The second day, while the morning mist still clung to the earth, we were 'ambushed'.
An ugly gang of seven half-starved with rusted swords and no skill. Not shinobi. Not even trained mercs. Robbers, plain and desperate, acting more from hunger than strategy.
The 'ambush' found me in my perch halfway up a crooked tree trunk, feathers ruffled slightly in the cool breeze. Transformation technique well-held. Nobody even glanced up.
Naruto, Sakura, Sai…and my clone stood between the attackers and the stuttering merchant. The clone did what I intended; cheerleading if necessary and keeping the idiots away from the transport without actually expending effort. Mostly making sure it didn't poof under a single lucky strike.
I had no intention of personally stepping in.
This, after all, was a rare opportunity.
A chance to gauge the team when they thought they were fighting for real.
And what I saw didn't inspire confidence.
Naruto threw himself into the thick of it with his usual lack of finesse—loud, overcommitting at every step. Punching one bandit straight into a tree but leaving his side wide open for another to rush him. It was childish, in the worst way — a soldier who thought the war bowed to his will. But he's Naruto, so it probably will.
Sakura… To her credit, she didn't freeze. She darted in when safe opportunities presented themselves. Her form wasn't terrible. But there was a hesitation in her strikes, like she was still asking for permission to hurt someone every time her fist connected.
The Academy had shaped her into a passable student. Sharp memory, clean chakra control, decent theoretical grounding. On paper, she looked promising. In practice, she was a civilian wearing a hitai-ate.
No instincts. No battlefield awareness. No reflex for violence.
The problem wasn't her aptitude. It was the absence of conditioning. She had been allowed to think strength was something you studied for, not something you bled for. She was a flowerhouse plant, soft and delicate.
In another life, Tsunade had made her a half-decent healer. But here, without that intervention….
Fifteen years of education, and not one ounce of instinct to show for it.
I wasn't disappointed. You can't be disappointed by a stone for failing to fly.
….. maybe too harsh. Bet her ass was softer than any stone and definitely twice as distracting. I wondered how it would compare with her mother's; it certainly looks just as shapely.
Focus.
Sai was the only one moving properly.
Calm. Detached. Without making it flashy, he kept precise distance from the attackers, flicking ink strokes onto scrolls with the same easy fluidity as breathing. Out popped beasts—small ones: falcons, foxes, low-cost summons meant not to annihilate enemies but to harry them. Biting at calves, snapping at ankles. Disrupting momentum.
He wasn't wasting chakra, either. Smart kid. He'd assessed the danger level correctly and wasn't burning his reserves on trash mobs. His frequency and size of summoned creatures were economical and efficient.
In another life, I might have smiled.
But here, all I felt was disappointment.
If this were a real threat. If an ambush team of C-rank enemy shinobi had sprung from that treeline instead of gaunt civilians with knives, Naruto would already be bleeding out. Sakura might've gotten herself cornered or worse. Sai might be forced to fight a retreat with the client his only burden. Left to hold the line alone.
I clicked my beak quietly and ruffled my feathers, waiting.
It took them nearly half an hour to finish it.
Thirty whole minutes.
I couldn't remember, in all my life—this life, this world—a fight that had dragged on like that.
Sure, there were standoffs, guerrilla battles, training fights, but a straightforward engagement—an actual fight—you either won fast or you ended up dead.
Half an hour was an eternity. Even if it was to stall for time.
Still, credit where due.
Naruto was a true Uzumaki through and through. Endlessly spiraling, pouring out absurd stamina as if chakra were drawn from some bottomless well. His strikes never lost force, only form. He swatted away attackers with the same wide, slinging punches he'd opened with.
And Sai was pure pragmatism.
He didn't lift a finger to help Naruto or Sakura. Didn't even glance at them. He focused solely on the client, like he literally couldn't care less if the rest of his squad lived or died so long as the objective survived. Professionally heartless. Robotically efficient.
I couldn't even fault him.
Sakura… was Sakura.
She exhausted herself chasing an opponent who should have been down in one blow. By the time she'd actually subdued him, she didn't even have enough juice left to cover her own back.
And go figure, she needed Naruto's saving soon after.
I waited until the last attacker collapsed into the dirt before I flapped my wings and flew down.
Most shinobi never truly grasped what made the Henge no Jutsu so remarkable. They saw it as a party trick—a shallow disguise at best.
Fools, the lot of them.
The transformation wasn't a mere illusion; it was reconstruction. My lungs had shrunk to air sacs, my bones hollowed, my vision sharpened to catch the slightest movement below. For those precious moments, I wasn't mimicking a bird — I was one.
What baffled me most wasn't the physical change, but the instinctual knowledge that came with it. I'd only observed kites a handful of times, yet somehow my transformed body knew exactly how to adjust wing angles for the thermal currents, how to tilt tail feathers for precise turns.
The Academy taught transformation as a D-rank technique, basic and limited. But there was nothing basic about completely restructuring your body on a cellular level while maintaining consciousness. Nothing limited about becoming something else entirely.
In the right hands, transformation wasn't just disguise—it was evolution on demand.
I folded my wings and dropped into a dive before releasing the transformation with a small burst of chakra, feathers dissolving into smoke as I landed.
My eyes landed on Naruto, and with the sound dispelling the jutsu made, he turned in my direction from a kneeling Sakura.
"Why didn't you use clones?" I said.
"Why didn't you use clones?" We said.
My clone and I stood there awkwardly for a heartbeat.
Naruto's head whipped between me and the figure standing by the cart.
The clone scratched the back of its neck, coughed, and — coward that it was —puffed out of existence in a lazy swirl of smoke.
Gone.
Naruto recoiled like he'd just seen a ghost, pointing a trembling finger at the dissipated smoke trail.
"What the hell was that?!" he shouted, voice pitching higher like he couldn't decide between fear and fascination.
I frowned. "Something you should have used."
The tone must've been sharper than I intended, because Naruto's expression twisted immediately into a snarl.
"—Tch!—Well, if it's so good, then how come I took out four of them," he barked, almost triumphant about it, "while you and your fake only got one!"
Before I could speak, Sakura—still hunched slightly, long pink hair plastered to her forehead with sweat—straightened. Her breathing was ragged, but there was fire in her eyes now, something like shame-fueled anger.
"He didn't fight, Naruto," she said.
"Huh?" Naruto blinked, "What're you talkin' about, Sakura-chan?"
Sai answered instead, calm as ever, voice inflected with a plasticky friendliness he wore but didn't care at all. "The commander did not engage," he said, lips curling slightly at the edges. "The figure you saw was merely a clone. The real commander took the form of a black kite and observed from the trees. Tactically sound — either to assess our capabilities, or to check if the ambush was only the first wave."
For a second, Naruto just stared.
Then his face went red, his fists balled against his sides, and he exploded:
"ARE YOU KIDDIN' ME?! How could you just SIT THERE while Sakura-chan almost—!"
His shout cracked, sharp with betrayal.
The poor client flinched harder than any of us; I caught his eye and gave a small nod. I'll deal with him soon. For now…
I turned back to the three genin.
And exhaled slowly through my nose.
"Because they're weak," I said. "Not even genin-level."
Naruto flailed his hands, mouth opening to protest, but I cut him off.
"If you couldn't even handle a starving band of roadside trash," I flicked a glance sideways at the unconscious bandits, barely even structured threats, "without turning this into a half-hour circus, what makes you think you'd survive the next assault? Hmm? Someone with a brain and chakra bigger than a kitchen fire?"
Naruto cursed under his breath, but Sakura just lowered her gaze, fists clenched at her thighs.
Sai… didn't react at all. Just blinked, expression mechanical.
"If you can't even pass that bar, then I intend to send you back to Konoha before you get yourselves killed."
"The mission…." Sakura said barely above a whisper.
Naruto, however, seemed to have good ears. He flailed a hand toward the merchant. "THE CLIENT?! If we bail—it's, it's—not shinobi-like!!"
"I'm not abandoning the mission, Naruto." I shook my head slowly. "I can still finish it without you."
Naruto's shoulders pulled tight, stung. Sakura's nails dug crescent-shaped moons into her palms. Even Sai's plastic smile twitched.
I studied them for a moment longer. Let the dejection settle. Then, because they needed somewhere to crawl toward, I tilted my head a fraction and added:
"That's why I need to make sure you're strong." I scanned their faces as I spouted some cringe shit. "Strong enough to survive this mission. Strong enough to improve for the next."
Slowly, the unbearable tightness in their bodies loosened into a trembling kind of attention.
Good.
I turned first to Sai.
"You need to learn to fight as part of a team, not just around one."
His vacant gaze flicked open just minutely, a minute nod, couldn't tell whether he'd actually processed it or merely to get along with the superior words.
I shifted to Sakura.
She was still kneeling where the last scraps of adrenaline had dropped her. Her wide green eyes lifted in reflex when she felt my gaze. Met mine, they quickly wrenched away.
"You need field conditioning." I said, voice even, "Your taijutsu form's decent. But your endurance can't sustain it. Real fights aren't practiced five-minute drills, Haruno."
I used her last name to drive it home. Her mouth trembled slightly, but she nodded.
I turned last to Naruto.
He looked almost hopeful for a moment, buoyed by the quiet encouragement I'd given the others. Chest puffed slightly, ready. I stared at him.
Hope curdled into irritation. His cheeks pinked with defensive heat, and his brows pulled together in his usual stubborn fit.
Finally, crossing his arms dramatically over his thin chest, he grunted
"Tch—whatever, y'know—I'm the Hokage's son—!"
Huh?
"I was waiting for you to answer the question I asked you, idiot."
His furious blush deepened, crooked grin twitching awkwardly at the corner of his mouth.
"What—what question...?"
"Why didn't you use clones?"
Naruto huffed, scuffed his sandal against the dirt.
"Pff—like it'd make any difference," he muttered. "They suck anyway."
I squinted at him.
He scratched his head sheepishly, refusing to meet my eyes.
Then mumbled, almost too low to make out, "...Not good at it."
Not good at cloning? Who? Are you fucking with me?
I turned the thought over fast. Standard clones. Shadow clones.
Oh, no…..
In this timeline, he'd never stolen the Forbidden Scroll. Never unlocked the masterpiece that let him weaponize himself a hundredfold.
Never fucking learned the Shadow Clone technique.
Fucking fuck.
No Shadow Clones. No Kyuubi. No endless second chances. Just... Naruto.
Small. Flawed. Earnest.
Vulnerable.
I felt so drained I could barely keep standing.
The realization was still sinking in when Sai's voice broke the silence.
"Naruto," he said in a peculiar mock-cheerful tone, "I believe you are confusing the basic Clone Technique with the Shadow Clone Technique."
Naruto stiffened, turning toward him. "Huh?!"
"They're fundamentally different," Sai continued unfazed, like he was reading a report out loud. "Standard clones are illusions. Formless with no substance. Easily dispelled. Shadow Clones, on the other hand, are physical. They can attack. Bleed. Think independently. Real bodies, made of your chakra."
He turned his empty black eyes on me for a moment.
"I believe the commander was referring to those clones, not the basic ones."
"Tch—shut up, y'know!" Naruto snapped, instinctively defensive for some reason. "It's not like—it's not like everyone knows fancy Ultra Super Techniques just 'cuz their dad's the Fourth Hokage or something!" he barked, far louder than necessary.
I shook my head slowly. Not easy sail even with parents. I ignored the blatant insecurities for now.
"What about the Rasengan?" I asked flatly, tilting my chin toward him.
Jiraiya had started teaching it to him. That I knew. he had bragged endlessly about it—one of the village's highest-level jutsu.
So why not the Shadow Clones too?
Naruto brightened immediately at the question, grinning, thumb brushing cockily along his nose.
"Pfft—it's all good, dattebayo!" he crowed. "I just gotta prep the Rasengan before using it, y'know! Didn't think I needed it against some scrubs like these."
Half bravado, half misplaced optimism.
I exhaled again, slower this time. At least he had something heavy in his pocket.
"I hope that Training Card helped," I said, "when you were practicing your chakra manipulation."
That made him freeze briefly. Laughing awkwardly, he rubbed the back of his head.
"Ahahaha—yeah, about that—" he chuckled.
"What." I squinted.
"It—uh—" He shifted guiltily. "It burned."
I pinched the bridge of my nose between two fingers. What do I expect?