[The previous summer, before the story starts in Chapter 2...]
The first time Naruto called it a "form," I wasn't even thinking about fighting.
I was thinking about not getting my face smashed into the dirt by a very angry shopkeeper.
"HEY! GET BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE—"
His voice boomed down the alley like a jutsu by itself. The crate of wilted vegetables we'd "borrowed" was bouncing against Naruto's chest as he ran, carrots and daikon rattling inside. I was three steps behind him, sandals slapping stone.
"This was your idea!" I hissed.
"It was a good idea!" Naruto yelled over his shoulder.
A rotten tomato burst against the wall by my head with a wet splat. I ducked purely on reflex.
"Stealing is not a good idea!" I wheezed.
"We're just reallocating resources!"
Another tomato sailed past. I saw the man's arm wind up again at the mouth of the alley, face red and sweaty, apron flapping. There was no way we'd outrun an adult on a straight street. Naruto didn't seem to notice that part.
"Faster!" he shouted. "He's gaining!"
"No kidding!"
The alley split ahead—one path going left toward the main road, one path right toward a narrow gap between buildings stacked too close together.
Left meant witnesses. Chūnin. That was bad.
Right was a squeezed little throat of an alley nobody bothered to clean. Broken crates, discarded rope, some busted tile. That was better.
"Right!" I snapped.
Naruto veered without thinking. I skidded as we turned, sandals catching a loose plank. For a moment I felt my balance go—and then caught myself by slapping a hand against the wall, body folding low.
Behind us the shopkeeper barreled into the turn, slip-sliding on the trash.
I saw it like a scroll painting for half a heartbeat: his foot, the loose plank, the angle of his weight. All the pieces.
I yanked Naruto's sleeve hard.
"Drop the crate!"
"But—"
"NOW."
He let go. The box thunked to the ground. Carrots jumped. I scooped the rough rope that had been tied around it and kept running, fingers already moving.
I didn't have tags. Not proper ones. But I had ink stains up my fingers and half-dried scribbles on the inside of my sleeves from practicing kanji, and rope, and trash, and panic.
I looped the rope between two broken posts and jerked it taut at knee height, fingers forming messy, half-remembered seal shapes in the air instead of on paper.
"Please work please work please work—"
Chakra flared from my fingertips into the rope in a clumsy rush. It wasn't a written formula. It was the idea of one—stick, catch, hold.
Naruto jumped over the rope automatically. I dove under it, shoulder almost scraping the wet ground.
The shopkeeper hit it full stride.
There was a beautiful fraction of a second where his eyes went wide. The rope bit into his shins and didn't just flop—it yanked. His legs went out from under him. He flipped forward in a slow, glorious arc and smacked down onto his back with a noise like a dropped sack of rice.
The impact rattled my teeth from three meters away.
Naruto and I both stumbled to a stop, hearts hammering.
"Whoa," Naruto breathed.
The rope shivered, fibres glowing faintly with leftover chakra before dimming. The man groaned, air knocked clean out of him.
"Is he alive?" I whispered.
"Probably," Naruto said, which was not comforting.
Footsteps pounded at the far end of the alley. Someone must have heard the crash. I heard the metallic clink of a flak jacket buckle. Chūnin.
Panic clawed up my throat.
"Go," I said.
"What? We can't just—"
"Go. You're carrying the evidence, remember?" I kicked the fallen crate with my toe.
Naruto looked down at it, then at the shopkeeper, then at me. His face did that scrunched thing it did when he couldn't decide what the stupidest option was.
"You didn't even take anything," he said.
"I'm not the one everyone yells at on sight," I said. "Run, idiot."
He clenched his jaw, then grabbed two carrots from the scattered pile and crammed one into my hand.
"Split the loot," he said. "Fair's fair."
The footsteps were getting closer.
"On three," I said.
He nodded.
"One."
We turned opposite directions—him back toward the main road, me deeper into the maze toward the trash gap.
"Two."
I bent my knees, every bit of me buzzing. The alley was narrow enough that if I hugged the wall, they'd miss me. Probably.
"THREE!"
Naruto bolted.
I went the other way. Two fast steps, then a drop and roll under a leaning stack of broken planks, hugging myself against the cold stone. My heart pounded in my ears, loud enough I was sure the whole village could hear.
A chūnin skidded into view a heartbeat later, flak jacket dark green, forehead protector glinting.
"What happened here?" he barked.
The shopkeeper wheezed, waving a hand toward where Naruto had gone. "Brat—stole—my vegetables—"
The chūnin sighed like he'd seen this a hundred times before.
"Uzumaki again?"
Even from under the planks, Naruto's name hit like a thrown stone. The chūnin sprinted off after him, sandals pounding.
I stayed still until the footsteps faded. The rope lay slack now, ordinary again. My chakra was still tingling along its fibres.
It had worked.
I shimmied out of my hiding spot and grabbed the rope with shaking hands, then darted back the way we'd come. The shopkeeper groaned again, but when he saw me he just squinted.
"...you one of his little friends?" he mumbled.
"Who?" I said, as blankly as I could. "I tripped too. That guy's dangerous."
He stared at me. There were tomato seeds on his cheek.
After a moment, he just sighed and flopped his head back.
"Damn kids," he muttered.
I backed away, carrots poking out of my pocket, rope warm in my hand.
By the time I found Naruto again, he was sitting on top of the stone head of the Third on the little training field hill, soaked in sweat and tomato pulp, legs swinging.
"You got caught," I said, climbing up beside him.
"Yeah, well, you vanished," he said. "One second you were behind me, the next you were—wooosh." He flung his hands out. "Like some kinda—some kinda Running Away Form."
I snorted, then immediately tried not to snort.
"Running Away Form isn't a real thing," I said.
"It is now!" He jabbed a finger at me. "You don't fight, you just—" he hopped to his feet and started imitating me, sort of—backsteps, half-turns, ducking low, hopping over an imaginary rope. "Step-step, crouch, roll, fwoosh—'I'm not here, Naruto, deal with it yourself!'"
"I do not say that."
"You say it with your legs," he declared. "Nige-ashi no Kata! Form of Running Away!"
He shouted it like an actual jutsu name, voice echoing over the empty field.
I laughed despite myself, nervous tension shaking out of my shoulders.
"It's not a form," I said. "It's called not wanting to die."
"Same thing," he said, flopping back down and tearing into his carrot. "You're good at it."
I looked down at the rope in my hands, at the faint smudges where my chakra had soaked into it. The idea of kanji and formulas and tight circles of ink swirled in my head.
"Maybe it should be a form," I said quietly.
Naruto glanced at me, mouth full of carrot.
"What?"
"Nothing." I bit my own carrot, taste sharp and sweet and stolen. "Just…if I'm always going to be running away, I may as well be really, really good at it."
Naruto chewed, then grinned.
"Then I'll just have to be really, really good at chasing you," he said. "Can't let my teammate out-rank me in coward jutsu."
He said it like a joke.
I pretended it didn't make something glow warm in my chest, too.