"What's your goal in joining Akatsuki?"
"Obviously—to pursue the beauty of art, of course!"
Nagato jolted awake in the middle of the night, chest heaving. He rubbed his aching brow.
It had been a long time since he'd had a nightmare.
But this time, his dream had been… bizarre.
In it, Konan had recruited Sasori.
Then Sasori somehow got dragged into Amamiya Kenichi's "chaos squad," and Akatsuki was turned completely upside down—chickens flying, dogs jumping, order in ruins.
"Haah… those two…" Nagato exhaled slowly. "If they can't even handle a simple funding operation, I should consider replac—no. That shouldn't happen."
If an S-rank and an A-rank missing-nin from Konoha couldn't even gather money, then Konoha never deserved to be called the strongest of the Five Great Villages in the first place.
Still, just thinking of Orochimaru and Amamiya Kenichi left him with a complicated headache.
Sasori had already accepted the invitation and joined Akatsuki.
That meant a small meeting would be needed soon.
He could only hope those two didn't turn it into a circus.
Especially that guy, "Gyoku".
Meanwhile, the man on Nagato's mind was standing alone in a clearing in the Land of Fire, pen and notebook in hand.
"…Experiment No. 3 has slightly higher blast power than the previous ones, but it's still below expectations. The fireworks effect, though, is kinda pretty."
Kenichi looked at the shattered rocks and shook his head.
After mixing several batches of thermobaric explosive in the lab, he had brought eight test samples out into the wild. For accuracy, he'd even used Earth Release to create simple earthen houses as targets.
Test Samples 1 and 2 had detonated successfully, but their performance was underwhelming.
Sample 3, on the other hand, had exploded into a plume of deep violet flame.
The color of fireworks, he knew, depended on the different elements embedded in the composition. Each element burned in its own hue.
Kenichi rubbed his chin.
"Maybe someday I can design a whole new series of fireworks. Open a ninja-world firework brand or something…"
He shook his head.
"Focus. Tight schedule, big goals. No time to play pyrotechnician."
He continued testing the remaining five samples one by one.
As for being discovered? He wasn't that worried.
The Land of Fire was huge, and this place was remote, tucked deep between mountains and forests. He had carefully scouted the area beforehand—there was no one around.
If someone still managed to observe him unnoticed, their skills would have to be exceptional.
…Or they'd have to be Zetsu.
Kenichi remembered that Zetsu had a particularly nasty reconnaissance method—one so good that even Kage-level shinobi often failed to sense him.
But honestly? Kenichi wasn't that concerned. In the big picture, he was just a "normal" shinobi.
Not exactly the kind of existence that demanded constant surveillance.
After detonating all eight samples, Kenichi finally had some data.
Purely in terms of blast strength, Sample No. 7 performed the best.
The earthen house he'd made with Earth Release had been obliterated—nothing left, and a sizable crater gouged into the ground.
And that was with a small amount of thermobaric mix.
Sample No. 5, meanwhile, had its own unique characteristic: the smoke generated after detonation was toxic.
Kenichi jotted it down, but didn't dwell on it.
The ninja world was absolutely full of poisons; toxic gas wasn't exactly a rare commodity.
In his mind, thermobaric weapons were meant to be battlefield tools—designed to devastate enemy fortifications and wipe out large numbers of low-to-mid-tier targets efficiently.
What he wanted was maximum destruction: pressure, heat, and oxygen depletion.
Poison was just… a side hobby. Not this project's focus.
Back in his previous world, thermobaric bombs were already among the most terrifying of conventional weapons. In the ninja world, though, things were trickier thanks to jutsu.
How much damage would this do to jōnin and above?
He wasn't sure yet.
But to genin and regular civilians?
A properly deployed thermobaric bomb would be even more troublesome than a Tailed Beast Bomb.
You couldn't dodge it. Even underground wasn't safe.
And Tailed Beast Bombs weren't exactly casually fired off in stealth. A giant monstrosity stomping around the battlefield made subtle deployment basically impossible.
"If Nagato had these things, he wouldn't need Shinra Tensei at all. Just have Deidara bomb the village from high altitude and roll the credits."
Kenichi flipped through his notes, satisfied.
"Still… against a hidden village, I'll need to test something else—whether a thermobaric blast can break through barrier formations."
Every village had its own defensive barrier.
Konoha's barrier, while often treated like a joke by fate, was still one of its core defenses.
If he wanted practical battlefield use against ninja villages, he needed to know how these bombs interacted with barriers.
One thing, however, was sure:
The higher the yield, the greater the effect. That rule didn't change.
"…Man, I really want to try it—with chakra mixed in. The power should spike even more, right?"
Kenichi rubbed his palms together, excitement glinting in his eyes.
Once he erased all traces of the explosions with Earth Release and Wind Release, he quickly left the area.
He already had a rough idea of how to merge chakra into the mixture.
But any actual experiments would have to be done far away from the lab.
If he blew up another base, Orochimaru would absolutely lose it.
When Kenichi finally returned to the underground facility, his heart tensed.
He glanced at the lab.
No sign of Orochimaru.
He let out a long breath.
"Why does this feel exactly like doing something bad behind your parents' back and praying they never find out?"
With sensei gone, he could at least sit down and work through the theory.
Kenichi actually enjoyed this kind of quiet, solitary life.
Real scientific research was mostly boring—years or decades of grinding effort for a single breakthrough.
If not for his cheat ability, he was pretty sure he'd still be "handcrafting" his first thermobaric bomb by the time the Fourth Great Ninja War rolled around.
He opened his notebook and started writing.
"Fusion methods between chakra and thermobaric mix can roughly be divided into two types…"
"First approach: keep the chakra sealed separately, isolated from the explosive. Once the fuse activates and the bomb arms, the chakra and explosive mix and react on the spot…"
"Yeah… that actually sounds promising."
Kenichi chewed the end of his pen, lost in thought—completely unaware that someone had quietly appeared behind him.