Naruto hated ravines.
They were just ditches with ambitions.
This one cut across the thinning forest like a scar, all slick stone and mist hanging low over a narrow ribbon of water at the bottom. The trees leaned in on both sides, roots exposed and grabby, like the forest was trying to pull itself back together after someone slashed it open.
"Creepy," he muttered.
"Accurate," Sylvie said behind him. "But also our best route. Kabuto said ravine, remember."
"I remember," Naruto said. "I'm not a goldfish."
"You forgot your own sandals at the bathhouse once," she pointed out.
"That was—" He flailed for an excuse and came up empty. "Shut up."
Sasuke just hopped down to the nearest ledge without comment, landing light, hood shadowing his eyes. The bandage on his neck peeked out when he moved, a flash of white against dark cloth. He adjusted his collar, jaw tight.
Naruto's stomach twisted. He still hadn't decided if he was more mad at Orochimaru, Sasuke, or himself.
Mostly himself. He'd been unconscious. Again.
"Watch your footing," Sylvie said. "Moss is basically nature's banana peel."
She eased down after Sasuke, one hand trailing against the rock wall, the other hovering near her tag pouch like it was a security blanket. Her hacked-short hair stuck out in every direction, stubborn and jagged and kind of cool.
He jumped down after them, refusing to let either of them get too far ahead. The mist here tasted cold and wet in his nose, heavier than the usual forest damp. Sound went muffled, like someone had thrown a blanket over the world.
Naruto shivered. "Feels weird."
"Because it is weird," Sylvie said. "The air's… off."
"Off how?" he asked.
She opened her mouth, then shut it. "Just…off."
Translation: she was doing that chakra-feeling thing and didn't have words for it yet. He'd stopped poking at the details when it became clear that "it tastes like bruised purple" actually meant something to her.
The three of them picked their way along the narrow ledge that hugged the ravine wall. Down below, the little river gurgled like it was laughing at them.
Naruto scowled at it. "Bet this stupid stream's cursed too."
"Don't jinx it," Sylvie said quickly. Then, after a beat: "…Not literally."
Sasuke snorted. Barely.
They were halfway across when Kabuto's voice floated out of the mist ahead.
"You three really like taking the scenic route, huh?"
Naruto jerked, almost losing his footing. "Gah! Don't just appear out of nowhere!"
Kabuto materialized through the mist like he'd stepped out of it, one hand resting on the ravine wall, glasses beaded with tiny droplets. Yoroi and Misumi were a little behind him, perched on a slightly wider section of ledge, watching with twin flavors of boredom and paranoia.
"We didn't appear out of nowhere," Kabuto said mildly. "We just used the same path I pointed out."
"Oh," Naruto said. "…Right."
Sylvie's shoulders relaxed a fraction. "You doubled back?"
Kabuto smiled. "Our original route toward the tower got a bit…crowded. We decided to trust my own advice."
"See?" Naruto said, jabbing a thumb at Sylvie and Sasuke. "I told you glasses guy knows what he's doing."
"You said, 'He has cards, he's awesome,'" Sylvie reminded him.
"Same thing," Naruto said.
Kabuto's eyes crinkled. "Flattering. But I'd still recommend caution here. Ravines are popular spots for ambushes. Limited movement, poor visibility, convenient drop if someone loses their footing…"
An unpleasant thrum crawled up Naruto's spine. "You had to say that out loud."
"That was already a given," Sasuke muttered, scanning the mist.
Naruto opened his mouth to say something extremely brave and cool—
The mist thickened.
It rolled in from both sides, swallowing the world in white. The opposite wall vanished. Kabuto's team blurred, then doubled, like someone had smeared the picture and it hadn't settled yet.
"Okay, that's not just weather," Sylvie said sharply.
Naruto blinked hard. His own teammates flickered at the edges of his vision, like the forest was trying to make copies of them and kept messing up the lineart.
"Genjutsu," Sasuke said.
Somewhere, a voice echoed between the stone walls, distorted by the mist.
"Konoha genin," it drawled. "Thanks for bringing your scrolls all the way out here."
Naruto's hand flew to his jacket pocket on instinct, checking for the Earth scroll. Sylvie's fingers twitched reflexively toward her pouch, where the Heaven scroll was stuffed. Both were still there.
"For the record," Sylvie said, loud enough for whoever was listening, "we do not tip."
"Bold," the voice said. "I'll enjoy watching that bravado crack."
Another voice laughed, higher, meaner. "Let's see how long they keep talking when they're buried."
Beneath Naruto's feet, the stone felt suddenly less solid.
"Move!" Sasuke snapped.
They all jumped at once.
The ledge they'd just been standing on exploded into a spray of rocks and mud, a hand of earth reaching up where Naruto's ankles had been. Shards peppered his calves as he landed further along, skidding on damp stone.
"Rude!" Naruto yelled into the mist. "Show yourselves, cowards!"
Three figures stepped out of the fog as if answering his challenge.
All three wore hitai-ate with a vertical line slashed through a rain symbol. One had shaggy hair and tired eyes—Oboro, his brain supplied from somewhere; he'd heard the name in the first exam. Another wore his headband as a bandanna and had narrow eyes that glittered. The third had his forehead protector over his nose like a mask, hands already buried in the long sleeves of his jacket.
"Hidden Rain," Kabuto murmured, low enough that only the nearest of them heard. "They prefer misdirection."
"Great," Naruto muttered. "We prefer punching."
Oboro smirked. "By all means. Try."
The mist surged again.
Suddenly there weren't three Rain-nin.
There were ten.
Then twenty.
They lined the ravine walls, clung to the rock face like lichen, crowded the thin ledge in both directions. Each Oboro and his buddies looked real: weight on the stone, wet hair dripping, kunai glinting.
Naruto's heart hammer-kicked.
"Okay," he said. "That's…a lot."
"Genjutsu and clone mix," Kabuto said, voice even. "They'll use the confusion to force someone off the ledge or into the river, then finish you while you're disoriented."
"Thanks for the pep talk," Sylvie said through her teeth.
Naruto gritted his own. This was exactly the kind of thing he hated: trick stuff. Illusions. Enemies hiding instead of just fighting.
He wasn't going to let some copy-paste rain jerks take their scrolls.
Not after everything.
He slammed his hands together. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Chakra surged down his arms, familiar and wild. Smoke billowed out, joining the mist for a second before the breeze shredded it.
Twenty Narutos popped into existence along the ledge and clinging to the wall. A few immediately slipped.
"Whoaa—!"
"Grab the rock, you morons!" Naruto barked. "And don't fall in the stupid river!"
"Yes, boss!" a chorus of hims yelled back.
Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is going to be a mess."
"Mess beats drowning," Sylvie said.
The Rain-nin laughed, multiplied voices echoing.
Naruto narrowed his eyes. Every single Oboro stared back with the same bored smirk.
Clone, clone, clone. Or genjutsu. Or both. Whatever. It didn't matter.
He pointed straight at the nearest cluster. "Alright, listen up!" he shouted at his copies. "New rule! If it hits back, it's real! Got it?!"
Half the Narutos blinked.
"What if it just dodges?"
"Then keep hitting until one doesn't!"
"That's not a rule, that's a lifestyle!"
"Exactly!" Naruto yelled. "Now go!"
The clones grinned, feral mirror-images, and launched themselves forward.
The ledge erupted into chaos.
Narutos slammed into Rain-nin—some with satisfying thuds, some with the empty shiver of punching smoke. Illusionary Oboros vanished in bursts of mist when struck, leaving Naruto's clones swearing as they overbalanced into nothing.
"Fake!"
"Real—ow, no, fake, that was rock!"
"Who put a wall there?!"
"YOU DID, WE'RE ON A WALL, IDIOT!"
Down below, the river churned with reflections of the fight, all wrong and flickering. Once, Naruto caught sight of himself falling in the water when he definitely wasn't. His stomach lurched.
"Don't look at the reflections!" Kabuto called. "They're using them to reinforce the illusion!"
Naruto tore his gaze away, focusing on solid things: stone under his sandals, the burn in his legs, the weight of his kunai. The shouts of his clones. Sasuke's sharp curses as he parried something that came out of the rock itself.
"Earth Style," Sasuke snapped, fending off a spike of stone with his forearm guard. "Of course."
"Rain-nin like slippery terrain and blind spots," Kabuto said, ducking a kunai that whistled out of nowhere and thunked into the rock behind him. He pushed his glasses back up with two fingers, as calm as if he were in a classroom. "They'll have one member specializing in subtle earth manipulation. Keep moving; don't give the ground time to grab you."
"You could've led with that!" Naruto shouted, kicking a fake Oboro through the chest. It burst into damp air. "Fake!"
The real voice hissed left. He spun toward it, but three more copies blocked his view.
Naruto's world narrowed.
Fake. Fake. Fake.
He needed one that hit back.
"Spread out!" he yelled. "Don't bunch up! If you feel yourself sinking, yell!"
Several clones chorused "Already sinking!" and got dragged waist-deep into the stone, windmilling their arms before popping out of existence, swearing as they went.
"Useless!" the bandanna Rain-nin jeered from six different spots.
Naruto flung a kunai at one of the mouths. It sailed through and buried itself in the rock.
"Fake," he muttered.
"Try not to waste too much steel," Sylvie called. He risked a glance back. She'd pressed herself flat against the ravine wall, feet braced, one hand white-knuckled on the stone. The other fluttered near her pouch like she was arguing with herself.
She caught his eye. "You okay?"
"No!" he yelled. "But in a cool way!"
She snorted, tension in her shoulders easing half a notch. "Keep them busy. I'll…think of something that isn't 'fall off and die.'"
"Great plan," he said, and hurled himself at another Rain cluster.
He punched one in the face; it vanished. He twisted, kicked another; his foot met solid ribs this time, and the guy grunted, stumbling.
Naruto's grin flashed sharp.
"Real!" he shouted. "That one's real!"
Every nearby clone swiveled like a flock of angry pigeons.
"That one?!"
"Get him!"
They dogpiled the Rain-nin, arms and legs everywhere. Half of them passed through illusions and tumbled, but enough hit meat that Naruto felt it in his own knuckles. The guy—a narrow-eyed one with the headband over his nose—vanished under the pile with a strangled curse.
Then the stone under them heaved.
The wall bulged like a throat swallowing, spewing rock and mud. Naruto lost his footing, sliding, grabbing for anything. A hand—his own—caught his wrist and yanked, the clone braced on a tiny outcropping.
"Got you, boss!"
"Don't call me boss!"
"You said—"
"Later!"
They scrambled, scraping skin, but managed to cling on. Below them, a fresh outcropping of stone jutted where they'd been, sharp as teeth.
The dogpile of clones popped, one after another, until only a single dazed Rain-nin slumped against the wall, bruised and glaring, clutching his ribs.
Naruto's pulse jumped. "There!"
He launched himself toward the guy, clones fanning out to intercept imaginary versions blocking his line. The Rain-nin's eyes widened.
"Kill his chakra flow!" another echoing voice snapped from somewhere in the mist. "We can't let him spam clones like that!"
Naruto braced for a counterattack—
And Kabuto's hand closed briefly on his shoulder, anchoring him, before letting go.
"Left," Kabuto said. Just that. Calm. Certain.
Naruto didn't question it.
He twisted mid-air and punched to his left instead of straight ahead.
His fist connected with a face that definitely wasn't an illusion. There was a crack of knuckles on cartilage, and a Rain-nin he hadn't seen—hair hanging in his eyes, half his body phasing out of the stone—jerked backward with a grunt, blood spraying from his nose.
The mist around him wavered.
"Found you!" Naruto crowed.
The illusions flickered for a heartbeat, out of sync. That was all the opening his clones needed. They swarmed, targeting the glitchy spots, shouting "Fake! Fake! Real! Real—nope, fake!" as they went.
"Naruto," Sasuke barked. "Stop yelling what's real!"
Right. Maybe broadcasting that to the enemy was dumb.
"I'll yell it in my head," Naruto muttered.
"You don't—" Sasuke cut himself off with a hiss as a stone spike grazed his thigh.
Kabuto stepped back, letting Naruto's chaos fill the space. Yoroi and Misumi lurked just behind him, hands still in pockets and sleeves, clearly holding back and clearly annoyed about it.
"Interesting," Kabuto murmured, almost to himself. "Crude, but effective. Flooding the field with sensory probes instead of subtle disruption…"
Naruto had no idea what that meant, but he chose to take it as a compliment.
He threw up another round of clones, breath burning in his chest, chakra buzzing under his skin.
He wasn't going to let genjutsu make him useless again. Not when it mattered. Not with Sylvie and Sasuke right there and the tower finally somewhere past all this stupid fog.
"Listen up!" he yelled to himself. "Same rule! Hit everything that looks at you funny! If it hits back, it's real! If you fall in the river, I'm haunting you!"
"Haunting is after dying, boss!"
"Then don't die!"
They roared back, a disorganized, enthusiastic wave, and crashed into the Rain-nin's carefully constructed illusions like a storm.
For the first time, Naruto heard something in the enemy voices that wasn't smug.
It was irritation.
"Why won't they just fall already?!"
"Because we're stubborn!" Naruto yelled, punching another Oboro into mist. "That's our whole thing!"
The mist shuddered again.
Somewhere behind him, Sylvie drew in a sharp breath, like she'd finally seen a seam she could grab.
The fight wasn't over.
But for the first time since the ravine had closed in, Naruto felt that familiar rush in his chest, the one that said:
You're not background.
You're here.
And you're hitting back.