---Third POV---
"Hmm... Rōran, huh? A kingdom in the desert. Sure, leave this mission to me." Ryouma patted his chest and readily agreed.
Minato breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that he was willing to take on the task. To be honest, there weren't many people in Konoha right now who could confidently complete this mission, besides Ryouma, there was only Orochimaru.
But the latter was holed up in his lab all day, so he obviously didn't have time for missions.
Thinking of this, he said apologetically, "Sorry. Your vacation isn't even over yet."
"No worries. I actually feel like going out and stretching my legs a bit," Ryouma said as he rolled his wrists and continued, "But I heard the Ryūmyaku in Rōran holds chakra capable of crossing through time and space. Don't you want to come and check it out? You might even run into a ninja from the future."
Kakashi squinted with his usual dead-fish eyes. "Ryouma, Minato-sensei is the Hokage now. How could he just leave the Land of Fire so casually?"
"Haha," Minato chuckled calmly. "Just as Kakashi said, I really can't leave the village so easily now. Besides, if there truly are ninjas from the future, I'm sure we'll meet eventually."
"Alright then," Ryouma said. It was just a casual question anyway. With the butterfly effect he's caused, there was no telling whether Naruto would still travel to this timeline.
"So, regarding your team for this mission, do you have anyone you'd recommend?" Minato asked, pulling out two ninja profiles. "Shibi and Chōza are both jonin currently on standby in the village. Want to consider taking them?"
"No need." Ryouma shook his head and declined Minato's offer, then pulled Kakashi over. "I want to take Kakashi, Obito, and Rin with me on this one."
Minato hadn't expected that, but on second thought, with Ryouma's strength, he could probably complete the mission alone. Bringing Kakashi and the others wouldn't be an issue.
"Alright. Just be careful out there," Minato reminded him.
"You know me."
---
7 AM the next morning, Ryouma, Rin, Kakashi, and Obito, Konoha's new council, gathered at the village gate right on time.
Ryouma glanced around and whispered, "Ready? Our destination is a kingdom called Rōran."
Obito deliberately lowered his voice as well. "Fully prepared, Captain."
Seeing him play along so well, Ryouma nodded with satisfaction. "Very good, Sith Lord Obito."
"Sith Lord? Hahaha, I like it!"
Rin joined in, saying softly, "I'm ready too, Captain."
"What are you guys even doing? Didn't we already go over the mission intel yesterday?" Kakashi looked on, speechless, as the other three suddenly got all serious.
"You just don't get it. A mission needs a sense of ceremony," Ryouma said, rolling his eyes at him. Then he continued in a low voice. "Sith Lord, initiate wormhole jump mode."
"Yes, Captain!" Obito stood at attention. The Mangekyō Sharingan swirled to life in his eyes, the sharp pinwheel spinning slowly. The Kamui dimension opened and swallowed up all four of them.
---
As unbelievable as it sounded, Rōran was indeed an independent small kingdom located within the borders of the Land of Wind. And today, this vast, endless desert welcomed a new group of travelers from a foreign land.
A spatial vortex opened, and the four figures of Ryouma's team appeared in the middle of the desert. Not far off, a fierce wind howled past, lifting golden sand into the air, swirling wildly across the sky.
Yet, right in the middle of this wind-ravaged land, stood a number of strikingly unique buildings, tall, with pointed spires piercing the clouds, full of exotic flair.
The four didn't linger outside for long. After confirming there was no large-scale barrier technique, they quickly infiltrated the city.
---
Meanwhile, inside a deserted, open building, a blond-haired boy wearing a Konoha forehead protector slowly woke up, feeling the sunlight on his face as he lay on a stone-paved floor.
"Ugh… My head's spinning. What happened…? I wonder how Kakashi-sensei and the others are doing?"
Naruto rubbed his forehead and slowly stood up. At that moment, a gentle, melodic singing voice echoed through the abandoned building, reaching his ears.
♪No matter if it's a day full of tears
Or if it's a bright sunny day
I hope we can always hold hands
And walk down the same roads♪
♪I want to forever see
The same future that you do
Let's forever look at
The same stars at the same place♪
He looked around, and behind several jagged stone pillars, he saw a girl with long, deep red hair. Though her singing voice was beautiful, he wasn't in the mood to appreciate it just then. He called out loudly to the girl, "Hey! What is this place?!"
The red-haired girl seemed startled by his sudden voice. With a few agile leaps, she darted off in one direction.
Naruto had no idea why she'd run just from being asked a question, so he chased after her.
"Wait up!"
The red-haired girl ran into a passageway within the wall. Just as he was about to follow, two puppets inside the corridor suddenly launched a barrage of hidden weapons at him.
He reached behind his back and pulled out two kunai, ready to deflect the projectiles, but as the weapons exited the corridor, it was as if they hit some kind of invisible barrier. They lost all force and clattered harmlessly to the ground.
While he stood there puzzled, the two puppets also charged at him.
But just like the projectiles, they lost all momentum the moment they passed the threshold, falling apart and scattering puppet parts all over the floor. At the same time, the passageway in the wall swiftly shut.
"Hey! Wait!"
Staring at the tightly closed wall in front of him, he leapt up, used the wall for support, and smashed through a skylight where sunlight was pouring in, landing on a grassy patch outside.
"Where… is this place?"
All around him were towering structures completely different from Konoha's architecture. The towers stood close together, and countless pipes of various shapes and sizes stretched across the sky above.
He leapt a few times and landed in what looked like a small plaza. Looking up at the sky, nearly hidden by the pointed rooftops, he couldn't help but exclaim:
"Whoa… they built them this high?"
Before he could finish marveling at the scene, six puppets, each about three meters tall, flew out from behind one of the towers and charged straight at him.
"Ahhh, what the heck is going on?!"
Naruto didn't want to get tangled up with those puppets right now, so he turned and dashed off in a random direction.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Several concealed weapons were fired by the relentlessly pursuing puppets behind him. He agilely dodged them all. Just when he thought he had shaken them off, six more puppets emerged from a tall tower ahead.
"How many of these things are there?!"
At that moment, he remembered the chakra blade he had been equipped with before setting out. He quickly drew it from his back, infused it with chakra, and swung it at the chakra threads behind the pursuing puppets.
But he felt no resistance, nothing indicated that he'd cut anything. Confused, he glanced at his still-intact chakra blade.
"What's going on?"
Seizing the moment while his attack failed, the six puppets ahead raised their arms. With mechanical clicking, their components shifted and transformed into pitch-black cannon barrels.
Zzzt~ zzzt~
A crackling sound filled the air as blue chakra currents built up inside the barrels. The next second, several powerful chakra blasts came shooting toward him like a torrential storm.
All he saw was a sudden burst of blinding light, and then came a thunderous explosion that felt like the heavens were crashing down.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The impact of the chakra blasts was beyond imagination. He took a direct hit and was sent flying backward, crashing downward through the air. The suspended bridge he had been standing on moments ago disintegrated in an instant under the violent energy, crumbling into countless fragments that tumbled into the abyss below.
He was blown away, eventually crashing into an empty tower. Fortunately, thanks to his exceptional resilience, he wasn't killed outright by the obviously abnormal chakra blasts.
"Cough, cough… That hurts!"
Just as he spat out a few mouthfuls of blood, a sharp pain surged through him. Struggling to sit up halfway, he looked to his right, only to see a sharp stone spike impaled through his side, with blood gushing from the wound.
"This… is bad…"
He looked up bitterly as the twelve puppets began to descend slowly from the air.
Clack clack clack~
One of the puppets rotated its joints, pointing the black cannon barrel on its arm directly at the wounded Naruto. Azure chakra began to gather at the barrel's tip. In the next instant, the blue blast surged forth.
He quickly formed hand seals to summon a shadow clone to help him dodge the attack. Though it would likely worsen his injury, there was no better option at the moment.
But luckily, someone else was faster than him.
Fwoosh!
A kunai sliced through the air and embedded itself into the ground beside Naruto. As ripples of space-time shimmered, a figure appeared with it.
The blue laser closed in instantly. The ninja drew a nearly broken blade from behind his back and slashed forward.
An invisible domain expanded at high speed, rebounding the incoming chakra blast with even greater force.
Boom!
The puppet that had fired the chakra cannon was hit by its own attack and exploded into fragments within the smoke and flames.
Seeing this, Naruto released the hand seal he had already formed. "Thanks, you really saved me."
Without turning back, the ninja replied softly, "It's too early to thank me. Wait until I finish off the rest of these puppets."
With that, he stretched out his left hand. Strands of blue chakra emerged, and a powerful gust of wind condensed in his palm, compressed and concentrated with force.
Meanwhile, the one secretly controlling the eleven remaining airborne puppets seemed to have recognized the ninja's identity.
They immediately stopped firing chakra blasts and instead directed the puppets to launch a self-destructing charge straight at him.
Bzzzz~
Under ninja's control, a Big Ball Rasenshuriken quickly formed in his hand. With a slight turn of his body, he charged his left arm and hurled the dazzling Rasenshuriken like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.
Accompanied by a deafening, high-pitched whirring sound, the shuriken tore through the air, leaving behind a visible trail as if even the atmosphere itself were being ripped apart. When it collided with the incoming eleven puppets, there was an earth-shattering explosion. The blinding light illuminated the entire space, making it almost impossible to look directly.
A massive blue sphere rapidly expanded outward, completely enveloping the eleven puppets within it. Then came the nerve-wracking sound of intense slicing, echoing through the air. Within a few seconds, the blue sphere gradually dissipated, and the eleven puppets had completely vanished without a trace.
In their place was a perfectly circular, massive skylight cut clean through the structure.
"That jutsu? You're—?"
Naruto had been feeling something strange ever since the white-haired boy had shown up.
There was something very familiar about him, and that jutsu was unmistakably the Rasenshuriken, Ryouma's signature technique.
After easily finishing off the puppets, the ninja turned and walked over to Naruto to check on his condition.
"Whoa, that's a nasty injury."
He could sense that there was no Nine-Tails chakra inside Naruto, so this kind of wound was definitely serious for him.
"Yeah, it's kinda bad… but it's okay. Just a bandage and I'll be good to go!"
Even though pain was still surging through him, Naruto smiled foolishly with his usual optimism.
"Haha, don't act tough in front of me. A bandage won't cut it for this kind of injury."
The ninja ruffled Naruto's yellow hair, then gently placed his right hand on the stone spike impaled through Naruto's side.
"Hang in there, this is gonna hurt a little."
As soon as he finished speaking, he teleported the stone spike out of Naruto's body.
"What? Ah, that hurts!"
Naruto had just opened his mouth to ask what the oddly familiar boy was doing when a sharp, tearing pain suddenly shot through him.
He looked down and shouted in alarm, "I'm bleeding out!"
"I told you it'd hurt. That's why I warned you."
After removing the spike, the ninja quickly took a syringe filled with glowing green liquid from his ninja tools pouch and injected it into Naruto's thigh.
All of Naruto's wounds began to emit a green glow similar to the Mystical Palm Technique, though it was just a visual resemblance, the healing effect of this medicine was far stronger than traditional medical ninjutsu.
Under the green glow, new tissue began to grow rapidly at the wound sites. In less than thirty seconds, the gaping hole in his side, once as wide as a bowl, had completely healed.
"Incredible! Even my chakra's been restored!"
Naruto touched his waist, surprised by the smooth, unbroken skin where a gory wound had been moments earlier. With a quick kip-up, he sprang to his feet and clenched his fists. He felt better than before he got injured.