Naruto had made up his mind: he was going to save Kakashi.
It was the exact same resolve he possessed when he set out to save Sasuke.
Sasuke had gone willingly too, yet Naruto had been fully prepared to shatter his limbs just to drag him back.
Now, that same flawless logic applied to Kakashi.
"I'D RATHER BREAK ALL FIVE OF KAKASHI-SENSEI'S LIMBS THAN LET HIM BE TAKEN!" Naruto declared, his face burning with grand ambition.
He had tweaked the infamous phrase a bit, learning from his experience with Sasuke.
It was perfectly logical.
By shattering all "five" limbs, he wouldn't have to worry about Kakashi-sensei possessing the physical capability to be defiled by Granny Chiyo.
"Do you seriously think breaking his five limbs will guarantee his purity?" Ajisai asked, mercilessly dousing Naruto's fiery resolve with cold, hard facts.
"You need to remember that Granny Chiyo is a master puppeteer. Forget breaking his limbs—even if you beat Kakashi into a vegetative state, she could still manipulate his paralyzed body with her chakra threads to get what she wants."
Naruto's face fell.
He turned to Team 8 with a grave expression. "Kiba, Shino, Hinata... this rescue mission is far too dangerous. I can't take you with me."
"We weren't planning on going anyway," Kiba scoffed, rolling his eyes at the sheer absurdity.
Shino's expression remained perfectly unreadable behind his dark sunglasses.
Hinata, of course, simply stared with her pale Byakugan.
"Alright then," Naruto nodded, turning to leave on foot.
"Wait, let us help you out," Ajisai interjected, grabbing his collar.
Making him trek all the way to the Sand Village by himself would be a massive waste of time.
It was far faster to simply use the Flying Thunder Formation.
The Sand Village's surrounding territory was a fascinating landscape.
After the Dragon Vein was extracted, the land began to slowly regenerate from its epicenter, but the process was gradual, leaving vast, desolate stretches of desert remaining.
These boundless dunes served as ideal proving grounds for testing large-scale, destructive ninjutsu without civilian casualties.
The Land of Rain, being a small country, had limited territory, a single misfired Tailed Beast Ball could easily obliterate the entire nation from border to border.
...
After Ajisai and her covert teleportation squad deposited Naruto into the middle of the endless sands, they vanished in a flash of light, leaving him no chance to reconsider his crusade.
"Huh?"
Naruto squinted through the glaring sun.
He noticed two figures sitting on a distant dune, one of whom he recognized instantly.
"Makoto-ni! You..."
"No need to ask further, Naruto," Makoto interrupted, his voice carrying perfectly across the wind. "I am the official witness for Chiyo and Kakashi's wedding. It was I who sent Lady Chiyo's swimsuit photographs to Kakashi, persuading him to abandon his old life and marry into her family."
"...DAMN IT! EVEN IF IT'S YOU, MAKOTO-NI, I WILL STILL RESCUE KAKASHI-SENSEI! I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON I WAS BEFORE!"
Clearly, Naruto's recent mastery of Sage Mode and the Nine-Tails' raw power had filled him with unprecedented confidence.
This was true even though he hadn't yet developed the Rasenshuriken or any actual lethal ninjutsu techniques to pair with it.
"Of course I can fight you," Makoto replied calmly. "But before that, you must defeat him."
As Makoto spoke, Sasori of the Red Sand slowly rose to his feet from the dune, brushed the dust off his dark cloak, and took a deliberate step forward.
Sasori remained completely silent, his cold, expressionless gaze fixed on the boy.
Though Sasori's human emotions had been restored, they were merely restored to basic functional levels.
He wasn't suddenly going to become an expressive dramatic theater kid.
"Who the hell is he?" Naruto demanded.
"He is on the bride's side of the family," Makoto offered helpfully.
Naruto blinked, struggling to grasp the concept of a bridal party.
"He is Granny Chiyo's grandson," Makoto explained, fully aware that Naruto's limited intellect often required direct translation.
"HEY, RED-HAIRED DUDE! ARE YOU REALLY OKAY WITH KAKASHI-SENSEI HAVING A BABY WITH YOUR GRANDMA?! DO YOU WANT HIM TO BE YOUR NEW GRANDPA?!"
Once Naruto understood the bizarre relationship, he immediately tried to utilize his infamous Talk-no-Jutsu on the Akatsuki member.
"Save your breath. Your psychological warfare won't work on me," Sasori replied, his voice deadpan.
"Defeat me, and you will earn the right to stop this wedding."
With a sharp wave of his hand, the desert sands exploded. Countless puppets erupted from beneath the dunes, hovering in the air.
Some were forged of gleaming steel, while others were carved from dark, polished wood.
But their wooden construction did not imply weakness.
On the contrary, these wooden puppets were far more terrifying!
They were crafted from stolen fragments of the Divine Tree. Their raw durability vastly outclassed ordinary mahogany or iron.
Naruto had rarely fought genuine puppeteers before.
His only real exposure was Kankuro, whose Chūnin Exam matches he had mostly slept through.
Had a seasoned combatant been present, they would have immediately noticed a glaring anomaly.
'Where were the puppeteer's chakra threads?'
Because puppeteers needed to forcefully manipulate heavy wooden limbs, the chakra density in their strings had to be incredibly high.
This normally caused the threads to glow with a conspicuous, easily visible blue light.
Yet the mechanical army Sasori pulled from the sand possessed perfectly clean joints, with no shimmering threads connecting them to his fingertips at all.
This was one of Sasori's greatest new innovations.
Chakra threads were a puppeteer's most fatal weakness.
The existence of the strings meant that a skilled enemy could sever them, temporarily cutting off the user's control and leaving them defenseless.
The engineering solution was simple: abandon the external strings altogether.
But how could one control a puppet without them?
The answer was equally elegant, and it solved his operational limits simultaneously.
Even Sasori, who had transformed himself into a living puppet, faced a strict numerical limitation: his ultimate technique, the Performance of a Hundred Puppets, allowed him to command an army, but only for basic uncoordinated swarming attacks.
He lacked precise, simultaneous manipulation.
Sasori had once considered using mechanical computers to assist with the targeting processing, but he quickly discovered a more organic method that also perfectly preserved his restored emotions: the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique.
By placing a living Shadow Clone inside the chassis of each puppet, he could naturally resolve the energy consumption and the inability to perform simultaneous, complex maneuvers—all without relying on severable chakra threads.
As for fitting inside the chassis... Shadow Clones could replicate clothing, armor, and weapons.
However, a shinobi could also choose to reduce their chakra consumption by sacrificing certain aspects of the physical replication.
This made sense.
Otherwise, if a ninja performed a hand seal while touching the ground, could they replicate the entire planet?
After learning the precise cloning formula from the Second Hokage, Sasori did exactly that.
His true, biological body consisted of only a single cylindrical core holding his heart.
Therefore, the most efficient Shadow Clone technique for him was to simply replicate that isolated heart.
He then transferred these replicated, beating cores into the hollow chest cavities of his army using summoning seals.
"THERE'S SO MANY PUPPETS! LET'S GO, KURAMA!"
After a brief moment of surprise, Naruto clapped his hands together excitedly and immediately entered his blazing golden Nine-Tails Chakra Mode.
In Naruto's eyes, his true final boss was Makoto, this red-haired guy was just a mob to be bulldozed along the way.
Seeing Naruto immediately unleash his ultimate god-tier transformation against a baseline test, Makoto and Sasori exchanged wry glances.
'This strategy is actually quite sound,' Makoto mused.
'A lion hunting a rabbit should strike with full force. Obliterating the target with a single, devastating attack is the wisest approach.'
'But Naruto's actions clearly weren't driven by exceptional intelligence.'
'Instead, he had just grown far too accustomed to relying on an overpowered crutch.'
'Now, without even bothering to test the waters with Sage Mode, he simply slammed the panic button and launched straight into his ultimate trump card.'
"If that's how you want to play..."
Sasori made a sharp, clenching gesture with his fist.
Instantly, all the hovering puppets shattered into thousands of fragments, transforming into a massive swirling tornado of lethal components that converged around his body.
"This is the colossal construct I created, forged using the remnants of the Nine-Tails' flesh devoured by Kinkaku and Ginkaku," Sasori announced, his voice echoing from within the forming behemoth.
"I call it... Steel Horn."
For some reason, hearing the name 'Steel Horn' sent a sharp, terrifying phantom ache shooting straight through Naruto's ass.