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.