Chapter 261: War Scorpion
Fortunately, the giant scorpion in front of Kenichi showed no sign of exploding. If anything, it was unnervingly stable.
Still, remembering the glorious track record of Sasori and Deidara, Kenichi kept his distance. He had no desire to be caught in an unexpected blast and walk away with his face painted in soot.
"Amemiya senpai, do you have time?" Deidara's excited voice came through the scorpion. "Sasori senpai made something really interesting. Come take a look!"
Deidara did not seem to be inside the scorpion at all. Kenichi's eyes narrowed as he noticed what looked like a loudspeaker embedded into its body.
So while he was away, those two had not only built bizarre contraptions, they had also pushed into remote communication and surveillance. The scorpion barely carried any of the ninja world's usual flavor. It looked like a piece of pure technology, and the sight gave Kenichi an odd sense of returning to somewhere familiar.
He nodded. He had not seen Sasori in a while, and he had no idea what Sasori had been doing. Since he was back, it was better to check in now. If something went wrong later because he ignored it, that would be even more troublesome.
Kenichi followed the massive scorpion to Sasori and Deidara's laboratory.
After some time apart, the place looked far more organized than before. The exterior, however, was another story. The walls and surrounding ground were covered in scorch marks and blast scars, as if the building had survived a small war.
The moment Kenichi reached the entrance, the door swung open.
"Amemiya senpai!" Deidara stepped out with a grin, holding something that looked like a remote control.
Kenichi looked at the remote, then at the enormous scorpion behind him. A strange feeling crept up his spine.
So Deidara had been piloting it with that thing?
Why did this suddenly feel like he had run into someone playing with a giant robot?
"Did you and Sasori build that scorpion?" Kenichi asked, eyeing Deidara.
Deidara had not changed much, which was normal. Kenichi had not been gone long. Still, there was one obvious difference. Deidara's left eye now carried something like a zoom lens, and the added hardware looked unsettling on him.
"Yes!" Deidara practically bounced. "Sasori senpai and I made it together. The outer layer is my explosive clay, but it's an improved version. And now it can also fire"
He grabbed Kenichi's sleeve and launched into an excited explanation, rattling off detail after detail.
Kenichi listened carefully, curious about what those two had managed to create. But as Deidara kept talking, Kenichi's expression slowly turned odd.
He had expected Sasori to prioritize finishing Unit 01.
Instead, the first major result was this gigantic war machine scorpion.
It was so absurd it gave him the feeling of waking up from a dream about some massive fortress city.
"So," Kenichi cut in, "what about Unit 01?"
Deidara coughed, suddenly awkward. He did not answer. He just gestured for Kenichi to go inside.
Kenichi raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He followed.
Once inside, he noticed something even stranger.
The laboratory door itself was silver white, but the outside had been blasted black, like someone had burned the color off it. The contrast was almost baffling.
Not long after, Kenichi spotted Sasori.
"Hm? Kenichi, you're back?" Sasori was tinkering with something on a workbench. When he noticed Kenichi, he greeted him with a rare hint of happiness.
Kenichi was about to bring up Unit 01, but then his gaze locked onto what Sasori was working on.
It looked like a miniature version of Unit 01, only around two meters tall. Compact. Almost neat, for something that was supposed to be a robot.
Kenichi's curiosity spiked instantly. Why abandon the previous build and switch to something like this?
"Sasori," Kenichi asked, "aren't you working on Unit 01 anymore?"
"I am," Sasori replied simply. "But I realized a very large Unit 01 is difficult to control. So I came up with this method."
He explained the concept in a few calm sentences, and Kenichi understood.
Unit 01 was not truly a robot in the strict sense. It was an enlarged puppet, and controlling it required an overwhelming number of puppet strings. Too many strings meant control became clumsy and unstable.
So Sasori had chosen a different path.
He would create an enlarged puppet, then use that puppet as the control layer for Unit 01.
Kenichi frowned. "Isn't that even more troublesome?"
Before, Sasori controlled the large one directly. Now he would control a smaller one, and that smaller one would control the larger one. It sounded like adding steps for the sake of adding steps.
"No." Sasori shook his head, completely confident. "That war machine scorpion earlier was a prototype."
Kenichi glanced at Deidara, who was casually playing with the controller like a toy, then looked back at Sasori.
He finally understood.
Sasori was essentially moving toward remote operation. A controller to pilot a large body from a safer position.
It was not impossible.
It just felt subtly strange, like the ninja world had taken a step sideways.
But Sasori had already tested it once and clearly believed in it, so Kenichi did not argue further. If Sasori had thought it through, Kenichi would simply watch and see where it went.
They chatted a little longer. Then Sasori, eager to continue his research, asked Kenichi to leave first.
Kenichi did not mind. He understood that feeling well. When he was deep in research, he also hated being interrupted.
He returned to his own laboratory, Hidan's hand in tow.
"Now I'll experiment with Hidan's hand and see if I can improve the gene programming that Sensei developed," Kenichi murmured to himself. "I'll only consider using it on myself when the success rate reaches one hundred percent."
.....
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