Chiyo watched the young Konoha shinobi with mounting fury. She wanted nothing more than to slaughter them all—though that was wishful thinking.
So she narrowed her target: eliminate the ones who stood out, the promising ones, the ones with rare techniques.
Just like Konoha, Sunagakure had its own field analysts, tasked with tracking battlefield performance and flagging individuals who posed a potential threat. Chiyo already had a list of standout names committed to memory.
She couldn't touch Namikaze Minato. But the rest of these nobodies? They were fair game.
And so, Chiyo opened with her trump card.
"White Secret Technique: Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu!"
Ten white-cloaked puppets shot out in all directions. Wherever they passed, Konoha shinobi dropped like wheat under the scythe.
Other puppet masters followed suit, unleashing their own creations into the fray.
"If Sasori saw this, maybe he'd feel proud," Chiyo thought bitterly. "But this battlefield is too dangerous. Not until White Fang is dead will I allow him to show his face."
Her rage softened at the thought of her six-year-old grandson.
Six was too young for war... though perhaps not for long. Senju Nawaki had died at twelve. Minato was killing Iwa jōnin at thirteen. But still—Chiyo feared her grandson would one day fall to Hatake Sakumo. Better to act now. Better to thin the herd of Konoha's next generation.
And that's when Tsukasa Kaede became the next target of fate.
A Chikamatsu puppet barreled straight toward him, cutting through two Konoha shinobi and forcing an opening through their line. Several more puppets followed, swarming behind it.
"Medics, fall back! Leave this to the combat units!"
"Damn it! Why is she here?!"
"White Secret Technique—this is the pinnacle of Suna's Kugutsu no Jutsu! Stick together! Don't isolate!"
Eight Leaf shinobi rushed in to contain the breach. The first two were shredded by a hail of poisoned projectiles from one puppet's arm compartments. A third suffered a poisoned gash—he wouldn't last long.
Three more were cut down by a single puppet's blade, its movements blindingly fast. This was the terror of the Chikamatsu puppets, operated remotely by a single finger from Chiyo.
Each of the ten puppets caused similar devastation across the field, weapons flying, limbs spinning, all soaked in lethal toxins. Without specialized antidotes, Konoha was being torn apart.
"A genin like me, getting targeted by Chiyo herself? What an honor…"
Tsukasa muttered under his breath. One wrong step and he'd be dead.
In a flash, he unfurled a summoning scroll—poof!
Two figures emerged in a burst of smoke.
Clang!
The sound of steel rang out as a zombified Amegakure jōnin blocked the puppet's attack with a scythe.
It didn't stop there.
With a flick of Tsukasa's fingers—two pressed together in a guiding seal—the second corpse, once a Sunagakure puppet master, spread its arms. Ten threads of chakra extended from its fingertips and latched onto the Amegakure corpse.
A second later, the zombified jōnin and the white puppet were locked in high-speed combat. They clashed midair, exchanging over a dozen blows in seconds. Their speed would've overwhelmed most chūnin.
"That should buy me a moment to breathe…"
Tsukasa backpedaled, maintaining the hand sign, pretending to be actively controlling the zombies.
But in truth, it was mostly deception.
Unless Tsukasa forcefully overrode their actions to perform jutsu they hadn't learned in life, the corpses acted on instinct, requiring only simple tactical prompts: what jutsu to use, who to target first. Minimal chakra cost.
And they had the massive advantage of retaining the ninjutsu they knew in life.
Tsukasa exhaled, barely keeping himself together—but the surrounding shinobi were in disbelief.
"That medic… is he controlling two reanimated shinobi… and holding off a Chikamatsu puppet?!"
"Dozens of us died in seconds, but he's matching that thing?"
"This… this is the Impure Soul Technique? It has this much potential?"
"He's using chakra threads through a reanimated puppet master's corpse? He's making one corpse control another? And it's functioning like a real puppet master?!"
Veterans who had fought Suna shinobi were stunned. The zombified puppet master's chakra thread manipulation was indistinguishable from the real thing. The idea that corpses could fight like this shattered assumptions.
Dead bodies… could really be used like this?
Even Chiyo, from afar, was visibly shaken. She ordered several puppet masters to destroy the undead shinobi, but Konoha's soldiers swarmed to protect Tsukasa. The fight around him became a contested pocket of the battlefield.
More Konoha jōnin arrived, taking on the other Chikamatsu puppets—but none of their battles had the same shock value as Tsukasa's grotesque counter.
All of it had taken mere seconds.
"That brat… he's using our own dead against us. Filthy."
Chiyo's face twisted in rage. She hated everything about Konoha, especially the parts that outshone Suna. And the more she hated, the more she wanted to obliterate them.
What Tsukasa was doing—reanimating the dead, using them with their former abilities—was eerily close to Suna's most taboo forbidden technique: Human Puppetry.
Chiyo didn't believe that boy had mastered actual kugutsu. Konoha had no real puppet tradition.
"He must be captured alive. I want to dissect that technique myself!"
With murder in her eyes, Chiyo signaled the remaining Chikamatsu puppets to reposition. Other puppeteers launched volleys of poisoned weapons to disorient the Konoha lines.
"Doton: Earth-Style Wall!"
"Fūton: Great Breakthrough!"
"Don't block with your bodies—these weapons are poisoned! Use jutsu!"
The battlefield exploded into chaos again.
Skilled puppet masters often deployed entire puppet artillery units dedicated solely to launching weapons. Their rate of fire and range made them a nightmare to deal with.
Tsukasa downed a soldier pill. Pain flared through his veins as his chakra system was forced into overdrive.
His eyes swept over the corpses strewn across the battlefield—their terrified, desperate expressions mirrored the dull eyes of his zombies. Maybe, in a war like this, the line between the living and the dead didn't matter anymore.
He'd rather not become one of them.
"Die, brat! Everyone in Konoha deserves to die!"
The white puppet impaled one of Tsukasa's zombies with a longsword, then shoved it forward to skewer the second one behind it—impaling both in a single thrust.
Of course, that didn't stop the zombies. The poison was irrelevant. Unless the brain was destroyed, they wouldn't fall.
But the damage had built up. Their chakra drained, their bodies crumbling, they were finally overwhelmed and torn apart by Chiyo's puppets.
The stench of rotting flesh hit Tsukasa's nostrils—but those seconds bought him his chance.
He summoned one more zombie, and as the puppet closed in—
BOOM!
He triggered the corpse's self-destruction.
The detonation wasn't expected. Chiyo flinched—just long enough.
SHING!
A silver arc of light split the Chikamatsu puppet in half.
"You've done well."
A calm voice sounded.
Hatake Sakumo stepped forward, his chakra blade humming, standing between Tsukasa and death. His voice, usually cold, carried rare warmth.
"That old hag always resorts to underhanded tricks. But you've changed how I see the Impure Soul Technique. Leave the rest to me."