By the time Neji found the broken tree, Lee's trail was already a mess.
Gouged bark. Kicked-up dirt. A footprint that was almost a crater.
"He really went all out," Tenten muttered at his shoulder, hands on her hips. A scroll knocked lightly against her thigh as she shifted. "You're sure this is the right way?"
Neji didn't answer immediately. His Byakugan traced the lingering outlines of Lee's chakra in the air—faint now, scraps of motion pressed into the forest like afterimages.
"When has he ever gone a little out," Neji said.
Tenten snorted. "Fair."
Lee's chakra signature was easy to distinguish, even at distance: bright, loud, constantly moving, like a bonfire that didn't know how to be embers. Neji had been tracking it since the moment Lee had bolted away from their assigned route to "check on Sylvie-san."
Then there'd been the spike.
That.
One moment, Lee's chakra had been a fast, steady swirl in the direction of the Uchiha and Uzumaki signatures. The next, something had flared in that area—huge, ugly, twisting. Like a Gate opening, and also…not. The quality had been wrong. Thicker. Sour.
For one heartbeat, Neji had been sure Lee had ignored every warning and flung half his life out through his tenketsu.
Then it had shifted again, settled into a different shape entirely. Still wrong. Just…contained.
Neji didn't like not having a name for something.
"Neji," Tenten said quietly. "You saw that too, right?"
He let his Byakugan fade. The veins around his eyes smoothed out. The forest returned to normal contact-range depth.
"Yes," he said.
"And?" she pressed.
"And it was not Lee opening a Gate," he said. "The flow pattern was different. Not self-generated." He paused. "More like something was forced into one of them. The Uchiha, probably."
"Ugh." Tenten made a face. "Creepy forest snake guy creepy again?"
Neji thought of the Kusagakure team that had stopped moving altogether not long after that flare. Three signatures, snuffed. No struggle. Just there one moment, gone the next.
He did not share that particular detail.
"He was in their vicinity," Neji said. "So yes. Probably Orochimaru."
"Awesome," Tenten said flatly. "Love that for us."
They'd made a deliberate choice after feeling that wave of chakra: circle wide, avoid the epicenter, and come in only when the pressure dropped. They had their scrolls already. Risking his team on whatever Orochimaru was doing to Leaf genin was stupidity.
But Lee was part of his team too.
Which was why they were here, following the ghost of his idiot chakra through torn-up undergrowth and half-scorched trunks, threading carefully around clusters of unfamiliar signatures. Neji steered them along the least crowded routes, avoiding two different skirmishes by slipping behind ridges and letting the trees eat their trail.
"You could've told Gai-sensei," Tenten said, ducking under a low branch. "About the weird flare."
"And have him charge off alone into the forest after both Orochimaru and Lee?" Neji said. "No."
She grimaced. "Yeah, okay. Fair."
They moved in silence for a while, the kind that came from being used to each other's pacing. Birds screamed overhead. A tree off to their left showed the unmistakable pattern of compressed air damage and scorch—someone's bad day.
Neji checked the tower's direction briefly, as a habit. Still time, as long as they didn't get pulled into any more fights.
"His chakra drops off around here," he said finally. "He's not moving now."
Tenten's shoulders stiffened. "Not…moving, like…?"
"Like unconscious," Neji said. "Not like dead."
She exhaled. "Okay. Good. That's…good."
He didn't say that you could be unconscious first and dead later. He just angled his body toward the patch of trees ahead where Lee's signature lay faint and stubborn, tangled with several others—Uchiha, Uzumaki, Sylvie, and traces of that foreign, tainted presence, already fading.
Up close, the forest smelled like ozone and ink and too many burned tags.
Tenten squinted. "Feels like we're walking into the remains of a fireworks accident."
"Accurate," Neji said.
A few more steps, and he caught it: the soft, ragged saw of a familiar breath pattern. Barely audible over bugs and wind, but unmistakable when you'd bunked near it through too many training camps.
Tenten's face lit with relieved annoyance.
"It's okay," she said, dry affection sliding into her tone. "I'm pretty sure I can hear Lee snoring over there."
She jerked her chin toward a cluster of trees ahead, then stepped forward, pushing a branch aside.
Neji followed her into the clearing.
By the time my brain caught up, Neji and Tenten were just…there.
Like they'd grown out of the trees while I blinked.
Lee was out again—properly out now, not the dramatic one-eye-open nonsense. Tenten had him propped against a trunk, fussing with his bandages in a brisk, practiced way that made my medic instincts feel small and amateurish. Neji stood a few steps away, arms folded, Byakugan not active but there behind his eyes like a judgmental ghost.
Naruto was finally awake for real, sitting cross-legged with his arms thrown over his knees. Sasuke leaned against the other side of my tree, arms folded too, eyes half-lidded, curses burned out of his chakra but still pacing under his skin.
The clearing looked like a crime scene from a bad war story. Scorched earth, gouged bark, my hair everywhere. I tried not to look at the drift of pink-brown strands where Kin had held them.
"So," I said, because someone had to start. "Inventory check. We're not dead. That's a plus."
Naruto snorted. "Coulda fooled me. My head feels like a taijutsu class used it as a drum."
"Language," I croaked.
He squinted at me. "…you look different."
"Oh my god," I said. "We did this already."
"Your hair's cooler," Lee had said. Naruto's version was more "demolition site." Progress, I guess.
Neji cut across before Naruto could wind up.
"You have both scrolls," he said, tone flat, eyes on the two tubes at my belt. "Heaven and Earth."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Yeah. We started with Heaven." I tapped one. "Sound Trio left an Earth scroll when they retreated. Payment for not dying to them, I guess."
"Payment for surviving Orochimaru," Sasuke said quietly.
The way he said the name made something in my chest twitch. I felt his chakra spike and flatten again, like it was trying to peel itself off his coils and go somewhere, anywhere.
I nudged the Squad Mark on him gently with my own chakra, the tiniest tap of check in.
It shivered, then settled. For now.
Neji nodded once. "Then you have what you need. The shortest path to the tower from here is east-northeast." He turned slightly, chin indicating the direction. "My team has already secured the required scrolls and confirmed the route. We will take Lee and proceed there directly."
Naruto scowled. "Who asked you, eyebrow clone?"
Tenten looked genuinely offended on Neji's behalf. "Excuse me?"
Neji didn't even look at Naruto. "We don't have time to waste," he said to the air in general. "Sasuke is compromised. The enemy that inflicted that mark is still in the forest. Remaining in one place increases risk."
"Yeah, that's why I think we should not sprain our everything rushing off right this second," I said. "Your team might be fine, but Lee is half paste, Sasuke's…" I waved a hand vaguely at him. "…whatever that is, and Naruto's got 'post-Monster Mode crash' written all through his chakra."
Naruto perked up at that. "Monster mode?"
"Not the point," I said.
Neji's eyes flickered to me. I felt the weight of his assessment like a measuring tape.
"You want to delay," he said.
"I want a window," I corrected. "An hour. Two, if we can steal it. Enough time for Lee to stabilize, for Sasuke to…not keel over, and for Naruto's reserves to climb back from 'sleepy raccoon' to 'functional menace.' We're in no shape to fight anyone serious right now. You know that."
Tenten's hands paused on Lee's sleeve. "She's not wrong," she said. "His pulse is all over the place. If we make him walk too soon, he'll just faceplant at the tower gate."
Neji's jaw tightened a fraction.
"The longer we remain, the more likely we encounter another hostile team," he said. "Or worse, Orochimaru again."
"You avoided him once already," I said. "You can do it again for a couple hours."
His gaze sharpened. "How did you—"
"You showed up after everything exploded," I said. "You don't smell like snake. I can do basic math."
Naruto made a face. "You smell people now?"
"It's a metaphor," I lied.
Sasuke pushed off the tree a little, the movement small but tight, like everything under his skin ached.
"We should move," he said.
I looked over. His eyes were dark, flat; the Sharingan wasn't active, but it felt like it should be. His chakra hummed low and ugly, restless under the seal.
"You just almost murdered three people," I said gently. "Maybe sit with that for five minutes before you decide we're going on a hike."
Naruto flinched. Tenten's eyes flicked between us, taking in more than I wanted her to. Neji's spine went even straighter, if that was possible.
Sasuke's mouth thinned. "Staying put makes us targets."
Remaining where Orochimaru had marked him, where anyone with a decent sensor range could smell the wrongness on his chakra—it made his skin crawl. I could feel it, the way his energy refused to settle, like it was vibrating against the inside of his ribs.
He wasn't wrong. He just wasn't entirely right, either.
"We're targets either way," I said. "Difference is whether our tank here—" I jerked a thumb at Naruto "—and our damage dealer—" I nodded at Sasuke "—are at, like, thirty percent or sixty."
Naruto made a choked noise. "I'm the tank?"
"Congratulations on your promotion," I said. "It comes with a lifetime supply of yelling."
Neji watched this with that distant, superior expression he wore like a forehead protector.
"You're too sentimental," he said finally. "If you misjudge your window and encounter another threat, you'll die because you insisted on resting here."
"Yes," I said. "And if I ignore three critically injured idiots and push them to sprint across Murder Woods because a boy with magic eyes told me to, they die because I cared more about the clock than their bodies."
He opened his mouth, then shut it.
The silence that followed felt like someone had just dropped a needle on a record.
Tenten's lips twitched. "She's got you there," she murmured.
I realized my hands were shaking again. I laced my fingers together in my lap so no one would see.
"I don't…care about failing this exam as much as I care about not losing anyone else," I said, lower now. "We have time. So we use it."
Neji looked at me properly then, not like a piece on a board but like a variable he hadn't accounted for.
"You're the seal user," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry about the mess."
His gaze flicked to the scattered tags, the scorched bark, the faint pulsing marks on our wrists.
"And the medic," he added.
I shrugged. "Discount version. But yeah."
A tiny nod. Almost imperceptible.
"Very well," he said. "An hour."
His gaze lingered a fraction too long on the light warping in her glasses, on the way she seemed to track things he couldn't see, then slid away. No, it wasn't her chakra that bothered him now, or even the burned hands. It was her eyes. Not the color -an ordinary hazel- but the way they moved: always checking the edges first, measuring exits, like someone who had learned early that danger rarely came from straight ahead.
Neji recognized that look. Branch house children wore it young.
A question rose to his mouth 'who taught you to look like that?' and died there.
Hyūga etiquette was simple: you did not pry into the scars other people pretended not to have. No one had ever offered him that courtesy, but he still knew the rule. He turned his head away instead.
"An hour," he repeated.
Tenten blinked. "Wait, really?"
He ignored her surprise. "We'll stay until Lee is stable enough to move without worsening his condition," he clarified. "After that, we leave. And if you insist on remaining beyond that point, it's your risk."
"I can work with that," I said. Relief sagged in my bones so fast it made me dizzy. "Thank you."
He gave me one more measuring look, then turned his head slightly toward Naruto, who had been making increasingly obnoxious faces in his peripheral vision, trying to get a reaction.
"So you're just gonna ignore me, huh?" Naruto said, leaning forward. "Too scared to talk to the future Hokage?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Here we go."
Tenten sighed under her breath. "Do you ever stop?"
"Why would I?" Naruto demanded. "He's looking down on us like he's already passed. We're not weaklings!"
"Two of you were unconscious when we arrived," Neji said without inflection.
Naruto spluttered. "That—that was temporary!"
Neji turned away. "Tenten. Finish with Lee."
"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, adjusting the last wrap. "Bossy."
We settled into a rough, uneasy almost-camp. Tenten checked Lee's pupils again, satisfied when they reacted properly. I re-taped Naruto's ribs, redid Sasuke's bandage over the curse mark with more layers and less shaking. Neji stood watch, eyes half-lidded, attention sweeping the trees even when his Byakugan wasn't obviously active.
The hour slid by.
When Neji finally straightened from where he'd been leaning on a branch, the sun had shifted just enough to burn through the canopy, shards of light hitting the ruined ground. Lee's breathing was stronger. Naruto's chakra had climbed from "wheezing candle" to "annoying lantern." Sasuke's storm had quieted to a simmer.
"It's time," Neji said.
Tenten got to her feet with a groan. "You're carrying him," she told Neji. "My shoulders are not built for two hours of green spandex and broken bones."
Lee made a faint, protesting noise. "I can…walk…"
"Nope," three of us said at once.
Neji crouched, hauling Lee onto his back like it was nothing. Lee flopped there, half-conscious, mumbling something about youthful flames into Neji's shoulder.
Tenten grabbed Lee's dropped nunchaku and one of my spare tags that had glued to his shoe. "Souvenir," she said, tucking it away.
Neji turned to go, then paused. For the first time since arriving, he looked directly at Naruto.
"Don't follow me," he said.
Naruto's jaw dropped. "Why would I follow you?!"
Neji didn't elaborate. He just stepped into the trees with Lee on his back, Tenten falling into stride beside him. In a few breaths, they were gone, eaten by leaves and distance.
The clearing felt bigger without them. And emptier.
Naruto glared at the spot where Neji had vanished, fists clenched.
"What does that even mean?" he demanded.
Sasuke snorted softly. "It means he thinks you're an idiot."
"I know what it means," Naruto shot back. "It's just—what—argh."
I patted his shoulder. "Look on the bright side. You have a new rival now."
"I did not sign up for extra rivals," he complained.
"Too late," I said. "They come free with the 'want to be Hokage' starter pack."
He huffed, crossing his arms.
We still had to move. The tower wasn't going to walk to us. But for one more breath, I let myself sit there between them, feeling their chakra hum against my senses—Naruto bright and stubborn, Sasuke sharp and wary, the forest still heavy with what we'd survived.
"Alright," I said finally. "Break's over. Let's go be suicidal somewhere closer to the finish line."
Naruto cracked his neck, already shifting into motion.
"Yeah," he said. "And this time, I'm not sleeping through anything."
The way he said it stuck in my head.
Naruto trudged through the underbrush, kicking at roots like they'd offended him personally.
He hated being behind.
Not just physically—though that too, stupid forest—but in the story in his head. Important stuff had happened while he was out cold: snake freaks, cursed marks, Sylvie cutting her hair in the middle of a fight; Rock Lee dropping in like a green comet and almost dying; Neji showing up and acting like everyone else were background extras.
And Naruto Uzumaki was not background anything.
He glanced sideways at Sylvie, who was walking with her hands shoved in her pockets, eyes scanning the trees, hair hacked short and uneven and somehow still very…her. Sasuke on the other side, quiet, jaw tight, like he was carrying something heavier than his own weight.
They'd both done things. Big things.
Naruto's fists tightened around the straps of his pack.
Next time, he thought. Next fight. No more sleeping through it. No more being the guy who wakes up after and asks what happened.
He'd be front and center. He'd show Neji, show the Old Man, show everyone—including himself—that he wasn't just loud chakra and stupid luck.
He grinned, sharp and a little feral, already imagining it.
Whatever came next in this forest, he was going to blow it away.