The Roran Kingdom.
An expanse of golden sand stretched endlessly as far as the eye could see, hiding an architectural marvel that seemed to defy the laws of nature in the heart of the arid desert.
Unlike the silent and dead ancient ruins of the future, in this Third Shinobi World War timeline, Roran stood with a majesty that thrilled the soul of anyone who laid eyes upon it.
Giant cylindrical towers made of solid steel and brick soared arrogantly, piercing the scorching sky.
Overpasses circled the buildings like giant iron belts, connecting one tower to another in a complex web of infrastructure.
White smoke from steam engines billowed into the air, blending with the bluish-purple glow of chakra flowing rapidly through transparent pipes in every corner of the city.
The clanking of metal, the roar of gears, and the beating of engines became the heartbeat of this city, proving absolutely that Roran was still a highly active, prosperous, and triumphant kingdom.
In a secluded corner of the city, perfectly hidden in the shadows of a giant tower's balcony to avoid the patrols of one-eyed puppet guards, Shion stood frozen.
The dry, hot desert wind blew fiercely, whipping his long brown hair around wildly to sweep across his face.
The fine veins around his temples tensed. His pale Byakugan eyes were now widened to their absolute limits, radiating an absolute horror that couldn't be hidden at all.
Before him, just a few steps away on the steel-plated balcony floor, stood a very, very familiar teenage boy dressed in an orange and black tracksuit. His spiky blond hair defied gravity, and his pair of blue eyes, as bright as the midday sky, stared at Shion with overflowing shock.
"Mother? What are you doing here?" asked the blond teenager, his voice cutting through the roaring wind, filled with both shock and innocent curiosity. "I just said goodbye and left home a few days ago, why are you here following me?"
Hearing that one-word address, Shion's heart felt like it was violently ripped from his chest cavity and stopped beating instantly. His blood, which had been boiling earlier due to Roran's weather, now felt frozen solid. He reflexively took a step back, his back nearly slamming into the concrete pillar wall.
Shion stared intently at the teenager's face with bated breath. His facial features, his spiky blond hair, his sapphire blue eyes... this teenager was truly a living, breathing replica of Minato Namikaze! Except, that genetic blueprint was augmented with three distinct fox whisker marks on each of his cheeks!
"W-who is your Mother?!" Shion stammered, his voice cracking at the highest octave due to panic and a massive identity crisis.
The blond teenager furrowed his brow in confusion, completely ignoring, or oblivious to, the extreme panic washing over Shion. Instead, he took a step closer with a look of bewilderment.
"It's me, Naruto! I just left the village with Captain Yamato a few days ago to chase that damn Mukade... wait..."
Naruto's footsteps suddenly halted. His head tilted slightly to the side. His blue eyes narrowed sharply, scrutinizing Shion's beautiful face, his slimmer posture, and the strange clothes he was wearing. The survival instincts forged from various deadly battles began to ignite.
"Wait a minute... Why do you look younger?" Naruto muttered, his vigilance as a shinobi suddenly spiking drastically. He lowered his center of gravity, taking a combat stance, and pointed straight at Shion's nose with his index finger. "You... are you an enemy ninja using the Henge no Jutsu to copy my mother to trick me?!"
Shion nearly had a double heart attack on the spot. His body froze stiff like an ice statue in the middle of the desert.
In front of him right now was Uzumaki Naruto. The main character of this world! A teenage jinchuriki from the future who, according to the laws of physics, spatial logic, and time, absolutely shouldn't even be born yet and shouldn't be in this timeline! And for whatever reason... whether due to the side effects of time travel, dimensional distortion, or simply his legendary cross-generational stupidity, the teenager suddenly called him 'Mother'...
How did the situation end up this complicated and insane?
Let's turn back the clock a bit.
A few days ago, at the Konoha-Iwa Border Command Headquarters.
Exactly one year had passed since the historic day when Shion officially threw the remnants of his masculine pride into the deepest trenches of the Mariana, prostrating himself and begging with crocodile tears, and miraculously being accepted as the direct disciple of the genius scientist and Legendary Sannin, Orochimaru.
Honestly, in Orochimaru's analytical eyes, if it weren't for the 'weirdness' of the young Kunoichi's fashion sense and awkward behavior that often caused his brain to experience system errors, the Sannin would very openly admit that he was extremely proud. Having a disciple as genius, as strong, and as tough as this girl from the Hyuga clan was an incredible military asset.
Currently, inside the central command tent where the air always felt stuffy and filled with piles of dusty parchment scrolls, Shion was busy sorting logistics reports, counting military pill supplies, and marking enemy troop movement maps.
His appearance? He was wearing the 'Seductive Miko Outfit', a god-tier absurd design masterpiece bestowed by the System as a mission reward a year ago.
The outfit consisted of a red and white silk sleeveless top that completely exposed his pale shoulders, a pair of detached fabric sleeves dangling loosely like butterfly wings, a giant ribbon on his lower back, and black shorts cut so very, very short that they brushed the alarming boundaries of common decency. Coupled with the charm of the Zettai Ryouiki that had become his permanent curse.
Orochimaru, who was sitting with his pale chin propped on one hand behind the main desk, stared at his disciple in silence.
The Sannin had long since given up and couldn't even be bothered to question Shion's sanity anymore. From which crazy tailor did his disciple get that bizarre cosplay outfit in the middle of a hellish border battlefield? How could clothes that exposed so much bare skin magically never get dirty with dust, never be stained by enemy blood, or tear even the slightest bit despite Shion wearing them non-stop every single day for a full year?
To Orochimaru, that was one of the mysteries of the scientific world better left unsolved to preserve his own remaining sanity.
Orochimaru's reptilian golden eyes narrowed slowly, continuing to stare at the back of his disciple who was looking down, brushing an ink pen to write a report. The scientist's focus was no longer on the clothes, but shifted to a space-time modification phenomenon that still bothered and tickled his rational logic: the dimensional pocket artifact.
"Shion, try lifting—"
Hearing his master's raspy and cold voice suddenly break the silence of the tent, Shion immediately stopped the stroke of his ink brush. He turned around with a flowing, graceful movement, looking at Orochimaru with an obedient smile like a model subordinate.
"Yes, Shishou? Do you need something?"
Orochimaru opened his mouth to issue a follow-up command, but his brain immediately reprocessed the sentence structure a fraction of a second before the vowels were actually spoken.
'Try lifting your skirt, I want to see your crotch.'
Orochimaru's mouth clamped shut instantly with a soft clack of teeth.
His body froze.
That sentence sounded very, very, very wrong. Even by the moral standards of an Orochimaru who didn't hesitate to dissect enemy soldiers alive and experiment with lethal neurotoxins, telling his teenage female disciple to lift her lower garments alone inside a closed tent was a high-level social crime! It was a fatal S-class harassment that couldn't be justified by any logical scientific curiosity!
If Tsunade or Jiraiya heard about this, his reputation would be pulverized not as a rogue ninja, but as a perverted middle-aged man!
The pale Sannin let out a very long sigh, massaging his temples that suddenly throbbed with pain from overthinking.
"...No. Forget it."
Shion tilted his head slightly, strands of brown hair falling to frame his beautiful face. He looked at his master with a confused and overly innocent gaze. "Eh? Are you sure, Shishou? I don't mind if you need help moving things."
"Continue your work," Orochimaru cut in quickly and firmly, turning his face back toward the map scroll, refusing to make any further eye contact.
Truthfully, it wasn't that Orochimaru had even the slightest perverted intention in his ice-cold heart! He purely just felt an intense intellectual itch. He was curious about what Shion called a 'secret family heirloom artifact'. A boundless pocket dimension space that, strangely, could only be accessed from under his disciple's skirt or shorts.
Orochimaru's logic as a master of thousands of jutsu continued to rebel. Even if a magical object of the caliber of a pocket space-time storage actually existed, how could a young girl who merely hailed from the branch family of the Hyuga clan possess it?
But, regardless of all the absurd and dizzying things surrounding the girl, Orochimaru had to admit one absolute fact: Shion's talent, survival instincts, and combat power were developing at an incredibly rapid and terrifying pace.
Of course, Orochimaru had absolutely no idea about the pathetic truth behind the scenes—that the 'extraordinary combat talent' Shion possessed was actually just a passive buff from the bastard System.
And because this border was a real battlefield reeking of blood, mud, and death, coupled with the fact that Shion's status was no longer a fresh Genin who needed to be thrown to the front lines just to gain combat experience, Orochimaru didn't feel the need to train her in combat every day. He already considered Shion mature enough.
Instead, Shion's main job over the past year was much more akin to Shizune's work routine when serving Tsunade in the future. He managed his master's packed patrol schedule, sorted the piling intelligence reports from spies, prepared tea, and organized the logistics of medical supply distribution to the nursing tents.
Even though Shion's heart incessantly cursed the System's injustice and complained about the cold every time the border night wind managed to pierce his highly revealing Miko outfit, deep down inside, he was so grateful he felt like crying tears of joy.
Being a personal assistant inside Orochimaru's warm tent meant he no longer had to risk his life, bathe in blood, and fight desperately every day on the filthy front lines against the brutal sea of Iwagakure ninjas.
However, that peace was not without a soul-torturing price. There was one small note (which was highly depressing and Shion wanted to erase from his memory) regarding the physical development of his body over the past year.
The System, it turned out, truly wasn't joking about its promise regarding the 'Chest Pad Bonus'. The pair of magical pads that acted as reserve chakra storage pouches beneath the Miko top actually worked on a cellular principle very similar to the Byakugou Seal on Tsunade's forehead.
The pads slowly, constantly, and invisibly siphoned Shion's unused residual chakra while he was sound asleep at night. However, because this high-level absorption took a very long time and progressed gradually in harmony with his body's circulation flow, the development of the 'pads' size occurred slowly like biological growth.
After a full year had passed, that high-level chakra accumulation had only managed to increase his chest size by one cup.
A physical change subtle and completely logical enough to be deemed as the 'natural growth period of a teenage girl's puberty' by the medical nurses and ninjas around him.
But for Shion's full-blooded male soul? The reality that the physical body he inhabited was slowly forming the prominent and permanent curves of a mature woman every time he saved chakra, was enough to make him feel severely depressed, losing his appetite every time he saw his own reflection in the mirror.
Amidst the quiet of the command tent that afternoon, a smooth, slithering hissing sound came from the gap under the tent entrance.
A small white snake slithered in nimbly, tracing the muddy ground, smoothly climbing up one of the wooden table legs, and finally regurgitating a small, tightly sealed parchment scroll right in front of Orochimaru.
Orochimaru picked up the slightly slimy scroll without showing the slightest expression of disgust. He broke the wax seal engraved with the Konoha leaf symbol and read the complex rows of cipher text inside rapidly. His thin eyebrows lifted slightly upwards.
The Sannin placed the scroll down and looked at his disciple with a facial expression that had fully reverted to military commander mode. "Shion, leave your sorting work. It seems you need to immediately start packing your things. The Hokage summons you."
"Hokage-sama?" Shion asked, putting down the scroll in his hand. His tone implied genuine surprise. It was very rare, almost unprecedented, for a combat subordinate stationed in the hellish border front lines to be recalled directly by the village's supreme leader, unless there was something extremely urgent, a sudden invasion, or an S-rank secret mission.
"Yes," Orochimaru answered while rolling the parchment back up and storing it into the inner pocket of his robes.
"Sarutobi-Sensei wrote that he has a special mission designed specifically for you. You will be assigned to travel deep into the Land of Wind territory and investigate the situation in the Roran Kingdom. According to Anbu intelligence reports that just reached the Hokage's desk, that isolated place has over the past six years 'suddenly developed rapidly' in architecture and technology in a way that is highly unnatural, illogical, and suspicious."
Hearing the name 'Roran Kingdom' spoken from his master's mouth, memories from Shion's past life instantly exploded in his mind like a bolt of lightning in broad daylight.
Roran! Memories of the plot of an animated movie where there was a giant Ley Line energy tower named Ryumyaku, time travel caused by a chakra explosion, and Mukade the villain who controlled mechanical servant puppets using chakra threads!
Shion quickly tidied up the last report scroll on his desk, then stepped to the center of the tent and bowed deeply in respect to his master.
After bidding a proper farewell and expressing his profound gratitude for the protection from the harsh front lines and Orochimaru's guidance over the past year in this camp, Shion quickly ran out of the command tent. He had to head back to Konoha as fast as lightning to receive his official briefing directly from the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
A few hours later, under a dusk sky as red as blood, in the middle of the dense border forest.
Shion's figure darted, leaping from one giant tree branch to another at high speed like the shadow of a hunting owl. He wore a long, thick gray travel cloak that flapped fiercely. He desperately used the cloak to cover his highly conspicuous Miko outfit, aiming to hide his identity and the silhouette of his bodily curves from the prying eyes of enemy spies who might be hiding behind the foliage.
"The Roran Kingdom, huh..." Shion murmured softly to the howling dusk wind striking his beautiful face. His pale eyes stared sharply, piercing through the darkening horizon in the west. "The plot of The Lost Tower. I'm really curious... just how drastically my existence as an anomaly in this world will trigger the butterfly effect and alter the course of history and the future..."
Present Time…
Shion snapped back to reality from his flashback reverie. His mind returned to the harsh reality on the steel balcony of the Roran Kingdom.
Before him, the teenage Naruto was still staring at him with an accusing and suspicious glare. A standard Konoha kunai was already gripped in his sturdy right hand.
"Hey! Why have you been staying quiet this whole time?!" Naruto shouted impatiently, his blond eyebrows furrowing sharply. "Hurry up and answer my question! Who are you really and why are you using some cheap jutsu to try and copy my mother's face?!"
Shion squeezed his eyes shut tightly, pressing his temples, which were beginning to throb with an excruciating pain with two fingers.
Altering the future? Worrying about the butterfly effect?
Bullshit! It seemed the arrival of this hyperactive orange-clad kid in front of him was already more than enough absolute proof that Shion had successfully screwed up this timeline and shattered it to pieces!