Namikaze Minato had lost count of how many times he had visited the Hokage Building recently.
Many of the shinobi working there had already committed the boy to memory: a clean-cut, gentle youth with a shock of bright blond hair, whose brow was perpetually furrowed with a worry he couldn't quite hide. At just fourteen, Minato had already attained the rank of Chunin, but in the eyes of the administrative staff—most of whom were well into their thirties—he was still very much a child.
"Minato? Here to check for news on your brother again?"
Shimizu, a Chunin responsible for sorting intelligence and correspondence from the Land of Rain front, was the first to speak as Minato approached.
"Yes, Chunin Shimizu. I'm sorry to keep bothering you like this every day," Minato replied, offering a polite, albeit strained, smile. He bowed slightly in apology before quickly looking up, his eyes brimming with hope.
When his younger brother, Namikaze Hatani, had first received orders to deploy to the Land of Rain, Minato had felt a twinge of unease. However, knowing that the team was led by Mimura Shinji—a highly capable Jonin—and included Nawaki, a scion of the Senju clan, he had managed to convince himself that his brother would be safe.
Shortly after Hatani left the village, Minato had even rescued his crush, Uzumaki Kushina, from Cloud ninja. That moonlit rescue had successfully won her heart, drawing them closer and setting them on the path to becoming more than just friends.
It should have been the happiest time of his life.
But as the saying goes, extreme joy begets sorrow. Just as he began to envision a bright future, disaster struck.
Report arrived that Team 13 had been ambushed by Suna forces. They were listed as missing in action. From that day forward, Minato had spent every spare moment outside of his own missions at the Hokage Building, desperate for updates.
Four days had passed since the initial report, and the only follow-up had been devastating: Mimura Shinji and Kazuha were confirmed dead. Nawaki and Hatani were still missing.
Anyone else might have given up hope by now. Being a shinobi was a high-risk profession, and in the midst of a great war, casualty reports were a daily occurrence. Many in the village had grown numb to the constant flow of death. To the village at large, two rookie Genin who hadn't even been out of the Academy for a year were as good as dead.
But Minato knew his brother. He remained steadfast in his belief that Hatani wouldn't die so easily.
While Hatani had never explicitly shared his secrets, Minato was far too brilliant not to have noticed them.
His little brother could command the wind.
In the sweltering heat of summer, while others used every tool at their disposal to stay cool, their home was always comfortable. As long as the windows were open, no matter how stagnant or oppressive the air outside was, a cool breeze would constantly flow through the house to sweep away the heat.
Furthermore, since Minato had graduated and started taking missions outside the village, he never came home to an empty house. Hatani always seemed to know exactly when he was arriving. He would be standing at the door, waiting. Depending on how exhausted or injured Minato was, Hatani would either drag him out to a nice meal using his mission pay, or he would have already prepared a hot bath and medicinal salves for his wounds.
In the year and a half since Minato's graduation, Hatani hadn't missed a single time.
Minato didn't understand why his brother insisted on hiding this gift, but he knew one thing for certain: someone with that kind of perception didn't just stumble into an ambush, and they certainly didn't die easily.
Still, despite his confidence, Minato's heart sank when he saw the look of regret on Shimizu's face as the man mouthed the word, "Sorry."
"Thank you anyway," Minato forced out, nodding to Shimizu. He turned and walked out of the building, his footsteps feeling heavier with every pace.
Outside, he squinted against the piercing sunlight. The brightness stung his eyes, but it also temporarily burned away the gloom in his heart.
"No. I can't just sit here and wait anymore." He tightened his fists, his resolve hardening. "I'm going to the Land of Rain."
Under the same sky, but across the border in the perpetually weeping Land of Rain, Hatani was also looking up at the clouds. He felt a sense of oppression. It had been so long since he'd seen the sun that he'd almost forgotten the feeling of warmth on his skin.
"Hoo..."
He shook his head, clearing his mind of idle thoughts, and returned to his training.
Becoming Jiraiya's student had been a calculated move for self-preservation, but Hatani had to admit that having a walking encyclopedia of ninjutsu as a mentor was providing benefits far beyond mere safety.
Whether it was the specific breathing exercises Jiraiya had given him to refine his chakra, or the handwritten notes detailing the research on Wind Style nature transformation conducted by both Hiruzen Sarutobi and Jiraiya, the materials were invaluable.
The notes, in particular, were a godsend.
If the basic wind-style manual he'd looted from the Rain Chunin, Asayu, was an elementary school primer, then this scroll—compiled by two generations of masters—was a university-level textbook. While it was incredibly taxing to jump from a primer to advanced theory, the insights he gained were transformative.
Specifically, the detailed breakdowns of two B-rank jutsu—Vacuum Sphere and Vacuum Wave—had been eye-opening.
In the past, Hatani had mostly thought about wind in terms of its natural properties. For the first time, he truly understood how chakra could "specialize" those properties.
By applying the principles of nature transformation found in Vacuum Wave, a blade of wind didn't even need to be rotated to be lethal. It carried an inherently sharp, "Kamaitachi" quality that could slice through physical matter and chakra alike.
Vacuum Sphere, on the other hand, was somewhat similar to his Powershot. Both relied on compressing wind to achieve extreme velocity.
The difference was that Vacuum Sphere acted like a machine gun, pelting the enemy with a rapid-fire barrage of wind bullets. It was fast and dense, but lacked individual piercing power and follow-up damage.
His Powershot, thanks to its high-speed rotation, didn't just have a lethal, armor-piercing "arrowhead"—the trail of wind following behind it evolved into countless tiny, spinning blades that shredded everything in their path. In that sense, it was structurally similar to his "future nephew's" signature move: the Rasenshuriken.
If he could master Vacuum Wave and learn to use chakra to force that specific nature transformation, he could combine it with the ultra-high-speed rotation of Powershot. The destructive power would skyrocket. He might even be able to pierce through a Mangekyo Sharingan's Susanoo.
After all, Danzo would eventually prove that a sufficiently buffed Wind Style could damage a Susanoo. There was no reason Hatani couldn't do the same.
Meanwhile, studying Vacuum Sphere would undoubtedly allow him to compress wind faster and more efficiently.
"The master leads you through the door, but the cultivation is up to the individual..."
Hatani muttered the old proverb as he looked at how much just two jutsu had helped him. He glanced at the rest of the scroll, which was filled with dense records of other techniques.
"I used to think that saying was all about how important personal effort is," he sighed. "But actually, the 'master leads you through the door' part is the real point."
Without someone to point you toward the right path, even a lucky person will find themselves working twice as hard for half the results. And if an unlucky person takes a wrong turn, the harder they work, the further they stray.
Hatani felt a surge of genuine relief. "I'm glad I went to all that trouble to get Jiraiya to take me in. Otherwise, I'd still be taking the long way around, wasting time on effort that leads nowhere."