The kunai rose.
Ebizo watched it through the narrowing tunnel of his vision, the blade catching the light in a thin white line against the grey sky. The scroll thief's grip was steady now. The hesitation was gone.
So this is how it ends. Well, at least the girls are safe…
Something moved.
From behind, from far behind, a sound like wood cracking through open air. Fast. Getting louder.
The middle-aged shinobi looked up.
Hundreds of wooden fists the size of a melons smashed into the side of his face. His head snapped sideways. His body followed, spinning off his feet and crashing into the rocks three yards away. The kunai flew from his hand and clattered somewhere in the dust.
Then more came.
Arms. Wooden segmented arms, extending and extending and extending past Ebizo's blurred vision like an invasion of jointed snakes. They punched through the group of Iwa shinobi in a wave, each one slamming into a torso, a jaw, a knee, a raised guard that faltered under the impact. The cracking of wood against bone echoed off the canyon walls.
Million.
The arms retracted. The Iwa shinobi who'd been knocked back were scrambling, shouting, reaching for weapons and forming hand seals. Two were down, not moving. The rest were recovering fast.
Voices. Distant but closing. Young, high, breathless from running.
"Sensei!"
"There he is! He's down!"
"I see him!"
No.
The word formed in Ebizo's mind with a clarity that surprised him, cutting through the fog of blood loss and pain and fading consciousness.
No, no, no.
His girls. His stupid, reckless, loyal girls.
You should have gone back to the village.
He tried to speak. His jaw wouldn't close properly and the words came out as bloody air.
This was a trap. You should have taken the loss, turned south, and reported back to Suna.
Million moved in front of him. He could feel the ground shudder as the puppet planted its feet between him and the nearest Iwa shinobi, its four arms spread wide, that stupid smiley face grinning at the enemy. It was cracked and tilted and missing a chunk from the left side, but the grin remained.
The mission doesn't matter if you die. The scroll doesn't matter. I don't matter. I'm a foolish shinobi who lacked proper sense and walked into the most obvious trap in the history of shinobi warfare, and you three should have let me pay for that mistake.
Three shapes appeared at the mouth of the pass. Small. So small. Children. Armed children sprinting toward a squad of grown killers.
You foolish...
His vision went dark at the edges. The tunnel narrowed further.
...stupidly loyal...
The last thing he saw was Million's extending arms launching again, wooden fists crashing into an Iwa shinobi who'd been forming a jutsu, and behind the puppet, three small figures spreading into formation.
...shinobi.
Ebizo's eye closed. His head dropped to the dirt. His breathing went shallow and even, and the sounds of battle faded into nothing.
______________________________________________
Karura felt him go.
Her puppet had been operating at the very edge of her range when the girls sprinted into the pass, and the moment she closed enough distance, the threads snapped taut and alive and Million became hers again. Every joint, every mechanism, every hidden compartment. She could feel the damage from the earlier fight, the cracked faceplate, a stiffness in the left shoulder joint where sand had gotten into the socket, but the arms worked. The launchers worked. The core was intact.
That was enough.
"Mai, left side! Pakura, keep their ninjutsu off us!"
She didn't wait for confirmation. Her fingers were already moving, the threads pulling Million into a fighting stance between Ebizo's unconscious body and the six Iwa shinobi still standing.
Six. Two were down from Million's opening barrage, crumpled against rocks with broken jaws and caved-in chest plates. But six remained, and they were already recovering from the surprise. Already spreading out, putting distance between themselves and the puppet, trying to encircle the children the way they'd encircled the man.
The biggest one, a broad-shouldered jonin with stone gauntlets covering both fists, pointed at Karura.
"The puppeteer. Kill her and the puppet drops."
He wasn't wrong.
Three of them broke toward her. The other three moved to intercept Mai and Pakura, cutting them off before they could support Karura or reach Ebizo.
Karura's left hand twitched. Million surged forward.
The puppet intercepted the first attacker with its lower-right arm, catching the man's incoming punch at the wrist and squeezing. Bone cracked. The man screamed. Million's upper-left arm drove a blunt fist into his gut, folding him in half, and the upper-right arm grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground. One down, two seconds.
The second shinobi flanked wide, circling behind Million while the puppet was engaged. He formed three hand seals. "Earth Style: Earthen Stone Shoots!"
A lance of compressed rock erupted from the ground beneath Million's feet. Karura yanked all ten threads simultaneously. Million leapt. The spear punched through empty air where the puppet had been standing, and Million landed on the shinobi's extended arm, two wooden feet clamping down on his limb like a vise.
The man's elbow snapped and he shrieked.
Million released one of its lower arms, the forearm housing clicking open, segmented extending arms pouring out like a nest of wooden serpents. Three of them wrapped around the screaming shinobi's torso and squeezed until something inside him broke with a wet, muffled sound. His shrieking stopped.
The third attacker was smarter. He stayed back, throwing kunai with explosive tags, forcing Million to dodge rather than press forward. Each explosion kicked up clouds of dust and gravel, and in the chaos, he circled toward Karura herself.
Karura saw him coming. Her right hand kept Million moving, dodging and blocking, while her left hand dropped to the puppet arms mounted on her back. Chakra flowed into them. The giant mechanical arms unfolded from her frame, rising over her shoulders like a scorpion's claws.
The shinobi burst through the dust cloud, kunai in each hand, closing the distance to her in two Body Flickers. Fast. Too fast for an eight-year-old to react to.
But Karura had already reacted. The puppet arms swung. The left one batted his leading kunai aside with an open palm, and the right one caught his second wrist. The pressure valves in the knuckles cracked on contact, and a thin, oily film of paralytic poison coated the man's skin.
He pulled free. He was still fast, still dangerous. But his fingers were slower on the next set of hand seals. Slower by a fraction.
Karura's puppet arms struck again. A straight punch with the right, catching him in the ribs. Another dose of poison through the knuckle plates. He blocked the left arm's follow-up with his forearm, but the impact transferred more of the compound onto his skin.
Four hits now. His arms were getting heavy. She could see it in the way his guard sagged between exchanges.
"What the hell..." he muttered, staring at his trembling hands.
Karura didn't answer. She kicked, a spinning heel aimed at his jaw, her body flowing through the motion. He leaned back, dodging it, but the dodge was sluggish. The puppet arms corrected, one catching his ankle, the other driving into his stomach. The senbon launchers in her palms fired, six needles at point-blank range punching into his abdomen through his flak jacket.
He staggered. His legs were dragging now, each step heavier than the last, the poison accumulating in his blood faster than his body could fight it. He tried one more jutsu. His hands came together, stone coating his fists for a final swing.
Million's extending arms hit him from behind. Four segmented limbs wrapping around his arms, his legs, his torso, pulling him off balance and holding him suspended while Karura's puppet arm drove a final poisoned fist into the side of his neck.
He went limp.
Karura dropped him and spun to find her teammates.
______________________________________________
Pakura was losing.
Her Scorch Release orbs burned hot, evaporating moisture from the air around them, and any shinobi stupid enough to close distance with her risked touching one and ending up a dried husk. But she was fighting two at once with cracked ribs, and every time she raised her arms to direct an orb, her side screamed.
One of them was a ninjutsu type, throwing Earth Release jutsu from range, walls and spears and projectiles that forced Pakura to dodge when dodging was the last thing her ribs wanted. The other was a taijutsu fighter, darting in during the gaps between her orbs, landing body shots that made her vision white out.
She caught the taijutsu fighter with an orb on his third pass. He zigged when he should have zagged, and the heat sphere clipped his left shoulder. The moisture in his arm evaporated in an instant. His sleeve collapsed against desiccated muscle and he screamed, staggering back, his left arm a withered stick hanging from a functioning body.
But the ninjutsu fighter used the opening. "Earth Release: Mud Wall!"
A slab of hardened earth erupted from the ground and slammed into Pakura from the side. She hadn't seen it. She'd been focused on the taijutsu fighter, and the wall caught her across the ribs, the broken ones, and the world went white.
She hit the ground. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. Her hands clutched at the dirt and she tried to roll, tried to get up, but her body wasn't listening.
The ninjutsu fighter walked toward her, forming seals for something bigger. Something that would finish it. His hands came together.
Pakura saw the jutsu forming. Saw the stone spear materializing above his palm, aimed at her chest. She tried to move. Her body refused. Her ribs were grinding against each other and the pain was so total that it swallowed everything else.
Move. Move. MOVE!
The spear launched.
Pakura's body jerked sideways.
Her legs kicked out and her torso twisted and she rolled three feet to the left, and the stone spear punched into the dirt where her chest had been a half-second earlier. Her body kept moving, pulling itself upright, her arms rising into a guard position, and she realized with a jolt of confusion that she hadn't done any of it.
Her legs were moving on their own.
She could feel something. Faint, almost imperceptible, a tingle along her spine, her arms, her thighs. Like threads. Like someone had tied strings to her body and was pulling them.
"I've got you!"
Karura's voice. From somewhere behind and above.
Pakura's body dodged again, a sidestep that avoided a follow-up kunai, and this time she could feel the threads distinctly, could feel the tiny tugs that preceded each movement, her body responding to Karura's direction before her own brain could process the danger.
"What are you, what is this?!" Pakura shouted.
"Don't fight it! Just use your jutsu, I'll handle the rest!"
______________________________________________
It had come to her easier than she thought.
That was the only way Karura could describe it later. One second she was watching Pakura take the hit, watching her teammate crumple, watching the stone spear form, and the next second her fingers moved.
Chakra threads, thin as spider silk, invisible in the dust and chaos of the battlefield, shot from her fingertips and attached to Pakura's body. The connection was instant, and the information that flowed back through the threads was overwhelming, every tension in Pakura's muscles, every shift in her weight, the grinding of broken bone against broken bone.
She pulled and Pakura moved.
She was doing three things at once: controlling Million with her left hand as the puppet grappled with the half-desiccated taijutsu fighter, moving Pakura with her right hand to dodge and reposition, and scanning the battlefield with her eyes for Mai.
Mai was in trouble too.
She'd engaged the broad-shouldered jonin, the one who'd ordered them to kill the puppeteer, and she was holding her own. Barely. The man was twice her size and his stone gauntlets hit like sledgehammers. Mai was strong but she wasn't jonin strong, not yet at least. He threw short, heavy punches that didn't leave openings, and when Mai kicked, he absorbed the blow on his stone-coated arms and countered.
A straight punch caught Mai in the sternum. She flew backward, hit the canyon wall, and dropped to her knees wheezing. The jonin advanced.
Karura's fingers moved again. More threads, reaching across the gap, attaching to Mai's body the same way they'd attached to Pakura's. The connection bloomed. She could feel Mai's body too now, the bruised sternum, the screaming lungs, the legs coiling to dodge.
"Mai! Don't fight me!"
Mai's head snapped toward Karura's voice. Her eyes were furious. "What?!"
"Trust me!"
The jonin's fist came down. Mai's body slid sideways, Karura's threads pulling her out of the path of the strike with inches to spare. Mai's eyes went wide. She hadn't moved herself. She knew she hadn't moved herself.
"What the frick, Karura?!"
"Hit him! I'll keep you alive, you just hit him!"
Three puppets. She was controlling three things at once. Million on her left hand, five threads. Pakura on four threads from her right hand. Mai on the remaining thread from her right pinky.
She wasn't even sweating. It didn't seem like much of an issue. Like she'd been practicing this her whole life and never knew it. Her kekkei genkai… The one that gave her that tenfold skill. It accelerated her prowess as a puppet master… Making her capable of something that even jonin puppet masters struggle to do proficiently.
Million caught the desiccated taijutsu fighter in a chokehold with two arms and snapped his neck with the other two. The body dropped. Million turned toward the ninjutsu fighter who'd been pressuring Pakura.
"Pakura! Orbs! I'll keep you standing!"
Pakura didn't argue this time. She couldn't feel her left side anymore, couldn't tell if her ribs were cracked or shattered, but her hands still worked and her Scorch Release didn't need her legs. She formed the orbs, three of them, blazing orange-white, and Karura's threads pulled her body through the motions of staying alive while Pakura focused purely on the jutsu itself.
The ninjutsu fighter threw up an earth wall. The first orb hit it and the moisture in the rock evaporated, the wall crumbling to powder. The second orb passed through the gap. The man dodged, barely, rolling to the side, and the third orb caught his trailing leg.
His calf dried to jerky in an instant. He collapsed, screaming, clutching the withered limb.
Million's extending arms finished him.
Four down on their side. Two left. The exhausted ninja with the scroll was still sitting on his rock, too drained to run, watching the battle with hollow eyes. And the big one, the broad-shouldered jonin with the stone gauntlets, was still pressing Mai.
But now it was three against one.
Karura pulled Mai backward, out of the jonin's reach, and sent Million charging forward. The puppet's four arms swung in overlapping arcs, a flurry of blunt strikes aimed at the man's head and torso. He blocked the first two on his gauntlets, stone cracking against wood, but the lower arms caught him in the thighs and buckled his stance.
Mai hit him from the left. A spinning kick that Karura guided with her threads. Mai's heel connected with his jaw, and the force of it, Mai's monstrous trained strength combined with Karura's perfect positioning, snapped his head sideways. Blood and teeth sprayed across the rocks.
He didn't go down. He spat red into the dirt and swung, and the stone gauntlet clipped Million's shoulder joint, cracking the wood and jamming the mechanism. The puppet's upper-right arm went dead.
Pakura's Scorch orb hit him in the back.
He arched. His mouth opened in a silent scream as the moisture in his lower back evaporated, skin and muscle drying and tightening against his spine. He dropped to one knee.
Million's three remaining arms grabbed him. Two pinned his arms. The third seized his head. The extending arms deployed from the forearm housings, wrapping around his torso, his legs, binding him in a cocoon of segmented wood and wire.
He struggled. Stone coated his body, a last desperate defense, and the wood groaned against the rock armor. Cracks spiderwebbed through Million's forearms.
Mai walked up to him. Karura released the threads on her body. Mai's movements were her own again.
She looked at the man. At his stone-coated body straining against Million's grip. At the blood dripping from his mouth and the dried flesh on his back where Pakura's orb had hit.
She hit him once. One punch, full force, aimed at the crack in his stone armor where Pakura's heat had made the rock brittle. Her fist punched through, and the man's chest caved.
He went limp in Million's arms. The puppet dropped him.
Silence.
Karura let out a breath. She released the threads on Pakura and felt the girl sag, catching herself on her own legs, her jaw clenched against the pain in her ribs.
The exhausted jonin with the scroll hadn't moved from his rock. He sat there, clutching the massive scroll to his chest, staring at the three girls and the broken puppet with an expression that couldn't decide between horror and resignation.
Mai walked toward him.
He didn't run. He couldn't. His chakra was spent, his legs were dead weight, and the three children who'd just dismantled his entire reinforcement squad were between him and any escape route.
"Please," he said. His voice was cracked and dry. "It's just intelligence. It's not worth..."
Mai finished him off with a kunai to the throat.
He fell off the rock. The scroll rolled free. Mai picked it up, slung it over her shoulder, and turned away without looking at him again.
[Congratulations on defeating and killing Chunin and a Jonin as a genin! You are rewarded with the improved legendary ninja tool, Blastsword!]
[Blastsword - A double-sided blastsword with a cutting edge on one side and an explosive platform on the other. Its scroll converts the wielder's chakra and absorbed ambient energy into self-generating explosive tags, eliminating the need for a finite supply. Each detonation feeds residual force back into the next, creating an escalation loop where successive strikes grow more powerful. The scroll can also absorb enemy ninjutsu on contact and repurpose that energy as additional explosive output on the following swing.]
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
Karura knelt beside Ebizo. Her fingers found his pulse, thready and weak but present. His face was swollen beyond recognition, his hand was a ruin of crushed bone, and his breathing gurgled with what was probably blood in his lungs. But he was alive.
"We need to move," Karura said. "They might have more reinforcements. Pakura, can you walk?"
Pakura straightened her spine with obvious pain but she nodded.
"I'll get Sensei and Pakura."
Karura recalled Million to its scroll. The puppet was badly damaged, its right shoulder joint jammed, two of its four forearm housings cracked, and the faceplate was barely hanging on. But it had done its job. She summoned two identical copies of Million in perfect condition to carry both Pakura and Sensei.
She looked back at the pass. Bodies lay scattered across the rocks.
"Let's go home."
They ran. Three girls, one unconscious sensei, one recovered scroll, heading south through the badlands toward the border of the Land of Wind. Behind them, the pass fell quiet, and the desert wind began to cover the blood in sand.