By the time the adults noticed, it was already too late.
Naruto had given the Third Hokage 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—now with a truly awful, bright orange beard scrawled across his cheeks.
"That line is crooked," I called up.
Naruto, halfway down the Fourth's nose, 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 like that somehow helped.
I sighed, but there was a smile tugging at my mouth. This was, objectively, a terrible idea. 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 and converted into an art kit. Half the colors were things I'd mixed myself from cheap pigment and whatever I could steal from the market: crushed berries, charcoal, 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 vandalize," I'd told him, very solemn, "at least have decent line work."
That had been all the encouragement he needed.
I dipped a brush into a jar of dark blue and flicked it thoughtfully, testing the consistency. Up above, Naruto whooped and went to town on the Second Hokage's hairline. From here, the faces of four dead men became clowns, monsters, some in-between thing that would make the old guard of Konoha have an aneurysm.
Worth it.
A faint clink of armor reached my ears. I froze, then glanced toward the main road.
Two chunin were jogging along the street, heads tilted back as they pointed up at the mountain. One of them swore.
Ah. There it was. The late-stage consequences.
"Showtime," I muttered.
I snapped the tin shut, wiped my fingers on the inside of my shirt—stains added character, anyway—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 a mini smoke tag, untested outside of my bedroom.
"Don't embarrass me," I told it under my breath.
Then I flicked it into the alley mouth.
The tag hit the ground, flared, and spat out a thick puff of greasy grey smoke that rolled across the cobblestones.
Both chunin swore again, louder this time.
"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—my seals were nowhere near that good yet—but it was enough to make them 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 committed a crime," I muttered, skidding around a corner. "Very inspiring."
I wasn't actually trying to get away. Not really. If I outran every adult in the village, someone would start asking how a random orphan kid knew how to lay smoke tags and plan vantage points.
I just needed to make it look good.
A kunai thunked into the wooden crate in front of me—not close enough to be a real attack, just a warning.
I yelped, because I might be reincarnated but I wasn't suicidal, and threw my hands up.
"STOP!" a chunin barked. "You two are in so much trouble!"
I let myself be grabbed by the back of my collar and dragged along, grumbling under my breath.
Up on the mountain, Naruto kept painting until the third voice—this one older, and very done with everything—boomed out over the training grounds.
"UZUMAKI NARUTO!"
Even from down here, I could feel the way Naruto's chakra jumped. I didn't have the words for it yet, but the spike of panic was obvious. I winced in sympathy.
…Yeah. We were absolutely dead.
They tied him to the punishment post.
Technically, it was just a log in the Academy courtyard, but it had the vibe of a public execution. Naruto squirmed against the rope, scowling murder at everyone who walked past. The other kids shot him looks ranging from "whoa" to "idiot" to "man, I wish I'd thought of that."
I sat at my desk inside, chalk dust already on my fingers, listening to Iruka-sensei lecture us about respect.
"…and the Hokage faces are a symbol of our village's history," Iruka said, tapping the board 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 orphan face. It had spotty effectiveness. He'd known me too long.
"Why," he asked, in the weary tone of a man who already knew this was a mistake, "did you think helping Naruto with this was a good idea?"
Technically, no one had said I'd helped. But Naruto hadn't kept his mouth shut, and my color choices were all over the monument like a signature.
I fiddled with my pencil. "Because he was going to do it anyway," I said finally. "I just… improved the execution."
A few kids snickered.
Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Improved—" He cut himself off. "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. I tuned it in and out, scribbling notes in the margins of my book—some actual, some little seal patterns I wanted to try later. The familiar scratching of pencil on paper calmed me more than his words did.
Outside, through the window, I could see Naruto tied to the post, swinging his legs and yelling about how he'd be Hokage one day and then everyone would look up and see his face on the mountain instead.
Honestly? Still a better medium than whatever we'd just done to the Third's beard.
Ino leaned over from the next desk and poked my arm with her eraser.
"You know they're going to make you scrub it too, right?" she whispered.
"Yeah," I whispered back. "Which means I'll get a close-up view. Professional studies."
"Of defacing national monuments?"
"Of large-scale murals," I said. "There's a difference."
She snorted, then bit her lip to hide a grin when Iruka glanced our way.
When class finally ended, the other kids bolted for the door, chattering about lunch and training and not being on the receiving end of an Iruka rant. I took my time packing my bag. There was no point rushing: I was walking straight into more punishment.
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. Somehow he'd gotten red in his hair. 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 Hokage. I didn't! I just… improved them."
"That's my line," I said dryly.
Iruka appeared behind me like a summoned demon, 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 in the first place."
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. The water sloshed threateningly close to the brim. I eyed my reflection in it: short black hair (for now), ink on my cheek, hospital pallor mostly replaced by Konoha sun.
"C'mon," Naruto said, already 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. Probably wise. If left unsupervised, Naruto would absolutely try to paint a mustache on the Fourth again out of spite.
As we started up the path, 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 bucket in my hands. "You'd have done it with or without me," I said. "I just made sure it looked less like a crime and more like… art."
"Art crime," he corrected solemnly.
"Exactly."
He laughed, the sound bouncing off the stone.
Konoha spread out below us as we climbed—the tiled roofs, the busy streets, the people who barely glanced up at two kids trudging toward their own punishment. Somewhere under all of that was a giant fox locked in a cage inside the boy next to me. Somewhere above us, four dead leaders watched us scrub their faces.
I was an alien soul in a borrowed body, carrying a scrub brush like a penance.
And somehow, walking up that mountain with Uzumaki Naruto complaining about elbow grease, it all felt… weirdly right.