If Kakashi's teaching style was "benign neglect until you accidentally learn something," Anko's was "active attempted murder."
We hit the tree line running. The Forest of Death smelled exactly the same as it had a week ago: wet rot, old fear, and bad decisions. The only difference was that this time, the apex predator wasn't a giant snake or a foreign team.
It was our chaperone.
"Left!" I screamed, banking hard off a mossy trunk.
A fireball the size of a minivan roared through the space where my torso had been a second earlier. The heat singed my eyebrows.
"Too slow!" Anko's voice echoed from everywhere at once. "If that was a paper bomb, you're confetti! If that was poison, you're soup! Move your asses!"
Naruto scrambled up a tree, claws digging into bark, chakra flaring bright orange panic. "SHE'S CRAZY! SHE'S ACTUALLY TRYING TO ROAST US!"
"She's a tokubetsu jōnin!" I yelled back, slapping a sticky tag onto a branch as I vaulted over it. "This is her idea of a warm-up!"
Sasuke was silent, which meant he was thinking, which usually meant he was about to do something stupidly brave. His chakra was a tight, blue-black coil, suppressed but angry. He cut a sharp angle through the canopy, heading for the spot where we'd heard the supply bag land.
"I see it!" he shouted. "Two o'clock, near the big roots!"
"Go for the bag!" I ordered. "I'll lay cover!"
I spun in mid-air, ink brush already in hand. My chakra reserves were still recovering from the invasion—my internal gauge read somewhere around "half a tank of gas in a car with a leak"—but I had paper.
I slapped three flash tags onto the trunk behind me and channeled a pulse.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
White light strobed through the undergrowth.
Anko laughed.
It wasn't a nice laugh. It was the sound a blender makes when it realizes it can digest bone.
She burst through the light like it wasn't even there, coat flapping like bat wings. Her chakra tasted like grape soda mixed with battery acid—sweet, fizzy, and absolutely corrosive.
"Cute!" she chirped. "My turn!"
Snakes shot out of her sleeves. Not one or two. Dozens.
They lashed out like whips, seeking ankles, wrists, necks.
"Nope, nope, absolutely not," I hissed, dropping like a stone to the forest floor. I rolled, came up in a crouch, and slapped a barrier tag onto the dirt.
Kekkai: Sumi Tate.
A translucent ink-shield sprang up. The snakes slammed into it with a wet thwack-thwack-thwack.
The barrier cracked instantly.
"Fragile!" Anko critiqued, appearing directly above me.
She dropped a heel kick that would have caved in my skull if I hadn't thrown myself sideways into a patch of ferns. The ground exploded. Dirt showered my glasses.
"Don't block what you can't hold, Pinkie!" she shouted. "Deflect or die!"
"I'm working on it!" I wheezed, scrambling away on hands and knees.
Naruto dropped from the canopy, screaming a war cry that sounded suspiciously like "LEAVE HER ALONE YOU WITCH!"
He summoned four clones mid-fall. They dogpiled Anko.
She spun, a whirlwind of elbows and knees.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Four clouds of smoke.
Real Naruto landed, skidded, and tried to sweep her leg.
Anko hopped over it without looking, grabbed his face with one hand, and threw him into a bush.
"Sloppy!" she barked. "You telegraph like a billboard!"
Sasuke took the opening.
He came in silent, kunai drawn, speed ramped up to that level that blurred the edges of his silhouette. He went for the bag—which was hanging from a root ten feet away—but Anko cut him off.
She didn't use jutsu. She used physics and malice.
She intercepted his line, blocked his strike with her forearm guard, and twisted her hips.
Sasuke went flying.
He recovered mid-air, flipping off a tree trunk, Sharingan spinning to life. Red trails cut the gloom.
"Oh, the eyes," Anko drawled, leaning back against the tree where the bag hung. She looked bored. Terrifyingly bored. "Kakashi taught you to rely on those too much. What happens when you can see the hit coming but aren't fast enough to stop it?"
"I get faster," Sasuke spat.
He lunged.
This time, he feinted high, dropped low, and tried to snag the strap of the bag.
Anko stepped into his guard.
It was a move that shouldn't have worked. It put her right in his danger zone. But she moved with such fluid, predatory confidence that Sasuke flinched.
That flinch cost him.
Anko's hand shot out and clamped around his collar. She yanked him forward, off-balance, and slammed him back against the tree trunk. Her other hand pinned his wrist to the bark.
They were nose-to-nose.
Sasuke froze, eyes widening. The curse mark on his neck throbbed—I could feel it from here, a spike of cold, oily rot amidst his panic.
Anko felt it too.
Her grin sharpened. She leaned in, tilting her head to inspect the bandage covering the seal. Her own mark, hidden under her hair, pulsed in sympathetic resonance—a ugly, violet harmony.
"Aww," she cooed, voice dripping with mock sympathy. "Cute tattoo."
Sasuke stiffened, face going pale.
Anko tapped the bandage with a finger.
"Did your boyfriend give it to you?"
The clearing went dead silent.
It was such a playground insult. So petty. So breathtakingly rude given that the "boyfriend" was a terrifying S-rank missing-nin who wanted to wear Sasuke like a suit.
Sasuke turned a color I had never seen on a human face before. It was somewhere between "tomato red" and "asphyxiation purple." His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He looked like his brain had just error-coded.
From the bush, Naruto popped up, twigs in his hair.
He stared at Sasuke. He stared at Anko.
And then he started laughing.
It wasn't a chuckle. It was a full-body, wheezing, hyena-cackle that doubled him over.
"PFFT— HAHAHAHA! BOYFRIEND! SHE SAID— SHE SAID YOUR BOYFRIEND—"
He slapped the ground, tears streaming down his face.
"SASUKE'S GOT A SNAKE BOYFRIEND! HAHAHAHA!"
I stayed frozen in the ferns, watching Anko's grin widen.
"Oh," I whispered. "You idiot."
Anko didn't even look. She just lashed out with a leg, back-kicking blindly but with perfect aim.
Her boot connected with Naruto's solar plexus.
WHAM.
The laughter cut off with a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on.
Naruto flew backward, crashed through two shrubs, and hit a tree with a dull thud. He slid down the bark and stayed there, wheezing.
"Stop letting your guard down, idiot!" Anko shouted, not releasing Sasuke. "Enemy insults you? You stab them! Enemy laughs? You stab them! You think Akatsuki is gonna pause for a comedy break?"
She finally let go of Sasuke, shoving him away.
He stumbled, hand flying to his neck, looking like he wanted to burn the entire forest down just to erase the last thirty seconds from history.
"Grab the bag," Anko ordered, voice suddenly flat and professional. "If you're not out of my sight in three seconds, I start breaking fingers."
I scrambled up, grabbed the heavy canvas strap, and hauled it over my shoulder.
"Go, go, go," I hissed, grabbing Sasuke's arm and dragging him. He came willingly, mostly because he seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
We grabbed Naruto—who was making a high-pitched whistling noise—and bolted.
We didn't stop running until we hit the edge of the training ground, lungs burning and dignity left somewhere back near the river.
I dropped the bag. It hit the dirt with a heavy clank of metal and glass.
"Okay," I gasped, hands on my knees. "Okay. We have the gear."
Naruto was still clutching his stomach. "She… she kicks… so hard…"
Sasuke was leaning against a fence post, staring into the middle distance. His chakra felt like static electricity—spiky and humiliated.
"I hate her," he said quietly.
"She's effective," I said, straightening up and adjusting my glasses. They were crooked. Again. "She got in your head. That was the point."
"She called him my boyfriend," Sasuke hissed. "He's a monster who wants to steal my body."
"Toxic relationship," I nodded. "Red flags everywhere."
"Sylvie."
"Stopping now."
Leaves rustled.
We all flinched into combat stances instantly. Kunai out. Breath held.
Anko stepped out of the trees, casually picking her teeth with a senbon. She looked completely unruffled. Her coat was pristine. She looked like she'd just come from a light stroll, not a high-speed hunt.
She looked us over—battered, dirty, breathing hard, but standing in a formation that actually covered each other's blind spots.
She smirked. It was smaller this time. Less 'I'm going to eat you' and more 'you might be edible later.'
"Well," she said. "You didn't die. And you got the loot."
She walked over and kicked the bag lightly.
"You're slow," she listed, ticking points off on her fingers. "You're easily distracted. You let your emotions drive the bus. And your taijutsu form falls apart the second you get scared."
Naruto hung his head. Sasuke scowled at the ground.
"But," Anko continued.
We looked up.
"You didn't leave the bag," she said. "And when I grabbed the Uchiha, Pinkie had a tag on my blind side ready to blow, and the idiot fox-boy tried to flank me."
She pulled the senbon from her mouth and pointed it at us.
"You aren't total trash," she decided. "You're recyclable trash."
"Thanks?" Naruto ventured.
"Don't thank me yet," Anko said. "That was the warm-up. We leave at dawn. You have until then to fix whatever's broken, pack that gear properly, and say goodbye to your beds."
She turned, coat flaring.
"Oh, and Sasuke?"
He stiffened.
She glanced back, eyes dark and serious for the first time.
"The mark," she said. "It feeds on shame. And anger. If you let it embarrass you, it wins. It's just ink and bad intentions. Treat it like dirt."
She tapped her own neck, right over where her bandages sat.
"Don't let him own the real estate."
Then she vanished in a swirl of leaves that was definitely just for show.
Silence settled over the training ground.
Naruto rubbed his stomach. "She's terrifying," he said, with a note of genuine admiration. "I think she might be cooler than Kakashi-sensei."
"Don't let him hear you say that," I said. "He'll cry."
Sasuke touched his neck, fingers brushing the bandage. His chakra smoothed out, just a fraction. The spiky humiliation receded, replaced by something colder, steadier.
"Dawn," he said.
"Dawn," I agreed.
I picked up the bag. It was heavy, full of tools I hoped we wouldn't need and knew we would.
"Let's go," I said. "I need to put a lot of ice on my dignity."
Naruto snickered, then winced. "Me too. My ribs hurt when I laugh."
"Good," Sasuke said. "Maybe you'll do it less."
"Hey!"
We walked back toward the village, battered and bruised, walking into a sunset that looked like a bruise itself.
We were going to find a Sannin. We were going to walk into a world without a Hokage.
But for tonight, we were just three kids who had survived Anko, and that felt like enough of a victory.