By the time the adults noticed, it was already too late.
Naruto had given the Third Hokage—the current boss of this military city-state—a handlebar mustache.
From my angle in the alley, leaning against a crate with my paint-stained hands jammed in my pockets, I could just see the old man's stone face looming over the village. A bright, aggressive orange streak now zigzagged across his stone cheeks.
"That line is crooked," I called up.
Naruto, dangling halfway down the nose of the Fourth one (the spiky-haired guy I'd decided was the best-looking of the bunch), twisted to glare at me. "No, it's not!"
"It is," I said. "Your symmetry is a war crime."
"I'll show you a war crime!" he yelled back, and slapped more paint across the stone nostril.
I sighed, but there was a smile tugging at my mouth.
This was, objectively, a terrible idea. Defacing government property in a village run by super-powered assassins was high on the list of "How to Die Twice." But it was also the most fun I'd had all week.
The box of paints sat open beside me—a beat-up metal lunch tin I'd salvaged from the orphanage trash. Half the colors were things I'd mixed myself from cheap pigment and whatever I could scrounge: crushed berries, charcoal, and a suspiciously nice red I was pretty sure had started life as fabric dye.
Naruto had looked at it like treasure when I'd pulled it out that morning.
"If you're going to be a delinquent," I'd told him, very solemn, "at least have decent color theory."
That had been all the encouragement he needed.
I dipped a brush into a jar of dark blue and flicked it thoughtfully against the crate. Up above, Naruto whooped and went to town on the Second Hokage's hairline.
From here, the faces of four dead-or-retired dictators became clowns. It made them feel less oppressive. Less like giant stone gods watching us starve in the orphanage.
A faint clink of metal reached my ears. Armor.
I froze, then glanced toward the main road.
Two men in green flak jackets were jogging along the street, heads tilted back as they pointed up at the mountain. One of them swore loudly.
Ah. There it was. The consequences.
"Showtime," I muttered.
I snapped the tin shut, wiped my fingers on the inside of my shirt—stains added character—and pulled a small paper slip from my pocket.
The ink pattern on it was simple: a spiral and three dots. My best attempt at reverse-engineering the "exploding tags" I'd seen in a textbook, but swapped with a chemical compound I'd mixed from fertilizer and sugar.
"Don't embarrass me," I told the paper under my breath.
Then I flicked it into the alley mouth.
The tag hit the cobblestones. I channeled that weird, buzzing energy in my gut—chakra, they called it—into the ink.
Fwoom.
It flared and spat out a thick puff of greasy gray smoke that rolled across the street.
"HEY! YOU THERE!"
"Crap," I said, and bolted out the other side of the alley.
Behind me, someone shouted about brats and vandalism. The smoke wasn't enough to fully hide me—I was an eight-year-old with a chemistry set, not a ninja—but it was enough to make the soldiers hesitate, cough, and pick the wrong direction for a few precious seconds.
Which was the point.
On the mountain, Naruto saw the commotion and laughed like a maniac.
"SYLVIE, THEY SAW IT!" he hollered, voice echoing over the village. "I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GONNA BE AWESOME!"
"Yes, congratulations, you've successfully alerted the authorities," I muttered, skidding around a corner. "You loud little idiot."
I wasn't actually trying to get away. Not really. In this village, the adults could jump over buildings. If I outran them, they'd just ask how a random orphan girl had the cardio of an Olympian.
I just needed to make it look like I tried.
Thunk.
A blackened steel knife slammed into the wooden crate right in front of my nose.
I yelped, skidding to a halt, and threw my hands up. I might be reincarnated, but I wasn't stupid.
"STOP!" a voice barked.
I let myself be grabbed by the back of my collar and dragged along, grumbling.
Up on the mountain, Naruto kept painting until a third voice—this one older, and sounding very, very tired—boomed out over the training grounds.
"UZUMAKI NARUTO!"
Even from down here, I could feel the way the air shifted. It was like static electricity spiking before a storm. Naruto froze.
I winced in sympathy.
…Yeah. We were dead.
They tied him to a post.
Technically, it was just a log in the Academy courtyard, but the vibe was distinctly "public shaming." Naruto squirmed against the rope, scowling murder at everyone who walked past. The other kids shot him looks ranging from disdain to fear.
I sat at my desk inside, chalk dust already on my fingers, listening to our teacher, Iruka-sensei, lecture us about respect.
"…and the Hokage faces are a symbol of our village's history," Iruka said, tapping the blackboard hard enough to make the chalk squeak. "Not a blank canvas for certain students to scribble on."
His eyes flicked to the empty seat next to mine, then to me. My hands, my shirt, my ink-stained nails.
He sighed deeply.
"Sylvie."
"Yes, Iruka-sensei?" I said, doing my best 'innocent victim of circumstance' face.
It didn't work. He wasn't stupid.
"Why," he asked, in the weary tone of a man who didn't get paid enough for this, "did you think helping Naruto with this was a good idea?"
Technically, no one had seen me holding a brush. But Naruto hadn't kept his mouth shut, and my paint tin was currently in police custody.
I fiddled with my pencil. "Because he was going to do it anyway," I said finally. "I just… wanted to make sure the color palette wasn't a total disaster."
A few kids snickered.
Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose.
"You're both staying after class for cleanup duty. And no recess for a week."
I winced. "Yes, sensei."
He moved on, mercifully shifting the lecture to the history of the First Hokage—the guy with the long hair on the mountain. I tuned it in and out, scribbling notes in the margins of my book. Not history notes. Geometry. The angles of the ink on the paper tags.
Outside, through the window, I could see Naruto tied to the post, swinging his legs and yelling at the clouds.
I didn't know why everyone hated him. I mean, sure, he was loud. He had no impulse control. He smelled like ramen broth and dirt. But in the orphanage, the matrons looked at him like he was a bomb waiting to go off.
I looked at my own hands. Pale, weird, constantly stained with ink. They looked at me like I was a ghost.
At least Naruto was loud about his weirdness. I respected that.
When class finally ended, the other kids bolted for the door. I took my time packing my bag. There was no point rushing toward manual labor.
Outside, Naruto looked up as I stepped into the sunlight.
"Sylvie!" he shouted, brightening immediately. "Hey! Did you see it from down here? Was it awesome? It was awesome, right?"
His cheeks were smudged with dried paint. The ropes around his torso had a couple of frayed spots where he'd clearly tried to wiggle free and failed.
I couldn't help it. I smiled.
"You gave the Third a serial killer smile," I said. "It was very avant-garde."
"Ha!" He beamed, then pulled a face. "Iruka-sensei is so mad, though. He said I disrespected the village. I didn't! I just… improved it."
"That's my line," I said dryly.
Iruka appeared behind me like he'd teleported, hands on his hips.
"Speaking of improvements," he said. "You two are going to clean every bit of that paint off the monument before sundown. Maybe then you'll appreciate how much work went into carving those faces."
Naruto groaned. "But Iruka-sensei—!"
"No buts," Iruka snapped. "Actions have consequences."
He untied Naruto with a few quick motions, then thrust a bucket and scrub brush into each of our hands.
"C'mon," Naruto said, rubbing his wrists and stomping toward the path up the mountain. "It'll be fine. We'll just… scrub really fast!"
"That's not how scrubbing works," I muttered, but followed.
Iruka fell into step behind us, clearly planning to supervise. Wise choice.
As we started up the winding path that led to the top of the cliff, Naruto glanced sideways at me.
"Hey," he said, suddenly quieter. "Thanks. For the paint. And the, y'know… helping."
His ears were a little red. It didn't match the loud grin he tried to plaster over his face.
I shrugged, shifting the heavy bucket in my hands.
"Better than sitting in class," I said. "Besides, if the village is going to treat us like delinquents, we might as well be good at it."
"Heh." He laughed, the sound bouncing off the stone walls. "Yeah! We're the best delinquents!"
Konoha spread out below us as we climbed—the tiled roofs, the busy streets, the people who barely glanced up at two orphans trudging toward their punishment.
Somewhere under all of that was a reason why the adults looked at Naruto with cold eyes. Somewhere under all of that was the reason I had memories of a world with cars and airplanes.
I didn't know the answers.
But walking up that mountain with Uzumaki Naruto complaining about elbow grease, listening to him plan his next "masterpiece," the alien world felt a little less lonely.