I woke up to the feeling of someone knocking on my web.
Not literally—no one was up there with me on the branch tapping—but my trap grid twanged against my nerves. The faint threads of chakra I'd left in the tags shivered, sending little pings along my skin.
It felt like someone pressing fingers into a bruise. Gently. Testing.
I jerked upright too fast. Bark bit into my back; my neck screamed; my glasses tried to swan-dive off my face. I caught them with two burned fingers and immediately regretted using those. The skin along my chakra pathways was still tender, blackened hairline cracks of pain running from palm to wrist.
"Ow—okay, still crispy," I muttered. My voice sounded like it had been left out in the rain.
For a second I didn't know where I was. Just trees, humid green light, the taste of rot. Then it all slammed back: Orochimaru's teeth in Sasuke's neck, Naruto's chakra going nova, the screaming in my Squad Marks, the dragging.
I sucked in air and reached for them first.
The marks were faint warmth under my skin—three linked rings at my wrist, the ink sunk deeper than the surface now. I didn't dare push much chakra into them; my reserves were low enough that my brain felt hollow. But I nudged them, just a little.
Naruto answered as a flicker of bright orange-gold, ragged but there. His pulse-hum was fast, uneven. Feverish, not dying.
Sasuke was worse. His chakra beat in jagged spikes, stop-start stutters around a new, ugly smear at the back of my sense—a raw, dark brand that tasted like hot metal and venom. The curse mark sat there like a splinter the size of a shuriken.
They were both still breathing. That was the important part.
The traps fluttered again.
I slid carefully along the branch until I could peer down through the leaves. The clearing below was almost exactly how I'd left it: Naruto propped half-sitting against the big tree trunk, head lolling; Sasuke stretched out beside him, shirt torn, bandages around the bite I couldn't actually fix. Tag seals and ink patches were tucked into roots, rocks, low branches; even knowing where I'd put them, some were hard to spot.
The difference was the three new chakra signatures nudging at the edges.
Not animals. Not examiner-level. They felt… muted. Controlled. No sloppy bleed like Naruto, no towering pressure like Orochimaru. Just three tight, deliberate presences, each one with its own flavor: dry rasp, hollow boom, a thin, needling whine that set my teeth on edge.
"Guests," I breathed.
I swallowed, wiped my palms uselessly on my shorts, and started climbing down.
By the time my feet hit the ground, they'd decided to stop pretending to be polite.
Leaves rustled.
One boy dropped from the trees first, hitting the ground in a low crouch. The bandages wrapped around his right arm and the metal thing over his ear drew the eye before his actual face did. His visible eye was narrow, calculating, dark. Sound-nin forehead protector.
Two more figures landed behind him—one girl with long dark hair and senbon-laced fingers, one boy with wild hair and metal plates strapped over both arms like someone had tried to turn his forearms into flutes. Also Sound.
So. These were the "weirdos in music cosplay" Kakashi had mentioned.
I stepped automatically sideways until my body lined up between them and the boys. My heart slammed around like it wanted out; my hands shook hard enough that the stitches in my burned fingers pulled. I locked my knees.
The bandaged boy—Dosu, my brain supplied, dragging the name up from the exam hall—took a few steps forward, sandals whispering in the dirt. His chakra stayed compact, like he'd drawn a line one meter around his body and decided nothing inside it was allowed to escape.
"You're awake," he said. His voice was oddly flat. The ear device caught it and sent back a faint echo, like he was standing in a half-empty room. "Good. This will be simpler."
"Define 'simple,'" I said. It came out rougher than I intended. I cleared my throat. "If it's a survey, we're not interested."
His gaze slid past me, assessing the clearing with surgical economy. Naruto. Sasuke. The placement of my tags—he clocked those, eyes lingering half a second too long on one patch of bark, one innocuous scrap of paper half-buried near a root.
I tried not to flinch.
"We're here for Uchiha Sasuke," he said. "Nothing personal."
The other boy—Zaku, arm vents, loud in the written test—snorted. "Speak for yourself." His chakra had a buzz to it, loud and impatient. "We take him, crush the loudmouth, maybe kick you around for practice. Then we go finish the exam. Very personal."
The girl's lips curled. "She doesn't look like much." Her eyes flicked over my too-big schoolgirl top, the ribbon, the mesh, the ink stains. "Cosplay's cute, though."
My cheeks burned. Not from the comment—okay, a little from the comment—but from the way my body remembered fingers in my hair, someone saying "you look ridiculous" and meaning "you look wrong."
I forced my voice to stay even.
"You're not taking anyone," I said.
Dosu's eye came back to me. Really came back, like he'd been half-ignoring me until that moment and now decided to file me in a different drawer.
"You're outnumbered," he said. No mockery. Just fact-stating. "Low chakra. Fingers burned. Two teammates down. Stand aside and you can live to fail another day."
Behind me, Naruto snored softly and then mumbled something about ramen. Completely useless. Sasuke moved once in his sleep, a twitch that ran head-to-toe like someone had brushed a live wire over his skin.
Fear sat in my throat like a stone.
In my last life, choices like this had never been mine. I'd been collateral damage, something the grown-ups stepped over on their way to more important fights. A problem, a burden, a mouth. Men yelled, threw things, slammed doors. They decided who got to stay, who got hit, who got walked out on.
I'd died in a forest because nobody came back for me.
Here, these idiots were mine.
"Yeah," I heard myself say. "No."
I planted my feet. My burned hands curled into fists against my thighs to hide the tremor.
"In both my lives," I said, very quietly, more to myself than them, "men have decided who gets to live."
I lifted my chin. Met Dosu's eye.
"Not this time."
Zaku laughed. It was sharp and mean. "You hear that? She's gonna stop us with attitude."
The girl—Kin, I remembered now—twirled a senbon between two fingers, metal glinting. "Maybe she's a sensor," she said. "Or maybe she's just stupid."
Ah. Right on cue: my nervous laughter tried to claw its way up. I pushed it back down where it belonged.
"Bold of you to assume I can't be both," I said.
The three of them shifted, almost imperceptibly, into better positions. Zaku angled to my left, arms hanging loose, those weird vents on his palms pointing vaguely down. Kin drifted to the right, senbon ready, weight in the balls of her feet. Dosu stayed center, calm in a way that made my skin crawl.
My traps hummed in my awareness—little landmines of cheap ink and desperation. One step wrong and something would flash, or glue, or blow up at shin-level. It wouldn't stop them. It might buy seconds.
Seconds might be enough to get Naruto upright. To roll Sasuke out of reach. To die trying.
"Last offer," Dosu said. "Move."
"Can't," I said. "Union rules."
He frowned, just the slightest crease between his brows, like the joke had hit a file labeled "unknown reference" and gotten stuck.
Zaku, less patient, lifted his arms. "Whatever. I'll blow her out of the way and—"
The air above us folded.
It was the only way my chakra sense could parse it: something bright and fast and stupidly straightforward dropped through the canopy like a thrown knife. For one split second, all I saw in that direction was a flare of color—sharp spring green around a core of blazing, earnest orange, the emotional equivalent of someone shouting "GOOD MORNING" at five in the morning with their whole chest.
Then he hit one of my flash tags.
I'd taped it to the underside of a low branch directly over the boys—a last-resort deterrent. Step into this zone, get your retinas fried. I hadn't exactly planned for "incoming projectile human."
The tag flared as soon as his weight brushed the branch. Chakra snapped along my tired channels, and then—
White.
Sound slammed into the clearing a heartbeat later: a cracking pop, like a giant had clapped right over our heads. My vision filled with searing light. I hissed, throwing an arm over my eyes on reflex. My tags were calibrated for "disorient enemy from ground," not "go off at face level."
Shapes lurched in the glare. Someone swore—Zaku, definitely Zaku. Dirt showered down.
By the time the smoke billowed and the afterimages stopped burning neon spots into my vision, there was a new body in front of me.
He'd landed in a low, perfect kicking pose, one leg extended where Zaku's head had been a second ago. Zaku was only not decapitated because he'd thrown himself backward at the first hint of motion and then gotten blinded. He'd landed on his ass in a patch of sticky ink that I'd meant for someone else; his hands sank in up to the wrist.
Tiny victory. I'd take it.
The newcomer held the pose for a second longer than was strictly necessary, back to me, one arm swept out dramatically. His flak jacket was open over a hideous, unmistakable green bodysuit. His bowl-cut hair was even more violent up close than at a distance—black, glossy, perfectly straight. Massive eyebrows. Bandages on his hands.
It was like someone had wrapped a sincere handsome boy in a crime against fashion and dared the universe to say something.
My brain went, helplessly: …oh no.
He straightened and turned, and his face snapped into focus.
"Y-you—" I started.
"SYLVIE!" Rock Lee said, like he was announcing my name to a stadium. His eyes sparkled. Actually sparkled. "Once again, your youthful radiance is placed in danger!"
Oh no, I thought again, louder this time.
He took in the scene at high speed—the unconscious boys, me, the Sound trio resetting after the flash bomb. His jaw tightened for half a second. Then his whole expression rearranged itself into something bright and martial and absolutely sincere.
He stepped between me and Dosu, planting himself with his back to me, arms spread just enough that his stupid green shoulders blocked most of my view of the enemy. The lingering smoke curled around him. Behind his outline, the flash tag's afterglow made a makeshift halo.
Great. Of course my taste would kick in for the guy doing accidental religious iconography in spandex.
He threw one arm out, finger stabbing toward Team Dosu.
"I am Rock Lee," he declared, "the proud disciple of Maito Gai!"
Kin blinked, still wincing against the light. "What is he wearing," she muttered.
"I have sworn," Lee went on, either not hearing or not caring, "to protect Sylvie-san and her comrades with my life!"
Wait, what.
He clasped his fists in front of his chest, eyes fierce. "Even if it costs me my last breath, I will stand between her and any foe who dares threaten her youthful dreams!"
My brain helpfully replayed "protect Sylvie-san" on loop, mashed up with "last breath" and "youthful dreams." My stomach dropped and climbed at the same time. Heat crawled up the back of my neck, settling somewhere under my ribbon.
I was filthy. Exhausted. My palms were scorched; my hair was a wreck; I smelled like blood and forest rot and anxiety. He was… saying that. Out loud. In front of other people.
I wanted to die. I also wanted to grab his stupid green collar and ask if he'd say it again slower.
"Wh—" I coughed because my voice cracked. "Why are you dressed like that," I blurted, because my mouth defaulted to coping mechanism number one: insult the situation before it ate me.
He half-turned, cheeks going pink. "Th-this is the uniform of a true taijutsu specialist," he said, horrified that I might not recognize its glory. "It offers unparalleled freedom of movement and symbolizes my burning spirit!"
"It's… very green," I said faintly.
"GREEN IS THE COLOR OF YOUTH!" he shouted.
Zaku groaned, tugging uselessly against the ink glue. "I hate this village," he said.
Dosu took a careful step sideways, keeping his center aligned with Lee now instead of me. The metal over his ear glinted; I could practically hear him recalculating.
"Rock Lee," he repeated. "Taijutsu only. No ninjutsu, no genjutsu." His eye flicked to the place Lee had just fallen from. "Speed above average. Reckless."
Lee bristled. "It is not recklessness," he said hotly. "It is the courage to act when others hesitate!"
Behind my ribs, something twisted.
Naruto would've liked that line.
Kin rolled her neck, popping the joints, and palmed two more senbon. "Whatever you call it," she said. "He just volunteered to get broken first."
Lee sank into a fighting stance, one leg sweeping back, arms held in that precise, formal style I'd seen when he challenged Sasuke. His chakra flared, bright and clean, like polished stone and fresh leaves and the burn in your muscles when you kept going past when you thought you were done.
My Squad Marks hummed against my wrist, reacting to the sudden emotional charge in the air—Naruto's unconscious chakra fluttering, Sasuke's spiking once and then settling, Lee's blazing as he focused.
I realized my hand had drifted to the back of his flak jacket, fingers brushing the fabric like my reflex wanted a tether. I yanked it back, embarrassed.
He glanced over his shoulder. Just for a moment.
His eyes were steady. Totally unafraid.
"Do not worry, Sylvie-san," he said, quieter now, the theatrics peeled back to bare promise. "I will not let them reach you."
Something in my chest stuttered, then slammed into a harder rhythm.
"Try not to step on any more of my traps," I managed. "They're… calibrated for people I like less."
His mouth twitched into a quick, delighted grin, like I'd just handed him a personal compliment instead of basic battlefield advice. "Your preparations are impressive!" he said. "Together, our efforts will shine brilliantly!"
Zaku finally ripped one arm free of the sticky ink with a wet tearing sound. He shook glue strings off his fingers, scowling. "Enough flirting," he snapped. "We're wasting time."
Kin shifted to flank, wires glinting faintly between her fingers now as well as senbon. Dosu raised his bandaged arm a few centimeters, ear device humming to life.
The air thickened again. Not like Orochimaru—nothing like that drowning, crushing weight. This was smaller. Sharper. Three predators circling, testing a new unknown in their equation.
Lee slid his foot an inch to the side, adjusting for their positions. His shoulders squared.
I took one step back, back pressing to the tree where Naruto leaned. I could feel his heat at my side, hear his rough, uneven breathing. Sasuke lay just beyond, the curse mark hidden under wrappings, pulsing like a bad idea waiting to happen.
My burned fingers curled around the bark at my back. Ink tags thrummed at the edges of my awareness, little landmines waiting for my signal or a careless foot.
Three Sound-nin in front. One green idiot between us. Two boys behind me who had saved my life more times than I could count.
In my old forest, I'd died alone.
In this one, I was outnumbered, outgunned, stupidly underdressed for a war—and somehow still standing in the middle of a scene where people were arguing over who got to protect me.
The universe had a deranged sense of humor.
"Very well," Dosu said, settling his stance. "We'll remove the interference first."
Lee's muscles coiled.
Kin's wires sang.
Zaku lifted his arms.
My traps buzzed like a nest of angry bugs under the dirt.
The Forest of Death held its breath.
And on that thin, knife-edge of a moment—right before everything exploded again—I realized that whatever happened next, I was not stepping aside.