Path of no return

The geography of the Land of Lightning was simply terrible. You couldn't walk for fifteen minutes without having to cross a bridge over a ravine or river, climb a mountain slope, or descend a zigzagging path.

There wasn't a single meadow or flat field; everything was either uphill or downhill. With so much effort just to move around, it was almost a mandatory training regime where even civilians were forced to get in shape. It's no wonder that the local ninjas tended to have prominent muscles!

Takara didn't want to have to worry about the terrain, so he used the Tenseigan Chakra Mode to fly above the clouds and travel at great speed.

"I have most of the bijus and their rebirth eggs, only missing Matatabi and Gyuki along with Kokuo's egg."

But no matter how much his noxinas searched, there was no news of the elusive egg. Kokuo was a mix between a horse and a dolphin, so he couldn't really pinpoint a particularly favorable ecosystem for him. Did he really have to explore the coasts and seas?

Though Takara felt somewhat exasperated, he also had some theories about certain things. To start, Matatabi's egg had very high probabilities of being in the Land of Lightning, primarily because the surroundings were essentially an ideal place for a giant cat to jump, do acrobatics, and climb like felines love to do.

And ever since he learned that Hashirama took the Kyubi's egg, he had the theory that perhaps Kumogakure got their hands on the eggs of their bijuus and moved them to a specific location: the giant turtle Genbu, which holds the temples of Kumo's jinchuriki.

The suspicion was mainly because he remembered that Kumogakure also had Hagoromo's artifacts in their possession that appeared during the Fourth Ninja World War, so it wasn't entirely unexpected that the rebirth eggs of their tailed beasts were under surveillance. At least, it was a possibility.

"I should start with Yugito Nii and quickly move on to that annoying rapper."

Yugito was turned into a jinchuriki at the age of two, forced to undergo detestable training to learn to control herself, and could be considered one of the prime examples of child soldiers at their peak. From what Takara could discern, it seemed she wasn't as isolated from the village as Han, but she definitely had surveillance and a prohibition against going out on her own. And Yugito was fine with that! Unless she was assigned a mission, in which case two teams of Anbu would accompany her as backup. This made it strange because one couldn't help but think what kind of missions would require the jinchuriki when her glorified bodyguards were probably more than enough to complete the job.

"Matatabi was especially sensitive among the tailed beasts, I don't know if she'll be able to give an early alert and ruin everything."

He might need to resort to a slightly different approach. Should he repeat Jiraiya's operation? Distract, strike, and run.

"No, Kumogakure is better organized when it comes to patrols and they don't lack people like the current Konoha. I need something more…forceful," Takara squinted his eyes under his mask. "I think it's time to release them."

It was a pity he could only prepare two puppets of the same model; he couldn't invest more time in increasing the number without risking Akatsuki moving because they felt uneasy.

Takara took several more days to approach the village unnoticed, stopping his overflight in the immediate vicinity. But soon he noticed something that made him frown.

"Are the connections with my noxinas unstable in this area?"

This left him perplexed, and it didn't take long to see that they were being affected by a combination of local magnetic fields and areas of high static charge. But not all the news was bad. While there was instability, the noxinas had a certain degree of autonomy and as long as they didn't move more than a few kilometers away, it didn't matter too much.

"But that will make espionage tasks difficult," Takara wasn't happy with the discovery. "Will the puppets also have that instability?"

He immediately took some out and dispersed them.

"There's a bit of delay with the feedback in both directions, but it shouldn't affect their capabilities too much. At most, they'll spend most of the time acting on orders and will take a few seconds to receive and follow new ones."

Takara hadn't expected the battlefield to give his puppets a debuff. How come there were no records of these issues in Sunagakure?

He was sure that when he reviewed geography documents, these kinds of peculiarities weren't mentioned. It made no sense! Unless…

"Surely it's because the puppet masters of Suna rely on chakra strings and rarely travel this far. Most missions only reach as far as the Land of Fire."

As for going further? Sorry, Konoha and the other villages would take those well-paid missions.

"I doubt that Kumogakure would let me in as a tourist without taking off my mask, and someone from Suna getting this far is too suspicious, so the tourist act can be discarded. I'll have to get serious," Takara said, circling the village of Kumo and looking for a couple of suitable places to start his plan.

Having located the areas on two opposite sides of Kumo, he entered his workshop and moved to a room where the meteorite chakra had concentrated into a gelatinous liquid that flowed through a series of tubes into two large puppets.

These puppets displayed a design of gears and needles, with a vial of purple liquid in their chests shaped like an hourglass, with the bottom part slowly filling through the tubes.

"Timecutter, Nox's masterpiece that he used to raid and destroy an entire kingdom along with a species," a hand signal sent a chakra pulse that ejected the tubes' connections, leaving the puppets ready to activate. "Clear a path and make sure to draw Kumogakure's attention. I don't want to be disappointed."

The hourglass filled with purple liquid turned over, and the first drop fell, providing the meteorite chakra necessary to power the mechanical creations. Both puppets straightened and heavily dropped from their birthing platforms, looking at their creator while emitting a digitized sound.

"Welcome to hell, are you ready?"

An incomprehensible digital response was all Takara got.

"Fine, go then," Takara ordered coldly. "And don't come back!"

Both Timecutters began to walk, then started running, and just as they were about to collide with Takara, the sound of the biwa made two doors appear through which they rushed and disappeared.