Outside Konoha, at dusk.
He had finished a full day of taxing ANBU intelligence work.
Hyuga Tianyi headed toward the Senju Clan Grounds as usual.
The setting sun stretched his shadow long, and wisps of cooking smoke began rising within Konoha.
A peaceful air hung over everything, and the tension of the past few days seemed to ease a little with the fading light.
As he always did, Tianyi habitually activated his Magnet Release Sensory to scan all of Konoha.
"Hm?"
Tianyi stopped dead and tilted his head slightly, his gaze seeming to pierce the rows of buildings toward somewhere outside the village.
Within his sensory range, a familiar chakra signature was moving away from Konoha at tremendous speed.
It raced toward the forest to the northeast.
This was...
Without a moment's hesitation, veins bulged around Tianyi's eyes, and his vision changed abruptly.
"Byakugan, activate!"
The material world before him seemed to become a translucent, black-and-white map of interwoven pathways.
His field of perception expanded rapidly, far beyond ordinary human limits. Village walls, forests, and mountains offered no obstruction to his sight.
His Byakugan quickly locked onto the retreating chakra source.
Within the penetrating vision of his Byakugan.
A young Ninja Academy student was giving chase.
A small, curled-up figure with an active chakra signature came into view.
"Kushina Uzumaki..."
But just as Tianyi was about to examine the Hidden Cloud Village ninja more closely.
At the edge of his Byakugan's vision, he caught another figure sprinting through the woods from behind and to the side, closing in rapidly.
That chakra was warm and bright, and its owner was moving incredibly fast.
So it was him... Tianyi understood.
Minato Namikaze, the Ninja Academy's prodigy of recent years and Jiraiya's future student.
He had clearly noticed something amiss as well and