There's a special kind of silence that happens when you're the only idiot still standing.
The forest went quiet around us—not actually, the bugs were still screaming and the leaves still hissed—but my brain filtered everything down to three chakra signatures in front of me and two behind.
Front: muted metal thrum (Dosu), jagged little knife-gusts (Zaku), thin wire-scratch with glass edges (Kin).
Back: Naruto, weak but steady; Sasuke, wrong and spiking under the curse mark like a heart learning how to misfire.
And me in the middle, pretending I was a wall instead of just…soft.
Dosu's visible eye skimmed over me like I was a diagram. "Last chance. Step aside and we leave you breathing."
My hand shook on the kunai, burned fingers complaining every time I tightened my grip. I could taste iron at the back of my throat.
"In both my lives," I heard myself say, "men deciding who gets to live hasn't gone super great for me."
I planted my feet anyway. My legs felt like wet paper, but they were my wet paper.
"No," I said. "You want them, you go through me."
Zaku snorted. "You? You're support at best, decoration at worst." His gaze flicked over my clothes, my ink-smudged arms, the half-charred tags. "I've seen scarier kittens."
"Not even one of the strong clans," Kin added, tilting her head. Her bells chimed faintly as the wires between her fingers shifted. "Just some village girl with a crush on her teammates and a box of crayons."
Anger fizzed under my skin. Fear was louder. Behind me, Naruto's chakra flickered like a candle in a draft. Sasuke's surged once, then stuttered.
I had absolutely no idea how I was going to win this. The rational move was to run, maybe try to lead them away, hope they took the bait.
I didn't move.
Kin moved first.
She was faster than she looked. One second she was smirking from her little triangle with the boys, the next she was sprinting low along the ground, body angled, using the roots like stepping stones. I flung my free hand out on reflex, tags between my fingers.
"Stay back—!"
I threw. The seal left my burned fingertips crooked, the trajectory just off. The tag slapped into a nearby trunk instead of her face. It flared, sticky ink splashing in a messy starburst.
Kin twisted around it without even looking, rolling past in a smear of purple-grey chakra that felt like someone dragging nails across silk.
Her hand shot up.
She grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked.
White pain lanced across my scalp. My head snapped back; my glasses skidded crooked down my nose. The clearing blurred into double trees, triple enemies, two Narutos behind me instead of one.
Kin laughed. It wasn't a nice sound.
"Look at you," she cooed over my shoulder, breath hot in my ear. "All this long, pretty hair…" She gave another brutal tug. Tears stabbed the corners of my eyes. "You dress like some schoolgirl playing ninja."
I made a strangled noise, half pain, half rage. My neck screamed. Fingers twitched on the kunai.
"Let go," I grated.
She ignored that completely, fingers tightening in the dyed strands at the base of my skull. I could feel the individual hairs straining.
"Do they tell you you look cute?" Kin went on. "Those boys you're guarding? 'So girly, so pretty, thanks for the bandages, stay out of the way while we fight'?"
Ino's giggle flashed behind my eyes. Her hands in my hair at the salon, bright bottles of dye lined up like candy. You're gonna look so girly, Sylvie-chan, trust me, the pink will be adorable—
Another image slammed into it. A different bathroom. Different world. Cheap razor in someone else's hand. My hair—short, stubborn, wrong in every direction—fisted and forced down toward running tap water.
"You think you're a girl because of that?" an old voice said in my head, sharp as broken glass. "You're delusional. You'll never—"
Kin's fingers tightened almost in the same rhythm, like she'd reached straight through the years and grabbed what was left.
"And it's not even really pink," Kin said now, gleeful. "Look at those roots. Brown underneath. Fake, just like you."
My stomach dropped out.
For a second, it wasn't the Forest of Death. It was a kitchen with linoleum that never got clean, hair clogging a sink while someone behind me decided what was allowed to grow out of my skull. It was the orphanage matron with the scissors, clucking her tongue about "appropriate length." It was every look that said you're pretending, every snicker behind my back at the Academy when my clothes didn't fit right yet.
And under all of that: the quiet, toxic thought I'd been feeding myself since we stepped into this forest.
Let the boys take point. Let Naruto shout and Sasuke burn. You're the brain. You're the little medic. You're allowed to be here because you're useful, not because you're…
Kin jerked my head back again.
"Here's what I think," she breathed, lips almost touching my ear. "Underneath all this? You're nobody. When we're done, they'll remember the Uchiha, maybe the jinchūriki. Not you."
Something in me that had been curled small for years…uncoiled.
I was so tired of being something that happened in the background of other people's stories.
My hand stopped shaking.
"You're wrong," I said. My voice came out thin but level.
Kin started to reply, but I was already moving.
I let my knees go loose, dropping my weight without warning. Her grip slipped for half a second as she compensated. My burned fingers found the hilt of my kunai more surely than they'd found anything all day.
Not my best idea. Absolutely not my worst.
I brought the blade up, not at her hand but at my own hair.
Her eyes widened. "What are you—"
I cut.
The kunai bit through strands with a harsh, ripping sound. Pain flared across my scalp, then vanished as the tension snapped. Kin stumbled backward, left holding a thick fistful of hot pink hair.
The rest of it fell around us in a messy, surreal rain. Long strands slid down my shoulders and onto the dirt, a neon puddle at my feet. The sudden lightness on my neck made me dizzy.
Everything smelled like dye and sweat and smoke.
I swayed, grabbed the nearest root with my free hand to steady myself, and shoved my glasses back up my nose with the back of my wrist. The world snapped into shaky focus.
Kin stared at me, mouth open, my hair still clutched in her fist like something she'd scraped off her shoe. "You…you crazy—"
"I'm a kunoichi," I said, throat raw. "With or without the hair."
The words came out sharper than the kunai. They tasted like a promise, like an incision.
Kin's face twisted. "You're dead."
"Probably," I said, and lunged.
My form was garbage. Every academy instructor I'd ever had would've winced. But I had a low center of gravity, adrenaline, and thirty kilos of rage.
I slammed into her midsection, shoulder first. It wasn't a pretty punch, just a full-body shove. She staggered back with a breathless oof, dropping the hair to grab at me. Her chakra spiked, wires flicking unseen.
We hit the ground together and rolled.
She scratched my cheek; I headbutted her chin. Bells chimed in my ears. Something bit into my side—maybe a senbon, maybe a rock. I didn't have the bandwidth to care.
Get her away from the boys, get her away from the boys, get her away—
I twisted hard, using the roll to sling us toward one of my tags. We slammed into the tree instead, but her skull clipped bark where I'd slapped a flash seal earlier.
I slapped my palm against it.
"Sorry in advance," I muttered.
The tag went off.
White exploded across my vision. I heard Kin scream—not in pain exactly, but in surprise and anger as her senses overloaded. Mine weren't much happier; my head rang like a bell. But I'd set the seal directional. It hit her full-on and only grazed me.
We both tumbled apart.
I got my feet under me first. My legs wobbled. The whole world rang. Kin was blinking hard, eyes wet and unfocused, wires twitching erratically in her hands.
"Dosu!" she shouted, voice cracking. "The bitch—"
"Language," I wheezed, and took the opening.
I darted sideways, toward Zaku.
He'd hung back, watching, vents in his arms still hissing softly from his last blast. His chakra felt like a chipped fan—uneven, gusting, too proud of itself.
He sneered as I approached. "You think you can take me in a fistfight, pinkie?"
"Nope," I said. "Good thing I brought glue."
His brow furrowed. "Wha—"
I yanked a tag from my pouch with my teeth. No time for ink brush, no time for neat. This one was already drawn, a sticky seal I'd nearly thrown at his face earlier. My fingers screamed as I flung myself forward, low, going for his arm instead of his chest.
He raised his hand to blast me away, vents opening.
I slapped the tag straight over the nearer one.
Chakra jumped from my burned fingertips into the seal like a live wire, activating it mid-swing. The paper flared, then sagged, oozing thick, dark ink that hardened immediately, crusting over the vent like tar cooling.
The backwash hit me first.
He'd already started the blast; the air pressure slammed into my side at half-force, launching me sideways. I hit the ground hard enough that my ribs lit up in miserable fireworks.
Zaku got the rest.
The compressed air tried to leave and met a blocked nozzle. It bucked. The metal in his arm screamed. The blast ripped out of the remaining vent in a jagged, uncontrolled spray that tore a trench in the dirt and sent him spinning.
"GAH—!" Zaku clutched at his arm, howling. "What did you do?!"
"Industrial accident," I croaked from where I'd landed face-down in the leaves. "File a report."
"Enough," Dosu said.
His chakra had stayed weirdly steady this whole time—thick, measured, like someone tapping the same beat on a drum while the rest of the band fell apart. When I forced my head up, he was already moving.
Kin was rubbing at her eyes, mostly recovered. Zaku was swearing and trying to peel ink off his vent with his nails.
Dosu walked between them, toward me. Calm.
"I told you your seals would be irrelevant once you were removed," he said, voice almost gentle. "You've done well, for a support type. Annoying. Tactical. But this is over."
My arms trembled when I pushed myself up onto hands and knees. There was mud on my cheek and blood in my mouth. My glasses had a crack across one lens. My hair hung around my face in uneven chunks, the back hacked short where I'd cut it free.
I probably looked like hell.
"Story of my life," I said. "Some guy deciding when my part's over."
"Don't take it personally," he replied. "You're just in the way."
He raised his bandaged arm.
The chakra hum in it spiked, heavy enough that even my fried senses caught it as a greasy wave. I remembered the way Lee had flown when that fist hit him, the way the sound had hit my teeth even from meters away.
If that landed on my skull, lights out. If I dodged, he'd step over me and go for Sasuke.
Naruto's mark fluttered faintly on the edge of my awareness, like a heartbeat in a dream. Sasuke's was worse—jagged pulses, the curse mark's heat coiling around it like a snake.
In my old life, nobody came back for me.
I could lie down, let it happen. Let the story go back to the boys with scary eyes and monsters in their gut, to prodigies and chosen ones and people whose names mattered.
Or I could die on my feet, screaming.
I planted one knee. Got one foot under me. My lungs burned. My burned fingers flexed on the kunai, raw skin sticking to the hilt.
"I am not," I said, "in your way."
I pushed up into a stagger that wished it was a stance.
"You are in mine."
He hesitated for half a heartbeat. Not much, but enough that I saw it—the tiny recalculation as he slotted that line into his mental file on me.
Then he stepped in and swung.
I raised my arm to block, knowing it wouldn't work.
The forest shivered.
Not from Dosu. Not from me.
From behind me.
Sasuke's chakra, which had been a messy, unstable mess of spikes and lulls, suddenly surged. Heat flooded through the Squad Mark on my wrist, burning up the little loop of ink from the inside.
For a second I saw it, not with my eyes but with that weird, broken sense under my skin: black-red flame lacing over his body, the curse mark's pattern crawling across his skin like a living brand.
Dosu's fist kept coming.
I braced for impact, stubborn and stupid and furious.
Whatever happened next, whether I hit the ground or bit his arm or both, I'd chosen it.
Not accessory. Not prop.
Mine.