The Konoha Ninja Tool Research Facility didn't look like a place where legendary weapons were forged. It looked like a DMV that had been aggressively militarized.
The lobby smelled like ozone, hot grease, and the specific, dusty despair of paperwork. Stacks of crates lined the walls, stenciled with warnings like EXPLOSIVE – HANDLE WITH CHAKRA and DO NOT OPEN NEAR OPEN FLAME OR CIVILIANS.
I walked up to the main counter, clutching Raidō's requisition scroll like it was a winning lottery ticket I was afraid might be fake.
Behind the desk, a guy with messy hair and goggles pushed up onto his forehead was drowning in forms. He was stamping things with a rhythm that suggested he was imagining punching someone's face.
"Name, rank, and reason for interrupting my inventory audit," he said without looking up. His chakra tasted like stale coffee and copper wire―frayed, buzzing, hyper-focused.
"Sylvie," I said. "Genin. Team 7. I have a note; Namashi said to tell you 'give her the good stuff.'"
The stamping stopped.
He looked up. He blinked, eyes adjusting behind thick lenses as he took in the pink hair, the glasses, the general air of 'I have survived terrible things and I am tired.'
"Oh," he said. A grin split his grease-smudged face. "You're the pink one. Tenten's friend."
"I―yes," I said, startled. "Wait. Tenten talks about me?"
"Tenten talks about anyone who doesn't treat weapons like garbage," he said. "She said you actually bother to clean your kunai. High praise."
He leaned over the counter, extending a hand that was stained three different colors of ink. "Shōseki. Assistant to Iō. We make the things that make people go boom."
"Nice to meet you," I said. "I would like some of the boom things, please."
I slapped Raidō's scroll onto the counter.
Shōseki picked it up, broke the seal, and unrolled it. His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. Then he let out a sharp, barking laugh.
"Raidō signed a Class B open req?" he wheezed, tapping the paper. "For a genin team? Man, what kind of guilt trip did you put on him? This is basically a blank check for the armory."
"He feels bad about the Hokage," I said honestly. "And he thinks Naruto is going to die."
Shōseki's amusement vanished, replaced by a quick, somber nod. The copper taste in his chakra dulled to something heavier, like tarnished brass.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Lot of that going around."
He re-rolled the scroll and tossed it into a pneumatic tube behind him. It vanished with a thwump.
"Alright," he said, jerking a thumb toward a heavy steel door on the right. "Storage Room Four. It's mostly field surplus, but it's high-grade. Wire, tags, soldier pills, coagulants. Take what you can carry. If you can lift it, you can keep it."
"Seriously?"
"Raidō's dime," he said with a shrug. "Go nuts. Just don't touch the crates marked with red X's. Those are unstable prototypes. Last guy who touched one lost his eyebrows."
"Noted," I said.
I turned to head for the door, my brain already calculating weight ratios and inventory space. Wire spools. Flash bombs. Did they have those barrier stakes I'd read about?
"Hey!" Shōseki called out just as I reached the handle.
I looked back.
"Since you're seeing her," he said, leaning his chin on his hand. "Tell Tenten that Iō finally fixed her Jidanda."
I tilted my head. "Her… Jidanda?"
"Yeah." Shōseki chuckled, miming a massive, crushing shape with his hands. "The giant metal ball with the spikes! The one she swings around on a chain like a wrecking ball."
My brain summoned a mental image of Tenten, who usually threw elegant, precise storms of needles, suddenly whipping a medieval torture sphere around her head.
It tracked.
"Oh," I said, nodding sagely. "Of course. The giant spike ball. I'll tell her."
"Thanks, Pinkie," he said, and went back to violently stamping forms.
I pushed open the heavy steel door and stepped into the armory, ready to loot the government for everything it was worth.
Because if we were going to find a Sannin, fight a Sannin, or just survive Anko, I was going to need a bigger bag.
Waiting for Kakashi was usually a meditative exercise in patience, punctuated by Naruto screaming at insects.
Today, it felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop in a room full of shoes.
The red bridge was the same as always. The river gurgled underneath, indifferent to the fact that the village upstream was half-rubble. Naruto was vibrating at a frequency that could probably shatter glass, pacing back and forth until he'd worn a groove in the dirt. Sasuke leaned against the railing, arms crossed, staring at the water like he was trying to intimidate the fish.
I sat on the railing, clutching the requisition scroll Raidō had given me like a security blanket.
My chakra felt thin. My head still had that post-invasion rattle. But we were a team, and we were waiting for our sensei, and that felt… normal.
"He's late," Naruto complained for the fortieth time. "He's extra late! He's probably saving a cat from a tree in another dimension!"
"He's the Acting Jōnin Commander," I said, adjusting my glasses. "He's probably drowning in forms. I saw the stack on his desk. It was taller than you."
Naruto stopped pacing. "Hey! I'm growing!"
"Vertically challenged leadership," I muttered.
Sasuke shifted. His chakra—usually a cold, sharp blue—flared with a sudden spike of warning.
"Something's coming," he said.
I opened my mouth to ask if it was Kakashi—
CRACK.
A branch snapped above us. A swirl of leaves that looked suspiciously dramatic spiraled down into the center of the bridge, followed by a heavy thud that shook the planks.
Dust puffed up.
When it cleared, it wasn't Kakashi.
Anko Mitarashi stood up from a crouch, trench coat flaring, mesh shirt catching the light. She grinned, and it was a smile made entirely of knives and bad decisions.
"Listen up, maggots!" she barked. "Kakashi is busy saving the village politically. You're mine now."
My stomach dropped into my shoes.
Naruto blinked, then recoiled. "NO! I want Kakashi-sensei! You're the crazy lady from the forest!"
He turned to bolt.
Anko moved faster than a human being should be allowed to move without a permit. Her hand shot out and snagged the back of Naruto's collar. She yanked him back so hard his feet left the ground.
"Too bad!" she chirped, leaning into his face. Her chakra tasted like grape soda spiked with battery acid—sweet, fizzy, and absolutely corrosive. "He's buried in paperwork. You get the fun parent."
Naruto flailed, dangling like a kitten held by a toddler. "You're not the fun parent! You're scary! Girls shouldn't be scary!"
The air on the bridge went very still.
I slid off the railing. My feet hit the wood with a soft thump.
Anko didn't let go of Naruto. She just tilted her head, her smile widening until it showed too many teeth.
"Oh?" she purred.
I walked up beside her. I didn't plan it. My body just recognized the energy frequency and harmonized. I adjusted my glasses, letting the light catch the lenses so they went opaque white.
We leaned in at the exact same angle.
"What was that, Naruto?" I asked, voice soft and dead.
"Care to repeat that to the class?" Anko added, voice dripping with false sweetness.
Naruto stopped flailing. He looked at Anko's manic grin. He looked at my blank lenses and the ink stains on my hands. He looked at the fact that we were suddenly flanking him like twin gargoyles of judgment.
"Ehhh… hehe…" He laughed nervously, sweat popping on his forehead. He scratched his cheek. "I mean… uh… scary is… cool?"
He looked desperately toward the railing for backup.
"Sasuke! Tell them!"
Sasuke was already gone.
He was ten feet away, walking briskly toward the end of the bridge, hands in his pockets, radiating an aura of I do not know these people.
"Traitor!" Naruto wailed.
Anko dropped him. He hit the wood with a yelp.
"Pack it up, ducklings," she said, straightening and dusting off her hands. "We're burning daylight. And if we're lucky, nothing else."
She turned on her heel and marched toward the forest.
I looked at Naruto. Naruto looked at me.
"We're gonna die," he whispered.
"Statistically probable," I agreed.
We ran to catch up.
The walk to the training ground was less of a march and more of a forced migration.
Anko set a pace that suggested she had somewhere to be in five minutes and didn't care if our legs fell off. We trotted behind her—Sasuke looking annoyed, Naruto looking worried, me looking at my requisition scroll and praying it contained a miracle.
"So," Anko called over her shoulder. "Mission briefing. Since the old man kicked the bucket—"
I winced.
"—we're short on leadership. Jiraiya is going to find the other Sannin. Tsunade. The Slug Princess."
"Slug Princess?" Naruto echoed, wrinkling his nose. "That sounds gross."
"She's the greatest medic in the world," I said, perking up. "She can reattach limbs. She can probably cure death if she's drunk enough. She's my hero."
Anko snorted. "She's a drunk gambler with a temper that makes mine look like a mild suggestion. But yeah. She's the target. We're the retrieval team."
"We?" Sasuke asked. "You're coming?"
"Someone has to make sure you don't get eaten by bears. Or wandering ninja. Or your own stupidity." She stopped abruptly, spinning to face us. We nearly piled into her.
We were at the edge of Training Ground 44. The Forest of Death.
Again.
The fence loomed, wire rusted and foreboding. The trees behind it whispered things that sounded like come here so I can digest you.
"But first," Anko said, crossing her arms. "I need to make sure you won't die on the road. Kakashi baby-proofs you. I don't."
She eyed the scroll case and the heavy canvas bag slung over my shoulder—the one I'd filled at the depot thanks to Raidō's guilt-trip authorization.
"What's in the bag, Pinkie?"
"Supplies," I said, clutching the strap. "Raidō gave me a requisition form. I got… everything. Blood coagulants, chakra pills, high-tensile wire, explosive tags, three kinds of antidote, spare kunai, a portable barrier kit—"
I was proud of that bag. It was heavy, it clanked, and it smelled like safety.
Anko raised an eyebrow.
"Cute," she said. "Do any of you actually use ninja tools?"
We blinked.
"I use kunai!" Naruto said defensively. "And shuriken! And… uh… smoke bombs!"
"You throw them," Anko corrected. "That's not using them. That's littering with intent."
She looked at Sasuke.
"I use wire," Sasuke said stiffly. "For the Dragon Fire Jutsu."
"One trick," Anko dismissed. She looked at me.
"I use seals," I said. "And… ink. And paper."
"Props," she said. "Crutches."
She held out a hand. "Give me the bag."
I hesitated. "But… it's our supplies. For the mission."
"Give. Me. The. Bag."
Her chakra flared—a quick, violet snap of killing intent that made my knees lock.
I handed her the bag.
It was heavy. I'd packed it well. It had everything we needed to survive a B-rank disaster.
Anko weighed it in one hand, looking unimpressed.
"Heavy," she commented. "Slows you down. Makes you think you're safe because you have things."
She grinned.
"Let's see what you learned in the forest," she said.
Then she wound up and hurled the bag over the fence.
It sailed through the air, a beautiful, heavy arc of canvas and survival, crashing through the canopy of the Forest of Death. We heard it tumbling down, hitting branches, and finally landing with a distant, muffled thud somewhere deep in the murder zone.
Silence.
Naruto's mouth fell open. Sasuke stared at the fence like he was calculating the trajectory of a murder.
I felt a small, essential part of my soul shrivel up and die.
"Without your new toys," Anko finished cheerfully.
She pointed at the gate.
"Go get it. If you're not back by sunset, I'm assuming you were eaten and I'm ordering dinner without you."
She pulled a senbon from her pocket and started picking her teeth.
"Go."
Naruto looked at the fence. "But… we just got out of there!"
"And now you're going back in," Anko said. "Run, ducklings. Before I start throwing things at you."
She reached into her coat.
We ran.
As we scrambled over the fence, wire snagging my clothes and the smell of damp rot hitting my face again, my internal monologue finally caught up with reality.
We are going to die.
And she's going to laugh at our funeral.