Minato didn't hesitate. The moment the Iwa scouts turned to flee, his hands moved with practiced precision, pulling a handful of kunai from his pouch. With a flick of his wrist, they scattered throughout the dense forest, embedding themselves into trees, logs, and the ground in an intricate formation.
To the untrained eye, it may have seemed like a chaotic display, but to Minato, each kunai was a mark. A calculated move.
A trap.
Arashi, who had remained mostly indifferent up until now, stiffened slightly. His bright green eyes followed the motion as more and more kunai embedded into the environment around them. Then, something twitched at his temple.
A vein throbbed in his forehead.
"Oi, oi—are you serious?" Arashi's tone was somewhere between annoyance and disbelief. He let out an annoyed sigh, watching as Minato littered the forest with deadly steel. "You're really going to turn this whole place into your personal weapons depot?"
Minato, ever composed, merely flicked a glance his way before settling into a stance, watching the retreating Iwa scouts with razor-sharp focus. "I'll clean up after I'm done here," he replied, voice calm, as if raining kunai all over a forest was perfectly normal.
Arashi clicked his tongue, arms crossing over his chest as he muttered, "Tch. You'd better."
Still, the annoyance in his tone was mild. If anything, it was like watching someone resigned to dealing with a friend's messy habits.
Arashi will fight to keep the forest clean of trash but fighting? That was beyond him.
With a casual stretch, Arashi rolled his shoulders and sighed dramatically. "Well, that's my cue to get out of here," he said, his smirk returning. "Not really in the mood to get caught up in Leaf-Stone drama. You have fun, though."
Before Minato could stop him from leaving, the red-haired wanderer suddenly dissolved.
Not into smoke.
Not into chakra.
But into something else entirely.
Minato's sharp eyes widened as the young man's form shifted—bones shrinking, muscles pulling inward, skin morphing. Feathers sprouted in a rapid wave over his body, and within the span of a breath, Arashi was gone.
In his place, a small cardinal flitted upward, wings beating as it lifted off the ground and into the air.
Minato froze.
He'd seen Transformation Jutsu countless times before, of course, but this? This was much different.
Minato's mind immediately went to the Inuzuka Clan and their beast transformations, but even those took years of compatibility, chemistry, and training with their partners. No shinobi should be able to shift into a creature so effortlessly, so fluidly, without any signs of it even being a jutsu.
And yet, Arashi was now a bird with green eyes and red feathers, lazily flying toward a tree branch as if he had been born that way.
Even as Minato's mind raced with possible explanations, he kept his primary focus on the Iwa scouts. His confusion could wait. They couldn't.
The moment one of them attempted to leap onto a tree branch for higher ground—
Minato vanished.
A blink, and he was already behind the first retreating scout.
The kunai he had scattered weren't just for show. They were designed like a web. A battlefield designed to be his to control.
With a single flicker of chakra, he reappeared right next to one of his kunai, seizing the closest Iwa shinobi by the back of the collar before slamming him into the ground.
A sickening thud.
The other two barely had time to react.
Minato vanished again, reappearing in front of another Iwa scout before they could even raise a defensive stance. A precise, lightning-fast chop to the back of the neck, and the shinobi collapsed, unconscious.
The last scouthad just watched his teammates get desimated within the time spread of 3 seconds froze in his spot for a second and desperately decided to use ninjutsu to aid his escape.
In his fear, he tried to throw a desperate Earth-Style technique, but Minato was already a step ahead.
By the time the hand seals were even halfway formed, Minato had threw a kunai right by his neck and teleported to it before the piece of sharpened metal ever embedded itself into the tree behind him.
One final flash and the third scout hit the ground. In less than five seconds, the fight was over.
Minato straightened, exhaling as he surveyed the unconscious bodies around him. They weren't high-ranking. Probably just information gatherers, but the fact that Iwa had sent scouts to Konoha's borders was something that couldn't be ignored.
He crouched down, inspecting the insignias on their flak jackets. Standard issue. That ruled out any special operatives, at least. But if Iwa was willing to send people this far in... they were planning something.
A shift in the air above caught his attention.
"Damn."
Minato's attention flicked upward.
Sitting comfortably on a thick branch, Arashi had returned to his human form.
He lounged there, one leg hanging off the side, arms resting behind his head as he surveyed the scene with mild interest.
"The rumors weren't lying about you, you really are as fast as a flash" Arashi mused, tilting his head. "That was, what? Five seconds? Maybe less? Kinda scary, not gonna lie."
Minato didn't respond immediately. He was still trying to process what he had seen earlier. His sharp mind could recognize a threat, but he could also recognize when something, or someone, was completely beyond expectation.
"You transformed," Minato finally said, voice measured. "Not a jutsu. Not an illusion. You actually turned into a bird."
Arashi grinned teasing the blonde. "You say that like it's weird."
Minato's eyes narrowed. "It is weird. Very weird even."
The red-haired wanderer let out a small chuckle. "What? I don't mind the fact that you can teleport to kunai in the blink of an eye, but I turn into a small, cute, adorable little bird and suddenly that's where you draw the line?" He shook his head, as if Minato was the odd one in this conversation. "Come on, blondie, open your mind a little."
Minato stared at him, unimpressed. "That ability. What is it?"
Arashi smirked, but didn't answer immediately. Instead, he plucked a white dandelion seed from the air as it drifted past, spinning it between his fingers.
Minato's patience was thinning. He had seen countless jutsu in his lifetime, learned from the best, and innovated his own techniques, but nothing quite like what he had witnessed today.
If this wasn't a known kekkei genkai or a specialized clan ability, then what the hell was it? 'Could it be a new kekkei genkai perhaps?'