Kenji woke before dawn.
He packed his kunai, shuriken, wire, explosive tags, medical supplies, and ration pills. Everything a chunin was expected to carry into combat. Then he changed into his standard-issue uniform.
The chunin vest was a dull green with the Uzumaki clan spiral emblazoned on the back. It was practical, and most importantly, completely unremarkable. He tied his Konoha forehead protector across his brow and checked himself in the mirror.
Generic ninja. Forgettable face in a crowd of hundreds.
He felt fairly satisfied. That was exactly the kind of plainness he wanted.
In the shinobi world, standing out was dangerous. People who dressed uniquely were either powerful enough to not care, or idiots who wouldn't live long. He was neither. Blending in, being another face in the mob, that was survival.
He walked over to the small altar where his parents' photo sat.
"Keep me alive out there," he muttered.
Then he left.
The assembly point was at Konoha's main gate. His deployment notice had been clear about that. Just show up and wait for orders.
When he arrived, the crowd was already there. Hundreds of ninjas milling around in loose groups. Genin clustered near their jonin instructors, looking nervous and trying not to show it. Chunin and unattached jonin stood more freely, talking quietly with people they knew.
After graduating from the Academy, fresh genin got assigned to three-person squads led by a jonin. Once all three members of a squad made chunin, the team dissolved. From that point on, chunin worked flexible assignments, like temporary teams for specific missions, or solo work when appropriate. They were no longer bound to a fixed team like genin were.
Kenji scanned the crowd for familiar faces and found none. It was not surprising. Most of the Yamanaka clan was already deployed, and the original Kenji had never been particularly social anyway.
He found a tree near the edge of the assembly area and leaned against it. Then he pulled out his medical ninjutsu scroll and started reading. Might as well use the time productively.
He'd been studying for maybe fifteen minutes when a commotion broke out.
Voices raised in surprise, and people were turning to look at something. He glanced up from his scroll and followed their gazes.
A group of kids was walking out through the village gates.
Not kids, but fresh Academy graduates, maybe even a batch that had been graduated early. They looked like kids, twelve years old, maybe thirteen for the older ones. They all wore brand-new forehead protectors. Their eyes were bright and clear, full of excitement as they looked toward the assembled ninja ranks.
"No way. They're not actually..."
But they were. He knew this was a world of child soldiers, but watching it from the comfort of your room as anime and seeing it unfold before you were two entirely different things.
The fresh graduates formed up in an open area, still chattering and laughing among themselves. Oblivious to the sudden tension that had gripped the older ninjas watching them.
"Are they sending those kids to the front lines with us?" someone nearby asked. "That's insane."
Kenji agreed completely.
Fresh graduates weren't supposed to see combat, not immediately. The standard protocol was clear. Start with D-rank missions, like finding lost pets, delivering messages, and helping civilians with manual labor. Basically boring work designed to build teamwork and let the jonin instructor teach practical skills the Academy didn't cover.
After that came C-rank missions, like bandit suppression, and escort duty against non-ninja threats. The goal was to gradually introduce real danger, letting the genin experience violence.
Only after months or even years of that progression would they move to B-rank missions involving combat against other ninjas.
What he was seeing here threw all of that out the window.
Even if they were assigned to logistics and supply duties, the front lines were chaotic. You couldn't avoid combat. Battles didn't respect neat organizational charts.
This was suicide.
The Third Hokage has lost his mind, he thought. He's a Kage-level fighter. He should be on the front lines crushing enemies. Instead he's sitting safe in his office and sending children to die in his place?
The strategic logic was ass-backwards. These kids represented Konoha's future. Give them proper training, let them develop for a few years, and most of them would become competent chunin. Some might even make jonin eventually.
Throwing them into meat grinder now was throwing away that potential. But he wasn't naive enough to think war was fair or clean. People died. That was the nature of ninja conflict. But there were smart ways and stupid ways to manage that reality.
This was stupid.
Although he felt some dissatisfaction toward Konoha's higher-ups, he had no power to change anything at the moment. All he could do was look with pity at those children, thrilled simply because they had become ninjas.
The surrounding ninjas seemed to share his assessment. The initial surprise faded into silence.
After maybe ten more minutes of waiting, an ANBU operative appeared. He wore a cat mask, and standard black ops uniform. He held a clipboard with a list of names written on it.
The ANBU positioned himself in front of the assembled chunin and jonin and started calling out names.
"Yamabuki Kenta. Kazama Takuma. Yamanaka Kenji. Asakawa Yuuji..."
He called about fifteen names, and Kenji's was among them.
"Those whose names I called, follow me."
The ANBU turned and walked toward the group of fresh graduates. Kenji fell in with the others who'd been called. He took the opportunity to gauge his new colleagues.
His chakra sensing wasn't active, but proximity alone gave him enough information. Most of the people around him had chakra reserves in the chunin range. A few stood out as probably jonin-level, but they were the minority.
Judging a ninja's rank by chakra alone wasn't entirely accurate, but it was enough for him to conclude that most of those present were chunin like himself.
They reached the line of Academy graduates and stopped. The ANBU operative stood there silently, clearly waiting for someone.
That someone arrived a moment later.
Hiruzen walked out wearing his formal robes and hat. The kids erupted into excited cheers the moment they saw him.
"It's the Hokage!"
"The Third Hokage himself!"
Their faces lit up with awe. To them, being addressed personally by the legendary leader of their village was probably the greatest moment of their lives so far.
Kenji watched with growing distaste.
Hiruzen smiled warmly at the kids and began his speech about protecting the village, inheriting the ideals of those who came before, dedicating yourself to Konoha's prosperity. The usual propaganda nonsense that sounded noble but meant nothing when you were bleeding out in a ditch.
The kids ate it up, of course. They were too young and too inexperienced to recognize empty rhetoric.
When the speech finished, Hiruzen started reading out team assignments from a scroll. Three genin per squad, with the name of their assigned instructor.
That's when it clicked for Kenji.
The names the ANBU had called earlier. They weren't mission assignments, they were instructor assignments. The people standing around him were about to become team leaders for these fresh graduates.
Chunin team leaders.
You've got to be kidding me, he thought. They're not even trying to hide that they're sending these kids to die.
Genin teams were always led by jonin. Chunin didn't have the experience or strength to guarantee their students' safety. Using chunin as instructors massively increased casualty rates, every tactical manual said so.
But here was the Third Hokage himself, publicly assigning chunin to lead these kids.
Konoha was so desperate for bodies on the front lines that they couldn't spare jonin for training duty. Every experienced fighter was needed for active combat, so they were forced to improvise by assigning chunin as instructors, shortening the training, and sending recruits into battle immediately.
He understood the logic behind it. The war was brutal. Konoha had two fronts, against Suna and Iwa at the same time, with heavy casualties on both sides. Jonin were needed at the front, where their experience and power could turn the tide of battle. You couldn't afford to waste elite fighters on babysitting duty.
But understanding didn't mean agreeing.
This was still tactically and morally wrong, sacrificing the future to buy time in the present. Still a losing proposition no matter how you calculated it.
Now I get why he came personally, he thought, watching the Hokage smile at the excited children. He's packaging a death sentence as a privilege by making them feel special about being chosen.
Propaganda at its finest.
Whatever faint respect he still held for the Third Hokage evaporated completely. Maybe Hiruzen thought he was making hard but necessary choices. Maybe he really believed this was the only option.
But it didn't matter.
Anyone who could stand there smiling while condemning children to death was beneath contempt. The fake kindness made it worse. At least an open villain would be honest about the cruelty.
He added Hiruzen to his mental list of people to never trust, right at the top, actually. A friendly face hiding ruthless pragmatism was more dangerous than an obvious enemy.
---
---
I don't know if it wasn't clear enough, or if some readers misunderstood, but the reason he made the armor was to protect his unconscious body.
If I'm not mistaken, it should've been mentioned that when he uses the Mind Body Switch Technique, his body inside the armor remains standing upright (due to armor), not lying on the ground like, for example, Ino's.
Someone mentioned the Mind Puppet Switch Cursed Seal Technique, but the armor is clearly meant to guard his defenseless body. I mean, what's the point of transferring your mind into an external armor puppet if your real body is left completely unprotected?
In short, the armor protects his body while his mind is elsewhere. His shadow clone can control the armor that houses his unconscious body while his mind inhabits, say, an enemy. Alternatively, he could use the enemy's body to manipulate his armor, which still contains his real, defenseless form.
Again, why the armor? It's for defense and for better puppeteering, he can control wood much more easily than flesh.