate slip just enough to expose the faint outline of the eye beneath.

“But you got unlucky,” he said. “You ran into us instead.”

He lifted his hand to his forehead.

“Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto said, breathless. “Are you—”

“Don’t worry,” Kakashi said lightly, thumb hooking under the edge of the headband. “You’re about to see something interesting.”

He slid the cloth up.

His left eye opened, red and black and spiraled. The Sharingan drank in the fog, the lines of Zabuza’s stance, the tension in the man’s fingers. The world sharpened, colors snapping into painful clarity.

Zabuza’s grin widened. “So it’s true,” he said. “The Sharingan.”

Naruto’s chakra spiked, a mix of awe and “what does that do” and “can I have one.”

“Eyes up, Naruto,” Kakashi said. “If you look away, you’ll miss the parts where you don’t die.”

The fog thickened again as Zabuza moved.

One moment he was there; the next, water exploded around him as he vanished. Killing intent slammed into Kakashi like a physical blow, trying to freeze muscles, dull reaction time. It was an old trick. Kakashi had felt worse from people with less impressive nicknames.

He moved.

Steel met steel in the mist. Zabuza’s sword hummed as it carved through air and water and the trunk of another tree. Kakashi’s kunai slid along the edge, deflecting, turning. The Sharingan caught every twitch, every micro-shift in weight, every ripple that telegraphed the next strike.

He saw Zabuza’s hand signs before they finished forming.

“Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu!”

“Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu,” Kakashi echoed under his breath, mimicking the seals even as he dodged.

Water surged up from the lake, taking shape—three, four Zabuzas, each as solid as the original at a glance. They fanned out, boots slapping against the water’s surface.

Behind him, Kakashi heard Naruto swear, Sasuke’s breath catch, Sylvie’s heartbeat stutter.

“Remember,” Kakashi called, never taking his eye off the enemy, “the real body has to be near the clones. Don’t let them herd you away from me.”

“Like I’m just gonna stand here and watch,” Naruto yelled, because of course he did.

He lunged forward—

—and Sylvie’s hand shot out, grabbing the back of his jacket.

“Wait,” she hissed. “Kakashi-sensei said—”

“Let go!” Naruto snapped, twisting. “We’re a team! We can help!”

“Helping doesn’t mean feeding yourself to the blender, idiot,” Sylvie snapped back. “Look at the water. Look at the way they’re moving—”

“Both of you,” Kakashi said, as calmly as he could while parrying a sword slash that could bisect a tree. “Shut up and protect the client.”

Sasuke moved without being told, slipping between Tazuna and the nearest clone, kunai already in hand. His chakra tightened, focused.

The closest water clone smirked and surged toward him.

Kakashi met the original’s next blow, Sharingan spinning. For a moment, water, steel, and mist all blurred together. He saw the path of the sword, the angle of Zabuza’s shoulder, the exact spot on the lake that would support his weight—

He stepped the wrong way on purpose.

The sword slammed into him, biting deep—

—and Kakashi burst into water, splashing back into the lake.

A substitution, freeing him to appear at Zabuza’s blind spot. Kunai flashed toward exposed flesh—

The Zabuza he’d targeted broke apart too.

They traded places, clones and originals dancing in circles. The Sharingan mirrored every hand sign. Water surged and slammed and spun; the lake became a battlefield of liquid and reflection.

On the shoreline, the kids were having their own battle.

Two water clones peeled off toward the boat, grinning with identical malice. One went for Naruto, the other for Tazuna.

Naruto braced, kunai shaking a little in his hand. “Come on!” he shouted. “I’m not scared of you!”

He was absolutely scared. His chakra screamed it. But he stepped forward anyway.

Sylvie moved first.

She darted in close to Naruto, fingers already smudged with ink. In one quick motion, she dragged two short lines and a spiral on the back of his wrist. The pattern flared faintly, then sank into his skin.

“Don’t freak out,” she said, breathless. “And don’t wipe that off.”

“Huh? What are you—”

She was already turning, snagging Sasuke’s sleeve as he passed and marking his forearm with the same pattern before he could yank away.

“Tch.” Sasuke glared at her. “Do you mind?”

“You’re welcome,” Sylvie said, and shoved him toward the incoming clone. “Now go be dramatic somewhere useful.”

Kakashi caught all of that in peripheral flashes. Even through the chaos, he recognized the structure of the seal—simple, elegant, anchored to their chakra.

Fuinjutsu at genin level. Interesting.

One of the clones reached Tazuna, sword arcing down.

Sylvie’s hand dipped into her pouch. A paper tag snapped between her fingers, the ink on it a messy spiral with three ragged lines through it.

“Smoke!” she shouted, and slapped it onto the ground between Tazuna and the clone.

The tag sparked. A burst of thick, dark smoke billowed up, swallowing the clone’s strike. The blade passed through empty air as Tazuna yelped and stumbled back, coughing.

The smoke wasn’t as dense as a proper ninja tool—it had holes, thin spots—but it was enough. Enough to make the clone hesitate. Enough for Naruto, heart pounding and eyes wide, to dart in and slam his kunai into the clone’s middle.

Water exploded outward, drenching him.

Naruto spat and shook his head, blinking drops from his lashes. “Ha! See that?! I got him!”

“One,” Sasuke said dryly, driving his kunai into the neck of the second clone as it lunged for Tazuna. It dissolved in a rush of water at his feet.

“Yeah? And I got mine first!” Naruto snapped.

“Congratulations,” Sylvie said, dragging Tazuna further back onto the shoreline, her fingers tight on his sleeve. Her face was pale; her voice was steady. “You both win the ‘didn’t die immediately’ award.”

“You kids,” Tazuna wheezed. “Are insane.”

Kakashi would’ve agreed, but he was a little busy.

The real Zabuza had apparently decided he’d had enough foreplay.

“Enough games,” Zabuza snarled, forming a new string of seals. “Water Style: Water Prison Jutsu!”

The lake rose around Kakashi in a sudden, roiling sphere, slamming around his midsection like a cold fist. He felt the chakra lock in, heavy and binding. The world muffled; sound distorted. The water held him, unyielding, from shoulders to knees.

Outside the sphere, Zabuza stood with one arm submerged in the water, hand clenched. As long as he maintained contact, the prison would hold.

Kakashi tested it once, pushing chakra against the barrier. It didn’t budge.

He exhaled slowly through his mask.

“Ah,” he said, voice echoing oddly in the liquid. “This is inconvenient.”

On the shore, Naruto yelled. “Kakashi-sensei!”

Zabuza’s clone oozed up onto the bank, sword resting on its shoulder, grin shark-bright.

“Don’t move,” the real Zabuza called, eyes on the kids. “If any of you try anything heroic, I’ll slice your sensei into pieces before you can blink.”

Kakashi could see them through the curved wall of water: Naruto, shaking but furious; Sasuke, jaw clenched, eyes calculating; Sylvie, dragging Tazuna behind her like a human sandbag, fingers twitching toward her pouch.

Her eyes flicked to him. Behind the reflection and distortion, he saw the quick flare of panic in them.

She was smart enough to know exactly how bad this was.

He held her gaze as much as he could through the shifting surface and gave the slightest shake of his head.

Don’t rush. Don’t die stupidly. Think.

Naruto took a step forward anyway. “Let him go!” he shouted. “You big eyebrow freak!”

Zabuza’s clone chuckled, rolling its shoulders. “Look at you,” it said. “Barely off the Academy swingset and already mouthing off.”

The sword lifted.

“Run,” Tazuna whispered, voice thin. “Just—just leave me. This is my fault.”

Naruto’s chakra flared like an explosion.

“No way!” he barked. “We’re not running!”

Kakashi watched them, heart steady despite the cold constriction around him. The plan forming in his head was risky even by his standards. It would depend on timing, on their instincts, on whether they listened to the heartbeat of the fight instead of just the fear.

His students were idiots. But they were his idiots.

And if there was one thing Kakashi knew how to do, it was improvise around idiots.

The water pressed in, cold and unforgiving. Zabuza’s grip tightened.

“Let’s see,” Zabuza said, voice carrying eerily clear through the mist. “How long your little team lasts without their scarecrow.”

Naruto’s hands balled into fists. Sasuke’s eyes narrowed. Sylvie’s fingers brushed the edge of a scroll, lips pressing into a thin line.

Kakashi breathed in the damp, heavy air of the Water Prison, Sharingan spinning slowly in its socket.

“Show me,” he thought, as the clone stepped toward his students with that enormous blade.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time my brain finished buffering, Kakashi was already inside a floating sphere of lake.

Not an illusion. A real, churning globe of water, hanging above the surface like someone had tried to drown him in a snow globe. Only his head and one shoulder were visible. Everything else was trapped, limbs pinned by the spinning current.

Zabuza Momochi stood beside him, half-submerged, one muscled arm sunk into the water sphere up to the elbow like he was casually stirring a pot.

On the bank, roll call:

• One bridge builder shaking hard enough to rattle his own bones.

• One sulky Avenger-in-training.

• One orange-clad disaster.

• And me, ink stains and all.

“Don’t move,” Zabuza called, voice thick with amusement and murder. The mist warped it, echoing around us. “If any of you brats twitch, I crush the prison. Your sensei’s lungs fill. He dies before you hit the water. Clear enough for you?”

The pressure of his killing intent crawled over my skin like a cold tide. My throat tightened.

Naruto’s chakra went wild. It whipped around him in jagged bursts, panic and fury tangled together until I could almost hear it buzzing.

“Kakashi-sensei!” he yelled, taking a step toward the lake. “We have to—”

I grabbed his sleeve so hard my knuckles popped. “Naruto.”

He spun on me, eyes wide, breathing too fast. His chakra was a storm trying to claw out of his skin.

“We can’t just stand here!” he snapped. “We can’t just watch him—”

“I’m not planning on watching anything,” I said, though my voice came out rough. “But if you sprint out there screaming, you will get him killed.”

He froze… which was worse, in its own way. All that chakra had nowhere to go.

Hands shaking, I formed two quick seals. Boar. Ram. My fingers slipped; I forced them to keep moving.

I pressed my fingertips to the inside of his wrist, drawing a tiny spiral of chakra on his skin—uneven, sloppy, barely a proper seal.

“Calm Stroke,” I muttered.

The pattern sank in. His chakra bucked against it first, a wild colt kicking at the bit. Then the edges blunted just a little, enough for air to reach his lungs.

He sucked in a shaky breath. “What did you—”

“Dialed the panic down from ‘screaming kettle’ to ‘boiling pot,’” I said. “We still need your crazy. Just… focused crazy. Yeah?”

His eyes flicked past me to the lake, to Kakashi’s head barely above the surface.

“…Focused,” he echoed, swallowing. “Right. I can do focused.”

“Debatable,” came a dry voice to our left.

Sasuke stepped up beside us, kunai already palmed, jaw set so hard it looked painful. His chakra was a tight, angry flame, pulled in close, as if he could burn Zabuza down just by glaring.

“You two finished having a moment?” he said, not looking at either of us. “Because I’m not planning on dying here.”

“Nice to know we’re on the same page,” I muttered.

Kakashi’s voice drifted over from the prison, thin through the water. “Stay back,” he called. “Guard Tazuna. This is beyond your level.”

The surface of the sphere sloshed dangerously as Zabuza shifted his stance.

“You heard your babysitter,” Zabuza said. “Run along home, little genin. This is a grown-up fight.”

“Shut up,” Naruto growled under his breath.

Sasuke didn’t answer, but his hands tightened. His eyes tracked everything: the distance to the water, the way Zabuza’s arm was sunk into the prison, the slow drift of the three remaining water clones along the shoreline.

“If that technique needs constant contact…” he murmured, mostly to himself, “…then the clones and the prison are both drawing from the same source.”

He flicked a glance at us. “If we make him divide his attention—force him to block something he can’t ignore—the prison will destabilize.”

“And if the prison drops,” Naruto said, hope sparking, “Kakashi-sensei can fight for real.”

“Exactly.”

“Tiny issue,” I said. “We’re squishy.”

Sasuke ignored me and started pulling gear: wire, shuriken, scrolls. Planning mode.

Naruto leaned toward him, agitation roasting off him in waves. “You’ve got a plan, right? You always have a plan.”

Sasuke’s mouth twitched. “I have an idea,” he said. “It’s reckless.”

“That’s my whole specialty,” Naruto said. “Hit me.”

“Not literally,” I added, stepping back. “Please.”

Sasuke’s eyes slid to me for half a second. “You stay with the client,” he said. “If this doesn’t work, someone needs to be between him and those clones.”

“Great,” I said. “Love being the human sandbag.”

Still, I grabbed Tazuna’s elbow and dragged him behind the biggest rock I could find. My fingers fumbled for my ink case. If this went sideways, I wanted something between us and incoming sharp things.

I slapped a crude disruption tag onto the trunk of a nearby tree—a tangled mess of kanji and spirals that was barely more than a chakra tripwire—and pushed energy into it, leaving it smoldering and dormant.

“Backup,” I whispered to it. “Please cooperate.”

On the lake, Zabuza watched Naruto and Sasuke move with lazy interest. “Kids,” he said. “You try anything cute, your teacher’s lungs pop.”

Kakashi’s chakra was fraying around the edges, but the core of it stayed steady. He believed in something here—either in us, or in his own ability to capitalize on a split second.

I wasn’t sure which was scarier.

Sasuke stepped into the open, lips pressed thin, a giant windmill shuriken already unfolded in his hand. Another rested in the grass beside him.

“Kakashi-sensei,” he called without looking back. “Don’t die yet.”

Naruto snorted. “Yeah, we’re not done with you.”

The prison shivered. Kakashi didn’t answer.

Sasuke grabbed the second shuriken by the cord and, with a smooth spin, hurled both across the water. Their blades cut through the mist, twin arcs of steel singing over the lake.

“Big toy,” Zabuza said, unimpressed.

He shifted his weight and caught the lead shuriken between two fingers, stopping it with casual precision inches from his neck.

“Predictable.”

The second shuriken skimmed the surface, angling low. Zabuza barely glanced at it, already adjusting his stance to avoid it.

Sasuke’s chakra tightened. “Naruto!” he shouted.

The low-flying shuriken exploded into smoke.

Naruto tore out of the cloud, mid-spin, grinning like a maniac. “Bet you didn’t see this coming!”

Of course he yelled his surprise attack.

He twisted in the air, kunai slashing toward the arm Zabuza had sunk in the prison. If he severed contact, even for a heartbeat—

The killing intent spiked.

Zabuza’s free hand snapped the captured shuriken up between him and Naruto. Steel shrieked as kunai met blade. Naruto’s arm jarred; his eyes went wide.

The prison shuddered, the surface rippling wildly as Zabuza’s focus split.

Now, I thought. Come on, come on—

Zabuza snarled and drove more chakra into the prison. The water steadied.

Naruto hung there for a fraction of a second, completely exposed.

Sasuke didn’t waste it.

A third shuriken—smaller, masked by the arc of the first pair—whipped in along a different line, the razor edge cutting toward Zabuza’s blind spot.

He registered it just in time to move the shuriken he was already holding, redirecting his block to protect his neck.

For one heartbeat, his attention left the prison.

The water sphere buckled.

Kakashi’s chakra flared like someone had ripped the lid off a boiling pot. The prison exploded in a rush of lake water, dumping him unceremoniously into the shallows.

Zabuza’s eyes went wide. “What—?”

Kakashi hit the surface hands-first, already molding chakra. He landed on the water instead of in it, skidding slightly before regaining balance.

He touched his hitai-ate with two fingers and flipped the cloth up.

The Sharingan stared out at the world, bright red and hungry.

I’d seen it once before, but it still scraped along my nerves. The three tomoe spun lazily, tracking chakra, motion, future, everything.

Zabuza’s chakra flared with real alarm for the first time. “So that’s your game,” he growled. “A Sharingan user.”

Kakashi glanced at Naruto, still half-falling toward the water, and moved.

One moment Naruto was about to get backhanded into oblivion by Zabuza. The next, Kakashi’s hand was wrapped in the back of his jacket, yanking him clear as he slid between them.

“Thanks,” Naruto wheezed.

“Good distraction,” Kakashi said lightly, even as his eye never left Zabuza. “I’ll take it from here.”

He set Naruto down on the water’s surface like it was solid ground and stepped forward.

What followed wasn’t a fight so much as a demonstration.

Every swing of Zabuza’s massive sword, Kakashi matched. Every seal Zabuza flashed, Kakashi copied beat for beat, his Sharingan whirling. Their voices overlapped as they called out techniques, water surging, spraying, roaring.

Zabuza spat out, “Water Style: Water Dragon—”

“—Jutsu,” Kakashi finished with him, the same dragon coiling from his side of the lake like a mirror image.

Twin dragons rose and collided in mid-air, crashing together with the sound of a tsunami trying to tear itself in half. The lake heaved. Mist exploded outward.

Tazuna yelped. I shoved him further behind the rock and clung to it myself, boots skidding in the mud.

“You seeing this?” Naruto yelled, equal parts awe and envy.

“Trying not to feel it,” I shouted back, teeth rattling.

Inside the boiling blur of water and chakra, Kakashi never lost rhythm. It was like watching someone play a game who already knew every move the boss could make. Zabuza’s raw strength and experience met a copy that stole his tricks in real time.

The thought hit me hard and stupid: My seals are doodles on paper, and this man’s eyeball is a built-in plagiarism engine.

The clash finally broke.

Zabuza staggered, chest heaving, water streaming off him. His chakra, once this towering, suffocating presence, wobbled around the edges.

Kakashi, still standing on the surface of the lake, raised one hand. Lightning crawled along his palm, crackling blue-white, chakra compressed to a screaming point.

The air itself winced.

He closed the distance between them in a blink, Sharingan tomoe spinning, lightning-hand aimed straight for Zabuza’s heart.

“This is the end,” Kakashi said, voice flat.

He drove his arm forward—

—and a sharp whistle sliced through the mist.

Three slivers of metal flashed out of nowhere and buried themselves in Zabuza’s exposed neck with quiet, efficient ticks.

The lightning in Kakashi’s hand guttered out as he jerked back, eyes widening.

Zabuza made a strangled sound. His chakra spasmed, then went slack, dropping out of my senses like someone had yanked a cord.

The Demon of the Hidden Mist crumpled forward, that ridiculous sword slipping from nerveless fingers. He hit the lake face-first and bobbed once before starting to sink.

For a second, none of us moved.

Then I felt it: a new chakra signature, faint and folded in on itself, perched at the edge of my perception like a brushstroke at the corner of a page.

I looked up.

A slim figure stood on a low branch above the water, cloaked, face hidden behind blank porcelain painted with simple markings.

A hunter-nin mask.

Of course this day wasn’t over.

The masked ninja inclined their head slightly toward Kakashi, posture almost polite.

“I’ll handle the rest,” they said.

And just like that, the battlefield had a new player.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The title made Naruto’s chest puff a little despite himself.

I was only half listening. The rest of me was tuned to the way the hunter-nin’s chakra changed when they turned back to Zabuza.

It sharpened.

Not like a predator eying meat.

Like a hand reaching for something precious.

They stepped into the shallows beside the floating body, water lapping at their sandals, and touched two fingers lightly to the senbon in his neck. A thin thread of chakra slipped into him, mapping… something. Pulse, breath, patterns.

This wasn’t the neat finality of a professional making sure the job was done.

This was someone wrapping a shield around a dying spark.

My stomach twisted.

“I will handle disposal,” the hunter-nin said. “We cannot allow his body to be examined. The techniques he carries must remain buried with him.”

“Disposal,” I repeated under my breath. “Sure.”

Naruto’s brows knit. “Wait, wait. You’re just gonna take him? After we risked—”

“Naruto,” Kakashi warned.

“What?!” Naruto rounded on him. “He tried to kill us! You nearly died! And now some weirdo in a mask drops in, pokes him full of needles, and just… walks off with the Demon of the Hidden Mist as a party favor?”

“Standard hunter-nin protocol,” Kakashi said calmly, though his chakra throbbed with fatigue. “They retrieve the body and destroy it somewhere safe. Nothing unusual about this.”

“Unusual,” I thought, watching the careful way the hunter-nin looped rope under Zabuza’s arms, avoiding the wounds. “Right.”

Naruto folded his arms, still fuming. “At least tell us who you are,” he demanded. “Under the mask, I mean. Name. Face. Something.”

The hunter-nin paused.

“A tool doesn’t require a name,” they said at last. “Only a purpose.”

The words landed like a rock in my chest.

Zabuza’s chakra—faint as it was, down somewhere under the water—quivered at the word tool, as if even unconscious he’d heard it a thousand times before.

Naruto’s face twisted. “That’s stupid,” he said flatly. “You’re a person, not a kunai. You helped. You can’t just be—”

“Enough, Naruto,” Kakashi said again, softer this time. “Different villages. Different training.”

Naruto’s chakra flared hot and unhappy but he bit his tongue, jaw working.

The hunter-nin cocked their head, watching him, something unreadable in the angle. Then they hefted Zabuza’s limp weight with surprising ease, his massive sword left abandoned in the shallows.

“I appreciate your assistance,” they said. “You should tend to your wounded and leave this area. There may be other enemies.”

The real warning was unspoken: don’t follow.

Kakashi inclined his head, the movement smaller than usual. “Understood.”

The hunter-nin’s chakra fluttered once more—like a curtain lifting and dropping—and then they were gone, leaping into the mist-heavy trees with their “corpse” over their shoulder.

I watched them vanish until even my chakra sense lost the thread.

“…I don’t like them,” Naruto muttered at last. “Acting all cool, saying creepy stuff about being a tool, walking off with our bad guy.”

Sasuke, who’d been silent this whole time, finally spoke. “We barely scratched Zabuza,” he said quietly. “You saw the fight. If Kakashi hadn’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Naruto said, kicking at a rock. His aura ping-ponged between wounded pride and raw relief. “Still don’t like them.”

“Hunter-nin aren’t the friendly type,” Kakashi said. “And they’re very dangerous. Treat them like you would a loaded trap. Don’t poke them just because you’re curious.”

He sounded like he wanted to lie down.

The Sharingan finally closed, his headband sliding back into place with a shaky hand. As soon as it did, the strain he’d been holding off hit all at once. His chakra sagged like a tent with the poles kicked out.

“Kakashi-sensei,” I said, moving closer. “Sit down before gravity does it for you.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

His knees buckled.

Sasuke darted in on one side, I grabbed the other, and Naruto flailed forward to grab whatever sleeve he could reach. Between the three of us, we managed to keep him from eating dirt.

“See?” Kakashi said weakly. “Perfectly in control.”

“Sure,” I said. “If the goal was ‘fall slowly.’”

I eased him back against a tree and dropped into a crouch in front of him, letting my chakra slide along his coils. The diagnostic technique I’d learned buzzed faintly in my fingers.

He felt… wrecked. Not torn or poisoned, just scraped down to the dregs. The Sharingan, the water dragons, the prison—all of it had chewed through him.

“Reserves are basically soup,” I said. “Thick soup, but still. You’re done for the day.”

“Soup,” Kakashi repeated. “That’s the technical term?”

“Medically speaking, you’re a hot mess,” I said. “But you’ll live.”

Naruto hovered like an anxious puppy. “You are gonna live, right? You can’t just copy a hundred jutsu and then keel over, that’s false advertising.”

Kakashi managed the tiniest eye-crease. “Planning on sticking around,” he said. “I still have to make sure you all survive long enough to be my retirement plan.”

Naruto’s shoulders dropped in relief. Sasuke exhaled slowly, tension bleeding out of his posture even as his eyes stayed on the lake, where Zabuza’s sword still jutted from the shallows like a gravestone.

Tazuna shuffled closer, hat in hand. “I… I don’t understand half of what just happened,” he admitted. “But… thank you. All of you.”

“You hired one suicidal team,” I said. “You got your money’s worth.”

Kakashi pushed himself a little straighter against the tree, then gave up and leaned back again. “We’re heading to Tazuna’s,” he decided. “I need a day or two to recover. You three watch the client and each other in the meantime.”

“You’re not walking there on your own,” I said. “You’d trip over a leaf and die of embarrassment.”

“I resent that,” he said mildly. “I’d trip over at least a branch.”

Naruto snorted. “We’ve got him, dattebayo. I’m super strong now, remember?”

“You also almost drowned,” Sasuke said.

“You stabbed your own hand,” Naruto shot back.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Congratulations,” I said. “You’re both disasters. Help me get sensei on his feet, disasters.”

Between the three of us, we hauled Kakashi upright. He slung one arm over Naruto’s shoulders, the other over Sasuke’s, doing his best not to be dead weight. I stayed close to his side, fingers lightly on his sleeve, tracking the slow, uneven thrum of his chakra.

Tazuna fell into step behind me, still shaking, still very much aware that his choice to build a bridge had just nearly taken out four Leaf ninja.

As we started down the path away from the lake, the mist closed in behind us, swallowing the battlefield. Zabuza’s sword disappeared from view. So did the spot where the hunter-nin had stood.

Naruto trudged along, muttering, “Next time I’ll be strong enough that some rando in a mask doesn’t have to finish my fight for me.”

Sasuke didn’t say anything, but his chakra burned low and tight—anger at himself, hunger for power, frustration at how wide the gap still was.

I couldn’t stop replaying the hunter-nin’s chakra in my head. Soft. Layered. Fierce when it touched Zabuza.

“Still thinking?” Naruto asked eventually, eyeing me over Kakashi’s shoulder. “You’ve got your ‘I smell a conspiracy’ face.”

“I don’t have a conspiracy face,” I said.

“You do,” he insisted. “You squint.”

“I always squint,” I said. “Glasses, remember?”

Sasuke made a noise that absolutely wasn’t a laugh and definitely was.

I hesitated, then let the words out. “Their chakra didn’t feel like someone who’d just killed an enemy,” I said. “It felt like… someone putting themselves between him and the world.”

Naruto frowned. “So you think he’s not dead?”

“Think?” I said. “No. I don’t have proof. It’s just… a pattern. The way they checked him. That ‘tool’ line. The way they lifted him like he was—”

“Important,” Kakashi supplied quietly.

I glanced at him. His visible eye was half-lidded, but sharp. “You noticed too,” I said.

“Hard not to,” he replied. “Hunter-nin usually sever the head and burn the body on the spot. Taking him somewhere? Possible. Odd.”

“So we should go after them?” Naruto said, immediately.

“No,” Kakashi said, and the iron in his voice cut through the fatigue. “You’re exhausted. I’m worse. We have a client to protect and no guarantee Zabuza’s even still breathing. We log it, we stay alert, and we don’t assume this mission is over.”

I nodded, throat tight. That, at least, we could do.

Naruto scowled at the road. “Still don’t like them,” he muttered. “Who even says stuff like ‘a tool doesn’t need a name’?”

“Someone who’s been told that a lot,” I said before I could stop myself.

The words hung there, heavy.

Naruto made a quiet, angry sound. Sasuke’s jaw clenched.

We walked on.

Behind us, somewhere in the mist, a masked figure was carrying a not-quite-corpse through the trees, chakra wrapped around him like silk.

Everyone else wanted to stamp this as “boss defeated, quest complete.”

My skin itched.

No evidence. No rank. Just an ink-stained nobody with too much chakra sensitivity and a bad habit of noticing when stories didn’t tie off clean.

So I did the only thing I could.

I remembered.

The feel of that soft, folded chakra. The way it sharpened when it touched Zabuza. The word tool spoken like an old bruise.

And I filed it away under:

Things That Are Definitely Going To Be A Problem Later.

Because missions don’t end just because someone says “target neutralized.”

Not in a world where devotion can hit sharper than senbon.

Chapter Text

<Kakashi>

Kakashi did not so much walk into Wave as drift there on stubbornness.

The moment Zabuza and the masked hunter-nin disappeared into the mist, everything that had been running on instinct and muscle memory started sending in complaints. His legs were lead, his Sharingan eye a slow-burning throb under the hitai-ate. Each step along the muddy path hooked another weight onto his shoulders.

He kept moving anyway.

The kids were still wired, even if they didn’t realize it. Naruto buzzed between bravado and delayed terror. Sasuke’s jaw was clenched too tight, eyes narrowed, replaying mistakes. Sylvie walked with her hands clenched on her straps, chakra tucked in close, but every time she glanced at the treeline it spiked sharp before she crushed it back down.

Tazuna trudged ahead of them, hunched under more than just age and the smell of cheap alcohol.

By the time the outline of his house appeared through the fog—simple wood, salt-worn and sagging—Kakashi’s chakra coils felt like dry, scraped channels. He was very aware of how much damage one more real fight would do.

Tsunade would have smacked him for overextending like this.

“Hey, old man, is that your place?” Naruto shouted, pointing like the house might sprint away if unobserved.

“Yes,” Tazuna snapped, though the edge was dulled by exhaustion. “Welcome to the glamorous Land of Waves. Try not to trip over our poverty.”

The front door slid open before they reached it.

A woman stood there with a dishcloth in her hands, hair tied back, eyes shadowed with the particular tiredness that comes from holding a household together with willpower and cheap rice. A small boy half-hid behind her leg, peering out with narrowed eyes.

“Tsunami,” Tazuna said, voice softening. “I’m back.”

She blinked. Took in the hitai-ate, the kids, the tired man in the mask. Her gaze lingered on the blood drying on Kakashi’s vest and sleeves.

“…Welcome home, Father,” she said. Then, to Kakashi, “Please, come in. You’re hurt.”

“Just a little chakra exhaustion,” Kakashi said lightly.

The porch tilted under his feet.

The world hiccuped sideways.

He felt himself listing and thought, distantly, before everything went grey at the edges.

Naruto yelled his name. Someone grabbed his arm. The ground came up faster than he could correct for—

—then he hit a futon instead of the floor. At some point, someone had shepherded him down a hall and into a small room. His vest was off, his mask tugged down around his neck, the air thick with the smell of antiseptic and miso.

His whole body complained in chorus.

“Don’t get up,” a small voice said firmly.

He cracked open his good eye.

Sylvie sat cross-legged beside him, glasses askew, hair frizzed from humidity. There were bandages on her hands where she’d scraped them earlier. Her chakra brushed against his—a cautious, precise tap, like a kid poking a sleeping tiger.

“You should still be unconscious,” she added. “Medically speaking.”

“Mm,” Kakashi said. “Medically speaking, I’ve heard worse.”

Across the room, Tsunami frowned as she wrung out a cloth. “You shouldn’t be moving at all,” she said. “You used too much… chakra, was it? Whatever it is, you scared my father half to death.”

“Sorry,” Kakashi said. He meant it. Startling clients by collapsing was bad form.

Outside, he could hear Naruto and the small boy arguing about something—volume, shouting, the words “hero” and “stupid” already featuring heavily. Sasuke’s footsteps paced somewhere nearby, measured and restless.

Kakashi exhaled slowly and let the ceiling stop tilting.

“Since we’re talking about my terrible life choices,” he said, turning his head just enough to look at the three genin hovering in the doorway now, “we should probably discuss yours too.”

Naruto blinked. “What? We didn’t almost drown in a water prison!”

“You also nearly got you and Tazuna killed,” Kakashi said mildly. “Twice.”

Naruto flinched. Sylvie’s chakra spiked with quiet annoyance on his behalf.

Kakashi sighed.

“Sit,” he said.

They did, grudgingly—Naruto at the foot of the futon, Sylvie and Sasuke against the wall, all three radiating varying degrees of tension and adolescent outrage.

“First,” Kakashi said, “I owe you an explanation. About chakra, missions, and why this all went sideways.”

He watched their faces as he talked.

He kept it simple; they’d had Academy lectures, but context mattered. How chakra was physical and spiritual energy braided together. How using too much didn’t just make you tired; it burned channels, tore muscles, wrecked nerves.

“How close were you?” Sylvie asked quietly. “On the lake.”

“Closer than I’d like to repeat,” Kakashi admitted. “Sharingan isn’t free. Copying that many jutsu in a body that isn’t built for it…” He trailed off, letting the implication hang.

Naruto swallowed. “So you… could’ve died.”

“Yes,” Kakashi said. “Which is why you three need to understand what we’re actually in now.”

He shifted, ignoring the way his leg throbbed in protest.

“You were promised a C-rank escort,” he said. “Bandits. Maybe one or two minor thugs. That situation with the Demon Brothers?” He raised an eyebrow. “Borderline B-rank. Zabuza Momochi, former elite from the Hidden Mist, working for a crime lord who owns half this country?” His tone flattened. “Solid A-rank.”

Naruto’s eyes went wide. Sylvie’s fingers tightened on her knees. Even Sasuke’s cool mask flickered.

“You mean…” Naruto started. “We’re not supposed to be here?”

“By the book?” Kakashi said. “No. By reality?” He glanced toward the adjoining room, where Tsunami moved quietly between kitchen and table. “We’re here. And if we leave, Wave stays under Gato’s boot.”

Silence stretched.

“Here’s what that means,” Kakashi went on. “I am on a time-limited recovery. Zabuza is too, wherever he is. When he comes back—and he will—you three need to be stronger than you were today. A lot stronger.”

Naruto straightened. “We can do it! Just teach us some super strong jutsu!”

“Yeah,” Kakashi said dryly. “I’ll just give you all Chidori and see who loses an arm first.”

Naruto perked back up. “What’s Chidori?”

“Forget ninjutsu—curiosity also killed the cat,” Kakashi said. His visible eye curved just enough that it might’ve been a smile, if any of them trusted him that far.

Naruto deflated a little. Sylvie snorted. Sasuke’s gaze went intent, like he was carving the unfamiliar word into stone.

“Then what?” Sasuke said.

Kakashi pointed a finger at the window.

“Tree-walking,” he said.

Naruto blinked. “…Tree-walking is a thing?”

“Walking,” Kakashi said, “up trees. Without using your hands.”

Naruto’s jaw dropped. “That’s awesome.”

Sasuke’s mouth twitched, just a little. Sylvie looked thoughtful, already mentally reverse-engineering the mechanics.

“It’s an exercise in chakra control,” Kakashi explained. “Channeling just enough to stick, not enough to blast yourself off the bark. You three start that tomorrow. I’ll supervise as soon as I can stand without my legs arguing with me.”

Naruto punched the air. “We’re going to be so strong Zabuza won’t know what hit him!”

“We’ll see,” Kakashi said. “But if you listen and train, you’ll at least live long enough to find out.”

He let his eye drift closed for a moment.

Outside, the ocean roared softly against rocks. Inside, the house hummed with a low, persistent fear. It lived in the way Tsunami’s eyes darted to the window whenever a cart rattled past. In the tension in Tazuna’s shoulders. In the small, hard knot that was the boy—Inari, Tazuna had called him—watching them all with the cynical focus of someone who’d seen too much.

Kakashi’s own chakra was a frayed rope. But the three kids in front of him were burning bright. Too bright. If they weren’t careful, this place would eat them.

“Rest tonight,” he said. “We start climbing trees at dawn.”

Naruto groaned dramatically. Sasuke rolled his eyes. Sylvie hid a smile.

It was a mess. An underpaid, mis-ranked, morally dubious mess.

Kakashi had been in worse.

<Sylvie>

The house creaked like it was tired of standing.

By evening, the adrenaline had leaked out of my veins, leaving behind dull aches and a weird floaty feeling. I’d cleaned the little gashes on my palms from grabbing Tazuna earlier, wrapped Naruto’s freshly reopened hand wound (again), and done my best impression of a responsible kunoichi while my brain replayed the day in jittery fragments.

Zabuza’s killing intent. The water prison. Kakashi’s eye, red and spinning, drinking in jutsu like he was cheating on a test with the answer key tattooed on his face.

The feeling of the hunter-nin’s chakra—soft and sharp all at once—as those senbon hit.

I stood in the narrow hallway outside Kakashi’s room, a bowl of water in my hands and a crude diagnostic seal written on my wrist in smeared ink. The script was a little crooked. My fingers had been shaking when I drew it.

“You can do this,” I muttered at myself. “Basic diagnostic, not brain surgery.”

The door slid open with a small scrape.

Kakashi looked worse under lamplight. Without the flak vest and mask, you could see the way exhaustion hollowed his face, the way every movement was controlled and careful in that “if I relax, I’ll fall over” kind of way.

He still managed to look mildly amused, because of course he did.

“Evening,” he said. “Come to assassinate me while I’m weak?”

“In your dreams,” I said, stepping in. “Tsunami asked me to check your leg. If you keel over in the kitchen, her floor doesn’t deserve that.”

He huffed a laugh and shifted to let me sit near his ankles.

The wound itself wasn’t bad—more strain than obvious damage. But chakra exhaustion made everything harder to read. I dipped my fingers in the water, activated the little seal on my wrist, and pressed my hand lightly over the fabric at his calf.

Chakra, I’d learned, wasn’t just one thing. It had flavors. Natures. Kakashi’s was… complex. Thick, layered, like lines of ink that had been written over in different colors until they blended into something new.

Right now it felt dry and crackly, like parchment left in the sun.

I sent the tiniest thread of my own energy into the muscle and tendons, letting the seal pattern on my skin guide it into a spiral and back. The trick was not to push. Just… listen.

“Pain?” I asked.

“A little,” he said. “Nothing compared to what you’ll feel tomorrow when you fall off a tree for the twentieth time.”

“Rude,” I said. “You don’t know I’ll be bad at it.”

“I’ve seen your stamina,” he said. “I’ll get extra bandages ready.”

I made a face, but he wasn’t wrong.

Under my palm, the tension in his leg mapped itself out—tight bands of muscle, little knots where chakra had overloaded and then burned out. Nothing torn. Just overused.

“Good news,” I said. “You didn’t permanently break yourself trying to show off in front of us.”

“Mm. That is good news,” he murmured. “Don’t tell Guy. He’ll be disappointed.”

I snorted.

When I pulled my chakra back, my fingers tingled with pins and needles. The seal on my wrist faded, ink already smudged from sweat. My head throbbed a little—the price of poking around in someone else’s pathways, even gently.

“You’re picking this up fast,” Kakashi said, watching me. “Medical diagnostics.”

I shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s useful,” I said. “And someone has to be able to tell when Naruto’s about to fall down for real.”

“True,” he said. “Just remember not to burn yourself out trying to patch everyone else.”

I didn’t answer that.

From the main room, Tsunami called that dinner was ready.

Kakashi waved me out with a flick of his fingers. “Go eat,” he said. “I’ll join you before Naruto tries to wrestle the rice pot.”

“Too late,” I said. “He’s already made eye contact with it. It’s doomed.”

The dining area was small but clean. Tsunami had laid out bowls and chopsticks with careful, habitual precision. Tazuna sat at the far end, shoulders slumped, a cup of something suspiciously strong in his hand. Inari was already there too, chin propped on the table, eyes dull.

Naruto planted himself cross-legged next to Inari and immediately started shoveling rice into his mouth like someone was timing him. Sasuke sat more neatly, but he was just as focused. Chakra exhaustion made everybody hungry.

I slid into a gap on the other side of the table.

For a little while, there was only the sound of eating. It was… nice, actually. Warm. Simple. Tsunami moved quietly, refilling bowls, watching Naruto like she couldn’t decide whether to scold him for talking with his mouth full or adopt him on the spot.

“You three,” Tazuna said suddenly, voice rough. “You really fought that monster today, didn’t you?”

Naruto swallowed, eyes flashing. “Yeah! We’re gonna beat him next time, too. Believe it!”

Tazuna snorted. “You kids talk big.”

“We backed it up,” Sasuke said flatly.

“My father means,” Tsunami cut in quickly, “thank you. For protecting him. For protecting us.”

Her chakra was tired but steady. The fear coiled underneath didn’t go away, but there was genuine gratitude mixed in.

Inari slammed his chopsticks down.

“Why are you thanking them?” he snapped. “They’re going to die. Just like Kaiza did.”

The air went sharp.

Tsunami went pale. “Inari—”

“It’s true!” Inari shouted, eyes suddenly bright with angry tears. “Everyone says the same thing! ‘We’ll protect you, we’ll fight Gato, we’ll fix everything!’ And then Gato kills them. Just like he did to Kaiza. And everybody goes back to being scared and pretending they didn’t try.”

His chakra felt like a fist, clenched so tight it was shaking. Fear, grief, anger—all jammed together with nowhere to go.

Naruto’s chair scraped as he shot to his feet.

“You think that means we should just give up?” he yelled back. “Hide in here and cry all day?”

Inari glared up at him, small hands balled on the table.

“You don’t understand anything!” he shouted. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone! You just show up and shout about being a hero like it’s easy!”

Naruto flinched like he’d been hit.

For a heartbeat, the room froze—Tazuna halfway to standing, Tsunami’s hand gripping her apron, Sasuke’s chopsticks hovering over his bowl.

Naruto’s chakra spiked, then surged, a hot flare of something I recognized too well: that bone-deep indignation when someone claimed the monopoly on pain. On being hurt.

“Stop acting like you’re the only one who’s had it hard!” he yelled.

His voice shook. His hands clenched at his sides.

Around him, the air buzzed. He was so angry the room felt bigger, somehow.

Inari’s face twisted. He shoved his bowl away, the clatter loud in the silence, and bolted from the room.

“Inari!” Tsunami called.

He didn’t stop.

The front door slammed.

Naruto stood there, breathing hard, eyes dark and wet but furious.

“…Naruto,” Kakashi’s voice said quietly from the doorway.

Naruto jerked around. Kakashi leaned against the frame, looking like he’d walked there on sheer attitude, but his gaze was sharp.

“That’s enough,” Kakashi said.

Naruto’s shoulders hunched. “But he—”

“I heard,” Kakashi said. “You’re both hurting. Yelling won’t fix that.”

Naruto’s jaw worked. For a second I thought he’d argue anyway. Then he dropped back onto his cushion, muttering something obscene into his rice.

The rest of dinner happened in a weird, lopsided quiet.

Tsunami apologized too many times. Tazuna drank in sullen silence. Sasuke pretended not to care, but his chakra was tight. Naruto grumbled every now and then under his breath, the edges of his anger fraying into something more tired.

I ate mechanically, thoughts spinning.

Inari’s despair felt… familiar. The same flavor as Naruto’s used to be, before he’d learned to turn it outward into noise and declarations. A heavy, grey hopelessness that curled in on itself, convinced that the worst thing was also the truest thing.

Back home—my first home—people like that just… disappeared into themselves. Systems failed them, adults looked away, and the world moved on.

Here, Gato was the system. The failure. The weight sitting on this whole country. Inari had proof that heroes died and nothing changed.

Naruto had proof that the world hated him and still wanted to change it anyway.

Both of them were right, in their own awful ways.

After the dishes were done—me helping Tsunami scrub stubborn rice off cheap ceramic while Naruto “helped” by sneak-eating leftovers—I slipped away.

The hallway to Inari’s room was dim, the wood cool under my bare feet. I paused outside his door, hand hovering over the frame.

I could feel him on the other side. A tight, bitter knot of chakra, small and brittle. He wasn’t crying loudly. The house was too practiced at hiding that kind of sound.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out a tiny square of paper.

The courage charm seal was… ugly. The lines wobbled. The little spiral in the center was lopsided. The kanji for “endure” looked like it had lost a fight with my brush.

But I’d made it between cleaning and dinner, ink smearing on my fingers, thoughts running circles.

It wasn’t a real jutsu. Not yet. Just ink and intention.

Quietly, I slid the door open a crack.

Inari sat on his futon with his back to me, knees drawn up, face buried in his arms. The room smelled faintly of salt and wood smoke. There were a few toy soldiers lined up on a shelf, gathering dust.

I stepped inside as softly as I could.

He didn’t look up.

There was a nail hammered into the wall near his bed, empty. Maybe something had hung there once. A charm. A picture.

I reached up and pressed the little seal to the wood. It stuck, just barely, the corner curling.

It looked ridiculous. Crooked and small.

“It’s not magic,” I said.

Inari’s shoulders jerked. He twisted around, eyes wide, anger and embarrassment flashing across his face.

“What are you doing in here?” he snapped.

I held my hands up, backing toward the door.

“Relax,” I said. “I’m not here to lecture you. Or yell. Naruto’s got that covered.”

Inari glared. “Then what do you want?”

His chakra prickled against my skin, all sharp defensiveness.

I nodded toward the charm.

“Just… leaving that,” I said. “For when you need it.”

He squinted at it, suspicious. “What is it?”

“A reminder,” I said. “That being scared doesn’t mean you’re wrong for wanting things to change.”

He scowled. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Most things worth doing don’t, at first,” I said. “Look. I get that… this all sucks. That Gato feels big and you feel small. That people have already tried and failed. That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to hope. Or be angry. Or both.”

His lip trembled, just once.

“That little paper isn’t going to stop Gato,” he muttered.

“No,” I agreed. “It really isn’t. It’s badly painted, for one thing.”

His eyes flicked back to me, confused.

“Then why—”

“Because sometimes,” I said, “when everything feels awful, it helps to have something near you that says, ‘hey, remember, you’re still here.’ Even if it’s just a stupid scrap of paper.”

I stepped back into the hall.

He didn’t call me back. But he also didn’t rip the charm down, which felt like a miracle on par with some of the higher-ranked jutsu.

“Goodnight, Inari,” I said softly.

“…Night,” he muttered.

Back in the little room I was sharing with Naruto—who was already snoring like he was trying to win an award—I lay on my futon and stared at the ceiling.

Tomorrow we’d start climbing trees until our legs gave out. Zabuza and his masked accomplice were out there somewhere, recovering, sharpening their own blades. Gato’s men still prowled the roads.

I couldn’t fix any of that with a smear of ink and a half-baked seal.

But maybe, in a village where hope had been stomped flat, a badly painted courage charm on a crooked nail was a start.

People mattered more than orders. Kakashi had said that.

Maybe that meant, sometimes, people mattered more than logic, too.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The forest behind Tazuna’s house looked like the first forest in one of those long, save-file-eating RPGs: trees, moss, and the promise of things that could kill you.

Tall trees, mossy trunks, the air damp enough to frizz my hair into a halo of chaos. Birds. Bugs. The distant sound of waves. Also, three children about to commit chakra-related stupidity while a chronically exhausted war veteran supervised.

So, you know. Tuesday.

Kakashi stood in front of a tree with his hands in his pockets like this was just another day at the murder office. His hitai-ate was tilted just so, masking the Sharingan again. The lines around his visible eye looked deeper, but his chakra felt a little less like burnt toast, so that was an improvement.

“Alright,” he said, in that bored drawl that somehow made everything sound more ominous, “time for step one of your intensive training.”

Naruto bounced on his toes. “Is it a secret ultimate jutsu?!”

“Is it something that’ll actually be useful?” Sasuke asked, which was technically the same question but with more edge.

Kakashi ignored both of them and slapped his palm casually against the tree trunk.

Then he walked up it.

Just. Walked. Up it. Feet flat, hands still in his pockets, like gravity was a rumor.

Naruto’s jaw dropped. Mine probably did too, but I at least had the decency to pretend I’d expected it. Sasuke’s eyes widened for half a second before he shoved the reaction back down into his “nothing impresses me” folder.

Kakashi kept going until he was standing upside-down on a branch. Leaves framed him against the gray sky.

“This,” he said, “is tree-climbing practice. Using chakra.”

He let that hang, then pushed off, flipping lazily to land in front of us again.

Naruto immediately started vibrating. “WE GET TO WALK ON TREES?!”

“Not yet,” Kakashi said. “First you get to fall off of them. Repeatedly.”

Naruto deflated. “You’re doing that thing again where you make everything sound lame.”

“It’s a gift,” Kakashi said. “Here’s how it works.”

He knelt and scratched in the dirt with a kunai, drawing a crude stick figure standing on a vertical line. Then little arrows, scribbled circles.

“Channel chakra to the soles of your feet,” he said. “Too little, you slip. Too much, you blow yourself off the trunk. The goal is controlled output—steady, precise, consistent.”

His eye flicked toward me as he said “precise,” which was deeply rude but fair.

“Why do we need this?” Sasuke asked, already memorizing the diagram.

“Chakra control improves everything,” Kakashi said. “Jutsu efficiency. Stamina. Speed. If you can’t even manage this, you’ll waste energy every time you fight. Or, say, try to walk on water and drown.”

Naruto’s hand shot up. “We can walk on water too?!”

“Focus on the trees first,” Kakashi said.

He pulled out three kunai, tossing one to each of us.

“Your job,” he said, “is to channel chakra to your feet, run up the tree, and mark the highest point you reach before you fall. Then repeat, trying to beat your record each time.”

Naruto twirled the kunai dangerously. “Heh. This’ll be easy. I’ll be at the top before you losers even—”

He charged the tree mid-sentence.

No prep, no testing, just pure Naruto energy.

His foot hit the trunk, chakra flared loud and messy—and he shot up three steps before physics remembered he existed. Then there was a loud thump as he pivoted backward and landed flat on his back, arms spread, eyes spinning.

I winced in sympathy. “Wow. That’s a new level of commitment to concussion.”

“Shut uuuup,” he groaned.

Sasuke snorted—quiet, almost involuntary—but his eyes stayed locked on the tree.

He walked up to it, concentrated, and placed his hand on the bark for a second, brows drawn. Probably feeling the texture, making some genius Uchiha micro-calculation.

Then he stepped forward and pushed his chakra down into his soles. The air around him tightened; his chakra was hot and sharp, focused like a blade edge.

He ran.

He got higher than Naruto—maybe ten steps—before his control slipped. His foot skidded, the chakra burst too bright, and he had to push off sideways to avoid Naruto’s fate. He twisted midair and landed in a crouch, teeth clenched.

“Tch,” he said.

“What did we learn?” Kakashi asked.

Naruto, still on the ground: “That trees hate me personally?”

“Too much chakra,” Sasuke muttered, already turning back to the trunk.

I swallowed, adjusted my glasses, and took my own step forward.

I’d been low-key looking forward to this. Chakra control was the one area where I didn’t feel like I was faking it entirely. Fine lines. Careful flow. My entire seal-based everything depended on not overdoing it.

Still. Walking up a tree was a very visible way to humiliate yourself in public.

“Any tips?” I asked Kakashi quietly.

“Don’t fall,” he said. “Hurts less.”

“Deeply helpful, thank you.”

He hummed.

I placed my palm against the bark, feeling the texture—rough, cool, slick in places where moss clung. Then I took a breath and pulled chakra into my feet, the way I would into a brush, except more.

Not too much. Not too little. The Goldilocks of self-inflicted vertigo.

The bark gripped under my sandal. That weird sticky sensation hummed up my legs.

“Okay,” I told my ankles. “Don’t betray me.”

I stepped.

One step. Two. Three.

The world tilted, shifting ninety degrees in my brain without warning. There’s a specific kind of panic that hits when your inner ear files a complaint about your entire life. I pushed past it and took another step.

Four. Five.

My control held, but my chakra hissed through me faster than I liked. Each footfall smeared more energy onto the trunk, a thin film I had to keep refreshing.

By the time I hit eight, my legs were shaking.

“Mark, Sylvie,” Kakashi called.

Right. The kunai.

I gritted my teeth, slammed the blade into the bark just above my head, and then pushed off. I twisted on the way down, trying to copy Sasuke’s cool land-like-a-cat thing.

I landed on my feet. Mostly. Knees protested. My heart hammered.

Naruto sat up, squinting at my mark.

“Hey! You got higher than me!”

“You started with a flying leap of hubris,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “The bar was underground.”

He pouted. “I’m gonna catch up.”

“I know,” I said, and weirdly, I did.

The next few hours were a blur of falling.

Naruto: run, shout, slam, groan, repeat. His chakra splashed out like a busted hose, half of it wasted, but he never stopped. He kept slamming into the trunk until the bark under his usual crash zone looked slightly flattened.

Sasuke: quiet, controlled, eyes narrowed, adjusting micro-amounts each time. His marks climbed steadily up the trunk, each kunai placement just a little higher than the last. The frustration when he slipped wasn’t loud, but it coiled tight under his skin.

Me? I bounced between them, somewhere in the middle. Technically competent; practically limited.

My control was good enough that once I found the right “stickiness,” I could maintain it. The problem was juice. My chakra reserves were not built for sustained wall-running marathons.

On my fourth attempt, I made it to the halfway point of the trunk. My lungs burned, vision fuzzing at the edges. My feet finally slipped when my chakra stuttered, and I slid down the bark, leaving a slightly charred-looking smear.

I hit the ground on my butt and just… stayed there.

Leaves whispered overhead. Naruto cursed in the distance, the sharp thud of another fall punctuating his swear. Sasuke exhaled sharply when a branch betrayed him and he had to spin midair to avoid face-planting.

Kakashi leaned against a tree with his ever-present orange book, completely ignoring it to watch us over the pages.

I tipped my head back against the trunk behind me and panted.

“Okay,” I told no one in particular, “so it turns out I am not, in fact, a chakra battery.”

“You’re not supposed to be sitting!” Naruto shouted over. “We’re still training!”

“You’ve eaten dirt like twenty times,” I called back. “Let me flirt with hypoglycemia in peace.”

He scowled; then I watched his lips start mouthing out 'hy-po-...hyp-o...' but then his gaze caught my kunai mark, which was still higher than his. His jaw set.

“Fine!” he said. “But when I get past you, I’m never letting you forget it!”

“I would be disappointed if you did,” I said.

He grinned, wild and stubborn, and went back to throwing himself at the tree like it had personally insulted ramen.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper and a charcoal stub. My hands were still shaking, but drawing settled them.

Okay. Chakra flow.

I sketched a rough cross-section of a leg. Foot, ankle, shin. Little arrows where chakra should pool. Lines for channels. Numbers where my reserves started dropping off. It was half anatomy, half fanart of my own circulatory system.

“This is what normal people do on their breaks, I’m sure,” I muttered.

At some point, Sasuke walked past me, breathing hard. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. He glanced down at the paper, eyebrow twitching.

“What are you doing,” he asked, flat but curious.

“Trying to quantify how much this sucks,” I said. “If I pretend it’s a math problem, I’m less likely to cry about it.”

His mouth did that barely-there almost-smile thing. “Dobe’s making progress,” he said, jerking his head at Naruto.

I followed his gaze.

Naruto had gotten higher. The height of his marks was starting to rival Sasuke’s lower ones. More importantly, his falls were less catastrophic. Instead of full-body flail, he was starting to push off deliberately when his chakra wobbled.

“Yeah,” I said. “He is.”

Sasuke’s jaw tightened. “He’s got more chakra than sense.”

“Those might be the same stat for him,” I said.

Sasuke snorted and headed back to his own tree.

Once my head stopped buzzing quite so much, I pushed myself back to my feet.

“Round… whatever this is,” I muttered, brushing dirt off my shorts. The pink stripes were permanently stained; my inner fashion gremlin screamed and then shut up, because life-or-death training trumped outfit maintenance.

An idea had been poking at me for a while.

Seals.

Of course.

I dug into my pouch and pulled out a small brush and a tiny pot of thick, dark ink. The smell hit immediately—sharp, a little chemical, with that undertone of soot and something medicinal I’d come to associate with “this will absolutely stain your soul and your fingers.”

“Please tell me you’re not about to graffiti the training field,” Kakashi said mildly.

“I would never,” I lied. “I’m doing science.”

I dipped the brush, careful not to load it too much, and then knelt to paint a thin, looping pattern along the edge of my sandal soles. A simple traction seal—sticky spiral, tethered to the current flow of my chakra. Not enough to override the tree-walking technique, just… assist.

Like crampons, but for cheating.

Naruto padded over, curiosity overpowering exhaustion.

“What’re you doing?”

“Improving my odds,” I said. “Or giving myself tetanus via fumes, hard to say.”

He sniffed. “Smells weird.”

“That’s the smell of innovation,” I said. “Back up. If this explodes, I want plausible deniability for you.”

He did not back up.

Of course he didn’t.

I capped the ink carefully. The seals glistened wet-black on my sandals, the tiny symbols for “grip” and “flow” tucked into the curves like secrets.

“Okay,” I told my feet. “You and me, we’re in this together.”

I stepped up to the tree.

Chakra to soles. Different, this time—caught by the seal, redirected in a small loop along the spiral before sinking into the bark. The sensation changed: more even, almost adhesive. Less mental juggling to maintain.

I climbed.

Five steps. Six. Eight.

Ten.

My lungs burned. But my feet felt more secure. The seal was doing some of the constant output adjustments for me, smoothing out hiccups.

“This might actually work,” I gasped.

Then the bill came due.

The seal didn’t generate chakra; it just redistributed it more aggressively than my body was ready to support. My reserves dipped fast, like someone had punched a hole in my tank. By step twelve, my head was buzzing, vision greying around the edges.

“Mark!” Kakashi called.

I fumbled my kunai up and stabbed the bark just above my previous highest point. My hand shook badly enough that the blade went in crooked.

On step thirteen, the world did a fun spinny thing.

“Oh, that’s—”

My foot slipped. The seal sputtered as my chakra stuttered. For a second I was weightless and then I was falling, and my stomach tried to exit through my mouth.

I hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled, and somehow ended up flat on my back staring at the leaves.

“Ow,” I informed the universe.

A second later, Naruto’s worried face filled my vision, upside-down.

“SYLVIE!”

“I’m alive,” I croaked. “Mostly. My dignity died, but that’s fine, it’s died before.”

He hovered. “You okay? You look kinda… pale.”

“That’s just my soul leaving my body,” I said. “Give it a minute, it’ll boomerang back.”

My whole chakra system felt like I’d run a marathon. My limbs were jelly, my brain cotton. The seals on my sandals had gone dull, the ink lines flaking at the edges like overused stickers.

Kakashi appeared over us, hands in his pockets, head tilted.

“Creative,” he said, glancing at my sandals. “Fuinsjutsu-assisted tree climbing. Effective, short-term. Terrible, long-term.”

“Yeah,” I wheezed. “I noticed. Ten out of ten for height, negative three for not dying.”

“You got higher than before,” Naruto pointed out. “That’s good!”

“And then almost passed out,” I said. “Less good.”

I flopped an arm over my eyes and groaned. “Okay. Verdict: no seal crutches during missions. If I do that in an actual fight, I’ll black out halfway up a cliff and splatter.”

“Please don’t splatter,” Naruto said, horrified. “We just became teammates.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I’ll try to avoid permanent decorative stains.”

Kakashi crouched down, his tone a little more serious.

“This is exactly why we train,” he said. “Better to hit your limits here than out there with someone’s sword in your face.”

“Zabuza’s sword,” Naruto muttered. “We’re gonna beat him next time. For sure.”

His chakra flared hot again—determination and anger and something else, something bright. Sasuke glanced over from where he was catching his breath at the base of his own tree, eyes narrowing at the tone.

I pushed myself up to sit. The world did only a small wobble this time.

Naruto stomped back to his trunk like it had insulted his ancestors.

Sasuke watched him for a second, then stood and went back to his tree without a word.

Something shifted between them then. It wasn’t visible, not if you were just looking at flailing limbs and kunai marks. But if you watched the way their chakra moved…

It started to sync.

No, that’s not quite right. They were still very different—Naruto all messy bursts and overflowing reserves, Sasuke sharp and controlled, precise lines of energy—but their spikes began to answer each other.

Naruto would push higher than he had any right to, slip, and catch himself a little better each time. Sasuke would grind his teeth, adjust, and make damn sure he climbed at least a little further than Naruto’s last mark.

Their rivalry became a feedback loop, each jump dragging the other upward.

I watched, sweaty and aching, and something loosened in my chest.

Right. This was how it was supposed to go.

Kakashi wandered back to his leaning tree, flipping his book open one-handed, though I noticed he wasn’t actually turning pages.

His gaze flicked to me.

“You’re not going back up yet?” he asked.

I shook my head. “If I try again now I’ll fall asleep halfway up and you’ll have to chisel me off.”

“Efficient way to train core strength,” he said. “But I suppose Tsunami would complain.”

I snorted.

He watched Naruto slam into the bark, watched Sasuke run higher in stubborn silence, then glanced back at the diagrams on my crumpled paper.

“You gave up your turn to watch them,” he said. Not accusing. Just noting.

I shrugged. “I’m not giving up, I’m… reallocating resources. If I can see what works for them, I can adjust my seals later to complement it.”

His visible eye crinkled at the corner. “Complement, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m never going to hit as hard as they do. Or last as long. But I can make sure they get to hit where it counts. And that somebody’s around to tape them back together after.”

Kakashi studied me for a long moment.

“Support role,” he said eventually. “Tactician. Medic. Fuinsjutsu.”

“Control freak with a pen,” I said. “Same thing.”

He huffed a quiet laugh.

“There’s more than one way to be a shinobi,” he said. “Just don’t forget to pull yourself up with them. Tools that only work for others tend to break.”

I thought about Inari’s tiny room and the crooked courage charm on the nail. About Naruto screaming that he’d never run away again. About Sasuke’s promise to kill “a certain man.”

I thought about myself in another forest once, bleeding and small and alone.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Naruto yelled triumphantly.

We both looked over.

He’d made it past my mark.

He grinned down at us from halfway up the trunk, one foot braced, kunai buried in the bark above his head.

“See that?!” he shouted. “I told you I’d get higher than you, Sylvie!”

My first instinct was petty: to shout back that I’d done it with science and he’d done it with brute force and we both had our methods.

What came out instead was a laugh.

“Hell yeah, Naruto!” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Keep going! Don’t let Sasuke catch up!”

Sasuke’s glare could have cut steel. He turned, pushed off, and ran. His chakra sharpened, slicing up the trunk. He planted his own kunai just above Naruto’s mark, then dropped back down, landing in a smooth crouch that absolutely screamed “I planned that, shut up.”

Naruto bristled. “You bastard! You did that on purpose!”

“Obviously,” Sasuke said.

Naruto threw himself back at the tree, swearing.

Kakashi shook his head, amusement and something softer threading through his chakra.

“They’re going to kill themselves over a kunai height,” I muttered.

“Maybe,” Kakashi said. “Or they’ll drag each other to a level they couldn’t reach alone.”

I watched them race, fall, get back up.

For a second, the forest blurred. Not from tears—my body was too dehydrated for that—but from the weird, aching joy of recognition.

In my first life, I’d watched stories like this from the outside. Safe, distant. Screen between me and the kids bleeding for their village.

Now I was here, bruised, tired, ink-stained. Watching two idiots I cared about turn a tree into a battlefield and a ladder at the same time.

I pressed my palm to the bark of my own tree again.

“Alright,” I told it. “One more run. I’m not letting them have all the dramatic growth moments.”

My chakra flickered, then steadied. Not much left, but enough for a careful climb.

I wasn’t the main character. That belonged to the loud blond disaster currently yelling about being Hokage.

I didn’t need to be.

I could be the girl with paint on her fingers and seals on her shoes, who knew how to read the room and nudge things just enough that heroes didn’t die alone.

I took a breath, pushed chakra to my soles, and stepped onto the trunk.

This time, I climbed until my legs shook and my vision went spotty and I had to stab the tree and jump off before I embarrassed myself.

When I landed, my new mark sat just under Naruto’s latest one and a few feet below Sasuke’s.

It felt right.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By day three of “welcome to mid-tier war zone,” my hands smelled permanently like herbs and sweat.

Which, to be fair, was better than blood.

“Don’t wander too far,” Kakashi had said that morning, stretched out under a tree like a retired cat. “Gather these three. Don’t mix them up. Don’t die.”

Naruto and Sasuke were already sprinting off to go one-up each other up their respective trees, so I’d taken the basket and the little illustrated notes Kakashi had drawn. Leaf shapes, stem patterns, kanji scribbled in the margins.

Now I was ankle-deep in mist-wet grass a little way from Tazuna’s house, basket on my arm, muttering to myself like a tiny hedge witch.

“Round leaves, serrated edge, purple underside… you are not my problem today,” I told a plant, pushing it aside. “Where are you, muscle-ache friend…”

The forest here wasn’t like the one I’d died in.

The trees were taller, older. Moss climbed up trunks like they were trying to escape the ground. The air was heavy and damp, full of the slow drip of water from leaves. Every now and then, a gust of wind would comb through the branches and drag the smell of salt from the distant sea.

Still. A forest is a forest. Too many shadows, too many places to disappear in.

I swallowed that thought and focused on the chakra hum in the back of my head instead. Kakashi was a dim thrum somewhere behind me, calm and steady—resting but alert. Naruto and Sasuke were two bright, competitive spikes a ways off, slamming into tree bark and each other’s pride.

The land itself was… tired. Wave’s chakra felt like its people looked: worn thin, threadbare around the edges.

I pushed aside some ferns and finally spotted what I needed: a clump of pale green stalks with star-shaped leaves and tiny white flowers.

“Yes,” I hissed. “You, come here.”

I knelt, fingers brushing the stems, and focused enough chakra into my fingertips to check they matched Kakashi’s sketch: cool, slightly fizzy, like ginger ale in my palms. Good for circulation, muscle pain, and—according to Kakashi’s notes—“making sure your idiot students don’t collapse halfway through a mission.”

“Generous of you,” I muttered, and started to cut.

My basket was half full when the air shifted.

Not with killing intent. That felt like a punch, like Zabuza’s chakra-wall that had almost knocked me to my knees. This was smaller, subtler. A prickle along the back of my neck, like static. The sense of another presence sliding into range.

Soft. Layered. Polite.

I froze, one hand still on a plant stalk, and listened.

A twig snapped somewhere to my left. Footsteps followed—light, careful, barely bending the grass.

“Okay,” I thought, pulse picking up. “Civilian? Thug? Round two ninja boss fight?”

The chakra answered before my brain finished the list.

It wasn’t like Gato’s men, all greasy fear and aggression. It wasn’t like Zabuza’s blade-sharp weight. It was… folded. Deliberate. A still pool with something hard at the bottom.

And threaded through it, bright and brittle, was one overwhelming note: devotion.

I didn’t move. If it was an enemy scout and I startled like a rabbit, that’d be it. If it was just some local herb-picker, I’d look stupid for nothing.

The footsteps came closer, then stopped just beyond the low brush in front of me.

“Those are good for fevers,” a voice said mildly. “But they won’t help much with torn muscles.”

My brain blue-screened for half a second.

Slowly, I pushed the leaves aside and looked up.

The person standing there had a basket on one arm and an armful of plants cradled in the other. A dark green kimono, worn but clean. Long dark hair pulled back. Fine features, the kind of soft you usually only see on dolls or expensive paintings. A blank hunter-nin mask hung loose at their hip, pushed aside.

Definitely older than me. Not by much, but enough to move them into that weird space of “not quite adult, but absolutely out of your league.”

Chakra: soft silk, sharp needle.

“Uh,” I said intelligently.

Their mouth curved in a small, polite smile.

“Sorry,” they added. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You… didn’t,” I lied.

We just kind of… stared at each other for a second.

Internally, my thoughts were doing laps:
Girl. No, boy. No, girl. No—does it matter? Why does it matter? Stop staring at their eyelashes.

Externally, I was kneeling in the dirt with a handful of herbs like the world’s least threatening mugger.

They glanced at my basket. “You’re gathering medicine?”

“Yeah.” My voice finally remembered how to work. “My sensei overdid it with the big flashy murder magic, and now he needs help pretending he’s fine.”

That got a tiny laugh out of them, quick and honest.

“Ah,” they said. “Overusing chakra can be dangerous. Especially for adults who think they are invincible.”

“You say that like from experience,” I said, before my caution filter kicked back in.

They tilted their head, amused. “Something like that.”

Silence stretched again, soft as the fog.

I realized, belatedly, that my hand was still on the plant. My knuckles had gone white.

“Um,” I tried. “You said these aren’t great for… muscles?”

They stepped closer, moving easily over the roots, and crouched opposite me. For a second, their chakra brushed against mine—a cool, precise touch. Not probing, just noticing back.

They pointed at the clump in my hand.

“These are for circulation,” they said. “Useful, but not what you want if your sensei is only strained, not poisoned. Those, however—” Their finger shifted toward a patch a little further on, thin stalks with serrated leaves. “—will help fatigue and pain. If you combine them carefully.”

I followed their hand, then looked back at their face.

“You know a lot about this for someone wandering around in cosplay,” I said.

Their eyes warmed. “I could say the same for a small kunoichi with paint on her cuticles.”

I reflexively tucked my hands under my thighs. “Rude,” I said, cheeks heating. “You can’t call someone out like that. It’s illegal.”

They laughed again. It was a soft sound, edged with something sad.

“I’m sorry,” they said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t,” I muttered. “You just… noticed too much. Occupational hazard, I guess.”

They hummed thoughtfully, then shifted to kneel beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly brushed.

“May I?” they asked, nodding to my basket.

“Sure,” I said.

They scanned the contents with a practiced eye, setting a few stems aside and substituting others from their own collection. Movements neat, careful, almost… reverent.

“You’re not from around here,” I blurted, because my mouth hated me. “Wave, I mean. Your chakra feels too… precise. No offense to the locals, but everyone’s kind of leaking despair.”

One eyebrow arched. “You can feel that?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “If I’m close. Or touching someone. It’s like… colors. Or textures. I’m still figuring it out.”

“So you’re sensitive,” they said. “To people.”

“I’m annoying at parties, is what I am,” I said. “But yeah. Something like that.”

They mulled that over.

“I am Haku,” they said finally, like offering a gift. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Haku. The name fit. Gentle consonants, edges smoothed off.

“Sylvie,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. Brain lag.”

We sat there in the filtered green light, two strangers swapping plant tips like this was some normal countryside meet-cute instead of… whatever it was.

“So,” Haku said after a moment, fingers busy tying a small bundle with twine, “are you gathering herbs for someone precious to you?”

The question hit harder than it had any right to.

“Precious” was a simple word. Basic vocab. But the way they said it—quiet, steady, like it really meant something—made my chakra stutter.

“My… team,” I said, buying time. “They’re idiots. Loud, stubborn, take stupid risks. But they’re my idiots, so. Yes, I guess.”

Haku’s eyes softened. For a second, the calm surface of their chakra opened, and I saw it: one point of light in the center, blindingly bright in their inner map. One person, held so close everything else got dimmed.

“And for your sensei, of course,” they added. “Even if he plays at being lazy.”

“The man reads porn in public,” I said. “It’s less ‘plays’ and more ‘full commitment to the bit.’ But yeah. He’s… ours.”

Haku’s mouth quirked. “That’s important,” they said. “Having people you want to protect.”

“Is it?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

They picked up a leaf, rolling it gently between their fingers.

“A person with nothing precious to them is… empty,” Haku said. “They have no reason to become strong. No reason to endure. But if there is someone you wish to protect more than yourself… then even a very weak person can become very strong.”

Their chakra flared as they spoke—briefly, sharply. Not big like Zabuza’s, but intense. The devotion in it was enough to make my fingers tingle.

They weren’t exaggerating. Whoever they meant, they weren’t just important. They were the axis Haku spun around.

“Sounds like a lot of pressure to put on someone,” I said lightly, because the alternative was thinking too hard about how that felt in my own chest. “Being someone’s entire reason to exist.”

Haku blinked, surprised. No one had pushed back on that before, probably.

“I don’t see it as pressure,” they said slowly. “More like… a gift. I was… nothing. For a long time. No worth, no place. Then I met someone who gave me a purpose. To be useful to them. To be their tool.”

They said “tool” like it was holy.

My stomach twisted.

I thought of Naruto, yelling that he’d never go back on his word even if it killed him. Of Kakashi, standing between us and Zabuza with that tired, stubborn set to his shoulders. Of Inari’s shut-down eyes. Of myself, bleeding out in one forest and waking up in another, shoved into a role that wasn’t mine.

“Tools break,” I said quietly. “People… shouldn’t.”

Haku looked at me properly then, head tilted, expression somewhere between curiosity and caution.

“You disagree?” they asked.

“I—” I dug my nails into my palm, grounding. “I think it’s good to have people. To care enough to fight. I just… don’t like the idea of disappearing completely into someone else’s story. Of only having value because you’re useful.”

Their gaze slipped away, out over the water, where the mist hugged the surface like a blanket.

“For some of us,” they said, softer now, “there was never any other way to be.”

The weight under those words made my chest ache.

My chakra sense picked up a faint tremor under their calm, like old fault lines. Pain. Fear. And under those, that same blinding devotion, stitched over the cracks like gold.

I wanted to reach out. To put my hand over theirs and say, “You’re allowed to exist for yourself.” To pull that word “tool” out of their mouth and throw it in the trash where it belonged.

Instead, I let my fingers curl around the edge of the basket.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe no one ever taught you the other options.”

For a moment, I thought I’d gone too far. That they’d pull away, go cold, slide the mask up and walk off into the mist.

Instead, Haku smiled. Not polite, not distant. Something small and sad and real.

“You are kind,” they said. “And… strange.”

“Rude again,” I said weakly.

“But not wrong,” they added.

We sat together in the quiet for another minute, the mist beading on our hair. Somewhere far off, I felt Naruto’s chakra spike as he probably yelled at Sasuke for cheating at tree-walking. Kakashi’s presence shifted a little, like he’d adjusted his position to keep both idiots in sight.

I wondered, suddenly, about the person at the center of Haku’s map. Someone brutal, probably. Someone who’d taught them herbs and senbon and the use of a hunter mask. Someone dangerous enough that loving them felt like standing in front of a storm on purpose.

“Is the person you’re gathering for… alright?” I asked carefully. “Injured?”

Haku’s fingers stilled over a sprig of leaves.

“They were hurt,” they said. “But they will recover. With time. And help.”

Their chakra flickered—worry, affection, that deep, frightening loyalty.

I thought of Zabuza, skewered by Kakashi’s jutsu, falling into the lake. Of the masked “hunter-nin” who’d whisked his body away with too much care for a simple disposal.

Pieces clicked.

“Oh,” I thought. “Of course.”

Aloud, I said nothing. I wasn’t stupid enough to accuse them of anything in the middle of nowhere with no backup. And honestly, it didn’t change what was in front of me: one person, kneeling in the dirt, trying to save someone important to them.

“Whoever they are,” I said instead, “they’re lucky you’re looking out for them.”

Haku’s eyes softened again. “I am the lucky one,” they said simply.

The sincerity in their chakra was so sharp it almost hurt to feel.

Kakashi’s pulse of presence nudged at the edge of my awareness then, a subtle tug like a hand on my collar. Time’s up.

I pushed myself to my feet, legs tingling from too long crouched. “I should head back,” I said. “If I stay gone too long, my sensei will assume I’ve been murdered, and then he’ll have to get up to look for me. Can’t ruin his nap schedule like that.”

Haku stood as well, smooth and easy.

“It was nice to meet you, Sylvie,” they said. “I hope your team recovers quickly.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope your… precious person does too.”

We looked at each other for a heartbeat longer, something unspoken hanging in the air.

Enemies, some part of me whispered. On opposite sides when this all shakes out.

People, another part insisted. Just people.

Haku adjusted their basket, the hunter mask at their hip clinking softly against the lacquered handle.

“Perhaps,” they said, “we will see each other again. When that happens… I hope you will still be strong enough to protect what is precious to you.”

There it was. A tiny shift in the words. Not if. When.

I swallowed. “You too,” I said. “Try not to disappear completely into being someone’s sword, okay? It’d be a waste.”

They met my eyes, and for the first time, something like conflict flickered across their face.

Then they smiled, stepped back, and melted into the trees like they’d never been there at all. Their chakra slipped away with them, folding down, gone.

I stood in the clearing for a long moment, heart beating too fast, basket suddenly heavy on my arm.

“Great,” I muttered to the empty air. “Fall into a magic ninja world, immediately develop a type: ‘emotionally damaged, terrifyingly devoted, gender-complicated.’ Fantastic. Totally sustainable.”

My cheeks felt hot. I blamed the mist.

Gather herbs, Kakashi had said. Don’t die.

He hadn’t mentioned running into walking philosophy in a kimono.

I took a breath, focused on the weight of the basket, and turned back toward Tazuna’s house. Naruto’s chakra flared again in the distance, bright and wild and stubborn.

“Precious people,” I thought, stepping around a root. “Being useful without disappearing. Being a tool, but on your own terms.”

Haku’s words and Naruto’s promise tangled together in my head, impossible to separate. My own chest felt like someone had drawn a seal there and not told me what it did yet.

“I’m never going to be the strongest hitter,” I reminded myself quietly, Kakashi’s training still echoing in my legs. “I can be the one who makes sure they get to hit.”

And maybe, someday, I could be more than a tool too.

For now, there was a bridge to survive, a crime boss to not die to, and two idiots to keep upright.

I tightened my grip on the basket and walked faster, mist swallowing my footprints behind me.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time we hit the bridge, the whole world felt like a held breath.

Mist clung to everything—ropes, scaffolding, the half-finished span stretching out over empty air. The water below was just… gone. Replaced with blank white that swallowed sound and color and common sense.

My “chakra weather” sense was screaming quietly in the back of my head. The air here didn’t just feel damp; it felt pressed on, the way old bruises ache before the rain.

Naruto did not care about any of that.

“This is it!” he said, grinning, hands laced behind his head like this was a walk to the ramen stand. “Our big showdown! I bet when we beat this Gato guy, they’ll make a statue of me at the end of the bridge.”

Tazuna snorted. “Just finish the bridge first, brat. Then maybe I’ll name it after you.”

“You heard him!” Naruto pointed at himself with his thumb. “Great Naruto Bridge, here we come!”

His chakra flared bright and gold, cutting through the fog. Hopeful. Loud. Stupid in a way that made my ribs hurt.

Sasuke walked a step ahead, eyes narrowed, looking like he’d rather chew glass than listen to Naruto brag. His chakra spun tighter than usual, though. Coiled. Expectant. Like a storm waiting for someone to lay down a lightning rod.

I walked on Tazuna’s other side, hand resting on my pouch. The paper slips inside were all neatly stacked—smoke tags, a couple of sticky ink seals, one shaky disruption tag I really hoped wouldn’t blow up in my face.

I could have sworn the bridge itself was watching us.

We passed abandoned tools half-buried in damp. A bucket overturned with its handle snapped. A smear of something dark on the stone that was definitely not paint.

“Where is everyone?” I asked softly.

Tazuna slowed. “They should’ve been working. Even with Gato’s men lurking… they wouldn’t leave the bridge.”

Kakashi, at the front, raised one hand. “Stop.”

Naruto’s foot kept going for one more step before his brain caught up. He froze mid-complaint. “What now—”

“Quiet,” Kakashi said.

His chakra sharpened, that lazy background buzz pulling tight. Under the mask and slouch was someone who had absolutely been here before: walking into bad fog with worse memories for company.

I swallowed, trying to breathe past the pressure building in my chest. The mist around us thickened in a way that wasn’t weather. It crawled along my skin, cold and deliberate.

Then it hit.

Killing intent slammed into us like a wave.

My knees almost folded. The world lurched sideways. My hands flew out for balance and landed on rough stone and Naruto’s sleeve at the same time.

For a heartbeat, I wasn’t on a bridge. I was eight again, in the wrong forest, staring at too much red and knowing no one was coming.

I yanked myself back, teeth clenched, fingers digging into Naruto’s jacket.

Naruto shivered under my grip, pupils blown wide. “W-what the hell—”

“That,” Kakashi said quietly, “is killing intent.”

A shape rose out of the mist ahead.

At first it was just a darker shadow. Then the fog peeled back, and there he was: standing on the rail like gravity didn’t apply, massive sword slung over one shoulder.

Zabuza Momochi.

Up close, he looked worse and better than before. Rougher around the edges, bandages damp from the mist, aura like a shark that’d tasted blood and wanted more. His chakra rolled cold and thick, slicing through the air like his sword did the mist.

“Yo,” he said, voice low and amused. “We meet again, Copy Ninja.”

I had to consciously unclench my jaw. The last time we’d seen this man, Kakashi had almost drowned. We’d thought—or pretended to think—he was dead.

Naruto’s chakra spiked—fear, anger, something hot and wild. He took half a step forward. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

Zabuza laughed. It was not a friendly sound.

“Kids,” he said, eyes flicking over us. “They really let anyone wear headbands these days.”

My fingers tingled. I slid my free hand into my pouch with slow, careful movements. One by one, I brushed the edges of three small tags until my chakra lit them up with a faint warmth. Pulse marks. Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi. Little anchors in the sensory noise.

If one of them suddenly felt like “empty,” I wanted to know in advance.

“Kakashi,” Zabuza went on, hefting the sword with one hand, “you look like hell.”

“Occupational hazard,” Kakashi said lightly. He didn’t move his eye from Zabuza. “I see the hunter-nin’s disposal work was… temporary.”

“Oh?” Zabuza’s eyes narrowed just a fraction. “So you noticed.”

The mist thickened again. It slid between us and the sky, down around our ankles, turning the half-built bridge into a floating island in a world of white.

My chest squeezed tighter. I swallowed bile and forced myself to move.

One step back, closer to Tazuna. One thumb brushing the edge of a smoke tag, ready to fling it if anything got too close.

If Kakashi fell, this went from “terrifying” to “unwinnable.”

Kakashi hadn’t expected this mission to get a sequel boss fight.

He should have, he thought. Gato was the type to squeeze every coin until it screamed; a hired swordsman like Zabuza was too valuable to throw away. A convenient hunter-nin, a fake execution, a quiet recovery period… the pattern was obvious in hindsight.

That was the problem with hindsight.

He rolled his shoulder once, feeling the faint ache of chakra overuse from the last fight. The Sharingan under his hitai-ate pulsed like a dull headache waiting to be born.

His team stood clustered around Tazuna: Naruto bristling, Sylvie pale but functional, Sasuke measuring distance like he could carve the gap into pieces. Three kids who had absolutely no business being this deep into a blood-soaked mess—and were here anyway because he’d let the mission continue.

Zabuza’s sword glinted as he rested it on the bridge railing. “You look tired, Copy Ninja,” he said. “Think you can still dance?”

Kakashi gave him a lazy eye-smile that didn’t touch the steel underneath. “I’ll let you know when I sit down.”

He shifted his weight just enough that his squad would see, if they were paying attention. Threat level: maximum. Joke level: purely cosmetic.

“Stay close to Tazuna,” he said, voice low enough for the kids but not for Zabuza. “Form up.”

Naruto opened his mouth—probably to yell something about not needing protection. Sylvie’s hand tightened on his sleeve like a clamp. Naruto glanced back, caught the rare, sharp look in her eyes, and actually shut up.

Progress.

Zabuza’s chakra swelled. The mist responded, thinning just enough to make room for a second presence.

Fine needles of ice shattered against the stone at Kakashi’s feet.

Kakashi didn’t flinch. He turned his head slightly.

From the fog to their right, a masked figure stepped into view—light, balanced, moving like water. The hunter-nin from before, porcelain mask painted with familiar marks, long dark hair tied back.

“So,” Kakashi said, “the tool returns with its master.”

Hunter-nin.

No. Not quite. The chakra signature was wrong for ANBU. Too… personal.

Naruto bristled. “That guy—!”

“I’ll handle Zabuza,” Kakashi cut in. “You three focus on the hunter-nin. Protect Tazuna. Do not get separated.”

Zabuza chuckled. “You’re assuming they’ll get a choice.”

He moved. One moment he was standing. The next he was gone, a blur of bandages and steel diving into the mist.

Kakashi’s body followed before thought caught up, kunai flashing into his hand.

Mist closed around him like a curtain. His world narrowed to chakra signatures and the faint, familiar pull of the Sharingan waking up behind the cloth.

Time to work.

The second Kakashi vanished into the fog, everything got worse.

The killing intent didn’t fade; it just split. One heavy, monstrous presence colliding with Kakashi’s signature somewhere in the mist. Another, sharper one sliding toward us like a knife.

Ice needles rattled across the stones, biting into the bridge around our feet. One nicked my calf. Cold burned hot under my skin for half a second. I hissed and jerked back.

“Stay behind me!” Naruto shouted at Tazuna, jumping in front of the old man with his arms spread wide like he could physically block senbon with stubbornness.

“In front of you is a terrible place,” I said, already moving.

I slapped a smoke tag down at our feet and sent chakra into the ink. It responded with a muffled bang and a billow of dark, crackling smoke—thicker and clingier than regular fog, smelling like burnt paper.

For a moment, it blurred the outline of Tazuna’s terrified chakra and Naruto’s blazing one.

Sasuke didn’t wait. He flickered forward, one hand already full of shuriken. His eyes were sharp, tracking the direction the senbon had come from.

The hunter-nin stepped through my smoke like it was a curtain, unbothered.

Up close, the mask was expressionless. The eyes behind it were not. They were calm. Sad, almost.

“I won’t let you interfere with Zabuza-sama,” the hunter-nin said. Voice high and soft under the distortion. “Please surrender. I don’t wish to kill you.”

My chakra sense screamed about the sincerity in those words.

Naruto snarled. “Yeah? Well, I kinda wish to punch you in the face!”

He lunged.

“Wait—!” I started.

Too late.

The hunter-nin moved like my seals wished they could. One step, one twist, and Naruto’s punch met air; the masked figure flowed around him and flicked a handful of senbon in a glittering arc.

Naruto yelped as two blades bit into his shoulder and thigh. He staggered back, more insulted than injured, chakra flaring with fury.

Sasuke darted in to cover him, shuriken singing. “Don’t rush in without a plan, dobe.”

“Shut up, bastard!”

Their chakra tangled in front of me—fire-hot and storm-sharp, clashing, syncing, clashing again. The hunter-nin’s presence slid between them like thread through cloth, not quite hitting as hard as they could have.

He really didn’t want to kill us.

Great. I’d file that under “ethical complications” later.

Right now, I moved.

I dragged Tazuna back behind a chunk of unfinished railing, heart hammering. “Stay low. If you see anything that isn’t Kakashi-sensei or one of us, yell.”

“You think I’m not going to yell?!” he hissed. “We’re all going to die out here!”

“Not helpful,” I said, and slapped a small sticky ink seal on the stone just ahead of us. If the hunter-nin tried to flank, maybe I could at least make him trip.

I risked a glance up.

Naruto and Sasuke were flanking now, circling the hunter-nin without even needing to talk about it. Naruto’s movements were big, obvious, too fast to predict cleanly; Sasuke’s were compact, precise, sliding into the gaps Naruto opened up.

They shouted over each other, insult layered on insult, but their chakra rhythm was starting to align.

Huh.

Something about the way their energy bounced off each other… shifted. The space between them felt less like open air and more like a drawn bowstring. Taut. Ready.

“She sees it too,” a treacherous little voice in my head whispered. “If she pulls just right, she can make them hit harder.”

Not now. Later. When I had more seals and more time and less murderous fog.

The hunter-nin leapt back from a flurry of kicks, landing lightly on one of the bridge’s support pillars. His hands blurred through signs.

I felt the chakra gather a split second before it happened—cold and sharp, blooming out in a circle.

“Move!” I shouted. “Naruto, Sasuke, move!”

Too slow.

Mirrors of ice erupted around them—beautiful, horrible, each one reflecting a masked figure. A dome of frozen glass snapped shut, catching Naruto and Sasuke inside.

“Naruto!”

“Sasuke!”

Their pulses slammed against my tags, pain and shock spiking bright. My knees hit stone before I realized I’d dropped.

Through the half-transparent dome, I caught a glimpse of Naruto’s face, pale and furious, and Sasuke’s jaw clenched so hard it had to hurt.

The hunter-nin’s voice floated out from everywhere and nowhere at once. “This is my technique,” he said. “Within this space… you cannot win.”

Behind me, Tazuna whimpered. In the distance, drowned in mist, I could feel Kakashi and Zabuza’s clash like tectonic plates grinding.

I pressed my shaking hand flat against the ice, tags buzzing under my skin, and forced myself to breathe.

“Okay,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone. “Fine. You take your pretty death-box. We’ll just have to break the rules again.”

The bridge of ghosts creaked under us.

Somewhere inside that dome, Naruto’s chakra flared like a shout:

I’m not losing here.

Chapter Text

<Naruto>

The first needle hit like a wasp sting.

Then about thirty more followed.

“GAAAH—!”

Naruto jerked sideways as senbon slammed into his arm, shoulder, thigh—anywhere he wasn’t quick enough to cover. Cold bit deeper than the metal. It felt like the air itself had turned mean.

Mist curled around them, thick and white, eating the bridge. Somewhere behind him, Tazuna yelled. Somewhere farther, Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza were breaking the world with water and steel.

Right here, though?

It was just him, Sasuke, and the prison.

The mirrors had come out of nowhere—one second, it was fog and the masked freak standing in front of them; the next, a circle of perfect ice panels shot up, ringing them in. Each one reflected Haku’s porcelain mask, the hunter-nin’s slim body and long hair, over and over, like they were trapped in a kunai pouch full of him.

“Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals,” the hunter-nin said calmly, voice echoing from everywhere. “Within this dome, I am unbeatable.”

“Yeah?” Naruto spat, blood in his teeth. “We’ll see about that!”

He launched himself at the nearest mirror, kunai out, chakra surging to his legs. The glassy surface glittered, perfect and smooth.

“RAAAAH!”

He swung.

The kunai bounced.

Of course it did.

The impact jolted up his arm. He gritted his teeth, turned it into another slash, anything, but the ice just… didn’t care. Not a crack. Not even a scratch. It was like trying to stab a mountain.

A blur of motion flickered at the edge of his vision.

“Naruto, behind—!”

Sasuke’s shout hit him half a second before the hailstorm.

Senbon rained down from everywhere at once, silver lines cutting the air. Naruto barely got his arms up over his face. Cold pain threaded through his skin, needle after needle digging in.

He hit the ground on his knees, breath punching out of him.

“Dammit,” he wheezed.

Sasuke landed beside him in a low crouch, eyes narrowed. A few senbon stuck in his clothes and arms, but way fewer than Naruto. He’d moved through them somehow, body twisting just enough to make everything miss anything important.

Show-off.

“You’re getting shredded,” Sasuke said flatly.

“Yeah, thanks, I noticed!”

The mirrors pulsed faintly, light rippling across them like they were breathing. In each one, Haku’s reflection looked identical. Naruto couldn’t tell which was real. Maybe they all were. That was cheating.

Okay. Fine. Overwhelming force, then.

He staggered back to his feet, shook his arms out, and slammed his hands together.

“Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

With a pop of chakra and smoke, a mess of Narutos filled the dome. Some of them were already wobbling—his chakra was all over the place from the needles—but he grit his teeth and held it.

“GO!” he yelled. “Swarm him!”

The clones exploded into motion, charging different mirrors, throwing kunai in every direction.

For a heartbeat, it almost looked like it might work.

Then Haku moved.

He became a streak of pale color, a smear of mask and hair flickering from mirror to mirror faster than Naruto could track. Every time one of them got close, needles flared out, precise and cruel.

One clone took a spray of senbon to the chest and vanished in smoke. Another got clipped in the throat. Another tripped over Naruto’s own stupid feet and faceplanted before getting erased by a barrage.

Inside the dome, it was chaos—Naruto’s chaos—but Haku danced through it like he’d practiced for this exact mess.

Sasuke slid forward, weaving between clones. His movements were sharp, precise, like all the academy drills had just clicked into something meaner.

“Naruto!” he barked. “You’re wasting chakra. You’re too slow to track him. Pull the clones back!”

“Shut up! You think I’m just gonna sit here and—”

A senbon caught Naruto in the side of the neck.

The world tilted.

He crashed down, hand going instinctively to the spot. His fingers came away slick.

Haku’s voice rang from everywhere at once.

“Surrender,” he said, totally calm. “Your bodies are already reaching their limits. This jutsu will only become more painful from here.”

Something hot flared in Naruto’s chest.

“Screw you!” he shouted hoarsely. “I’m not… I’m not giving up!”

More needles flashed. Two clones caught them instead of him, bursting into smoke in unison.

Sasuke was moving before they cleared, feet light on the broken concrete, breath steady. His eyes tracked the blur of Haku in the mirrors with this laser focus that made Naruto’s teeth itch.

He was seeing something Naruto wasn’t.

The dome glittered around them, cold blue-white. Every breath burned.

“Why?” Naruto yelled at the reflections, furious and shaking. “Why are you even helping that jerk? You saw what Gato’s men did to this place! You think he deserves all this loyalty or something?”

Haku paused.

Just for a fraction, the blur in the mirrors stuttered. The mask tilted, ever so slightly.

“Because I am useful to him,” he said quietly. “That is all I need.”

Something in that voice made the hair on Naruto’s arms stand up. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t proud. It was… gentle. Like he’d just said the nicest thing in the world.

Naruto didn’t get it.

“You’re crazy,” he snapped. “You don’t have to be his tool—”

A spray of senbon shut him up, slamming into his shoulder hard enough to send him spinning.

“Naruto!” Sasuke snarled.

He darted between Naruto and the next volley, fingertips brushing the ground as he pivoted. His kunai flashed, knocking a cluster of needles out of the air.

More slipped through.

Small red flowers bloomed on Sasuke’s arm.

The bridge shook under another distant impact—Kakashi and Zabuza still trying to murder each other with entire lakes. Everything was too loud and too far and too close at once.

Naruto’s chest heaved. His clones were gone. His legs trembled.

Sasuke sidestepped another barrage, eyes narrowed in concentration.

His pupils were different.

For a second, Naruto thought it was just the light. Then Sasuke turned his head, and Naruto saw it clearly: black irises ringed by a flicker of red, a single tomoe swirling into existence.

The air around Sasuke changed.

He moved again, this time faster, smoother. Not as fast as Haku, but close enough to be annoying. His kunai whipped up, hand snapping to just the right spot to slap a needle away a breath before it hit Naruto’s face.

He clicked his tongue.

“I can see it now,” he muttered. “He’s moving between the mirrors. The reflections are just… echoes.”

Of course he could see it. Stupid prodigy eyes.

“Then hit him!” Naruto grunted, forcing himself up again. “If you can see him, take him out!”

Sasuke shot him a look like he’d just suggested he sprout wings.

“You really think it’s that easy?” he snapped. “He’s still faster than us. And you—”

Another volley of senbon shredded the ground between them.

Naruto flung himself sideways, shoulder screaming. Sasuke spun, kunai blurring, batting away what he could. Three slipped through and buried themselves in his leg.

He hissed, staggering.

The dome hummed around them, every mirror glinting. Haku’s presence was everywhere. Calm. Focused. Unshakable.

And yet…

Underneath the precision, there was something weird.

Every time a needle thudded into flesh—Naruto’s, Sasuke’s—there was this faint… stutter. A flicker in the rhythm of Haku’s movements. Like it hurt him too.

“Why aren’t you going for the kill?” Naruto yelled, panting. “You could’ve hit our necks a dozen times already!”

Silence.

The mask in the mirrors watched them quietly.

“Because my task,” Haku said at last, “is to stop you. Not to waste your lives.”

Naruto stared, throat burning.

What kind of enemy talked about not wasting their lives while turning them into pincushions?

Behind him, Sasuke shifted his weight, favoring his uninjured leg. His eyes glowed faintly red.

“Moron,” Sasuke muttered under his breath. “You really know how to pick fights.”

“Like you’re any better!”

He didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to. They both knew he’d chosen to stand here with Naruto instead of hanging back like a smart, emotionally detached avenger.

Senbon drifted down, tinkling as they hit the ground.

Naruto’s breath came in ragged bursts. His chakra felt thin, stretched, like old ramen noodles.

“Sasuke,” he said.

“What.”

“You’re not allowed to die here,” Naruto forced out through clenched teeth. “Okay? That’s a rule.”

Sasuke snorted, eyes fixed on the mirrors.

“Shut up and stay behind me,” he said.

So Naruto did.

For once.

<Sylvie>

I knew something was wrong the second my breath fogged white.

It wasn’t the weather. Wave was always damp and chilly, sure, but this was different. The air itself felt like it had gone brittle.

I skidded to a stop on the bridge, boots scraping stone, and looked up.

The world had turned into a horror snow globe.

A dome of ice stood ahead, clear and glittering even in the thick mist. Shards of it curved up from the shattered bridge, forming a sphere big enough to swallow the entire lane.

Inside, faint shapes moved—orange blur, blue blur, silver flashes.

Naruto. Sasuke. Haku.

My stomach dropped.

“Okay,” I told nobody, because nobody had stuck close enough for this conversation. “That’s… not great.”

Behind me, Tazuna wheezed, struggling to keep up. I jogged back two steps, grabbed his arm, and yanked him behind a chunk of half-built concrete barrier.

“Stay down,” I said. “If you get turned into ice-art, I’m charging extra.”

His eyes were wide, face pale under the scruffy beard. “W-what about—”

“I’ve got eyes on them,” I lied, because technically I had… something on them.

My skin buzzed with tags.

Before we’d left the house, I’d slapped quick Pulse marks on Naruto and Sasuke. Simple spirals inked on scraps of bandage under their sleeves. When I pushed a trickle of chakra into the matching mark on my wrist, I could feel them both—two distinct hums in the background noise.

Naruto: loud, chaotic, like a drum smashed by someone with more enthusiasm than rhythm.

Sasuke: tight, hot, like a coal hidden in a fist.

Now both threads spiked and dipped erratically, pinging sharp in my head.

I set my palm against the concrete and took a breath.

“Okay,” I muttered. “Tags first, panic later.”

The ice dome hummed faintly, a low, eerie sound like someone running a wet finger around the rim of a glass. Cold bled out from it in waves. Every exhale hung in the air like a ghost.

Kakashi and Zabuza’s fight rumbled somewhere off to the side—big crashes of water, the grind of blade on blade, that suffocating, suffocating killing intent. I deliberately did not look that way. One crisis at a time.

I dug into my pouch, pulling out a handful of prepared slips.

The seals etched on them were simple disruption marks. Tiny loops and jagged lines meant to destabilize chakra in a small radius, like static shocks: enough to kick someone out of a genjutsu, not powerful enough to blow a hole in reality.

Probably.

I crouched near the base of the dome, pressed one tag to the ground, and slapped my palm over it.

“Come on, come on…”

Chakra trickled out of me into the ink. The lines flared a dim purple, then sank into the stone, little veins spreading.

The ice above did not crack open in obedient, gratifying fashion.

Rude.

I grimaced, moved three paces to the right, and did it again.

Tag, flare, nothing.

The dome thrummed back at me, its own chakra lines dense and interlocking. This wasn’t just ice. It was architecture. A technique way out of my league.

“Okay,” I muttered, “so this is what ‘above my pay grade’ feels like.”

I kept going anyway.

Even if I couldn’t shatter the jutsu, maybe I could make it wobble. A flicker at the wrong time could mean the difference between “Sasuke walks away with bruises” and “Sasuke walks away at all.”

Naruto’s pulse-mark jerked suddenly under my skin.

I flinched, nearly dropping the next tag.

“Stop doing that,” I hissed at the distant dome. “It’s rude.”

I pressed my hand to my wrist, feeding a careful thread of chakra into my own seal.

The world narrowed.

I didn’t get images—not yet, not with this crude version—but I got impressions, colors without sight.

Naruto was a swirl of hot orange and sickly green, bright edges dripping. Pain, anger, fear, stubbornness. The sense of him being everywhere at once, splattered across the ice like graffiti.

Sasuke was a tighter knot—sharp red around a dark core, brittle and blazing. His focus felt like being stared at by a predator who hadn’t realized he was just as trapped as the prey.

And around them—

Cold.

Not the clean, empty cold of snow, but something intricate. Haku’s chakra wound through the dome like embroidery. Fine threads connecting each mirror, each reflection, each angle. Smooth, controlled, complicated.

Every time a needle sank into flesh, a little spike of pain flashed across my sense.

Not just theirs.

His.

I blinked, thrown.

What?

I pressed harder, fingertips digging into my own skin. The Pulse mark burned faintly, protesting the strain.

There—again.

Senbon hit Naruto. His presence flared, a flare of white-hot hurt.

At the same time, Haku’s chakra pulsed on the edge of my awareness, a tiny, sharp sting. Not big enough to be physical damage. More like… a sympathetic ache.

“Idiot,” I breathed. “You really are doing this with your heart wide open, aren’t you?”

Behind me, Tazuna shifted.

“Girl?” he whispered. “Is—”

“Still working on it,” I snapped, then winced. “…Sorry. Just—don’t move. Please.”

He shut up. Points for cooperation.

I slapped another tag down, fingers shaking.

Disruption seals weren’t meant for this. They were designed to jolt individual people, not unravel the geometry of a complex jutsu. But I didn’t have anything better. No massive explosive tags, no super-secret village techniques. Just my little handmade band-aids on reality.

The bridge under my hand vibrated with the latest clash between Kakashi and Zabuza. That killing intent crawled over my skin, making the hairs on my arms rise.

If either of those monsters decided to redirect their attention over here, we were all dead.

“Naruto, Sasuke, please hurry up and do something stupidly heroic,” I muttered. “I am rapidly running out of adult supervision.”

The dome flashed.

Not visually—chakra-wise.

Sasuke’s thread flared sharp and bright, then narrowed, sharpening like a blade. In my mind’s eye, his presence shifted, something red and spinning unfurling with terrible, inevitable grace.

Sharingan, I thought, even though I’d never seen it in action before. Some instincts came pre-packaged with this world.

He and Naruto moved in sync for a few precious seconds—anger and focus dovetailing. Haku’s chakra flickered in response, pressed.

Then the pattern inside the dome stuttered.

A spray of pain stabbed across my senses. Naruto’s thread bucked; Sasuke’s blazed, then—

Dropped.

I gasped, clutching my wrist.

No. No no no—

He wasn’t gone. Not completely. I could still feel him. But the hot, sharp presence that was Sasuke had dimmed, dimmed, dimmed until it was just a flicker.

Naruto’s chakra surged, bright panic spiking.

“Dammit,” I whispered. My vision prickled, edges fuzzing. I shoved the sensation down. No time.

“HEY!” I yelled, cupping my hands around my mouth like that would help. “Naruto! Sasuke! Can you hear me?!”

The dome didn’t answer.

Mist swallowed my words, but sound still traveled. Maybe. Hopefully.

I took a breath that felt like knives and screamed louder.

“HE DOESN’T WANT TO KILL YOU!”

My voice cracked halfway through the sentence, but I didn’t stop.

“He’s holding back! Every time he hits you, he hesitates—this isn’t just a job to him, he’s fighting for someone else!”

If Haku could hear me, he’d probably be thrilled I was narrating his feelings to his enemies. Sorry, emotionally compromised ice boy, but your aura is public property.

Naruto’s chakra flared, confusion and anger roiling together.

For a second, the pattern inside the dome… shifted. Not the ice; that stayed perfect. But the emotional weather changed.

Haku’s presence twisted, a sudden flare of something tight and painful.

Good. Let it hurt.

“If you’re going to act like a tool,” I muttered under my breath, “you don’t get to be surprised when people try to use you.”

Another volley exploded inside. I felt Naruto take the hits, Sasuke’s dim flicker sheltering him with what little strength was left.

My heart hammered.

I moved again, circling the dome as best I could without losing sight of Tazuna, dropping tags like breadcrumbs. My chakra reserve screamed, but I kept going. Thin lines of ink glowed and sank into the stone, little pockets of static lining the ground.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Give me anything. Cracks, frostbite, a tiny shiver—”

The air changed.

It wasn’t temperature this time. It was… pressure.

Naruto’s presence inside the dome spiked, higher than I’d ever felt it. Not the usual hurricane of “I will headbutt destiny.” This was deeper. Hotter. A wound instead of a fire.

Fear, grief, rage, something old and jagged forced open.

For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.

Then his chakra tore.

It didn’t surge so much as rupture, red flooding through every thread I could feel. The Pulse mark on my wrist seared, sending a shock up my arm.

I stumbled back with a shout, dropping to one knee.

“Naruto…”

It didn’t feel like him.

It did, but magnified, distorted. All the parts I knew—the stubborn joy, the furious loneliness, the desperate hunger to be seen—boiled over, wrapped in something ancient and furious and vast.

Predator, my instincts whispered. Predator predator predator—

I squeezed my eyes shut, fought the urge to crawl under the nearest non-metaphorical rock.

He wasn’t alone in there. Sasuke’s dim ember flared weakly in response, like someone shielding their face from a furnace.

The dome reacted last.

Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the ice, lines of white racing out from a central point. I opened my eyes in time to see the nearest mirror shudder.

“Naruto,” I breathed, half-prayer, half-swear, “if you blow yourself up before I finish these tags, I am going to haunt you.”

Red chakra licked along the inside of the dome, wild and angry. It pressed against the ice like a living thing, roaring without sound.

Haku’s presence trembled.

For the first time, I felt fear from him—not steady, resolved fear, but the sharp, personal kind. Not “I might fail my mission.” More “I might not be enough.”

The mirrors shattered.

It was almost beautiful.

The dome went from perfect, curved panels to a storm of glittering shards in an instant. Ice exploded outward, catching the weak light and scattering it in lethal rain. I threw my arms over my head and ducked, chakra snapping to the tags at my feet on instinct.

“Disrupt!” I hissed, flushing the marks with energy.

A ripple of static shot through the stone, up into the air around me. The nearest shards hit that field and veered just enough to miss anything vital. One clipped my sleeve, slicing fabric and nicking skin.

“OW—okay, rude—”

When the world stopped chiming, I peeked up.

The prison was gone.

In its place, the bridge was a rubble-strewn mess. Ice fragments littered the ground like diamond dust. Frost crept along cracks in the stone.

In the middle of it all stood Naruto.

Or… something wearing his shape.

His clothes were torn, skin a patchwork of senbon and bruises. Red chakra crawled around him like fire boiling under water, tails of it flicking in the air. His whisker marks stood out darker, eyes glowing a bright, feral orange.

He snarled—actually snarled—and lunged at Haku.

Haku, mask cracked, clothes disheveled, met him with raised arms and precise, desperate steps. His movements were still graceful, but they lacked the earlier effortless glide. Every block looked like it hurt.

Naruto slammed into him like a thrown boulder.

I winced.

“Okay,” I whispered, throat tight, “note to self: Naruto rage mode is… a lot.”

I pushed my palm to my wrist again, just for a moment.

Under the fox-fire and fury, Naruto was still there. Buried, but present. His chakra screamed grief, fear, protect protect protect.

He wasn’t gone.

Not yet.

“Don’t let it eat you,” I murmured, fingers pressed to cold skin. “Don’t you dare.”

Haku flew backward, smashed into a broken railing, dropped to one knee. His mask finally shattered, pieces falling away to reveal the soft, pretty face I’d seen by the lake.

Naruto's chakra twisted, the red surge faltering.

Good.

Horrible.

Necessary.

I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat.

This was never going to be a clean fight.

I dragged myself upright, legs shaking, and took stock.

Naruto: alive, feral, dangerously close to burning himself out.

Sasuke: on the ground nearby, pale and still, senbon bristling from his body like broken wings—but his Pulse thread still flickered in my senses. It was faint, faint, but there.

Haku: battered, bleeding, mascara-levels of emotional mess hidden under that calm face. Still fighting.

Kakashi and Zabuza: silhouettes in the mist, moving slower now. The waves they were throwing around were smaller. More controlled. Both of them were nearing their limits.

Tazuna: still crouched behind the barrier, clutching his head. Good.

Me: chakra reserves at “please sit down before you faceplant,” fingers numb, brain doing that thing where you’re weirdly calm because all the panic circuits already blew.

Right.

I couldn’t stop what was coming next. Naruto and Haku’s clash was theirs. Kakashi and Zabuza’s tragedy was theirs.

But I could make sure nobody bled out on the way to their big emotional revelations.

My feet moved before my brain fully caught up.

I sprinted toward Sasuke.

Every step sent little shocks up my legs; every breath hurt. I dropped to my knees beside him anyway, skidding on frost.

He looked dead.

Too pale, lips tinged blue, chest barely moving under the lattice of needles. Senbon protruded from his arms, legs, torso—a dozen precise strikes that should’ve wrecked him.

Up close, though, my diagnostic training kicked in.

Some of them were shallow. Some hit muscle. A few were nastily placed, but not quite where they’d need to be for instant kill shots.

Haku hadn’t missed.

He’d chosen.

“You stupid boys,” I whispered, hands hovering over Sasuke’s chest. “Risking your lives for each other and somehow apologizing via murder attempts.”

His Pulse tag fluttered against my awareness, a tiny, stubborn heartbeat.

“He’s not gone,” I called hoarsely, not sure if Naruto could hear me over the roaring in his head. “Naruto! He’s not dead!”

Haku’s eyes snapped to me. Naruto’s followed, wild and unfocused.

The red chakra around him seethed.

For a second, I thought he might turn that rage on me for interfering with his grief.

Then his gaze dragged back to Sasuke, to Haku, to the needles in both their bodies.

I felt it, like a pressure loosening: the fox’s grip easing, just a fraction, under the weight of Naruto’s own feelings.

Good.

I pressed my hands to Sasuke’s chest, chakra flaring in a shaky green glow.

I couldn’t pull the senbon yet—not here, not now, not without risking hitting something crucial. But I could stabilize. Slow bleeding. Keep his pulse from dropping any lower until Kakashi was free, until Tsunami had a chance to see him, until—

Until.

“Stay,” I told his faint, sharp little ember of a presence. “You don’t get to bail on this story yet.”

Under my palms, his heartbeat stuttered, then thumped a little stronger.

Naruto roared and lunged again, Nine-Tails cloak flaring.

Haku stepped in to meet him, eyes soft and sad even as his body moved with lethal intent.

The bridge became a battlefield and a confession booth all at once.

I kept my hands where they were, ink-stained fingers pressed to a boy who refused to die, and did the only thing I could:

I made sure they all got the chance to finish breaking each other’s hearts.

Chapter Text

<Naruto>

Naruto had seen a lot of blood in the last hour.

Most of it had been his.

Now it was soaking into the snow around a body that shouldn’t have been still.

He stood there, chest heaving, breath fogging the air in short, ragged bursts. The bridge felt weirdly quiet—just the distant clash of Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza somewhere ahead, steel on steel, and the lap of ocean below.

Right here, the world had shrunk to white ice, red drops… and Haku.

The hunter-nin’s mask lay cracked a few feet away, half-buried in slush. Long dark hair spilled across the ground. That face—soft lines, long lashes, pale skin—looked exactly like the person he’d met in the forest. The one picking herbs. The one who’d talked about “someone precious.”

Naruto swallowed, throat dry and dropped to his knees beside him.

He wanted to be angry. Part of him was. But under the anger was something knotty and sharp he didn’t have words for.

He stared for a second, then scowled and blurted it out anyway.

“You’re a guy?!”

If things weren't so serious, I'd have planted my palm square in my face.

The words bounced off the ice, stupid and loud and wrong. They sounded tiny next to the silence.

Naruto winced. “I mean—whatever, that part’s not—” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You looked like a girl! And you… you were nice. And you smiled like… like someone who didn’t want to kill people all the time.”

His hand shook where it hovered over Haku’s shoulder. He forced it to still.

“You said all you needed was to be useful,” he whispered. “Like that was enough. Like that was… good.”

Snowflakes drifted down, catching in Haku’s hair.

Naruto’s stomach twisted. He thought of training grounds, and cold stares, and villagers turning away. Of people who only looked at him to say what a nuisance he was.

If someone had come along then and said “you can matter if you’re useful to me”… yeah. He knew exactly how that would’ve sounded.

“You’re an idiot,” Naruto said, very softly. “You should’ve… you should’ve wanted more than that.”

The wind picked up, carrying the distant sound of Kakashi’s jutsu—water crashing, a whirl of chakra that raised the hairs on Naruto’s arms.

He flinched, looking up. The fog ahead glowed with scattered light. The fight was still going.

Naruto clenched his fists.

“I…” He looked back down at Haku, guilt gnawing at his chest. “I’m not gonna let it end like this. Not with him just calling you a tool and walking away.”

His legs protested when he stood. He ignored them.

“Sleep or whatever,” he muttered. “I’m gonna go punch your boss in the face for you.”

He turned and ran.

The fog got thicker the closer he got to the main fight. The air tasted like metal and ozone. Every few seconds the mist lit up with flashes of chakra—Kakashi’s blue-white lightning, Zabuza’s heavy killing intent pressing like a weight on Naruto’s skin.

He burst out onto the center of the bridge in time to see Kakashi’s hand blazing with electricity.

“Raikiri,” Kakashi said, voice low and lethal.

He lunged.

Zabuza moved to block—but something else moved faster.

A blur of white and black interposed itself between them.

For a second, Naruto’s brain refused to understand what he was seeing.

Then Haku was there again, between Kakashi and Zabuza, arms spread.

The lightning blade punched straight through his chest.

Time snapped.

“H–HAKU?!” Naruto’s scream tore out of his throat.

Kakashi’s eye went wide. The chakra around his hand sputtered and died as he yanked his arm back, horror twisting his face. Haku swayed, blood blooming across his chest, then crumpled.

He hit the ground in a careful heap, as if he’d tried to fall neatly.

Zabuza stared down at him.

The Demon of the Mist looked… wrong without his sword. Smaller somehow. His bandages were frayed and red. For once, there was no manic grin, no taunting sneer.

Just a blank, stunned face above that fog of killing intent.

“Haku,” he rasped. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel. “You… fool.”

Naruto’s hands shook.

He remembered Haku’s voice in the ice dome, calm and gentle even as senbon tore into their skin: “Because I am useful to him.”
He remembered the soft way Haku had talked about his “precious person” in the forest. Like that was the only thing that held him to the world.

His precious person was standing over him now, staring like someone had moved the ground.

“You used him,” Naruto choked out.

The words ripped free before he could stop them.

“You used him and he still—he still jumped in front of you!”

Zabuza didn’t look at him. His gaze was fixed on Haku’s body.

Naruto’s breath hitched.

“Say something!” he shouted. “He died for you!”

Zabuza’s fingers twitched once on the hilt of his sword. His chakra—cold, brutal, thick as fog—didn’t move at all.

“Shut up, brat,” he said roughly. “This is the life of a tool. He knew that.”

Naruto saw red.

“Tool,” he repeated, disbelief turning acid. “You’re calling him a tool? After everything he—”

A slow clap echoed through the mist.

Everyone turned.

Gato walked out onto the bridge like he was taking a casual stroll. Short, soft, wrapped in rich fabrics that didn’t belong in the chill air. Thugs trailed behind him, a mess of weapons and ugly grins.

“Well, well,” Gato said. “Looks like I got my money’s worth after all.”

He stepped right up to Haku’s body and nudged it with his cane like he was checking a sack of rice.

Naruto’s fingers curled so tight his nails bit into his palms.

“Hey,” he snarled. “Get away from him.”

Gato didn’t even glance at him. His eyes were on Zabuza, sharp and amused.

“You failed,” Gato said. “You were supposed to kill the bridge builder, not play around with Leaf brats until you got beaten.”

He gave the cane another little jab.

“Pathetic. You’re not a demon. You’re just a dog I fed for a while.”

The thugs laughed.

Something in Naruto’s chest tore.

He took a step forward, only to have Kakashi’s arm bar out to block him. Kakashi’s chakra was a strained, ragged thing, barely held together. His visible eye was hard and flat.

Zabuza finally looked up.

He looked at Gato, then down at Haku again.

Naruto wasn’t Sylvie—he didn’t feel chakra like colors and textures—but even he could see something crack in the man’s face. The neutral mask didn’t hold. For a second, something raw and ugly twisted through his expression.

Gato didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.

“I don’t need you anymore,” the little tyrant went on. “I’ve got all these men, and you’re crippled without your little pet.” He gestured lazily. “Kill them all. We’ll hang their heads off the bridge for decoration.”

The thugs started forward, weapons raised.

Naruto could feel fear rising off the villagers behind them, and something else—despair, thick and familiar. The same flavor as Wave’s streets. The same as Inari’s eyes when he’d said heroes always died.

Naruto’s blood roared in his ears.

“Stop it,” he growled, voice low and shaking.

No one listened.

He shoved Kakashi’s arm aside and moved up beside Zabuza, planting himself between Haku’s body and Gato’s advancing men.

“I said,” Naruto shouted, lungs burning, “STOP IT!”

That time, the bridge listened.

Half the thugs faltered, thrown off by the sheer volume. Gato blinked, annoyed.

Naruto sucked in a breath.

“You think he was just your tool?” he yelled at Zabuza, pointing back at Haku with a trembling hand. “Some… some weapon you could throw away?”

Zabuza’s visible eye flicked to him, warning, but Naruto didn’t care.

“He was a person!” Naruto went on. “He had feelings. He—he smiled when we talked about precious people. He cared about you so much it hurt to look at him!”

His voice broke. He pushed through it anyway.

“And you stood there and let that bastard”—he jabbed a finger at Gato—“kick him like trash!”

Somewhere off to the side, he heard Sylvie’s sharp inhale. He didn’t look; if he saw her face right now, he was pretty sure he’d fall apart.

“You’re supposed to be this big scary demon, right?” Naruto said, glaring up at Zabuza. “But you’re just standing there. Haku believed in you. He gave up everything for you! He didn’t care if he lived as long as you were okay!”

The words echoed back at him.

He thought of lonely afternoons on the swing, of villagers’ backs. Of Sylvie’s steady presence at his side, paint on her fingers and deadpan mutters when the world kicked him again.

“What’s the point of being strong,” Naruto demanded, “if you treat the people who believe in you like they’re nothing?”

Zabuza’s hand closed slowly into a fist.

Naruto’s throat burned. His eyes stung.

“Tools don’t cry when you get hurt,” he said. “Tools don’t throw themselves in front of you because they care. People do that. Friends do that.”

His voice dropped.

“He loved you, you idiot.”

The mist seemed to pull tighter around them. For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Zabuza’s shoulders shook once.

When he lifted his head again, his expression had split wide open.

Tears cut tracks through the blood on his cheeks. His chakra—what Naruto could feel of it, just the oppressive weight filling the air—had changed. The killing intent was still there, but underneath it something jagged and bright was bleeding through.

“…Brat,” Zabuza rasped. “You talk too much.”

Naruto sniffed, dragging an arm across his face.

“Yeah?” he said. “Do something about it then.”

Zabuza stared at him for one more second. At Kakashi. At Haku.

Then he moved.

Slowly, as if the weight of his body had doubled, he reached down and picked up a kunai. His fingers flexed on the handle like he wasn’t used to something that light.

“Gato,” he said.

The crime boss sneered. “What, you still got something to say, dog?”

Zabuza put the blade between his teeth.

“Yeah,” he said around the metal. His voice was muffled, but the intent in it was clear. “I’m going to kill you.”

He charged.

<Naruto>

Zabuza hit the mob like a storm.

He had no sword, no backup, half his body already cut and bruised, but he moved like every step was fueled by something beyond muscle. Knives and spears slammed into him; he took them and kept going.

Blood sprayed. Men screamed. Gato started shouting orders that turned into shrieks when Zabuza finally broke through and plowed straight into him.

Naruto didn’t see the exact moment Zabuza got his hands on him. There was a flash of movement, a wet sound, and then Gato was airborne for a heartbeat before crashing over the edge of the bridge, tumbling into the sea below.

Zabuza swayed.

For a second, he stood there like a statue made of wounds and stubbornness, backlit by the fog. Then he turned, dragging himself back across the slick concrete toward Haku.

Naruto’s chest hurt just watching him.

By the time Zabuza reached Haku’s body, his steps were ragged. Weapons stuck out of him at wrong angles; blood left a smeared path behind him.

He collapsed onto his knees beside Haku, breathing harsh and uneven.

Naruto found himself walking closer without meaning to. Sylvie was there ahead of him, quiet as a ghost, her glasses speckled with mist.

She didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

Zabuza looked down at Haku’s face like he was seeing it for the first time.

“Hey,” he muttered hoarsely. “It’s… cold out here, huh?”

His hand shook as it hovered, then finally came down to brush a strand of hair away from Haku’s eyes.

“I… never told you,” he went on, words thick. “Tch. Always thought it was pointless. But…”

He swallowed.

“You were… more than a tool,” he forced out. “You… were my partner.”

The words seemed to cost him more than the wounds.

Naruto’s throat closed up.

Zabuza leaned forward, coughing, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. His eye flicked to Naruto, then away again.

“Brat,” he said quietly. “You win. Talked me into… feeling this crap again. Hope you’re… happy.”

Naruto didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded.

Zabuza huffed something that might have been a laugh.

He slumped down beside Haku, his large hand settling over the smaller one. The fog thickened around them.

By the time it cleared a little, the Demon of the Mist had gone still.

<Sylvie>

I’d never seen that much red outside of a paint box.

It was everywhere—splashed across the bridge, smeared where Zabuza had dragged himself, sprinkled in a loose halo around Haku’s body. It soaked into the mist and the air and the edges of my vision.

My hands shook anyway.

I only realized I was holding a bandage roll when it slipped a little, the linen trailing like a stupid white flag.

Too late for that.

Kakashi-sensei was already moving through the aftermath, taking stock, checking for survivors, making sure the remaining thugs understood that today was not the day to try anything brave. Naruto stood a few steps away from Haku and Zabuza, fists clenched, shoulders rigid, his chakra blazing raw and bright.

Mine felt… thin. Stretched. Like the inside of my skull had been sandpapered by too much fear and too many jutsu in too little time.

But there was one last thing I could do.

I knelt beside Haku.

Up close, he looked even younger. Funny how a mask could make someone seem ageless and a few inches of exposed throat could yank them right back into “boy who should’ve been at home with a blanket and a book instead of dying on a bridge for a mobster.”

His eyes were still half-open, clouded over.

Carefully, with a thumb and forefinger that wouldn’t stop trembling, I reached out and slid his lids shut.

It was a tiny, human motion in the middle of all this ridiculous shinobi theater. No seals, no chakra, no cleverness. Just… courtesy.

Still, the moment my fingers brushed his skin, that instinctive part of me that tracked emotions on contact woke up.

Haku’s chakra—what was left of it—was faint and scattered. Like ink washed almost completely away by too much water. The echoes hurt to touch: pain and devotion twisted together so tightly they were almost the same color.

Underneath all of it was a strange, clean emptiness. Anger draining out. Fear fading.

No more being someone’s “tool.”

My throat got tight.

Beside him, Zabuza’s chakra was already almost gone, sinking into the same quiet. What lingered was jagged and surprisingly… soft. Not gentle, exactly, but cracked open in a way that made my chest hurt.

He’d died with his hand over Haku’s.

I didn’t have to like what they’d done to appreciate what that meant.

Behind me, Naruto took a shaky breath.

“I didn’t… want it to go like this,” he muttered. His voice sounded scraped raw. “I just… I just didn’t want him to be treated like garbage.”

I didn’t look up yet. If I did, I might accidentally say something that stepped on what he’d just done.

Naruto’s words were the thing that mattered here. He’d been the one to dig under Zabuza’s armor and drag whatever was left of his heart out into the open. Kakashi’s lightning had made the holes; Naruto’s stupid, honest yelling had actually hit the target.

Me? I was just the cleanup crew.

So I kept my focus small and practical.

I folded Haku’s arms over his chest. Straightened the torn collar of his clothes. I didn’t have flowers or pretty fabrics or any of the things funerals were supposed to get, so I did what I could with linen and hands that knew how to dress wounds.

“Sleep well,” I whispered, mostly for myself. “You deserved better than Gato.”

A beat of quiet.

“That hunter-nin?” Naruto’s voice came from just over my shoulder now. Closer than before. “He… he I thought he was a girl.”

He sounded puzzled more than anything. Hurt, but not in the dramatic way a certain type of boy back home would’ve gone “ew, gross” about it. Just… trying to sort the mental boxes out.

I sat back on my heels and finally looked at him.

Naruto’s face was blotchy from crying, smeared with blood and dirt. Senbon marks dotted his skin like ugly, swollen freckles. His eyes were still fierce.

“He told me his purpose was to be useful to someone precious,” Naruto said, frowning. “I don’t get how you can be okay with that.”

He wasn’t really asking me. Still, my brain decided to answer.

“So gender really is more complicated here,” I thought. “Good.”

Back in my first life, a lot of people liked to pretend there were neat little boxes with labels. Boy, girl, normal, weird. Tools, monsters, heroes. Nice straight lines, easy to file.

Standing on a half-finished bridge in a land ruled by a greedy little man who’d just been murdered by his own hired demon, looking down at a boy who’d presented like a girl and died for love… the boxes looked even more ridiculous than usual.

Out loud, I kept it simple.

“I don’t think he was actually okay with it,” I said. “I think he just decided that was the only way he got to stay alive. Or… needed.”

Naruto’s jaw clenched.

“That sucks,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It does.”

He sank down beside me in a graceless crouch, hugging his arms around his knees. For a second, up this close, his chakra brushed against mine—hot and chaotic and still flavored with something I wanted to label “fox” and then immediately shove into a box labeled “later panic.”

I could feel the echo of what had happened when Sasuke went down, too. That moment when Naruto’s chakra spiked into something red and vast and raging. Not all the way loose, not yet. Just a crack in the door.

I pretended not to notice.

“So… Haku was a guy,” Naruto said slowly. “But he kinda… wasn’t? I don’t know. He just… was.”

He made a frustrated noise and scrubbed his hair.

“I liked him,” he admitted. “Before all this. He was… soft. In a nice way. Even when he was talking about killing us, he didn’t look happy about it.”

I thought about Haku in the forest—delicate hands sorting herbs, that small, sad smile. The way his chakra had unfolded when he talked about being useful, like he was laying his heart on a chopping block and saying “look, isn’t this lovely.”

I thought about looking down at my own hands in that hospital bed years ago, realizing they were smaller and smoother and more right than anything I’d ever owned.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I liked him too.”

The wind skated across the bridge, carrying the distant sound of waves and, faintly, voices from the village. We’d have to deal with all of that soon. Bodies, Gato’s leftover thugs, a traumatized country.

For now, though, the world had narrowed to two corpses and two stupid kids trying to make sense of what they’d just watched.

Kakashi limped over eventually, one hand in his pocket, the other resting lightly on his leg.

“We’ll… make sure they’re buried,” he said, voice soft. “Properly. Not dumped in the ocean like trash.”

Naruto nodded, eyes fixed on Haku and Zabuza.

“They were our enemies,” Kakashi went on. “But they were also… shinobi. They chose their paths. And in the end…”

He trailed off. I could feel his chakra twitch around the word “tools” and veer away. He’d used that language himself once, in a different context. This probably hurt more than he’d ever admit.

“In the end,” he finished, “they remembered they were people too.”

I looked at him.

His Sharingan was covered again, hitai-ate pulled down. He’d given up a lot of chakra today. More than was safe. Underneath the usual lazy slouch, his whole aura felt frayed.

“You should sit down before you fall down,” I said.

He gave me a faint eye-smile. “Noted.”

He did sit, though, a few feet away, keeping quiet vigil while Tazuna and the remaining workers slowly crept back onto the bridge, staring at the aftermath.

Inari was among them, eyes huge, lips pressed tight. I followed his gaze to where Gato’s body had disappeared over the edge, then back to Zabuza.

“Monsters kill monsters,” I thought. “And the rest of us try to build something on the bones.”

…Fun thought. Very uplifting.

I shifted, feeling the ache in my legs catch up with me. The bandage roll was still crumpled in one fist. Without really thinking about it, I tore off a thin strip and tied it gently around Haku’s wrist—a makeshift bracelet, white and neat against pale skin.

It wasn’t a seal. It wasn’t anything, really.

Just a reminder.

Naruto watched me do it.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Everything. I don’t know.”

He huffed out a tired sound that might have been a laugh.

“You’re weird,” he said.

“Accurate.”

We stayed like that for a while—me, Naruto, Kakashi, and two dead men who’d finally stopped being weapons long enough to die like something else.

The mist began to lift.

Somewhere down the line, this bridge would get a proper name. People would tell stories about it. About the Demon of the Mist’s last charge. About the kid who yelled at him until he cried.

About the loud, ridiculous orphan who turned “tool” into “person” by sheer force of stubbornness.

When that happened, I wanted to remember this part too.

The quiet.

The way Haku’s chakra had gone still in my hands, taking the rage with it.

The feeling in my chest when I realized that in this world, just like my last one, you could be soft and devoted and deadly and a boy and a girl and neither and still have all of that boiled down to “useful” by someone who needed you more than they knew.

I pressed my palms together for a second, as if I was holding something fragile between them.

“…Goodnight, Haku,” I thought, not daring to say it out loud. “Next time, I hope you get to choose more.”

Naruto sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“Hey,” he said. “When I’m Hokage… I’m gonna make it so kids don’t have to live like that. Tools and weapons and… all that crap.”

He stared out over the water, jaw set.

“I don’t know how yet,” he admitted. “But I will.”

I believed him.

Not because the story said so, but because I could feel his chakra burning with it—stubborn, furious hope, bright enough to hurt.

“Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll make sure you live long enough to be annoying as Hokage.”

He glanced at me, blinking, and for a second the corner of his mouth twitched up.

“Deal,” he said.

The bridge wind tugged at our clothes, cold and salty and real.

Tools, monsters, men, women, whatever else the world tried to call us—standing there on the Great-Nameless-For-Now Bridge, covered in someone else’s blood, I decided one thing for sure:

Orders could go to hell.

People mattered more.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time the screaming started, the fog was already lifting.

Not all at once. Just in thin strands, peeling off the bridge and drifting out over the water. Enough that I could finally see more than ten meters without guessing which blob was Naruto and which blob was a corpse.

Zabuza and Haku lay side by side on the cold stone, wrapped in cloaks that were probably never meant to be burial shrouds. The air around them felt weirdly quiet, like the world itself was holding its breath.

Naruto had finally stopped yelling.

He knelt a little away from them, shoulders heaving, fists clenched on his knees. His chakra was scraped raw—bright and jagged, all grief and fury and something else he didn’t have words for yet.

Kakashi stood over the bodies, hitai-ate back down over the Sharingan, face unreadable above his mask. Sasuke was propped up against a support pillar, pale and stiff, keeping the weight off his more-needles-than-skin leg. Tazuna just… stared. At the bridge. At what was left of his enemies. At the future he’d almost lost.

I was trying very hard not to fall over.

My hands were wrecked—ink ground into the lines of my fingers, dried blood at my knuckles, chakra scraped thin from slapping emergency seals anywhere they’d stick. My cooldown timer was blinking red. Emotionally, I was somewhere between “hysterical laugh” and “lie down on the ground and never move again.”

That’s when the shouting reached us from the direction of the village.

High, panicked voices. A deeper roar of men trying to sound meaner than they felt. A toddler-level tantrum wrapped in adult-size weapons.

Kakashi’s head snapped toward the sound. Naruto flinched.

“What now?” Sasuke muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing.

Tazuna cursed quietly. “Gato’s leftover trash,” he said. “Without him, they’ll be trying to grab what they can before they run.”

Kakashi’s chakra pulsed, then dipped—he was running on fumes too. Great. Fantastic. Love that for us.

“We’ll handle it,” he said. “Naruto, Sylvie, you stay here with—”

A second voice cut through everything.

“LEAVE THEM ALONE!”

It carried weirdly well over the water, small and cracking but sharp enough to sting.

Naruto’s head jerked up. “Was that—?”

“Inari,” Tazuna breathed, face going bloodless and then flushed all at once. “That idiot boy—”

Naruto was already scrambling to his feet. “Come on!”

“Hold it,” Kakashi snapped, grabbing his shoulder. “You’re exhausted, and if there are more thugs—”

“They’re going after the village,” Naruto shot back, wrenching his arm free. “We’re not just gonna sit here!”

He looked at me like I was the deciding vote.

My legs hurt. My everything hurt. But somewhere back in that village was a kid with a too-big hat and a courage charm I’d scribbled at two in the morning hanging off his belt.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re not.”

Kakashi looked from Naruto to me, then out into the fog. I could feel the calculations. Threat assessment, chakra reserves, risk vs reward.

Then he sighed, long and resigned.

“Fine,” he said. “Naruto, Sylvie, move. Sasuke, you stay with Tazuna and guard him. I’ll cover the rear.”

Sasuke scoffed. “Like I’m letting the dobe show me up.”

His chakra said otherwise—it was tired and frayed—but he pushed off the pillar anyway, jaw clenched.

Kakashi didn’t argue. He just started walking.

We crossed the bridge faster than we should’ve, stumbling and half-running, the fog thinning more with each step. The closer we got to the village, the clearer the shouting became.

“Shut up and hand over your valuables!”

“This place belongs to Gato’s men now!”

“You think your precious bridge-builder’s gonna save you? He’s not even here!”

There was laughter, ugly and thin. A baby cried. Someone begged.

Naruto’s chakra spiked hot.

My stomach knotted. This was the part, back home, where I’d pause the episode and take a breath before the hopeful music kicked in.

Out here, we didn’t have a soundtrack. Just our feet on stone and the sharp taste of adrenaline in my mouth.

We cleared the last rise and saw the village square.

Gato’s remaining hired muscle had cornered a bunch of villagers near the docks—a loose ring of maybe twenty, thirty men with weapons and cheap armor, trying to look scarier than they actually were. A couple had already grabbed crates, bags, whatever they could carry.

In front of them, blocking the path to Tsunami’s house, stood one small, shaking boy.

Inari wore his stupid little hat. His eyes were huge. His legs were trembling hard enough to rattle his whole body.

He had my charm hanging from his belt, tied with careful knots. The inked spiral stared back at me from across the square.

One of the thugs laughed. “Move it, brat, before I—”

“No!” Inari yelled. His voice cracked on the word. “This is our home! We’re not scared of you anymore!”

That wasn’t true; I could feel his fear from here. It buzzed off him like static. But underneath it was something solid and bright and furious.

Tsunami stood behind him, hand clamped over her mouth, eyes wet. Other villagers clustered around her—men and women with tools instead of kunai, mismatched bits of armor, faces drawn and tired.

One of the thugs stepped forward, hefting his club. “You think you can stop us, little hero?”

Inari flinched.

Naruto took a step forward on instinct.

Kakashi’s hand landed on his shoulder again, gentler this time. “Wait.”

“What?” Naruto hissed. “He’s gonna—”

“Look,” Kakashi said quietly.

We looked.

Inari swallowed. His knees wobbled. For a second, it really did look like he was about to bolt.

Then he grabbed the charm at his belt like it was something real instead of ink on paper and shouted, voice breaking with sheer terror,

“Everyone! Please! Help me! If we don’t stand up now, nothing will ever change!”

The square went very still.

The villagers looked at each other. They looked at the thugs. They looked at the tiny boy shaking so hard his hat almost fell off.

Slowly, one of the men stepped forward. An older guy with a bandaged arm and lines around his eyes. He held a hoe like a spear.

“Inari’s right,” he said. “We’ve been scared of Gato for too long.”

A woman with a laundry basket set it down and grabbed a broken plank. “My husband’s gone because of that bastard,” she said. “I’m done hiding.”

It snowballed.

One by one, people moved to stand beside Inari. Behind him. Around him. Tools turned into weapons. Rocks were picked up. Someone produced an old hunting bow that looked like it had been in a closet for a decade.

The thugs faltered.

“Hey—hey, back off!” one of them barked, suddenly less sure. “We’re armed! We’re—”

“You’re outnumbered,” the older man said flatly. “And your boss is dead.”

Not technically public knowledge yet, but I didn’t feel the need to correct him.

“Naruto,” I said, very quietly, “I think they’ve got this.”

He stared, wide-eyed, as Inari stepped forward again, clutching his charm so tightly his knuckles went white.

“We’re not tools,” Inari shouted. “We’re people! This is our home!”

That hit weirdly close to home for reasons I did not have the bandwidth to unpack.

Then the village moved as one.

It wasn’t pretty. There was a lot of screaming and flailing and totally incorrect weapon form. But thirty half-armed, genuinely pissed-off villagers versus a couple dozen mercenaries whose paycheck had just evaporated?

The mercs broke faster than I expected.

A few tried to fight and got dogpiled. Most took one look at the wave of humanity coming at them and booked it for the boats.

Within minutes, they were scrambling to untie ropes, pushing each other out of the way, arguing over whatever loot they’d managed to grab. A couple jumped straight into the water to swim for it rather than face another day in Wave.

On the shore, Inari dropped to his knees, shaking with delayed terror and adrenaline.

Tsunami ran to him and scooped him up, hugging him so hard I heard the breath leave his lungs. Villagers cheered, cried, laughed in that hysterical, too-loud way that only happens when you don’t die.

Beside me, Naruto made a soft, strangled sound.

“You see that?” he breathed. “He did it. That crybaby actually—”

“He’s not a crybaby,” I said, but there was no bite in it.

His chakra felt like a sunrise—tired, aching, but filling with warm, stunned pride.

Kakashi’s eye crinkled above his mask. “Looks like Wave has its own heroes,” he murmured.

Sasuke snorted quietly. “Tch. Took them long enough.”

His chakra, though, flickered in a way that said he was impressed and annoyed about it.

I watched Inari cling to his mom and felt something unknot in my chest.

The little charm on his belt had no actual chakra effect. I hadn’t had the reserves or the skill to make it do anything more than tingle if you held it long enough.

But sometimes the magic wasn’t in the ink. It was in what people decided it meant.

“Good job, kid,” I whispered, so quiet only the fog and whatever gods handled narrative symmetry could hear me. “You did the thing.”

We buried Haku and Zabuza on a rise overlooking the bridge.

“Buried” was generous. It was more like “assembled a respectful pile of rocks and made sure nothing hungry could get to them easily.” We didn’t exactly have a full mortuary team on hand.

Tazuna insisted on helping, even though his hands shook. Naruto helped too, with a kind of solemn determination I hadn’t seen on his face before. Sasuke limped through it, breath hissing every time he bent, but never said a word about stopping.

Kakashi did most of the heavy lifting, both literal and metaphorical.

When the cairns were finally done—two side by side, rough and uneven but solid—everyone stepped back.

The fog had thinned to a light dampness in the air. The bridge stretched out behind us, clean lines and fresh stone. Below, the sea lapped quietly at the pillars, like it hadn’t just seen a small, contained tragedy.

Naruto stood in front of Haku’s cairn, fists clenched at his sides.

“He was my enemy,” Naruto said, voice thick. “But he… he was also just… human. You know? He had dreams and—and a stupid mask and he liked herbs and—”

His words tangled. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his arm.

Kakashi watched him with that tired, patient look he saved for students who were learning a lesson he couldn’t teach on a blackboard.

“There are many kinds of shinobi,” Kakashi said quietly. “Many kinds of monsters. And many kinds of tools.”

Naruto flinched at the word “tools.”

“He wasn’t just a tool,” Naruto said fiercely. “Even if he thought he was. Even if that jerk treated him like one. He was… he was precious.”

“Yeah,” I thought. “He was.”

I already knew that, from the way Haku’s chakra had wrapped around Zabuza like silk around a blade. From the way his voice had gone soft when he talked about being “useful.” From the way he’d stepped between us and Zabuza’s dreams without hesitation.

I didn’t say any of that out loud. This was Naruto’s moment, not mine.

Instead, I walked forward when it felt like the space was empty enough and knelt by Haku’s cairn.

My hands shook as I set the small stone I’d been working on at the base.

It wasn’t much. Just a palm-sized rock I’d smoothed down and then carefully inked with a simple spiral. Not the Leaf symbol—this wasn’t about the village. Just a curve turning inward, and then back out again, like a path that led somewhere instead of a circle that trapped you.

No chakra. No function. Just lines.

“A gravemarker you drew yourself,” my brain supplied. “Welcome to your new hobby: memorial design.”

“Is that one of your seals?” Naruto asked hoarsely, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Not really,” I said. “It doesn’t do anything. It’s just… a sign. Just in case he still has somewhere to look from.”

“Do you really think he can… see it?” Inari asked softly from behind us.

His eyes were still red. The charm at his belt was stained with dirt now, but he hadn’t taken it off.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But if souls stick around anywhere, it’s probably here.”

On a hillside above a bridge that changed everything. Wrapped up in the memory of a boy who’d given his life to protect someone who only learned how to say “thank you” at the very end.

The breeze shifted. For half a second, I could’ve sworn the air felt… lighter. Less crowded. Like two presences had finally stopped pacing and laid down.

Probably imagination. Probably trauma.

I stood up anyway.

Tazuna cleared his throat, voice rough. “Zabuza Momochi,” he said slowly, like the name was a rock in his mouth. “You were a demon. You killed my men. You… also killed Gato.”

He looked at the second cairn for a long moment.

“I won’t forgive what you did,” he said. “But I’ll be damned if I forget what you did at the end.”

Naruto sniffed. “That sounds… fair, I guess,” he muttered.

Kakashi’s eye crinkled slightly. “The world is complicated like that,” he said.

No one argued.

Tazuna finished his bridge a week later.

A miracle, according to the villagers. Pure stubbornness and sheer spite, according to Tazuna. The man worked like someone had insulted his ancestors and the concept of structural integrity in the same sentence.

We helped where we could.

Naruto carried supplies and complained loudly. Sasuke did precision work and pretended he wasn’t enjoying using his hands for something that wasn’t violence. I patched blisters and bruises and occasionally reinforced a rope with a little chakra if it looked dodgy.

It was… weirdly peaceful.

Wave slowly started to look different around the edges. People walked a little straighter. Shops opened shutters that had been nailed shut for months. Kids played closer to the docks without their parents yanking them back in terror.

Hope had weight to it. A color. I saw it everywhere.

On the day Tazuna laid the final stone, half the village gathered on the shore to watch.

The bridge stretched out behind him, solid and gleaming in the weak sunlight. The fog had pulled back like a curtain, giving us a clear view for the first time since we’d arrived.

Tazuna wiped his hands on his pants, took a deep breath, and turned to face the crowd.

“Well,” he said. “There it is. We did it.”

The villagers cheered. Kids waved. Someone started crying again, but this time it sounded like relief instead of despair.

Naruto puffed up like a frog.

“Pretty great, huh?” he said, elbowing me. “I mean, obviously he couldn’t have done it without my help.”

“Your help,” I repeated, watching three builders haul away the last of the scaffolding Naruto had broken twice.

“Yeah!” Naruto grinned. “I totally inspired everyone with my coolness!”

“You fell off the bridge three times,” Sasuke said, deadpan. “Once into wet concrete.”

“That was on purpose,” Naruto protested. “To test it.”

I snorted. “Sure. Very scientific.”

Tsunami stepped forward, smiling tiredly. Inari clung to her side, the courage charm now tied around his wrist like a bracelet, the ink faded and smudged from being touched too much.

“So,” a woman in the crowd called, “what are we going to call it?”

There was a hum of curiosity. People turned to Tazuna, who suddenly looked like he’d rather wrestle Zabuza again.

“I, uh…” he said. “I hadn’t really… thought about…”

“Name it after yourself!” one man shouted. “You’re the one who built it!”

“Yeah!” another agreed. “The Tazuna Bridge!”

Tazuna grimaced. “That sounds stupid,” he muttered.

“Naming things after yourself is lame,” Naruto announced, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Right, Kakashi-sensei?”

Kakashi pretended to ponder. “Well, the Fourth Hokage didn’t name the village after himself, so I’d say you have a point.”

Naruto beamed like he’d just won a philosophical debate.

Tazuna squinted at Naruto, then at the bridge, then at the boy again.

A slow, fond sort of exasperation crossed his face.

“Fine,” he said. “Then how about this.”

He cleared his throat, raising his voice.

“We’ll call it the Great Naruto Bridge,” he declared. “After the biggest idiot with the biggest guts I’ve ever met.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Naruto’s jaw dropped. “Huh?!”

Then the crowd erupted.

A few people laughed. More cheered. A couple shouted “Naruto! Naruto!” because they were absolutely the type to latch onto a chant.

Naruto turned bright red all the way to his ears.

“W-why me?!” he yelped. “I mean, it’s a cool name, I guess, but—”

“You’re the one who stirred things up,” Tazuna said, grinning. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t think any of this would’ve changed. You gave us the guts to fight. You and your… terrifying amount of yelling.”

Naruto blinked fast. His chakra flared high and loud, a tangle of embarrassment and pride and disbelief.

Kakashi ruffled his hair, ignoring Naruto’s squawk of protest. “Looks like you’ve left your mark on more than monuments now,” he said.

I leaned on the railing, watching Naruto sputter under the attention, and felt something warm loosen in my chest.

“Ink washes off,” I thought. “This won’t.”

“I do all the careful patching up,” I said aloud, “and you get a whole bridge named after you. Again.”

Naruto spun on me. “Hey! When did I get something named after me the first time?!”

“The mustache,” I said. “The Third’s statue will never be the same.”

“That’s not—”

He flailed, then laughed, because he couldn’t not.

Honestly? I was glad. Let the world remember him. Let it carve his name into stone and tell stories about the loud blond kid who wouldn’t let them stay afraid.

If anyone deserved that, it was him.

We left Wave in the early morning.

The fog had thinned to a gentle haze that made everything look softer. The Great Naruto Bridge stretched behind us, solid and complete, connecting a once-hopeless country to the rest of the world.

Inari ran after us until the edge of the village, panting, hat askew.

“Wait!” he shouted.

Naruto turned. “Huh?”

Inari skidded to a stop in front of him, sucking in air.

“Th-thank you!” he blurted. “For… for everything. For not giving up. For… for showing me I didn’t have to be a coward.”

Naruto scratched the back of his head, suddenly flustered. “I mean, I just did what anyone would’ve done, y’know? It was nothing, really—”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Inari said fiercely. “You changed things.”

Naruto froze for a second, eyes wide. Then he grinned, big and bright and a little sheepish.

“I’m gonna change the whole world,” he said. “Starting small is fine.”

I choked on a laugh. “Modest,” I muttered.

Inari turned to me then.

“Thank you,” he said again, quieter. He tapped the charm at his wrist. “This… helped.”

“It’s just a doodle,” I said.

He shook his head. “It reminded me,” he insisted. “When I was scared.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then stopped.

“Then I’m glad,” I said simply. “Keep it, if you want. Or draw your own later. Just… don’t stop reminding yourself.”

He nodded, serious in a way little kids shouldn’t have to be.

Tsunami called him back a moment later. He ran to her, waving until we were out of sight.

The road back to Konoha felt different.

Naruto walked ahead, hands clasped behind his head, humming something off-key. Every so often he’d punch the air and shout, “Believe it!” like he was practicing for a future where the whole world listened.

Sasuke walked a little behind him, quieter than usual. His chakra was tight and thoughtful, circling around itself. I caught him looking at Naruto’s back once, expression unreadable.

Kakashi brought up the rear, Icha Icha held at a comfortable “I’m reading but also watching you” angle. His chakra felt… drained, but steadier. Like he’d filed the mission away under “things that hurt” and “things that mattered” at the same time.

I walked somewhere between Naruto and Sasuke, a half-step off to the side.

My fingers were still stained—ink under the nails, faint smears of dried blood in the creases. My arms ached from bandaging, from hauling, from drawing too many seals too fast.

The forest on either side of the road was lush and green, sunlight filtering through the leaves in warm patches. It smelled like earth and growing things. Not like the woods where I’d died the first time.

“In my first world,” I thought, watching Naruto argue with Sasuke over who’d landed the cooler hit on Haku, “I bled out alone in a forest and no one knew what that meant until it was too late.”

Here, people died on bridges with someone holding their hand. People changed their minds at the end. Kids cried and then stood up anyway. Whole villages shifted from terror to hope because one idiot in orange refused to back down.

It wasn’t better. Not exactly. The violence was bigger here, the stakes higher, the monsters both literal and metaphorical. The world chewed people up and spat them out with impressive efficiency.

But…

“Maybe,” I thought, flexing my ink-stained fingers, “I can make some of it less awful.”

Maybe I could be the hands that caught people before they shattered, the lines that stitched things together instead of just holding them in place. The one who made sure Naruto’s bridge-building wasn’t just metaphorical.

Naruto tripped over a rock, windmilled his arms, and barely kept his feet.

“I meant to do that!” he shouted.

Sasuke scoffed. “Idiot.”

Kakashi turned a page.

I smiled to myself and kept walking.

The road ahead was long. There would be more forests, more bridges, more bodies. More kids who thought they were tools and men who called themselves demons and people who believed they were alone.

I’d already died in the wrong forest once.

This time, I planned to do something about it.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

By the time we saw the village walls, my legs hated me and my ribs felt like they’d been replaced with bruises.

Konoha’s gates rose out of the trees like always: giant wooden doors, scarred and solid, flanked by the two chunin who seemed to live there more than any house. The mid-afternoon sun painted everything warm.

Naruto, naturally, had enough energy to jog ahead and yell.

“WE’RE BAAACK!”

The guard on the left visibly flinched. The one on the right peered past him, eyes flicking over Kakashi’s slouched form, Sasuke’s scuffed clothes, me trailing behind with ink-stained fingers and a mission scroll in my hand.

Their chakra did an interesting little double-take—relief, surprise, something like as they realized all three of us were walking in under our own power.

“Team 7,” the right guard said, pen already scratching across his clipboard. “Report?”

Kakashi raised a lazy hand. “Back from escort mission. One client delivered. One minor bout of international terrorism averted.”

Naruto puffed up. “We beat this huge demon of the Mist with a sword taller than Sylvie! I did a super awesome combo with Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei—”

“Correction,” Sasuke said flatly. “You almost died and Kakashi cleaned up.”

Naruto whirled on him. “We almost died together, thank you.”

I leaned my shoulder against the gate frame, letting the village wash over me.

Wave had felt like someone turned the saturation down on everything. Chakra there ran grey and thin, stretched over too many empty stomachs and empty houses. Even the air had tasted tired.

Konoha was… lighter. Brighter. The chakra “weather” here hummed like a crowded street market: warm pockets of contentment, sharp flashes of irritation, kids laughing somewhere off to the left, an ANBU watching from a rooftop with their presence folded small.

But right next to me?

Naruto burned hotter than before, wild orange-red threaded with something darker, heavier. Sasuke’s presence had sharpened into a hard, spinning point. Kakashi’s chakra, usually this easy, smooth current, felt dimmer at the edges—tugged thin by Sharingan overuse and a week of pretending he wasn’t exhausted.

We’d left as three rookies with a scarecrow. We were coming back as… slightly more dented rookies with a scarecrow who had to pretend this was fine.

“We’ll need the written report, Hatake,” the left guard said, pen hovering. “The mission was listed as C-rank.”

Kakashi eye-smiled. “And it will be very earnestly filed. Right after the hospital tries to convince me I’m not allowed to run myself to chakra exhaustion. Again.”

The guards gave us another once-over, like they were trying to reconcile “these undersized goblins” with “rumors of a missing-nin and a crime lord.” One of them muttered, “Kids these days,” under his breath.

I didn’t take it personally. They were just late to the party.

Naruto inhaled deeply as we stepped through the gates, chest puffed out.

“Smell that?” he said. “Ramen. And not-rotting-fish-smell. I missed not-rotting-fish-smell.”

“Your standards are inspiring,” I said.

He grinned, wide and toothy, then winced when the bandage under his shirt tugged.

Right. We were home. Which meant step one was obvious.

“Hospital,” I said.

Naruto groaned. “Nooo, not bandage gremlins—”

Kakashi flicked him lightly on the back of the head. “Hospital, Naruto. Non-negotiable.”

Sasuke said nothing, but his shoulders had that extra-straight look they got when he didn’t want to admit he was also in pain.

I adjusted my glasses and followed them toward the white-walled guilt box where Konoha stored its broken shinobi and pretended that made us fine.

The hospital smelled like it always did: antiseptic and herbs and faint sweat, with an undercurrent of chakra that tasted like static if you focused too hard.

Kakashi got hijacked by a medic-nin the second we walked in.

“Hatake-san.”

The woman was short, steel-eyed, and had the violent patience of someone who’d treated him before. She looked him up and down the way Ino’s mom looked at mismatched outfits: clinically offended.

“You’re pale,” she said.

“I’m always pale,” Kakashi said.

“Your chakra pathways are inflamed.”

“Occupational hazard.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Sit.”

He sat. The power of medical authority.

Sasuke and Naruto slumped into plastic chairs nearby. I hovered close enough to eavesdrop without getting in the way, mostly because watching someone tell Kakashi off was cheap entertainment.

The medic pressed glowing hands over his side. The air around her shifted, little waves of professional focus rippling the chakra-weather.

“You overloaded your Sharingan again,” she said. “Did you forget the part where it’s not actually yours?”

Kakashi scratched his cheek. “It was either that or let my students be turned into red mist by an S-rank missing-nin. I made a call.”

Naruto perked up. “We weren’t gonna be red mist! Me and Sasuke had it totally under control—”

“You froze and got chained,” Sasuke said.

“You froze and got almost dead,” I added helpfully.

Naruto pointed at both of us. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side,” I said. “I’d just prefer that side not be ‘splattered across a bridge.’”

The medic snorted once, then schooled her face back into disapproval.

“You need to stop pushing your limits like this, Hatake,” she said. “Especially if you’re going to keep taking genin on missions that jump two ranks in the field.”

Kakashi lifted his visible eye toward the ceiling like maybe there was a friendly Hokage up there who’d bail him out.

“If someone wants to give us only D-ranks forever,” he said, “I’ll happily spend my days rescuing cats.”

“Liar,” I muttered.

He cut a glance at me. I shrugged.

“You do,” I said. “You’d die of boredom. Very dramatically.”

“Some of us enjoy reading quietly,” he replied. His chakra flickered with tired amusement.

The medic finished her scan, then scribbled something on a chart.

“I’m putting in the file—again—that you’re restricted from high-intensity missions for a week,” she said. “You need to rest, hydrate, and for the love of the Shodai, stop using the eye unless you absolutely have to.”

Kakashi gave a lazy salute.

“I’ll consider treating my body with basic respect,” he said. “For the children.”

That was my opening and my mouth did the stupid thing before my brain could stop it.

“If you need a control group,” I said, “you could give me some first-hand lessons in ‘what chakra overuse feels like.’ For education purposes.”

Naruto blinked at me. Sasuke stared. The medic raised her brows. Kakashi’s entire presence went “…”.

Heat shot up my neck.

“I mean—” I flailed. “Not actually! I’m not asking you to— I just— lessons, not… experiments.”

Naruto frowned. “Why would you want to feel like that on purpose? He looked like he was gonna fall over and die.”

“Curiosity,” I said weakly. “Terrible personality trait. I’m working on it.”

Kakashi made a soft, incredulous sound.

“Sylvie,” he said, “as your sensei, I feel obligated to inform you that my training methods do not include ‘collapse in front of your students so they can take notes.’”

“Yet,” I said under my breath.

He ignored that.

The medic shoved a smaller clipboard into my hands.

“You,” she said. “Diagnostics practice.”

My brain did a very quick happy dance.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

Naruto slumped dramatically. “Why does she get to ‘practice’ and I just get poked?”

“Because she volunteered to be a terrifying little nerd,” the medic said. “Put your arm out, Naruto.”

He grumbled but obeyed. I pressed my glowing fingertips to the bruises under his sleeve, letting my chakra trickle in just enough to feel the difference between “healing” and “we need to panic now.”

The buzz of his presence jumped out at me, familiar and loud. Underneath the surface scrapes, his body was knitting itself back together at a ridiculous speed.

“You’re fine,” I said. “Annoyingly so.”

He grinned. “Told you I was tough.”

“Sasuke next,” the medic said.

Sasuke extended his leg without comment. The ache in his chakra was deeper, slower—muscle strain, the echo of Ice Mirror needles, fatigue he was carefully not showing.

“Try shifting your chakra to your fingertips,” I murmured, more to myself. “Less flood, more… thread.”

It wasn’t elegant, but I could feel the injury in clearer outlines. Every bit of feedback like this was a little treasure hoarded.

I hesitated, watching the medic's hands as she adjusted Naruto's chart. Her chakra felt clean and steady, like cool water running under skin. Not flashy. Not destructive. Just… fixing things.

“Hey,” I said, before my anxiety could drag it back down my throat. “If I wanted to get better at this—at scanning, I mean—what should I even be looking for?”

She blinked at me, then at my still-glowing fingers. “You already are,” she said. “Most genin your age can’t feel the difference between a bruise and a torn ligament.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know his arm was fine until you said it was,” I argued. “I’m guessing. I don’t want to be guessing when it’s… worse.”

Haku’s body flashed across my mind, too still on the bridge. Kakashi slumped against Zabuza with blood in his hair. The tiny dip in Naruto’s chakra when he’d sagged into sleep.

The medic’s face softened in a way that made me uncomfortable. “If you want formal med-nin training, talk to the hospital after the Exams,” she said. “We always need more hands. Until then? Start with anatomy. Learn what the body’s supposed to feel like before you try to fix it.”

“Homework,” I muttered, but my brain was already making a list. Books. Charts. Maybe I could bribe someone into letting me watch their rounds.

If I was going to be the one slapping glow-stick hands on people, I wanted to know what I was missing before it killed them.

Kakashi watched from the exam table, eye half-lidded. His chakra smoothed out, just a little.

“Look at you,” he said. “Already stealing my job.”

“I’m just trying to make sure you get to keep yours,” I said.

He hummed, something unreadable flickering under the noise of the room.

That was the thing about Kakashi: he could fold his emotions so flat it took real effort to tug at the edges. Here, surrounded by clean white walls and the ghosts of every shinobi that hadn’t walked out of this place, there was a tired gratitude buried under the habitual lazy.

I didn’t prod it. Not yet.

We almost made it out of the hospital before Naruto got ambushed.

“NARUTO!”

Iruka hit him like a small, panicked meteor.

One second Naruto was standing in the hallway, whining about wanting ramen. The next he was wrapped in a flak vest and tan arms, his face smushed against a chuunin’s chest.

“CAN’T—CAN’T BREATHE—” he wheezed.

Iruka did not care.

“You little idiot,” Iruka choked out, voice cracking around the edges. “A B-rank? With a missing-nin? Do you have any idea how—”

He broke off, clearly cycling through at least six different emotions at once. His chakra was a hot mess: guilt, fear, relief, exasperation. It hurt to touch.

Slowly, cautiously, he unwound his arms enough to hold Naruto at arm’s length and inspect him. Naruto, of course, beamed through the oxygen deprivation.

“See?” Naruto said. “Totally fine. We kicked butt.”

Then Iruka saw me.

“Sylvie,” he said, and I got the same treatment, slightly less intense. His hands closed around my shoulders. His eyes did a quick, frantic scan like he was checking for missing limbs.

I picked up a flash of the last time he’d seen us: kids in an Academy classroom, still safe, still unblooded. Then a mission scroll with the words “Chakra exhaustion (Jonin), multiple critical injuries possible,” and the knowledge that his brats had been out there in that.

“Hi, Iruka-sensei,” I said, awkward, trying not to crumble under the pressure of his worry. “We… didn’t die?”

“Not funny,” he snapped, then swallowed hard. “You’re—are you hurt?”

“Less than last week,” I said. “More than I’d like. Working on it.”

His expression did something complicated, like someone had tried to mix “proud” and “furious” in the same bowl.

Naruto took the opportunity to wriggle free and puff himself up.

“I told you, Iruka-sensei!” he said. “We took down this giant demon of the Hidden Mist with a huge sword, and then I went all—” he flailed his arms, “—whoosh, and Sasuke did this super cool fire thing and Kakashi-sensei was like—” he mimed a one-eyed glower, “—and the guy was totally scared—”

“It was a B-rank missing-nin named Momochi Zabuza,” I cut in. “He wasn’t scared of anything. Naruto almost died, Sasuke did actual tactics, Kakashi did most of the heavy lifting, and I… tried very hard not to throw up in a puddle.”

Iruka’s head snapped toward Kakashi, who had just ambled up behind us like he hadn’t heard his name.

“You turned a C-rank into a B-rank?” Iruka demanded.

Kakashi lifted his hands. “Technically, the client turned it into a B-rank. I just… adjusted.”

“You took three fresh genin into a lethal combat situation with a missing-nin,” Iruka said, voice going tight.

Kakashi’s posture never changed, but his chakra hummed low.

“They’re alive,” he said. “More experienced. You know as well as I do that the world outside D-ranks doesn’t wait for perfect timing.”

Iruka clenched his jaw. “They’re twelve.”

“Twelve,” Kakashi echoed. “And already saw more in one mission than some chunin do in a year.”

Naruto blinked between them, sensing the shift but not the depth.

“Uh,” he said. “Should we… leave?”

Sasuke had already stepped back, something shuttered dropping over his face. I grabbed Naruto’s sleeve and tugged.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let the adults fight about child endangerment without an audience.”

We slunk a few steps away, just far enough that Kakashi and Iruka’s voices blurred into low murmurs… but not far enough that my chakra sense couldn’t pick up the edges.

Words floated down the hall: “Chunin Exams,” “recommendation,” “too soon,” “already in B-rank territory,” “responsibility.”

The phrase “Chunin Exams” rang like a bell.

Naruto’s ears perked. “Did he say—”

“Shh,” I hissed, even as my pulse kicked. “Not our business yet.”

My brain, of course, ignored that and immediately started cataloguing.

Chunin meant rank. Rank meant more responsibility. More say in mission parameters. Less being handed “escort this client, surprise, it’s a mob boss situation.”

More kids in danger, if those kids weren’t ready.

Also, more ways to make sure people like Gato didn’t get to steamroll entire countries.

Iruka’s chakra spiked with worry. Kakashi’s smoothed out in that deliberate way that meant he was digging his heels in.

“They’re not ready,” Iruka said, low and fierce.

“They’re as ready as anyone ever is,” Kakashi replied. “And they won’t get readier if we keep them chasing cats.”

Naruto leaned closer, practically vibrating. “Chunin Exams,” he whispered. “That sounds awesome. And dangerous. And awesome.”

My stomach fluttered.

“Yeah,” I said. “It really does.”

We finally escaped the hospital with a promise from Kakashi to “let us know” about whatever adult argument was happening, which translated to: he’d say nothing until we were standing in the middle of something exploding.

Naruto and I ended up on the main road as the sun dipped lower, orange light hitting tile roofs and the Hokage Monument in the distance. The paint we’d once splashed all over those faces was long gone, scrubbed away by punishment and time.

People moved around us in easy currents: vendors packing up, shinobi heading off-duty, kids chasing each other with paper shuriken.

Every person we passed made Naruto’s shoulders twitch just a little. Some glanced at him and looked away quickly. Some didn’t look at all. Old habits.

He kicked a rock down the street like it had offended him.

“Next time,” he said suddenly, “I’m gonna be the one who saves everyone.”

I blinked. “You literally already helped save everyone. You and Sasuke almost got turned into ice cube pin cushions for it.”

“Yeah, but Kakashi-sensei had to bail us out,” he said, scowling. “He almost died because he had to protect us. If I was stronger, he wouldn’t have had to use the eye that much. Or at all. Or we could’ve taken Zabuza down ourselves.”

The rock bounced off a wall and skittered away.

“I’m not gonna be the dead weight forever,” he muttered. “I’m gonna get so strong that no one ever has to save me again. I’ll be the one saving people. And then—”

“You’ll be Hokage,” I finished.

He shot me a quick look. “Yeah. I will.”

His chakra flared hot and determined, the same stubborn orange that had punched through Haku’s mirrors and screamed at Zabuza about treating people like tools.

I thought of Haku’s still face. Zabuza’s bloody hand reaching for him. Gato’s body tumbling off the bridge. Inari’s little wrist with my stupid charm seal tied around it.

In my first life, I’d died alone in a forest, bleeding into the dirt, nobody coming because nobody knew I was gone yet.

Here, people died on bridges and battlefields and hospital beds.

Here, people also held their hands when they went.

Not better. Not worse. Just… different.

“I want the next test,” I heard myself say.

Naruto blinked. “Huh?”

I shoved my hands into my shorts pockets, fingers brushing dry ink flakes.

“The Chunin Exams,” I said. “If Kakashi recommends us. I want to take them.”

His face lit up. “Yeah? Really?”

“Really,” I said. “Not because I want a fancy vest. I mean, the pockets would be nice, but. If we’re doing missions like that, I’d rather have some say in what ‘like that’ looks like.”

He squinted at me. “You mean… boss people around.”

“I mean influence strategy,” I corrected. “But yes, eventually, boss people around.”

He laughed, loud and bright, earning a couple of annoyed looks from passersby.

“Man,” he said, “we are gonna blow those exams away. Written stuff, fighting stuff, whatever. I’ll show them. I’ll show everyone.”

“Careful,” I said. “Your overconfidence is showing.”

“My overconfidence is amazing,” he said.

We turned down the street that split toward the orphanage on one side and the cheap apartments on the other. The sky above was streaked pink and gold, the Hokage faces watching like always.

Naruto dropped his voice a little as we walked.

“Hey,” he said. “On the bridge… when you closed Haku’s eyes.”

My chest tightened.

“Yeah?”

He kicked at another rock. Missed. Tried to pretend he hadn’t.

“Thanks,” he said. “For being there. For him. For me.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat.

“Thanks for not letting Zabuza turn us into art installations,” I said. “Team effort.”

He grinned, crooked and sincere. “Team 7,” he said.

“Team 7,” I echoed.

We split at the corner with a lazy wave—Naruto heading toward his empty apartment that smelled like instant ramen and stubbornness, me toward the orphanage that mostly smelled like cabbage and regret.

Ink stained the pads of my fingers. My chakra felt like a frayed wire, humming low and tired.

Somewhere in the mission office, a jonin was filling out forms that would decide whether three twelve-year-olds got thrown into a tournament where children fought other children for promotion.

Somewhere, the world was rearranging itself around those words: Chunin Exams.

I curled my hand into a fist, feeling the ghosts of seal patterns under my skin.

“I’m not going to stop people from dying,” I murmured to myself, so quietly the village couldn’t hear. “But maybe I can make sure more of them live long enough to choose how they go.”

Later that night, I was walking home when the street in front of me… acquired a Kakashi.

One second I was alone under the streetlamps, listening to the soft hum of sleeping village chakra. The next, my sensei was just there, hands in his pockets, casual as a lamppost that had learned to slouch.

“Hey, Sylvie.”

I tried very hard not to jump. My feet still left the ground.

“G-good evening, sensei,” I said, shoving my hands into my shorts like that would hide the flinch.

He tilted his head. “Come on. You said you wanted solo training.”

He turned and started walking like that was a perfectly normal sentence and not an invitation to spontaneously combust from nerves.

My brain fuzzed a little. I am a professional, I told myself. I am a kunoichi. I do not skip after my jonin sensei like a duckling.

I only kind of skipped.

We ended up at the old hospital on the outskirts of the village—the one they mostly used now for overflow and low-stakes stuff. During the day it was where people went for broken fingers and food poisoning. At night, it sat under the trees like a dozing beast, just a few windows lit.

The lobby had one bored-looking receptionist behind a high desk, reading a book I didn’t recognize. Her chakra was a sleepy, soft blue that brightened the second she saw Kakashi.

“Oh, Hatake-san,” she said, smiling. “Long time no—”

He lifted a hand in apology and tipped his head toward me. “Training,” he said. “Sorry to steal a room.”

Her eyes flicked over me, curious. I tried to stand up straighter and look like a person who knew the difference between a vein and an artery on purpose.

“Go on, then,” she said, smile lingering. “Exam room three’s free.”

Kakashi led me down a short hallway that smelled like disinfectant and old paper. Exam room three was exactly what you’d expect: narrow bed with crinkly paper, metal stool, cabinet of supplies, sink. No ominous ritual circles or hidden trapdoors. Disappointing, honestly.

He leaned against the wall by the door, arms crossed.

“Okay,” he said. “Your patient will be here in a second. The only rule is: no questions.”

He winked—at least, I think he did. With the hitai-ate over one eye, it was impossible to tell.

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. “No questions,” I repeated. “Got it.”

“Good.” He pushed himself off the wall. “I’ll be in the hall.”

I sat on the stool after he left, my palms a little damp against the metal. For a minute there was just the buzz of the fluorescent light and the distant murmur of the receptionist turning a page.

Then I heard Kakashi’s voice outside. Something about “sequel” and “actually better than the first one,” followed by another set of footsteps joining his. Their chakra signature was… odd. Tight, neat, folded in on itself.

Instinct made me stand, smoothing my shirt like that would somehow make me look more medically competent in my slightly-too-big shorts.

“Good even—” I started, cutting myself off as the door opened.

The person who stepped in wasn’t Kakashi.

The first thing I saw was the mask. An ANBU-style porcelain mask: white with red markings, painted into a vague cat shape. The kind of thing that would’ve freaked me out in a horror movie. Here, it just made my stomach flip for different reasons.

ANBU.

They said nothing, just walked in and closed the door behind them. Up close, their chakra felt… wrong in a way that wasn’t bad, just unfamiliar. Most people were messy gradients, jagged edges, little flashes of color where their emotions leaked. This was like ink on rice paper: controlled, smooth, very still.

Under all that flat white, though, there was a faint tremor of nerves. Not danger. Just someone who really did not like being on the patient side of the equation.

I exhaled slowly.

“Please, have a seat,” I said, motioning to the bed. “How can I help you?”

They hesitated, then moved with that same precise economy and sat. No wasted motion. Definitely trained.

Without a word, they started rolling up their left sleeve.

The bite was obvious: two punctures on the inside of the forearm, already puffy and discolored. The flesh around it looked… wrong. The veins nearby had gone a dark, ugly violet, spiderwebbing up toward the elbow. The blood at the edges had thickened into something that was more sludge than liquid.

I stepped closer, reaching out with my chakra sense. Up close, the whole area felt like static under my fingers—wrong frequency, like someone had poured ink into clear water and stirred.

“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. “That’s… not great.”

The ANBU tilted their head, mask giving away nothing. I could have sworn their chakra twitched at my dry understatement.

I pulled in a breath, forcing my brain into checklist mode. This was why I’d begged for more training, right? To do something when it mattered.

“No questions” meant I didn’t ask what bit them, or why they weren’t already in the main hospital. Maybe it was classified. Maybe this was a test. Probably both.

“Pain?” I asked instead. “Numbness? Dizziness?”

They hesitated, then gave a small nod and tapped two fingers against their chest—just under the collarbone. The chakra around their heart fluttered, faintly off-beat.

Great. Circulating poison. Timer already ticking.

“All right,” I muttered. “We’re going to need to get that out of you before it reaches anything important.”

I stepped over to the supply cabinet, hands moving almost on autopilot. Gloves. Bandages. A small scalpel. An empty syringe. A roll of blank tags and a pen.

I wasn’t good enough yet to neutralize venom with pure medical ninjutsu. But I didn’t have to, not if I could move it.

I dropped onto the stool and quickly sketched a seal on one of the tags, pen scratching fast: a simple siphon array, tuned to pull out anything that didn’t match the target’s chakra signature. I’d practiced it on bruises and splinters, never on something this serious.

“Give me your arm,” I said.

They extended it without flinching. Up close, the faint scent of metal and ink clung to them. There was a paint stain on the inside of their wrist, half scrubbed away. Huh.

I pressed my glowing fingertips to their skin just above the bite, letting my chakra seep in, careful and thin—a thread, not a flood, like the hospital medic had said. The venom felt like cold grit in a warm river, heavier than blood, dragging at the flow.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ve got you. Don’t move.”

I placed the tag just below the puncture, the paper sticking slightly to their skin. With my other hand, I guided my chakra into the seal, activating the siphon.

The tag warmed under my fingers. Slowly, painfully slowly, the color around the bite shifted. The dark purple veining began to recede from the elbow, pooling back toward the punctures as if someone had hit rewind. The tag’s ink lines darkened, swelling with something that wasn’t blood.

The ANBU’s breath hitched, just once. I felt the flutter at their chest steady a fraction.

“Almost,” I murmured. Sweat pricked at my temples. My own chakra reserves were not exactly massive, and this was like trying to vacuum gravel through a straw without swallowing any.

When the veins nearest the surface had mostly cleared, I let the siphon taper off. The tag had gone from pale paper to a heavy, almost wet dark. I peeled it back carefully and slapped a second, much smaller seal over the bite itself to hold any leftover venom in place.

“Okay,” I said, voice a little rough. “Step one done. Step two… let’s see what we caught.”

I set the used tag on a metal tray and pressed the tip of the scalpel to it, slicing a careful line through the center of the seal. The paper shivered, and a bead of thick, purple-black liquid welled up like a very gross tear.

It smelled acrid, like burned herbs and old pennies.

I drew it up into the syringe, capped it, and slapped another tag over the barrel—a containment seal, rough but functional. No sense leaving mystery poison just lying around.

Then I pressed my fingers to the ANBU’s arm again, flooding the area with gentle, green-tinted chakra. Flushing the tissue, coaxing the blood back into its normal rhythm. I followed it up the arm toward the shoulder, checking for lingering grit.

It wasn’t perfect. I could still feel faint traces of the wrongness deeper in the muscle, but nothing like the concentrated mess it had been. The chakra near their heart had smoothed out almost entirely.

I exhaled, only then realizing I’d been half holding my breath.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

A beat, then a small nod. They flexed their fingers experimentally. The dark discoloration had faded back to a more normal angry red around the punctures.

“Good,” I said, letting my hands drop. “The venom’s mostly out. There might still be tiny traces in your system, so you’re not going on any marathons tonight, but you’re not going to keel over in the next ten minutes either.”

They stared at me through the painted cat eyes of the mask. For a second I wondered if I’d completely misread everything and they were about to stand up and collapse.

Instead, they bowed at the waist, sudden and precise.

It threw me a little. ANBU weren’t exactly known for effusive gratitude.

“You’re welcome,” I said, then realized I was still clutching the syringe and probably looked like a tiny, concerned serial killer. I set it down. “Uh. Nice mask, by the way. Very… dramatic.”

Their chakra flared—a quick, embarrassed flicker of pink under the controlled white. One gloved hand went to the back of their head in a universal “don’t know what to do with my limbs” gesture. If a porcelain cat could look flustered, this one did.

Something about that made my chest go soft. Under all the secrecy and training and “no questions,” they were just… another kid who’d gotten bit by something nasty doing a job too big for their age.

“Try not to get eaten by anything for at least twenty-four hours,” I said dryly. “I’m on a chakra budget.”

They let out a tiny huff that might have been a laugh, then straightened and headed for the door. Just before they opened it, they glanced back at me, bowed again—smaller this time—and slipped out.

Kakashi slid in a heartbeat later, as if they’d traded places.

He looked from the cleared veins on the bed’s former occupant’s arm-shaped dent to the used tag on the tray to my slightly shaking hands.

“Well,” he said. “The patient didn’t explode. Always a good sign.”

“Not for lack of trying,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes. “What was that? The venom, I mean. It didn’t feel like any snakebite I’ve read about.”

One silver eyebrow arched.

“What was the rule?” he asked.

I made a face. “No questions.”

“Mm.” He stepped over to the tray and eyed the sealed syringe. “You did well. For the record.”

A little knot in my chest loosened at that. “I didn’t get it all,” I admitted. “There’s still trace contamination. If it’s something that keeps cycling—”

“He’ll be monitored,” Kakashi said. “You bought him time and prevented a trip straight to the morgue. That’s not nothing.”

I snorted. “High praise: ‘not nothing.’ I’ll embroider it on a pillow.”

His eye crinkled. “Don’t tempt me. I know people.”

He leaned back against the wall again, hands in his pockets, gaze sharpening just a fraction in that way that meant the laziness was mostly a costume.

“Consider this your first ANBU-adjacent consult,” he said. “There’s a whole part of this village that lives in shadows. When they break, they can’t always come through the front door. We need medics who can handle that. Quietly.”

I swallowed. “Quietly,” I repeated.

“Which brings us to the second rule,” he added.

I eyed him warily. “There’s a second rule?”

He nodded. “You don’t tell anyone what you just did. Not Naruto, not Sasuke, not Iruka, not Ino. Not even the nice receptionist who gave you the good room. This stays between you, me, and the patient. Understood?”

The words settled over my shoulders like a new weight. Not heavy in a bad way. More like a cloak I hadn’t realized I was already wearing.

“…Because of ANBU stuff?” I asked carefully. “Or because of me stuff?”

“Both,” he said. “They need anonymity. You need time to grow without every faction in this village trying to recruit you or kill you.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I can keep my mouth shut.”

“Good.” Kakashi pushed off the wall. “Then let’s get you home before the matron decides I’ve kidnapped you for some terrible experiment and bans me from the orphanage.”

I gathered the used tag and containment syringe onto the tray for the staff, peeled off my gloves, and flexed my fingers. They trembled just a little.

As we stepped back into the hallway, the receptionist glanced up. Her eyes flicked from me to Kakashi, to the now-empty doorway of exam room three.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

Kakashi gave her that lazy eye-curve that lied for him. “All patched up,” he said. “She did great.”

I rolled my eyes, but warmth crept up my neck anyway.

Outside, the night air was cooler, the village quieter. The Hokage Monument loomed in silhouette against a sky full of stars.

I walked beside Kakashi in silence for a while, feeling the echo of the siphon seal in my fingers, the ghost of venom in someone else’s veins.

Today I had watched a man cry over a kid who almost wasn’t his student anymore. I’d listened to two adults argue about whether I was ready to be thrown into a tournament designed to weed people out. I’d promised myself I would try to keep more people alive long enough to make their own choices.

And now, apparently, I was also on call for the people in masks who never wanted their names spoken.

Back home, slightly less squishy, significantly more complicated.

That still felt about right.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Konohamaru had done this first. This was, technically, his fault.

I pressed my back to the corner of the building anyway, hands clasped, chakra coiled and ready. Around the bend, Naruto’s voice bounced off the stone like an overexcited rubber ball.

“—I’m just saying, Sasuke, what if the Exams are actually like a secret boss fight? Or, or, like, a tournament inside a tournament—”

“Hn.”

“And after I win they’re gonna have to give me a vest and a ramen card for life—”

There it was. The cadence. The “OH RAMEN!” spike of joy as they passed the shop front. My pulse kicked up.

Time to make some truly regrettable choices.

I stepped out directly into their path.

Naruto yelped and skidded, nearly eating pavement. Sasuke stopped a pace back, chakra flickering sharp with mild alarm before smoothing into unimpressed.

He looked at me. Looked at the way I was braced, hands together in the most suspiciously familiar seal in the world. His mouth flattened.

“…no,” he said, already turning to step neatly out of splash range. “Whatever this is, no.”

“Good morning to you too,” I said. “Naruto.”

He perked up instantly. “Sylvie! I thought you were meeting us at the training grounds? Or—wait, are you here to hear about my excellent new Exam strategy—”

“Better,” I said. “I came to apologize.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“For calling Sexy Jutsu a war crime.”

Sasuke made a tiny, strangled noise.

Naruto’s eyes went huge. “You what?”

“I have reconsidered my stance,” I said gravely, because if I didn’t commit I’d lose my nerve. Chakra tingled at my fingertips, ready to sprint up my arms. “Some techniques deserve to be studied empirically. For science. And mutual psychological damage.”

Naruto leaned forward like a kid at a street performance. “No way, no way—did you learn it? Did you actually—”

I snapped my hands into the last seal before I could think better of it.

“SEXY JUTSU!”

Chakra surged, snapping through my coils hot and dizzy. Smoke exploded out, thick and bright around me, the world muffled to the sound of Naruto choking on his own scream.

“WHAT?! NO WAY!”

Okay, so: facts.

Fact one: the henge took. I could feel it in the weird redistribution of weight, the shift of my center of gravity, the unfamiliar drag of something heavy and higher on my face than glasses had any right to be.

Fact two: the censor-smoke did that strategic swirl thing again, curling and stretching in a way that should have been funny.

Fact three: Naruto had slapped his hitai-ate down over his eyes and was running in frantic circles, arms flailing.

“WAR CRIME! WAR CRIME! WAR CRIME!” he howled. “THIS IS ILLEGAL! THAT’S A FELONY!”

I frowned.

“…Is it that bad?” My voice sounded different. Deeper. Lazier. Absolutely not mine.

Sasuke had gone scarlet all the way to his ears. He turned so fast his shirt collar flipped up, burying half his face. “I’m leaving,” he muttered, and started walking away at a speed that was technically not fleeing and absolutely felt like it.

My stomach sank.

I looked down.

Gloved hands. Fingerless. Long, familiar.

Oh.

I reached up slowly, through the thinning smoke to my face, and my fingers bumped metal and fabric—hitai-ate, tilted at just the right angle. My vision narrowed to one eye. My hair—grey. My vest—green.

I did not, technically, look like a sexy woman.

I looked like Hatake Kakashi.

Sexy Jutsu: Misfire Edition.

“…”

“Well,” I said weakly, “in my defense, I was thinking about what he’d say if he caught me doing this.”

Naruto tore his headband up just enough to peek, took one look, and shrieked again.

“DOUBLE WAR CRIME! TREASON! YOU CAN’T SEXY JUTSU KAKASHI-SENSEI, THAT’S LIKE, THAT’S LIKE—” He flailed in my direction without actually looking. “TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF RIGHT NOW!”

Somewhere above us, perched on the awning of a dango shop, Tora lounged in a patch of sunlight. The demon cat cracked one eye open, took in the scene, and—swear to every kami listening—smirked in fluent cat.

I slapped my hands together and dropped the henge so hard my chakra stuttered.

Smoke popped. When it cleared, I was just… me again. Short. Glasses slightly askew. Heart doing unpleasant origami.

Naruto collapsed to his knees in the middle of the street, clutching his headband like a stress ball.

“I trusted you,” he said hoarsely. “You said it was a war crime, and then you did an upgraded war crime.”

“Scientifically,” I said, trying not to laugh hysterically, “I have to agree with your assessment.”

Sasuke didn’t look back, but his shoulders were shaking. With suppressed laughter or secondhand embarrassment, I refused to speculatively measure.

Naruto lurched to his feet and pointed at both of us, then at the sky, then at some very alarmed civilians.

“WAR CRIME!” he announced at top volume. “THIS WHOLE TEAM IS A WAR CRIME!”

“…that feels harsh,” I said.

He stomped past me, still muttering “war crime, war crime, that’s our teacher, you can’t do that,” under his breath. Sasuke accelerated to avoid being in the blast radius of Naruto’s outrage.

I fell into step beside them, cheeks still hot, chakra still buzzing like it had opinions.

Up on the awning, Tora yawned, tail flicking, as if to say: you brought this on yourselves.

By the time we reached the training field, Naruto was still ranting, Sasuke had fully retreated into his collar, and I had firmly re-established “Sexy Jutsu” in the mental folder labeled: DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN.

At least, not where Kakashi could see it.

By the time Kakashi actually showed up, Naruto had already died on the training post twice.

“HE’S NEVER COMING,” Naruto yelled at the clouds, hanging off the post by his knees. “WE’RE GONNA ROT HERE. WE’LL BE SKELETONS. THEY’LL CALL US TEAM BONES.”

“You’re already brain-dead,” Sasuke muttered from the shade of a tree. “Skeletons would be an upgrade.”

I sat on the grass between them, sketchbook across my knees, carefully inking a little spiral seal into the corner of the page. My fingers were still stained from salve and ink and “congratulations on surviving your first real war crime-adjacent mission, now please sign these discharge forms.”

“At least skeletons don’t shout,” I said. “Upside.”

Naruto dropped off the post, landing in a puff of dust. “You’re both just jealous because I’d be the coolest skeleton.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what keeps me up at night.”

He opened his mouth to argue with physics, pride, or both—

—and Kakashi appeared in a swirl of leaves, casual as anything, book already tucked in his hand.

“Yo,” he said.

Naruto’s chakra flared like a flipped table.

“YOU’RE LATE!” he roared. “You said nine in the morning! It’s basically lunchtime!”

“It is lunchtime,” I said, checking the sun. “We’re in the lunchtime zone, at least.”

Kakashi looked down at us, eye crinkling. “I got lost on the road of—”

“Don’t you dare,” I warned.

He paused. “—paperwork,” he finished blandly.

That shut Naruto up for about half a second. “Huh?”

Kakashi tucked Icha Icha into his vest and pulled out three folded slips of paper instead.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You survived a mission that should have killed all of you. Or at least maimed you in artistically interesting ways.”

“That’s not reassuring,” I said.

“Which is why,” he continued, ignoring me, “I’ve recommended Team 7 for the Chunin Exams.”

The words hit like a thrown kunai. Naruto’s chakra did a full-body slam. Sasuke’s sharpened.

I… blinked.

“Chunin… Exams?” Naruto repeated, voice going high with excitement and mortal terror in equal measure. “Like, promotion chunin? Real shinobi chunin? I-get-a-vest chunin?”

“Technically yes,” Kakashi said. “Practically, you’ll just get yelled at more.”

Naruto rocketed forward and snatched one of the slips from his hand. It fluttered open between his fingers—official, neat kanji: Chunin Selection Exam Application – Konoha Round.

He whooped. “HA! I knew it! We’re moving up! This is it, this is where we get Stronger and Cooler and I prove everyone wrong and—”

“You are,” Kakashi cut in mildly, “required to actually pass the Exams before any of that happens.”

Naruto vibrated like an overcaffeinated washing machine.

Sasuke took his own slip without a word, scanning it once. His chakra tightened, edges going sharper, hungrier. That quiet, ugly need to catch up to ghosts.

“Hn,” he said.

Which translated roughly to: Obviously I’m in.

I reached up to take the third form and felt my stomach do something complicated.

Exams. Promotions. Command structure. More missions like Wave, but worse. More Narutos and Sasukes and Haku-level tragedies because some old men in vests thought the meat grinder needed feeding.

The paper felt too light for the weight behind it.

Kakashi watched our faces—Naruto’s blazing, Sasuke’s carved from stone, mine probably hovering somewhere between “panic” and “overthinking this like it’s my job.”

“Before you all start sprinting toward your doom,” he said, “I am obligated to tell you a few things.”

He tucked his hands into his pockets, slipping into that deceptively lazy lecture pose.

“The Chunin Exams,” he said, “are designed to test more than just jutsu. You’ll be up against genin from our village and others. Some older. Some from places where sending children to die is less of an unfortunate side effect and more of a hobby.”

Naruto’s grin faltered.

Kakashi went on. “The Exams are dangerous. People get hurt. Sometimes badly. In rare cases, they die.”

He let the word hang there. Die. My chest tightened.

“You are not required to participate,” he said. “You have the right to say no. If even one of you refuses, the whole team sits out. I’ll recommend you again in a year or two. No shame in that.”

He looked at us in turn.

“Think about it carefully,” he said. “This isn’t another D-rank cat chase. If you go, you go knowing what you’re signing up for.”

There was a pause.

Then Naruto exploded.

“I’M IN!” he shouted, thrusting the form into the air like he’d already won. “You don’t even gotta ask! I’m gonna be Hokage, right? Hokage can’t chicken out of some test! Pfft!”

“Naruto,” Kakashi tried.

“Nope!” Naruto barreled on. “You said dangerous? Cool! I just fought a mist demon and his ice boyfriend on a haunted bridge! Bring it on!”

I choked. “You can’t just— that’s—that’s not how nicknaming works—”

Sasuke snorted quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Kakashi sighed the sigh of a man who regretted all of his life choices, up to and including being born here.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s one yes.”

He turned to Sasuke. “And you?”

Sasuke slid the form into his pocket. “If there are stronger opponents,” he said, eyes hard, “I’ll be there. I’m not wasting time.”

I felt the flicker of anger under his words, the old, scar-deep ache. His chakra tasted like cut steel.

Two yeses.

Kakashi’s visible eye settled on me.

“And you, Sylvie?”

Both of them looked at me now. Naruto buzzing, Sasuke intense.

My brain did what it always did: pulled the situation apart into lines and angles and probable outcomes. Chunin meant more responsibility, more authority on missions. Chunin meant being the one writing the plan, not just following it. Chunin meant… maybe, eventually, being able to say “No, that’s a terrible mission profile, we’re not taking three kids into a slaughterhouse for pocket change.”

It also meant walking straight toward more things like Wave. Like Haku. More bodies on bridges and in forests, while old men in hats called it “the price of peace.”

I looked down at my form. My fingers left a faint smudge of ink on the corner.

“If you two go in without someone sensible,” I said, “you’ll die in the hallway before the test starts.”

Naruto spluttered. “HEY—”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “She’s not wrong.”

I nodded once, heart beating too fast. “I’m in,” I said. “Someone has to bring the bandages.”

Kakashi studied me for a heartbeat longer. His chakra was dimmer than it had been before Wave—still steady, but tired around the edges, like an old streetlamp.

Then he nodded. “All right,” he said. “That’s decided.”

Naruto pumped his fist. Sasuke’s “hn” sounded almost satisfied.

“Exams start in a few days,” Kakashi added. “Until then, rest, train, and try not to commit any felonies.”

Naruto opened his mouth.

“Additional note,” Kakashi said smoothly, “try not to get caught committing any felonies.”

Naruto grinned. “No promises!”

“Yeah,” I said softly, folding the form. “That tracks.”

Ichiraku smelled like broth, steam, and impending emotional chaos.

We’d barely ducked under the noren when Teuchi’s eyes went wide.

“Team 7!” he boomed. “Back from your big mission, huh? Heard some wild rumors about a bridge…”

Naruto puffed up like a pufferfish. “It was awesome! There was this giant sword guy, and a dude in a mask with ICE POWERS, and I almost died—”

“You did die a little,” I said, sliding onto a stool. “Inside. Emotionally.”

Naruto glared. “That’s not how dying works.”

“Tell that to my back,” I muttered.

Ayame set bowls in front of us with her usual sunny efficiency. “This one’s on the house,” she said. “Hero discount.”

Naruto’s eyes turned into actual stars. “AYAME YOU’RE THE BEST—”

The curtain rustled again.

“Man,” a lazy voice drawled, “this place is packed.”

Nara Shikamaru slouched in, hands in his pockets, expression stuck somewhere between bored and mildly alarmed to see this many people in one spot. Behind him padded Choji, sniffing appreciatively, and Ino, already mid-complaint.

“—I’m just saying,” Ino was telling Asuma, who trailed behind them with a cigarette, “if they’re assigning teams based on balance, maybe don’t stick the only girl between two bottomless stomachs and call it a day.”

Asuma scratched his beard. “Now, now, Ino. You’ve got the brains, Shikamaru’s got the strategy, Choji’s got the brawn—”

“And what do you have, sensei?” she shot back. “Secondhand smoke?”

Asuma choked. Choji laughed. Shikamaru sighed like existence itself was a drag.

Behind them, another group filtered in: Kiba talking loud enough for three people, Hinata hovering like a nervous ghost at his elbow, Shino quietly keeping pace. Kurenai followed, red eyes already scanning for the closest table that would keep her team away from Kiba’s elbows.

By the time Lee burst through the curtain—bowl cut gleaming, eyebrows earnest, Gai nowhere in sight but spiritually present—the little stand felt like the starting line of a race I hadn’t realized I’d entered.

Lee squared his shoulders, spotted Sasuke, and zeroed in like a missile.

“Sasuke-kun!” he declared, finger stabbing the air. “I have heard of your genius! I, Rock Lee, challenge you to a test of youthful strength—”

“Not here,” Kurenai said sharply. “Lee, no sparring in the ramen shop.”

“Aw,” Naruto muttered into his noodles. “I kinda wanted to see that.”

“Please don’t break the furniture,” Teuchi pleaded.

Lee wilted, then straightened. “Very well! I shall save our glorious clash for the proper stage!”

Sasuke stared at him like he’d just been handed a new, very loud problem. “Who even are you?” he asked.

“ROCK LEE!” Lee repeated, as if that explained everything.

Honestly, it kind of did.

In the middle of this chaos, Ino’s gaze landed on me.

Her eyes went wide.

“Oh my god,” she said, and bulldozed through Hinata, Shino, and one of Gaara’s siblings—Temari, I realized belatedly—like they were minor obstacles on the road to drama.

“Sylvie!”

I had just gotten chopsticks into my mouth when she grabbed my shoulders and spun me on the stool.

“Hey—!”

She ignored my flailing. Her eyes swept over my face, lingering on the bandage still peeking from under my collar, then down my arms to the faint scars and the new, slightly darker shorts I’d scrounged from the orphanage donation bin.

“You go off on one mission,” she said, outraged, “and come back with bridge trauma and better legs? Rude.”

I blinked. “Better… legs?”

She gestured broadly. “Those shorts are illegal, first of all. Second of all, you look like you got dragged through a war and then dumped in a fashion catalog.”

“I did get dragged through a war,” I said. “The catalog part is… generous.”

“Is that a new scar?” she demanded, poking gently near my collarbone.

“Probably,” I said. “I stopped naming them after the fifth one.”

Naruto leaned over, noodles dangling from his mouth. “You should name them after me,” he said proudly. “Battle scars of friendship.”

“These are wounds from your bad decisions,” I said. “So… kind of already named after you.”

Kiba snorted from the next table. “You two are such weirdos.”

Hinata went pink and ducked her head when Naruto glanced her way. Her chakra buzzed soft and nervous, a warm, flickery blue.

Shino sat beside her, calm and still, like a bug under glass. His emotional color was almost… symmetrical. Ordered. It made my brain itch in a nice way.

Asuma herded Team 10 onto stools, Kurenai did the same with Team 8, and Lee ended up squeezed between me and Shikamaru, radiating earnest determination like a space heater.

I slurped some broth and tried not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people in the room. So many colors. So many patterns.

Sasuke stayed mostly quiet, eating in measured bites, but I saw the way his eyes flicked to Neji when the Hyuuga prodigy appeared at the far end of the stand, pale eyes cool and assessing. Saw the twinge in Sasuke’s chakra when Gaara slipped in silently behind his siblings, sand gourd looming.

We weren’t the only ones gunning for promotion. And we definitely weren’t the scariest.

“So,” Shikamaru said eventually, cutting through the noise in his soft, put-upon drawl. “I hear Kakashi-sensei signed you three up for the Exams.”

“How’d you hear that?” I asked.

He tipped his head toward Asuma, who was chatting with Kurenai over their teams’ heads. “Grown-ups gossip,” he said. “And you guys are the only rookies who’ve done a non-D-rank already.”

“Wave wasn’t that bad,” Naruto said through a mouthful of noodles.

I stared at him.

Sasuke stared at him.

Even Hinata, who’d barely said a word, looked faintly horrified.

“Okay, it was… kinda bad,” Naruto amended. “But we won, so it’s fine.”

“Terrifying logic,” I muttered.

Shikamaru studied me under half-lowered lids. “You signing up too?”

“That’s how teams work, yeah,” I said. “We’re a package deal. Buy one disaster, get two free.”

He huffed. “Troublesome,” he said. “All the overachievers are gonna show up. Neji, Gaara, that creepy Sound team everyone keeps whispering about… Our year is gonna get flattened.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kiba cut in. “Team 8’s gonna crush it!”

Akamaru barked in tiny agreement.

“Kiba,” Shino said quietly, “we have not yet seen the field.”

“I don’t need to see the field,” Kiba argued. “I can smell the competition.”

Temari muttered something rude about dog breath from three stools down.

I watched it all swirl together—bravado and nerves and subtle, simmering fear. My emotional sense kept trying to chart it like weather patterns.

Hinata’s quiet admiration of Naruto hummed at the edge of my awareness, soft and persistent. Shikamaru’s laziness was a thin crust over dense, shifting thought. Ino’s flash and noise hid a genuine concern that made my chest ache.

And threaded through it all, like an off-key note, was Naruto’s blazing, stubborn optimism. Bruised from Wave, sure, but still… bright.

I wanted to protect that. Not by wrapping it in bubble wrap, but by shaping the world around him so it didn’t always have to smash into brick walls.

Ino squeezed my shoulder once more and finally let go, sliding back to her team. “Don’t you dare die,” she said lightly. “I’m not doing these Exams without you.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.

“Good. Also, if you get any more scars, they better be symmetrical. Think of the aesthetic.”

She vanished into the noise before I could answer.

Shikamaru propped his chin on his hand. “We’re all gonna be crushed by overachievers,” he murmured. “What a drag.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I fully intend to be crushed by overachievers while taking very detailed notes.”

He snorted. “Figures.”

Naruto slammed his empty bowl down. “I’M GONNA CRUSH EVERYONE,” he announced. “Believe it!”

Teuchi jumped. Ayame laughed. Half the stand groaned in unison.

I smiled into my broth.

Iruka caught me outside Ichiraku as the sun started sliding down.

I was half a block away when I heard him.

“Sylvie.”

I turned.

He looked… older than he had a few weeks ago. Tired in that specific “my kids went off to war without me” way. His forehead protector was askew; a stack of graded papers stuck out of the folder under his arm.

“Hey, Iruka-sensei,” I said, going for casual. “Come to yell at Naruto for slurping too loud?”

“Not this time.” His gaze flicked over me, checking for injuries automatically. “You all right?”

“Mostly intact,” I said. “A few new lines for the collection.”

He blew out a breath, then gestured toward the mission office down the street. “I heard about Kakashi’s recommendation,” he said. “Chunin Exams.”

“Word travels fast,” I said.

“Word about you travels fast,” he corrected. “Naruto, Sasuke… that’s one thing. But you’re—”

“An orphan with no clan, no specialty, and barely enough chakra to pass Academy techniques?” I said, voice a little too sharp. The words from that other chunin still stung.

Iruka flinched. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

I folded my arms. “What were you going to say, then?”

He hesitated, then stepped a little closer, lowering his voice.

“I was going to say,” he said, “that Naruto is reckless, Sasuke is dangerous, and the Exams are brutal. And that you… have a tendency to throw yourself between them and whatever’s coming without thinking about what it does to you.”

My throat went tight.

“That’s not—”

“It is,” he said gently. “You bandaged half the class after weapons practice. You stayed up three nights in a row at the orphanage when that flu went around. I saw on the Wave report that you were healing people between fights even when your own chakra was low.”

I stared at the ground. The dust on the street made weird patterns under my sandals.

“I’m a medic,” I muttered. “That’s the job.”

“You are a student,” he said. “Who got thrown into a battle she shouldn’t have been in and did her best. That’s not the same as a front-line medic-nin with backup and rank.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m proud of you,” he added roughly. “But I’m also allowed to worry.”

Silence stretched between us. The mission office doors creaked as someone went in, laughing.

“You’re asking if I’m sure,” I said finally. “About the Exams.”

“Yes,” he said. “Because if you’re going because they are”—he jerked his chin toward where Naruto had gone—“that’s one thing. But if you’re going because you think you have to, or because you think you’re the only one who can keep them alive…”

“I’m not the only one,” I said. “Kakashi’s there. And—”

“And Kakashi is one man,” Iruka said quietly, “with one eye and more ghosts than you can count. He’ll do his best. So will you. I just… want you to be honest with yourself about why.”

I swallowed.

Why.

Because this system built kids like Haku and then threw them away. Because Naruto was going to stand in front of that system and scream at it until it changed or killed him. Because Sasuke was very likely to let it eat him alive if it meant power.

Because if being chunin meant sitting at the table where mission assignments were decided, where intel was parsed, where people’s lives were slotted into “acceptable risk,” then I wanted a seat. Not to stop all the death—that wasn’t possible—but to at least nudge the graph away from “slaughterhouse” toward “still awful but marginally less so.”

Also because a small, selfish part of me wanted proof that I belonged here. That this village, this uniform, this name fit.

I looked up at Iruka and forced a crooked smile.

“If they’re going,” I said, “I’m going. Someone has to bring the bandages.”

He searched my face for a long second.

“You’re scared,” he said softly.

“Constantly,” I said. “But I’m still going.”

Something in his shoulders eased, just a fraction. He nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll cheer you on. And yell at you if you do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid,” I said.

“Anything that gets you killed,” he said. “Or Naruto. Or Sasuke. Or any of your classmates. Or Kakashi. Or any—”

“So everything, got it,” I cut in.

He huffed a laugh. “Brat.”

“Teacher,” I said.

He squeezed my shoulder once, warm and solid, then stepped back.

“Go sign up before I change my mind,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and started walking.

The mission office was weirdly quiet when I got there.

Most of the rush had already gone through, it seemed. A bored chunin sat behind the front desk, stamping forms with an expression that said they’d rather be literally anywhere else.

Sasuke was already there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, form in hand. Naruto bounced on his heels next to him, trying to peer past the chunin to see the stack of applications like they were secret treasure.

“SYLVIE!” Naruto waved me over. “You’re late!”

“It’s been twenty minutes,” I said. “Calm down, hyperactive squirrel.”

He thrust his form under my nose. “Look! I didn’t mess up the kanji this time!”

I squinted. “Congratulations. You spelled your own name right. Truly we stand in the presence of greatness.”

“HEY—”

Sasuke held his own form out just enough to show me the neat, precise script. Of course his handwriting looked like it had been printed by a smug calligraphy god.

I glanced down at my own.

The red ink I’d used was still a little damp in one corner. My name sat on the line, careful strokes, no smudges—Sylvie, just Sylvie. The “Clan” box was blank. The “Specialty” line read, in my own handwriting: Basic medical ninjutsu / low-level sealing.

It looked small. Honest. Sharper than it had any right to be.

“What’d you put under specialty?” Naruto demanded, trying to read upside-down.

“‘Making your life harder,’” I said.

He snorted. “You already do that for free.”

The chunin at the desk cleared their throat.

“If you three are done,” they said dryly, “I’d like to finish this century.”

Sasuke pushed off the wall and stepped forward, sliding his form across the counter. Naruto followed, practically slamming his down. I placed mine last, smoothing the edge.

The chunin scanned them, glanced at us, and stamped all three with the same heavy thump.

“Team 7,” they said. “Application accepted. Report to Exam Room 301 tomorrow at nine hundred. Don’t be late.”

They stared at Kakashi’s name on the recommendation line for a second, sighed, and added, “And tell your sensei that if he sends me more paperwork at the last minute, I’m filing a complaint.”

Naruto saluted. “Yes, ma’am! Believe it!”

She gave him a look that said she did not, in fact, believe it.

We stepped back out into the evening light with the faint smell of ink and bureaucracy still clinging to us.

Naruto bounced down the stairs two at a time, fist pumping the air. “We did it,” he crowed. “We’re really doing this!”

Sasuke followed at a more reasonable pace, eyes already distant, probably fighting imaginary opponents in his head.

I walked a little behind them, my own hands shoved into my shorts pockets, chakra brush tucked behind my ear like a pencil. The wood bumped against my temple with each step, a small, familiar weight.

Homework tool. Weapon. Both.

“Chunin Exams,” I murmured under my breath.

In my first world, tests had been paper and pencils and maybe a teacher with a bad attitude. Here, they were written in blood and chakra and names on stone.

If this was the system that decided who got to lead, who got to call the shots on missions that ended in bridges and graves… then I wanted my terrible life choice officially on file.

Naruto spun on his heel and started walking backwards so he could grin at both of us at once.

“We’re gonna pass,” he declared. “All three of us. Just you watch.”

Sasuke snorted. “Don’t drag us down, dobe.”

“Like you could pass without me!” Naruto shot back.

They bickered all the way down the street, voices bouncing off the walls.

I let myself fall one extra step behind, watching their backs—bright orange and dark blue moving in parallel.

Ink stained my fingers. My heart hurt in that strange, hopeful way.

If the Exams wanted to see what we were made of, fine.

They were about to find out.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The exam building looked disappointingly normal.

No ominous statues, no screaming faces, not even a suspicious bloodstain on the walls. Just a big square of concrete and glass with too many windows and the stale chakra of a thousand bureaucrats clinging to the halls.

Naruto deflated visibly. “This is it?” he whined. “Where’s the death aura? The menacing architecture?”

“Sorry,” I said. “The budget went to trauma counseling and explosive tags.”

He squinted at me. “Is that a joke?”

“Probably.”

We filed in with the other teams, sandals scuffing against tile. The stairwell was already crowded—Leaf headbands everywhere, a couple foreign ones mixed in like someone shuffled the nations and scattered them on the stairs.

The air buzzed. Nervous chakra, sharp edges, a few people already trying too hard to look scary.

Naruto leaned over the railing. “Whoaaa, there’s so many people!”

“Don’t lean over,” I said automatically. “I don’t have a seal for ‘fell down three flights of stairs like an idiot.’”

He pouted, but stepped back.

We reached the second floor landing—sign over the door: 301.

“Is that… already the exam room?” Naruto asked. “That was fast.”

Something tugged at the back of my senses.

The chakra in the air here felt… thin. Like someone had stretched a piece of cling wrap over the corridor. Not heavy auras, not killing intent, just a shallow, flat film over people’s awareness.

I frowned. “Huh.”

Two older genin guarded the doorway, blocking it with lazy confidence. A sign was taped to the wall, big black brushstrokes: CHUNIN EXAM ROOM 301.

In front of them, a tiny drama was already in progress.

A kid with round glasses and an overlarge hitai-ate was picking himself up off the floor, nose bleeding. His teammate, a girl with dark hair in buns, glared at the blockers.

“You didn’t have to hit him that hard,” she snapped.

The taller of the two guards smirked. “If you can’t handle this, you’ve got no business taking the Exams.”

The other one flicked his eyes over the crowd. “You brats should just quit now. Save us the trouble of watching you fail.”

They radiated the smug, sour chakra of people who had failed once and decided bullying was a valid coping mechanism.

Naruto’s fists clenched. “Those jerks—”

“Don’t,” I murmured, catching his sleeve. “Pretty sure punching the proctors is bad form.”

“They’re not proctors,” Sasuke said flatly.

I looked at him. He’d gone still, eyes narrowed—not just annoyed, but focused.

He glanced at the sign again, then at the stairwell behind us.

“It’s a genjutsu,” he said. “We’re still on the second floor.”

Naruto blinked. “Huh?”

Sasuke jerked his chin at the kids who’d just been knocked back. “They’ve been letting everyone think this is the third floor and using it to test us. Anyone who can’t see through an illusion like this isn’t fit to be chunin.”

I exhaled a little. “Great,” I said. “Stairs that lie. Day one and we’re already losing to architecture.”

Naruto squinted harder at the sign like he could brute-force it into honesty. “But it says three-oh-one!”

“Numbers are fake, Naruto,” I said. “Trust nothing.”

“‘Fake numbers’ is not a helpful takeaway,” Sasuke muttered.

He stepped forward, brushing past the two “guards” without flinching.

“Quit wasting everyone’s time,” he told them. “Drop the genjutsu.”

The taller one bristled. “Oh? You think you’re hot stuff, figuring it out—”

Sasuke’s eyes shifted.

The single tomoe in each Sharingan spun into place, red bleeding into black. His chakra sharpened like a blade being honed.

The taller genin shut up mid-sentence.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Welcome to the Chunin Exams.”

The illusion snapped.

The air cleared; the thin film sensation vanished. The sign over the door resolved to 201, not 301. A few of the rookies around us gasped, realizing they’d been fooled the entire time.

Naruto gaped. “Wha—?!”

“I hate mind tricks,” Kiba muttered somewhere behind us.

“Those of us with insufficient genjutsu training may need to compensate with other skills,” Shino said calmly.

“Speak for yourself,” Ino huffed. “I knew something was up. I just didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

Shikamaru sighed. “What a drag,” he said. “They’re already testing us before the test. Troublesome.”

The two fake gatekeepers melted back into the crowd, eyeing Sasuke with new interest.

Sasuke’s Sharingan faded, but his chakra stayed razor-edged. He gave a little scoff, like that whole thing had been beneath him, and turned toward the stairs.

“Niiice,” Naruto said, eyes sparkling. “You looked so cool just now!”

“Hn,” Sasuke replied, but his shoulders loosened a fraction.

We started up toward the real third floor.

I was halfway to composing a deeply sarcastic internal rant about exam designers when someone landed in front of us with a soft whump of air.

He’d dropped from the ceiling.

Of course he had.

He wore the standard green jumpsuit, orange legwarmers, and the most powerful eyebrows I had ever seen in my life. His bowl-cut gleamed with righteous fury. His chakra blazed bright and earnest, like green firework sparks going off in every direction.

He pointed directly at Sasuke.

“You!” he declared. “With the cool eyes and the aura of brooding darkness!”

Sasuke stared. “What.”

Naruto leaned over. "Hey! It's that bushy-brow guy from the ramen shop!"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I think a training manual came to life.”

Bushy Brows straightened to his full, not-very-imposing height.

“My name is Rock Lee!” he announced, voice ringing across the hallway. “And I challenge you, Uchiha Sasuke, to a duel!”

There was a beat of absolute silence.

“Why,” Sasuke said flatly.

“Because!” Lee’s eyes actually sparkled. “I have sworn to prove that one can become a splendid ninja through hard work alone, even without ninjutsu or genjutsu! To that end, I wish to test my taijutsu against the rookie our village holds in highest regard!”

“Wow,” I said. “Imagine doing this much cardio on purpose.”

"You again. I told you I'm not fighting you."

Lee wobbled, briefly shaken, then recovered with terrifying speed.

“In time, you will know my name,” he said earnestly. “But first, Sasuke-kun! Do you accept my challenge?”

Sasuke’s eye twitched.

He looked like he wanted to say no on principle. But a stronger impulse ran under his chakra: the need to measure himself against anything stronger, faster, sharper. Especially after Gaara’s unsettling presence down the hall, Neji’s cold confidence, the whispers about foreign prodigies.

He exhaled slowly.

“Five minutes,” he said. “No more.”

Lee lit up like someone had flipped a chakra switch. “Excellent!”

He dropped into a stance, arms up, legs braced. Even I could see the discipline in it—no wasted movement, no flash, just pure efficiency wrapped in horrible fashion.

I stepped back to the edge of the hall with Naruto and the others.

“Is this allowed?” I murmured.

“Probably not,” Shikamaru said. “But no one’s stopping it, so…”

Tenten appeared at Lee’s shoulder for a second, sighing. “Lee, you’re going to get us in trouble.”

Neji watched from behind them, arms crossed, pale eyes cool and utterly unimpressed. His chakra felt like a closed fist—tight, contained, ready to punch straight through whatever it met.

I shivered.

All right. So the competition wasn’t just loud and weird. It was terrifying and weird.

Lee moved first.

No warning, no feint—just a flicker of motion and sudden impact.

One second he was in front of Sasuke; the next, he was above him, leg already swinging down.

Sasuke barely got his arms up in time.

Lee’s kick hammered into his guard, sending him skidding backward across the tile. The air left his lungs in a harsh exhale.

Fast.

Faster than Haku in the mirrors? No. But close. Too close for comfort.

Naruto shouted something in the background. Sasuke tuned it out.

He reset his stance, eyes narrowing, Sharingan flaring back to life. Red tomoe spun into focus, tracking Lee’s movements as he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet.

“You’re strong,” Lee said, not sounding even a little out of breath. “But your body isn’t used to this speed.”

Sasuke’s jaw clenched.

“I’ll adjust,” he said.

He lunged forward, kunai flashing. If this guy relied purely on taijutsu, then closing the distance and disrupting his rhythm was the only option.

Lee slid around the blade like it was nothing, twisting at the last second. His fist snapped out, catching Sasuke in the ribs. Pain bloomed white-hot along Sasuke’s side.

He staggered a step, then forced himself steady. His Sharingan drank in every twitch of Lee’s muscles, every shift of weight.

Again.

Sasuke came in lower this time, feinting left, then spinning to strike from the right.

Lee was already there.

He caught Sasuke’s kick on his forearm and shoved him away easily, using Sasuke’s own momentum against him.

“Your eyes,” Lee said, expression serious, “are remarkable. You can see my movements.”

He vanished.

Sasuke’s Sharingan tracked the blur of green reappearing behind him, but his body couldn’t turn fast enough to match. A kick slammed into his back, launching him forward.

He caught himself on his hands, flipped, landed in a crouch.

But his breath was coming faster now. His muscles ached from impacts he hadn’t fully blocked.

It was like fighting the air itself—nothing to grab onto, nothing to slow down.

“If you cannot keep up now,” Lee said gently, “you will not be able to stand against certain opponents in these Exams. I do not say this to insult you, but to warn you.”

Neji’s gaze sharpened. Tenten bit her lip.

Sasuke’s hands curled into fists.

He thought of Haku, of the ice mirrors, of how slow he’d felt in that cage. He thought of Itachi’s shadow, always just ahead, always just out of reach.

“I don’t need warnings,” he said, forcing the words through his teeth. “I need power.”

He pushed his chakra harder into his legs, calculating angles even as his ribs protested. Sharingan fed him data: the way Lee’s right foot dug in before every lunge, the slight hitch in his breaths, the microseconds of opening between attacks.

If he could just—

Lee smiled, sudden and bright.

“Very well,” he said. “Then I will show you the power of hard work! Forgive me, Gai-sensei, but I must…”

His hands moved to the bandages around his legs.

He started to unwrap them.

A ripple went through the watching genin.

Sasuke’s instincts screamed.

“That’s enough.”

The booming voice came from the stairs.

Might Guy strode up like a green hurricane, teeth gleaming, bowl-cut somehow even more dramatic than Lee’s. His chakra burned hot and ridiculous, like Lee’s turned up to eleven.

He landed beside his student in a pose that absolutely no one asked for, arms crossed, one thumb up, his smile so blinding it was probably a war crime.

“Young Lee,” Guy said, “we must not reveal our secret techniques in the hallway before the Exams!”

Lee froze mid-unwrap, eyes wide with dismay. “Gai-sensei!”

Naruto and Sylvie traded an identical horrified look.

“Is… is that us in ten years?” Sylvie whispered.

Naruto shuddered. “No way. I’m gonna have way cooler hair.”

Sasuke straightened slowly, forcing his breathing to steady. His chest hurt. His pride hurt more.

Guy gave him a once-over, then nodded approvingly.

“You have excellent instincts, young man!” he said. “To hold your own against Lee without preparation is impressive!”

Sasuke wanted to argue that he had not held his own. He’d been pushed around like a training dummy. But the words stuck in his throat.

He couldn’t deny the evidence: even with Sharingan, his body hadn’t kept up.

Not yet.

“Hn,” he said instead, wiping a smear of blood from his mouth. “Next time, I’ll win.”

Lee’s eyes lit again. “I look forward to our rematch, Sasuke-kun!”

Guy threw an arm around Lee’s shoulders, tears already forming.

“Such youthful rivalry!” he sobbed. “It burns like a thousand suns!”

“Please stop,” someone muttered.

Naruto gawked. “What’s wrong with them?”

Sylvie pinched the bridge of her nose again. “I don’t know,” she said. “But whatever it is, it’s contagious.”

Contagious or not, they were also terrifying.

Lee’s chakra felt like a rush of hot air—forward, no subtlety, bright green determination that wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was “up.” Even when he stood still, the energy around him bounced on its toes. On paper, he was the type of shinobi the Academy would call “limited.” No elemental affinity yet, no flashy techniques. And yet he’d just bounced Sasuke—the boy with the Sharingan—around a hallway like a rubber ball.

Proof that “useless” skills on a chart could still snap your spine.

Neji’s chakra was the opposite: cool and dense, the center of a storm with all the motion hidden under a still surface. It flowed along his pathways in neat, ruthless lines, like he’d been practicing control since before he could walk.

My ink-stained fingers itched.

Tenten hovered near them, steady and practical. Her chakra didn’t shout; it hummed like tight bowstrings and polished metal, all clean intent and no wasted motion.

I made myself memorize the feel of all three of them, especially Lee and Neji. If I ever ran into them again on a mission—or on a battlefield—I wanted to know what “normal” felt like before I had to figure out “broken.”

Guy finally dragged Lee off with promises of “proper youthful arenas,” leaving a trail of emotional glitter behind them.

Naruto immediately rounded on Sasuke.

“DUDE,” he exploded. “That was crazy! You were like ‘wham!’ and he was like ‘zoom!’ and then you were like ‘ow!’—”

Sasuke glared. “Shut up.”

Naruto ignored him. “We gotta get way faster,” he said, eyes wide. “Like, way way faster. If there’s more guys like that in there—”

“There are,” I said. “And some worse.”

He swallowed.

The corridor began to empty as genin moved toward the real third floor. The air buzzed harder here—nerves, excitement, hungry ambition. Dozens of chakra signatures layered over each other, turning my sense into static.

I reached out on instinct, brushing my thumb over the small ink marks hidden under Naruto’s sleeve and on the back of Sasuke’s glove.

The Squad Marks flared faintly in response—tiny, simple tags I’d drawn on them last week. Nothing fancy, just a quick “ping” when I pushed chakra through: I’m here, you idiots.

Both of them glanced back at me at the same time.

Naruto grinned.

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

Good. That was balance.

We moved with the herd up the last flight of stairs.

The sign over the next door read 301 again.

This time, it felt right. No chakra film, no illusion shimmer, just heavy air and the muffled roar of too many people stuck in the same room.

Naruto swallowed once, then puffed himself up like nothing scared him.

“Ready?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But let’s go anyway.”

We slid the doors open.

The room was already packed. Genin from all over—Sound headbands, Sand, Rain, Grass, a few I didn’t recognize. The emotional palette hit me like a punch: suspicion, boredom, aggression, outright murderous glee.

A couple dozen faces turned toward the door.

Hostility rolled over us in a wave.

Naruto, genius that he was, inhaled deeply.

“HEY LOSERS!” he yelled. “TEAM 7’S HERE! WE’RE GONNA CRUSH YOU ALL!”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose so hard it almost counted as a self-inflicted injury.

“Great,” I muttered. “Step one: antagonize everyone in the room. Perfect start.”

Sasuke sighed like his soul had left his body.

We stepped inside anyway.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The room smelled like ink, sweat, and murder attempts waiting for paperwork.

A hundred hostile eyes turned when Naruto kicked the door open and yelled, “All right! We’re gonna crush this exam, believe it!”

You could feel the collective “oh this idiot” ripple across the room.

I slipped in behind him, trying very hard to radiate the opposite of “please beat us up in the hallway.” Sasuke followed, cool and bored, which somehow just made people glare at us harder.

Chakra pressed in from every direction—sharp, buzzing, heavy, bitter. The whole place felt like someone had taken every bad mood in Konoha, boiled them down, and poured the concentrate into a classroom.

“Great,” I muttered. “Shark tank.”

We picked our way down the aisles toward three open seats, stepping through the silence like it might explode. Teams had already claimed their tables: foreign headbands, unfamiliar faces, weapons lined up like promises.

On our left, three Grass-nin watched us with flat, insect eyes. On our right, a Rain squad radiated nervous, twitchy static. Ahead—

My gaze snagged on a trio in dark outfits with metal plates on their arms instead of headbands.

Sound.

Their chakra felt like broken glass in a blender. Jagged, high-pitched, restless. The girl—long dark hair, bells in her strands—had a focused, bitter edge. The tall one with the bandages over his ears buzzed like live wire. The leader with the wrappings on his arm just looked amused in a way that made my skin crawl.

I stuck closer to Naruto on instinct, fingers brushing the shape of the Squad Marks inked under my sleeves. My little spiral seals pulsed faintly in response—Naruto bright and hot, Sasuke tight and sharp.

“Why is everyone looking at us?” Naruto whispered, not quietly at all.

“Because you shouted ‘we’re gonna crush you all’ into a room full of killers,” I whispered back. “Indoor voice, please.”

“Hey! I didn’t say killers!”

“Yet,” I said. “Give it time.”

He pouted. It didn’t help.

We hadn’t even sat down before a voice from the front left said, “Well, well. So many rookies this year.”

I looked.

Three Sand ninja occupied one table like they owned the floorboards. Temari—tall, blonde, giant fan strapped to her back—lounged with her ankles crossed, smirk sharp and lazy. Her chakra was dry heat and amusement, like sun-baked stone.

Next to her, Kankuro slouched with his hood up, arms folded, what was very obviously a puppet swaddled and strapped to his back. His chakra felt bluff and jittery, bravado smeared over nerves.

And then there was the redhead.

Small, pale, the kanji for “love” carved into his forehead. Dark-rimmed eyes. Sand gourd almost as big as he was.

Gaara.

His chakra hit me like walking off a cliff.

Dense. Shifting. Suffocating. A storm made of ground glass grinding against itself, and underneath that, something ancient and hungry curled tight as a fist.

My stomach flipped. For a second, my legs almost forgot how to be legs.

I jerked my awareness back, breathing shallow.

“Don’t stare,” Sasuke said quietly, not looking at me. “You’ll just attract them.”

“I’m not staring,” I said. “I’m strategically… visually assessing.”

He “hn”’d, which meant “I know you almost fell over but I’m not going to ask.”

Temari’s eyes flicked over us with bored interest. Kankuro snorted.

Gaara didn’t look our way at all.

Which, somehow, felt worse.

We reached three open seats near the middle. Naruto flopped into his chair, immediately turning to pick a fight with someone from the next table. Sasuke slid into his spot, arms crossed. I lowered myself into the last chair and tried to ignore the way the air buzzed against my skin.

A kunai thunked into the desk directly in front of Naruto’s nose.

He yelped. The room went pin-drop silent.

The kunai owner stood up slowly, chair scraping.

“Hey,” an older genin sneered. “If you’re gonna be so loud, at least keep it out of the exam room, brat.”

Naruto shot to his feet, hands already curling into fists. “What’d you say, you jerk?!”

Chakra snapped around us like static. A couple of other teams leaned forward, eyes bright, like they couldn’t wait for the pre-test bloodshed.

Fantastic. We were about two seconds from a brawl before we’d even gotten pencils.

“Um, excuse me,” a mild voice cut in from my right. “Maybe try not to get disqualified before we even sit down?”

We turned.

The speaker wore round glasses, gray hair tied back in a low ponytail, standard Konoha gear. Ordinary. Completely ordinary. Even his chakra sat mild and smoothed out, like someone had ironed every wrinkle flat.

He smiled, sheepish and affable.

“My name’s Yakushi Kabuto,” he said, scratching his cheek. “You three are causing quite a stir.”

Naruto bristled. “Yeah? So what!”

Kabuto chuckled. “Well, this is their exam too. Everyone’s already tense. You don’t want all that focus on you before the proctors even appear, right?”

I watched him carefully.

On the surface, his chakra really did feel harmless. Warm, a little fuzzy, like Iruka on a good day. But underneath that… there were layers. Carefully arranged, all pointing outward—like a stack of masks made of pleasant energy.

“This guy never stops thinking,” I thought. “Even his emotions feel rehearsed.”

Aloud, I said, “You seem very relaxed for someone about to take a nightmare test with a bunch of strangers who want us dead.”

He laughed lightly. “It’s not my first time. Or my second.” He tapped his forehead protector. “I’ve taken the Chunin Exams seven times.”

Seven.

My eyebrows tried to climb off my face. Naruto’s jaw dropped.

“Seven?!” he yelped. “How are you not a chunin yet?!”

Naruto, king of tact.

Kabuto just shrugged, wry. “Well, that’s the point of exams, isn’t it? You can fail.”

Sasuke leaned forward slightly, interest sharpened. “If you’ve taken it seven times, you’ve seen other villages’ candidates,” he said. “You’ve gathered data.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question. It wasn’t one.

Kabuto pushed his glasses up. The lenses flashed.

“As it happens… I do have a little information.” He reached into his pouch and pulled out a small deck of cards, held together with a metal ring. “I’ve been gathering intel on other teams. Helps make up for my own shortcomings.”

The bullying genin who’d thrown the kunai scoffed. “What, you’ve got flashcards? This isn’t school, old man.”

“Never underestimate flashcards,” I muttered.

Kabuto smiled. “These are special. They’re chakra-encoded.”

He held up one card between two fingers, drew a thin thread of chakra into it through his thumb. Ink bloomed across the surface, forming words and a simple map.

“All I need is a name,” he said. “And a bit of chakra.”

Naruto’s eyes sparkled. “Whoa! That’s awesome!”

Sasuke’s gaze sharpened another notch. “Show me,” he said.

Kabuto nodded and flipped to a different card. “Let’s start with the foreign teams,” he said, loud enough for the nearby squads to hear. “Might as well share the stress.”

He tapped the card. “Sunagakure, the Village Hidden in the Sand. Three siblings: Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara.”

The map showed a vague outline of Wind Country. Notes scrolled on the side.

Kabuto read off the highlights. Temari, wind user. Kankuro, puppet specialist. Gaara…

His voice hitched for half a beat before smoothing again.

“Gaara of the Desert,” Kabuto said. “Has completed all his missions without injury. Rumored to have never been touched in battle. Very dangerous.”

I didn’t need the card to tell me that. My chakra sense still felt like it had brushed the edge of a void.

Temari smirked at us across the room. Kankuro stiffened, annoyed. Gaara glanced up, gaze sliding over everyone like we were already dead. My chest tightened.

“Next, the newcomers—Sound,” Kabuto went on.

He flicked to another card. The map updated: a small, recently registered symbol, little more than a mark on the border.

“Village Hidden in the Sound,” he said. “Very new. Not much public intel available. Team consists of three: Dosu, Zaku, and Kin. Specialty appears to be—”

He didn’t get to finish.

The bandage-wrapped one—Dosu—stood up, chakra spiking, and crossed the space between their desk and ours in three deliberate strides. The room went quiet around him.

“That’s enough,” Dosu said, voice muffled but clear. “You talk too much.”

Kabuto held up his free hand placatingly. “My apologies. Just trying to—”

Dosu’s uncovered hand flicked.

Chakra rippled out, a pressure wave so sharp and precise it felt like an invisible needle jammed straight through my eardrums.

Pain exploded behind my eyes. The room lurched. I slapped my hands over my ears on instinct, but it still hit—vibrations shuddering through my skull, making my teeth ache.

Kabuto jerked, glasses cracking. He stumbled back, one hand flying to his ear, face twisting.

The air itself had turned into a weapon.

Sound-based jutsu. Fantastic. As if written tests weren’t bad enough, now we had pop quizzes in migraine.

Naruto yelped, clapping his hands over his own ears. “What the hell was that?!”

Dosu’s chakra buzzed, satisfied.

“Just a taste,” he said calmly. “So you remember we’re not here to be measured like numbers on a page.”

His gaze flicked to Kabuto’s cards, then to Naruto, then to Sasuke. The message was obvious: we’re not data; we’re threats.

Kin and Zaku smirked behind him, savoring the attention.

Kabuto straightened slowly, forcing a shaky smile. Blood trickled from his nose. One lens of his glasses had spiderweb cracks.

“That was… impressive,” he said weakly. “So that’s Sound’s specialty.”

My stomach twisted. He was still playing the harmless idiot even with his inner ear probably doing cartwheels.

Dosu snorted and went back to his seat.

I ground my teeth, willing the ringing in my ears to settle. The ache behind my eyes buzzed like an angry insect. Under the table, I traced a small calming spiral over the skin of my wrist to ground myself.

“Naruto,” I hissed. “Stop glaring at them. They will absolutely turn your face into a tuning fork.”

“I’m not scared!” he hissed back, even though his chakra was doing a pretty convincing impression of “actually, yes, terrified.”

“Cool. Maybe try ‘strategically cautious’ instead of ‘please target me first’,” I said.

Before he could reply, Kabuto cleared his throat again.

“Well,” he said, a little hoarse, “since we’ve already started, I might as well finish. Rookies from our own village, for example.”

He flipped to a new section of cards. “Konoha’s new genin squads.”

At the mention of “rookies,” several heads turned. Kiba perked up. Ino straightened, clearly ready to be complimented. Shikamaru sighed like he already regretted being alive.

Kabuto tapped a card.

“Team 8: Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Hyūga Hinata,” he read. “Tracker type. High success rate in D-ranks, flexible formation…”

As he spoke, impressions flickered under my chakra sense.

Shino: calm, organized, thoughts marching in little neat rows.

Kiba: loud, hot streak of protectiveness under the bravado.

Hinata: soft glow that jumped every time Naruto’s name passed anyone’s lips.

Kabuto went on. “Team 10: Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino. Classic Ino-Shika-Cho formation. Inherited strategy from the previous generation…”

Shikamaru slouched further down in his seat, muttering, “What a drag.” His chakra, annoyingly, did a subtle little shift like he’d just filed away three new pieces of info.

Ino flicked her hair and whispered to Choji, “See? We’re classic.”

“Classic is old,” Shikamaru said.

“Classic is iconic,” she snapped.

Kabuto turned another card. “Team Guy: Rock Lee, Hyūga Neji, Tenten. Highly physical team. Lee has no talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu—”

Across the room, Lee straightened at the sound of his name, eyes blazing. He didn’t look offended. If anything, he looked proud.

“—but his taijutsu and work ethic are remarkable,” Kabuto finished.

Neji’s chakra sat coiled and controlled beside him, like a spring held in check. Tenten’s hummed with quiet, steady competence. I mentally filed her under “person to talk to about scroll storage and weapon seals later.”

“And finally,” Kabuto said, adjusting his cracked glasses, “Team 7.”

Every muscle in my shoulders tightened.

He tapped the next card.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” he read. “Academy graduate on his second attempt. History of pranks and disciplinary issues…”

Naruto puffed up, like that was something to be proud of.

“…secretly stole the Scroll of Seals six months ago, later recovered under the supervision of Umino Iruka and other instructors.” Kabuto squinted at the writing. “Unusual chakra levels. Unconfirmed rumors regarding… jinchūriki status.”

The unfamiliar word hit me like a cold draft.

Jinchūriki.

I didn’t know what it meant exactly. Not in detail. But I knew enough to feel the way the room’s mood twitched around it. A couple of older genin stiffened. Someone from another village snorted. The air tasted metallic.

Naruto, blessedly oblivious to half that subtext, just frowned. “What’s a ‘jinchu-whatever’?”

“Nothing you need to worry about right now,” I said quickly, voice sharper than I meant. “Finish the list.”

Kabuto flicked his eyes up, studying my face for a split second before continuing.

“Uchiha Sasuke,” he read next. “Last surviving member of the Uchiha clan. Top of his class. High aptitude in fire jutsu and taijutsu. Considered one of the strongest rookies this year.”

A little ripple ran through the room. Interest. Envy. A few open glares.

Sasuke’s jaw tightened. His chakra pulled in, colder, edgier. He didn’t react outwardly. Of course he didn’t.

“And…” Kabuto hesitated, then turned the card fully.

“Sylvie,” he said. “No recorded surname. Found near the village border as a child. No clan affiliation. Orphan status. Graduated Academy on first attempt with above-average scores in written tests and chakra control. Early fuinjutsu aptitude. Basic medical training. Classified as a support-type genin with… ‘unknown potential’.”

He actually read the quotation marks out loud.

Heat crawled up my neck. My chest went tight in that awful, hollow way.

Orphan. No surname. Unknown potential.

Having my entire life boiled down to a handful of bullet points made me feel like someone had skinned me. Even Naruto’s “disciplinary issues” sounded more alive than “support type.”

“I didn’t think they’d bother tracking me,” I thought, fingers clenched under the desk. “Guess I was wrong.”

Naruto squinted at the card. “Hey, support type is good! Right? That means you’re like, our secret weapon!”

“Wow,” I said dryly. “A weapon and a mystery. My two favorite ways to be objectified.”

He grinned. “See? You’re already good at it.”

I elbowed him. Lightly. Mostly.

Across the aisle, Ino leaned around Choji to look at me. “Unknown potential,” she whispered. “Fancy. I’m just ‘mind-transfer blonde’ on mine, aren’t I?”

“You’re at least ‘terrifying mind-transfer blonde,’” I whispered back.

She snickered.

Kabuto shuffled his cards back into a neat stack. “Anyway,” he said. “That’s the gist. Use it or don’t. Just remember—no amount of intel replaces actual skill.”

He said it like a joke, but underneath the smile there was a brittle little edge.

Before anyone could respond, the air in the room changed.

The low murmur of conversation snapped off as the door at the front slammed open.

A group of chunin strode in, all in standard flak vests, movements clipped and efficient. They fanned out along the walls and aisles like a net closing.

At their center walked a man with a shaved head, heavy coat, and eyes that seemed to catalog every single person he looked at.

His face was a roadmap of scars. Old burns, jagged lines, the kind that spoke of torture rather than clean battlefield wounds. He carried no visible weapon, just a clipboard and an aura that said he didn’t need anything else.

Silence rolled through the room like mist.

My chakra sense reeled for a second. Most people’s emotional “color” had a few mixed shades—fear and excitement, nerves and focus. This man’s presence was… stripped.

No joy. No cruelty, either. Just iron conviction and a low, constant ache. Like someone who’d torn himself down to the minimum necessary pieces and stapled them together out of sheer stubbornness.

He set the clipboard on the front desk.

“I am Ibiki Morino,” he said. His voice was low, rough, the kind that didn’t need to be loud to carry. “I’ll be your proctor for the first test of the Chunin Exams.”

You could practically hear thirty hearts drop into thirty stomachs at once.

He scanned the room slowly. Bullies, prodigies, rookies, foreign killers—nobody had anything to say under that gaze.

Naruto swallowed audibly.

Several chunin assistants began handing out sheets of paper, moving down the rows with crisp efficiency. Answer sheets, question packets, little numbered tags.

“Listen carefully,” Ibiki went on. “From this point on, every action you take will be judged.”

He paused, letting that sink in.

“The rules for this test are simple,” he said. “You each start with ten points. Nine questions. Each wrong answer costs you one point. If your total reaches zero… you fail. Your entire team fails.”

A collective flinch went around the room.

Naruto’s chakra spiked in panicked loops. I slipped my foot sideways under the table and nudged his ankle once, a silent “breathe.”

Ibiki’s eyes swept past us, sharp as kunai.

“Cheating,” he said, voice flattening, “is allowed.”

A confused murmur rippled.

“Being caught cheating,” he continued, “is not.”

He gestured to the chunin around the room. “My assistants are all trained to detect any form of deception. If we catch you five times, you are out. Your whole team is out. Permanently. There will be no second chances, and no protests.”

Kiba bristled. Someone from Rain cursed under their breath. Sasuke’s mouth twitched, just barely.

Ibiki’s gaze landed on Naruto for a moment, then on me, then on Sasuke.

“Consider this your first real battlefield,” he said. “Information is as deadly a weapon as any kunai. Those who don’t know how to get it—quietly—have no business being chunin.”

He let that hang, then nodded once.

“Now,” he said. “We will begin the test. First, write your names and registration numbers at the top of the answer sheet.”

Papers slid onto our desks.

Naruto stared at his like it might explode. Sasuke picked up his pen immediately. I rolled my shoulders, trying to force my muscles to remember how to relax as I wrote my name in careful, ink-stained strokes.

Sylvie.

No family, so...no surname.

Ibiki waited until the rustle of paper settled.

“The Chunin Exams first test,” he said calmly. “Written.”

He smiled; the scars on his face didn’t.

“Begin.”

Pens scratched. Pages flipped.

And I watched Naruto’s brain blue-screen in real time.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The room sounded like static.

Not loud—just the soft, relentless hiss of a hundred pen tips grinding over paper, whispered curses, chair legs creaking. Underneath that, like a bassline only I could hear, chakra pulsed and spiked and coiled, a hundred nervous little storms bottled into one classroom.

“The Chunin Exams first test,” Ibiki had said, scars catching the light as he scanned us. “Written. Begin.”

Then the proctors handed out the papers, and the mood dropped from “tense” to “oh, no.”

I flipped mine over.

Question One: tactical scenario. Two squads, three possible routes, enemy unknown. Calculate risk factors, assign formations. Easy. I’d scribbled this kind of thing in the margins of Iruka’s handouts for fun.

Question Two: chakra theory. Ratios, efficiency, flow. Still fine, still in “Sylvie is a terrible nerd” territory.

Question Three introduced statistical casualty projections for multi-front campaigns in language that belonged in a Jonin war-room, not in a room full of twelve-year-olds.

By Question Five, I hit a reference to an S-rank mission that had never even been mentioned in class.

I stared at the sheet. My pen hovered.

“…Right,” I whispered under my breath. “So that’s how we’re playing this.”

Around me, I felt it happen in layers.

Confusion. Then panic. Then, for some of them, something else—this bright, sharp note of realization. Shikamaru’s chakra, a few desks over, went from “half-asleep puddle” to “annoyed, but interested.” Neji’s focus tightened like a camera lens shifting into perfect focus. In the back, a Sand genin’s chakra calmed, pulse settling into the steady tempo of someone who’d already seen this kind of trick before.

They weren’t expecting us to know this.

They wanted to see who figured that out.

I let out a slow breath and started moving my pen again—not to answer the impossible questions yet, just to keep up the illusion of “good student focusing very hard and definitely not plotting how to cheat in front of a room full of sadists.”

The rules had been clear:

• Ten questions.

• Start with ten points. Lose one point for each wrong answer.

• Caught cheating? Lose two points. Get caught enough, your team hits zero. Whole squad fails.

Nobody had said we couldn’t use our heads. Or our hands. Or our eyes. Or the entire shared nervous system of Konoha’s most annoying cohort of twelve-year-olds.

I filled in what I actually knew—first two questions, a half-decent guess on the third, one line on the fourth—and then leaned back just enough to stretch.

'Time to see what everyone else studied,' I thought.

The girl from Suna—we’d learned her name was Temari from Kabuto’s cards—sat a few rows ahead and to the right, legs crossed under the desk, fan propped against her chair. Her chakra felt dry and sharp, like sun-bleached wood, with little flickers of amusement every time someone shifted too loudly. She wasn’t even pretending to stress.

Kankuro, two seats over, hunched over his paper with exaggerated seriousness. His chakra, underneath the smug, flickered off in a strange direction, like a thread running up his sleeve and away. Puppet, probably. I couldn’t see it, but I’d bet an ink pot he had someone or something feeding him answers from a better vantage point.

The Sound trio—Dosu, Zaku, Kin—were pure static. Their chakra scratched at the edge of my awareness, harsh and ugly, like metal scraping metal. One of them twitched his fingers in tiny patterns on the desk; another kept tapping their foot in a rhythm that didn’t match the room. Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t wholesome.

I let my gaze drift, lazy and unfocused.

Neji sat near the center, posture perfect. His pale eyes were “looking” at his paper, but his chakra was stretched like a net, flicking outward and back in clean arcs. Byakugan. He didn’t have to move his head to see everything. Lucky jerk.

Shino barely seemed to move at all, but tiny flickers of chakra scuttled along the floor between desks. His bugs crawled up chair legs and onto people’s papers, antennas humming with stolen answers. Efficient, a little gross, kind of brilliant.

Ino, two rows ahead, had her head tilted just enough that her long hair fell like a curtain. Every so often, her chakra hiccuped—sudden, tiny flares of sharp focus, then nothing, then focus again. Mind slips. Quick jumps into someone smarter, peek at their paper, jump back. Short bursts to avoid detection.

And Sasuke—

Sasuke looked bored.

But the air around him had that faint, warping heat that meant his Sharingan was on, even if he was being subtle about it. I could feel his attention lock onto one of the older genin near the front, track along with their writing. Copy-paste, Uchiha style.

So, to recap:

Everyone who mattered was cheating.

The proctors knew it.

We were supposed to do it too.

I smiled, just a little, and dropped my eyes back to my test.

'Fine,' I thought. 'If this is an information-gathering exam, time to weaponize notebook doodles.'

I uncapped the tiny chakra reservoir tucked into the barrel of my pen and let a trickle seep into the tip. The ink tingled, just a bit.

Then, next to Question Six—some nightmare about supply line optimization and mid-battle rerouting—I drew a small spiral. One loop, then three branching arrows. To anyone else, it looked like nervous scribbling. To me, it was a shorthand I’d been using since the Academy: spiral orientation mapped to multiple-choice options, arrow length to confidence levels.

Long arrow at “B.” Medium at “C.” Short one nudging “A.”

I filled in “B” with a little flourish.

Question Seven: obscure treaty clause. Thanks to Iruka’s lectures and my unholy love of footnotes, I actually recognized which agreement they meant. I answered it. Easy.

Eight and Nine were on advanced infiltration patterns. I sketched a small cluster of dots, connected them with lines, added another spiral. Anyone smart enough to read it would see the pattern. Anyone not smart enough… well, they wouldn’t.

Which raised an interesting question.

My desk was near the aisle that split the room. Shikamaru sat one over from that aisle, two rows up. He’d spent the first ten minutes of the test staring at the ceiling with the dead eyes of someone deeply betrayed by life.

Now, though? The moment Ibiki had barked, “Begin,” his chakra had shifted from “nap” to “trapped genius doing calculus under protest.” He started answering slowly, lazily, but every line he wrote settled with this smug little click of rightness.

I wanted that. Not his answers, exactly. Just a calibration. A way to check that I wasn’t overthinking myself into a ditch.

I hesitated.

'On one hand,' I thought, 'subtle seal hints could help more than one person. On the other hand, if I get caught dropping notes, Ibiki will skin me and use me as classroom décor.'

I glanced at the clock. Time slipped by in steady chunks. Proctors slid between desks on silent feet, eyes sweeping, chakra senses pried open. Every so often, a strangled yelp broke the air as someone got caught looking too obviously, or making hand signs too big, or whispering.

“Candidate 27, back row,” one proctor said coldly. “You and your team are out.”

Three chairs scraped. Papers were taken. The team shuffled out, shoulders stiff.

The room’s tension ratcheted tighter.

I sighed, quietly, and raised my hand.

The nearest proctor—a kunoichi with sharp eyes and sharper cheekbones—strode over.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Uh,” I said, injecting just enough anxious wobble into my voice to sell it, “my pen’s dying. Do you have a spare sheet? I… messed this one up with ink.”

She glanced down at my paper. The doodles looked chaotic, but the answer bubbles were neat and filled. Nothing obviously suspicious. Just a stressed-out girl with ink-stained fingers.

She grunted and dropped a blank sheet on my desk. “You have to transfer everything if you start over,” she said. “Time’s still running.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She moved on.

As soon as her attention slid away, I shifted.

The new sheet sat crisp and clean on top. On it, in the corner, I started copying my little spiral-legends—small, faint, harmless. Then, as I “accidentally” jostled my elbow, the sheet slid off the desk and fluttered into the aisle.

It landed halfway between me and Shikamaru.

I let out a soft, “Ah—sorry,” reached down, and tugged it closer with my foot. I took a half-step into the aisle to pick it up, making sure my body blocked it from Ibiki’s line of sight for a second.

Shikamaru’s eyes cracked open just a sliver. He watched the paper slide, watched my hand scoop it up, watched the little spirals and arrows in that brief instant before it vanished back onto my desk.

Our eyes met.

He gave me the tiniest, laziest smirk. It said, 'Yeah, I saw it.' It also said, “'You overcomplicate things,”'but that was just his face.

I didn’t need him to copy me. I just needed him to know the code existed. If my answers were wildly off, I had a feeling his genius pride would compel him to huff and correct me later out of sheer annoyance.

I transferred my answers to the new sheet, fingers flying.

Chakra burned low and steady along the tip of the pen, tracing those tiny seal-shapes with a nuance normal ink wouldn’t have. The backlash throbbed behind my eyes. Fine control was my thing, but even I had limits.

I eased off before my hand started shaking.

Across the room, Naruto’s chakra flickered like a shorting light bulb.

I risked a glance.

He sat hunched over his paper, pencil gripped so tightly his knuckles were turning white. His eyes were huge and desperate, flitting between questions like they might magically translate themselves if he glared hard enough.

He’d written something—some words, a doodle of… was that supposed to be a shuriken?—but most of the bubbles were still empty.

Hinata, two rows over and one seat ahead of him, kept sneaking anxious glances back. Her chakra fluttered like a nervous, glowing moth. At one point, she shifted her paper just enough that, if Naruto looked, he could see.

He didn’t.

Of course he didn’t.

Hinata’s cheeks went red. She turned back around, hands shaking.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

I could, theoretically, get something to him. I had enough control to flick a tiny ink dot with a bit of chakra, land it on his page. Tap his Pulse Mark with a signal only he’d feel: this is a pattern, this is a hint.

But would he even get it?

Naruto could be smart, but he was not pattern-smart under pressure. And if he hesitated, looked confused, looked around…

Two points per caught cheat. Team score shared. My fancy little nerd tricks could tank all three of us.

I breathed out through my nose.

'This isn’t about right answers,' I reminded myself. 'It’s about staying in the room.'

If this was a test of information-gathering, they wanted to see who used tools and who understood risk. If it was also a test of resolve—staying put while the rules bent around you—they wanted to see who broke.

Naruto didn’t break.

That was one thing in this universe I’d learned to count on.

'Sorry, idiot,' I thought. 'This one’s yours.'

Another team got bounced. This time, Ibiki himself caught them. He didn’t shout. He just rested a hand on the girl’s desk, leaned down, and said something too soft to hear. Her face went chalk-pale.

“Candidate seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six,” he said a second later, straightening. “You’re done. Leave.”

The boy at her side slammed his fist on the desk. “This is crap!” he snapped. “There’s no way to answer these questions—”

Ibiki’s gaze turned toward him. Slowly.

The boy clamped his mouth shut.

They left.

The room’s fear thickened into something almost physical. Chakra signatures trembled, some spiking high, others constricting so tightly they were barely there.

I forced my shoulders to unclench and went back to work.

Ticking clock. Scratching pens. The faint, disgusting crunch of Sound chakra when one of their tricks misfired and sent a shrill note through the room that made my teeth ache.

Ibiki prowled the aisles, hands in pockets, eyes everywhere.

Up close, his chakra felt… awful. Not in the way the Sound trio’s did, all jagged hate. Ibiki’s was old scar tissue. Thick. Layered. A thousand shards of other people’s terror and pain ground down into something hard and uncompromising.

There was no joy in it. No sadism. Just a solid, unshakeable belief: this was necessary.

He’d broken a lot of people to get here, and he hadn’t forgotten a single one.

When he passed my desk, my pen slowed, but I didn’t stop.

His gaze flicked over my answers, my little doodles, my ink-stained hand. I felt the weight of his attention pause, evaluate, move on.

Approval? Disinterest? “Too small to bother with?”

Didn’t matter. He hadn’t said “You, out.” That was enough.

Minutes stretched.

A boy from the Cloud village put his head down on his desk and refused to pick it up again. His teammates whispered furiously until a proctor caught them. One whisper too loud, one glance too many. Ejected.

Hinata flinched every time someone got tossed, but her chakra, underneath the fear, had this stubborn little thread of blue steel. Nobodies and clan brats alike were breaking, walking out, failing. She stayed.

Across the room, Shikamaru’s pen moved at a steady, lazy pace. No extra sheets. No flashy tricks. Just that soft little thrum of “I figured it out and now I’m bored again.”

I wondered, briefly, if he’d seen more in my doodles than I meant to give away. If he’d words for what this test really was before I did.

Probably.

Show-off.

The hand on the clock slid closer to the top.

My answers were… not perfect. I’d guessed on two, half-built a structure around another, and trusted Shikamaru’s distant, low-key satisfaction to mean I wasn’t totally off base in my reasoning.

My wrist ached. A dull line of chakra fatigue crawled up my arm, behind my eyes. This was not the kind of exam that loved fine motor types.

I flexed my fingers once, shook it out, then forced myself still again.

“Last five minutes,” one of the proctors called.

A wave of tension rolled through the room.

Naruto’s chakra fluttered like a dying candle—and then steadied.

He didn’t reach for Hinata’s answers. Didn’t look at me. He just gripped his pencil hard enough to squeak and started writing something in big, determined strokes. I had no idea what he was putting down. I doubted it mattered.

I smiled, tiny and helpless.

'There you go,' I thought. 'Do it your way.'

Ibiki reached the front of the room.

“Pens down,” he said. “Now.”

The scratching stopped.

He waited until every hand left every page, until the proctors had moved down the rows collecting sheets, until the only sound was breathing and the occasional stifled cough.

His presence filled the silence. Bigger than any jutsu, just a man who’d seen too much and wasn’t impressed by our fear.

“Before we grade anything,” Ibiki said, voice carrying easily, “I have one last thing to tell you.”

Chakra in the room spiked again. Eyelids twitched. Backs straightened.

He let the moment stretch, squeezing it until we were all just a little bit closer to breaking.

“The tenth question,” he said, scarred face unreadable, “will decide whether you pass… or you walk out of here as failures.”

The air tasted like iron.

My hand found the edge of my desk and gripped it. Naruto’s chakra snapped toward him like someone yanking on a wire. Sasuke’s tightened. Hinata’s fluttered, then held.

I swallowed.

'Okay," I thought, pulse loud in my ears. "Here comes the real exam.'

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Ibiki let the silence sit on our shoulders for a good, suffocating minute before he smiled.

It wasn't a nice smile.

"You've all done… admirably," he said, voice dry as chalk dust. "But now we move on to the main event. The tenth question."

Pens stopped scratching. A couple of kids choked on air.

I straightened a little in my seat, fingers tight around my pen. The paper in front of me was mostly full—ink lines, seal-doodles tucked into margins, actual answers somewhere in there. Behind me, Naruto's chakra fluttered like a trapped bird over what I suspected was still a mostly blank exam.

Ibiki held up a single sheet of paper.

"The rules for this question," he went on, "are different."

The air shifted. Even the proctors on the walls seemed to lean in.

"First," he said, "you may choose whether or not to take it. Each of you, individually. However…"

He let that hang, because of course he did.

"If any one member of a three-man cell chooses not to take the tenth question," he continued, "the entire team fails and is dismissed."

A ripple went through the room. Chairs creaked. Someone hissed under their breath.

Team-based trap. Classic.

"And second," Ibiki said, eyes sweeping over us, "if you choose to take the tenth question… and fail… you will never be allowed to take the Chunin Exams again. For as long as you live, you will remain at your current rank. Genin, forever."

The whole room went very, very still.

My stomach dropped like a rock.

Genin forever. No promotion. No chance at better mission assignments, more say in tactics, more authority to push back when a client lied. Just… stuck. Running errands and getting thrown at low-level bandits until something eventually killed you.

Harsh villages would eat their "failed" kids alive for that.

"Those are your options," Ibiki said calmly. "You have thirty minutes before the question is given. During that time, you may raise your hand if you wish to withdraw. Your team will be escorted out and you will be free to try again another year."

He tapped the blank sheet of paper with one gloved finger.

"Or," he added, "you can stay, take the risk, and see if you have what it takes to become Chunin now."

A buzz of whispered panic rose immediately.

I didn't need my chakra sense to see it, but it didn't shut up either.

On my left, a pair of Grass genin were shaking, their chakra flickering in and out of control like bad fluorescent lights. One of them had scars around his wrists that were older than I was. The idea of "no promotion ever" hit him like a punch; I felt the way his resolve cracked.

Two rows over, Hinata hunched in on herself, fingers curled tight around her pen. Her chakra trembled, not just with fear for herself but for Naruto. She glanced his way, then ducked her head when he stared stubbornly at his paper.

Other tables: a Rain team arguing in hoarse whispers; a Sound team unnervingly calm; Sand genin radiating that sandstorm chill like this was just another day in the desert.

The proctors did nothing. They watched.

My own heart thudded against my ribs.

Logically, I knew what this was. The written questions were too advanced for most of us; that part had been about information-gathering and cheating under surveillance. This part? Psychological pressure. Command decisions.

Was it smarter to cut your losses and try again later? Or to gamble everything on one throw?

A hand went up near the back.

"I… I withdraw," a boy muttered.

"Team number forty-one, dismissed," Ibiki said without blinking.

Two more hands followed immediately—different tables, different villages. More mutters. Some looked angry. Some looked relieved and empty, like they'd already decided they'd never be good enough anyway.

Chakra flashed and guttered in little bursts as teams argued under their breath.

"This is stupid."

"Don't you dare risk my career on—"

"We can't fail now—"

I closed my eyes for half a second, not to shut it out but to sort it.

Fear. Regret. Shame. A few sharp, stubborn cores that refused to move no matter how ugly the options got.

Behind me, Naruto's chakra jittered like a live wire.

Not the sharp stab of "I'm going to fail this question." That was almost an afterthought—he already knew his paper was a train wreck. No, what vibrated through the air was the raw, nauseating terror of losing the path ahead entirely.

No Chunin meant no higher rank.

No higher rank meant no Hokage.

He was too loud to miss. If I could feel him from here, Ibiki probably could too, even without my weird sense.

"Teams that withdraw now avoid the risk of permanent failure," Ibiki went on. "There is no shame in recognizing your limits. Being a Chunin means knowing when to retreat."

More hands went up. A whole team from the Hidden Rain. One from Grass. Then another. The proctors moved like vultures, swooping in to collect test papers and escort kids out whose dreams had just been told "later… maybe."

Logical brain: We already proved we can gather information, I thought, fingers dug into my pen hard enough to hurt. We know what this exam is really about. Strategic withdrawal, regroup, try again next year. It's sensible.

My heart threw that plan out the window.

Year after year of staying down at the bottom rank meant more missions like Wave, where kids with no authority were thrown at threats way over their pay grade with no backup. It meant more Haku, more nameless tools bleeding out in places no one would remember.

And Naruto—

I remembered him on the swing, small and furious and absolutely alone. Remembered the raging look in his eyes on that bridge as he screamed at Zabuza about Haku being human, not a tool. That kid did not survive to be told "sit quietly and accept your limits" by a man with scars and a clipboard.

I could tell him to quit. Turn around in my chair, whisper "Naruto, just withdraw, we'll try again next time." He might even listen. He trusted me, stupidly.

But that would be me deciding I knew better than he did what his dream was worth.

Exactly the kind of "for your own good" manipulation I hated.

So I stayed quiet. My hand stayed down.

If he was going to jump off that cliff, it had to be his decision.

Another team withdrew. The room felt thinner every time the door clicked shut. Ibiki stood at the front, unmoved, the weight of his chakra pressing down like a storm front.

"If you lack the courage to face this risk," he said mildly, "leave now. There are always D-rank missions that need doing."

Something in the back of my skull flared—resentment, the urge to throw my pen at him, the bitter knowledge that kids like us would keep getting thrown at D-ranks with A-rank consequences.

The seconds ticked by.

"Last call," Ibiki said. "Anyone else wish to leave? Once we begin, there is no going back."

My pen shook in my fingers.

Behind me, Naruto's chair creaked.

Naruto stared at his test paper like it had personally declared war on him.

The questions all blurred together now. Strategies, infiltration scenarios, coded nonsense. He'd answered—maybe—one. The rest of it was white space and panic sweat.

The words never become Chunin burned in his head like they'd been carved there.

"Genin forever," he muttered under his breath. "No way. No way…"

Everyone around him was talking, whispering, arguing. Chairs scraped as teams left; proctors posted on the walls watched, still as stone.

He heard snatches.

"Just quit—"

"Are you crazy, this is our only—"

"We can try again next year!"

Next year.

He pictured himself sitting in another classroom just like this one a year from now—same orange jacket, same dumb headband, same blank test, while everyone else moved on without him. Sasuke, climbing ahead. Sylvie, painting new seals on new missions. Him, stuck.

His hands clenched.

He hadn't become a ninja to stay at the bottom of the pile and run errands until he died. He hadn't endured the looks, the whispers, the empty apartment, the way everyone treated him like a walking curse, just to give up because some scarred guy said so.

He thought of the bridge in Wave—wind screaming, Haku's body falling, Zabuza dying on his feet with blood on his teeth. He thought of Inari, tiny and shaking, still stepping forward anyway. He thought of the Great Naruto Bridge, named after a loud, stupid kid who wouldn't shut up about changing the world.

His chest hurt. His throat burned.

If I back down here, he thought, what right do I have to shout about being Hokage?

Another team got up to quit. A girl started crying. Ibiki's eyes swept the room, bored and sharp at the same time.

Naruto's fingers dug into the desk so hard it creaked.

He was scared. He wasn't stupid enough to pretend he wasn't. The idea of being stuck as a genin forever made his stomach flip. The idea of losing the chance to stand on that mountain—of never being able to keep his promise to himself—hurt worse.

His heart pounded.

If I quit now, he thought, I'll have to live with it. Every time I say 'I'll be Hokage,' I'll know I ran away here.

The thought made him feel sick.

His body moved before he could talk himself out of it.

He slammed his hands down on the desk and shot to his feet.

"I'm not quitting!" he yelled.

Every head in the room jerked toward him. Pens froze. The proctors went tense. Sylvie flinched in her seat, but didn't turn around.

Naruto swallowed and kept going, because if he stopped now his knees might give out.

"I don't care what your stupid question is!" he shouted, pointing straight at Ibiki. "I'm not gonna back down just 'cause you're trying to scare us!"

A few nervous laughs, a hissed "shut up, idiot"—he ignored them.

"Even if I stay a genin forever, I'll still find a way to become Hokage!" he went on, voice cracking but loud. "I don't care how many times I fail! I'll keep going and going and going until you all have to notice me! That's my ninja way, dattebayo!"

The words tumbled out raw and messy, nothing like the speeches grown-ups gave.

They still landed.

Ibiki's dark eyes fixed on him. The proctor's chakra felt like a wall—steady, immovable, weirdly… interested. He didn't interrupt. He didn't tell Naruto to sit down. He just watched.

Naruto's whole body trembled. He could feel sweat running down his back, feel his classmates' stares prickling against his skin.

But he'd said it. Out loud. In front of everyone.

He wasn't taking it back.

"I'm not afraid of your dumb question!" he finished, breathing hard. "So just give it already!"

Silence crashed over the room like a wave.

The second Naruto stood up, the emotional temperature in the room changed.

Fear didn't vanish. It didn't magically evaporate under the power of one idiot's declaration. But it… shifted.

Resolve flared up in pockets, bright and stubborn.

The Hidden Leaf kids first—Hinata's chakra trembling but brightening, Shikamaru's lazy river current speeding up, Kiba's energy igniting like someone had poured oil on a fire. Across the room, I could feel other sparks catch: a Sand genin who hated backing down, a Rain team determined not to be shown up, a Sound trio whose aura of smug didn't so much brighten as coil tighter in interest.

Naruto himself felt like sunlight forced through a jagged hole—blinding and a little painful, but undeniably real.

He didn't look at me once. He didn't look at Sasuke. He stared straight ahead like the only thing in the world worth seeing was the man behind the desk trying to crush his dream with words.

"That's my ninja way," he finished, voice rough.

My throat felt tight.

"This," I thought, not sure if I was amused or terrified, "is what he's for."

Not just punching things until they stopped being a problem. Not just stupid bravery. He walked right up to the edge of his own worst fear, yelled at it, and somehow dragged other people's courage back from the drop with him.

Ibiki studied him, expression unreadable.

A bead of sweat crawled down my spine.

Then, finally, the proctor smiled.

It was small. Crooked. Dangerous. And, for the first time all exam, not completely awful.

"Well," he said. "Looks like we've still got some interesting candidates after all."

He let his gaze sweep the room.

"No one else is withdrawing?" he asked. "Last chance."

Silence.

Nobody moved.

A few people were shaking. Some stared down at their desks like the wood had turned fascinating. But no one raised their hand.

"All right," Ibiki said. "Decision made."

He set his clipboard aside.

"In that case," he continued, "I suppose there's no need for the tenth question after all."

Half the room made a noise at once.

"What?!"

"You've got to be kidding—"

"Then what were we—"

My jaw actually dropped.

"Allow me to explain," Ibiki said, hands clasped behind his back. "This test was never about whether you could answer these questions. Most of you can't." He said it like a compliment. "It was about whether you could gather information without being caught… and whether you had the resolve to face harsh conditions without abandoning your mission."

He nodded toward the proctors on the walls.

"Those who were caught cheating too obviously failed," he said. "Those who quit under pressure also failed. But those who stayed—who found ways to get the answers, or chose to trust their comrades' abilities, and refused to give up despite the risk…"

He spread his hands.

"Pass."

The word echoed.

For a heartbeat, no one reacted. Then relief hit in a wave so strong my head spun.

Chairs scraped. Someone laughed hysterically. A boy from Cloud actually punched the air. Hinata slumped forward, head thunking softly onto her desk, chakra flaring with shaky joy. Shikamaru muttered something about "what a drag" but his energy loosened at the edges.

Behind me, Naruto collapsed back into his seat like someone had cut his strings.

"I… passed?" he croaked.

"You passed," I said weakly, letting my forehead drop to the desk. My glasses slid askew. "Mostly by screaming at a war criminal. But yes."

He laughed, a little too high-pitched, then kept laughing until it turned into wheezing.

Ibiki's gaze flicked to him, the corner of his mouth twitching again.

"That outburst of yours," he said, "helped some of your comrades decide. That kind of determination, in the face of permanent consequences… is exactly the kind of thing a Chunin needs."

Naruto blinked like he couldn't quite process being complimented by a man whose scalp looked like a topographical map of bad decisions.

"Uh," he said. "Thanks?"

"Don't get used to it," I muttered.

Ibiki's voice rose over the babble.

"Congratulations to all of you," he said. "You have passed the first exam of the Chunin Selection Trials."

Cheers this time. Real ones. Tired but real.

My shoulders finally unclenched. My hand ached from gripping the pen; my fingers were cramped around half-finished seals in the margins. I flexed them slowly and felt the tremor in my chakra settle.

Across the room, Sasuke sat back with that cool, faintly irritated look of his, like he'd known all along and was just annoyed it had taken everyone else so long to catch up. His chakra told a different story—tension easing, a sharp little spike of satisfaction when Naruto had stood up that he'd probably never admit to.

I drew a tiny spiral on the corner of my exam paper, more habit than jutsu.

"In our first big test," I thought, "I played it safe, cheated politely, and analyzed the system. Naruto yelled at it until it told us what it was really measuring."

We needed both of those things. I hated that, but I also didn't.

Ibiki opened his mouth to continue—probably to lay out what horror show came next.

He didn't get the chance.

The windows exploded.

Glass rained inward as something fast and purple and insane screamed through the opening, trailing a banner.

Several people yelped. I flinched so hard my seat skidded. Naruto was halfway into a defensive crouch before he realized the "attack" was actually a person.

Kunoichi, technically. Maybe. Allegedly.

She landed on the proctor's desk in a low crouch, trench coat flaring, short skirt and fishnet catching the light. A long tongue of a dango stick jutted from her mouth, which was curled into a grin that was at least sixty percent murder and forty percent fun.

"Yo!" she yelled. "Hope you maggots enjoyed the warm-up!"

Naruto's eyes lit up like he'd just discovered a new type of chaos.

The newcomer yanked the pinned banner so it rolled down behind her, smacking Ibiki in the head. He didn't even flinch, which said alarming things about his life.

Big, sloppy brushstrokes spelled out: SECOND EXAM – FOREST OF DEATH.

"I'm Mitarashi Anko," she announced, hands on her hips, grin widening. "Your next proctor. Try not to die, yeah?"

A low, uneasy murmur rolled through the room.

Her chakra hit me a second later—sharp and wild, coiled around something ugly and old. It tasted like knives and snakebite and sugar on the air before a storm.

My heart did a very stupid, very specific little flip.

"That woman," I thought, pushing my glasses back up with ink-stained fingers, "is either my future mentor… or the reason I'll need one."

Possibly both.

Around me, genin swallowed hard, stared at the banner, thought about the words "Forest of Death" and then very obviously tried not to think about them.

Naruto leaned forward, practically vibrating.

"Forest of Death?" he whispered, delighted.

I put my head back down on the desk.

"I was wrong," I muttered. "The tenth question everyone should be asking is: why did I sign up for this."

No one had an answer.

But as Anko grinned like a wolf who'd just been handed a flock of particularly crunchy sheep, and Naruto's chakra flared eager and bright beside me, I felt something else under the nerves.

Anticipation. Fear and hope, tangled together.

Phase three of this ridiculous, lethal exam was starting.

And I was still here. With ink on my hands, a headache behind my eyes, and two idiots beside me I'd decided were worth betting my future on.

Honestly? That felt like the right kind of wrong.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

Anko Mitarashi did not leave a room; she detonated out of it.

"Training Ground 44! Tomorrow! One P.M.!" she shouted over her shoulder, already halfway out the shattered window. "Bring your consent forms or don't bother showing up!"

She vanished.

The room stayed silent for a solid three seconds.

"Did she just… break the window and leave?" Naruto asked, staring at the jagged glass. "The door was right there."

"She's efficient," I said, even though my heart was doing Olympic-level gymnastics in my chest. Sugar and knives.

"She's crazy," Shikamaru corrected, putting his head back on the desk. "This whole exam is crazy. I should have stayed in bed."

Ibiki cleared his throat. The sound was heavy enough to crack a walnut.

"You heard the proctor," he said, and suddenly he was just a scary man with a stack of papers again, the oppressive torture-chamber aura dialed back to a manageable strict-teacher vibe. "Collect your forms on the way out. Dismissed."

The tension snapped. The room exploded into chatter, scraping chairs, and the frantic energy of sixty genin realizing they'd survived the first hurdle only to be told the second one involved something called the Forest of Death.

We shuffled out. I grabbed three forms from the stack, handing one to Naruto and one to Sasuke.

"Consent forms," Naruto read, squinting at the dense kanji. "What for?"

"Liability," I said, scanning the fine print. "'The village of Konohagakure is not responsible for loss of limb, life, sanity, or belongings…' Standard ‘if you die, don’t sue us’ stuff."

Sasuke folded his neatly and pocketed it. "Hn. Just means the next stage allows killing."

"You say that like it's a weather report," I muttered.

We walked out into the late afternoon sun. The air felt cleaner outside, free of the ink-and-anxiety smell of the classroom.

"So," Naruto said, stretching his arms over his head. "We got until tomorrow afternoon? That's plenty of time to train! We should go over strategy! We should—"

"We should rest," Sasuke cut in. "And restock."

"And eat," I added. "My brain used too many calories inventing fake answers."

"Restock!" Naruto agreed immediately, pivoting. "Ninja tools shop! Then ramen!"

"Actually," I said, stopping.

They both looked back.

I twisted a lock of my hair around my finger. It was light-brown, limp, and currently dull with dust and stress. Just like Naruto’s. Just like Ino’s. Just like half the village.

Just like a background character.

"I have an errand," I said. "You guys go ahead. I'll meet you at the training ground in the morning."

Naruto blinked. "By yourself? But we're a team!"

"I need… girl supplies," I lied smoothly.

Naruto turned bright red and immediately backed up three steps. "Okay! Yep! See you tomorrow! Bye!"

He grabbed Sasuke’s arm and dragged him off before Sasuke could ask follow-up questions.

I watched them go, then turned and headed for the commercial district.

I didn't need girl supplies. Well, I did, but not the kind Naruto was imagining.

I needed a change.

I found Ino exactly where I expected to find her: inside her family’s flower shop, aggressively de-thorning roses like they owed her money.

"Hey," I said, the bell dinging above me.

She looked up, saw me, and immediately dropped the shears.

"Sylvie! You survived!" She vaulted the counter—because Ino did not believe in walking around things—and landed in front of me.

She looked me up and down, blue eyes narrowing critically. Ino rolled her eyes fondly.

Then she reached out and tugged a strand of my hair.

"You look like a dust mop," she informed me.

"Thank you," I said. "I was going for 'urban camouflage.'"

"It's not working. It just looks… beige." She wrinkled her nose. "With Naruto on your team, you guys are too yellow. It’s monochromatic. You need contrast."

"That’s actually why I’m here," I admitted.

My gaze slid toward a bucket of bright lilies near the window—tiger orange, violent violet, and a soft, stubborn pink.

"I want to dye it," I said.

Ino’s eyebrows shot up. "Really? Finally? I’ve been telling you for months that boring brown does nothing for your complexion. What are we thinking? Darker? Red?"

"Pink," I said.

Ino blinked. "Pink?"

"Like cherry blossoms," I said. "But… tougher. Less ‘falling off the tree,’ more ‘poisonous flower you shouldn't touch.’"

Ino stared at me for a second, then a slow, delighted grin spread across her face.

"Get in the back," she ordered, pointing to the stairs. "I have a mixing bowl and I am not afraid to use it."

An hour later, I sat in front of the mirror in Ino’s bathroom, a towel draped over my shoulders and my head smelling like chemicals.

"It's going to be bright," Ino warned, peeling off her gloves. "Like, bright bright. You sure about this?"

I looked at my reflection. The girl in the mirror looked tired. My glasses were smudge-prone, my features soft, my history invisible.

"I'm tired of blending in," I said.

Also, if my life insisted on treating my hair as symbolism, I might as well pick the loudest possible color.

"Wash it out," Ino commanded.

I dunked my head under the faucet. The water ran clear, then pale ruby.

When I towel-dried it and looked up, the brown was gone.

In its place was pink.

Not a soft, pastel whisper of pink. This was vibrant. Deep. The color of raw chakra or a fresh bruise or a really aggressive sunset.

It stood out against the black of my glasses and the dark green orphanage walls I usually stared at.

Ino whistled. "Okay. Yeah. That works."

She grabbed a brush and started yanking it through the damp tangles.

"It makes your eyes look greener," she decided. "And it definitely says ‘I am not Naruto's sister,’ which is a plus."

"Was that a concern?"

"People talk," she said darkly. "Anyway. Now you look like… you."

I touched the ends.

"Yeah," I whispered. "I do."

We spent the next hour debating hairstyles (I insisted on keeping it practical; Ino insisted on 'volume') before I finally escaped with a promise to not die in the Forest of Death so she could say "I told you so" about the color later.

Walking back to the orphanage, I caught my reflection in a shop window.

Pink hair. Pink-trimmed top. Dark shorts.

I looked like a candy-colored warning label.

"All right," I told the reflection. "Phase two. Let’s go get traumatized in the woods."

The next morning, I arrived at Training Ground 44 early.

The place lived up to the name. A massive wire fence stretched up toward the sky, topped with barbed wire and warning signs that basically screamed DO NOT ENTER in red paint.

Beyond the fence, trees the size of office buildings loomed, blocking out the sun. The shadows were thick and smelled like rot.

Naruto and Sasuke were already there.

Naruto was vibrating with energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Sasuke was leaning against a post, looking cool and constipated.

"Hey," I said, walking up.

Naruto spun around. "Sylvie! You're—"

He stopped. His jaw dropped.

"WHOA!"

Sasuke looked up. His eyes widened, just a fraction.

"Your hair!" Naruto yelled, pointing. "It's… it’s…!"

"Pink," I supplied. "Astute observation, detective."

"It's really pink!" He grinned. "It looks like… like candy! Or a cool explosion!"

"I was going for ‘toxic hazard,’" I said.

Sasuke studied me for a second, gaze sweeping over the new color.

"You'll be easier to spot in the foliage," he criticized.

"Or," I countered, "enemies will pause for two seconds wondering why there's a neon sign in the bushes, and you can set them on fire."

"Hn," he said. But the corner of his mouth twitched up. "Acceptable."

"You guys ready?" I asked, adjusting my pouch. "I brought extra bandages, ink, and enough soldier pills to keep a horse awake for a week."

"I brought lunch!" Naruto announced, patting his backpack.

"Naruto," I said gently. "We’re going into a survival exam. We’re supposed to hunt for food."

"Yeah, but what if the food tastes bad?"

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it.

"Valid point," I admitted.

A commotion near the gate drew our attention.

Anko was standing on a rock, grinning down at the gathering crowd of genin. She held a stack of papers in one hand and a kunai in the other.

"Alright, maggots!" she shouted. "Welcome to the stage where I trim the herd!"

She waved the papers.

"Before you go in, you gotta sign these!"

"What are they?" someone called out.

"Consent forms!" Anko chirped. "Because people are gonna die in there, and I don’t want the paperwork if it’s my fault!"

A ripple of unease went through the crowd.

I took the form she passed out. It was exactly what I thought it was.

…death by giant insects… death by toxic plants… death by enemy combatants…

"Fun," I muttered, signing my name with a flourish.

Naruto signed his without reading it. Sasuke signed his with a scowl.

"Now," Anko said, jumping down. She handed the forms to a chunin and grinned. "I’ll explain the rules once. You get a scroll. Heaven or Earth. You need both to pass. You have five days. No quitting. No rules except ‘get to the tower in the middle.’"

She jabbed a thumb at the dark treeline behind her.

"Inside… it’s a lawless zone. Theft, betrayal, murder? All fair game."

Naruto gulped.

"Sounds like a party," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady.

Anko’s eyes snapped to me. She blinked, taking in the pink hair, the glasses, the ink stains on my hands.

"Ooh," she said, stepping closer. "New look? Very… visible."

"Distraction tactic," I said.

She laughed—a sharp, barking sound.

"I like you," she said. "Try not to get eaten in the first hour."

I wasn’t sure if that was encouragement or betting odds.

She turned her attention to Naruto, who was making a face at the looming forest.

"Something wrong, kid?" she asked, voice dropping to a purr. "Scared?"

"No way!" Naruto shouted. "I’m not scared of some stupid trees!"

Anko smiled.

In a blur of motion, she whipped a kunai past Naruto’s cheek. It sliced the skin—a thin red line appearing instantly.

Before he could even flinch, she was behind him, arm draped over his neck like a lover, whispering in his ear.

"Tough guys are usually the first to go," she murmured. "Their blood tastes the best."

She licked the blood off the cheek she’d just cut.

Naruto froze, terrifyingly still.

My stomach did a flip. Sugar and knives.

A Grass-nin returned the kunai with her long tongue—my brain whispered all kinds of quiet alarms—and the tension ratcheted up to suffocating.

"Okay!" Anko announced, hopping back to the front as if she hadn’t just casually traumatized a twelve-year-old. "Exchange your forms for scrolls at the booth! Gate opens in ten minutes!"

We got in line.

"She’s… intense," Naruto squeaked, touching his cheek.

"She’s terrifying," I agreed. "I want to be her when I grow up."

Sasuke gave me a look of genuine concern. "Don’t."

We got our scroll—Heaven—and moved to Gate 12.

"Okay," I said, tightening my gloves. "Formation?"

"I take point," Naruto said.

"I check for traps," Sasuke countered.

"I keep us from walking off cliffs and track enemy chakra," I said. "So… diamond formation? With me in the back screaming warnings?"

"Works for me," Naruto said.

The boys drifted closer to the gate, tense and focused. I should have been doing the same, but out of the corner of my eye, something pinged my social radar.

Hinata Hyūga stood a little ways off from the rest of her team near Gate 13, half-shadowed by the post. Clipboard-straight posture, eyes glued to her consent form like it might sprout extra instructions. Everyone else was clustered in noisy trios. She was a quiet island.

Yeah, no. Not on my watch.

"I'll be right back," I told Naruto and Sasuke.

Naruto blinked. "Huh?"

"Extremely dangerous mission," I said. "Socializing."

I peeled off before he could argue.

Up close, Hinata flinched when she realized I was heading her way, then did that tiny double-dip bow thing she did when overwhelmed.

"H-Hyuuga Hinata," she murmured, like I didn’t already know. "G-good morning."

"Sylvie," I said. "Pink hair, terrible decision-maker. Mind if I stand here?"

She shook her head, fingers worrying the edge of her form. Her gaze kept flicking over my shoulder. Every time Naruto laughed at something, she tensed like she'd been poked with a senbon.

I followed her line of sight. Naruto. Of course.

The cut on his cheek was still visible—thin, red, stupidly heroic. Hinata’s eyes kept snagging on it. Her hand slipped into her jacket pocket on autopilot.

"You looking at the forest," I asked quietly, "or at the idiot who tried to pick a fight with it?"

Her face went scarlet. "I—I just… N-Naruto-kun… his f-face…"

She fumbled something out of her pocket: a small, familiar jar. Medical ointment. The good kind. Hyūga household pharmaceutical-grade "we can afford this" ointment.

"I thought… maybe… i-if he had this… it would… um…"

"Not get infected?" I supplied. "Solid plan."

She nodded, eyes dropping to the dirt. Her thumb ran frantic circles over the lid.

"Do you want to give it to him?" I asked.

Hinata made a noise that might have been words in another, less cursed universe. "I—I couldn’t… h-he’s about to g-go in, and I don’t want to b-bother him, and if I say something stupid—"

"Okay," I said. "Plan B: you give it to me, I give it to him, and I explicitly tell him it’s from you. Full credit. No stealth charity."

Her head snapped up. "Y-you would…?"

"It's either that or I let him march into Murder Nature Preserve leaking blood everywhere," I said. "My healer instincts are offended."

She hesitated for one more heartbeat, then thrust the jar at me so fast you’d think it was explosive-tagged. "P-please! If… if that’s okay!"

"Signed, sealed, delivered," I said, tucking it into my pouch. "You did good, Hinata."

She went back to worrying her jacket hem, shoulders hunched, but a tiny, shaky smile was starting to pry its way onto her face.

Mission: mildly successful.

I jogged back to Gate 12.

"Where’d you go?" Naruto demanded immediately. "They’re about to open the gate!"

"Logistics," I said, already unscrewing the ointment. "Hold still."

He yelped as I thumbed it onto his cheek. "C-cold! What is that?"

"Medicine," I said. "Courtesy of Hinata."

He froze. "Hinata? As in—"

I jerked my chin toward Gate 13, where she was now staring very hard at the posted rules like they were life-or-death kanji.

Naruto’s face lit up like someone had lit a sparkler inside his skull. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"YO~ THANKS HINATA-CHAN!!"

Half the training ground turned to look. Hinata almost dropped her form. She bowed so fast I worried about whiplash, fingers knotting in the front of her coat.

"Smooth," I muttered.

If the universe insisted on writing slow-burn crushes, I could at least mess with the pacing.

The gatekeeper chunin checked his watch, the universal body language for "I am not paid enough to care about adolescent drama."

"Ready?" he called.

I touched the fresh pink ends of my hair. It was stupid how soft it felt—how much of my brain had latched onto it as proof I got to be “girl” now. Dyed, styled, mine.

The forest beyond the fence did not care about any of that.

If it came down to it, I could cut it. Trade pretty for practical, softness for survival. Kunoichi over fragile femininity.

I felt the ink pots in my pouch, the tags hidden in my sleeves, the faint tug of my Squad Marks on my teammates.

I felt fear, yeah. A lot of it. But also… ready enough.

"Unlock," the chunin said.

The lock clicked. The gate creaked open. Naruto’s hand was still mid-wave when the chains rattled.

"Second Exam, start!"

We ran into the dark.

Chapter Text

<The Third Hokage>

The Hokage’s office was quiet, which mostly meant everyone had gone home to worry somewhere else.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat alone behind his desk, staring at the latest stack of reports without really reading them. Outside the tall windows, Konoha was a dark bowl of rooftops, lanterns flickering like fireflies. Somewhere far below, he could hear the distant echo of teenagers shouting and laughing as they left the Academy building.

Chūnin Exams. Kids with headbands and big eyes, signing consent forms that boiled down to: if you die, try not to make it the village’s fault.

His gaze drifted to the corner of the desk where a fresh set of Forest of Death waivers sat, all neat lines and legalese. Anko’s scrawled signature sprawled across the bottom of the proctor authorization page like a threat.

Training Field 44: lethal fauna, hostile flora, internal security barrier active.

He took a slow breath through his pipe, let it out through his nose. The smoke curled up toward the carved faces on the far wall.

Sound. Sand. Orochimaru.

The kanji blurred for a moment. He saw instead a white-eyed prodigy falling, a boy with yellow hair turning his back on the village, three teenagers drenched in blood on a border that had moved three times in one war.

He rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

A soft scrape broke the quiet as someone slid the office door open without knocking.

Hiruzen didn’t look up immediately. Only one man in the village still walked into the Hokage’s office like it was his own.

“Working late, Hiruzen,” Danzō Shimura said. “Again.”

“Someone has to read these,” Hiruzen replied. His voice came out rougher than he intended. “Or we’ll be assigning genin to border patrol and ANBU to cat retrieval.”

Danzō’s dry chuckle was as humorless as always. He limped into the room, cane tapping lightly on the wooden floor. Bandages swaddled his right arm and half his face, as if he’d wrapped himself in all the secrets he wouldn’t let go of.

He stopped in front of the desk. The shadows from the lamp caught the lines around his one visible eye, carved deeper since the last war, never softened.

“I hear the first phase of the Exams has concluded,” Danzō said. “Minimal… casualties.”

Hiruzen’s jaw tightened. “None,” he said. “This time.”

“Ah.” Danzō’s mouth twitched in something that might have been displeasure. “You sound disappointed.”

“I sound tired,” Hiruzen said. “Children shouldn’t die for promotion tests.”

Danzō’s eye flicked to the Forest of Death paperwork, then back. “No,” he agreed. “They should die for their village.”

Hiruzen didn’t rise to it. Arguing definitions of patriotism with Danzō was like arguing with a stone. It only left you bruised.

“You didn’t come here to lecture me on exam design,” Hiruzen said. “What is it?”

Danzō inclined his head, accepting the correction.

“I came,” he said, “to reassure you. We have increased security.”

That made Hiruzen look up.

Danzō took that as his cue and stepped closer, resting both hands on the top of his cane.

“After the… regrettable defection of Orochimaru,” Danzō began, as if they were discussing a misplaced file, “and with the presence of Otogakure teams in the Exams, it seemed prudent to assume the worst.”

“I have already assumed the worst,” Hiruzen said. “Twice.”

“And yet,” Danzō went on smoothly, “you still allowed them to enter. Sand and Sound, side by side. A new minor village headed by your former student. A foreign Kazekage with unstable health, an ambitious council. Many… variables.”

He let the word hang.

Hiruzen tamped down the coal in his pipe with his thumb.

“Get to the point.”

“Of course.” Danzō’s eye narrowed, a hawk choosing which small animal to dissect first. “ANBU rotations have been doubled around the perimeter. There are now four-man squads at each gate instead of two, with Root support reinforcing from the shadows when needed.”

“Root is disbanded,” Hiruzen said automatically.

Danzō ignored that like smoke. “Ongoing surveillance around the Exams themselves has been increased. The Barrier Corps has been instructed to keep the four-corner barrier at full sensitivity—any foreign chakra signature will be flagged immediately. We have also repositioned several sensor-nin… more flexibly.”

Hiruzen heard the words, but underneath them he heard the old song: I have moved pieces you did not see. The board is already different, Hiruzen.

He stared at the stack of mission slips for out-of-village genin teams. Kumo. Iwa. Suna. New Sound.

“And?” he asked quietly. “You didn’t come here just to tell me you have ANBU doing their jobs.”

“No,” Danzō said. “For something like this, we need… deniability.”

There it was.

Hiruzen’s stomach sank.

“Deniability from what?”

“From the perception of weakness,” Danzō said. “The other Kage are watching. So are less… civilized parties. If word spreads that Konoha’s security can be breached during its own Exam, our position in the balance of power degrades. Our enemies need to see a strong stance. Our allies need to believe we control our own streets.”

“And if we don’t?” Hiruzen asked. “If someone is already inside?”

“Then we catch them,” Danzō said simply. “Before they can do more than sniff at the walls.”

He shifted his weight, as if the next part were a formality.

“To that end,” he said, “I’ve taken the liberty of hiring several external operatives. Independent specialists from minor countries. No village affiliation, no public history with Konoha.”

Hiruzen’s eyes hardened. “Mercenaries.”

“Assets,” Danzō corrected. “They know the terrain between nations, they know how to move without flags on their backs, and they have no interest in the politics of the Five Great Villages. All they care about is the contract and their own survival. Useful traits.”

Hiruzen saw again, in the mind’s eye that never turned off, a boy on a training field, laughing as he promised to protect his friends. Another boy, older, turning away with cold eyes and a curse mark blooming on his neck. A third, their sensei, caught between them.

“You brought outsiders into my village,” Hiruzen said, very softly, “during an international exam full of children, without informing the Hokage first.”

Danzō’s fingers tightened on his cane. Just a fraction.

“I brought an extra layer of teeth around the village,” he said. “In case the ones you already have prove too blunt. These operatives understand the value of keeping their presence discreet. To the other Kage, they will look like traders, wanderers, the usual detritus that gathers when so many people converge in one place.”

“And when they inevitably report everything they see to whoever pays them more?” Hiruzen asked. “What then?”

“They won’t,” Danzō said. “They’ve been made to understand that betraying Konoha’s interests would be… terminal.”

There was a particular calm in his voice when he said that word. Hiruzen had heard it before, over maps and casualty lists.

He set his pipe down with deliberate care.

“And who,” he asked, “selected these ‘assets’?”

“My people vetted them thoroughly,” Danzō said. “We’ve worked with their ilk before, on… delicate matters bordering Rain. They have no love for the great nations. No loyalties but the ones written in their contracts.”

Hiruzen thought of Ame’s endless downpour. Of whispers about a small, ruthless organization that picked off missing-nin and war orphans and turned them into ghosts in black cloaks. Stories even ANBU told each other around late-night campfires when missions went quiet.

“You are inviting wolves to guard the sheep,” he said.

Danzō’s eye gleamed.

“Wolves keep out other wolves,” he said. “Dogs… only bark.”

For a moment, the old anger flared hot in Hiruzen’s chest. Not the tempered frustration of paperwork and policy, but the sharp, ugly spark from decades ago, when he’d first realized how far Danzō would go and how many graves it would take to stop him.

“You always did confuse fear with respect,” Hiruzen said.

“And you,” Danzō replied, “always confuse compassion with weakness.”

The silence between them stretched, old and tired and sharp-edged.

Finally, Hiruzen leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach.

“Fine,” he said. “The operatives stay—for now. But if they touch a single civilian, or interfere with the Exams without explicit orders, I will have them removed. Personally.”

Danzō inclined his head, as if they were discussing the weather.

“Of course,” he said. “They know the parameters. Their role is simple: observe. Report. Intercept only if an external threat breaches our lines.”

He turned, cane tapping toward the door. At the threshold, he paused.

“You worry about Sand and Sound,” Danzō said. “About Orochimaru slithering back through some crack. Let me worry about the shadows behind them. Between us, the village will remain… secure.”

Hiruzen watched him go, the lamplight swallowing him inch by inch until the door slid shut with a soft click.

Secure.

He picked his pipe back up, but didn’t light it.

From somewhere deeper in the building came a knock at the inner door.

“Enter,” Hiruzen called.

A barrier-nin stepped in, vest slightly askew, dark circles under his eyes. He bowed quickly.

“Hokage-sama. Apologies for the late report.”

“Go on,” Hiruzen said.

“The perimeter seals registered several brief flares along the western wall,” the man said. “High-level chakra signatures, in and out too fast for our trackers to get a lock. No physical breach detected. We believe they were… probes. Testing our alertness.”

“Foreign?” Hiruzen asked.

The barrier-nin hesitated.

“Hard to say,” he admitted. “Not the usual feel of our own ANBU. Whoever it was, they knew how to skim the edge of the barrier without triggering a full alarm. We’ve already increased sensitivity and notified the ANBU captains. Root has assured us some of their… friends are also watching that sector, so—”

Hiruzen held up a hand. The man stopped.

“Thank you,” Hiruzen said. “Get some rest. Rotate your team. I want the barrier manned at all times during the Exams. No lapses.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

The man left, door sliding shut behind him.

Hiruzen sat there for a long moment, staring at the wood.

Friends.

Akatsuki. Mercenaries. Orochimaru. Suna’s silence. A new pink-haired genin who signed a death

waiver this afternoon and walked toward a forest that wanted to eat her.

He could feel the village’s chakra even here: a low, constant hum, full of bright, foolish sparks and the slow, steady burn of older lives. Under it, something else now—faint, unfamiliar notes weaving just outside the usual chords.

More ANBU on the walls. A sharper barrier. “Independent assets.”

Security.

He thought of a saying his own sensei had once used, back when they were all younger and the war had different names.

A cage keeps danger out, Tobirama had said. It also keeps whatever’s inside from seeing what’s coming over the horizon.

Hiruzen closed his eyes.

“I will keep them safe,” he murmured, barely audible in the empty room. “Even from the help you think I need.”

Outside, unseen in the dark streets and on the rooftops and beyond the walls, new eyes were already mapping Konoha’s arteries. Counting guards. Marking habits. Testing the seams of its defenses.

The Forest of Death would open in the morning.

The village was “more secure” than ever.

And for the first time in a long while, Hiruzen Sarutobi felt like the walls he’d spent his life building were being held up by other people’s hands.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

The gate clanged open behind us and we ran straight into a throat.

One second there was fence and sky and Anko’s feral grin. Next second it was trees and dirt and the Forest of Death closing over us like lips.

Naruto launched out front like someone had fired him out of a cannon.

“LET’S GOOO—”

“Indoor voice,” I snapped, already dropping into our formation. “You can be loud or alive. Pick one.”

Sasuke slid into place a few meters behind Naruto, eyes already cutting over branches, roots, shadows—pre-empting traps on autopilot. I took rear-support, the messy third point of our triangle, glancing back every few steps for anything trying to sneak up on us.

And because I could feel too much.

Forests were bad news for me.

The worst memories in my head all smelled like wet bark and metal. Trees plus being alone equaled dying on the wrong world with my face in the dirt. That forest had been empty—no chakra, no help, no backup. Just silence and the slow realization that no one was coming.

This one was crowded.

I couldn’t see chakra—not really—but as soon as we crossed the line, something prickled against my skin. The air here pressed in the way a full room does. The ground had this slow, buried thrum. My stomach couldn’t decide if it wanted to flip or crawl away without me.

My brain immediately tried to file everything.

Naruto ahead of us felt like standing next to a bonfire that kept hiccuping. Hot, restless, flickery. Whenever I pushed my awareness toward him, it was like getting jostled by someone who couldn’t stop bouncing.

Sasuke was the opposite: tight and compressed, like a drawn bowstring. The feeling off him didn’t spread much, but it had weight. Focused, sharp pressure, all held in.

And under that, the forest.

It didn’t feel neutral. The background against my nerves was this low, muddy pulse, full of tiny jumps and stabs—little lives everywhere, reacting to us, to each other. My senses kept catching on pockets of…interest? Hunger? It all blurred together. I could tell there was a lot; I couldn’t tell what any of it meant.

The canopy stitched thicker overhead until the sky turned into a sickly green smear. Light got thin. Air got thick. Every breath tasted like rot and damp wood.

“The Forest of Death doesn’t feel like a place,” I thought. “It feels like a mouth. And we just ran over the tongue.”

“The air’s weird,” Naruto said, because subtlety had never once picked him.

“It’s a chakra-rich biome,” I said. “Officially. Unofficial name: ‘Konoha’s Temporary Child Murder Zone.’”

He snorted. Sasuke made a quiet, offended noise that said “shinobi exams” in Uchiha.

“Hands,” I said.

Naruto half-turned while still jogging. “Huh?”

“Hands,” I repeated. “Squad Marks. Renewal time. Unless you want your tracking seal to expire mid-exam.”

That got him. He threw an arm back toward me without even looking. I grabbed his wrist, fingers finding the faint ink swirl of the seal.

I pushed a bit of my chakra into the mark. Thin, careful, like tapping something to see if it was hollow. The ink warmed under my touch. Something inside the seal caught that and bounced it back at me.

For a second, I got a rush of Naruto through that contact—loud, hot, urgent. It was more feeling than anything else, a burst of restless energy that made my fingers tingle. In my mind, it registered as a sharp, buzzing note; not a picture, not a color, just a distinct signal against the background fuzz.

“Ow,” he complained. “That tingled.”

“Good. Your life alert is renewed.” I let go. “Don’t run out of range or I’ll assume you died stupid.”

“Rude,” he said.

“Accurate,” Sasuke added.

“Your turn,” I said.

Sasuke didn’t argue. He just shifted his arm back, smooth and controlled, like this was a perfectly normal thing to do while sprinting through a deadly forest.

His wrist was bare where I’d scrubbed and redrawn the seal earlier. My fingers brushed his skin, and I shoved chakra into the ink, feeling it catch and hum.

What came back wasn’t a blast like Naruto. It was pressure. Clean, narrow, dense. Like a held breath that refused to leak. It settled in my head as a second note—lower, steadier.

Two distinct pulses now at the edge of my awareness, both layered over the forest’s heavy background thrum.

I broke contact before the feedback made my headache worse.

“Couldn’t you do that before we started running?” Naruto called back.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t want to renew my subscription to your vitals in front of a torture proctor. I have boundaries.”

“Her quiz was worse,” he muttered.

“Debatable,” I said.

We vaulted a fallen trunk. Naruto whooped like it was a training field, not a giant trip hazard.

The trees here were obscene. Trunks thick enough to have addresses. Roots clawed up out of the ground like fingers trying to drag us down. The more we pushed in, the more the light warped—everything tinted that dull green that made skin look wrong.

“Okay, ground rules,” I said, partly to distract myself from the pressure in my chest. “Five days. We need one Heaven scroll, one Earth scroll, then we beeline to the tower in the middle. No opening scrolls early, no losing them, no dying. That last one’s technically extra credit, but we’re overachievers.”

Naruto’s hand went to his pouch.

“Speaking of—”

He yanked the Heaven scroll out and held it up like a trophy.

My heart did something illegal.

“Do you think it rattles?” he wondered. “What if there’s, like, a second scroll inside? Or a hint? Or—”

He gave it a sharp shake next to his ear.

“PUT THAT AWAY,” I exploded.

He shook it harder. “It’s just a scroll!”

“You don’t know that!” I lunged and smacked it out of his hands. “In this village, ‘just a scroll’ means ‘pick a body part you’d miss least.’”

It spun once in the air. For one sick second I was back in another forest, watching my own blood drip. Then the scroll dropped into my hands instead of blowing our fingers off.

“Naruto,” I said, very calm. “If you open this now, we’re disqualified at best. At worst, it does something exam-shaped that we are not ready for. There is no universe where that ends well.”

“…Ten?” he guessed.

“Higher,” I said.

Sasuke didn’t bother hiding his irritation.

“If the examiners wanted us dead,” he said, “they wouldn’t need the scroll. We have twenty-nine other teams for that.”

“Cool,” I said. “So we’re more likely to be murdered by children than by test materials. Very comforting.”

I shoved the scroll back into Naruto’s pouch myself and closed the flap firmly.

“There,” I said. “You touch that again before the tower, I draw ‘free organs’ on your forehead in permanent ink.”

“Sylvie,” he whined.

“I brought a lot of ink,” I warned.

He sulked. Functionally, though, his hand stayed away from the pouch.

We kept moving.

The further in we got, the heavier everything felt. Warm, wet air wrapped around us, full of the sweet-sour smell of rot. Sound went strange—our footsteps felt muffled, but some bird shrieking way off to the side cut through clear as a knife.

If Konoha was chakra soup, this place was chakra stew. Thick, lumpy, full of bits that kept brushing up against my awareness and sliding off before I could tell what they were.

It started in my teeth, this buzzing under the enamel, then crawled up behind my eyes. Not sharp enough to be pain, not clear enough to be useful. Just crowded.

Back home, the forest had been thin. Nothing there but me and the cold and some hypothetical god who definitely had better things to do. No sense of other minds in the dark, no pressure, just my own heartbeat getting slower.

Here?

Here it felt like being shoved into a party where I didn’t know anyone and everyone was staring.

“Five days in this,” I muttered. “Great. Love that for us.”

Naruto crashed through a fern so hard the plant squealed. Something many-legged and glossy skittered away.

“Man, this place is awesome,” he said. “It’s like my training grounds but angrier.”

“Everything feels angry to you,” I said. “You live at maximum volume.”

“That’s what makes me charming!”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go with ‘charming’ instead of ‘terminally loud.’”

We hit a curtain of hanging branches—not unusual, just foliage, shade, and—

My nerves flashed cold.

“Naruto, duck,” I snapped, grabbing for his collar.

He moved, but not fast enough. I yanked him backward anyway.

A chunky clump of shiny, horrible somethings poured from the branches where his head had been and hit the ground with a wet noise that made my brain want to reboot. The whole mass writhed as pieces crawled over each other, all legs and soft bodies and “absolutely not.”

“GROSS,” Naruto yelped, stumbling back into me.

My skin tried to evacuate my body.

Sasuke flicked a kunai up, slicing through the branch they’d been hanging from.

“Note,” he said, staring at the glistening heap. “Watch the canopy.”

“Note,” I echoed, already moving toward a nearby trunk. “Do not go this way again.”

I smeared ink onto my thumb and slapped a quick swirl-and-cross mark onto the bark at knee height. Nothing complex—just my own shorthand for “bad insect nonsense here.”

Sasuke’s eyes tracked the motion as we skirted around the pile.

“You’re tagging trees now?” he asked.

“If I don’t write it down, I get one forest worth of horrible and it all blurs together,” I said. “Past us deserves hazard labels. I’ll give you a translation key if we make it out.”

Naruto rubbed his neck, still glaring at the branch.

“Think any of those things are edible?” he asked.

“No,” Sasuke and I said together.

We picked up speed again.

Once the spike of adrenaline drained, there was a stretch of almost-quiet: just our breathing, our footfalls, the constant insect buzz. That was when my brain tried to go somewhere else.

The last forest had only had one noise: my own blood in my ears. Mud dragging at my hands when I tried to crawl. The underside of a log inches from my face. No chakra. No background hum. Just the slow, awful realization that I wasn’t getting up.

I tasted iron and wet wood so sharply my throat closed for a second.

Nope.

I shoved my attention outward, into the noise.

If I paid close enough attention, I could pick apart bits of the background fuzz. Something big and slow off to our right—heavy, cold presence, like a rock that wanted to move. Higher up somewhere, a cluster of small, thin, twitchy feelings all tangled together: insect nest, probably, and absolutely not my problem if I could help it. A jittery team somewhere to the left, flickering pulses like they couldn’t decide whether to run or freeze.

“Hey,” Naruto said. “What’re you doing with your hand?”

I glanced down. My fingers were sketching little seal strokes against my thigh, automatic.

“Cataloguing,” I said. “Also freaking out, but I’m multitasking.”

“You’re weird,” he said, kind of fond.

“Thank you.”

The path narrowed between two huge roots. Sasuke stopped so suddenly Naruto nearly collided with him.

“Wire,” Sasuke said.

Naruto squinted. “Where?”

Sasuke tipped his kunai at ankle height. Now that I was looking, the nearly invisible line across the gap snagged my attention instantly.

I exhaled.

“Reminder,” I said from the back. “I’m back here so when the frontline geniuses explode, there’s enough of you left for me to rearrange.”

“We’re not idiots,” Naruto protested.

Sasuke carefully slid the kunai under the wire and lifted it. His silence had Opinions.

Somewhere overhead, something clicked.

“Down!” I yelped.

We hit the dirt as a rain of kunai came down hard enough to chew up the ground where Naruto had been standing. One buried itself in the trunk next to my head and just… vibrated.

Naruto lay sprawled on his stomach, arms over his head.

“I hate this forest,” he announced into the ground.

“Already?” I pushed myself up, plucking leaves out of my hair. “We just got here.”

He rolled onto his back and glared up at the canopy.

“Cowards!” he shouted. “Fight me yourselves, you stupid trees!”

“Please don’t trash talk the ecosystem,” I said. “It has more weapons than you do.”

Sasuke’s gaze flicked from the wire to the fallen kunai, then further into the trees.

“Not Academy traps,” he said. “Whoever set that did it fast.”

“So not for practice,” I said. “Cool. Love that.”

“Heh.” Naruto puffed his chest out from the ground. “I could do that if I wanted.”

“Great,” I said, offering him a hand. “Let’s schedule ‘kills people with wire’ lessons for after we survive the murder exam.”

He grabbed my hand and bounced up, almost dragging me forward with him.

We kept going. The buzz under my skin didn’t fade; if anything, it kept getting thicker, like cotton stuffed in the spaces between my thoughts.

To keep it from turning into one big anxiety blob, I forced myself to keep track.

Naruto: front, loud, jagged-feeling, constantly shifting but consistently there whenever I checked.

Sasuke: closer, compact and contained, like a weight hanging in a fixed spot.

Both marks answered when I brushed my chakra along the connection—small, reassuring flickers against the static.

Then there was the other thing.

It wasn’t like the animals, all jittery instinct. It wasn’t like the genin, little knots of tension and nerves. It wasn’t even in one clear direction.

It was just… there. A low, constant scrape under everything, like someone dragging metal along stone very far away. No spikes. No sudden shifts. Just this distant, steady irritation on the edge of my sense.

The deeper we went, the more I noticed it. Thin, but persistent.

Probably the barrier, I told myself. Or whatever seals they used to keep this whole mess contained. Or just my brain frying from too much chakra in the air. Anxiety loved cosplay.

Out loud, I said, “If either of you randomly feel like puking or your head gets weird, that’s either the forest, the barrier, or Naruto’s diet. I’ll update you as I narrow it down.”

“Hey!” Naruto protested. “My diet is great!”

“Your diet is sugar and instant regret,” I said.

“At least I’m not the one who eats ink,” he fired back.

“I don’t eat it,” I said. “It just migrates. There’s a difference.”

“Can you both shut up?” Sasuke said. “We’re in a death forest.”

“Statistically, we’ll still be talking,” I said.

He didn’t argue.

Sound kept warping. Our immediate noise felt stuffed with wet cloth, but distant things came through clear—branches snapping somewhere far off, an animal cry, the weird creak of something huge shifting.

Then a scream ripped through the trees ahead and to the left.

High. Human. Cut off too fast.

Naruto stumbled mid-step. “Was that—?”

“Another team,” Sasuke said. His face barely changed. The feeling off him constricted, pulling tighter, sharper.

The echo hit me a second later. For a heartbeat, there was a flare in the background—panic, bright and jagged, tying my gut in a knot—and then it went out. I couldn’t tell if that meant death, knockout, or “congratulations, enjoy the man-eating plants,” just that something had stopped.

My chest tightened.

Three kids like us had walked through the same gate. Signed the same “if you die, you die” forms. Now their part in this little game had just… ended.

Our job was to make sure we didn’t get the same curtain call.

I checked my marks again.

Naruto answered my focus with that same wild, stubborn shove of presence.

Sasuke with that coiled, steady pressure.

Both still there. Both still mine to worry about.

I rolled my shoulders, shook my hands out to bleed off some tension.

“Okay,” I said, mostly for my own benefit. “Plan review. Avoid obvious traps. Don’t pick fights we don’t have to. Don’t open the scroll. Don’t lick anything.”

“Who would lick something here?” Naruto demanded.

“You,” Sasuke and I said together.

He spluttered. “Why are you both bullying me?!”

“Because this entire forest is ‘do not put in mouth’ energy,” I said, “and you have protagonist-level bad ideas.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then froze as a branch creaked overhead in a way that shut us all up.

We moved faster after that.

Behind us, the gate was gone. Ahead, the trees pressed closer, the light thinned even more, and that far-off scraping feeling in my senses kept going, faint and relentless.

“Just the barrier,” I told myself.

It didn’t feel like it. But for now, it was either that or admit I was picking up something I didn’t understand at all.

And I really didn’t want to add “mystery brain static” to the list of things trying to kill us.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

We’d been in the mouth for maybe ten minutes and it already needed to spit.

“I gotta pee,” Naruto announced.

Loudly. Like he was declaring war.

I tripped over a root.

“Why would you say that at full volume?” I hissed. “Do you want to die with your pants down?”

Sasuke’s eye twitched. “Can you not broadcast bodily functions to the entire forest?”

Naruto folded his arms, already defensive. “What? It’s natural!”

“So is decomposition,” I said. “Less keen on you demonstrating that one.”

We’d stopped in a little dip between three giant trees, roots twisting up and over each other like an ossified wave. The canopy above was a clotted mess of leaves and hanging moss; everything smelled like damp wood, old mud, and too many things that had died in the underbrush.

The pressure in the air had only gotten worse the deeper we went. Forest chakra hugging my skin, pressing in on my teeth. That distant metal-scrape under it all hadn’t changed—still there, still wrong, still too far away to be useful.

Naruto bounced in place. “Look, if I just hold it, I’m gonna get distracted and then I’ll die, and it’ll be your fault.”

“That’s not how causality works,” I said automatically. “Also, leave a clone.”

He made a face. “Why? I’ll be, like, thirty seconds, tops.”

I stared at him. Sasuke stared at him. The forest probably stared at him.

“I do not believe you have ever done anything in thirty seconds,” I said. “You can’t even pick ramen toppings that fast.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, thought about it. “…Okay, fair. But I don’t wanna waste chakra on a clone just for peeing!”

“We are in a forest specifically designed for child-on-child violence,” I reminded him. “We’re not wasting chakra, we’re investing it in ‘not being stabbed in the spine while your hands are busy.’”

“Naruto,” Sasuke added, voice flat, “you’re the one carrying the scroll. You don’t go anywhere alone.”

“That’s why I’m telling you I’m going!” Naruto said, exasperated. “C’mon, you think I’m stupid?”

“Yes,” we both said.

He spluttered. “You traitors.”

I rubbed my face. The air felt thick enough to chew. In the back of my skull, the marks I’d set on them earlier hummed faintly—Naruto’s loud, restless presence ahead, Sasuke’s tight, steady one beside me. Little anchor points in a place that felt like it wanted to swallow us whole.

“Fine,” I said. “Compromise. No clone, but you’re not walking off completely untagged.”

He squinted. “I already got your Squad Mark. You just zapped me, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s for general ‘are you alive’ stuff,” I said, lifting my hand and snapping my fingers near his hip. “You want premium service, you get premium seals.”

He looked immediately suspicious. “What’s that mean?”

“It means stand still,” I said, already stepping in. “I’m not looking, I promise.”

He yelped as I grabbed the waistband of his shorts and yanked it up enough to get skin and cloth both. The fabric was warm and damp with sweat. Definitely not thinking about that.

“Hey! Buy me dinner first!” he protested, going bright red.

“Can’t afford it,” I said. “Hold still or I write ‘emergency latrine’ instead.”

That shut him up.

I thumbed my ink, smearing a quick crescent-and-dot sigil low near his hip bone. Fast, simple, tuned specifically for him. Not a full-on Squad Mark, just a little thing that would ping when I pushed at it and send me a tiny echo back from his chakra, not anyone else’s.

“Okay,” I said. “Pulse Tag installed.”

“Pulse Tag?” Naruto echoed dubiously.

“So I can feel the exact moment someone murders you mid-stream,” I said.

He made a strangled noise. “That’s messed up!”

“Talk to literally any chūnin about statistics,” I said. “Go. Bushes. Now. Shout if you get murdered.”

“That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” he grumbled, but he shuffled off toward the thicker undergrowth anyway, one hand already going for his zipper.

“Don’t go out of sight,” Sasuke called after him.

“I’m not a baby!” Naruto yelled back right before he disappeared behind a tangle of ferns and low branches. “I’ll be—”

His voice cut off as the forest swallowed him.

“—thirty seconds,” I muttered. “Sure.”

We stood there.

The insect drone pressed in. Something chittered high up. My senses stretched whether I wanted them to or not: big slow presence off to our right, insect cluster overhead, faint flutter of some other team panicking in the distance.

Naruto’s mark buzzed at the edge of my awareness, moving a little further and then stopping. Even when I wasn’t focusing, I could feel that knot of…Naruto-ness, right where he should be. Loud, restless, grumpy.

Don’t think about last time, my brain offered helpfully.

Last time there hadn’t been marks or tags or anyone who cared enough to keep track. Just empty woods, wet air, and a sense of being already forgotten.

I shoved the memory down and watched the bushes Naruto had vanished behind like they were going to grow teeth.

“Relax,” Sasuke said quietly.

“I’d love to,” I said. “I think I forgot how.”

He made a noncommittal noise.

We waited.

Thirty seconds became a minute. Then two. Time stretched out, long and sticky. My shoulders crept up toward my ears. The static in the back of my head kept buzzing.

“Is he composing a ballad back there?” I muttered. “We should have forced him to leave a clone.”

Sasuke’s jaw tightened. “If he’s being an idiot, I’ll knock him out myself.”

“You’re gonna have to wait in line.”

Branches rustled. Footsteps squished through damp leaf mold. Naruto pushed his way back through the undergrowth, brushing a leaf out of his hair.

“See?” he said. “Told you I’d be quick.”

Some of the tension leaking out of my spine froze halfway.

Naruto looked…normal. Headband crooked, hair messy, clothes rumpled. Same bright orange eyes, same whisker marks, same ridiculous grin—

No, not quite.

His grin was there, but it was sitting wrong on his face. Too careful. His eyes didn’t crinkle the way they usually did. His shoulders were a little straighter. His chin a little higher. The way you hold yourself when you’re copying someone from the outside in.

Could’ve been my nerves, I told myself. Could’ve been the weird forest pressure skewing my read.

“Bravo,” I said anyway, because my mouth didn’t get the memo. “You didn’t die. Gold star.”

He barked a laugh. “You worry too much, Sylvie.”

The sound rolled over my skin and didn’t quite land. Like hearing a recording through static.

I flicked my awareness toward his Squad Mark out of habit.

He was still where he should be in my sense—roughly in front of me, same distance, same general Naruto-shaped noise. It lined up. But that could just be the fact he was standing there and my brain was doing the lazy thing.

“Hang on,” I said, forcing my fingers to unclench. “Tag test.”

Naruto blinked. “Huh?”

I tapped two fingers against my thigh, feeling for the little scrap of chakra I’d braided into the Pulse Tag. Then I pushed.

The seal was simple. It sent a little knock of my chakra into the mark and waited for the pushback—Naruto’s chakra answering along that thread. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy. Just “you there?” “yeah.”

Except when I pinged, the sense of him right in front of me didn’t echo at all.

No bounce. No familiar tingle of response where my ink should be. Just my chakra going out…and not coming back from the person wearing his face.

For half a second, I thought I’d messed up the seal. But the thread of chakra I’d laid into the tag was still there, humming faintly—just not in front of me.

The faintest hiccup tugged at my attention a few meters off to the side instead, somewhere deeper in the underbrush.

Cold slid down my spine.

The boy in front of me smiled Naruto’s grin at me and got nothing from my seal.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said. “Tag’s just being weird.”

My voice sounded wrong in my own ears.

Beside me, Sasuke’s posture went very, very still.

He’d noticed the moment “Naruto” stepped out of the bushes.

It wasn’t obvious. Superficially, it was perfect: same loud voice, same stupid hair, same ridiculous orange eyes.

But Naruto never came out of the woods that quietly.

He usually crashed, or tripped, or announced himself like a one-boy parade. He always wore his weight impatiently, leaning forward, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

This Naruto’s steps had been careful. Centered. His shoulders weren’t slouched; they were set. His grin came late, like he’d remembered to put it on.

And his eyes—

Naruto’s eyes were loud even when his mouth was shut. Always moving, taking everything in, never still for more than a heartbeat. The eyes on this face were too steady. Watching, not just seeing.

Sasuke had clocked it in two seconds and filed it under possible henge, confirm before killing the idiot.

Then Sylvie said “Tag test” and something in her chakra pulled tight like a drawstring.

She looked normal on the surface. Teasing, easy voice, the usual fake-casual tilt of her head. But her shoulders had climbed a fraction, fingers twitching like they wanted ink.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

Sasuke had spent months standing next to both of them. He noticed.

She pushed chakra into her seal. Sasuke didn’t feel it, exactly, but he knew the moment something went wrong. The tiny pause. The way her pupils shrank for half a second.

She was lying when she said, “Tag’s just being weird.”

“Naruto” laughed it off. “See?” he said to him. “Overprotective.”

Sasuke tilted his head. “Right,” he said, keeping his voice flat. “Hey. Naruto.”

“Yeah?” the fake said, a little too eager.

“Remember the last time we had a mission with Tora?” Sasuke asked. “What did you yell you were going to turn him into?”

There was only one correct answer.

They’d spent an entire afternoon chasing the daimyo’s wife’s cat across rooftops. Tora had shredded Naruto’s arms and face so badly that when he finally grabbed the cat, bleeding and furious, he’d screamed that he was going to make it into “a really ugly pair of mittens” before Iruka smacked him.

Naruto had been very loud about this. For days.

Real Naruto would’ve exploded on reflex. “MITTENS! AND A HAT!” Or some equally stupid variation.

The boy wearing his face blinked once.

“Uh,” he said. “I don’t remember. Why are you asking about some stupid cat? That mission sucked.”

Wrong.

Sasuke didn’t let his expression change. Inside, the last of his doubt slid into place.

He saw Sylvie tense, just in the corner of his vision, hand twitching toward her ink pouch.

Good. She’d figured it out too.

“Yeah,” Sasuke said. “It did.”

He moved.

One moment he was standing still, the next he was in “Naruto’s” space, kunai already in hand. The fake flinched too late, stepping back on instinct.

Sasuke swept his foot behind the impostor’s ankle and hooked, yanking. At the same time, he jammed the flat of his kunai up under the other boy’s chin.

“Drop the henge,” Sasuke said calmly, blade kissing fake-Naruto’s throat. “Now.”

For a heartbeat, “Naruto’s” eyes went wide with something that wasn’t Naruto-panic. Then they narrowed.

Smoke burst around them as the transformation failed.

When it cleared, Sasuke had a stranger under his blade.

Older than them by a year or two, maybe. Dark, dirty hair stuck to his forehead. Cheekbones sharp. His eyes were a muddy color, hard and mean. The hitai-ate on his forehead bore four vertical lines: Amegakure.

Hidden Rain.

“Well,” the Ame genin said, lips curling. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”

He twisted his wrist, trying to bring his hand up. Sasuke shifted his weight and drove his arm down with his knee, pinning it.

“Don’t move,” Sasuke said.

The boy snorted. “Or what? You’ll scratch me?”

Something flicked overhead.

Sasuke’s muscles moved before his thoughts. He jerked the boy sideways as a kunai whistled through where his head had been.

Second attacker. Maybe third. Of course the impostor hadn’t come alone.

The Ame genin under him used the distraction to wrench his pinned arm free, twisting like an eel. He slammed his heel into the ground, kicking up dirt into Sasuke’s eyes.

Sasuke turned his head, but grit still stung. He let go of the wrist, rolled, came up into a guard.

Another kunai hit the tree next to him. A shadow flickered in the canopy and was gone.

Cowards.

By the time his vision cleared, the boy whose face had been Naruto’s was already sprinting back into the underbrush, light on his feet despite the blade-cut at his neck. He vanished into the greenery with practiced ease.

“Tch.”

He could chase. He wanted to.

But the faint trail of scuff marks in the leaf mold behind those bushes, the broken branches, the weird angle Sylvie’s eyes had gone when she used her seal—those pointed somewhere more important.

To the right. Deeper in.

“Can you track your tag?” he asked, turning to Sylvie.

Her face was too calm. Her knuckles were white around her ink brush.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. This way.”

She took off toward the undergrowth without waiting for him to answer.

He followed.

The place where Naruto had “gone to pee” looked like something had grabbed him and tried to erase him from the scene.

The ground was torn up, dirt churned with footprints. Broken branches, scuffed bark, a smear of something darker that my brain refused to identify. A disturbed patch of ferns led off to the side like an arrow.

My Pulse Tag thread was humming now that I was paying attention fully. Not from the pseudo-Naruto that had just run his mouth at us; from somewhere ahead and right, like a distant, steady drip.

“Here,” I said, shoving aside a curtain of vines.

They clung in my hair, sticky and damp. I ducked under, pushed through a narrow gap between two roots big enough to drive a car over, and nearly tripped over him.

Naruto lay on his side in a little hollow between roots, turned away from the path, half-hidden by underbrush. His hands were tied behind his back with coarse rope. Another loop bound his ankles. Someone had been considerate enough—if you could call it that—to yank his pants back up before dumping him.

His face was slack. A red mark bloomed on his temple where something had hit him.

The Pulse Tag on his hip warmed under my mental touch, finally answering properly, not that flat nothing I’d gotten off the fake. His chakra felt…smaller. Dimmer. Pushed inward, like a hearth fire banked down to coals.

My knees gave out faster than my brain could tell them not to. I dropped beside him and grabbed his shoulder.

“Hey,” I said, too sharp. “Naruto. Hey.”

Sasuke slid in on my other side, eyes already sweeping the surrounding trees for more Rain idiots.

“He’s breathing,” Sasuke said, as calm as if he were commenting on the weather.

“Yeah,” I said, and the word snagged on something in my chest. “Help me get him loose.”

Sasuke’s kunai made short work of the rope. As soon as Naruto’s hands were free, I caught his wrists and pulled them forward, careful not to yank. The skin around them was already red and bruised.

“Hey,” I said again, softer this time. “C’mon. Time to wake up. You don’t get to nap during the murder exam.”

He didn’t move.

My stomach did a slow flip.

In my old life, this was the part where you shook someone and they didn’t wake up, and you had to decide how long to keep pretending.

“Check him,” Sasuke said.

“I know,” I snapped, more sharply than he deserved.

I pressed my fingers to Naruto’s neck to feel his pulse, just like they’d drilled into us in the Academy. Strong. Fast. Not fading. I let some chakra trickle into my fingers, the way I’d practiced in the hospital: not enough to heal, just enough to skim the surface.

His circulation sparked against my senses. Brain activity normal. No fracture under the swelling on his temple, just a nasty knock. Whatever they’d hit him with, it was made to incapacitate, not kill.

Relief hit so hard it made my fingers numb.

“Concussion-lite,” I muttered. “They clocked him and dumped him. No internal bleeding, no obvious damage. Come on, idiot, wake up.”

I shifted my chakra, this time pushing a little pulse up toward his head, just enough to annoy his nervous system. A half-step below the “I will absolutely give you a migraine” line.

“Up,” I said. “I am not carrying you. You’re too dense.”

“Too loud,” he mumbled.

His eyelids fluttered once, then again. I could’ve cried with how stupidly beautiful that was.

His face scrunched. “My head hurts.”

“That’s because you let someone hit it,” I said, sitting back just enough to breathe. “Ten out of ten, would diagnose you with ‘being Naruto.’”

His eyes cracked open. Unfocused blue washed over my face, then Sasuke’s, then the trees overhead.

“What happened?” he slurred.

“You got ambushed,” Sasuke said, blunt as a kunai handle. “By an Ame genin using henge.”

Naruto pushed himself up onto his elbows, wobbling. “Like—the rain guys we saw at the gate?”

“The very same,” I said. “One of them borrowed your face, came back to us, and tried to get us to let him walk around with our scroll. Sasuke caught it.”

Naruto scowled, then winced, bringing a hand to his temple. “So you guys…you fought him without me?”

There it was. Not “I could’ve died.” Not “thanks for saving me.” Just offended he’d missed a fight.

I snorted, the tension in my chest melting into something mean and fond.

“Wow,” I said. “Sorry we didn’t schedule our life-or-death struggle around your bathroom break.”

He glared at me with all the fire of a wet kitten. “I can’t believe you beat someone without me.”

“Oh, calm down,” I said. “Technically, he ran away. Sasuke just scared him hard enough he forgot how to lie.”

“Which counts as winning,” Sasuke put in.

Naruto pouted. “I wanted to punch him.”

“You can punch the next one,” I promised. “Consider this motivation to not give kidnappers easy access to your kidneys.”

He huffed, then squinted. “Wait. How’d you even know he wasn’t me? I’m very convincing.”

“You are deeply, profoundly unconvincing,” I said. “For one, fake you didn’t immediately complain about the rope burns. For two, he didn’t remember your very loud threat to make Tora into mittens. For three…”

I tapped his hip where the Pulse Tag sat under his waistband.

“…this.”

Naruto blinked down at my hand. “The…pee seal?”

“Do not call it that,” I said.

Sasuke made the tiniest sound that might have been a choked laugh.

“The Pulse Tag only pings for you,” I explained. “When the faker showed up, I poked it and got nothing. Which meant you weren’t where your face was, which is generally a bad sign.”

Naruto’s eyes widened. “So wait, if you hadn’t put that on me—”

“You’d still be tied up in a ditch because Sasuke would’ve still noticed,” I said quickly, because my throat had tried to close around the words. “He clocked your imitation like, immediately.”

It was true. Pulse Tag or not, Sasuke had swung the kunai first. My seal had just turned the bad feeling in my gut into facts.

Naruto looked between us, frowning. His expression softened for half a second before he covered it in bluster.

“Still,” he muttered, rubbing his wrists. “Guess that was…kinda smart.”

“Careful,” I said. “You’re going to strain something if you keep complimenting me.”

He stuck his tongue out. “Shut up.”

“Gladly,” I lied.

His Squad Mark and the Pulse Tag both hummed steady in my awareness now, warm and solid. No flat zeros. No empty spaces where he should’ve been.

Like someone had taken a weight off my ribs.

The forest didn’t care, of course. The pressure in the air stayed thick. The creepy far-off scrape under everything kept going. The bugs kept buzzing.

But Naruto was sitting up and yelling at me, and that mattered more than all of it.

“Can you stand?” Sasuke asked.

Naruto pushed himself to his feet, swayed, and caught himself on my shoulder. His weight slammed into me harder than it should have; I planted my feet and pretended that was on purpose.

“Yeah,” he said. “Totally fine. I’m awesome.”

“Sure,” I said. “Awesome at getting kidnapped while peeing.”

He flushed. “Don’t tell anyone about that!”

“Oh, absolutely telling people,” I said. “I’m starting a list. ‘Ways Naruto Almost Died: Number One, Peed in the Forest of Death.’”

“Sylvie!” he howled, mortified.

Sasuke’s mouth twitched, just a little.

I clung to the sound of Naruto’s outrage like it was a lifeline and pretended my hands weren’t still shaking.

“Come on,” I said, turning back toward the path, forcing my legs to move. “We’ve already wasted time. Rain creeps know we’re here now, so let’s try not to give them another shot at our bladders.”

Naruto grumbled under his breath. “Next time I’m just peeing on them.”

“Honestly?” I said. “If you can weaponize it, I’m not stopping you.”

We pushed back through the curtain of vines, rejoining the twisted path between the trees. The forest closed around us again, heavy and green and hungry.

The static in the back of my skull scraped on, uncaring.

We started running anyway.

Chapter Text

<Konan>

Konoha smelled like sun-warmed stone and boiled bones.

Steam rolled off the street vendors in lazy sheets, carrying broth and grilled meat and sugar. Children wove through the crowd with exam headbands tied too tight. Chūnin leaned against railings, pretending not to watch the gates.

Konan walked among them with her hands folded, a paper flower tucked above her ear.

No cloak. No headband. Just travel clothes in neutral colors, dust on the hems, a nondescript satchel at her hip. The only oddity was the flower, folded from pale cream paper that had once held an encoded report.

Beside her, the red-haired boy adjusted the strap of his pack.

He looked like any other foreign genin: a little too thin from travel, clothes worn at the edges, eyes the wrong kind of sharp for someone his age. Red hair pulled back, travel cloak unfastened. His gait was relaxed, almost lazy.

If you didn’t know to look, you’d never notice the way his movements stopped between steps, like a puppet at rest.

Konan let her gaze drift up.

Above the tiled roofs, chakra clung to the air like mist. The Barrier Corps had wrapped their net tight. She could feel the way it bowed and flexed, reacting whenever someone pushed against it from outside.

The river is trying to dam itself, she thought.

She breathed in ramen steam and chatter, breathed out Rain Country’s endless grey.

“Is this it?” Sasori asked, voice pitched a little higher than his real one. Tourist-boy bright. “The famous stand you mentioned?”

Ichiraku was a wedge of wood and canvas slotted into the street like an afterthought. Red curtains hung from the frame, edges stained with years of oil and steam. Three stools were occupied—two chunin gossiping over miso, one civilian in work clothes trying to inhale his lunch in ten minutes.

“Mm.” Konan nodded and pushed the curtain aside.

Inside, heat wrapped around her. The broth smell was stronger, anchored with garlic and soy. The counter was clean, hands behind it busy.

“Welcome!” the man behind the counter said. He had a round, open face and forearms like stone mortars. “Travelers, yeah? Grab a seat.”

Konan slid onto a stool. Sasori took the one beside her, posture easy, attention ostensibly on the pots.

“Sis! New customers!” a girl’s voice called from the back. A teenager with her hair tied up in a bandanna leaned out of the tiny kitchen space, wiping her hands. “What can I get you?”

“Two miso with egg,” Konan said. “One extra noodles. Extra bamboo shoots on that one.”

Sasori’s eyes flicked sideways at her. A small, private thing.

“You remembered,” he said under his breath.

“I remember many things,” she replied.

The ramen man nodded briskly. “You got it. Ayame, two miso, one with extra everything!”

Ayame vanished with a cheerful “Hai!”

Konan let the chatter around her settle into a backdrop. Outside, footsteps and voices swelled and broke like waves. Inside, metal clinked, broth bubbled, the old wood under her elbows thrummed faintly with the weight of years.

It was a different kind of river than Amegakure. No gutters overflowing with dirty water. No rain beating all sound flat. But it flowed, all the same.

Sasori leaned his forearms on the counter, looking for all the world like a bored teenager on an errand.

“Kinda bright,” he said, eyes on the street. “Too much color.”

“You don’t like color,” Konan said mildly.

“I like control,” he corrected. “This village—” He gestured vaguely with one hand, careful not to make it look like a jutsu seal. “The canvas is crowded. Too many layers. Too many hands have painted over it.”

“Old murals are often the most fragile,” Konan said. “Cracks hidden under fresh pigment.”

His mouth twitched, almost a smile.

“Mm. But the framework…” He tilted his head, studying the line of rooftops, the watch points, the rhythm of shinobi moving past. “The framework is solid. Someone understood structure.”

The previous Hokage, she thought, but didn’t say. The one who had made the river bed in the first place.

The curtain rustled as a pair of chunin left, laughing about “that grass kunoichi’s tongue” and “the Forest of Death honestly should not be legal.” Their chakra brushed past Konan like a light breeze—strong but unfocused, all surface tension.

Easy to break, if someone knew where to press.

A shadow moved across the stand as something passed overhead.

Konan didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. The shape of their chakra was as familiar as her own hands.

ANBU. Two signatures, high and tight, moving fast across the roofline. A third lagged slightly behind—sensor-nin, hands together in a seal, chakra flaring in a quick, practiced pulse.

The wave spread out in a ring, invisible to most.

Konan felt it wash over her like cold water.

The paper seals layered under her clothes soaked it up, glyphs she’d inked and pressed to her own skin hours ago drinking in and bending the pulse away. Her chakra folded in on itself, reeds bending with the current.

Beside her, Sasori didn’t twitch. She doubted the sensor got much off him at all. His current shell read to most people as “odd” but low. The heart inside it was another matter entirely.

The wave continued on, bouncing off the barrier net, returning to its sender.

On the roof, the sensor’s chakra flickered once in brief acknowledgment.

Satisfied. No anomalies detected. The village is secure.

Konan’s lips barely moved.

“Testing the currents,” she murmured.

Sasori glanced at her, lashes low.

“The river?” he prompted.

“Their barrier.” She watched Ayame ladle broth with easy, practiced movements. “They send out waves, feel where it catches, where it slips through. Testing the currents of this river before the flood.”

Sasori huffed softly.

“You still insist on calling it that,” he said.

“What else would you call it?” she asked.

He considered.

“A performance,” he said. “An installation piece. Something large and unavoidable, meant to be seen from a distance.”

Konan thought of Yahiko’s hands shaping imaginary futures in the air, Nagato’s eyes seeing too far, too much. The way the world refused to change until someone forced it.

“Leader will want to know the flow,” she said. “Where the banks are high. Where they’re already crumbling.”

“Leader likes his metaphors,” Sasori said. “Floods. Storms.”

Konan’s fingers brushed the rim of the bowl in front of her, savoring the warmth.

“The one watching the storm likes maps even more,” she said. “We’re only here to sketch the shorelines.”

The ramen arrived, cutting off further poetry.

Two bowls set down with a satisfying clack of ceramic on wood. Golden broth, noodles piled high, eggs glistening, bamboo shoots tucked in neatly like thoughts in a row.

Ayame beamed. “Here you go! Careful, it’s hot.”

“Thank you,” Konan said. She picked up her chopsticks, broke them with a soft crack.

Sasori inhaled steam, eyes half-lidding.

“The smell is acceptable,” he allowed.

“You told me once,” Konan said, stirring her noodles, “that a good piece of art doesn’t have to be permanent to matter.”

“Mm.” He twirled noodles around his chopsticks with precise fingers. “Ephemeral works can be the most striking. They force you to confront mortality.”

He slurped, chewed thoughtfully.

“This,” he said, “will be gone in minutes. But as a small study in warmth and salt… it has its merits.”

Ayame laughed, not quite sure if she was being complimented. “I’ll take that as a good review.”

Konan tasted the broth.

It was simple. No showy tricks. Fat, salt, umami. A foundation someone had paid attention to and then left alone.

“Your base is strong,” she told Teuchi, honest. “You don’t hide it.”

He scratched the back of his head, embarrassed. “Ah, well, you know. Long as people leave full and smiling, I’m happy.”

Outside, someone shouted about exam odds. A bookie argued with a shopkeeper over whether Sand or Leaf teams would place higher.

Konan listened without seeming to. Snatches of information slid into place.

Forest. Five days. Foreign teams. Sound. Sand. The usual arrogance of a village assuming its walls would do the hard work for it.

Sasori traced condensation on the side of his water glass with one finger.

“The composition is busy,” he said quietly. “Adding more elements risks clutter. More genin, more allies, more enemies. But…”

He flicked a glance upward, toward where the barrier hummed unseen.

“The underlying frame is good enough to hang something large on. That’s rare.”

Konan swallowed another mouthful of noodles.

“You think this riverbed can handle a flood,” she said.

“For a while,” he answered. “Long enough to watch what breaks first.”

The paper flower in her hair rustled faintly as a breeze slipped under the curtain.

“Leader will ask for specifics,” she said. “Routes. Weak points. Which stones in the riverbed are load-bearing.”

“The man with the bandaged eye thinks he is one of those stones,” Sasori said.

Konan’s expression didn’t change, but the broth tasted briefly of iron.

“He believes he hired knives,” she said. “He doesn’t see the hand that forged them.”

“He thinks we’re here to cut for him,” Sasori agreed, amused. “I’m tempted to show him a real dissection.”

“Not yet,” Konan said. “We didn’t come to shatter the canvas today. Just… test the frame.”

She finished the last of her noodles, set her chopsticks across the bowl.

Outside, the ANBU signatures shifted, continuing their patrol pattern. The barrier’s hum steadied again.

Konoha’s river kept flowing. Laughing, eating, gambling on other people’s children.

When they paid, Konan laid folded bills neatly on the counter—more than the cost of two bowls.

Ayame blinked. “Oh! That’s—sir, ma’am, that’s too much.”

Konan shook her head.

“Your warmth is valuable,” she said. “Keep it.”

Sasori stood, adjusting the strap of his pack again. For a moment, he looked exactly like a boy about to continue a long, dull journey.

“Thank you for the meal,” he said, voice perfectly polite.

Teuchi bowed slightly from behind the counter. “Anytime. Safe travels, you two.”

Konan stepped back out into the sunlight. The crowd swallowed them up without a ripple.

Above, the river pressed against its own banks and pretended it couldn’t feel the storm gathering offshore.

<Teuchi>

For a few seconds after the curtain fell back into place, Teuchi just stood there, ladle hovering over the pot.

Steam fogged his glasses. He didn’t wipe them.

Ayame was the first to break the spell.

“Did you hear that?” she said, scooping up the bills. “ ‘Your warmth is valuable.’ That’s… kinda poetic for a ramen review.”

Teuchi grunted.

“Poetic, yeah,” he said. “Customers like that…”

He trailed off.

The stand had seen all kinds. Loud, quiet, broke, flashy. Shinobi who smelled like blood and mud. Civilians who smelled like ink and sweat. Drunkards leaning too hard on the counter, kids swinging their legs so hard the stools squeaked.

Most people came in carrying some kind of noise, even when they didn’t talk. Worries. Excitement. Exhaustion. The air around them moved.

Those two had felt like stones dropped in the middle of the stream. Everything else flowed around them.

He scooped broth on reflex, noodles following, muscle memory working while his thoughts chewed on the aftertaste they’d left behind.

“…give me a bad feeling,” he finished.

Ayame snorted. “They tipped well, though,” she said, fanning the bills a little. “Better than some of your regulars, dad.”

“Hey.” He jabbed a finger at her, mock-offended. “Naruto always pays eventually.”

“He pays in enthusiasm,” she said. “And dishwashing.”

Teuchi smiled despite himself, the familiar ache of fond worry settling in his chest.

The brat should’ve been here, making a scene about extra pork, bragging about the exams. Instead he was somewhere in Training Ground Forty-Four, running around a cursed forest with crazy proctors and foreign kids.

His ladle dipped a little too hard; broth splashed.

He glanced at the flap where the blue-haired woman had disappeared.

“Just saying,” he muttered. “I’ve been serving shinobi longer than you’ve been walking, Ayame. You learn to feel it, sometimes. When something’s… off.”

Ayame’s smile faltered just a hair.

“You think they were ninja?” she asked. “They didn’t wear headbands.”

“Doesn’t mean much these days,” he said. “Could be from a minor village. Could be merchants with a flair for drama. Could be nothing.”

He handed a bowl to a waiting customer, forced his hands to their usual steadiness.

“I hope it’s nothing,” he added.

Ayame tucked the tip money into the box, fingers lingering a second too long.

“Everyone’s jumpy because of the Exams,” she said, a little too bright. “I’m sure they were just… weird tourists. Happens all the time.”

“Mm,” Teuchi said.

Through the gap in the curtain, he watched the street for a heartbeat longer.

Kids in forehead protectors walked past, laughing too loudly. A patrol cut across the roofs, masks flashing white. Somewhere far away, a flock of crows took off all at once, black against the blue.

The village hummed around them, warm and loud and very proud of how safe it was.

Teuchi turned back to his pots.

He couldn’t do anything about bad feelings. He could keep the soup hot, the seats open, and the door—well, the curtain—ready for a certain orange idiot when he came back.

Because he was coming back.

Whatever storms were brewing, whatever strange customers wandered in with too-quiet eyes and too-polished words, Ichiraku was going to be here. A little patch of warmth on the riverbank.

“Oi, Ayame,” he said. “Don’t forget to put extra pork aside. For when Naruto shows up demanding a victory bowl.”

She smiled, for real this time.

“Yeah,” she said. “He’ll complain if we don’t.”

Outside, the currents shifted, unnoticed.

Inside, broth simmered and bowls clinked, and Konoha kept pretending the flood wasn’t already on its way.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

We hadn’t gone fifty meters before my brain started chewing on itself.

Naruto’s Squad Mark hummed steady in the back of my skull. His Pulse Tag sat warm and familiar at my mental fingertips. Both said he was fine.

My eyes kept insisting on replaying him tied up in that root pocket, pants hiked crooked, face slack.

“Stop,” I told myself, ducking under a low branch. “He’s walking. He’s yelling. That means alive. Focus on the jerks who made you use the pee seal in anger.”

“Hey,” Naruto said, voice still a little thick but climbing back toward normal. “We’re gonna go find those guys, right?”

Of course he wanted revenge.

Sasuke glanced at him. “You want to get jumped again?”

“I wanna punch them.” Naruto scowled at the trees like they’d personally conspired. “Who ambushes somebody in the bathroom? That’s cheating.”

“We are in a murder forest,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the rulebook is just a picture of Anko flipping us off.”

“Still cheating,” he muttered.

I hesitated, then nodded once. “They know we exist now. They’ve seen our gear. If we leave them completely alone, they’ll just try again when your pants are even further down.”

Naruto made a wounded noise.

“Strategically,” I added, because that sounded less petty, “it’s better to at least know where they are and what they can do.”

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed in thought. “They’ll regroup somewhere nearby,” he said. “Ambushers like to work in familiar terrain.”

“Can you track them?” Naruto asked.

Sasuke shrugged. “Maybe. I cut the henge one across the throat. He’ll be bleeding.” His gaze went to me. “You said you felt him run.”

“Not in a useful way,” I said. “Just…noise. But between that, footprints, broken branches, blood, and the fact they’re idiots, yeah. We can probably find them.”

Naruto grinned, lopsided and a little too sharp. “Good. Then we beat them up and take their stuff.”

Wow. Konoha’s curriculum, everybody.

“Clarification,” I said. “We beat them up if they insist on being a problem. Then we take their stuff. Priority order matters.”

“Same result,” Sasuke said.

“Details,” I muttered. “Whatever. Let’s hunt our muggers.”

Tracking in this forest felt like trying to follow one set of muddy footprints across a Jackson Pollock painting.

The ground was all churned leaf mold and old roots. Every bush had been brushed by a hundred desperate kids in the last few hours. Chakra residue clung to everything like humidity.

But we had a start point: the hole they’d dropped Naruto in. From there, Sasuke did the boring practical thing. He crouched, squinted at the scuffs in the dirt, the angle of snapped twigs, the way the underbrush leaned.

“They went that way,” he said, pointing off to the left. “Fast. Four sets of prints. One heavier, three about our size.”

“So they dragged you,” I said to Naruto.

He grunted. “I don’t remember anything after getting whacked. Just boom, nothing, then your annoying voice.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

We moved slower now, Sasuke in front, Naruto in the middle where I could keep both boys within tag-range. My chakra sense stretched whether I wanted it to or not, tasting for the fading smear of that too-quiet Ame chakra that had worn Naruto’s face.

There. Faint smudge to the left, like someone had spilled watered-down ink in the forest’s murky green-brown wash.

“We’re on them,” I murmured. “Still moving, but not fast. Either they think they lost us, or they’re tired.”

“Good,” Naruto said. “I’m gonna make them more tired.”

His chakra was bright and spiky again, anger re-inflating him. The weirdly comforting thing was: under the anger, there was embarrassment. Shame at having been taken out that easily. Shame flickering against his usual stubborn “I’m fine.”

I understood that flavor too well.

We followed the trail through a thicker patch of trees. The canopy lowered. The air got heavier, louder with insect buzz. Twice, Sasuke stopped us to skirt around things that might’ve been natural pitfalls or might’ve been the kind of trap that ended with “congratulations, you are plant food now.”

Finally, voices bled through the underbrush.

“…told you it wouldn’t work,” someone hissed ahead. “You blew the henge too early.”

“Yeah? Maybe don’t tie the brat up so close,” another voice shot back. “His friends were right there.”

A third, cracked and nervous: “Shut up. If they’re looking for us, they’re already listening.”

I held up a hand. Sasuke froze. Naruto nearly crashed into his back.

We crouched behind a curtain of moss and ferns. Through it, I could just make out a little clearing: a half-rotten log, a muddy puddle, three Rain headbands glinting.

We’d found them.

One was the fake Naruto: bandage slapped over the cut on his neck, jaw tight. He was pacing in tight lines like a caged dog. Another leaned against the log, picking at his nails with a kunai, trying too hard to look relaxed. The third sat on the log itself, knees up, arms wrapped around them. He looked…small. Freckled. Eyes glued to the forest.

Desperate kids. No adults. No backup.

“Okay,” I whispered. “We could do the honorable thing and announce ourselves, or—”

“We ambush them,” Sasuke said, immediately.

Naruto actually looked offended for a second. “Hey, they started it.”

“Cool,” I whispered. “Then we give them a taste of their own…bathroom medicine.”

Naruto made a face. “Don’t say it like that.”

I dug into my pouch, fingers brushing familiar paper edges, cold metal, the sticky feel of drying ink. I’d already burned chakra on Squad Marks, the Pulse Tag, diagnostics—nothing huge, but it all added up. My reserves buzzed low, like someone had turned the dimmer switch down.

Nothing fancy, then. No big traps. Just…tactical rudeness.

“Plan,” I said. “Naruto, clones from that side.” I pointed to where the underbrush thickened. “Make noise. Be loud. Pull their focus.”

“That’s my specialty,” he muttered, but he was already grinning. “Then I hit them.”

“Eventually,” I said. “Sasuke, you circle around the other side. Take the henge idiot first. He’ll expect you; he already fought you.”

Sasuke nodded once. “And you?”

“I stay back with tags,” I said. “Support, not frontline. Flash if they try to bail, sticky if they throw anything nasty. If one of them looks like they’re about to do something big, yell, and I’ll try to interrupt.”

“And if they have the other scroll?” Naruto’s eyes were bright.

“Then we take it,” Sasuke said.

Everyone looked at me.

“Look,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I’m not saying we don’t loot them. I am saying we don’t kill them.”

Naruto blinked. “I wasn’t gonna kill them,” he said. “I was gonna…beat them up.”

“Some genin teams are going to kill people in here,” Sasuke said. He didn’t sound like he liked the idea. Just like he’d already filed it under unavoidable. “If they’re that weak, leaving them might just mean someone else finishes it.”

“Do you want that on your conscience?” I asked. “Because I definitely don’t need ‘indirectly outsourced murder’ on my file already.”

“This is a ninja exam,” he said.

“So?” My voice sharpened. “We don’t have to aim for high marks in ‘efficient child execution.’ We knock them out, we tie them up somewhere that doesn’t scream ‘instant death,’ and we keep moving. They live long enough for the proctors to decide if they pass or fail.”

Naruto made a face. “We can…do that?”

“Yes,” I said. “We absolutely can choose to not be complete assholes. Revolutionary concept.”

Sasuke stared at me for a beat—dark eyes, unreadable—and then looked away.

“Fine,” he said. “Knock out. Strip gear. Leave them breathing.”

“Thank you,” I muttered. My heart was pounding faster than the situation warranted. Old ghosts whispering: you know what happens when the adults decide who gets to be disposable.

This time, I was the one making the call. So we weren’t doing that.

I took a breath. The forest air tasted like mud and metal and insect wings. Naruto’s chakra burned hot at my side. Sasuke’s coiled, razor-focus.

“On three,” I said. “One. Two—”

Naruto burst out of the bushes at “two.”

“HEY, TOILET MUGGERS!” he yelled, already mid-handseal. “REMEMBER ME?”

Subtlety: never an option.

Sasuke vanished in the opposite direction with a muttered curse. I stayed where I was, because someone had to.

Naruto’s entrance was, predictably, like dropping a grenade into a tea party.

The Rain kids flinched hard. The fake-Naruto’s eyes went wide; the one on the log actually yelped and nearly fell off. The kunai-picker snapped upright, blade in hand.

“N-Not him again,” log-boy stammered.

Naruto skidded to a stop at the edge of the clearing, flinging his arms out wide. “You knocked me out while I was peeing,” he shouted, voice climbing. “That is a CRIME. I am here for JUSTICE.”

“Subtle,” I muttered under my breath.

“Get him!” bandage-neck shouted, because of course he did.

They all moved at once.

Kunai-picker flung two blades at Naruto’s chest. Log-boy scrambled to his feet and started fumbling through handseals, panic all over his face. Bandage-neck leapt forward, drawing a kunai of his own, clearly aiming to close distance and stab the loudest problem.

Naruto grinned—actual grin this time, stupid and fierce.

“Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

Smoke exploded around him. Three Narutos, then six, then ten spilled out of the cloud, all yelling variations of “TOILET JUSTICE!” as they charged.

The kunai hit clones, dissipating them into smoke. Bandage-neck cursed, slashing through fake bodies. Log-boy lost his place in his handseals entirely, eyes going saucer-wide.

That’s when Sasuke dropped out of a tree behind them.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t announce. He just fell like gravity had been waiting for this. His foot hit bandage-neck in the side of the head, sending the guy sprawling. The kunai flew from his hand and thunked harmlessly into a stump.

I took that as my cue.

“Flash,” I whispered.

My fingers were already on the paper tag I’d drawn earlier—simple seal, minimal chakra cost. I flicked it into the clearing. It landed between kunai-picker and log-boy, harmless as litter.

Then it detonated in a burst of white light.

The Ame genin screamed. Naruto yelped. Sasuke swore.

“Warn me next time,” he hissed, voice muffled by his forearm as he shielded his eyes.

“Didn’t want them to hear,” I hissed back, crawling forward through the ferns to get a better angle. My heart was doing tap-dance routines in my throat.

The flash had done its job, though. Kunai-picker stumbled blindly, slashing at air. Log-boy flailed, rubbing at his eyes, tears streaming from the sudden brightness.

“Now!” I shouted.

Naruto clones swarmed. Two grabbed kunai-picker’s arms, wrenching them behind his back. Another tripped him at the knees. He went down in a tangle of limbs and swearing.

Two more clones tackled log-boy around the waist, hauling him off the log. He shrieked once, then hit the ground with a thud.

Bandage-neck was tougher. Even stunned from Sasuke’s kick and half-blinded, he rolled with the impact, came up low, and swept Sasuke’s legs.

Sasuke jumped over the sweep like he’d expected it. His heel caught bandage-neck in the chest. The Rain genin slid back in the dirt, breath leaving him in a loud wheeze.

For half a second, it looked like he’d keep fighting. Then he looked up and saw what we’d done to his teammates: kunai-picker pinned by clones, log-boy face-down with his arms wrenched back.

His eyes flicked to Naruto—real Naruto, standing amidst his clones like a small furious god—and to Sasuke, who had his Sharingan half-awake in his gaze, black eyes gone colder.

Then his gaze slid past them, to me.

I was still half in the bushes, ink-stained, glasses slightly askew, one hand on another tag. Not impressive. Not threatening.

But he’d already learned what happened when he underestimated the support.

He froze, chest heaving.

“Smart choice,” I said, stepping into the clearing proper. My legs felt like undercooked noodles; I pretended that was a stylistic decision. “Here’s how this is going to go. You answer some questions, we borrow some equipment, we leave you alive. Try anything cute, and we reintroduce you to unconsciousness.”

Kunai-picker struggled against the clones holding him. “You can’t just—this is an exam!”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which means the proctors are watching, and I really don’t want to get disqualified for redecorating the forest with your intestines. So work with me.”

“Wow,” Naruto muttered. “That was dark.”

“I’ve had a day,” I said.

Bandage-neck spat blood into the dirt. “You think we’re just gonna roll over? We need a scroll. We’re not going home without one.”

There it was. Need. Not want.

Naruto bristled. “So you just decided to take mine? While I was peeing?”

“Yes,” I added. “The indecency is the real crime here.”

“Shut up,” he hissed at me, but his ears were red.

Bandage-neck snorted. “You were a target,” he said to Naruto. “Loud, easy, carrying a scroll. That’s the game.”

“Yeah, well, the game sucks,” Naruto shot back. “Pick on someone who sees you coming next time!”

“You didn’t see us coming either,” Sasuke pointed out.

Naruto glared at him. “Not helping.”

I crouched a few feet away from bandage-neck, careful to stay out of kicking range. “We’re not here for moral debate,” I said. “We’re here for logistics. What did you do with his scroll?”

Bandage-neck sneered. “You think we’d tell you?”

“It’s in his pouch,” log-boy whimpered from the ground. “We didn’t get to open it yet.”

Bandage-neck twisted to snarl at him. “Shut up, Rei!”

“Rei, right?” I said, turning toward log-boy. “Hi. Ignore your fearless leader. He has a cut on his neck and a concussion in his future.”

Rei sniffled. Up close, he looked like he should be in the Academy still. Baby fat not burned off yet. His chakra felt jittery, thin with anxiety.

I swallowed down the rising guilt and focused.

“Do you already have a scroll?” I asked. “From someone else?”

Kunai-picker spat in my direction. “None of your business.”

“So that’s a no,” I said. “You’ve got nothing. That’s why you’re trying bathroom mugging as a career path.”

He flushed. “We—We just haven’t gotten lucky yet.”

“Everyone here is desperate enough to mug a kid while he’s peeing,” I muttered, more to myself than them. The forest chakra hummed around us, full of little sharp spikes of fear and hunger and ambition. “We are absolutely in the worst gacha.”

“What?” Naruto said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Okay. Let me summarize. You: three Rain brats, zero scrolls, one incredibly bad idea. Us: one scroll, three functional shinobi, increasingly lousy mood. Right?”

Bandage-neck glared. “So what? You think we’ll just give up because you beat us once?”

“No,” I said. “I think you don’t have anything we need bad enough to justify putting you in the ground.”

Their expressions all shifted a little at that.

“What do we need is…” I flicked my gaze over their gear. Standard-issue pouches. Kunai, shuriken, a few obvious paper bombs. No fancy swords, no weird relics. I could smell cheap ink from here.

“Ink,” I said. “Tags. Maybe a smoke bomb or two. Medical supplies if you have them.”

“You’re going to rob us?” Rei squeaked.

Naruto folded his arms. “You tried to rob me first.”

“That was a question, not a moral crisis,” I said. “Yes, we’re robbing you. Genin circular economy.”

“No,” Sasuke said, deadpan. “We’re redistributing resources.”

I shot him a look. “Wow,” I said. “Did you just make a socialism joke?”

“What’s socialism?” Naruto asked.

“Nothing, it’s made up,” I said quickly. “Point is, we take what we can use that you won’t immediately die without, and we leave you tied up somewhere where the trees are less bitey.”

Bandage-neck’s mouth twisted. “And then what? We just wait to get picked off by someone else?”

“No,” I said. “You wait until either the exam ends or you manage to untie yourselves. Given some of the teams I’ve seen, surviving without a scroll will still impress the right people. Not everyone here measures worth by how many classmates you manage to stab.”

I didn’t add: and if someone decides you only count if you bring home a scroll, that’s on them, not you. My throat had gone tight enough.

Naruto stared at me for a second. Something flickered in his chakra—recognition, brief and sharp.

He’d heard “worthless” from adults his whole life. He knew the weight of being told you only matter if you achieve something impossible.

I shifted my glasses up my nose with ink-stained fingers. “Look,” I said, softer. “You tried a crappy plan because you’re scared and this place sucks. We stopped you. That’s how it works. It doesn’t have to end with corpses.”

Rei’s shoulders shook. Kunai-picker looked away. Bandage-neck’s jaw clenched.

“Fine,” he muttered eventually. “Do what you want.”

“Sweet,” I said briskly, because if I stayed in the earnest lane too long I’d implode. “Naruto, clones keep them pinned. Sasuke, scroll check. Me? Shopping.”

Up close, their gear was underwhelming but functional.

Sasuke rifled through bandage-neck’s pouch first. “No scroll,” he reported. He checked the other two quickly. “Nothing. Just standard kit.”

Naruto’s face fell. “Seriously? After all that?”

“You were the first mark they got close to,” I said. “Which means we’re either very lucky or very stupid.”

Naruto pointed at himself. “Rookie of the year in ‘very stupid.’”

“Don’t call yourself that,” I said automatically.

He blinked at me, surprised.

I pretended I hadn’t said it and focused on loot.

Kunai-picker had decent steel, but we all already had kunai. I snagged one of his better-balanced ones anyway and clipped it to my belt. Rei had a small roll of bandages and a half-empty antiseptic vial; I took the vial and left the bandages.

From bandage-neck’s pouch, my fingers closed around a little glass bottle that rattled. I popped the cork and sniffed—sharp, chemical, made my eyes water.

“Smoke bomb?” I guessed.

He glared at me. “Flash-smoke mix. Short range.”

“Perfect,” I said, and dropped it into my pouch. “Thank you for your donation.”

He muttered something very rude under his breath.

Then I hit the jackpot: a small, flat ink bottle and a bundle of pre-cut, blank tags tucked into Rei’s bag. The ink was cheap, watery stuff, but it was still ink.

“Mine,” I said, hugging it for a second like a greedy dragon before I composed myself. “I mean, this will be very useful for…tactical purposes.”

Naruto snorted. “You’re worse than me with ramen.”

“Everyone has priorities,” I said.

While I worked, Naruto’s clones kept a firm but not painful hold on the Rain trio. No dislocated shoulders, no extra bruises. Just humiliation and rope. Sasuke, efficient as ever, tore strips from a fallen vine and reinforced the bindings, tying neat, practical knots.

We dragged them—gently, by clone power—over to the base of a thick, unassuming tree. No visible man-eating vines. No obvious pits. Just dirt and roots and shade.

“This is kidnapping,” Kunai-picker grumbled.

“No, this is detainment,” I corrected. “If it makes you feel better, you can say you were captured by the loud idiot, the broody prodigy, and the weird seal girl from Leaf. Very impressive story.”

Bandage-neck squinted at me. His gaze traveled from my scuffed sandals up my too-big dark pink shorts, past my mesh arm warmers, to the white top with the big pink bow that someone’s well-meaning hands at the orphanage had pressed on me with a “this will look so cute on you.”

“What are you even supposed to be,” he sneered, “a schoolgirl who got lost on the way to class?”

The words hit harder than any kunai.

Heat crept up my neck so fast it made me dizzy. For a second, all I could see was my reflection in the orphanage mirror: hair yanked into something presentable, bow straightened by gentle fingers, Ino squealing that I looked “so girly” the day she helped me restyle it.

I’d chosen this outfit on purpose. The bow. The stupid pink. It had been a declaration: I get to be this. I get to be soft and obvious and still a ninja.

To him, it was a joke. Costume, not uniform. Decoration, not danger.

Of course it was. That was the point. The world saw the surface. Rarely bothered looking under the ink.

My chest did that hollow drop it used to do when my old family had said, “You don’t look like—” and whatever I said after never mattered.

Naruto bristled. “Hey!” he snapped before I could say anything. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

All three Rain kids blinked, clearly not expecting him to be offended on my behalf.

“She’s the one who caught you,” Naruto went on, jabbing a thumb at me. “You know that, right? Her dumb little seal is the only reason I’m not still tied up in a ditch. So maybe shut your mouth about her clothes?”

I stared at him. For half a second, the forest’s oppressive chakra dimmed.

Sasuke didn’t say anything, but he shot me a sideways look. Not pitying; appraising. Like he’d just slotted this exchange somewhere in whatever mental map he kept of “people who matter to me, and how.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and flicked my hair back over my shoulder.

“You heard my very angry client,” I said lightly, once I trusted my voice. “I might dress like a lost schoolgirl, but I’m the one who decides how long you stay gift-wrapped for the proctors.”

Bandage-neck clicked his tongue and looked away.

Rei peeked up at me through his lashes. “Um,” he said, voice small. “Your…your bow is kind of cool.”

“Thank you,” I said, a little too quickly. “Taste recognized.”

I tightened the last knot and dusted my hands off.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. You’re tied, but not cruelly. We’re taking some gear, but leaving you enough to not die of infection or thirst. If you get free, you can try again on someone who isn’t us. If you don’t…well.”

“The proctors will find you,” Sasuke finished. “Or they won’t.”

Naruto shot him a look that said dude, we were doing a thing, but didn’t argue.

I pointed a finger at the Rain trio. “Don’t try to eat any weird mushrooms out of boredom,” I said. “If the forest doesn’t kill you, the hospital bills will.”

“Like we can afford a hospital,” Kunai-picker muttered.

That landed differently than he probably meant. A little jolt of recognition, like hitting a bruise.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I get that.”

They all looked at me again, puzzled.

I straightened, forcing my shoulders back.

“Anyway,” I said. “Enjoy your time in the timeout corner. Try not to die. I hear it’s bad for your grades.”

Naruto snorted. Sasuke shook his head.

We turned away as a unit, pushing back through the undergrowth, leaving three bound Rain genin behind us in the filtered green light.

Once we were out of earshot, Naruto exploded.

“I cannot BELIEVE they jumped me while I was peeing,” he ranted, shoving branches aside with unnecessary force. “I’m never living this down, am I?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “You handed me too much material.”

He groaned. “Why are you like this?”

“Coping mechanisms,” I said. “Also, you deserved it for trying to skip the clone.”

Sasuke walked ahead of us, posture relaxed in that way that meant he was absolutely not relaxed, watching everything.

“You did well,” he said abruptly.

Naruto blinked. “Me?”

“Both of you,” Sasuke said. “Naruto, for not running in alone without a plan for once.”

“Hey, I had a plan,” Naruto protested. “Punch them.”

“And you waited until we had positions before you punched,” Sasuke said. “Improvement.”

Naruto preened a little.

“And you,” he added, glancing back at me. “For spotting the opening. The flash tag.”

“Oh,” I said, caught off-guard. “Yeah. I mean. Low-level stuff.”

“You turned three-on-three into three-on-one,” he said. “Without that, it would’ve been slower. Messier.”

Messier. Like more blood on dirt, more concussions, more ways for things to spiral.

“Small tricks,” I said, “in service of not getting skewered. That’s my brand.”

Naruto bumped his shoulder against mine. “Your dumb pee seal saved my butt,” he said. “Literally. So…thanks.”

I made a face to hide the flare of warmth in my chest. “Don’t call it that.”

“It is a pee seal,” he insisted. “You put it on me while talking about peeing. That’s the origin story. You can’t change it now.”

“I will redraw the kanji to say ‘heroic tracking device’ out of spite,” I said.

He laughed, bright and free, and for a moment it almost drowned out the low, wrong static still buzzing at the edges of my chakra sense.

We kept moving, deeper into the trees. The light thinned further. The oppressive pressure of the forest settled back over us like a wet blanket.

Naruto chatted about how he was definitely going to come up with “the most humiliating payback prank in history” for future bathroom ambushers. Sasuke occasionally offered dry suggestions.

I let their bickering wash over me and checked my mental HUD again.

Naruto: loud orange-gold, bruised at the edges, but burning steady.

Sasuke: tight violet-black thread, solid, anchored.

Behind us, the Rain trio’s chakra turned small and quiet, wrapped in rope and resigned.

Around us, other signatures flared and faded—fights starting, ending, kids winning, losing, dropping.

Over all of it, that distant metal-scrape feeling dragged across my nerves again. Long, slow, patient. Like something big was moving parallel to us just out of sight.

I touched the new ink bottle in my pouch, feeling the cool glass against my fingers.

“First real loot,” I thought. “Congratulations, me. You mugged some desperate kids and got stationary.”

It should’ve felt pathetic. It didn’t.

Gear was gear. Experience was experience. And choosing not to kill people when the rules said you could—that was a kind of loot too. A little piece of myself I was keeping.

“I’m not going to be like you,” I told the ghosts in the trees, the examiners watching, the old world that had killed me alone between trunks.

“If I can help it, nobody on my watch dies in a ditch.”

“Hey,” Naruto called back, breaking my spiral. “We should name that move.”

“What move?” I asked.

“The one where you tag me and then we beat up anyone who messes with me,” he said, grinning. “Like…Pulse-and-Punch! Or Seal-and-Beatdown!”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

“C’mon,” he whined. “Team techniques need cool names.”

Sasuke sighed. “If you two start naming things, I’m leaving.”

“Rude,” I said. “We’re workshopping. Art takes time.”

“Just don’t write it on my forehead,” he said.

No promises, I thought, and smiled, just a little.

We walked on.

Behind us, three tied-up Rain genin glared at the trees and waited for whatever came next.

Ahead of us, the Forest of Death pressed in, full of teeth and eyes and the echo of something huge smiling with too many fangs.

My ink was a little heavier. My pouch was a little fuller. My hands were a little steadier.

First ambush survived. First real loot acquired. First line drawn in the sand about who we were going to be in this stupid, lethal game.

Step by step, we kept going deeper.

Chapter Text

<Sylvie>

I decided the Forest of Death had been misbranded.

Sure, there were murder trees and flesh-eating bugs and the constant chance of getting your throat slit by a kid with better grades, but mostly?

It was boring.

The same huge roots, the same moss-slick bark, the same smell of wet dirt and old leaves. If I stared too long, the whole place blurred into one big green smear.

“We should’ve looted something cooler,” Naruto complained as he hopped over a fallen trunk. “Like, I dunno, a big sword. Or a treasure chest.”

I made a tired noise. “You stole their smoke bomb.”

“That’s one smoke bomb,” he said. “I want treasure. Sparkly. Dramatic. Something that says, ‘You beat up other ninja in a murder forest, congratulations.’”

“Your prize is ‘not dead,’” I said. “Market value: priceless.”

Sasuke, jogging a little off to Naruto’s left, didn’t bother looking over. “We’re in an exam, not a fairy tale.”

“An exam could have treasure,” Naruto argued. “Like, whoever gets the most scrolls gets a bonus sword. That would be great motivation.”

“Or bait,” I muttered.

We moved through another stand of trees. The roots knotted together like a frozen wave, forcing us to step high, balance, duck. The light above was dimmer now, the canopy hanging heavy. Shadows clung to the branches.

Naruto kept squinting up at them like the branches were about to personally start something. To be fair, they might.

“Hold up,” I said, throat tightening with that now-familiar static behind my eyes.

I scrambled up onto one of the thicker roots, toes digging in, scanning the trunks like I was choosing which one to blame for my anxiety. One felt right—angle, sightline, likely path of pursuit. I flexed my fingers and jumped.

Catch, scramble, cling. Bark rough under my palms, ink-stained nails scraping. In a few seconds I was ten meters up, thighs wrapped around the trunk, one arm hooked while the other pulled out brush and ink.

“You’re doing the tree graffiti thing again,” Naruto called, craning his head back.

“Correct,” I called down. “Please continue complaining. It fuels me.”

“We don’t have time to turn the forest into your sketchbook,” Sasuke said, but it didn’t have much bite. His chakra had that flat, watchful feel; he’d already slowed to give me room.

I didn’t answer right away. My hand moved in quick, practiced strokes, the pattern already assembled in the back of my brain. Line, curve, anchor, directional sigil. No hesitation, no flourishes. Each stroke pulled a thin thread of chakra out of me; with every completed loop, the seal shivered against my skin like biting tinfoil.

“Flash trap,” I announced after a few seconds. I pressed my palm flat to the fresh ink and pushed. The seal pulsed once and sank into the tree, vanishing from sight but not from my sense.

Naruto’s chakra brightened below. “Flash like boom or flash like ‘I can see sounds now’?”

“Flash like ‘if you are chasing us in that direction, enjoy having your retinas set on fire,’” I said, dropping to a lower branch and then down to the ground. I landed with a grunt. “Directional. So if you stand on the wrong side, that’s on you.”

“That sounds awesome,” he said immediately. “I kinda wanna see it.”

“Please do not test it on purpose,” I said. “I like you, but not enough to walk you around by the hand while you’re blind.”

Naruto pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“I’m the only reason you’re still alive,” I shot back, dusting off my hands. “Fun is something we get to schedule later, after we are not in the murder woods.”

We settled back into our now-standard formation: Naruto in the lead, because of ego and also because it made a weird amount of tactical sense to let the walking siren be the first thing enemies saw. Sasuke just behind and to his left, watching everything. Me in the back, glancing behind us every few seconds, veering off sometimes to paint another quick seal on a trunk or rock.

Every so often I’d close the distance and tap Naruto on the wrist or elbow, right where I’d tucked marks earlier.

The little seal under his skin warmed each time, a tiny static buzz against my fingertip. Not loud, not obvious. Just enough to answer roll call.

“Quit poking me,” he grumbled the third time I did it in ten minutes.

“I’m recalibrating,” I said. “The forest’s chakra is messing with the signal. If I don’t check, I start getting false pings and then I have three overlapping heart attacks when you trip.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” he said.

“If you want it to stay a me problem and not become a ‘Naruto is lost in the woods because I couldn’t tell he was missing’ problem, hold still,” I replied.

He grunted, but he didn’t pull his arm away.

Sasuke offered his own wrist without being asked. He kept his eyes on the trees while I brushed my thumb over the spot, but his shoulders tightened for a heartbeat.

He hated being touched. Everyone in class had figured that out. He let me get away with it because the seals worked. His jaw still clenched every time.

I noticed. I always noticed.

“Still alive,” I murmured. “Very impressive.”

“Hn,” he said.

Naruto rolled his eyes so aggressively I could practically hear it. “You two and your seal-language. ‘Recalibrating.’ ‘Signal.’ ‘Ambient interference.’ I see trees and bugs. You see…math.”

“Correct,” I said. “You’re the field test. We’re the design team.”

He thought about flipping me off, I could tell. His hand half-twitched, then dropped. He settled for a loud, dramatic sigh instead.

The forest pressed harder against my skin as we went. When we first entered, it had just been creepy—too many shadows, air too wet, insect noise too loud. Now there was a weight behind my eyes. Not pain, exactly. Just pressure. Like someone was gently pushing from inside my skull, testing, looking for weak spots.

Naruto shook his head like he could rattle it loose.

“Head okay?” I asked quietly.

“Fine,” he said. “Just thinking.”

“Dangerous,” Sasuke said.

Naruto scowled at him. “I can think.”

“Sometimes you shouldn’t,” Sasuke replied.

I huffed once, a laugh that didn’t have enough oxygen behind it. My eyes skimmed the branches again. The Squad Marks on my wrist itched. Every time I blinked, my brain tried to trick me into believing one of the warm little points had vanished.

They hadn’t. Yet.

I also noticed how often Naruto kept glancing back, shoulders twitching like someone was breathing on his neck.

He wasn’t wrong. The whole forest felt like it was looking at us.

<Orochimaru>

High above them, a pale shape slid along the branches like smoke wearing a human outline.

Orochimaru moved easily through the canopy, light enough that the leaves hardly stirred under his weight. The forest was familiar under his hands. Old chakra clung to the bark and soil, some of it his, most of it Konoha’s. Layered protections, traps, habits.

Below, three genin wound their way through the roots.

The Uchiha boy was easy to read: all guarded sharpness and ruthless little calculations. His chakra coiled firmly in his center, controlled to an extent that did not belong in someone that age. It burned with that particular hunger Orochimaru knew so well—the need to fill a void with power until the emptiness shut up.

The blond jinchūriki was the opposite—chakra leaking out of him with every breath. Orange and bright, flickering constantly, like a bonfire someone had tried to put a lid on and failed.

Underneath that unruly surface was another presence. Older. Heavier. Red, resentful, caged.

Kurama.

Orochimaru’s tongue flicked out unconsciously, tasting the air. The seal around that chakra—Sarutobi’s seal—was still holding, but sloppily. Cracks already showed where the fox pressed hardest. Flaws meant possibilities.

Then his attention slid to the third one.

The girl did not carry a clan crest. Her clothes were mismatched, slightly too large, orphanage-standard. She did not move with the drilled precision of Hyūga or Aburame or Uchiha; she watched the ground and the trees like someone who had learned to be cautious the hard way.

Ink stained her fingers. Every few minutes, she veered off to tag a trunk or stone, leaving behind a faint shiver of fuinjutsu. Crude, but not without thought. Directional traps, tuned to angles and lines of approach. Not pulled from a standard scroll.

More interesting than the seals she placed on the environment were the ones she had laid on her teammates.

He could see them—not with his eyes, but in the way chakra flared and dimmed where her fingers pressed. Invisible marks humming on their wrists, hips, shoulders. Little anchors tying them together through the ambient soup of the forest.

Primitive work, but the concept…

Someone had taught her the basics, but this particular configuration? The way she kept adjusting for interference, for distance?

No.

That smelled like a mind worrying at a problem in the quiet hours.

A mind that might, given the right pushes, reproduce techniques that had been deliberately erased from Konoha’s libraries decades ago.

Orochimaru slid a little farther along the branch, keeping pace without effort.

The Uchiha looked up once, sharp eyes scanning. They swept past him, saw nothing, moved on.

Almost.

<Sylvie>

The static in Naruto’s chakra went from “annoying background fizz” to “someone scraping a fork along my nerves.”

He kept glancing over his shoulder.

Nothing obvious was there. Just more trees. More roots. A curtain of vines that could have been a person-shaped shadow if you stared long enough and let your survival instincts hallucinate for fun.

“You’re doing that thing,” Sasuke said, not bothering to look away from the path ahead.

“What thing?” Naruto asked.

“The twitchy thing,” Sasuke said. “You’ve looked behind us six times in the last minute.”

“Yeah, because something’s back there,” Naruto said. “Duh.”

“Nothing is there,” Sasuke said flatly.

“That’s not what it feels like,” Naruto muttered.

I’d been half listening, half counting my own heartbeat and the ones humming through the Squad Marks. The word feels snagged my attention. I glanced back over my shoulder, then forward again.

“You’re picking up the ambient chakra pressure,” I said. “Congratulations, you’re a sensitive little antenna.”

“I don’t want to be an antenna,” he said. “I want to be Hokage.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” I said. “Being able to tell when a place wants to eat you is a useful leadership trait.”

He made a face at me. “You’re not helping.”

“The exam is supposed to freak you out,” I said. “The forest has a lot of chakra. It’s like being in a crowded room, except the crowd is trees and bugs and murder. Your brain’s just yelling about it.”

“That’s a very normal explanation for why it feels like my skull’s full of bees,” Naruto said.

“Mhm,” I said. I tapped the mark on my own wrist with my thumb, grounding myself on that little loop of ink and chakra. “Occam’s razor says anxiety.”

Naruto blinked. “Who’s Razor?”

“Guy with a knife,” I said. “Cuts down complicated explanations until only the simple one’s left.”

“Sounds like a terrible ninja name,” he said.

“You’d like him.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then seemed to decide I had a point and shut it again.

We walked on.

Ten minutes later, the sense of being watched had not gone away. It hadn’t sharpened into something I could point to in chakra-space—no spike, no specific direction. Just pressure. Just weight. The forest sitting heavy on the back of my teeth.

Naruto’s fingers kept flexing like he wanted to punch the feeling itself. I sympathized.

“We need a break,” I said finally. My voice came out steady enough. My hands were starting to shake.

Naruto almost sagged. “Finally.”

Sasuke scanned the area slowly, eyes and chakra both sweeping. Then he jerked his chin toward a wedge of space between a toppled trunk and a rock outcrop. “There,” he said. “Ten minutes. No more.”

Naruto flopped down on the log like gravity had won a long argument. I slid into the gap between wood and stone, sitting with my back braced and knees pulled up where I could rest my arms on them. Sasuke stayed half-standing, propped against the rock where he could see in three directions at once.

The air was cooler here, but just as thick. It sat in my lungs like wet wool.

Naruto tipped his head back until it bumped the trunk and stared up at the canopy. The leaves barely moved.

“What’s the plan?” he asked the sky. “Besides ‘don’t die’?”

“Get an Earth scroll,” Sasuke said. “Get to the tower.”

Naruto groaned. “I meant a good plan. With details. And, like, a secret password.”

“‘Don’t die’ is a good plan,” I said. “Password is ‘Naruto doesn’t run off alone.’”

“I didn’t run off,” he said. “I had to pee.”

“That counts,” I said. “Rules of the murder exam: if your hands are busy, you are ‘off alone.’”

He scowled, then winced. The bruise on his temple pulsed in the same slow rhythm as the forest’s pressure. His chakra stuttered, just a little, around it.

I saw it. I felt it. My stomach dropped.

I leaned forward automatically, hand already reaching for his head. “Let me check—”

“I’m fine,” he said quickly, jerking his hand up to cover the spot.

“Stop saying that when you’re not,” I said, way more irritated than I meant to sound. “You got knocked out. That’s brain stuff. Brain stuff is important.”

“Your brain’s the one doing the goldfish thing,” he shot back.

I blinked. “…The what now.”

“The thing where you keep going quiet and then jumping like somebody tapped the bowl,” he said. “You look like a startled fish.”

“Wow,” I said. “Thank you for that mental image.”

He shrugged, looking smug for about half a second. “You’re the one who keeps slapping your own arm. Are the marks freaking out?”

“Kind of,” I admitted. I rubbed at my wrist, thumb worrying the skin where ink had soaked in over the last few days. “They keep stuttering. I think the forest’s chakra is messing with the signal. I’ll think one of you just dropped and then it…fizzes out. My brain doesn’t like that.”

“Can you fix it?” he asked.

“I can keep poking you,” I said. “I can’t make the trees shut up.”

I reached over anyway, catching his wrist before he could yank it away.

The seal warmed under my touch, his chakra answering the little test pulse with its usual loud, stubborn flare. I watched his face while I did it—not just the way his eyes tracked me, but how his mouth tried not to twitch when I leaned closer. His shoulders didn’t relax, even when I let go.

“Still alive,” I said. “Regrettably.”

He snorted. “Glad I disappoint you.”

“Constantly,” I said.

I crawled the short distance to Sasuke and held out a hand. “Yours.”

He sighed through his nose in that “you’re annoying but useful” way and extended his wrist.

I tuned his mark too, in quick, precise pulses. His chakra was smooth and sharp as ever, warping a little where the forest pressed. His jaw clenched once; he pretended it hadn’t happened.

“Functional?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Excellent,” I said. “Now I’m only panicking about the forest instead of also panicking about you.”

Naruto nudged my foot with his own. “You don’t have to panic about us, y’know.”

“You keep almost dying in new and exciting ways,” I said. “I feel like not panicking would be irresponsible.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, visibly caught between arguing and…not.

“Fine,” he muttered. “But if my head explodes, I get to say ‘told you so.’”

I gave him my flattest look. “If your head explodes, I will be very impressed and then extremely traumatized, in that order.”

He laughed. It came out thinner than usual, but it was still a laugh, and his chakra eased a fraction.

Somewhere out in the trees, something cracked.

All three of us went still.

Sasuke’s hand found a kunai without thinking. Naruto’s fingers brushed his pouch. My head snapped up, eyes unfocusing for a heartbeat as I shoved my senses outward, combing for a spike, a direction, anything.

Nothing moved.

The crack didn’t repeat.

“Branch,” Sasuke said after a long moment. “Or an animal.”

“Or a sadistic proctor throwing rocks,” I muttered.

I tried to unclench my shoulders. The forest did not help.

<Orochimaru>

The little break was enough for him.

From his vantage point, Orochimaru watched how they reacted to the single sound he’d allowed to escape. The tension. The way they triangulated without speaking. The way their chakras spiked and then slowly settled.

Not bad, for children.

He eased back a fraction, lowering his killing intent to a thin whisper.

Even that was enough to thicken the air by degrees.

The jinchūriki shivered and shook his head like a wet dog. Somewhere under the boy’s heart, the sealed beast twitched. A low, familiar malice pressed against its cage, murmuring disgust.

Kurama knew him.

Orochimaru’s smile thinned.

Good.

He let his gaze slide over the other two again.

The Uchiha had noticed the wrongness in the wind—that was interesting. He’d always liked perceptive ones.

The girl’s seals continued to jitter, short pulses of chakra trying to find purchase in an environment he’d tilted a few degrees off true. She slapped her own arm in irritation.

There. Imperfect as it was, that web she was spinning between her team and the environment hummed with old potential.

If given the right hints, she could rediscover things Konoha’s elders thought buried.

He catalogued that. Filed it away.

There would be time for experiments later.

For now, he slid along the branch and followed as they got to their feet and moved on, deeper into his playground.

<Sylvie>

My legs were starting to complain.

Naruto was still bouncing off roots like a particularly determined rubber ball, but even he had lost some spring. Sasuke kept the same steady pace, controlled and maddening.

The light had faded from sick green to sick green plus gray. We still hadn’t seen another team. No scrolls. No obvious ambushes. Just the constant feeling of the forest breathing slowly around us and the Heaven scroll thumping lightly against Naruto’s lower back with each step: half done, not enough.

“We need that second scroll,” Naruto said for at least the fifth time.

“Everyone in the forest needs a second scroll,” Sasuke answered. “That’s why no one’s being careless.”

“If we don’t find someone soon, I’m starting a rumor that we already have both,” Naruto said. “Make them come to us.”

“That’s actually not the worst idea you’ve had,” I said, almost absently. I was tracing possible ambush paths in my head and overlaying them with where I’d already placed seals.

Naruto beamed. “See? Genius.”

“Except for the part where it paints a target on our backs in neon,” I added. “But points for creativity.”

We walked a little farther. My calves burned. My ink was running low. The static behind my eyes wouldn’t shut up.

“Ten more minutes,” Sasuke said finally. “Then we find a place to sleep.”

Naruto made a face. “You mean ‘a place to pretend to sleep and then jolt awake every time a twig snaps.’”

“Yes,” Sasuke said.

“Accurate,” I said.

“Can we not sleep on the ground?” Naruto asked. He shuddered a little. “I’ve had enough of the ground today.”

“Trees,” I said immediately. “Please trees.”

Sasuke didn’t argue. “Trees,” he agreed. “Somewhere we can all see each other. And we trap the base.”

That was already my plan, but hearing him say it out loud helped. If Sasuke Uchiha agreed with my paranoia, it meant I wasn’t overreacting. Probably.

Eventually we found a cluster of trunks that had grown close together, branches tangling to make something like a platform high up.

Sasuke went up first, moving with that stupid catlike ease, then offered a hand down to me. Pride wanted me to refuse. Common sense reminded me I was tired, my hands were starting to shake, and falling out of a tree in the Forest of Death would be an extremely embarrassing way to die.

I grabbed his wrist and let him haul me the last bit.

Naruto followed under his own power, deliberately overshooting the branch and landing with a little extra flourish like he was auditioning for “flashy target” of the year.

Nobody commented. It was almost comforting, how rude we all were by default.

We settled in. Naruto wedged himself into a crook where he could wrap arms and legs around something solid. I sat with my back to the thickest part of the trunk, knees up, a branch under my feet like a makeshift footrest. Sasuke chose a spot where he had line of sight on both of us and as much of the forest floor as possible.

“Watches?” I asked.

“I’ll take third,” Sasuke said immediately.

“That’s the worst watch,” Naruto said. “You barely get any actual sleep.”

“I wasn’t asking for your health report,” Sasuke said.

“I’m first,” I decided before Naruto could launch into a speech. “You two have been knocked out today. I haven’t. Yet.”

Naruto bristled. “I can stay awake.”

“You can dream with your eyes open,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

Sasuke snorted softly. “You were wobbling ten minutes ago.”

“I was not—”

The whole tree rocked slightly as whatever passed for wind here pushed at the canopy. The small shift made Naruto very aware of how high up we were. I watched his throat bob.

He shut his mouth.

I watched his expression for another second, then gave him the kind of look I usually reserved for people trying to walk on broken ankles.

“Second watch,” I said. “You can be noble then. Sleep now.”

He scowled. “If anything happens and I’m not awake—”

“We’ll wake you,” I said. “That’s the point of watch. It’s not ‘sit quietly while your friends die.’”

“Could be,” he muttered, but the fight was leaking out of him.

His eyelids were heavy. His chakra buzz had dropped from “shouting” to “hoarse muttering.”

He grumbled something indistinct and shifted until the rough bark pressed into his cheek. The branch creaked under his weight and then held.

Across from me, Sasuke settled into the kind of coiled stillness that looked like rest and definitely wasn’t. I adjusted my glasses, set my ink and tools within easy reach, and stared out into the dark.

The feeling of being watched did not disappear.

It sat above us and around us, patient and hungry. The Squad Marks on my skin hummed, three warm points in a forest that wanted to smear us into the background.

Somewhere above, in the layered shadows of the canopy, something smiled and waited.

Chapter Text

<Konohamaru>

Konohamaru was on patrol.

Not the lame kind where grown-ups told you where to stand and when to breathe.

Real patrol.

He hugged the wall by the Academy steps, back flat, sliding along in what he was pretty sure was stealth mode. His scarf dragged on the stone and caught on a crack, but that just made it look more dramatic. Battle damage.

“Enemy forces sighted,” he muttered, mostly for himself. “Multiple suspicious adults… possibly spies… definitely lame.”

Down on the street, a cluster of foreign shinobi argued about directions. Wrong hitai-ate, weird clothes, louder than Naruto-nii at lunch.

Suspicious.

He dropped into the crouch Naruto had shown him—low, bouncy, ready to sprint. His knees popped a little. That meant it was working.

From here he could see the Hokage Monument peeking over the roofs. Jiji’s face watched the village, calm and stony. Konohamaru’s would be up there someday. They’d have to make the mountain taller so his hair fit.

“Konohamaru Sarutobi,” he whispered, testing the sound. “Seventh Hokage. No… Eighth. Naruto-nii can have Seventh.”

A wind kicked up, rattling the paper notices on the Academy board. The sun was sliding down behind the Monument now, painting everything gold. Evening, not night. Prime patrol time.

“Iruka-sensei says go straight home after class,” he informed the air. “Iruka-sensei also says ‘no smoke bombs in the classroom.’ Iruka-sensei has many wrong opinions.”

He checked. No one was looking.

Perfect.

He bolted.

Down the steps, across the little plaza, weaving between legs. A jonin barked something about “no running,” but he was already past. He jumped up onto the railing, sprinted along it for three glorious seconds, then leapt off like the hero of a war story.

“Shadow Patrol Technique,” he breathed, because naming jutsu made them stronger. Obviously.

He cut behind a dumpling stall and popped back onto the main path that led toward the Monument stairs. From there, all the carved faces looked like they were watching.

He threw them a quick, secret salute, then dropped back to “official business.”

He swung around the base of the stairs, doing a lazy loop to “check blind spots,” which mostly meant looking for hidden snack stashes.

That’s when he hit the wall.

Not a real wall. That would have been better.

This was like running full-speed into a tree trunk wrapped in cloth.

His forehead smacked something just above eye-level. The world bounced. He landed on his butt with an ugly grunt, the kind that did not sound like Future Hokage material.

His goggles slid sideways. He shoved them up, blinking.

He hadn’t hit a wall.

He’d hit a leg.

A huge leg, wrapped in a dark, heavy cloak. The fabric was rough, travel-worn, the kind you saw on the scariest missing-nin posters at the missions office.

Konohamaru’s gaze climbed.

The man looming over him was all vertical: tall, broad, wrapped in fabric and odd little visible stitches. Bits of dark thread poked out along his neck where the wrappings didn’t quite hide them, like someone had taken him apart and sewn him back together in a hurry.

Konohamaru swallowed. His throat forgot how for a second.

“Uh,” he managed. “Sorry.”

The figure tilted his head just enough that the hood shifted.

One eye came into view.

It wasn’t like Iruka’s, or Naruto’s, or Jiji’s. No warmth, no exasperation, no anything.

Just flat. Weird green—not bright, not pretty. Moss on stone that never went away. When that eye met his, something cold spilled down Konohamaru’s back in a straight line, like someone had poured river water right into his spine.

He’d never stood in front of a real enemy before. He played ninja every day, hiding from tutors and setting traps, but that was a game. This wasn't. It felt like the time he’d slipped near the edge of the Hokage Monument, that split-second of weightlessness before the ANBU guard caught his collar. The stomach-dropping certainty that the ground was waiting to break him.

This felt like falling.

His heart rabbited in his chest. His feet forgot how to stand up.

He was still trying to make his muscles listen when a hand landed on his shoulder.

Not yanking. Not crushing. Just there.

“Konohamaru.”

Iruka’s voice slid in from the side, calm on the surface, steel underneath.

<Kakuza>

The child’s forehead hit his thigh with a dull thump.

Kakuzu barely felt it. The street was crowded—civilian clutter, chunin patrols, exam brats swaggering. Background noise.

He glanced down.

The boy sprawled at his feet was all too-long scarf and oversized goggles, knees and elbows and righteous indignation. Brown hair stuck up like it was trying to escape. He glared up, halfway between mortified and offended.

Familiar, in a way.

Kakuzu’s gaze moved over the kid’s face, cataloguing. The nose. The jaw. The way the mouth tried to hold a brave line and almost managed it.

He’d seen that face on stone.

At the edge of the village, carved huge into the mountain: Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage. He’d seen it older, smaller, smeared with battlefield dirt, barking orders while the air tasted like blood and woodsmoke.

He’d seen another version in the valley where two idiots thought themselves gods.

Sarutobi. Hokage’s line.

Kakuzu let his eyes wander past the boy, up to the Monument looming over the rooftops.

Hashirama’s grin at the top, Tobirama’s sharp lines, Sarutobi’s tired smile, Minato’s softer features. Faces stacked like coins. Leaders piled up in stone because flesh didn’t last.

He’d once been sent to kill the man whose face sat at the very top.

Back then, his hands had been young, his village full of talk about “necessary sacrifice” and “protecting Takigakure’s future.” They’d handed him a mission scroll and a half-truth and expected him to throw his life away on one of the strongest men to ever walk the earth.

It had been…predictable when he failed.

More predictable when they tried to kill him for it.

He’d cut them down. He’d left Takigakure behind. He’d learned something important in the process:

Villages were temporary. Debt was not.

At his feet, the brat shivered.

Not from temperature. From instinct. Some primitive corner of him, the part that remembered red sky and a fox monster the size of a building, saw predator and froze.

Kakuzu felt nothing in particular about the child.

Not hatred. Not affection. Just quick math.

“Hokage’s grandson,” he thought. “No bounty attached. Yet.”

Chakra pricked at the edge of his awareness.

A chunin descended the steps like he’d been waiting at the top. Scar across his nose, flak jacket slightly crooked, hair tied back. Arms full of papers, eyes sharper than they had any right to be at the end of the day.

The man’s chakra was steady and unremarkable on the surface—middle-of-the-road strength, honed by repetition and routine. The kind that graded tests, ran drills, kept supply chains from collapsing.

Underneath, there was a grain of something else. Worn-down wariness. The kind that came from not dying when a lot of people around you had.

Interesting.

The chunin’s hand dropped onto the boy’s shoulder, fingers squeezing once. Grounding. Protective.

“Konohamaru,” he said, voice light in a way his shoulders weren’t. “You’re supposed to be home. You have tests tomorrow.”

He stepped partially in front of the kid as he spoke, body angling without fuss, turning himself into the easiest thing to hit if a strike came.

Then he bowed.

“Sorry,” he added, tone polite but not apologetic. “He should be home by now. I’ll take him.”

Kakuzu watched him.

The man’s eyes skipped over the stitches, the cloak, the hood, and then came back, just for a second. His pupils tightened. The skin at the corner of his jaw ticked.

He feels it, Kakuzu noted. No name. No file. Just…threat.

The brat opened his mouth, reflexive apology already on his tongue.

“Apologize, Konohamaru,” the chunin prompted anyway.

“S–sorry!” the boy blurted, bowing so fast his goggles nearly flew off. “I didn’t see you. I was…training.”

Of course he was.

Kakuzu did a quick, neat calculation.

He could reach down, twist, and break the boy’s neck before either of them processed the movement. The body would hit the stone with a sound the whole street would remember. Civilians would scream. Shinobi would converge.

The Hokage’s grandson dead at the foot of the Monument.

Konoha would slam into lockdown. ANBU everywhere. Danzō’s quiet little contract with “outside operatives” would become worthless in under an hour. No one moved money in a panic like that. No one paid bounties.

Akatsuki’s timetable would stagger. Leader would be…displeased.

Killing a child for symbolism was sentimental.

Kakuzu did not get paid for sentiment.

“Watch where you’re going,” he said finally.

His voice came out low, rough from disuse. The boy flinched anyway.

The chunin’s fingers tightened on the small shoulder under his hand.

“Come on,” the man said. “Home. Now.”

He turned, guiding Konohamaru with him. Not backing away. Not rushing. Just walking. Leaving his back to Kakuzu without actually relaxing, head angled so one eye still caught the space behind them.

If an attack came, it would hit him first.

They moved around Kakuzu like water around a rock.

He watched them go.

The brat’s scarf trailed like a banner. The teacher’s posture never quite lost that coiled line.

Gut instinct like that wouldn’t save the man from everything, but it would buy seconds other people didn’t get.

Kakuzu filed both faces away—not for his ledger, not yet. For context.

He adjusted the strap of his pack and stepped back into the flow of exam-season traffic.

More Hokage would rise and fall. More Sarutobi brats would be born under big stone faces. Villages would act like they were permanent.

In the end, only the numbers mattered.

Debt. Blood. Profit.

Sooner or later, Konoha would find its way onto his balance sheet.

<Iruka>

Iruka’s heart didn’t start pounding until after he turned the corner.

Before that, his body just moved.

He’d stepped out of the Academy with a stack of graded tests under his arm and a dull, familiar headache behind his eyes. Chūnin Exams meant extra forms, extra checklists, extra parents asking, “My child isn’t actually going into that forest, right?”

He loved his job. He loved his students.

He hated exam season.

He’d paused at the top of the steps to roll his shoulders, watching the courtyard breathe. The light was orange and soft. Dust hung in the air, catching it. Someone laughed near the playground. A genin team argued about lunch.

He spotted Konohamaru almost immediately. It was hard not to.

The boy was plastered dramatically to a wall, “sneaking” along with all the subtlety of a neon sign. Iruka watched him for a second, the corner of his mouth twitching.

He could have called out. He didn’t.

Five minutes, he decided. Let him play. Then walk him home, have a quiet word with the Sandaime about bedtime and responsibility.

Konohamaru vanished around the base of the Monument stairs.

A few moments later, there was a thud.

Not the hollow smack of a kid tripping on the steps. A heavier, flatter sound: soft body into something that didn’t move.

Iruka didn’t think. His feet were already going.

Down the steps, around the corner, tests forgotten under his arm.

He saw them in one sharp slice of a moment:

Konohamaru on the ground, goggles askew, looking up.

A tall cloaked figure above him, hooded, stitches visible at the neck.

The man’s chakra hit Iruka’s senses sideways. Heavy. Old. Threaded with a kind of killing intent that didn’t flare, didn’t shout. It simply existed, like a cliff existed at the edge of a long drop.

His vision doubled for a heartbeat.

The courtyard blurred into a different night.

He was six again. Heat on his face, air full of ash. The sky wrong—red instead of blue, pulsing with a huge chakra that made his teeth ache. Someone had shoved him behind a cart. “Don’t move,” a voice had said, and then there had been screaming, and he had moved anyway.

The Nine-Tails’ chakra had been like standing next to the ocean during a storm—each roar a wave big enough to crush a house.

This wasn’t that.

But it pressed against the same scar.

Danger.

Iruka’s fingers tightened on the pile of papers. His other hand reached Konohamaru’s shoulder before his brain caught up.

“Konohamaru,” he said, keeping his voice level. “You’re supposed to be home. You have tests tomorrow.”

The boy whipped his head around, relief flashing across his face so openly it hurt to look at.

“Iruka-sensei!”

Iruka stepped between him and the cloaked man without making it too obvious. His body turned just enough to block, his weight shifting so he could move sideways fast if he had to.

He bowed, because this was Konoha, and they were civil, even when their guts were screaming.

“Sorry,” he said. “He should be home by now. I’ll take him.”

The stranger looked at him.

Iruka caught a glimpse of an eye under the hood. Green and unnatural. Flat, like nothing surprised it anymore. Stitches along the jawline. Skin that looked like someone else’s.

Chakra pulsed again, not flaring so much as…checking.

Iruka wanted his hand on a kunai. He wanted ANBU on the roofs. He wanted this man very far away from any child with the Sarutobi name.

He smiled instead. The polite, brittle one he’d perfected for parent-teacher conferences with war veterans.

“Apologize, Konohamaru,” he said, not looking away from that hood.

“S–sorry!” Konohamaru blurted. He bowed hard enough that his goggles nearly flew off. “I didn’t see you, I was… training.”

Iruka felt the man’s chakra shift, a ripple of…amusement? Annoyance? Hard to tell.

“Watch where you’re going,” the stranger grated.

Konohamaru flinched and then scowled, halfway to puffing himself up, because of course he would.

Iruka’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“Home,” he repeated quietly. “Now.”

Konohamaru shut his mouth. For once.

Iruka turned, steering the boy away. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t run. Shinobi ran from very few things in their own village, and panic was contagious.

He kept his head angled so one eye still tracked the space behind them. If an attack came, it would come now, at their backs.

His nerves waited for that razor-thin spike of killing intent, for the sound of cloth whispering through the air, for pain.

The stranger didn’t move.

They took the corner. The cloaked figure vanished from sight.

Iruka only let his shoulders drop a fraction then. His heart, which had been ticking hard and precise like a mission clock, started to settle.

Konohamaru tugged at his hand, already regaining his usual volume.

“Iruka-sensei, I was on patrol—”

“Protecting the village,” Iruka said. “Yes. I saw.”

The boy blinked. “…You did?”

Iruka nodded. They walked past a dango shop; someone inside laughed too loudly. Exam kids clustered at a table, headbands flashing.

“There are already patrols,” Iruka said. “Real ones. With actual orders. You don’t need to run around alone to help right now.”

“I’m strong,” Konohamaru insisted automatically. “I can handle myself.”

“You’re twelve,” Iruka said, gentle but firm. “Your job is to get stronger so when it really is your turn, you’re ready. That means listening when people tell you when it’s safe and when it isn’t.”

The boy opened his mouth to invoke the sacred name.

“But Naruto-nii—”

“—is also an idiot who runs around alone,” Iruka cut in. “And I yell at him for it too.”

Konohamaru’s eyes widened. “…You do?”

“Constantly.”

That seemed to take some of the fight out of him. He scuffed his sandal against the road, thinking about it.

“Who was that guy?” he asked after a moment. “He felt…weird.”

Iruka kept his face neutral.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Probably just another foreign shinobi here for the Exams. There are a lot of visitors.”

The words were plausible. His gut called them a half-truth.

Konohamaru made a face. “He was creepy.”

Iruka’s mouth twitched. “Trust that,” he said. “If someone makes you feel like that, you don’t bump into them. You go the other way. Preferably toward a trusted adult. Preferably one with a flak jacket.”

Konohamaru huffed. “…Fine.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence, the noise of the village rising around them like usual. Vendors shouting, kids laughing, someone yelling about dango.

Iruka saw the Sarutobi compound come into view and stopped.

“From here,” he said, “I can see you get home. Got it?”

Konohamaru hesitated, then nodded. For a second, he looked smaller than his scarf.

“Got it.”

“Good.” Iruka squeezed his shoulder one last time and let go.

The boy jogged ahead, then turned and waved. Iruka lifted a hand back. Only when Konohamaru vanished through the gate did he turn away.

He didn’t go straight home.

His feet took him back toward the Monument almost without asking.

He stopped at the base and looked up at the huge carved faces, shadows stretching long in the falling light.

Hashirama. Tobirama. Hiruzen. Minato.

Legends in stone. Men in memory.

Behind the mountain, out beyond the walls, the Forest of Death swallowed the last of the sun. His current students were out there somewhere, running, fighting, terrified, excited.

Inside the walls, something ugly had just walked under the Hokage’s eyes and kept going.

Iruka rubbed a hand over his face and snorted softly at himself.

“You’re jumping at shadows,” he muttered. “Exam season’s getting to you.”

The feeling in his gut didn’t agree.

He turned back toward the Academy, toward lesson plans and attendance sheets and kids who still believed adults could fix things.

As he walked, he mentally added one more line to the long, private list he kept:

One more strange foreigner in exam season. Cloak. Stitches. Old killing chakra.

Probably nothing.

He knew better than anyone how often “probably nothing” turned into the story people told after the damage was done.

Chapter Text

<Naruto>

Naruto agreed that the Forest of Death needed a better name.

“Forest of Boring and Damp” fit so far. Everything was humid. The trees. His clothes. His mood.

He pushed off another massive root, landing hard and springing forward again. Heaven scroll thumped against the small of his back with every step, a steady donk-donk that said, at least we’ve done one thing right.

“Headcount,” Sylvie called quietly from behind, breath puffing.

Naruto threw his arm back without looking. Ink-stained fingers brushed his wrist, right over the little mark she’d tucked there earlier. A tiny static zing answered—her chakra nudging his, the seal humming for a second.

“Alive,” she muttered. “Annoying, but alive. Sasuke.”

Sasuke extended his own wrist. She tapped it, got her answer, and let go.

“We’re really doing roll call every ten minutes now?” Naruto griped.

“Yes,” Sylvie said. “Congratulations, you’ve unlocked the ‘paranoid medic’ difficulty.”

Sasuke didn’t bother commenting. His gaze stayed locked ahead, scanning branches and roots like he expected them to bite.

The forest pressed in on all sides. The air was thick and wet, the light turned sour green by layers of leaves. Insects buzzed like broken wires. Under that, there was…something else.

Naruto kept catching himself glancing over his shoulder.

The hairs on his neck were up. Not just from nerves. From that low scraping feeling in his gut, like metal dragged along stone very far away.

“You’re doing the twitchy meerkat thing,” Sylvie said after his third look back in a minute.

“I am not a meerkat,” he hissed.

Sasuke’s tone went flat. “You keep checking behind us.”

“Yeah, because something’s back there,” Naruto said. “Duh.”

“Nothing is back there,” Sasuke replied.

His voice said end of discussion. The feeling in Naruto’s spine disagreed.

“Forest’s just loud,” Sylvie added. “Think of it like…chakra static. It’s a crowded room, but everyone’s a tree or a bug or a very rude snake. Your head’s picking up noise.”

“Feels like bees in my skull,” Naruto muttered.

“Very aggressive bees,” she agreed.

He snorted, but it came out thin.

The root under his foot shuddered.

Naruto didn’t have time to say anything clever. The ground convulsed. Bark split ahead of them and the “root” tore itself out of the earth in one long, sick motion.

It uncoiled, and then there was no more “root.”

Just a snake.

Not normal big. Huge. Purple scales, slick with damp. Yellow eyes the size of dishes. A mouth full of curved fangs, lined with strips of meat from something that had died less lucky than them.

It hissed. The sound hit his chest like a shove.

“WHY IS IT ALWAYS SNAKES?!” Naruto yelled.

He jumped on instinct. Sasuke darted left, Sylvie dove for a knot of roots on the right. The snake’s head slammed into the dirt where Naruto had been, spraying mud in all directions.

The impact shook the trees.

“Move!” Sasuke snapped.

Naruto was already running up a trunk, chakra gluing his sandals to the bark. He hit a branch, sprang, and shot himself straight toward the snake’s head.

“Shadow Clone Jutsu!”

Three clones popped into existence around him mid-air, then three more because he never knew when to stop. Half a dozen Narutos crashed down toward the snake’s face.

“GO FOR THE EYES!” one of them yelled.

Two clones launched themselves at the nearest yellow globe, fists and kunai first. Another grabbed for the ridge above its nostrils. Another missed completely and smacked into a fang, popping in a puff of smoke.

The snake’s head whipped sideways.

The world turned into a smear of green and purple.

Naruto’s back hit a tree. Air punched out of his lungs in a cracked grunt. For a moment, everything was blank white and ringing.

By the time his vision cleared, the snake’s head was right there.

It didn’t strike.

It just opened its mouth.

Darkness and slime and rows of teeth rushed at him.

He flailed, grabbed for purchase, caught only slick scale. The world shrank down to throat and teeth and hot breath and then—

He was inside.

Flesh slapped around him. Muscles squeezed. He slid along something wet and rough, bounced off a fold of tissue, and came to a stop in a cramped, heaving tunnel.

The smell hit next. Rot and old blood and stomach acid. Hot, thick air that clung in his nose and mouth.

His fingers dug into the walls around him. They squished, slick and unhelpful.

…So this was how it ended, then.

Swallowed in one gulp, alone in the dark, while his team was out there with a murder snake and whatever else the forest thought was funny.

The thought landed like a punch.

Bridge mist rolled through his mind. Haku collapsing. Zabuza’s bloody grin. Kakashi dropping after the Chidori. Standing there, useless, while everyone bigger and stronger stepped in front of him.

He’d promised himself that wouldn’t be him again.

Not the dead weight. Not the one people had to drag along.

The muscles around him clenched. The snake’s body pulled, dragging him deeper.

“No way,” he rasped.

His voice sounded small in the wet dark.

He shoved his hands flat against the walls. They contracted, trying to force him further down. He pushed back, muscles straining. The flesh around him just…moved, slippery and alive and horrible.

His chest heaved. Panic clawed at him. His heartbeat roared in his ears, but under that, something heavier rolled in his gut.

Heat.

Not the normal warmth of his chakra. This was thicker. Meaner. Like hot mud bubbling up from a crack in the ground inside him.

It surged up from his belly, punching into his ribs, up his spine, into his skull.

Red flickered at the edges of his sight, even in the dark.

He sucked in a breath that tasted like acid and meat.

“Fine,” he growled through his teeth. “You wanna eat me? Choke on it.”

His hands flew together.

“Shadow… Clone Jutsu!”

Chakra burst out of him like someone had kicked a door open from the inside.

It wasn’t just his normal orange. Something else was mixed into it—deeper, hotter. Red boiled through the usual feel of his chakra, searing along his arms. For a second, it felt like his skin might burn off from the inside.

Clones exploded into existence in the cramped space.

One squashed against his shoulder. Another materialized half-through the wall and vanished immediately. Three more crammed in between him and the pulsing flesh, pressing into his sides.

The snake’s insides stretched. They weren’t made for this many Narutos.

“Push!” Naruto shouted.

He and his clones planted their feet and hands against the walls—anything solid enough to brace on—and shoved. The red-tinged chakra roared out of them, muscles straining.

The tunnel fought back, muscles spasming to crush the pressure. Meat squeezed. Ridges dug into his back and legs.

He screamed wordless anger and pushed harder.

Something gave.

The sound was a wet rip. Light knifed in, sickly green through the canopy. A gush of hot, stinking fluid poured over him as a ragged hole tore open in the snake’s side.

“OUT!” he yelled.

Narutos tumbled through the gap in a disgusting rain of blood and slime.

They hit branches, bark, ground. Clones popped one by one in puffs of white, leaving the real Naruto to slam down onto something hard and moving.

The snake’s back.

His hands hit scale. He dug his fingers in, sliding for a horrible second before friction caught him.

The snake shrieked. The sound rattled his teeth and made his head ache.

He hauled himself up onto the curve of its spine, boots squealing against slick purple plates. He planted his feet, bent his knees, and finally got a look at what he’d dropped into.

Sasuke was on his knees in the clearing below, one hand pressed into the dirt hard enough to sink his fingers. His whole body shook, not with effort but with something tight and invisible locked around him. His eyes were wide and fixed on something only he could see.

Sylvie knelt behind him, braced on the thick root they’d picked as cover. One hand fisted in the bark. The other was flat between Sasuke’s shoulder blades, fingers spread.

Green light flickered weakly under her palm, intermittent and shaky. Sweat ran down the side of her face, cutting tracks through dirt. Her glasses had slid halfway down her nose. Her mouth was moving, words too soft to hear over the snake’s scream.

Her hand trembled every time she tried to send a pulse of chakra into him.

And across from them—

Across from them stood the Grass-nin.

She was perched casually on the head of another giant snake coiled around a tree, like it was a chair instead of a monster. Long black hair hung down her back. Her hitai-ate bore the Kusa symbol. Her tongue flicked out, too long, to taste the air.

Her smile was wrong.

Naruto didn’t have Sylvie’s weird color-sense, but he didn’t need it to feel what was pouring off that woman.

The air around her hurt.

It pressed down on him like the night air had during the Nine-Tails attack he couldn’t remember but his body could. Heavy, suffocating weight. Like the world itself was holding its breath because something too dangerous had walked into the room.

Every instinct screamed predator.

Sasuke was drowning in it.

Sylvie was barely upright under it, trying to drag him toward the surface with a single shaking hand.

The Grass-nin’s eyes flicked up, tracing the arc he’d taken out of the exploding snake. Her smile widened, lazy and pleased.

“Well, well,” she murmured. Her voice carried easily across the clearing, soft and amused. “Little leaf survived being eaten.”

The killing intent coming off her hit Naruto fully as he met her gaze.

His muscles seized for a heartbeat. Breath snagged. The world narrowed to those eyes and that smile and the old, bone-deep certainty that if something like her wanted him dead, he would be.

His knees almost buckled.

The red boiling in his chakra snarled.

Fear slammed into that heat and crackled. The weight pushing down on him didn’t vanish, but it stopped being the only thing in his head.

He thought of Sasuke, kneeling and shaking and not moving. Of Sylvie’s hand still on his back, trying to be a dam against a flood. Of the Heaven scroll thumping against his spine, of the bridge, of Haku’s body hitting the ice.

Dead weight stayed still.

He refused.

His legs moved before his brain could catch up.

Naruto kicked off the snake’s back, launching himself into the air. The world blurred green and purple. He dropped out of the sky straight toward the second snake’s head, the one rearing over Sasuke and Sylvie like a guillotine.

He cocked his fist back.

Red-tinged chakra burned along his arm.

“RAAAH!”

His punch connected just behind the snake’s eye.

The impact boomed through the clearing. The summoned snake’s head snapped sideways, slamming into a tree. Bark exploded. The whole body thrashed, scales tearing deep grooves in the earth.

Sylvie ducked instinctively, dragging Sasuke with her.

Naruto hit the ground in a crouch between them and the Grass-nin, boots digging furrows in the dirt.

His knuckles stung. His shoulder throbbed. His lungs burned.

He straightened slowly, putting himself squarely in front of Sasuke and Sylvie, between them and the wrongness standing on that snake.

The killing intent crashed down on him again.

For a second, it felt like trying to stand in a waterfall. Every part of his body screamed to get small, to bow, to run, to do anything but be seen.

He planted his feet anyway.

Sasuke’s breath hitched behind him. Naruto glanced back over his shoulder.

The Uchiha’s face was bloodless. Sweat clung to his jaw. His fingers twitched uselessly in the dirt. His eyes, usually sharp and annoyed and full of quiet insults, were wide and glassy.

Naruto had never seen Sasuke look like that.

“Not hurt, are you… scaredy-cat?” he said.

The words came out rough, a little shaky. He said them anyway.

They felt like throwing a rope.

Sasuke’s eyes focused, just a fraction. Shock flickered there, then anger—even if it was small and buried under terror, it was his anger, not the forest’s.

“Idiot,” Sasuke rasped. His voice barely made it out.

Naruto’s chest loosened half an inch.

“Hi,” Sylvie said faintly from behind them. “You look like hell.”

He didn’t look back, but he heard the air catch in her throat, the tiny noise half between a laugh and a sob. The hand she’d planted on Sasuke’s back stayed there, but some of the shake went out of it.

The Grass-nin—no, whatever she really was—watched all of this with bright, interested eyes.

“That killing intent,” she murmured, almost to herself. “You can still move under it? Fascinating.”

Her tongue slid out again, tasting the air like a snake’s.

Naruto rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the feeling of cold fingers pressing along his spine.

“Yeah, well,” he said, louder now, forcing his voice to carry. “If you think I’m gonna sit there and shake while some creep stares at my friends, you picked the wrong leaf.”

Her smile sharpened.

“Friends,” she repeated. “Mm. The jinchūriki is sentimental.”

He didn’t know what that word meant, but he didn’t like how she said it.

Red burned hotter in his gut. The edges of his vision fuzzed with it. His fingers curled into fists.

Behind him, Sylvie’s breathing finally started to slow, coming in rough but more even pulls. Her hand stayed pressed to Sasuke’s back—not as a technique now, more like an anchor.

Naruto didn’t see the way she looked at him, eyes wide behind crooked glasses.

He didn’t see how the sight of him standing there—knees knocking but refusing to sit, chakra burning messy and bright against the smothering weight in the clearing—hit her.

He only felt the heat under his skin and the weight of two people behind him who could not move right now.

So he moved.

He jabbed his thumb toward his chest.

“I don’t care how scary you are,” he said, and for once there was no joke in it, just stubborn, terrified honesty. “You’re not getting past me.”

The Forest of Death seemed to lean in.

The woman’s smile widened, all teeth.

“Very well,” she purred, and the air cracked with her chakra as the snakes started to coil again. “Show me, then… little leaf.”

Chapter Text

<Sasuke>

The forest went quiet after Naruto stopped yelling.

Not normal quiet. Not bugs and leaves and distant screams quiet.

Dead quiet.

Orochimaru—still wearing that Grass-nin girl’s borrowed face—stood across from them with his hands loose at his sides, head tilted, eyes half-lidded. Completely untouched. Not a scratch, not a singe mark from Naruto’s wild charge or the way that red chakra had burst out of him like a broken dam.

Naruto was the one on his knees.

He swayed once, the last flickers of that boiling, red-streaked chakra peeling off him and dissolving into the heavy air. Then his arms gave out. He hit the ground hard, face-first, cheek grinding into the dirt.

“Naruto!” Sylvie was moving before Sasuke’s frozen brain finished the thought.

She slid in beside him, skidding on the wet leaves, hands already on his shoulders. Her glasses were crooked, pink hair plastered to her forehead with sweat and forest humidity.

Sasuke couldn’t move.