"Finally back."
Kenji stood on a rooftop overlooking Konoha, taking in the familiar sight of houses scattered across the village and people moving through the streets below. His mood lifted immediately. Yeah, Konoha's leadership made idiotic decisions on a regular basis. And yes, living under their rules could be suffocating. But as long as you were strong enough not to get crushed by their bureaucratic nonsense, Konoha was still the most comfortable place to live in the entire shinobi world.
He lingered there for a moment, just breathing in the peace that came from being off the battlefield. No wondering if today would be the day an enemy squad ambushed him during a supply run.
Just home.
Eventually he dropped down from the rooftop and started walking toward his house along the street. Not like in the anime where people could freely leap between buildings taking shortcuts wherever they wanted. Konoha had actual rules about that. Unless you were on an urgent mission, ninjas weren't allowed to use rooftops and buildings as a highway system. Get caught violating that ordinance and you'd be paying a fine.
When he reached his front door, he knocked out of habit. "I'm back."
No response.
He expanded his sensory technique and swept through the house. Nobody home.
"Where'd she go?" he muttered. Probably visiting Kushina. The two of them had gotten close over the past year, and with Minato deployed to the front lines most of the time, Kushina didn't have many people to talk to.
He unlocked the door and headed inside, making straight for the bathroom. After traveling from the border region back to Konoha on foot, he was covered in road dust and sweat. He needed a proper bath before doing anything else.
The technology tree in the Naruto world was so ass-backwards it gave him headaches sometimes. They had computers, movies, and even utility poles with electrical wiring in some towns. But transportation? Still primitive as hell. Ordinary civilians relied on horse carts, ox carts, or their own two feet. Ninjas either ran everywhere using chakra or burned through reserves with movement techniques.
Even though he could use the Flying Thunder God Technique, he wasn't about to waste massive amounts of chakra just to save travel time. The technique's chakra consumption scaled with distance. Teleporting across the country would drain him completely. So he'd walked back like everyone else.
He set Samehada down in the corner of the living room, the bandage-wrapped sword leaning against the wall. Then he stripped off his dusty clothes and spent a solid twenty minutes in the bath, scrubbing away weeks of grime.
When he emerged feeling human again, he changed into clean clothes and settled onto the couch. Time to find Honoka.
He closed his eyes and expanded his sensory technique to its maximum range, spreading his awareness across Konoha. Thousands of chakra signatures pinged his consciousness, but he filtered through them quickly, searching for the specific pattern he'd memorized.
There.
"Found you," he said, opening his eyes. "Why'd you go so far outside the village?"
He formed a single hand seal.
After two seconds, the world lurched. Space twisted around him in a nauseating spiral, and for a fraction of a second he existed nowhere at all. Then reality snapped back into place and he was standing in a completely different location.
The transition was instantaneous from an outside perspective, but he always felt it. That brief moment of discontinuity where his body ceased to exist in one place before reforming in another. It never got comfortable.
He'd given Honoka a pendant months ago with his Flying Thunder God seal carved into it, and told her to wear it whenever she went out so he could find her instantly if needed. Right now, that seal was pulling at his senses from outside the village proper, near Training Ground Three.
When his vision cleared, he found himself standing next to Honoka and Kushina. Both of them were outside Konoha's walls, well beyond the sealing barrier that was supposed to keep Kushina contained.
"Where are you two going?" he asked pleasantly, though his eyes tracked to Kushina specifically. "And shouldn't you still be restricted to the barrier area?"
"Kenji!" Honoka's face lit up. She moved toward. "When did you get back?"
"Just now. I escorted a war trophy back to the village." He gestured vaguely toward Konoha behind him. "I'll be resting here for a while before heading back to the front lines. Could you two answer my question, where are you going?"
"To see Minato," Kushina said, not quite meeting his eyes. Her tone carried that specific kind of defensive guilt that meant she knew exactly what she was doing wrong.
"Minato's been training a dangerous new technique at Training Ground Three," Honoka added helpfully. "He hasn't had time to visit Kushina, so she wanted to see him."
"Minato's back from the border?" Kenji raised an eyebrow. "I thought he was still fighting on the western front."
"He returned with Jiraiya-sama a few days ago," Honoka explained. "They've been helping him develop that technique. It's apparently pretty dangerous."
Kenji's interest piqued immediately. A dangerous technique that required Jiraiya's supervision? Given what he knew about Minato's capabilities, there was really only one possibility.
He must be working on elemental integration for the Rasengan.
Kenji had developed the basic Rasengan years ago and traded the technique to Hiruzen in exchange for chakra metal and other resources. It was a pure shape manipulation jutsu, rotating chakra at high speed to create destructive force. Powerful, but not particularly complex once you understood the principles.
Minato had seen him use it in combat and apparently memorized the mechanics. But if he was now trying to add elemental nature transformation to the Rasengan? That was a whole different level of difficulty. Combining shape and nature manipulation simultaneously was incredibly dangerous. The chakra control requirements were astronomical, and a single mistake could result in the technique detonating in your hand.
Kenji had considered attempting it himself, but between his focus on puppet development over the past few years and his chakra reserves being nowhere near Naruto's eventual level, he'd never had the time or capacity to experiment safely. Leave it to Minato to push straight into the advanced applications.
"But if I remember correctly," he said, looking directly at Kushina, "you're not supposed to leave the barrier without permission. Don't tell me you snuck out."
"I didn't—" Kushina started, then caught the look on his face. The expression that clearly said "Go ahead, keep lying, I'm listening."
She gave up on the pretense immediately.
Chakra erupted from her body in a visible wave. Her long red hair lifted and began floating without any wind, spreading around her like she was underwater. She raised both fists and shook them at him.
"So what if I snuck out?! If you tell anyone, I'll punch you into the stratosphere!"
The transformation from nervous girl to furious blood-red pepper happened in seconds. Classic Kushina.
He just waved his hand dismissively. "I'm not going to rat you out. The Third Hokage only keeps you locked in that barrier because he's paranoid about the Nine-Tails going berserk and hurting villagers. But think about it logically. Right now there are two Uzumaki sealing experts in the village, you and Honoka. Plus me and Minato. If the Nine-Tails actually broke free, we'd just beat it back into submission. What's there to worry about?"
He formed hand seals as he spoke, then slapped his palm against the ground.
"Summoning Technique!"
White smoke exploded outward. When it cleared, a humanoid puppet stood there. It stood almost two meters tall, built with the proportions of an adult male.
Kenji activated the Mind Clone Switch Technique, projecting part of his consciousness into the puppet. It straightened up, movements becoming fluid and natural as his control took hold.
"This is my Wood Release puppet," he explained, making the puppet walk over to stand beside Kushina. "It can use techniques from the First Hokage's arsenal. While you're out, I'll have it follow you around. Even if something goes wrong, this thing will protect you. How's that sound?"
Kushina's eyes went wide. She stood very still for a moment.
"Ever since it got close to me, the Nine-Tails went quiet," she said slowly, as if testing the words. "I can barely feel it."
"Huh." Kenji tilted his head. "I knew Wood Release suppressed tailed beasts, but I didn't expect the effect to be that strong."
He'd known that Hashirama's Wood Release could control tailed beasts. The First Hokage had famously treated the Nine-Tails like a pet, and Madara had ridden it into battle like a mount. But seeing the immediate psychological effect? The Nine-Tails was that traumatized? Just sensing Hashirama's chakra through the puppet was enough to make it shut up and hide?
Kushina circled the puppet, examining it from every angle.
"Can I sign a summoning contract with it?" she asked eagerly. "That way, if the fox starts acting up, I can just call this thing immediately!"
"You can sign a contract, sure," Kenji said. "But there's a problem. This puppet requires Yamanaka clan techniques to control. Specifically the Mind Clone Switch. Without that, it's just a wooden statue."
Kushina's face fell immediately. "Oh. Right. I can't use Yamanaka techniques."
"Isn't there any other way?" Honoka asked quietly. "You know how much Kushina wants to be able to move around freely."
He did know. Kushina was imprisoned in everything but name, locked inside a barrier like a criminal despite having done nothing wrong. During the war, Minato was almost always deployed, which meant Kushina spent most of her time alone. Honoka visited when she could, but that wasn't the same as real freedom.
He'd seen the way she stared out windows at villagers going about their normal lives. The longing in her eyes. The isolation of being in the village but treated like an outsider.
"Hold on, I wasn't finished," he said, raising a hand. "I don't actually need the Wood Release puppet for anything most of the time. Since it can help you, I can maintain control over it permanently. You'll be able to summon it whenever you want."
"Really?" Kushina's eyes lit up again, hope warring with concern in her expression. "But won't that affect you? Maintaining control constantly?"
Honoka was watching him carefully too, clearly worried about the same thing.
"It's fine," Kenji assured them. "With my current mental capacity, keeping one puppet controlled is nothing. I already maintain control over transport puppets for moving war spoils around. This is actually less work than that."
He wasn't exaggerating. The Mind Clone Switch technique split off a portion of his consciousness to inhabit the puppet. Once established, that connection required minimal chakra to maintain. It was the initial activation and long-distance teleportation that consumed significant energy. Passive control over a nearby puppet? Barely noticeable.
"Then I won't hold back!" Kushina said, her smile returning full force. The relief and joy on her face were obvious.
"Actually, Honoka should sign a contract too," Kenji said, forming more hand seals. "Summoning Technique!"
Another burst of white smoke. This time a different puppet appeared, the round transport unit he used for moving supplies. Its belly opened with a mechanical click, revealing a storage compartment. He reached inside and pulled out a scroll.
"This is the Wood Release puppet summoning contract," he explained, unrolling it and holding it out toward both women. "If either of you run into danger, you can summon it for protection."
"Me first!" Kushina lunged forward, already biting her thumb to draw blood. This was her key to freedom. She wasn't about to wait.
She pressed her bloody thumbprint onto the scroll, officially forming the contract. The seal glowed briefly, then faded.
Honoka waited patiently until Kushina finished, then stepped forward and added her own blood seal to the contract.