The Land of Waves mission had begun under a deceptive canopy of spring sunlight, but for Shorai, the world was never just scenery. It was a grid of tactical variables.
About a hundred meters... Shorai calculated. He adjusted his pace, drifting toward the rear of the formation where Kakashi walked with a bored, rhythmic slouch.
"Kakashi-san," Shorai murmured, his voice barely a vibration against the wind. "Nature calls. I'll rejoin you shortly. No need to wait."
Kakashi didn't break stride, but a single, sharp lift of his eyebrow was all the permission Shorai needed. To the Genin trio ahead, Shorai simply seemed to lag behind, eventually obscured by a bend in the road.
The moment he was out of their line of sight, the "Academy student" vanished.
Shorai thinned his chakra until it was a mere whisper. He didn't just walk; he became part of the forest's respiratory rhythm. He ascended a massive oak, his boots making soundless contact with the bark, and trailed the group from the shadows of the upper canopy.
He activated the Reality Stone for a fraction of a second. Perception Mode.
The world bled into infrared and crimson. He scanned the road ahead. No abnormalities in the fabric of space. No hidden seals. Just the same faint, yellow-tinged energy imprints he had seen on everyone since the Graduation Night. He shut it down immediately, switching to his natural chakra-pulse sensory.
Two signatures. Chunin-level. Skillful, but specialized.
Shorai watched as Team 7 approached a small, stagnant puddle. On a dry day like this, it was an amateur's mistake, a loud scream in a quiet room.
A ripple broke the surface.
Water Release combined with Henge, Shorai noted, impressed despite the circumstances. Seasoned teamwork.
The ambush was a blur of steel and cold intent. A chain, heavy and jagged with sharpened links, erupted from the water. Two figures—the Demon Brothers—emerged back-to-back, their metallic claws glinting with a dull, predatory light.
Zzzeeemm!
The chain whistled through the air, snaking around surprised looking Kakashi. Naruto froze, his breath hitching in a way that signaled a complete cognitive shutdown. Sakura screamed, the sound sharp and brittle. Sasuke was the only one whose muscles coiled into a response, though even he was a heartbeat behind the rhythm of the kill.
"One down!" the brothers roared.
They wrenched the chain. In a spray of what looked like blood and shredded cloth, the "Copy Ninja" was torn into three distinct pieces.
From his branch, Shorai's hand hovered over the hilt of his seal-engraved kunai. His pulse was steady, cold. He watched the "remains" of Kakashi hit the dirt.
Subtle. Transformation to thin the mass, followed by an instant Substitution, Shorai analyzed.
A shadow flickered beside him. Kakashi was suddenly standing on the same branch, his visible eye narrowed into a cold, clinical slit. They shared a silent, appreciative glance—a veteran captain and a budding operative—before turning their attention back to the stage below.
"Now it's your turn!" one brother spat, leaping toward the paralyzed Naruto.
Sasuke moved. It was a display of honed Uchiha reflex. He vaulted into the air, pinning the chain to a tree with a shuriken and locking it with a kunai in a single, fluid motion. Using the chain as a pivot, he delivered a double-kick to the brothers' masked faces.
The killers grunted, releasing the chain and splitting their focus. One charged the bridge-builder; the other swung around to finish the blonde boy.
Sasuke landed, his eyes darting between the two threats. He made a choice—he outran the attacker heading for Tazuna, applying a burst of chakra to his soles that made Shorai's eyes narrow.
Natural growth? Or an unconscious echo of something else?
Sakura stood her ground, trembling, kunai raised in a desperate guard in front of the client. Sasuke stepped in front of her, his silhouette defiant.
Time to end the play, Shorai thought.
He didn't look at Kakashi. He simply fed chakra into his legs, laced it with a stabilizing current of Wind, and moved.
Woosh!
A white blur materialized in the air between Naruto and the reaching claw of the Demon Brother. The enemy's gray eyes widened behind his breathing mask—a moment of pure, unadulterated hesitation.
Shorai didn't waste it. He delivered a snapping kick to the man's sternum, the impact amplified by a precise expulsion of chakra. The Chunin was sent hurtling backward directly into his twin.
Before they could untangle, Kakashi appeared. With a nonchalant grace that bordered on insulting, he placed a palm on each of their faces and slammed their heads together.
Dun!
The brothers went limp. The forest returned to a sudden, ringing silence.
"Kakashi-sensei! Shorai-kun!" Sakura gasped, her voice thick with relief.
Naruto stared at Shorai, then at the shredded logs where Kakashi had "died." "S-shorai...? Where did you...?"
"Sorry, Naruto," Shorai said, dropping his combat stance and ruffling his own white hair. "I didn't help immediately... nature called. It was a long walk."
Kakashi gave Shorai a silent nod of understanding as he began binding the prisoners with wire.
"Naruto, are you hurt?" Kakashi asked, his tone shifting from praise for Sasuke and Sakura to a sharp, evaluating coldness as he looked at the blonde boy. Naruto's hand was shaking—a shallow cut from the poisoned claw had begun to seep a dark, sluggish purple.
Shorai stepped closer, his analytical mind already dissecting the wound. Who can blame him? The jump from the Academy to a kill-zone is a cliff most fall off of. You either have the predisposition—a strategic apathy—or you don't.
"Kakashi-san," Shorai asked, his eyes turning cold. "The scent... that's a paralytic neurotoxin, isn't it? If the circulation isn't managed, he'll be dead weight in an hour."
Tazuna paled. Kakashi began the interrogation, revealing that the mission was no longer a C-rank. It was an assassination contract.
"This is beyond us!" Sakura cried. "We have to go back! Naruto needs a hospital!"
"That won't be necessary, Sakura," Shorai interrupted. He stepped forward, the sunlight catching the turquoise patterns on his sleeves. "The five of us can handle this. And besides..." his smirk was razor-sharp, "...I'm the doctor here."
"A medic?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. "You've been holding out on us, Shorai."
"I prefer the term 'over-prepared,'" Shorai replied.
The tension was a physical thing. Naruto, already vibrating with shame and the stinging heat of the poison, looked at Sasuke's smug silence and then at Shorai's calm competence. Something inside the boy snapped.
Splat!
Naruto drove a kunai into his own hand, piercing the wound to drain the tainted blood.
"I won't be a burden!" he roared, his voice thick with a raw, primal emotion that seemed to vibrate the very air. "I swear on the pain of this wound... I'm never losing to Sasuke again! I will protect the old man!"
The speech was classic Naruto, but as the words traveled, Shorai felt a cold, familiar dread settle in his marrow.
Tug. Tug.
Not chakra.
Something else.
The seals on his handguards burned hot enough to sting through the cloth, and for a moment the ink lines seemed to unravel beneath his skin. Shorai's breath caught.
No... not here. Not now.
Shorai didn't wait to see what happened next. He turned his focus inward, awakening the dormant Aether.
Warp: Substitution.
A warped shadow-clone peeled away in his place, taking the edge of what any passing eye might have noticed, while Shorai slipped backward into the trees and vanished behind a cedar trunk. A crimson-black barrier flared around him a heartbeat later, enclosing him in a thin shell of safety.
He looked back at the group.
Yellowish strands of energy clung to Naruto like static in a storm. They were faint, ugly, and alive with will. They did not drift like chakra. They reached. They searched for a gap.
He looked down at his handguards. The intricate ink of his seals hadn't just faded—it had dissolved, erased from reality as if it had never been written.
Shorai stared.
It wasn't lost in the village.
His mind raced, cold and sharp in the sudden silence.
Perhaps it wasn't taken by someone at all. Perhaps it was never "used" in the first place.
His thoughts sharpened further, pulling apart each possibility like threads under a blade.
Did that scroll contain it? Did someone open it and release it? Or did Naruto… become compatible with it? Chosen by it?
Questions flooded his mind, one after another, until they blurred into a single, uneasy certainty.
The Mind Stone was right there.
Not in some hidden vault. Not in a sealed ruin. Not in the hands of an enemy waiting in the dark.
It was inside the boy in front of him — the boy who never knew when to quit, whose emotions now seemed to feed whatever had awakened inside him.
Naruto looked small from where Shorai stood, framed by leaves and filtered light, still being scolded by Kakashi with all the drama of a child who had just thrown himself into danger.
Ordinary.
Human.
And yet Shorai could feel it.
A pressure behind the boy's defiance. A bright, unstable current of will that made the air around him seem wrong.
Shorai tightened his jaw.
He was safe, for now. Hidden.
But the realization settled over him like cold water.
The Mind Stone had not been found.
It had found Naruto first.