Last month, I did a power steering flush on my 5th gen as preventative maintenance since the fluid appeared dark in color.

My process for doing this was very similar to this, using Valvoline Maxlife ATF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYGPqewZvYg

All in all, I went through roughly 1.5 qts of the Maxlife stuff and confirmed red fluid was coming from the return line before calling it good.

Fast-forward to present day and about 800 miles later, the steering still feels perfectly fine. But when I went to check the condition of the fluid, I dabbed a little bit of the fluid onto a paper towel, and it came back a light brown, transparent color (almost like fresh motor oil).

I was not expecting the fluid color to have changed so quickly after only 800 miles. I also only have a little over 30k miles on the 4runner, so I'm really not suspecting the hoses at this point.

Anyone have any ideas as to why this could be happening, and/or experienced something similar?

Thanks all.

Original fluid was not red. It probably diluted new fluid enough to take away red. As long as it's Dex-lll you should be good.

Yup, it was a Dex-III ATF. Thanks!