The morning after the festival incident, the air was crisp, the sky was blue, and Anko Mitarashi was looking at me like I was a math problem she couldn't solve.
We stood in a clearing near the river. Jiraiya and Naruto were twenty yards away, arguing about rotation and balloons.
"Okay," Anko said, hands on her hips. "Let's establish a baseline. You're a sensor. You use seals. You have basic academy taijutsu which is... passable, if the enemy is a wooden post. But what's your nature?"
I blinked. "My nature?"
"Elemental affinity," Anko said, snapping her fingers. "Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, Water. Every jonin has at least two. Every chunin has one. You've been on C-ranks and survived an invasion. What's your primary?"
I opened my mouth. I closed it.
I knew the theory. I knew Naruto was Wind (eventually). I knew Sasuke was Fire and Lightning. I knew Kakashi was Everything.
But me?
"Uhhhh..." I said. It was a long, intelligent sound.
Anko stared at me. Her eye twitched.
"You don't know," she stated flatly.
"I... haven't checked?" I offered weakly. "I've been busy! Learning not to die! Memorizing barrier formulas! Trying to keep Naruto from eating poison!"
"You've been active for six months," Anko said, her voice rising in pitch. "You have a jōnin sensei. A famous jōnin sensei. The Copy Ninja. The man who knows a thousand jutsu."
She reached into her pouch and pulled out a slip of paper. She shoved it into my hand.
"Push chakra into it," she ordered.
I held the paper. I focused. I pushed a small pulse of blue energy into the fiber.
The paper didn't wrinkle. It didn't burn. It didn't crumble.
It got wet.
Soaked, instantly. Water dripped from the paper onto my sandals.
"Water," I said. "Neat."
Anko didn't say "neat."
She turned toward the river, took a deep breath, and let out a scream of pure, unadulterated rage that frightened a flock of birds out of a nearby tree.
"THAT ONE-EYED SCARECROW HACK!" she roared.
Naruto looked over. "Is she dying?"
"She's murdering Kakashi in her mind," Jiraiya observed, eating a rice ball.
Anko spun back to me. She looked furious. Not at me, I realized with a jolt, but for me.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?" she hissed, grabbing my shoulders. "Running field missions without an elemental release is like bringing a spoon to a knife fight! You've been surviving on luck and paper scraps! If you'd run into a Katon user in the invasion without knowing Suiton, you'd be ash right now!"
She released me, pacing back and forth, muttering threats involving snakes and Kakashi's internal organs.
"Okay," she said, stopping abruptly. "New plan. Jiraiya takes the loudmouth. I take you."
She pointed a thumb at herself.
"We are fixing this. Today."
"But—" I started.
"Go," she ordered.
Jiraiya waved lazily, dragging a protesting Naruto toward the woods.
"Have fun!" Naruto yelled back. "Don't let her feed you to a snake!"
I waved back, feeling like a kid at summer camp being sent to the cabin with the leaky roof while my friend got the one with the candy stash.
Anko turned to me. Her grin returned, sharp and terrifying.
"Relax, Pinkie," she said. "It's not like I'm going to kill you."
I was dying.
I was knee-deep in the river. The water was freezing. My legs were numb. My chakra coils felt like they had been scrubbed with steel wool.
"Again!" Anko shouted from her perch on a dry, sun-warmed rock. She was eating an apple. It crunched loudly.
"I'm... trying..." I wheezed.
"You're not trying, you're splashing!" Anko countered. "Water isn't Fire, Sylvie! You can't just push it and expect it to explode! Water is heavy! Water is patient! You have to lead it, not shove it!"
I slapped the surface of the water. A pathetic splash wetted my shirt.
"It's... heavy," I complained.
And it was.
My chakra—that strange, cool energy that always felt a little too silvery, a little too distant—connected with the river easily enough. But moving the water felt like trying to lift a weighted blanket with my mind.
"Stop thinking like a solid," Anko instructed, tossing the apple core into the bushes. "Seals are rigid. Lines. Angles. Logic. Water is chaos that follows gravity. Be the gravity."
Be the gravity.
I closed my eyes.
I reached out with my sensory perception.
Usually, chakra felt like color to me. Naruto was a roaring orange bonfire. Sasuke was a cold blue spike. Anko was a purple bruise.
But the water...
The water felt like silver. It felt cool, steady, and terrifyingly vast. It didn't resist me like the earth did. It waited.
I pulled.
Rise, I thought.
A column of water lifted from the river.
But it didn't look right.
It didn't splash or spray. It rose silently, a perfect, glass-smooth pillar of liquid. It didn't wobble. It hung there, suspended in the air, reflecting the sunlight.
It felt... magnetic.
It felt like the water wanted to come to me. Like I was a magnet and every droplet was an iron filing. It was heavy, yes, but it was an obedient weight. Like a tide answering a moon.
"Whoa," Anko murmured.
I opened my eyes.
The pillar was three feet high. It was perfectly cylindrical.
Then my concentration wavered.
The weight shifted. The "gravity" broke.
SPLASH.
The pillar collapsed, drenching me from head to toe. I sputtered, coughing up river water.
"Okay," Anko said, sounding slightly less critical and slightly more unnerved. "That was... dense. You have high viscosity control. Maybe too high. Loosen up."
"I'm trying," I shivered. "But it feels... big. Like if I pull too hard, I'll pull the whole river."
"Don't flatter yourself," Anko snorted. "You're a genin, not a Tailed Beast. Try again. Make an arc. A simple rainbow. Point A to Point B."
I wiped water from my glasses.
An arc. Flow.
I tried again.
The water resisted. It swirled around my ankles, cold and heavy.
"Stop being a sponge!" Anko yelled. "Start being the damn sea!"
I looked at the water rushing past my legs.
It reminded me of something.
The pond. The hidden training ground behind the Academy.
It was night. The moon was huge. I was trying to walk on water for the first time.
I remembered the feeling of the surface tension. How it dented under my heel like stretched cloth. I remembered the fear—the deep, primal fear of sinking into the dark.
I remembered looking up.
Naruto was there. He was standing on the water, grinning, his hand extended. His chakra was leaking out—that warm, chaotic orange light that felt like late-afternoon sunlight.
"Grab on, Sylvie!"
I had grabbed his hand. And the fear had vanished.
His orange warmth had anchored my cold silver.
I opened my eyes.
I looked toward the bank.
Fifty yards away, Naruto was sitting on the grass while Jiraiya lectured him about wind rotation. He was laughing at something, holding a half-eaten rice ball.
Even from here, I could feel it. That hum. That bright, stubborn, "I'm-still-here" signal.
He was the sun. I was the moon.
The moon doesn't make its own light. It reflects. And the moon doesn't fight the ocean. It moves it.
I took a deep breath.
I didn't try to force the water. I didn't try to lift it with muscle.
I just... leaned.
I used Naruto's orange signal as a beacon, a fixed point in the world, and I let my own chakra drift toward it like a tide.
Flow.
The water around me rose.
It didn't shoot up. It peeled off the surface of the river in a smooth, glassy sheet. It arched over my head, catching the light, turning from muddy river water into a ribbon of pure quicksilver.
It curved through the air, defied gravity, and splashed down ten feet away with a gentle, controlled ripple.
It was perfect.
I stood there, breathing hard, my hands raised.
"I did it," I whispered.
"Not bad," Anko said, nodding. "A little slow, but the form was clean. You might actually be useful."
"Hey! Sylvie!"
I looked over. Naruto was standing on the bank, pointing and laughing.
"It looks like you're peeing!" he shouted. "A giant water pee!"
Jiraiya snorted into his hand.
The majestic feeling of controlling the tides vanished instantly, replaced by the urge to commit violence.
"Oh," I said sweetly. "Does it?"
I didn't lose the connection. I tightened it.
I dipped my knees, gathering a mouthful of chakra-infused water in my cheeks. I channeled the pressure. Not a gentle tide this time. A pressurized jet.
I spun toward the bank.
Suiton: Water Bullet! (Or, more accurately, Suiton: Petty Spit Take).
I exhaled.
A high-velocity stream of water shot from my mouth. It crossed the twenty yards in a second.
SPLAT.
It hit Naruto dead in the face.
He sputtered, falling backward onto the grass, dropping his rice ball. He sat up, dripping wet, blinking in shock.
"Ack! Cold!" he yelled. "Sylvie! You... you water-gunned me!"
"Target practice," I called back, adjusting my glasses. "I passed."
Jiraiya burst out laughing, slapping his knee. Even Anko cracked a grin, hopping down from her rock.
"Nice shot," Anko said. "Ten points for accuracy. Zero points for hygiene."
Naruto wiped his face, then started laughing too—that big, infectious laugh that made the cold river feel a little warmer.
"Okay, okay!" he shouted. "You win! Now come on, lunch is ready! Pervy Sage bought buns!"
I waded out of the river, soaking wet, exhausted, and feeling lighter than I had in weeks.
Water was heavy. Water was patient.
But water could also be a really good joke.
And right now, that was exactly what we needed.