Cutting through a chunk of wood for the n-th time, Rei put so much lightning chakra into the strike the puppet his blade impacted literally exploded in a shower of wooden splinters. It was already two hours since he started felling down puppets as if they were a forest and with each additional kill, Rei felt as if he was getting back into the rhythm. It was a long time since he faced a lot of opponents and even longer he exercised his blade techniques.
Fighting against his girls in spars was good and all but he already knew most of their moves. They didn't give him a chance to practice some sword styles either since spars against them were in different power leagues and there were many better ways to deal with them than using a sword. Heck, using some otherwise powerful sword techniques against them would be outright foolish because they could just easily block or evade them.
Now, however, Rei was surrounded by a multitude of mediocre targets with no tricky Jutsu or bijuu level chakra reserves so he could let loose and simply have his body go through sword katas for kenjutsu styles he knew. It was really refreshing!
As yet another puppet lost its head to Rei's sword, Rei thought, 'Yes... I will definitely make Pakura remake these and then mass-produce them for training purposes!' He didn't even put his mind into the fact that such a sheer number of advanced puppets would be able to take over a hidden village. For them, these chunks of wood were just practice targets.
Rei sidestepped a stab from another humanoid puppet looking like a small creepy child, causing it to fly by his body. Hearing a clicking sound, he instantly spun on his heel, turning back, and saw the expected twist of the waist joint of the puppet causing its waist to turn backward. A pipe appeared on the palm of its bladeless hand, releasing yellow shine...
Rei's fist impacted the puppet's head, sending it crashing to the ground and making it involuntarily aim the pipe towards the sky before it released the yellow explosive ball.
Rei, much to his shame, fell for this trick once already and he had no intention of giving Pakura more ammunition to tease him.
At first, he was carefree and focused on the more artistic and 'cool' sword katas he never used because there were more practical ones for a real fight, but when he got hit for the first time because he momentarily forgot that he was fighting against puppets and that meant they could twist their bodies at inhuman angles, Pakura just couldn't let it go and teased him.
Rei just knew he would not hear the end of it for months but he also acknowledged he deserved it. Honestly, from the current ninja puppetry point of view of Sunagakure, these puppets were kinda useless. Yes, they had all the advantages of puppets and their bodies could be twisted, dismantled, and put together mid-fight as a few cases where Rei dispatched them without flooding their system with lighting energy showed. But... they simply lacked weaponry.
At first, Pakura was excited when she saw their firepower. The yellow exploding balls were marvelous! Such strength! With the number of puppeteers Sunagakure possessed, if she could give every one of them ten of those puppets...
But the longer the fight went on, the more flaws with her plan Pakrua saw. These puppets had massive firepower but that was honestly it. They had no internal weapon systems and their dismantling and putting themselves back together was also not up to snuff. Compared to the puppets of Sunagakure, they were simply disappointing.
It appeared as if without a puppeteer controlling them, the creator of these puppets had to give up most of what made puppets deadly and focus on one destructive attack the puppets could be programmed to do even without being controlled.
Pakura was still interested in the technology of puppets' remote control but she now saw there would be much to adjust and research once she got it.
Acknowledging that, Rei also decided to make it easier on her. Looking at the child-like motionless puppet with a cracked head on the floor, he noted his seal took effect. The puppets still twitched, showing it was trying to get back into the fight but the paralyzing seal stopped it.
The whole battle was littered with only two types of 'corpses'. The first were puppets fried from inside out and the second ones were these twitching, still functioning ones that were a gift for Pakura.
Rei's lighting chakra coursed through enough of the puppets to know the remote control technology would be useless to her as it took way too much place within the puppets' internal mechanisms. But... why would he tell her that? She had to be punished for teasing him!
'Meh, I will just give her the idea of using the spiritual part of Shadow Clones and merging it with puppets to create pseudo puppet clones when she comes to me crying her remotely controlled puppets are impossible to outfit with even basic Sunagakure's puppet weapon systems.' Rei shrewdly decided.
While fighting, Rei's mind naturally trailed towards how he would recreate the puppets. Such a thing was inevitable as the minds of many experienced ninjas worked in a similar way. It was a part of their training. During a fight, they always thought about how the enemy's techniques work, how to recreate them, and how to make them ineffective.
Only the most skilled and experienced could recreate the techniques of their enemies, and that was also why even the basic matured Sharingan was such a cheat as it allowed its user to bypass the needed knowledge and experience to do just that with a simple look.
Rei, however, had enough knowledge and experience to figure out a few ways to make Pakura's desire come true.
'Now that I think about it...' Rei looked around with furrowed eyebrows, 'How come I wasn't attacked yet? I must have been thinking for well over twenty seconds now.' It was then a slow and contemptuous clapping sound resounded from above, making Rei look up in surprise.
There, on the wall stood a white-skinned man, looking down at Rei while surrounded by the remaining puppets in a way as if he was a king surrounded by his obedient servants.
Needless to say, Rei quickly got annoyed at the cocky look the dude was shooting him. Obviously, his enemy thought he could squash him like a bug.
'I mean... sure, I used nothing more than lightning-enhanced kenjutsu but I don't think I deserve to be underestimated so much.' Rei disgruntledly thought, inwardly sighing. Clearly, the pale guy didn't think decimating a few thousand puppets was worth acknowledgement. 'Ah, youth.' Rei amusedly shook his head, 'Always thinking they own the world.'
The eyes of the pale guy narrowed at the gesture, yet, he tried to show he was not perturbed because of it.
"You have some skill, intruder." He coldly proclaimed, "If you think someone like you can stand against the Otsutsuki clan, however... you are greatly mistaken, foolish mortal!"