Life had settled into a routine after capturing Sō. So many weeks had passed. Kenji spent his days fighting on the battlefield or treating wounded soldiers in the medical tents. The cycle repeated endlessly. But he could feel something changing. The intensity of the battles was decreasing gradually. Casualties were mounting on both sides, and both Konoha and Iwa seemed to be running out of steam. Even the smell of blood that had permeated everything for months seemed less overwhelming.
It was a Thursday afternoon when things got interesting.
He had just sat down in his tent, planning to catch his breath and maybe close his eyes for ten minutes. That's when he heard the commotion outside.
He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out.
Haruto, Kaede, and Aoi were running toward him.
"Sensei!" Haruto reached him first, breathing hard. "News just came in from the front! The Third Raikage personally led Kumo ninjas into the Land of Earth! They invaded!"
Kenji blinked. "What?"
"The Third Tsuchikage already recalled all of Iwa's forces from the Land of Rain," Aoi added quickly. "They're pulling back to defend their home territory."
That made no sense.
Konoha was currently locked in brutal combat with both Iwa and Suna. Kumo had stayed neutral this whole time, not getting involved despite the opportunity to strike while everyone else was weakened. So why attack now? And more importantly, why would Kumo ignore Konoha, which was right there, and instead take the long way around to attack the Land of Earth?
He dug through his memories of the series. There had been something about this, he was pretty sure. The Third Raikage had died during an invasion, but wasn't that during the Third Great Ninja War? The details were fuzzy, and he couldn't remember what Kumo's objective had been. It seemed like a waste of resources and manpower for no real gain.
Unless the whole point was just for the Raikage to die dramatically? That seemed stupid, but ninja villages did stupid things all the time for the sake of honor or legacy or whatever else motivated the people in charge.
"Alright, thanks for the update," he said to his students. "Get back to your posts. This changes things, but we still have jobs to do."
They nodded and scattered.
He stood outside his tent for a moment longer. If Iwa was withdrawing forces from the Land of Rain to defend their home, that meant pressure on Konoha's eastern front would decrease significantly. Which meant Konoha could redirect resources to deal with Suna more effectively.
---
Three days later, confirmation arrived.
The Third Raikage was dead.
The official reports didn't provide many details beyond the bare facts. Kumo's invasion force had engaged Iwa's army. The battle went badly. The Raikage stayed behind to cover his troops' retreat. He died in the fighting.
Kenji remembered a bit of the story from the anime. The Third Raikage had faced ten thousand Iwa ninjas alone. He'd fought for three straight days and nights without rest, holding the line by himself through sheer physical power and endurance. When he finally fell, it was from exhaustion. It was the kind of death that became legend.
The Third Raikage's sacrifice broke Iwa's momentum completely. The next morning, the Land of Earth issued a formal ceasefire declaration. They were out of the war. Just like that, Konoha's pressure dropped by half.
With Iwa gone, the entire strategic situation transformed overnight.
Before, Suna and Iwa had been coordinating their attacks, forcing Konoha to fight on two fronts simultaneously. Now Suna was alone. They couldn't sustain that position. Within two days, Suna abandoned the defensive line Kenji's team had been holding and pulled their forces back to consolidate elsewhere.
With no enemy to fight, Konoha recalled its troops from the now-empty front.
He led his students back to the main camp for rest and resupply. The atmosphere there was noticeably different. People actually smiled occasionally. The end of the war felt possible now instead of like a distant fantasy.
Around that time, the reward for capturing Sō finally processed through the bureaucracy.
The official notice came during evening roll call. His squad received a massive amount of military credit, enough to set them up comfortably for months. The mission was formally classified as A-rank, which looked impressive on paper and would open doors for future assignments.
More importantly, Kenji himself got promoted to jonin.
He'd expected chunin for another few years at least, but capturing a bloodline limit user had apparently impressed someone high up the chain of command. The promotion came with better pay, access to higher-level jutsu in the archives, and significantly more autonomy in how he operated.
The village also granted him a chakra metal exchange quota.
He didn't hesitate. He used the entire quota immediately, trading it for as much chakra-conductive material as the supply office would give him. Getting official access was rare, and he intended to take full advantage.
The other matter on his mind was Aoi's training.
Jiraiya had come to find him a few days after their initial meeting. The conversation had been brief. Tsunade would be arriving at the camp soon to take command of operations against Suna. She'd agreed to evaluate Aoi and potentially take her on as a student if the girl showed sufficient aptitude.
That was good enough. Jiraiya's word carried weight. If he said Tsunade would give Aoi a fair chance, then that's what would happen. The rest was up to Aoi herself.
---
Several evenings later, Kenji made his way to a secluded grove about half a mile from the main camp.
He'd scouted the location earlier in the week. Dense trees provided cover from casual observation, and the terrain made it difficult to approach without being noticed. Perfect for what he needed to do.
He extended his sensory technique, scanning the area thoroughly. There were no other chakra signatures within range.
He pulled a storage scroll from his pouch and channeled chakra into it. White smoke erupted, and a massive glass container materialized on the ground. The thing was roughly 0.9 meters wide and 1.8 meters tall, filled with pale green nutrient solution.
Floating in the center of the liquid was a mass of flesh.
It looked like someone had taken a human body, compressed it down to remove all structure, and left just the raw biological matter. The tissue had grown to fill most of the container, irregular and vaguely unsettling to look at.
"This is still insane," he muttered, staring at his work. "Chakra completely breaks the normal rules."
The flesh had been cultured from samples taken from Sō's body. Specifically, from tissue that contained the Swift Release bloodline factor. Kenji's goal was straightforward: create a puppet that could use Swift Release.
His first attempt at puppet construction had taught him that a single heart wasn't enough to generate adequate bodily energy. The resulting chakra output had been pathetically weak, barely enough to enhance physical movements, definitely not enough for jutsu.
This time he'd compensated. Using medical ninjutsu knowledge, he'd cultured Sō's cells until they'd grown to roughly the mass of an adult human body. That should provide sufficient biological energy to power the puppet properly.
He pulled out a second scroll and summoned the puppet frame he'd built over the past weeks.
The design was much more refined than his crude first attempt. This one stood roughly a bit above one meter tall, wrapped entirely in dark fabric that resembled night operations gear. A featureless mask covered where a face would be, with only two empty eye sockets visible. The whole thing looked like a miniature assassin.
The internal structure had been completely redesigned. The abdominal cavity now contained a specialized housing unit specifically built to hold the puppet's "heart."
Next came the largest scroll. He unstrapped it from his back, the thing nearly as tall as he was, and unrolled it across the ground. The parchment was covered in densely-packed sealing formulas.
He double-checked the layout, making sure everything was properly aligned. Then he lifted the glass container and positioned it in the recessed area marked on the scroll's surface.
He took a deep breath and began forming hand seals. The sequence was long and complex, requiring absolute precision.
He slammed both palms onto the scroll.
Pale blue chakra flooded out from his hands and into the parchment. The sealing formulas ignited, characters lifting off the surface and beginning to move. They crawled up the exterior of the glass container like living things, wrapping around the vessel. They began to seep through the glass, and passed into the nutrient solution without disturbing the liquid, then made contact with the flesh mass itself.
The tissue reacted immediately. It pulsed once, twice, as the sealing formulas penetrated deep into the cellular structure. The light grew brighter, almost painful to look at directly.
Then the containment barrier formed.
The glowing characters merged together, creating a spherical shell around the flesh. The barrier became semi-transparent, then began to contract. It compressed inward, pulling everything within the glass container toward a central point.
The nutrient solution drained away, absorbed into the barrier. The flesh mass compacted, restructuring itself under the pressure of the seal. The glass container emptied completely as everything got pulled into the barrier's core.
When the process finished, the sphere had shrunk to roughly the size of a fist. It floated above the scroll, perfectly stable, containing all the biological material compressed and sealed within a self-sustaining chakra construct.
Kenji stared at it for a moment, hardly believing it had worked.
"First step complete," he said quietly.
He moved the puppet frame directly beneath the floating sphere and opened the abdominal access panel. The interior cavity was visible now, showing the chakra pathway network. Using careful chakra manipulation, he guided the sphere downward. It descended slowly, settling into the housing unit with a soft click as the mounting mechanisms engaged.
Now for the connections.
He extended thin chakra threads from his fingertips and began the delicate work of linking the sphere to the puppet's internal systems. Each pathway needed to be properly interfaced, and any mistake would result in energy leakage or blockages that would cripple the puppet's functionality.
It took nearly two hours to complete all the connections. When the last pathway was secured, he sealed the abdominal panel and withdrew his chakra threads.
"Time to test it."
He formed the hand seals for Mind Clone Switch Technique. A spiritual duplicate separated from his consciousness and drifted forward, passing through the puppet's exterior and entering the sealed sphere directly.
Through the puppet's systems, he sensed the biological energy beginning to circulate. The sphere was responding to his spiritual presence.
The puppet's eyes opened.
It stood up slowly. He flexed the fingers, rotated the shoulders, and tested the range of motion. Everything responded perfectly.
"It works... It actually works!"
He clenched his fist, unable to contain his excitement. Even more surprising, perhaps because his spiritual power had recently grown, this time when he used the Mind Clone Switch Technique, he could directly sense everything the clone experienced through their mental link. Unlike with shadow clones, where he could only receive the clone's memories after it dispersed, now he could perceive everything in real time, as if his left hand and right hand shared the same senses.
The real test would come next. He needed to see if this puppet could actually use Swift Release, or if the bloodline factor had been lost in the process.