Satsuki's Rinnegan was turning steadily, radiating an oppressive weight that pressed against the air in the room. She swept her gaze across every corner, every surface, every shadow.
In the seconds after the initial shock, she had already understood what she was looking at. The head on the worktable was a puppet. Not the real Naruto.
That understanding did not calm her in any way.
If anything, it made the anger worse.
Who? Who had made a puppet of her husband? Who had taken his likeness and fashioned it into this and left it sitting on a table like a piece of craftsmanship on display?
And whoever had done it was almost certainly still nearby. The state of that workbench, the half-assembled components, the work clearly in progress -- the puppeteer had been here recently. The mont they had co downstairs, that person had hidden.
Her gaze moved to a corner of the room.
There was a coat rack standing there. Wooden, ordinary style, an old jacket hanging from it. The kind of object that blended into any cluttered workspace without drawing attention.
Satsuki raised her hand. The lightning in her palm surged.
No longer anything gentle. This was real Lightning Style chakra, the kind built to go through things, blazing arcs snapping and screaming in the air around her, lighting the basent like midday.
She aid at the coat rack --
"Wait -- WAIT --"
The coat rack shuddered. A familiar figure burst out from behind it and hit the floor hard, sprawled flat, forehead pressed to the ground in the most complete prostration imaginable.
Kankuro.
Five-point contact with the floor, arms stretched forward, the entire form of a man who had decided that maximum deference was his only viable option. He was shaking visibly.
"I can explain -- please don't --!!"
There was sothing close to crying in his voice.
He had felt that killing intent.
That completely unconcealed, soul-freezing, genuinely homicidal killing intent. It was not a threat. It was not a warning. She had been about to actually go through with it.
Kankuro's mouth tasted like ash.
He had known this day would co. From the mont he began building the first Naruko puppet, he had known that if it were ever discovered, this was what the aftermath would look like.
He had built it anyway. Because he could not watch his brother like that -- hollowed out and drifting, locking himself in his room without eating, sitting for hours shaping Naruto's face out of sand with nothing to show for it. The first puppet had been found by Gaara, and the look on his face -- the absolute radiant shock of it -- had made refusal impossible.
So there had been a second.
He had thought there was still ti. The second one was not fully finished yet. There were adjustnts to the fine details, chanisms still being calibrated. A few more sessions and it would have been safe to move it sowhere Satsuki would never go.
How was he supposed to have known that Naruto would show up tonight? With Satsuki? And find the hidden door?
Kankuro's entire spirit had gone cold.
Naruto stepped forward quickly, placing himself between Satsuki and the floor. He could feel the chakra rolling off her -- volatile, sharp at the edges. This whole situation was deeply strange and he would be the first to admit that the chill running down his own spine was very much real.
But regardless. Kankuro was Gaara's older brother. He was a Sand Village officer. He was an ally. Letting Satsuki actually kill soone in this basent was not an outco they could work with.
Naruto worked to keep his voice steady, which required so effort.
"So..." The expression on his face was the particular kind that happened when a person was trying very hard to process multiple things simultaneously. "We were wrong to co down here without saying anything -- I acknowledge that, we should have knocked."
"But that --"
He raised one hand and pointed at the disassembled version of himself laid out across the worktable.
"What exactly is going on with that?"
"This... well, this is..."
Kankuro was face-down on the floor with his brain screaming in two directions at once.
One voice: throw Gaara under. Tell the truth. This is all for him, let him answer for it himself. You just made the puppet. You won't be the one they rember hating.
The other voice: take all of it. Say it was your idea. Say you lost your mind temporarily. Take the bla entirely and let Gaara keep his friendship with Naruto intact, let your brother have the one fragile thing holding him together.
The two voices fought each other for exactly two seconds.
At the end of two seconds, he had his answer.
"Actually --!!"
Kankuro wrenched his head up and delivered the words at maximum volu.
"This was entirely my idea!!"
His voice bounced off every wall in the basent. The words ca out with the energy of soone burning the bridge they are standing on. "Yes -- it was , I made an incredibly stupid decision --"
He pressed his forehead back to the cold floor, not willing to look at either of their faces.
"Because Naruto's reputation across the ninja world is absolutely unbelievable right now! Son of the Fourth! Student of the Fifth! The hero of the Leaf -- everyone knows that na everywhere!"
"So I thought -- if I had a puppet that looked like Naruto, I could use it to intimidate people! On missions, when facing a difficult opponent, all I'd have to do is produce it and they'd back off imdiately! Think of all the unnecessary fights that would prevent!"
"I know this was wrong! I should not have made unauthorized use of Naruto's likeness! I had no right to build this without permission! I -- I was wrong! I'm sorry!"
He lowered his head again. His forehead t the floor with a solid thud.
"Is that so." Satsuki's voice arrived from directly above him, cold in the specific way that suggested sothing crystalline and very sharp. She was looking down at him with her Rinnegan active and shifting, and the expression in her eyes belonged to soone reading a na off a list. "So this was your idea."
Kankuro had used up all of his courage. He had nothing left but to keep going.
"Yes -- that's right!" He nodded with considerable force. "I'm genuinely sor--"
"Don't play gas with ."
Satsuki's voice went up sharply. Kankuro's words cut off. He froze completely.
What followed ca one word at a ti, and each one landed like a step down into sothing cold.
"This was Gaara's request. Wasn't it."
Her Rinnegan was locked on him. What burned in those eyes was a fury without a clean na for it.
"Obviously it was him."
"Intimidating opponents? You're treating like I'm stupid?!"
Her voice filled the basent. Every wall threw it back.
"A surface-level replica for scaring people off?"
She whipped her hand toward the worktable -- toward the disassembled version of Naruto laid out across it, piece by piece, with a precision that had clearly involved a great deal of deliberate care.
"If that's all it was, then why are the private parts so ticulously detailed!!"
At that exact mont, at the top of the basent stairs.
Gaara and Temari, who had been about to descend and investigate, both stopped completely.
Temari's hand was still resting on the edge of the hidden door. Her expression had reached a place sowhere between shock and profound confusion and simply stayed there.
And Gaara.
The Fifth Kazekage of Sand Village stood perfectly still. The color was visibly leaving his face.
He had a fairly good idea by now of what was happening below.
Kankuro's secret workshop.
The puppets that had not been moved in ti.
And... certain details that had been rendered with perhaps excessive fidelity.
Gaara did not move.
He was giving genuine consideration to the question of whether, if he turned around right now, walked very quietly out of the building, hid Naruko sowhere outside the village, and pretended he had heard absolutely nothing -- whether any of that was still a viable option.
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