"One more year."
A few days after the celebration, Sasori and Yuji were back on the sand dune.
Same place, same view, the Hidden Sand Village spread out below them, unchanged, all wind and sand and old architecture carrying the accumulated weight of decades without renovation.
"The Second Kazekage's legacy," Sasori said, looking out at it.
Yuji was lying down beside him as usual.
"Getting into the Anbu isn't difficult with your record," Yuji said, staring up at the sky. "But rising quickly once you're in, getting close enough to have regular contact with the Kazekage, that still requires building the right resume.
You could use connections, but that invites gossip. Better to let the work speak for itself." He held up one finger. "Which means when we take missions going forward, we need to go separately.
Right now, almost everyone in the village thinks of us as a pair. That's not good for the plan. We need to quietly dissolve that impression and avoid drawing too much attention from the higher-ups at the same time."
"Keep a lower profile from here on. One more year of building military merits and you'll enter the Anbu with enough standing to hold a real position, Squad Leader at minimum.
From there the path to the Kazekage's inner circle opens up. Kage Guard isn't out of reach. The Anbu's assessment process is more careful than the front lines, you'll be touching the village's internal affairs and secrets, so they'll be watching how you carry yourself."
Sasori looked down at him. "And you?"
Yuji smiled. "My Blood Release is fully developed now. The only limitation is chakra volume, but that's not my actual ceiling. Over this past year I've worked out some new abilities, none of which I used against Iwagakure, not once.
The reason is simple. I don't want anyone to know. I don't want the higher-ups to have an accurate picture of where I actually stand." He paused.
"As far as they're concerned, I'm a talented junior with strong Medical Ninjutsu and a Kekkei Genkai. Their understanding of my Blood Release comes from battle reports, filtered, incomplete. That's exactly how I want it."
He let out a slow breath. "Human nature being what it is, if a talent is displayed too openly and the people above you can't feel fully confident in their control over it, it becomes a problem for them rather than an asset.
The Third Kazekage, Grandma Chiyo, both of them would have considerations along those lines. If they knew my real level, they would start designing tests and frameworks to make sure they had complete control over me.
And beyond the control question, growth that moves faster than people can track creates its own kind of unease in those watching it. Even the Kazekage isn't immune to that."
He smiled up at the sky. "What they see in me right now is what I've chosen to show them. Which means when the plan eventually moves, no one will see it coming, because in their understanding of things, we don't represent that kind of threat."
Sasori was quiet for a long moment.
"What?" Yuji asked.
"Insidious."
Yuji looked pained. "That's a bit harsh. I haven't hidden any of this from you, you're the only one who knows all of it. And I'm doing this for the village, for the plan. That has to count for something."
Sasori said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"My puppet core," Sasori said, shifting the subject. "I've found the approach. It still needs time."
Yuji's attention sharpened immediately.
Beyond the questions he had been bringing to Yuji about life science and the physical body, Sasori had been deepening his technical foundation through Grandma Chiyo's experience and working through records left by the village's previous Puppeteers.
The battlefield had given him something else, access to a large number of corpses for private experimentation, which he had made full use of.
The key, he had concluded, was the heart.
In the body's chakra circulation, the heart was the central node, the point where the meridian pathways converged most significantly, governing the various elements of chakra flow.
Sasori's working theory was that by preserving a portion of the heart's living tissue, he could discard the physical body entirely and transfer himself into a puppet frame.
The tradeoff was not straightforward.
The advantage was real, without the complexity of full circulation, chakra mobilization became faster and more direct. The normal routing through the body's network amounted to a detour, and removing that detour compressed the response time between intention and output.
But the disadvantage was more significant. Without nerves and living flesh, the life energy carried within chakra was stripped down to a raw power source and nothing more.
The capacity for complex internal calculation disappeared with it. Chakra transformation, elemental nature manipulation, the diversity that made conventional Ninjutsu possible, all of that required a biological framework to process it.
A puppet body couldn't provide that. To perform any technique with elemental properties, Sasori would have to route it through mechanisms built into the puppet itself, or rely on external tools like scrolls.
For most shinobi, this would be a crippling limitation.
For Sasori, it was nearly irrelevant.
His Ninjutsu had always been about puppet control, the precision and responsiveness of the threads, the management of multiple units simultaneously, the craft embedded in the mechanisms themselves.
Elemental release and hand seal sequences played almost no role in what he actually did. Whatever he lost in direct chakra transformation, he could transfer to the puppet's built-in mechanisms or compensate for with external objects.
The architecture of his fighting style happened to fit the constraints of a puppet body almost perfectly.
None of this had reached completion yet. There was still meaningful distance between the current state of his research and a workable result. But the direction was clear, and clarity was most of the work. Time would close the remaining gap.
Yuji's contribution to that timeline had not been small. The knowledge he had been able to provide, grounded in his understanding of the human body, life science, chakra physiology, had resolved problems that would otherwise have cost Sasori considerably more time to work through independently.
And beyond the technical assistance, Yuji already knew what Sasori's artistic framework would eventually look like. He had been giving him the answers in advance.
"If you're working with flesh and blood in the puppet, maintaining a basic life state, that's a techniques problem first. It has to be sustained through active methods." Yuji rubbed his chin.
"And if the puppet core is meant to retain the abilities the deceased had in life, you'd need to use it as a chakra node, stimulate and drive it to generate the original person's chakra, maintaining the same nature and capacity, then reconstruct their methods through techniques.
Probably some Sealing Jutsu or barrier-related talisman work."
Sasori glanced at him.
"I know you've had the idea of applying this to yourself for a long time," Yuji said.
Sasori had only described his research on the puppet core. He had said nothing about personal application. The specificity of Yuji's advice made the inference obvious.
"As a friend, I support it completely. And I'll find ways to make your art more powerful." Yuji raised both hands with a straight face.
Sasori made a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
He respected Yuji's understanding of the human body, but different disciplines were different worlds. What Yuji could offer was conceptual, ideas, frameworks, academic foundations. The actual execution still belonged entirely to Sasori.
The depth and complexity of Puppeteer craft was not something a Medical Ninja could fully grasp from the outside, whatever his intelligence. The offer to contribute directly was, in Sasori's private assessment, somewhat optimistic.
Reading his expression, Yuji didn't press the point. He just smiled. "Whatever you do, don't let Grandma Chiyo find out you're thinking along these lines. She'd be devastated."
Sasori gave no indication of having heard this.
He turned and started down the sand dune.
"Wait for me."
Yuji got to his feet, brushed the sand off himself, and followed.
...
Hey guys! Your powerstones can genuinely make a big difference for the story. The more stones we get, the higher we rank, and the more new readers get to discover it. So if you've got some to spare, please do throw them this way! Every single one helps. 🙏
Read upto 30 chapters ahead @Keepsmiling818 P@reon