Kenji watched the last Kumo ninja sprint into the darkness, running for his life after witnessing his two teammates get their throats cut.
A terrible, irresponsible, completely self-indulgent thought occurred to him.
I could make this more interesting.
The rational part of his brain immediately objected. He was supposed to be observing. But the other part of his brain, the part that had spent months doing nothing but tedious research and puppet construction, really wanted to see what would happen.
Plus, there was a practical angle. Minato and Kushina both had valuable bloodlines. The Namikaze clan wasn't particularly notable, but Minato himself was exceptional. And Kushina was an Uzumaki, which meant her cells contained genetics that could be incredibly useful for his research.
If he played this right, he could collect samples from both of them without anyone knowing.
Fuck it. Let's see what happens.
He formed hand seals quickly.
"Summoning Technique!"
His Swift Release puppet materialized in a puff of smoke. Without hesitation, he activated the Mind Clone Switch Technique and transferred his consciousness into it.
The puppet moved.
It blurred through the trees. Within seconds, he'd caught up to the runner. The Kumo ninja didn't even register the pursuit before Kenji's hand chopped down on the back of his neck.
The man dropped, unconscious before he hit the ground.
He dragged him behind a tree and quickly formed seals to suppress the ninja's consciousness with a basic sealing technique. Then he activated his Flying Thunder God mark and teleported the unconscious body back to his workshop.
Now came the fun part.
He returned to the clearing where Minato would arrive any second and activated the Transformation Technique. Chakra rippled across the puppet's surface, reshaping it to match the Kumo ninja's appearance. Same height, build, and uniform down to the individual tears and bloodstains.
Then he waited.
Minato appeared within thirty seconds, landing silently on a tree branch about ten meters away. His eyes immediately locked onto the transformed puppet standing in the clearing.
"Not running?"
He approached slowly, keeping several meters of distance, kunai already in hand.
The puppet didn't respond verbally. Instead, it pulled a kunai and charged.
Kenji held back, limiting the puppet's speed to slightly faster than what Minato could handle. Their kunai met with a sharp crack of metal on metal. Sparks flew in the darkness. Minato blocked the initial strike and immediately counterattacked. They separated, circled each other for a moment, then clashed again.
The fight was brutal in its simplicity. Kenji threw strikes that forced Minato to defend, mixed in feints that made him second-guess his positioning, applied steady pressure that wore down his stamina.
Minato held his own impressively well. A few times he almost landed solid hits, forcing Kenji to dodge or block more seriously than he'd intended.
After maybe forty exchanges, Kenji decided it was time to move to the next phase. He'd been monitoring the surrounding area with his sensory abilities, and there were patrol groups in the distance. If they kept fighting much longer, someone would notice the chakra signatures and investigate.
The puppet overextended on a thrust, leaving its flank exposed. Minato took the bait immediately, lunging forward with his kunai aimed at the opening.
Kenji used the momentum of Minato's attack to spring backward, putting ten meters of distance between them in a single leap. He landed directly behind Kushina, who was still sitting on the ground looking dazed. Before she could react, the puppet's arm wrapped around her throat and a kunai pressed against her neck.
"Don't move!" the puppet barked, using the Kumo ninja's voice. "Take another step and I'll kill her!"
Minato froze mid-stride.
"Let her go. You can't escape. The village will hunt you down."
"Hahaha!" The puppet laughed harshly. "I'm already dead. I might as well take someone with me."
To emphasize the threat, Kenji made the puppet press the kunai against Kushina's shoulder. A thin line of blood welled up and started running down her arm.
The sharp pain jolted Kushina fully awake. Her eyes snapped into focus and immediately found Minato standing a few meters away.
"It's you?" She sounded surprised. Then, a slight smirk crossed her face. "You actually came to save me, you wuss?"
Kenji had to suppress the urge to laugh at her calling him that. Even with a blade at her throat, Kushina couldn't resist throwing out an insult.
Minato's expression softened slightly at her voice.
"Yeah. I came to save you."
"Enough flirting!" The puppet snarled, pressing the kunai closer to Kushina's throat. "Here's what's going to happen. You want her to live? Then stab yourself in the thigh with your kunai. Right now."
"Don't!" Kushina's eyes went wide. "Don't you—"
But Minato didn't hesitate.
He reversed his grip on the kunai and drove it straight into his own thigh. The blade sank deep, blood immediately soaking through his pants. His face contorted with pain, but he didn't make a sound.
"You idiot!" Tears immediately welled up in Kushina's eyes. "Why would you—"
"Hahaha!" The puppet laughed loudly. "What a moron! Stabbing yourself for some girl!"
Then, Kenji had the puppet pull the kunai away from Kushina's throat.
Minato's hand blurred. The kunai flew from his grip, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second. It hit the puppet in the forehead, piercing through the skull and embedding itself deep.
The puppet immediately went limp and collapsed, releasing Kushina as it fell.
She pitched forward, but Minato was already moving. Despite the kunai still lodged in his thigh, he crossed the distance and caught her before she hit the ground.
"It's over," he said softly. "You're safe now."
From his hiding spot behind a tree, Kenji watched with satisfaction. The puppet's "death" had severed the Mind Clone Switch, but that was fine. The scene was playing out exactly as it should.
Minato was pulling bandages from his pouch now, treating the cut on Kushina's shoulder. She was crying, but when he tried to attend to his own injury, she took the bandages from him and started wrapping his thigh herself.
"Why did you do it? Why hurt yourself like that?"
Minato looked at her red hair.
"Because I didn't want to lose you."
Kushina's head snapped up, meeting his eyes. Her face immediately flushed red.
They finished the bandaging in silence. Then Minato knelt down and lifted Kushina into his arms, carrying her princess-style.
"W-wait!" she stammered, her hands instinctively clutching his collar. But she didn't push him away.
Minato leaped into the trees without another word, heading back toward Konoha. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, illuminating them as they moved. Kushina noticed he was holding a strand of her red hair clenched in his fist.
"That's..." she started to say.
"Beautiful hair," Minato said with a soft smile. "That's how I found you so quickly. I just followed the trail."
Kushina's blush deepened. She turned her face away. "You never helped before when people were bullying me..."
Minato's movement paused. He landed on a thick branch and looked at her seriously under the moonlight.
"Because I knew you were strong. Both in power and in spirit. You could handle petty bullies on your own. But this?" He shook his head. "This was enemy ninjas from another village trying to kidnap you. So..."
"So?" Kushina stared at him.
His eyes locked onto hers as he spoke slowly and clearly.
"So I didn't want to lose you."
Kushina's heart hammered in her chest. She couldn't think of anything to say.
Minato resumed moving through the trees, carrying her toward home. Kushina pressed her face against his shoulder and didn't say anything else.
Kenji watched them disappear into the distance, shaking his head with amusement.
"Well, that was touching."
He'd gotten a front-row seat to one of the most iconic romantic moments in the series. It was exactly as sweet as he'd expected.
Though he'd probably traumatized Minato a bit more than necessary. Making him stab his own leg had been harsh. But hey, adversity built character, right?
He walked over to where his puppet lay "dead" on the ground. The Transformation Technique had dispelled when it took the kunai hit, so it was back to its normal middle-aged male appearance. There was a hole in the forehead from where Minato's kunai had struck, but that was easily repairable. The core was in the chest, not the head, so the puppet was undamaged.
He brushed some dirt off the puppet's surface and sealed it back into a storage scroll. Then his eyes fell on the ground nearby.
Two kunai lay there, both stained with blood.
One was the kunai Minato had used to stab his own thigh. The other was the one that had cut Kushina's shoulder.
He picked both of them up.
The Uzumaki cells especially were valuable, nearly as good as Hashirama cells for vitality and chakra density. And Minato's genetics, while not a bloodline per se, came from someone who would eventually become one of the strongest ninjas in history. Worth studying.
He sealed the kunai into separate containers, making sure not to contaminate the samples. Then he extended his senses to check for nearby chakra signatures.
The forest was empty, no patrols yet.
He formed the seal for Flying Thunder God and channeled chakra for about ten seconds, feeling space bend around him. The forest dissolved, replaced by the familiar interior of his workshop cave.
Mission accomplished. He'd witnessed an iconic scene, and walked away with valuable research materials. All in all, a productive evening.
"Now," he said, setting the blood samples aside for processing later. "Back to work."
The Wood Release puppet project was waiting.
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40 Advance Chapters!