A certain town in the Country of Rain had now become a Suna stronghold.
In the open area outside the town, a massive tanuki-shaped machine sat quietly.
Even crouching in a lowered posture, this puppet was over ten meters tall. If it stood up completely, it might exceed twenty meters.
Around the puppet, a framework spliced from wood neatly encased it in the center, with the remaining space divided into six levels of platforms for material storage and convenient maintenance personnel to stand.
As the first large-scale puppet Hii Kōri had been hand-built in this world—the so-called theory validation prototype—this Shukaku Zero was equipped throughout with data recording functionality, allowing him to record the operating status of each system and make adjustments and optimizations.
After formal hostilities began, Hii Kōri spent nearly sixty percent of his time each day here.
Whether it was calibrating body performance from collected data and analyzing intelligence on Konoha ninja, or wanting to think and rest in a quiet place, the cockpit of this machine was a good spot for him.
Just as he quite liked "Vegeta's" underground office on the fifth basement level.
So when the ninja delivering the message came clambering up the stairs, calling out as he searched for Hii Kōri's whereabouts, Hii Kōri, still calibrating in the cockpit, suddenly thrust out his head and nearly sent the former flying.
"What?!"
The external neural wires behind Hii Kōri's neck stretched taut, nearly snapping without him noticing. Upon hearing the intelligence-bearing ninja's words, he frowned deeply, his expression one of disbelief.
"Jōnin Mataza and Jōnin Shūko were attacked by Konoha's White Fang. The puppeteer unit they were with... all personnel killed."
Over the past year or so, Suna's ninja had come to thoroughly understand their prodigy's temperament. If he hadn't heard clearly, he would definitely use precise Phrasing like "Sorry, I didn't catch that." Words like "What" require more detailed explanation.
Quickly regulating his breathing, the intelligence-bearing ninja rapidly expanded on his previous statement, then handed over a more detailed written intelligence summary.
"Konoha's White Fang... that explains it... yeah, that explains it."
Hii Kōri's movements halted for a moment, then he yanked off the connectors behind his neck, removed his plain glasses, and lowered his head, continuously wiping the lenses with his sleeve—lenses that actually didn't have a speck of dust.
"After all, it's that White Fang..."
Accompanied by obviously intense breathing, he muttered quietly to himself, as if convincing himself.
Both being ninja specializing in taijutsu, Hii Kōri couldn't deny the common belief of taijutsu in the ninja world.
Human arms, or rather palms, evolved over long ages to facilitate the use of tools, eventually becoming the flexible and convenient appendages they were today. Correspondingly, this evolution also made human hands unsuitable as weapons, unsuitable for "bare-handed" combat.
Every outstanding taijutsu master had to endure pain, take risks, day and night continuously honing themselves, dull their sense of pain, blunt their bodies, and then reforging their limbs into the weapons best suited for themselves.
How much effort it took to complete such a work was probably unimaginable for those not involved in this path.
And the training of wielding weapons was no easier than honing fists and feet. Compared to abilities like ninjutsu and genjutsu, taijutsu, which requires longer and repeated polishing, was indeed quite cost-effective.
Of course, this was also partly because ninja in the past generally didn't live that long.
But accordingly, if a ninja could become a jōnin or even gain a notorious reputation by virtue of taijutsu techniques alone, what this represented went without saying.
Talent far exceeds ordinary people, the effort to realize that talent, and even some luck, someone who took all these things into their palm and ground them to the extreme was definitely not someone to trifle with.
Konoha's White Fang, Sakumo Hatake, was such a man with nothing but a single style of fierce swordsmanship, he shocked the entire ninja world.
Hii Kōri knew very well the capabilities of his cheap brother. Even if Mataza considered himself lacking in talent, that was only in comparison to Chiyo.
In fact, Mataza's skill as a puppeteer was completely first-class level. If not, he wouldn't have been promoted to elite jōnin in just a few years—although such a rank didn't officially exist, jōnin assumed important functions in the village generally had something commendable about them.
After Chiyo became Suna's new elder, authority over the Medical Corps and Puppeteer Team was transferred out, with the Puppeteer Team being taken over by Mataza.
You could certainly call this hereditary succession of authority, but among regular puppeteers, there truly was no one stronger or more knowledgeable about puppet technology. After all, Mataza was a man who had been struck by his mother's skill and his adopted brother's talent for so many years, yet never gave up on puppetry.
And Shūko, as Mataza's wife and deputy, although not outstanding among Suna's jōnin, was anything but mediocre.
But if the opponent
was that man, and they were ambushed by him, defeat was unavoidable... right?
Silently putting his plain glasses back on, flipping through the records over and over, Hii Kōri nearly crushed the report in his hands into fragments.
Although from the not completely destroyed recorders on several puppets, it could be determined that Sakumo Hatake had been injured in both arms during the puppet unit's counterattack, and his left eye was suspected to be blinded—was this something to be proud of?
If his machines had been better, if his protective gear had been more effective, if, if, if, if...
The subtle sound of teeth grinding was masked by the tearing of paper, leaving only a slight tremor.
"...The old woman. Does she know?"
After a moment, Hii Kōri raised his head, slightly twitching his nostrils, then asked quietly in a flat tone with absolutely no inflection—almost mechanical.
The weather was good today. The sunlight, usually hard to find in the Country of Rain, rarely showed itself. Those large round plain glasses were dazzling in the sun, making it impossible to see Hii Kōri's eyes.
But this sunlight, even bright, couldn't bring the intelligence-bearing Suna ninja the slightest warmth. Even surrounded by that brightness, he still felt an inexplicable unease.
A chill slowly spreads from the soles of his feet, as if determined to take all his warmth.
"...Yes. Chiyo-sama... she already knows."
Taking a deep breath to calm the uneasiness in his heart, the Suna ninja answered in a trembling voice he himself didn't notice.
"Good. Thank you for your hard work."
Hii Kōri nodded, then meticulously sorted out the documents that had scattered slightly when he'd hurriedly leaned out, handed them to the ninja before him, and quietly entrusted, "I need to go see her. Please put these in the box over there for me."
Then he turned and jumped out of the cockpit, walking away softly,his steps were very, very light, just like his tone.
But in that Suna ninja's eyes, at this moment, Hii Kōri seemed to be burning with a flame.
A blazing, pitch-black, frigid flame.