"Your intent is way too obvious," Kenji said, looking at his three students. "And don't fall for such blatant bait."
"We're not giving up yet!" Haruto said, rubbing his sore arm where he'd crashed into Kaede.
The three exchanged quick glances. Then, they scattered and vanished into the trees and tall grass surrounding the training ground.
Kenji's chakra sensing picked up their positions immediately. He could feel them moving. But he acted oblivious, strolling across the grass with his hands in his pockets, looking completely relaxed and off-guard.
Let's see what they come up with, he thought.
"Now! Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears!"
The ground beneath Kenji's feet exploded.
Stone pillars erupted upward. They came from multiple angles, trying to impale him from below. His body moved before his conscious mind even registered the threat. He pushed off lightly and launched himself into the air, easily clearing the stone spikes.
But that had been the point.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
Kaede burst from behind a tree on the left, his cheeks puffed out as he expelled a massive gust of wind. The blast hit Kenji while he was still airborne. The wind buffeted him, making it nearly impossible to control his trajectory mid-flight.
At the same instant, Haruto finished forming hand seals.
"Earth Release: Earth Spear!"
His skin turned jet black as the defensive technique activated. But instead of using it purely for defense, he charged straight into Kaede's wind blast, using the hardened body to power through the resistance. His fist drew back, and jumped toward Kenji.
"Got him!" he shouted, throwing the punch with everything he had.
His fist connected.
POOF!
Kenji's body exploded into white smoke the instant Haruto's knuckles made contact. When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a section of log.
Substitution Jutsu.
"Watch out! It's a trap!"
Before Kaede could process the warning, two hands erupted from the ground directly beneath his feet. They grabbed his ankles and yanked hard, dragging him down into the earth so fast he didn't even have time to scream. In less than a second, only his head remained above ground, the rest of his body buried up to his neck.
Kenji emerged from the ground next to the trapped Kaede, dirt falling off his shoulders. He opened his mouth to make some teasing comment about falling for such an old trick.
Then his senses screamed a warning.
He looked up sharply.
Aoi was falling toward him from the tree canopy above, her fist raised high. Chakra wreathed her arm, concentrated into a dense layer.
Kenji twisted mid-stance and threw himself sideways.
Aoi's fist missed his head by centimeters and slammed into the ground.
BOOM!
The earth didn't just crack. It shattered. A crater maybe two meters across opened up, chunks of dirt and rock flying in all directions.
Kaede, still buried in the ground right next to the impact point, was launched into the air by the force of the explosion. His body sailed upward, tumbling end over end.
Then he crumbled into a pile of dirt.
The moment the clone vanished, a figure wrapped shot past him. The real Kaede landed smoothly about five meters away, skidding to a stop with a huge grin on his face.
He raised his hand triumphantly. Three silver bells dangled from his fingers.
By the time Kenji landed, his three students had regrouped. They each held one bell now, standing together with matching expressions of pride and excitement.
"Sensei! We got the bells!" Aoi waved hers in the air.
Kenji smiled and nodded approvingly.
"Not bad at all. Excellent teamwork and tactical thinking. Haruto used Earth Release to draw my attention and force me into the air where I couldn't dodge easily. Kaede used his clone as bait to make me think I'd won, then had it trapped underground to lure me into position. Aoi's attack created enough chaos and distraction for the real Kaede to slip in and grab the bells while I was focused elsewhere. Each of you played to your strengths."
"Hehe, but you were going easy on us, right sensei?" Haruto scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "You didn't even use any of the Yamanaka clan techniques. If you'd gone all out, we never would've gotten close."
The other two nodded in agreement. They weren't delusional. They knew their instructor's real capabilities. This had been a test of their abilities, not a serious fight.
"As a reward for successfully completing the bell test," Kenji said, "I'm treating you all to Ramen Ichiraku. Meet me there. My treat, so eat as much as you want."
He smiled at their excited reactions.
Then his body burst into white smoke and dissipated.
"Of course it was a clone," Haruto said, his enthusiasm deflating slightly. "The whole time..."
"I actually thought we'd beaten him for real," Kaede sighed.
"Don't be stupid," Aoi said, already walking toward the training ground exit. "Sensei's a jonin. You really think we could beat him that easily? Besides, who cares? We completed the test and he's buying ramen. Stop moping and start thinking about what you're going to order."
"Oh yeah!" Haruto's face lit back up. "I'm eating ten bowls!"
"Twenty for me!" Kaede declared.
"You're both going to make yourselves sick," Aoi said, but she was smiling too as they headed off together toward the village.
---
Back at his house, Kenji was in the middle of assembling a new puppet when the memories from his shadow clone flooded back. He paused in his work, and smiled.
"I did hold back quite a bit. But they're improving faster than I expected. Good."
He returned his attention to the puppet laid out on his workshop table.
This one was different from his previous creations. Where his assassination puppets had been small and designed for stealth, this one was built for direct combat. The frame stood roughly 1.75 meters tall, sized and proportioned like an adult male. Not so large that it would be unwieldy or waste materials, but big enough to generate real power in a fight.
What made it special was the layer of synthetic material covering the entire frame. It looked and felt remarkably close to human skin, flexible and warm to the touch instead of the hard wood or metal most puppets were made from.
The technique for creating this bionic skin had come from a Suna puppeteer named Zora who he had killed. Most puppet masters dismissed the innovation as pointless since it didn't directly improve combat effectiveness. But for him, it had been exactly what he needed. Ever since the incident with the Third Kazekage and his iron sand techniques, he had been paranoid about the vulnerability of his puppets to that kind of attack. Iron sand could seep into mechanical joints and mechanisms, jamming them completely. The solution was twofold: cover everything with this synthetic skin to seal the gaps, and simplify the internal mechanisms to reduce points of failure.
He'd already applied the treatment to all his existing puppets, including his own prosthetic left arm and both legs. Now his artificial limbs looked completely natural, just like Chiyo's prosthetics. Unless you knew what to look for and examined them closely, you'd never guess they weren't real flesh and bone.
Taking advantage of the sealed, skin-covered design, he'd even incorporated a subtle blade mechanism into each prosthetic limb. It was a simple yet deadly integration that aligned with his philosophy of minimizing vulnerabilities without overcomplicating the structure. Housed within the shin, the blade was isolated in an inner casing to protect the limb's core chakra channels and simplified joints from any potential damage or exposure. A compact chakra system, tied directly to his own energy flow, served as the trigger: a focused pulse would activate a lever, releasing a tightly wound spring to propel the blade upward through the shin and out via the knee joint.
If deployed mid-combat, it could turn a basic knee strike into a lethal thrust, driving straight into an opponent's gut to bypass the ribcage and pierce the heart, assuming precise timing and positioning. Even a side kick offered versatility, allowing the blade to slice or stab into vital areas like the liver or kidneys, disrupting internal organs with minimal telegraphing.
The left arm carried a similar integration. A narrow, tempered blade lay flush along the ulna, sealed inside the forearm's synthetic skin. At his chakra command the spring snapped; the blade moved forward through the center of the palm, emerging between the middle and ring fingers.
But for this new combat puppet, he'd opted for purity of purpose. The internal mechanisms were stripped down to only what was necessary. So, there were no fancy hidden weapons or elaborate joint systems that could break down. Just solid construction and room for the important thing: chakra capacity.
"Alright," he said, settling into a meditation posture in front of the completed puppet. "Time to test the Magnet Release."
His hands moved through the familiar sequence of seals.
"Mind Clone Switch Technique."
His spiritual energy flowed outward, leaving his body and entering the puppet. There was that familiar moment of displacement, like stepping through a doorway into a different room. Then his consciousness settled into the puppet's frame.
The puppet's eyes opened.
He stood up, and raised the puppet's hand, palm facing forward.
The iron sand he'd prepared earlier, sitting in a small pile on the workbench, immediately responded, or tried to. Individual grains began to twitch and shift, drawn haphazardly by the magnetic field he was generating through the puppet's chakra channels. But instead of flowing smoothly through the air, they scattered erratically, some clumping together in uneven blobs while others sprayed outward. Only a fraction gathered in the puppet's palm, compressing into a lumpy, misshapen mass that vaguely resembled an iron nail, about ten centimeters long.
"Too unstable," he muttered. This was his first integration of Magnet Release into a puppet chassis, and the chakra flow wasn't syncing perfectly. The synthetic skin sealed out external contaminants, but it also insulated the magnetic fields slightly, causing interference. Logically, he needed finer control: modulate the chakra output to start low and build gradually, attracting the grains in phases. Overwhelm them, and they'd repel each other due to induced polarity.
He dispersed the mess and tried again, this time pulsing the magnetic field in gentle waves, weak at first to draw the sand, then stronger to coalesce it. The grains responded better, aligning properly and forming a solid, uniform nail a centimeter thick.
"Now let's see what kind of force we can generate."
He focused his chakra, amplifying the magnetic field. The nail trembled slightly in his palm. Then he released it, propelling it forward with magnetic repulsion.
CRACK!
The wooden target across the room splintered, the nail going through but embedding shallowly in the wall beyond. This was quite a decent penetration, but not the clean exit he'd aimed for.
"Basic propulsion works. But not nearly strong enough for what I have in mind."
He retrieved the nail and returned to his starting position. This time, he approached the technique differently, drawing on a theory he'd pieced together from his own understanding of engineering principles.
The idea was to mimic the principle of a railgun: not a single push, but sequential magnetic fields accelerating the projectile in stages. In theory, by shaping chakra into overlapping "coils" within the palm, each field activating in rapid succession, he could build velocity exponentially without overloading the puppet's chakra capacity. But theory was one thing; implementation required calibration.
His first trial: three layered fields. The nail vibrated as they built up, but when released, it only dented the metal plate target, falling short with a weak impact.
"Underpowered," he noted. "The fields aren't syncing; the handoff between layers is losing momentum. Need more overlap or tighter timing."
Second attempt: five fields, with chakra pulses timed closer together. The humming grew louder, the air shimmering faintly, but BOOM! The nail launched wildly off-course, ricocheting off the ceiling and embedding in the floor.
"This should be overcorrection. Excess heat from friction warped the projectile mid-flight. Logic dictates adding a stabilizing field to keep it straight, and temper the iron sand with a bit more density upfront."
After a few hours of further experimenting, he settled on an optimal configuration: four fields, plus a thin magnetic sheath around the nail for guidance. He adjusted the chakra ratios based on the prior failures, 70% for acceleration, 30% for stability. The vibration stabilized, the hum steady rather than erratic.
"Now... GO!"
BOOM!
The sound was loud in the enclosed space. The iron nail vanished from sight, moving too fast for the eye to track. In the same instant, the metal plate he'd set up as a target was punctured clean through. Behind the plate, the nail had continued traveling and struck the reinforced back wall of his workshop. A spray of molten metal splattered outward from the impact point, some of it still glowing orange. The air around the hole rippled with heat haze.
He released the Mind Clone Switch and returned to his own body. He stood up and walked over to examine the damage.
The hole in the steel plate was perfectly circular, the edges melted smooth. The wall beyond had a crater in it where the nail had finally come to rest. He could feel the residual heat radiating from the impact point even from a meter away.
"That's the kind of destructive potential that can punch through most defensive jutsu."
But even as he admired the results, he was already analyzing the technique's limitations.
The iron sand projectile would melt from air friction at those speeds, limiting effective range to maybe fifty meters before the nail disintegrated completely. And the chakra consumption was enormous, nearly ten percent of the puppet's total reserves for a single shot. He couldn't spam this attack the way you could with normal techniques.
Still, having the option was better than not having it.
"I'll need to practice control more," Kenji mused, returning to his workbench. "Shave down the consumption if possible. And maybe experiment with different projectile shapes to reduce air resistance..."
He picked up his tools and got back to work. The puppet wasn't quite finished yet, and there was always room for improvement.
---
Merry Christmas!