“Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

Tazuna’s voice, rough with sake and fear, broke the silence that enveloped them in the fog.

“Sit down and be quiet, Tazuna-san,” Kurenai’s voice was soft, but it left no room for argument. “Noise travels over water.”

“What noise? You can’t even hear the damn crickets!” the bridge builder complained, clutching a bottle of sake to his chest. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

Sasuke, sitting back-to-back with Sakura, didn’t move. “Did anyone expect you to?”

“A little optimism wouldn’t hurt, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura replied in a whisper, her gaze fixed on the white curtain to starboard.

“Optimism doesn’t deflect a kunai,” he answered, emotionless.

At the bow, Kiba knelt, sniffing the air with a grimace. At his feet, Akamaru let out a low whine, huddled and trembling.

“Easy, boy,” Kiba murmured, stroking his dog’s head. He turned to his sensei. “Kurenai-sensei, this stinks.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her attention never wavering from the fog.

“I don’t know, but it’s unnatural. The air is dead. It doesn’t smell like anything, and that’s what smells like a trap.”

On the other side of the bow, Shino remained motionless. “My kikaichū confirm Kiba’s observation. The air lacks the usual biological signatures. It is… sterile.”

Meanwhile, at the stern, Naruto watched Hinata. She stood perfectly still, her Byakugan active. The veins around her temples bulged, betraying the effort she was making. She hadn’t complained, hadn’t said a word in almost an hour, but he could see the tension in the line of her shoulders, the way her knuckles were white where she gripped the side of the boat.

He took a step closer, lowering his voice so only she could hear. “Are you okay? You’ve been using it for a long time.”

Hinata didn’t turn, but her voice reached him, a whisper barely audible over the soft lapping of the oar. “I’m fine, Naruto-kun. It’s just… this fog is filled with chakra. It’s faint, but it’s everywhere.”

“Want me to take over? I can use a clone to…” he began to offer.

“No,” she interrupted, her tone a little firmer. “Your clones don’t have the Byakugan. I’m the only one who can see through this. It’s my job.”

Naruto scowled. He hated this. Hated feeling useless, hated watching her push herself to the limit. “Your job isn’t to go blind. Rest for a minute, Hinata. Just one. I’ll keep watch.”

He felt, more than saw, a faint smile on her lips. “I appreciate your concern, Naruto-kun. I really do. But we can’t risk it.”

He sighed, frustrated. He didn’t want to argue with her, not now. Instead, he stayed a little closer, right behind her. If anything came out of that fog, it would have to go through him to get to her. It was the only thing he could do.

In the center, Sakura felt a slight shift in Sasuke’s posture. “What is it?” she whispered.

“The water,” he answered, his voice barely a murmur. “The pattern of the waves isn’t natural.”

Sakura focused her chakra control. Slowly, she extended her senses from the boat into the water, probing the flow of chakra around them.

“You’re right,” she confirmed seconds later. “There’s something in the water. Could they be traps?”

“Sensei,” Shino’s voice, though low, cut through the tense silence. All eyes turned to him.

“What is it, Shino?” asked Kakashi, speaking for the first time. He had been watching the boatman in silence, his relaxed posture hiding a deadly focus.

“My kikaichū,” Shino continued, his tone as flat as ever, but with an underlying urgency no one missed. “The scouting party I sent out has stopped.”

Kurenai tensed visibly. “Were they destroyed?”

“Negative. I have not felt their deaths,” Shino explained. “They have simply ceased all movement. Their chakra connection to me is still active, but they are… immobilized.”

The same instant Shino finished speaking, Hinata gasped.

“Chakra!” her voice was strangled with surprise and panic. “It’s everywhere! Below us! It’s a trap!”

The final word was the trigger.

The boat jerked to a halt so violently that it threw everyone forward. Tazuna fell on his rear with a choked cry. The soft splashing of the oar stopped. The silence that followed was absolute, unnatural.

“They’ve got us!” Kiba shouted, jumping to his feet.

The boatman, until then a hooded and silent figure, suddenly stood tall. With a fluid motion, he threw off his straw hat and ragged cloak, revealing the standard Kirigakure flak jacket and a grin full of rotten teeth. A kunai appeared in his hand.

“Die!” he roared, lunging for the easiest target: Tazuna.

The move was a thug’s, fast for a civilian, but to the jōnin of Konoha, it seemed to happen in slow motion.

Before the kunai had even crossed half the distance, Kakashi was there. There was no puff of smoke, no flashy jutsu. Just a flicker of movement, a dull, wet thud, and the thug collapsed to the bottom of the boat, unconscious, his neck at an unnatural angle.

“A distraction,” Kurenai said, her red eyes already scanning the fog.

She had barely spoken the word when the real attack came.

A sharp whistle cut the air from starboard. A volley of thin senbon needles, nearly invisible in the fog, shot directly at Tazuna’s chest.

“Move!” Sasuke snarled.

He threw himself between the attack and the builder. His kunai deflected the needles with a series of sharp sparks. The ping-ping-ping of metal on metal was the only sound in the air.

At the same time, Sakura grabbed Tazuna by the collar of his shirt and yanked him to the wooden floor of the boat, shielding him with her own body.

“Down!” Hinata yelled from the stern.

A blade of wind, invisible but sharp, skimmed across the water’s surface, aimed directly at their legs. Naruto reacted on pure instinct. Without thinking, he wrapped an arm around Hinata’s waist and lifted her off the floor. The blade of wind whistled under them, carving a clean, deep gash into the side of the boat.

Naruto set her down, his heart pounding. “It almost cut you in half!”

“Thank you, Naruto-kun!” she said, her voice trembling with adrenaline.

“Kiba, your left!” Kurenai shouted.

But the warning came a split second too late. A chain with a sickle at the end shot out of the fog. It wrapped with brutal force around Kiba’s ankle and pulled.

“Aaaargh! Dammit!” he yelled, being mercilessly dragged toward the edge.

Akamaru barked frantically, lunging to bite the chain, but his puppy teeth barely scratched it.

“He won’t let go!” Shino exclaimed. “Kikaichū, to the chain!”

A dense swarm of his insects descended on the chain. They covered it completely, their combined weight making the grip unstable. From the fog, the unseen attacker was forced to release it to avoid being devoured.

Kurenai and Sasuke grabbed Kiba by the arms just as he was about to go overboard and hauled him back into the boat. He landed with a thud, coughing and clutching his bruised ankle.

The first assault was over. It had lasted less than ten seconds.

The silence returned, heavier and more threatening than before. They were unharmed, but the feeling of being trapped and watched by an invisible enemy was suffocating.

Naruto stood up, clenching his fists so hard his knuckles turned white. The initial shock had been replaced by a burning fury.

“That’s it!” he roared, his voice echoing over the silent water. “I’m not just going to sit here and wait for us to be picked off one by one!”

“Naruto, wait!” Sakura warned him. “You don’t know where he is! You’ll just waste chakra!”

“Then I’ll just have to find him!” he retorted, forming the hand seal they all knew so well. “Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!“

A series of smoky explosions filled the already crowded boat, nearly sinking it. A dozen identical Narutos appeared, all with the same defiant look on their faces.

“Listen up!” the original Naruto ordered, pointing in all directions. “I want you to find that coward! Go!”

Without a hint of hesitation, the clones leaped from the boat. Some ran across the water’s surface, others jumped toward the unseen shore, disappearing into the curtain of fog.

The silence returned once more. It lasted three seconds.

Then, the sounds began.

POOF!

Naruto flinched, receiving the memory of an incredibly sharp chakra thread slicing through his clone’s neck.

“Threads!” he gasped. “He’s using chakra threads!”

POOF!

Another memory assaulted him. Three senbon hitting a clone from three different directions at the same time as it jumped through the trees.

“He’s using needles, too!” he reported, gritting his teeth.

POOF! POOF! POOF!

Three more clones running together along the shore were erased from existence by a blade of wind that cut them off at the knees.

With every clone that vanished, a piece of the puzzle returned to the original Naruto. A blurry image, the sensation of an attack, the approximate direction.

“He’s in the trees… to the right,” he said, pointing. “He’s constantly moving. He’s circling us.”

“You’re revealing our exact position with every clone that screams,” Sasuke said coldly. “It’s useless. You’re just giving him more information.”

“It’s not useless!” Naruto snapped, turning to face him. “We know how he attacks! That’s more than we had a minute ago!”

Just then, a voice broke the tension. It didn’t belong to anyone on the team. It was calm, male, and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, amplified by the fog.

“The fox boy is right,” the voice said, with a tone of condescending amusement. “It isn’t useless. It’s a massive waste of energy… but it has saved me the trouble of hunting you down one by one. Thank you for confirming your position.”

Kakashi and Kurenai stiffened. The voice was not what they expected.

“Let’s see what we have here…” the voice continued. “The famous Kakashi of the Sharingan, though it seems you don’t want to use your eye just yet. And Kurenai Yūhi, Konoha’s genjutsu master. How impressive. They sent two of their top jōnin to protect a drunk old man.”

There was a pause, heavy with a killing intent that felt like needles on the skin.

“Then there are the children. An Uchiha. How rare. I thought your clan was extinct. You have good reflexes, I’ll give you that. But without your special eyes, you’re just a boy with a kunai.”

Sasuke clenched his jaw, his black eyes fixed on the fog, searching for the source of the voice.

“The dog boy,” the voice went on, mockingly. “Impulsive, loud… Your dog is more dangerous than you are. And the insect user. Predictable. Always on the defensive. Boring.”

Kiba growled, while Shino remained impassive.

The unseen voice paused, as if focusing its attention. “Then, the Hyūga girl. A Byakugan of surprising quality for your age. You try so hard, don’t you? Poor little girl, your head must ache from trying. But your eyes won’t do you any good if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

Hinata flinched as if the voice had physically touched her. Naruto took a protective step in front of her.

“And you,” the voice said, clearly addressing Naruto. “A reckless idiot. All that power inside you and the only thing you can think to do is use it to throw copies of yourself to a certain death. What a waste of potential.”

“And finally…” the voice drawled, savoring the moment. “…the pink-haired girl. Honestly, I don’t even know who you are or what you’re doing here. Moral support? The bait, perhaps?”

The insult hit Sakura with the force of a slap. She clenched her fists, her face flushing with anger and humiliation.

“A strangely unbalanced team,” the voice concluded. “Too much raw firepower, not enough subtlety. But fascinating, nonetheless.”

The silence returned. Kakashi exchanged a grim look with Kurenai. The truth was clear and cold.

“He wasn’t trying to kill us,” Kakashi whispered, low enough for only Kurenai to hear. “He was testing our defenses.”

As if he’d heard the whisper, the hunter’s voice echoed one last time, with a chilling finality.

“This has been an… interesting demonstration. Thank you for your cooperation.”

With those final words, the pressure they had felt on the boat vanished. The chakra threads holding them captive went slack and dissolved into the water. The killing presence, that cold, calculating intent that had been watching them, faded completely.

They were left floating in the middle of the river, in the heart of a fog that suddenly felt empty and ordinary.

Tazuna let out a long, shaky breath. “Is… is he gone?”

No one answered right away. The team remained on high alert, scanning the fog, listening for the slightest sound. But there was nothing. Only the drip of water from the unconscious boatman’s oar.

“I think so,” Kurenai finally said, her face pale in the diffuse light. “That fighting style… precise, based on traps, remote analysis. It doesn’t belong to any assassin I recognize.”

“No,” Kakashi confirmed, his single visible eye narrowing as he looked toward the shore. The fog was beginning to dissipate slowly, revealing the dark silhouettes of the trees. “This is the work of someone who isn’t looking for a direct fight.”

He looked at his team. The genin’s faces were pale, a mixture of relief, fear, and rage.

“Listen up, everyone,” Kakashi said, his voice regaining its leader’s firmness. “This changes things. The mission has just gone from Rank C to, at a minimum, Rank A. We could even be looking at Rank S. We’re not facing some random ninja. Gatō has hired an expert in traps. A butcher for his dirty work.”

He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.

“We just fell into the first of those traps. And worst of all,” he concluded, his gaze sweeping over his students’ faces, “we’ve revealed some of our abilities to him.”

The boat began to move again, propelled by a gentle wind jutsu from Kakashi.