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 show 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.