“Is that the shore?”

Sakura’s voice, barely a whisper, broke the still air.

“There it is. The Land of Waves,” said Kakashi, guiding the boat with a Wind Style Jutsu.

The boat’s keel scraped against the gravel with a harsh sound that made everyone tense up. They had arrived. The shore wasn’t a beach, but a strip of black sand and slick rocks. A forest of twisted trees rose just behind it, their gnarled roots clinging to the earth like claws. The fog swirled around the ground, cold against their ankles.

“I don’t like this place,” Kiba muttered, as Akamaru let out a low growl from inside his jacket.

“It’s the humidity,” said Shino, his voice as monotonous as ever. “And the lack of active insect sounds. It’s abnormal; it suggests the presence of a predator.”

“Thanks for the tip, Shino,” Kiba retorted sarcastically. “I feel so much better.”

Kakashi said nothing. He was the first to leap onto the shore, landing without a sound. His single visible eye scanned the surroundings, pausing on every shadow, every twisted branch. He didn’t relax. No one did. Sasuke followed him, his hand near his kunai pouch, his eyes fixed on the darkness of the forest.

“Landing formation,” Kakashi ordered, his voice low and calm, but with an edge of steel. “Kiba, right flank. Shino, left. Sasuke, with me.”

They moved with an efficiency learned the hard way. Kurenai helped Tazuna get off the boat. The bridge builder stumbled as he hit the sand, his legs trembling too much to support him.

“They almost… they almost killed us,” he stammered, his gaze lost on the water.

“But they didn’t,” Kurenai said firmly, though she gave him a reassuring look. “And they won’t. We’re here to protect you.”

Sakura and Hinata were the last to get off, covering the rear. Naruto landed beside them, his knuckles still white from how tightly he had been gripping his weapon.

“Clear,” Kakashi finally announced, breaking the tense silence. “For now.” He nodded toward a small, rocky cove a few yards away. “There. It’ll give us cover.”

The hollow in the rocks was damp, but it protected them on three sides. However, the feeling of being watched didn’t go away. They knew the enemy had let them go. And that’s what frayed their nerves the most.

Sakura, moving on pure instinct, knelt beside Tazuna and pulled a small roll of bandages from her pouch.

“Are you hurt, Tazuna-san?” she asked, more to keep her hands busy than anything else.

“Hurt? I’m about to have a heart attack!” the old man complained, though he let the girl check his arms. “You’re supposed to be elite ninja! We almost ended up at the bottom of the river!”

“And yet, here we are, on solid ground,” Kakashi intervened calmly, without taking his eyes off the forest. “The mission continues.”

Sasuke had already climbed to the highest rock. Hinata, despite the clear exhaustion on her face, activated her Byakugan again. Her white eyes, veined and tense, methodically scanned the surroundings. Kurenai approached her.

“Hinata, how are you on chakra?” she asked in a low voice.

“I can keep going, Kurenai-sensei,” Hinata replied, her voice steady despite the trembling in her hands. “I don’t detect anyone within a five-hundred-meter radius. Just… a lot of trees.”

“Good. Rest when you can,” her teacher instructed before turning. Her eyes landed on Naruto, who was standing by Hinata, watching her back. Her expression was that of a sensei about to teach a lesson.

“Naruto. We need to talk.”

Naruto turned around, his usual smile absent. “Yes, Kurenai-sensei?”

The rest of the group fell silent. Sakura stopped bandaging a non-existent wound on Tazuna’s arm. Kiba sat down and scratched Akamaru’s ears, but his attention was fixed on the conversation. Even Sasuke seemed to tilt his head from his perch.

“I understand what you felt on the boat,” Kurenai began, her voice calm but leaving no room for argument. “The rage, the helplessness. The need to do something, anything. I get it. But what you did was stupid.”

Naruto didn’t blink.

“You launched a blind attack, wasting a huge amount of chakra with no chance of hitting anything,” she continued, her tone hardening, that of a teacher who cannot afford mistakes from her students. “Not only that, you showed the enemy one of your best cards: the Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu. You gave him free information. You let him analyze your fighting style, your chakra level, your temperament. It was a rookie mistake, Naruto. And on a mission like this, rookie mistakes get people killed. I need you to understand the gravity of what you did.”

Kurenai finished, expecting an outburst. She expected him to yell, to defend himself, to make excuses. But Naruto remained silent, listening to every word with a seriousness that was unusual for him. When she was done, a small, strange smile appeared on his lips. It wasn’t a smile of joy. It was a cunning smile.

“Heh. Did you really think that was my plan, Kurenai-sensei?”

The question, so calm and unexpected, left Kurenai speechless. The air seemed to freeze.

“Explain yourself,” she finally managed to say.

Naruto looked around, making sure he had everyone’s attention. He saw the confusion and reproach on Sakura’s face. He saw Sasuke’s cold indifference, though he was now looking directly at him. He saw the unwavering faith in Hinata’s eyes, and that gave him strength. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was completely different. It was stripped of all his usual clumsiness.

“The first trap,” he began, “the one that almost caught Sakura-chan, was in the water. It was a chakra thread, right? It was triggered when something pulled on it.”

He looked at Kakashi, who had been watching everything from a distance. The jōnin nodded slowly, encouraging him to continue.

“Correct.”

“This ninja attacking us is a trap specialist, isn’t he?” Naruto continued. “He’s not an amateur. He’s not just going to set one trap and call it a day; that would be stupid. It was obvious the whole path between our boat and the shore would be filled with more threads like that.”

Kurenai blinked. She was beginning to see where he was going, but her mind refused to accept it. It was too far-fetched.

“We couldn’t stay on the boat,” Naruto reasoned, his logic simple and brutal. “We were a sitting duck, a floating death trap. We had to get to the shore, and fast, before the guy with the weird voice got bored and sank us. But the path to the shore was also a minefield. So what could we do?”

He paused, letting the question hang in the air.

“If we sent a single person to scout, like Kiba with his sense of smell or Shino with his insects, and that person triggered a trap… we’d lose them. It was too high a risk; we couldn’t sacrifice anyone.” Naruto clenched his fist. “But… I can make clones, hundreds of them, and mine are different. They’re solid, but they’re expendable. If one of them blows up, nothing happens to me. I just lose a little chakra, and I can make more.”

A slow, astonished understanding began to dawn on Kakashi’s and Kurenai’s faces. Sakura brought a hand to her mouth.

“My real plan,” Naruto said, the cunning smile returning to his face, wider this time, “wasn’t to find the ninja hiding in the fog. That was a distraction! The show! The magic trick to keep the enemy busy!”

He extended an arm, pointing to the path they had taken across the river.

“My real plan was to use my clones as a human minesweeper. A living trap detector.”

His voice filled with confidence as he revealed his strategy.

“Every clone that jumped into the water and ran without anything exploding told me that stretch of the river was safe. I had them advance in a sweeping pattern, covering the entire space between the boat and this cove. While the enemy was laughing at my clones, thinking, ‘What an idiot, he’s attacking blindly,’ I was mapping a safe path for us. The attack wasn’t for him. It was for you. To make sure you all got to the shore in one piece.”

The silence that followed was total, broken only by the soft lapping of the waves against the black sand.

Kurenai stared at him, her mask of severity completely shattered, replaced by an astonishment so deep she couldn’t speak. This boy… this loudmouthed idiot… he used his own reputation as a weapon. He created a diversion based on what everyone, including the enemy, expected of him. He pretended to be an impulsive fool to execute a tactical protective maneuver…

Kakashi, who had been pretending to clean a kunai, slowly lowered the weapon. His single eye was wide open, fixed on Naruto with a light of respect no one had ever seen in it before. He had been wrong. He had grossly underestimated the boy. He wasn’t a simple-minded loudmouth; he was far more cunning than anyone had given him credit for.

Sakura and Sasuke, who had heard every word, were just as shocked.

“So…” Sakura whispered, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time. “All that yelling… ‘Come out, you coward!’… All of that was…?”

“An act,” Naruto finished, smiling. “It had to be convincing, didn’t it?”

Sakura’s perception of him shattered in that instant. The boy she had always considered a burden, the one who needed the simplest plans explained to him, had just orchestrated a multi-layered strategy that had saved their lives. The idea that behind his outrageous facade was a mind that worked in such a bizarre and brilliant way was… overwhelming.

From his rock, Sasuke felt a surge of icy fury. Not at Naruto, but at himself. He, the Uchiha genius, the best in his class, hadn’t seen it. He had been so focused on the enemy’s power, on the humiliation of being trapped, that he had completely missed the brilliance of the maneuver the “idiot” was executing right under his nose. The realization that Naruto was not only strong but also undeniably craftier in that situation was a direct blow to his pride, more painful than any physical attack.

He jumped down from the rock, landing softly on the sand. He walked toward the group, his steps slow and deliberate. For a moment, Sakura thought he was going to hit Naruto. Instead, he stopped in front of him.

“So you’re not a total idiot,” Sasuke said, his voice a low, resentful murmur. It wasn’t a compliment, but coming from him, it was the greatest acknowledgment Naruto had ever received.

Naruto just shrugged, his smile becoming a little more genuine. “Sometimes you have to think like an idiot to win.”

Kurenai was the first to find her voice. A warm, proud smile lit up her face.

“Naruto,” she said, her tone filled with a completely new respect. “That was… one of the most brilliant and selfless disinformation tactics I have ever seen. Not from a genin, but from any ninja. You used the enemy’s perception of you against them and prioritized the team’s safety above all else. That’s incredible growth. Not just as a shinobi, but as a leader.”

Kakashi walked over, standing beside his colleague. “Kurenai’s right. You used your own reputation as camouflage. That’s a jōnin-level tactic, Naruto. Deceiving your enemy is one thing. Deceiving your own comrades to protect them… that’s another level.”

The double praise, so direct and sincere, made Naruto blush to the tips of his ears. He scratched the back of his neck, reverting to his usual demeanor.

“Well, you know! I had to make sure we all got here safely! Someone has to use their head around here!” he declared, puffing out his chest. “And the best part is, the guy in the mist bought it completely! Right now he must be thinking, ‘I’m so lucky, I’m up against a team with a clown!’ Making him underestimate us was part of the plan! It was a perfect plan, believe it!”

His childish joy broke the remaining tension. Kiba burst out laughing.

“No way!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “You, the king of idiots, had it all planned out! Akamaru, can you believe it?!”

The dog barked happily, as if sharing his owner’s surprise.

Shino adjusted his glasses. “An illogical strategy to counter an enemy who relies on predictable logic. Forcing him to analyze a meaningless variable while the real plan was executed unseen. Fascinating. Though a great expenditure of chakra.”

“Chakra comes back! My friends’ lives don’t!” Naruto retorted fervently.

Hinata, who had never doubted him, looked at him with an admiration so intense she had to look down, her cheeks flushing. He’s not just brave and kind, she thought to herself. He’s… brilliant. In his own unique way.

The group’s dynamic had changed forever in the span of five minutes.

Kakashi cleared his throat, taking command again. “Alright, team. Thanks to Naruto’s strategy, we’ve reached the shore. But the mission is just beginning. From here on out, we’re on his turf. Kurenai, you and I take the lead. Tazuna, in the center. Teams 7 and 8, diamond formation around him. Stay alert. And don’t underestimate anything.”

He paused, and his final gaze rested on Naruto, lingering there a second longer than normal.

“Especially… each other.”