The Suna ninja Kenji had supposedly just controlled with Mind Body Switch appeared behind him instead, katana raised high. A cruel smile twisted the man's face as the blade came down.
The figure Kenji had been controlling burst apart into splashing water. It was a clone.
"You fell for it!"
The katana descended.
The blade cut clean through Kenji's torso, splitting him in half from shoulder to hip. Blood sprayed across the dirt.
"SENSEI!"
All three students screamed. Haruto's face went white. Aoi's hand flew to her mouth. Kaede just stared, tears already streaming down his face.
Then the "corpse" exploded into white smoke.
When it cleared, only a splintered log lay on the ground where Kenji had been standing.
"Substitution!" The Suna ninja's expression changed instantly. "Shit!"
He started to pivot, searching for his target, but a voice spoke from directly behind him.
"The one who fell for it is you."
Kenji stood there, hands already forming seals. He'd been there the whole time, hidden and waiting.
The Suna ninja spun around fast, bringing his katana up. But his body suddenly locked up mid-motion. His muscles refused to obey. The blade froze inches from Kenji's face.
"Mind Clone Switch Technique."
With the enemy immobilized, Kenji formed another seal. His right hand turned black as stone. He drove it forward like a spear.
His hardened hand went straight through the Suna ninja's chest. Ribs cracked, and flesh tore. Blood gushed hot over his fingers as his hand emerged from the man's back, heart tissue still clinging to his knuckles.
The light slowly faded from the Suna ninja's eyes. His mouth opened, trying to form words, but only blood came out. He slumped forward.
Kenji yanked his hand free and let the corpse drop to the ground. Blood pooled beneath the body, soaking into the earth.
He turned toward his students, who were still frozen in shock. "It's over. I'm fine."
That broke the spell.
"Sensei! You're okay!" Haruto's voice was filled with relief.
"You scared the hell out of us!" Kaede wiped at his face, not even trying to hide the tears.
Aoi just ran over and grabbed his arm, like she needed physical confirmation he was alive.
They clustered around him, talking over each other. Kenji let them have their moment while his mind replayed the fight.
The moment he'd sensed that first chakra signature, he'd pushed his sensory technique to maximum range. That's when he'd spotted both the water clone approaching and the real enemy hiding behind rubble thirty meters to the right.
What had puzzled him was how the Suna ninja had briefly disrupted his sensing. Some kind of chakra suppression technique, maybe, or a seal that masked his presence. Either way, it had only worked for a few seconds before his enhanced mental power burned through it.
Rather than engage immediately and risk the enemy escaping, he'd played along. Let the bastard think his water clone trick was working. Used Substitution at the last second to switch places with a log, then circled around behind while the Suna ninja was focused on the "kill."
The Mind Clone Switch Technique had worked perfectly. He'd immobilized the target long enough to finish him with his own Earth Spear.
And the technique itself had proven even more effective than he'd hoped. His spiritual mutation gave him way more mental capacity than normal Yamanaka clan members. The mind clone didn't suffer from the same weaknesses as the traditional Mind Body Switch. No backlash when the controlled target got injured. His real body stayed conscious and mobile instead of going limp. And his massive spiritual reserves meant he could maintain stable control without worrying about the clone's limited mental strength causing the jutsu to fail.
Most Yamanaka considered Mind Clone Switch to be the inferior version of their techniques. Impractical for real combat due to its limitations.
For him, with his enhanced capabilities, it was damn near perfect.
"We need to move. This area isn't secure. Grab the wounded ninja and let's get back to friendly lines."
"Yes, sensei!" They responded, quickly getting back to work.
Kaede retrieved the unconscious Konoha ninja he'd dropped during the fight. Haruto and Aoi flanked them as they headed toward the medical zone. Kenji took point, his sensory technique active and scanning for more threats.
They found another wounded Konoha ninja about forty meters from where the fight had happened. This one was unconscious but alive, bleeding from a gash across his ribs. He knelt down to check the injury and immediately noticed the clan symbol stitched onto the back of his vest.
The Uchiha fan.
He glanced at the man's face. Sharp features, dark hair, probably mid-twenties. Kenji didn't recognize him personally, but that wasn't surprising. The Uchiha kept to themselves mostly, and he'd never been particularly social even before the transmigration.
He pressed his fingers against the man's neck, checking for a pulse. Still strong. The wound looked bad but wasn't immediately fatal. This guy would survive if they got him to medical-nin quickly.
As he lifted the Uchiha onto a stretcher, his hand brushed across the injury. His fingers moved quickly, collecting a small sample of tissue and blood while appearing to simply assess the damage. A test tube materialized in his palm from a storage seal, already containing preservative solution. The sample dropped in smoothly. Nobody watching would notice anything unusual.
Once the medical team took custody of the wounded Uchiha and carried him away, he pulled the test tube from his pouch and examined it. The tissue sample floated in the clear liquid, tiny fragments of flesh that contained genetic material he'd been trying to acquire for months.
Uchiha cells. Not as valuable as an actual Sharingan, but still incredibly useful for his research.
He sealed the test tube into a scroll and tucked it away safely.
The next several wounded extractions went smoothly. No ambushes, or complications. Just steady work moving injured ninjas to safety. And throughout the process, he kept his eyes open for opportunities.
Another Uchiha, this one dead. Sample collected.
A Hyūga with massive internal injuries, unconscious but stable. Sample collected.
He even found what looked like a Senju based on the name tag attached to the man's vest, though the clan's bloodline was harder to identify visually since they didn't have distinctive physical markers like the Uchiha or Hyūga. Sample collected anyway, just in case.
When the wounded evacuation concluded, his squad got assigned to body retrieval duty. The dead needed to be transported back to Konoha for proper burial. It was grim work, but it gave him even more opportunities to collect samples from deceased clan members.
Konoha didn't have many bloodline clans compared to other villages. Really just three major ones, the Uchiha, Senju, and Hyūga. Whenever he encountered members of those clans among the casualties, he made sure to acquire tissue samples.
The Senju were trickiest since they looked like regular ninjas. He had to rely on checking name tags like the fourth one and hoping the deceased had proper identification. In the original timeline, the Senju clan had dwindled to basically just Tsunade by the time Naruto's story started. He still wasn't entirely sure why that had happened. Political pressure from other clans? Targeted assassinations during the wars? Voluntary integration into the general population?
Whatever the reason, Senju ninjas definitely still existed during this Second Great Ninja War. Just in smaller numbers and harder to identify.
Since his living puppet experiment had proven theoretically viable, an idea had been growing in his mind. If he could replace the puppet's power core with cells from a bloodline clan, maybe the puppet could manifest bloodline abilities.
The original story loved to preach about bonds and willpower overcoming everything. Naruto and his talk-no-jutsu, Might Guy nearly killing Madara through pure determination and the Eight Gates, Rock Lee proving taijutsu alone could compete with genius bloodlines.
But reality in this world was harsher. Without powerful lineage or some kind of cheat ability, you ended up as a background character. Fodder. The kind of ninja who died in the first exchange of a battle and never got their name mentioned.
He wasn't content being fodder.
The problem was acquiring the bloodline limits from Konoha's three major clans. Sharingan and Byakugan were dōjutsu. The eyes themselves contained the power. You couldn't exactly walk up to an Uchiha or Hyūga and ask to borrow their eyeballs for research. Not without becoming a missing-nin immediately.
And the Wood Release was even more complicated. Hashirama had been the only one who could use it properly. His descendants and clan members could manipulate the Senju's life force and chakra to some degree, but Wood Release? That was unique to the First Hokage.
Still, he had a plan forming.
I need to get my hands on Sharingan and Byakugan eventually, he thought, organizing his collected samples as they loaded another body onto a transport cart. And I'll definitely need to experiment with Hashirama's cells.
That last goal wasn't completely impossible. Tobirama had started researching his brother's cells decades ago. But the large-scale research program wouldn't begin until after this war ended, right around the time Orochimaru would start getting involved before his eventual defection.
If he could create a puppet capable of using bloodline limit, revealing even a fraction of that capability might earn him access to the official Hashirama cell research. The village would want to know how he'd accomplished it. That could be his entry point.
Of course, that path carried massive risks. Danzō would almost certainly try to force him into Root the moment he demonstrated anything that valuable. And while Hiruzen had officially sanctioned the Hashirama cell research, it was really Danzō and Orochimaru running the show. Neither of them were trustworthy.
Before taking that route, he needed to confirm whether bloodline limit could actually manifest through a puppet. And he needed to quietly gather more powerful bloodlines to strengthen himself. Because once his research became known, he'd be touching on the taboo of "stealing bloodlines." If things went bad with Konoha's leadership, he needed enough personal power to flip the table and defect if necessary.
Beyond Konoha's three clans, he had two other long-term targets.
First was the Uzumaki clan. Uzushio had been destroyed, but Kushina still lived in Konoha as the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki. And scattered survivors from the Land of Whirlpools almost certainly existed somewhere in the ninja world. The Uzumaki's vitality and sealing expertise would be invaluable.
Second was the Kaguya clan from Kiri. They supposedly had connections to the legendary Ōtsutsuki lineage, and their Shikotsumyaku bone manipulation was a unique bloodline limit that could have interesting applications.
Both targets were currently beyond his reach. But he had time. Opportunities would present themselves eventually.
"Enemy approaching!" The commanding officer's shout interrupted his thoughts. "Prepare to engage! Ready your kunai!"
Kenji immediately gripped the kunai in his hand. His three students mirrored the action, falling into combat stance beside him. Around them, dozens of other Konoha ninjas formed up in loose ranks, weapons drawn.
Across the battlefield, maybe two hundred meters away, a mass of enemy ninjas was charging their position. Suna and Iwa forces combined, probably a hundred strong.
"Throw!"
At the signal, Kenji hurled his kunai along with everyone else. The air filled with the whistle of projectiles, hundreds of throwing weapons arcing toward the enemy lines.