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.