The rain began before anyone noticed.
Not heavy.Not sudden.
Just enough to darken the dirt road leading out of Konoha.
Team Seven stood at the village gate, adjusting packs, listening to Kakashi's lazy instructions. Naruto complained. Sakura corrected him. Sasuke said nothing.
Kakashi smiled beneath his mask.
None of them noticed the man standing above the gate, hidden where shadow met tile.
Tora watched without moving.
His ANBU mask rested at his side, not on his face. There was no need for it yet.
Team Seven's mission was simple on paper: escort a bridge builder to the Land of Waves. A C-rank. Low risk. Routine.
That was why he had been assigned.
Not because it was dangerous.
But because it would become dangerous.
Tora closed his eyes for a moment and listened.
Not to voices.Not to chakra signatures alone.
To the field.
Rain carried information if you knew how to read it. The air shifted. The flow resisted slightly in places it shouldn't.
Someone was already moving.
"Still time to turn back," Kakashi said casually, glancing at the sky.
The rain grew a little heavier.
Tora stepped back, melting into the village rooftops as the team departed.
He would not follow them directly.
He never did.
The road through the forest was quiet. Too quiet.
Tora moved parallel to the team, never close enough to be sensed, never far enough to lose them. His steps left no marks. His chakra flowed low and wide, diffused like mist rather than flame.
Ahead, Kakashi stopped.
A puddle lay in the middle of the path.
Tora's eyes narrowed.
It hadn't rained long enough for that.
The attack happened in seconds.
Chains. Steel. Killing intent sharp enough to cut breath from the air.
Naruto froze.
Sakura screamed.
Sasuke moved.
And Kakashi—
Tora was already there.
Not visible.Not acknowledged.
When the Demon Brothers struck, one of them felt something wrong an instant too late. His chain caught resistance where nothing should have been. A flicker of water pressure twisted his angle just enough.
Sasuke's kunai struck true.
The fight ended.
Kakashi scolded Naruto. The team regrouped.
No one saw the thin line of water evaporate from the leaves.
No one noticed the faint tiger-shaped ripple dispersing into the rain.
Later, when Kakashi interrogated Tazuna, Tora watched from the trees.
He did not interfere.
This was Kakashi's role.
But when the old man admitted the truth, when fear surfaced beneath his bravado, Tora felt it again.
That resistance in the flow.
Someone strong was waiting.
That night, as Team Seven rested, Kakashi stood guard.
The mist rolled in thick and unnatural.
Kakashi felt it instantly.
So did Tora.
Zabuza Momochi stepped onto the water like a nightmare given form.
Killing intent flooded the bridge.
Kakashi reached for his headband—
And paused.
Something else was here.
Something calm.
Zabuza frowned.
"For a moment," the Demon of the Mist muttered, "I thought there was another hunter."
Tora stood above them, unseen, rain sliding down his sleeve.
Good, he thought.
Stay unsure.
The battle began.
As steel met steel and mist swallowed sound, Tora moved only when necessary.
A diverted wave here.A pressure shift there.
When Haku's presence brushed the edge of the battlefield, Tora felt it clearly.
Fast. Precise. Young.
A mirror cracked slightly earlier than it should have.
Haku glanced up, confused.
Nothing was there.
When dawn came, blood stained the bridge.
Naruto cried.Kakashi knelt.Zabuza fell.
And Tora watched Haku carry his master into death with a silence he recognized all too well.
Rain washed the bridge clean.
By the time Team Seven returned to Konoha as heroes…
There was no record of him.
No witness.
No name.
But deep in the Hokage's archives, a single line was quietly updated that day:
Operational support successful. Subject remains unobserved.
And somewhere in the village, rainwater slid off rooftops as if guided by an unseen hand.
The space between the drops moved on.