By the time they kicked me out of the hospital, my chakra felt like stale bread.
Migaki had that look—the one where he'd start assigning extra rounds just out of spite if I fell over in front of him—so I signed out, dropped my spare gloves in the laundry chute, and let the night air swallow me on the front steps.
Konoha after midnight is a different village.
The lanterns are fewer. The streets are mostly empty except for the occasional patrol or drunk jōnin. The smell shifts from street food and exhaust to damp stone, night flowers, and the faint, clean bite of distant forests.
I cut across the back streets out of habit, hugging the line of the outer hospital wall, then slipped through a gap between two storage sheds instead of taking the main road home.
It was the long way. My legs hated me for it. My brain wanted the quiet.
Instead, I got steel singing through the air.
I stopped dead.
Somewhere up ahead, past the row of low buildings, metal was moving. Fast. A constant shshshSHUNK rhythm, air being cut over and over, followed by the soft thuds of impact and the papery hiss of scrolls.
My chakra-sense prickled awake before my conscious thought did. A thin, taut line of chakra stretched across the night from the right, bright and precise. It tasted like drawn bowstring—tension and focus and the smug, clean satisfaction of something hitting exactly where it was supposed to.
Practice field, I realized. Number… twelve? I'd never been there at night.
Curiosity tripped my feet forward before exhaustion could drag me home.
The field was carved into a little hollow between buildings, more like a big courtyard than a forest clearing. Training posts lined one side; target dummies slumped across the back like overworked scarecrows. Someone had hung paper lanterns along the fence, their warm glow barely holding back the night.
Weapons filled the sky.
Not literally, but it sure looked like it.
Scrolls bloomed open in midair like paper flowers, kanji flashing as they spat kunai, shuriken, and larger shapes into arcing, spinning paths. A Fūma shuriken the size of my torso whirled past in a wide circle, blades flashing as it skimmed three practice posts in a row.
At the center of it all, Tenten moved.
She was a hinge point around which steel orbited—feet grounded, arms tracing sharp, economical patterns through the air. She'd flick a wrist and a scroll snapped open; jerk her elbow and something flew, then another something, and another. Her chakra felt like fine wire threaded through everything, a net of attention. No spills. No wasted motion.
My tired brain did a little stutter, then quietly labeled the whole thing broken as hell.
In the good way.
A kunai thudded into the post right next to my head.
I flinched so hard my glasses nearly came off.
"Uh—sorry!"
Tenten skidded to a stop, hands flying together in a practiced seal. The scrolls froze, then folded themselves closed and drifted gently down around her like embarrassed leaves.
I carefully peeled myself off the fence post.
The kunai stuck in the wood was dead center between two old practice marks. If I hadn't been there, it would've been a perfect bullseye.
Which somehow made it more terrifying.
"You okay?" Tenten called, jogging over. She'd pulled her hair up into twin buns again, stray strands plastered to her forehead with sweat. Her hitai-ate was shoved back on her head like she'd forgotten about it mid-drill.
"I am now," I said, trying to make my voice not wobble. "You, uh. Have a very… aggressive resting training style."
Her mouth quirked. "You were standing in my blind spot."
"Didn't know there was a blind spot," I muttered. "Looked like you were attacking the concept of empty air."
She snorted, catching the kunai handle in one hand and tugging it free.
Up close, the details got… loud.
The kunai's ring was a different metal than the handle. The wrapping was uneven, like someone had done it fast and re-done it twice. The steel had been re-sharpened enough that the spine looked slightly hungry. There were tiny file marks where a factory edge would've been smooth.
It wasn't bad.
It was used.
And it didn't match the image in my head of Tenten—who, if you listened to the gossip, basically slept on a pile of legendary weapons and woke up every morning to a new scroll delivered by the gods.
Her hands were worse, in a way that made my throat tighten: calluses, little nicks and scars crisscrossing the backs like tiny maps. The kind you earned, not the kind you got from one tournament and a dramatic montage.
"You're Sylvie, right?" she said. "Pink hair, glasses, tags. Team Kakashi."
"That's me," I said. "And you're the one who tried to turn Temari into a pincushion."
"Past tense," she said bitterly. "She turned me into a pancake instead."
The humor in her chakra kinked, a little dip of blue frustration under the sharp copper of focus.
I'd seen her lose, of course. Everyone had. It had been quick and ugly—her beautiful arcing patterns shredded by a single sweep of wind, weapons scattered, body slammed into a wall.
Seeing the aftermath of that loss out here, alone, with her rebuilding the whole sky with her own hands… hit different.
"Could've gone worse," I said. "At least you didn't get eaten by sand."
"Low bar," she said, but some of the tension in her shoulders eased. "What are you doing out here, anyway? Thought you lived at the hospital now."
"On loan," I said. "Migaki let me go home before I fused with the linoleum."
She made a sympathetic face. "He's kind of scary."
"He's kind of right about everything, which is worse," I said.
Tenten huffed a laugh. Her eyes flicked up to the sky over the field, then back to me. "You want to watch?" she asked. "Or is that weird?"
"I think it might be weirder if I pretend I didn't just see that," I said. "I promise not to stand in the kill box this time."
"Deal," she said, and jerked her chin at a safer spot near the fence. "Just… don't tell Gai-sensei if I miss. He gets this tragic look and starts talking about youth wilting."
"My lips are sealed," I said—then winced at my own horrible pun. "Sorry. That was accidental."
She gave me a look that said she'd heard worse from Lee on his third cup of morning energy drink.
Tenten bounced back into the center of the field. The scrolls rose again around her in a slow, graceful halo.
Watching it from the side, without flinching for my life, I could really see the patterns.
She wasn't just throwing things randomly. Each scroll had a zone: high arc, midline, low sweep. Her hands flicked between them, switching loads the way I'd flick between brushes—heavy stroke, fine detail, that one good inking pen you baby because if it breaks you have to go back to the cheap ones.
Except—
Except these were the cheap ones.
I noticed it like a bruise you only feel once someone presses it. The shuriken weren't uniform. Some had slightly different angles on the points. A few flashed with the dull gray of old steel. The Fūma shuriken had a repaired nick on one blade, the kind of patch you only make when you refuse to throw something away.
And then I spotted what wasn't in the sky.
On the ground near the lantern post, half in shadow, was a scroll case that looked… expensive. Old lacquer, polished metal fittings, a subtle crest pressed into the leather. It sat apart from everything else like a rich cousin at a poor kid's birthday party.
It stayed closed.
My chakra-sight layered over it whether I liked it or not.
Every piece of metal had a faint taste of Tenten's chakra stamped on it—quick, clean, clipped, like her handwriting. A million little signatures flicking away from her, hitting their marks, staining the dummies with tiny sparks.
The closed scroll case tasted different.
Not wrong.
Just… not hers. Like perfume on borrowed clothes.
When she finally stopped, breathing hard, sweat running down the side of her neck, the field was… decorated.
Targets riddled with steel. Poles sprouting weapons like weird, vicious trees. A handful of kunai sunk so deep into the far fence that only the rings showed.
And she looked at all of it with this faint, dissatisfied wrinkle between her brows.
"I thought that was incredible," I blurted.
Her head snapped toward me. "You did?"
"Yes?" I flailed a hand at the field. "You just turned the entire sky into a weapons system. I'm pretty sure if you sneezed wrong in the middle of that, an entire squadron would cease to exist."
She flushed, a quick, embarrassed pink.
"Everyone else has bloodlines," she said. The words came out too fast, like they'd been waiting behind her teeth all night. "Neji has the Byakugan. Hinata does too. Naruto's got his whole fox thing. Sasuke's got those stupid eyes. Temari's got a giant murder fan and a demon raccoon brother. Gaara just stands there and lets his sand babysit him."
"That's one way to describe it," I said.
"And me?" she went on, steamrolling right over it. "I have… scrolls. I'm 'the weapons girl.'" Her fingers curled in midair like she was grabbing at something that wasn't there. "No destiny speech. No tragic clan history. Just calluses and a lot of time alone on practice fields."
Her chakra fizzed sharper, anger sparking bright under the frustration.
I glanced, without meaning to, at the expensive scroll case by the lantern.
Then at the mismatched kunai in her hand.
The story clicked—not as a neat line, but as a mess of pressure points.
"Those aren't the same weapons you used in the prelims," I said carefully.
Tenten went still.
Her eyes flicked to the ground, to that lacquered case, then back to me like I'd pointed at a bruise.
"Yeah," she said flatly. "No kidding."
"They feel…" I swallowed. "They feel like you. The ones back there feel like… a display."
Her jaw tightened.
"My family's," she said, like it hurt to say the word. "The nice scrolls. The nice steel. The nice everything. Like I'm a walking catalog." She huffed once, sharp. "They bought me gear like it was the same thing as believing in me."
I didn't trust my mouth for a second, so I just listened.
"I didn't lose to Temari because I can't throw," she said, voice tight and controlled, the way you talked when you refused to cry. "I lost because I hesitated. I kept thinking—if it breaks, if it gets blown away, if it gets stolen—then I'm the girl who ruined something that isn't even mine. I kept fighting like the mission was 'protect the inventory.'"
Her chakra tasted like iron for a heartbeat.
"And then I got pancaked anyway," she finished, bitterly.
Something in me went cold and familiar in an ugly way I didn't want to name. The feeling of being assessed by what you could preserve, what you could represent, what you could carry without dropping.
I swallowed.
"I don't know," I said quietly. "Looks pretty legendary from where I'm standing."
She snorted. "You saw my match. Legendary girl got blown into a wall in front of three villages' worth of spectators."
"Yeah," I said. "By someone whose whole elemental specialty happens to hard-counter your entire deal. That's like… making a perfect paper army and then it rains." I shrugged. "Doesn't mean the army was bad."
She actually smiled at that, quick and crooked.
"Paper army," she repeated. "Your brain works weird."
"Thank you," I said automatically.
We stood there for a bit, breathing the same night air, listening to Konoha's distant noises.
"Anyway," she said finally, toeing one of the dropped scrolls—one of the cheap ones, scuffed and patched at the seam. "You probably think it's stupid I'm out here trying to reinvent the same drills. Gai-sensei says I should see this as an 'opportunity for growth.' I think he means 'don't sulk.'"
"I don't think it's stupid," I said. "I think it's terrifying in a very practical way."
She glanced at me, skeptical.
"In my head," I tried to explain, "if we were… a team on a mission or something, and there was a 'party composition chart'—" I stopped. That was dangerously close to words I wasn't supposed to lean on. "—you'd be the entire ranged division, crowd control, and supply logistics all in one person. That's not 'just the weapons girl.' That's… that's siege engine."
"That's a lot of responsibility to stick on one short person," she said, but her shoulders straightened a little.
"I mean, you literally control the airspace," I said, pointing up. "That's a kind of bloodline. It's just… one you built yourself."
She went very still at that.
Her chakra tightened, then smoothed out, like someone had just run a hand down a snarled rope.
"Yeah, well," she said, trying for nonchalant and not quite making it. "Self-made bloodline isn't much use if you turn everyone into shish-kebab when the mission is 'bring them back alive.'"
That snagged my attention hard.
"You get a lot of 'bring them back alive' orders?" I asked.
"Not yet," she said. "But Gai-sensei says we will." Her mouth twisted. "And right now, almost everything I throw is meant to carve something up or blow something apart. I can pull punches, use flat sides, go for non-vitals, sure, but… one mistake, and—" She made a little slicing gesture. "Oops. No more hostage."
Her chakra flashed, for an instant, a vivid image of a kunai slipping a little too low. Of red on stone. Of Gai's face going expressionless in a way I never wanted to see.
I swallowed.
"I don't want to be the reason Lee or Neji get that look," she said quietly. "Or you. Or Naruto. Or anybody."
We were both silent for a second.
"I don't like killing people either," I admitted. "Turns out, shockingly, that watching kids get their bones blown apart is not my favorite part of ninja culture."
She huffed. "You and Lee. 'Protect, don't kill.' You're a very annoying duo."
"We try," I said.
The idea slid into place then, so smoothly it felt like it had been waiting.
"Tenten," I said slowly, "have you thought about… nonlethal loadouts?"
She blinked. "Nonlethal…?"
"Yeah." I gestured at the pile of steel lurking patiently in the dirt. "You control the entire sky. Why does everything in the sky have to stab?"
"Because sharp things go farther?" she tried.
"Not necessarily," I said. "What about nets? Weighted chains? You could tangle legs, pin arms. What if some of the scrolls had capture stuff instead of puncture stuff?"
She considered that, the gears in her head clearly shifting.
"Nets get shredded easily," she said. "And they're bulky. Already carrying three full scrolls plus emergency loads. Weight adds up."
"Okay, but what if the net is the payload?" I said, already reaching for my notebook. "You seal it into the scroll. Summon it already dropping. Or—look—"
I knelt in the dirt and flipped to a blank page, uncapping my pen. Tenten dropped down next to me, weapons forgotten for the moment.
"Bolas," I said, scribbling a crude sketch. "Two or three weighted ends, connected by cord. You throw it, it wraps around ankles. Hunters use them. Probably. Somewhere."
She peered. "Too much drag."
"Right, but what if—" I scribbled again, adding little rectangles along the cords—"we integrate tags? Low-yield stun seals, or sticky tags that activate on impact. They don't have to blow up. Just… discharge."
Her eyebrows climbed. "Stun tags?"
"I already make flash and smoke tags," I said. "It wouldn't be that big a leap to make a tag that dumps a jolt of disrupted chakra into whatever it hits. Enough to knock someone's limb numb for a few seconds. Or make their muscles seize up." I poked the sketch. "So your bola hits, wraps, tags fire, target goes down, not dead, mission success, nobody gets Fox Lecture about murderous tendencies."
She stared at the page like it was a particularly interesting enemy formation.
"If you can make those tags light enough," she said slowly, "and if I can recalibrate a scroll for their weight… I could launch a storm of them before anyone realized they weren't standard kunai."
Her eyes lit.
"Imagine," she went on, the words speeding up, "opening a scroll and instead of a rain of steel, it's a rain of stun-bolas. Whole squad tangled. Then I follow with regular weapons if needed. Or smoke. Or more nets. I could have layers."
Her chakra flared around us, a bright, eager ring.
"Layers are good," I said. "Onions, seals, complex girls—"
She choked on a laugh. "You're weird."
"You keep saying that," I said. "It keeps being true."
She snatched the notebook gently out of my hands, holding it so the lanternlight caught the messy lines. "What about kunai?" she asked. "Most of my scroll loads are calibrated for kunai weight and spin. I can't replace everything."
"Right," I said, leaning in again. "Okay, what if… the kunai is the carrier."
I drew another quick sketch: a kunai with a paper ring wrapped just behind the blade.
"See," I said, tapping it, "tag folds around the handle. I write a seal that's triggered by impact and keyed to chakra in the metal. When it hits something solid, the seal pops and releases a burst of… noise, basically. A concussion wave instead of a blade penetration. It'll still hurt, might bruise, might knock someone flat, but less… fatal."
"Concussion kunai," she murmured.
"Working title," I said. "We can name it something cooler later."
"Like 'Tenten's Magnificent Justice Storm,'" she said thoughtfully.
"We're workshopping," I said quickly.
She nudged my shoulder with hers. "You're not bad at this," she said. "For someone who mostly makes paper do stupid tricks."
"You literally make paper spit murder," I said. "We're in the same weird arts-and-crafts club."
Her grin went crooked. "Yeah. Maybe we are."
She flipped the notebook closed and handed it back to me—then pulled it toward herself again at the last second.
"Can I…?" she asked.
"Keep the page," I said. "I can redraw it. Maybe cleaner."
She tore the sketch out carefully along the spine and folded it into a neat square, tucking it into the pouch at her hip where she kept her favorite tools.
"I'll try these after the exams," she said. "Gai-sensei will have a heart attack if I change my whole kit right before a big mission."
"Please don't kill your teacher with innovation," I said. "He already has enough to scream about."
She snorted. "If this works, I'm telling everyone it was my idea."
"Of course," I said. "I'll sue you for royalties later."
We stood, brushing dirt off our knees.
She went back to the center of the field, rolling her shoulders, picking up her scrolls—the scuffed ones first, the ones with patched seams and inked-over kanji. The lanternlight caught on her profile; for a second, she looked like a statue in the training yard—some future hero captured mid-determination.
The expensive scroll case stayed by the lantern, untouched.
Not abandoned.
Just… waiting for the day she could open it without flinching.
"Hey, Sylvie?" she called without turning.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks," she said. "For… not treating me like I'm 'just the weapons girl.'"
"Anytime," I said. "Somebody's got to make the sky interesting."
She laughed, bright and quick, and the scrolls snapped open again.
This time, as the weapons rose, I didn't just see blades. I saw potential lines for nets, loops, nonlethal arcs. I saw places where stun tags could flare, where ropes could entangle, where capture could be more elegant than blood.
Metal traced constellations against the black—a private galaxy of steel and skill.
Practice Field Twelve had its own stars, and Tenten was rearranging them by hand.
I leaned against the fence, notebook warm in my pocket, and watched her redraw the sky.