Chapter 467: Puppet
Inside the storage scroll, quietly placed, was a special product that Kankuro had expended enormous effort to create. He had utilized almost all his connections and resources as a puppet master, even swallowing his pride to beseech the already-retired, consummate-skilled Chiyo to come out of seclusion and provide guidance before finally completing this with great difficulty.
It was a puppet.
However, it was completely different from the puppets traditionally used in Sunagakure for combat, assassination, or support.
This puppet had abandoned all offensive mechanisms. Kankuro and Chiyo had poured all their energy and precious materials into two other directions instead.
Ultimate realistic appearance and smooth, natural controllability. Its purpose of existence was not destruction, but rather... "companionship" or "replacement."
"Temari, you go outside first. Let me have a good private talk with Gaara alone." Kankuro did not immediately unfurl the scroll. Instead, he turned his head and spoke to Temari, who was still in shock and worry.
"Eh? But..." Temari looked at the room full of bizarre sand sculptures and her brother whose condition was obviously wrong. She really couldn't feel at ease leaving.
"It's fine, leave it to me." Kankuro's gaze carried the determination of burning one's boats. "Trust me, I'll find a way... to make Gaara pull himself together again. Some words might only be appropriate for us brothers to say alone."
Finally, under Kankuro's repeated assurances and earnest gaze, Temari reluctantly nodded. Looking back every few steps, filled with worry, she left the room.
Only Kankuro and Gaara remained in the room, along with those countless silent sand sculpture "audience members."
Kankuro sat cross-legged before Gaara, placing that storage scroll on the ground between them. He did not rush to display what was inside. Instead, he looked directly into Gaara's still-empty eyes and asked in a deep voice.
"Gaara, tell me. What exactly do you need right now to pull yourself together again? To make you willing to walk out of this room and become once more that Fifth Kazekage who makes Sunagakure proud, whom everyone trusts?"
"..."
Gaara hugged his knees, resting his chin on them, his gaze scattered as he stared at the floor.
He did not answer. Or rather, that answer he longed for in the depths of his heart—he believed Kankuro could never possibly achieve it. Speaking it would only add to his troubles and deeper despair.
Kankuro waited a moment. Seeing he had no response, he continued speaking on his own. "Alright, let me guess... Do you... want Naruto to be able to stay by your side forever? Regardless of what form, regardless of the distance, you hope he can always be in your sight?"
Hearing the words "Naruto stay by your side forever," Gaara's curled body trembled violently. He abruptly raised his head, panic and alarm flashing through his eyes as if his secret had been exposed. But immediately after, that light rapidly dimmed again, replaced by gloom and self-mockery.
Kankuro had guessed correctly, hitting the nail on the head.
But what use was that? This kind of wish... was simply a pipe dream, a delusion that violated common sense and reality.
Naruto had his own life, his deeply loved wife, his shouldered responsibilities. How could he possibly stay forever by the side of this "friend" far away in the Land of Wind?
Such extravagant hopes would only make him feel even more pathetic and laughable.
However, just as Gaara was disheartened and preparing to bury his face back in his arms—
Bang!
A slight muffled sound rang out in the silent room. It was the sound of the storage scroll being activated through summoning!
A faint white smoke rose from the scroll, rapidly spreading.
"Come, Gaara," Kankuro spoke once more. "Look at this."
"...What?" Gaara listlessly, instinctively raised his head, his gaze carelessly cast toward where the smoke was dispersing.
Then—
His breathing, along with all his thoughts, completely stopped in that instant.
His eyes suddenly widened to the limit. The numbness and dejection on his face shattered like ice struck by a heavy hammer, instantly crumbling, leaving only incredulous shock.
The smoke dispersed. In the room's center, atop the unfurled storage scroll, sat a "girl."
Her eyes were closed, her posture slumped powerlessly, leaning against the scroll's edge as if asleep, without any breath of life, like an exquisite puppet... Well, that's exactly what it was.
More precisely, it was an exquisitely suffocating humanoid puppet. However, her "exquisiteness" had already reached a terrifying degree capable of passing for real, challenging cognition.
Golden long hair was carefully arranged into two lively, playful twin tails hanging over her shoulders, the ends slightly curled.
Her features were incredibly delicate. The skin used a special biomimetic material that presented realistic luster and delicate texture in the dim light.
And on both sides of her fair cheeks, three parallel, distinctive whisker marks were clearly drawn.
She wore a well-fitted athletic outfit with bright orange and steady black as the main colors. Though the style was simple, the details were all carefully designed.
Whether it was the hair color, facial features, whiskers, or that highly personalized outfit... All the elements combined together formed an immensely familiar yet extremely strange picture.
This was clearly... a female version of Uzumaki Naruto!
Or rather, it was that image that only existed in Gaara's dreams and deepest secret fantasies—Uzumaki Naruko.
Kankuro and Chiyo had selected an extremely rare, priceless special flexible composite material from Sunagakure's secret inventory as the main body.
This material was not only sturdy and lightweight, but could also simulate elasticity, temperature, and touch extremely similar to human skin. It could be said the manufacturing cost was high enough to make even misers like Kakuzu gasp in shock.
The internal driving mechanisms were also designed to be exceptionally precise and quiet, aimed at achieving the most natural, least suspicious movements.
Gaara forcefully rubbed his eyes, then rubbed them again, suspecting whether he was producing double hallucinations due to excessive mental exhaustion, or was still in some absurd dream without having awakened.
That blurred yet inexplicably warm and stirring figure from his dream... How could it... how could it appear before him so realistically, so concretely?! How was this possible?!
"Kankuro... this, this..." Gaara's voice was hoarse and trembling, incoherent. He pointed at that puppet, even his fingertips slightly trembling. "You... how did you know... how could you..."
"Don't worry about that." Kankuro interrupted him, his tone carrying imperceptible fatigue.
Of course he wouldn't say that on that day when Gaara was utterly drunk and he carried him back to his quarters, Gaara had, in his confused consciousness, intermittently and incoherently muttered the entire way.
Describing in detail that "golden twin-tailed, face with markings, wearing orange clothes, warm-smiled" "girl's" appearance.
Those drunken words were branded in Kankuro's heart and also became the most direct, most accurate blueprint for creating this puppet.
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....so ..... it's weird right? a puppet, really? couldn't he find a kunoichi who can use transformation justsu skillfully and bang her? I mean he is a Kage?