"Each of you take one of these kunai and keep it on you at all times during patrol."
Kenji stood outside his tent in Area A3, holding out three specially marked kunai to the chunin squad leaders assigned to his sector. If any patrol encountered danger they couldn't handle, he could teleport directly to their location.
"Yes!" The three chunin accepted the kunai, securing them in their pouches.
They didn't ask questions about why these particular kunai were important. Operational security meant not explaining every detail to subordinates who didn't need to know.
The three squad leaders gathered their genin teams and headed deeper into the border zone, moving in different directions to cover ground. Kenji watched them disappear into the trees, then returned to his tent.
Once inside, he formed a quick seal sequence and slammed his palm against the ground.
"Summoning Technique!"
White smoke exploded outward. When it cleared, his Magnet Release and Swift Release puppets stood before him.
Kenji activated the Mind Clone Switch Technique, projecting his consciousness into both puppets simultaneously. The puppets remained in the tent for now, ready to deploy via Flying Thunder God the instant a patrol team activated their emergency signal.
His real body settled into a meditation posture and extended his sensory technique outward. At the same time, he began the slow, frustrating process of trying to sense natural energy for his Sage Mode training.
---
Deep in the forest, maybe three kilometers from Kenji's position, one of the patrol teams was moving through dense undergrowth.
The squad consisted of one chunin leader and three genin. They'd been sweeping the sector for about an hour without incident. Just trees, wildlife, and the occasional stream. Boring work, but boring was good on a border patrol. Excitement usually meant someone was dying.
The chunin leader raised his fist suddenly, and the entire squad froze.
He'd spotted a disturbance in the foliage about twenty meters ahead, movement that didn't match wind patterns or animal behavior.
Enemy contact, he signed to his team.
The genin immediately spread out into a defensive triangle formation, kunai drawn.
For about ten seconds, nothing happened. The forest went quiet.
Then three Kiri ninjas exploded out of the water.
They'd been hiding beneath the surface of a small stream that ran through the area, using breathing techniques to stay submerged.
The chunin leader blocked the first strike with his own blade, metal screeching against metal. One of his genin dodged desperately to the side, barely avoiding a thrust. The third genin wasn't fast enough.
A Kiri ninja's kunai drove toward the kid's throat in a killing strike.
Then a blur appeared between them.
CLANG!
The Swift Release puppet materialized mid-motion, its own kunai intercepting the attack. Sparks flew from the impact. The Kiri ninja's eyes widened, he hadn't sensed this newcomer approaching at all, but his training kicked in immediately.
He disengaged and leapt backward, creating distance.
The puppet didn't give him time to regroup. It vanished from its position and reappeared behind a different Kiri ninja, the one who'd been pressing the chunin leader. The puppet's kunai slashed horizontally at neck height.
The blade passed through the target smoothly.
Too smoothly.
The Kiri ninja burst into water, the liquid splashing across the ground.
The puppet showed no reaction to the fake. Its head snapped to the left, tracking movement that the Konoha ninjas couldn't even perceive yet. Its hands blurred through seals.
"Wind Release: Wind Cutter Technique!"
A compressed blade of wind chakra shot from the puppet's position, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second. It sliced clean through a tree trunk about fifteen meters away, the upper portion toppling with a crash. More importantly, it bisected the real Kiri ninja who'd been hiding behind that tree.
The enemy's torso separated from his legs, both halves hitting the ground. Blood sprayed across the bark and leaves, painting them red.
One down.
The Kiri ninja who'd initially been blocked by the puppet's intervention showed no emotional reaction to his teammate's death. He formed seals rapidly, chakra surging.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
A massive torrent of water materialized in the air and took the shape of a dragon. The dragon roared forward and slammed into the ground where the puppet had been standing, the impact crater sending up a geyser of mud and torn vegetation.
The Kiri ninja smiled as water splashed everywhere.
Then pain exploded through his chest.
He looked down slowly. A short blade had erupted from his sternum, the point protruding from his ninja vest. Blood welled around the metal.
"How..." he gasped.
The Swift Release puppet stood directly behind him. The puppet twisted the blade viciously, widening the wound. The Kiri ninja's body went rigid, a strangled sound escaping his throat. Then the blade withdrew.
The puppet flicked its arm once, scattering blood. It slid the short sword back into its sheath.
Two down.
The third Kiri ninja, seeing both his teammates killed in under thirty seconds, made the smart choice. He formed a rapid seal sequence, and his body sank into the ground using Earth Release. Retreating through the soil, trying to escape before this unknown enemy could finish him too.
The puppet tracked his movement underground through tremors in the earth, but didn't pursue. Its mission was protecting Konoha's patrol, not hunting fleeing enemies.
It turned to face the stunned genin and their chunin leader..
"Continue your patrol," the puppet said. "The threat has been neutralized."
"Th-thank you!" one of the genin stammered, his hands still shaking from the adrenaline.
The others echoed the gratitude, staring at the puppet. It had moved so fast they'd barely been able to follow its actions.
The Swift Release puppet acknowledged them with a slight nod. Then it vanished.
"That guy's strength is insane," one genin muttered once the puppet was gone. He was staring at the corpses.
"No kidding," another responded. "And I heard that's just one of his puppets. He's got multiple ones he can control."
"Wait, puppet? Like what Suna uses?" The genin who'd nearly been killed looked confused. "How does a puppet move like that?"
"Don't speculate about classified information," the chunin leader cut in sharply, finishing his sweep of the battlefield. He'd been checking for intelligence on the dead Kiri ninjas, but they carried nothing useful. "Focus on your job. Kiri's been sending more reconnaissance units every day. A full-scale engagement could happen any time."
The squad reformed and continued their patrol.
---
Back in the tent, Kenji felt his consciousness return fully to his real body as the Swift Release puppet reentered through the Flying Thunder God seal. He released the Mind Clone Switch on that puppet while maintaining it on the Magnet Release version, keeping one asset deployed for rapid response.
He picked up the scroll he'd been studying earlier and sighed quietly.
His Sage Mode training was progressing at a painfully slow pace. Thanks to his abnormally strong spiritual power, he could sense that natural energy existed around him. But the perception was incredibly vague, like trying to listen to someone speaking while wearing earplugs and standing on the other side of a thick wall.
It would take time until he could actually draw natural energy into himself.
At least he'd confirmed it was possible. That was more than most people could say.
He set down the Sage Mode scroll and formed another summoning seal.
"Summoning Technique!"
The two puppets that appeared were completely different. One male, one female. The male had sharp, cold features. The female had elegant bone structure with an icy beauty.
But the most striking feature was their eyes.
Blood-red, three tomoe spinning slowly in each eye.
These were the Sharingan Puppets he'd constructed using the eyes Danzō had provided. The outward design had been relatively simple, just standard puppet craftsmanship applied to bodies he found visually appealing.
The real challenge had been preserving the Sharingan themselves.
Transplanting Sharingan into puppets risked structural damage that could prevent evolution to Mangekyō. He couldn't just install them like normal puppet components. Instead, he'd developed a specialized sealing technique inspired by puppet core mechanics. The seal created a stable environment where chakra constantly circulated through the eyes, maintaining their vitality as if they were still inside a living Uchiha.
Getting them from one tomoe to three tomoe had been straightforward. Sharingan evolution relied on mental stimulation and emotional trauma. With his abnormally powerful spiritual energy, he'd been able to forcefully push both pairs through the lower stages of development by subjecting them to intense chakra fluctuations and sensory overload.
It was the Uchiha equivalent of power-leveling through brute force.
But the jump from three tomoe to Mangekyō Sharingan was a completely different problem.
According to Itachi in the original timeline, the Mangekyō awakened when an Uchiha experienced overwhelming emotional trauma. That trauma triggered the production of a special type of chakra that caused the Sharingan to mutate and evolve.
The question was: what exactly was this "special chakra"?
Kenji wasn't an Uchiha. His real body couldn't produce whatever unique chakra signature their bloodline generated during emotional crisis. The Sharingan puppets contained Uchiha cells and theoretically had the biological capacity to create it. But he controlled them remotely through the Mind Clone Switch technique.
There was no emotional connection. Just his consciousness piloting empty vessels.
Without authentic trauma, the Mangekyō evolution wouldn't trigger. It was like trying to forge a sword without fire. You could have all the right materials, but without the crucial transformative element, you'd never create the finished product.
"I'll have to shelf this for now," he muttered, pulling out another scroll and unrolling it across his workspace.
The scroll was covered in dense notes about Sharingan anatomy and function. Chakra flow patterns through the optic nerve. Structural changes as each tomoe developed. Comparative analysis between one-tomoe and three-tomoe visual processing speed. Everything he'd discovered through observation.
He examined one puppet's Sharingan closely, channeling a thread of chakra over the eye to sense the microscopic activity inside. There were subtle differences in how the tomoe rotated depending on chakra input.
He recorded the new observations on the scroll.
Witnessing a Mangekyō awakening in person was astronomically unlikely. Lower probability than winning a lottery. If he didn't already know which Uchiha would eventually awaken their Mangekyō and approximately when, he would never risk gambling on such a rare opportunity.
But since he did have that knowledge, he needed to be ready.
When the time came, he couldn't afford to miss the chance just because he wasn't familiar enough with how the Sharingan functioned at a deep level.
Information was power. Understanding was survival.
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