Metal and Wood

Takara was pleased to see that Orochimaru made the deal honestly upon receiving the elements from Surface before the puppet returned to its original and inanimate form.

Moving to the section of his workshop in the hideout, he took out Zabuza's body, which was still in the same state as he preserved it.

"Let's see if the product is genuine!" murmured Takara as he took a sample of Hashirama's cells and loaded it into a needle of a noxina, with the reservoir full of pure chakra.

With a gesture of his, mechanical arms in the workshop came to life and grabbed Zabuza's body, placing it in a special terrarium.

"Come on, little one, let me see how effective these cells are…"

The noxina blinked with its lens and flew to settle on Zabuza's corpse, spinning around his torso, and when it found the best place, its needle at the end of the abdomen injected the cocktail of cells along with the chakra stored in the flesh.

Under Takara's gaze behind his mask, Zabuza's corpse began to twist and creak as foreign cells took over his flesh and blood before small sprouts began to grow and, fed by the noxina's chakra, turned into a large tree confined to the terrarium.

"Not bad at all," nodded Takara as he cut two thick branches from the tree that was Zabuza and placed them separately.

He planted one of them in a terrarium identical to the previous one and sent a noxina to supply it with more chakra, watching as the branch greedily fed on the supplied chakra, grew roots, and began to grow.

"Perfect! It seems that my plan to grow chakra trees from the corpses of powerful ninjas is viable," the genin gave a fiery look to the branch that grew to match the tree from which it came, "Let's see the last test."

Cutting enough wood from both trees and taking the other branch, he began to carve the pieces with practiced ease and in a few hours, he had a Zabuza puppet in front of him. He examined it carefully, checking how the wood joints seemed to recognize and adapt to each other, how vivid the puppet was to its original body.

If it weren't for the unmasked skin, no one would say that it was made of wood.

"It doesn't exhibit a single trait of the human puppets created by Sasori, and yet..." Takara narrowed his eyes, sending a noxina to the puppet's chest compartment.

When the chakra began to flow, the puppet's posture changed and it faithfully reflected Zabuza's behavior. With a mental order, "Zabuza" performed the Hidden Mist technique with familiarity by performing the corresponding hand seals and consuming the necessary chakra.

Too bad that he could only apply techniques known to him and not all those known by the puppet in life, but the naturalness of the technique that he never used was the true key point.

"Well, with this confirmed, I'll be able to prevent those paranoid men and women from the upper echelons from trying to chase me. No matter how you look at it, it doesn't seem to be a forbidden technique no matter how much you examine it, even if you open it up to see its interior, it's just a very realistic puppet and that was never a crime.

Sasori might consider himself a genius, but Takara only thought about how stupid he was to modify his body into a puppet, having so many ways to extend his life. Going around exhibiting puppets that were once human only painted a bigger target on his back.

Takara intended to employ Tsunade's Senju's ridiculous physicality to feed various trees from which to extract wood, using it to upgrade the hardness and quality of his best puppets alongside the alloy he would prepare.

A good example of this would be Nakime's puppet, which was not only one of his creations with the highest degree of affinity but also the key to being able to access his hidden hideout.

On the other hand, puppets like Ram and Rem had only an intermediate affinity and he did not intend to upgrade them with such precious materials, it would be a complete waste and he had priorities.

"I suppose I should return to the village," Takara looked at the terrariums with boredom, wanting to get to work without delays, "Although I still have time to deliver the mission, I don't want to be late and miss the nomination for the chunin exam."

The appearance of the noxinas and their ability to help Gaara sleep had caused enough interest for him to be allowed to take missions without being part of a team.

Naturally, he used puppets instead to give the impression that he was traveling accompanied, he did not want to become a solitary target.

The only downside, so to speak, was that old Chiyo had become his responsible and supervisor.

"As if she couldn't notice the interest they have in visiting my workshop..."

In the basement of his house, he had a fake workshop where he left some cheap materials and plans for rudimentary constructions "hidden." He didn't bother to make them too realistic, he copied the plans of "innovative" puppets like the Crow and added limbs or changed some mechanism using common sense.

He didn't even bother to clean up that workshop, so that wood chips, sand, and used tools transmitted the feeling that he still used that place.

Frankly, getting Nakime's puppet to activate his ability was a pleasant surprise for Takara, as originally the village received an order from a nobleman of the Land of Rice for him to make a musical doll that played the biwa.

No puppeteer was willing to invest time in that mission, so it was forcibly assigned to Takara as an exam to test his abilities.

Remembering the character and his backstory, he began to recreate each part as best as possible to make it look real and the result... was spectacular.

Since then, Nakime had become the most useful and versatile puppet in his entire arsenal, the only one that enjoyed his personal maintenance.

As for the rest...

"Dr. Vegapunk Shaka," called Takara, causing the puppet of a slim man with a futuristic chrome helmet with a "01" painted on the glass to emerge from the shadows. The same puppet that ensured the optimal maintenance of the rest of its kind— "Take the other two corpses and start cultivating chakra wood in the assigned terrariums, especially the Senju on a large scale. Then process and treat the wood to prepare it to upgrade the rest of the puppets in person.

While there was no problem in the maintenance becoming mechanized, the replacement of parts to upgrade or the creation of new puppets still had to go through his hands personally.

"Allowed amount?" asked the puppet without questioning its creator's orders.

"Mmm, assign ten percent for now," Takara reflected for a minute before answering him.

His noxinas had been collecting chakra from everywhere and the reserve he had accumulated in the workshop was not small after this period of time, assigning ten percent was already a considerable amount, but he needed quite a lot of Senju wood.

"Also start running tests for the alloys, when I return I want at least six ingots of four different alloys like the ones I instructed before," added Takara before leaving through the door that appeared beside him.

"Roger, roger."