Karura put the linens away.
Third door on the left, just like Hina said. She folded them neatly on the shelf, closed the storage room door behind her, and stood in the empty corridor.
The palace was settling into its nighttime rhythm. Fewer footsteps. Fewer voices. The oil lamps threw long shadows on the stone walls and the air had cooled enough that she could feel it on her arms through the thin sleeves of her disguise.
She should leave. Right now. Out the servants' entrance, through the streets, back to the alley where her supplies were hidden, and then to Pakura and Mai. She had the intelligence. Iwa's involvement, the garrison plans, the trade route manipulation, all of it. More than enough for a report that would land on the Kazekage's desk and change the trajectory of whatever was coming. The mission was done. She'd done it perfectly.
She started walking toward the servants' quarters.
She got four steps before she stopped.
Hina's face. That smile. The way her hand trembled when she patted Karura's head.
Karura stood in the hallway. Her sandals scraped the stone as she shifted her weight.
She didn't understand what was going to happen in Burai's quarters. Not really. She was eight. But she understood enough. She understood that Hina was afraid. She understood that Hina didn't want to go. She understood that Hina went anyway.
She could feel what it looked like when someone needed help and they didn't want to ask for it.
Karura turned around.
She knew where Burai's quarters were.
She got to work.
The west wing staircase was empty. She took the steps two at a time, silent, her sandals barely touching the stone. The hallway at the top was lit by a single lamp near the far wall. The gold curtains hung limp and still. No soldiers at the door. Not yet.
She could hear a voice through the heavy wood. Burai's. Muffled but unmistakable.
"...don't have all night, woman. Hurry up."
Karura stopped in front of the door. Her hand went to the small of her back. Her fingers found the kunai beneath the tunic and drew it free.
She opened the door.
The room was large and overfurnished. A bed too wide for the space, buried under silk sheets and mismatched cushions. A table covered in wine bottles and half-eaten food. Gold curtains. Gold candleholders. Gold trim on the mirror frame. Everything gilded and tasteless, a poor man's idea of wealth.
Burai sat in a cushioned chair near the bed, a wine cup in one hand, his silk robe open at the chest. His bare feet were propped on an ottoman. His small eyes were fixed on the center of the room with that same expression from the hallway. That heat. That hunger.
Hina stood in front of him. Her back was to the door. Her outer robe was on the floor around her ankles. Her hands were at her collar, fingers working the ties of her undergarment. They were shaking.
Burai saw Karura first. His brow furrowed, the annoyance of being interrupted creasing his fat face.
"What are you, the new girl? Get out. Nobody called for you yet. Wait till you're a little older before interu-" He saw the weapon in her hand.
Hina turned. Her eyes were red. Her fingers were still frozen on the ties at her collar. She saw the kunai in Karura's hand and her face went white.
"Mika, no, don't..."
Karura was already gone.
Body Flicker. One step and the world blurred. She crossed the room in the time it took Burai to blink, appearing behind his chair, one hand gripping his oiled hair and pulling his head back, the kunai pressed flat against the soft, sweating fold of his throat.
Burai's wine cup hit the floor. Red splashed across the stone.
"H... huh?" His voice pitched high. The chair creaked as his body locked rigid. His small eyes rolled sideways, trying to see who was behind him, and all he could see was a child's hand holding a blade to his neck. "What, what is this? Stone! STONE!"
"Hina." Karura's voice was calm. Steady. "Pick up your clothes and leave."
Hina didn't move. She stared at Karura, at the kunai, at Burai's bulging eyes, her hands still at her collar.
"Hina. Please." Karura gently requested firmly.
Something broke loose in the woman. She snatched her robe off the floor, pulled it over her shoulders, and ran for the door. She didn't look back. Her footsteps echoed down the hallway and faded.
Burai was breathing in fast, shallow gulps. Sweat rolled down his temples and pooled against the flat of the blade. "Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what you're doing? My men will cut you to pieces, you little..."
"Be quiet."
"I'll have you skinned! I'll have your hands cut off and nailed to the..."
Karura pressed the kunai deeper. Enough to draw blood.
Burai went quiet.
The first one came through a side door she hadn't noticed, hidden behind one of the gold curtains. He was already in motion when the curtain swung aside, a kunai in each hand, his body low and fast. The Iwa headband caught the candlelight as he moved. The scar across his nose was a pale line on dark, weathered skin.
The second came through the window. Glass shattered inward and a massive frame filled the opening, broad shoulders barely clearing the frame, landing on the stone floor with a thud that rattled the wine bottles on the table. He was enormous. Not fat like Burai. Slabs of muscle. His Iwa headband was tied around his upper arm.
The third dropped from the ceiling. She hadn't even felt him up there. He landed between the other two, lighter, younger, already scanning the room. His headband was around his forehead in the standard position.
Three Iwagakure shinobi. In the Land of Dust. Protecting a puppet ruler who had just screamed loud enough for half the palace to hear.
The scarred one spoke first. His voice was the same flat tone she'd heard through the throne room door. "Release him. Now."
The big one didn't speak. He just stared at Karura with eyes that were far too small for his head, empty and patient, like a boulder waiting to fall.
The third one, the youngest, looked at the scarred one. Something passed between them. A nod, barely perceptible. The young one turned and vanished back through the window. Gone.
Two left.
Karura looked at the Iwa headbands. The stone. The symbol of the Hidden Village that had been Suna's enemy for longer than she'd been alive, longer than her parents had been alive, carved into metal and tied to the heads of men standing in a country that bordered her home.
That was all she needed.
She pulled the kunai across Burai's throat.
It opened easily. Flesh and fat parting under sharp steel. Blood sheeted down his chest in a single heavy curtain, soaking the silk robe black. Burai made a sound, not a scream, something smaller, a gurgle, a wet cough that sprayed red mist across the gold curtains. His hands came up to his neck and found nothing to hold. His body pitched forward out of the chair and hit the floor like a sack of wet grain.
He twitched twice. Then he was still.
The scarred shinobi's expression didn't change. The big one's didn't either. Their asset was dead. Their mission was compromised. And the person responsible was an eight-year-old girl in a maid's outfit holding a bloody kunai.
Karura dropped the kunai. Both hands moved to her thighs.
Two scrolls. Two puffs of smoke.
Million hit the stone floor on all fours, arms spread wide, that carved smiley face grinning in the candlelight. Its loose bandages swayed as it rose to its full height, four arms flexing.
Reaper landed beside it. The hooded cloak billowed as it straightened, the blank face vanishing into shadow beneath the cowl. Its lean frame towered over Million, long arms hanging at its sides. In its right hand, Blastsword caught the light, the cutting edge gleaming on one side, the explosive scroll platform dark and heavy on the other.
Ten threads of light connected Karura's fingers to her puppets. The chakra lines hummed in the air between them, barely visible, thin as spider silk.
The scarred shinobi looked at Million. Looked at Reaper. Looked at the Blastsword. Looked at the ten-fingered spread of a puppeteer controlling two combat puppets simultaneously.
His jaw tightened. Just slightly.
The big one cracked his knuckles. The sound was like stones breaking.
Burai's blood spread across the floor in a dark, widening pool. It reached the fallen wine cup and mixed with the red already there. The candles flickered. The gold curtains swayed in the draft from the shattered window.
Million rushed toward the big one while Reaper glided toward the scarred one.
The scarred one's hands blurred through seals. Earth chakra condensed around his grip and hardened into a warhammer, the head dense and dark as basalt. The big one slammed his fists together and stone crawled up from his knuckles to his elbows, forming gauntlets thick enough to crack a wall.
Karura didn't let the sight of their nature transformation scare her. She fought or she died.
Million closed the gap in two strides and swung all four fists at once. The big man caught them on his gauntlets, stone meeting wood in a collision that shook dust from the ceiling and cracked the floor tiles beneath his feet. Neither side gave. Four arms grinding against two, the wood groaning, the stone holding, raw force locked in a stalemate that made the air hum.
The man laughed. A short, astonished bark. "To think this little doll can keep up with my strength! Filthy puppet girl, you're better than we thought!"
The laugh died in his throat as Million's bandages unspooled from its arms and whipped around his gauntlets, circling his wrists, snaking up his forearms, pulling tight. The wrappings cinched like rope and locked. His stone-covered hands were bound to Million's four fists, arms tangled together in a knot of wood and linen and rock.
"Crap! Doki! Help me out!" He wrenched sideways, trying to tear free. The bandages held.
"Deal with it yourself, fool."
Doki swung his warhammer to meet Reaper's sword.
The Blastsword's cutting edge met the basalt head and the scroll on the platform side ignited. The explosion ripped through the room like a thunderclap, blowing out the remaining windows and shredding the gold curtains to burning ribbons. Doki took the blast full in the chest. His body punched through the bedroom wall, through the room behind it, through the next wall after that, leaving a ragged tunnel of shattered stone and dust. Reaper was already chasing him, cloak trailing, Blastsword raised for the second swing.
The big man screamed at the explosion but couldn't cover himself. His hands were wrapped. His arms were bound. Million's four fists began to move.
The first punch hit him in the jaw. His head rocked sideways. The second hit his cheekbone. The third drove into his chest. The fourth caught him in the stomach and folded him forward. Then all four came again. And again. Face, jaw, ribs, stomach, repeating in a blur of wooden knuckles slamming into flesh and bone.
He kicked. His boot cracked against Million's hip joint hard enough to splinter the outer casing. Million didn't flinch. He headbutted the puppet's face, cracking that carved smile down the middle. Million didn't stop. He tried to bite the nearest forearm, teeth scraping against wood, gnawing like a trapped animal. The fists kept coming. A puppet had no pain. No hesitation. No mercy built into its joints. It would hit him until the arms broke or he stopped moving, whichever came first.
His stone gauntlets crumbled. The chakra sustaining them flickered and failed as the blows rattled his focus apart. Bare knuckles now, bloody and swelling, trapped in bandages that only tightened the more he thrashed.
"P-Please... Spare me..." His eyes were swollen nearly shut. Blood ran from his nose and mouth and from a gash above his brow where the skin had split to the bone.
Sadly, mercy wasn't one of the things taught at the Academy.
Million's right fist came down one final time. His skull caved inward with a wet, heavy crack, red and white splattering across the stone floor. His body slumped against the bandages and hung there, limp.
Karura didn't feel good about killing him. But she didn't feel bad either. It was either him, herself, or the people she loved back home. One less threat.
She turned all of her attention to Reaper instead of splitting it.
The trail of destruction led through three rooms. Broken walls, scattered furniture, clouds of dust still settling in the lamplight. She followed it, Million stomping beside her, its cracked smile leaking sawdust.
She found Reaper in what had been a sitting room. Doki was on his feet, bleeding from the ears, his flak jacket scorched black down the front. The warhammer was gone, shattered by the first explosion. He'd formed a stone shield on his left arm and a short blade on his right, adapting fast. His eyes were sharp through the blood running down his face.
Reaper swung. Blastsword's edge caught the stone shield and the second detonation fired. Harder than the first. The escalation loop feeding the last explosion's force into this one. The blast cratered the shield, cracking it down the center, and threw Doki into the far wall. Stone dust rained from the ceiling.
He pushed himself up. Reformed the shield. It was thinner now. His chakra was draining.
Reaper closed the distance and brought the Blastsword down in a vertical arc. Doki raised the shield. The third detonation hit like nothing before it. The compounding force of three consecutive explosions channeled through a single point of contact. The shield didn't crack this time. It disintegrated. The blast wave tore through Doki's guard and caught him full in the chest, and what was left of him painted the wall behind where he'd been standing.
Only three swings. Each one stronger than the last. That was the improved Blastsword.
Karura recalled Reaper to her side. It landed beside Million, cloak settling, Blastsword dripping with dust and worse. She looked down the corridor toward the east wing. Footsteps. Voices. Dozens of them, growing louder.
Stone nin. Pouring out of the east wing and up from the ground floor. The third shinobi had done his job.
She watched them come. Leaping across rooftops visible through the shattered windows. Sprinting down hallways. Filling the corridors with the sound of sandals on stone and weapons clearing sheaths.
For some reason, not a single lick of fear touched her.
But at the same time there was no satisfaction or joy for what she knew what to come.
With a poof of smoke, Karura's giant puppet arms appeared over her shoulders and attached to her back. The massive wooden fists flexed behind her, knuckles cracking, dwarfing her small frame.
Million on her left. Reaper on her right. The puppet arms on her back.
Was she finally going to find her limit here?
Mai saw the explosion before she heard it.
A flash of orange from the palace's upper floor, bright enough to turn the windows into squares of fire for half a second. Then the sound hit, a deep concussive boom that rolled across the rooftops and rattled the tea cups in every shop on the market street. Dust plumed from the west wing. A second explosion followed. Then a third, louder than the first two combined, and a section of the palace wall blew outward in a shower of stone and mortar.
People screamed. The market street emptied in seconds, civilians scattering into doorways and alleys, pulling children behind them, slamming shutters. The soldiers at the intersections drew weapons and sprinted toward the palace.
Mai was already standing.
Pakura grabbed her arm. Her disguise was still holding, the weathered merchant woman with the covered head, but her eyes were Pakura's.
"Wait."
"That's the palace."
"I know."
"That's where Karura is."
"I said I know!"
A fourth explosion. Something inside the palace collapsed. Dust billowed from the shattered windows.
"Karura doesn't make mistakes," Mai said. "If she's blowing things up, something went wrong."
Pakura's hand tightened on her arm. Her jaw worked. She looked at Soran, still sitting beside her, his scarf pulled tight, his eyes wide and terrified above the sand-colored cloth.
"Stay here," Pakura told him. "Do not move. Do not speak to anyone. If we're not back by the time the moon clears those rooftops, run east. Follow the trade road back toward the Hidden Sand Village and don't stop until you find another sand ninja."
"But..."
"Shut up and follow directions." Pakura's disguise dropped. The transformation poofed away with smoke, and she was herself again, multi-colored hair, hard eyes, fist balled. "Stay. Put."
Soran shrank into his scarf and nodded.
Mai pulled the wrappings from her face and tossed them on the ground. She cracked her neck, bounced twice on the balls of her feet, and grinned.
They ran.
...
The streets between the market and the palace were chaos. Soldiers running in the opposite direction, toward the explosions, some of them half-dressed, some carrying weapons they clearly didn't know how to use. Civilians pressing themselves into doorways. A woman crying in the street with a child on each hip. Smoke rising from the palace in thick grey columns.
Mai and Pakura cut through the side streets, vaulting low walls, sliding across rooftops, covering ground faster than anything on the streets below. More explosions echoed from inside the palace. Five. Six. Seven. Each one slightly different. Some sharp and crackling, like explosive tags. Some heavy and deep, like stone breaking. Some wet.
Then it stopped.
The explosions stopped. The screaming stopped. The sound of combat, metal on wood, jutsu firing, bodies hitting walls, all of it just stopped. Like someone had closed a door on the noise.
Mai slowed on the last rooftop before the palace wall. Pakura landed beside her. They looked at each other.
Silence.
The palace was dark. The lamps inside had been extinguished or destroyed. Smoke drifted from every opening, lazy and thin, the kind of smoke that comes after a fire has burned through everything it can reach. The west wing was gutted. Three exterior walls had holes large enough to walk through. One entire section of the second floor had collapsed into the first, leaving a crater of rubble and dust.
"I don't hear fighting," Mai said.
Pakura didn't respond. She was staring at the palace with an expression Mai had never seen on her before.
They dropped from the rooftop and crossed the courtyard. The main gate was hanging off its hinges. Soldiers lay in the courtyard, scattered like dropped toys. Some were face down. Some were face up. None of them were moving.
Mai stepped over one. Then another. She glanced down at a third and her stride faltered.
The man's torso was separated from his legs at the waist. Whatever had done it had gone through his flak jacket, his belt, and his spine without slowing down.
She kept walking.
Through the main gate. Into the entrance hall. More bodies. A cluster of four soldiers near the doorway, all of them riddled with senbon. So many senbon that they looked like pincushions, dozens of thin metal needles protruding from throats and eyes and the gaps between their vest. Poisoned. Their skin looked a little sickly.
The corridor beyond the entrance hall was worse.
Two men slumped against opposite walls with their necks snapped. One had claw marks across his chest, four deep parallel gouges torn through cloth and flesh. Another lay in the center of the hallway with a hole through his chest the size of a fist.
Pakura stepped around a body that was missing its left arm and most of its left shoulder. The limb was nowhere in sight.
They turned the corner toward the west wing.
Mai stopped.
The corridor opened into what had been a large reception room. The ceiling was half gone, collapsed rubble piled along the far wall, open to the night sky above. Moonlight streamed in through the gap, cold and pale, illuminating everything below in silver and shadow.
Bodies. Everywhere.
They covered the floor like fallen leaves after a storm. Crumpled against walls. Draped over broken furniture. Piled in doorways where they'd tried to funnel through and died for it. Stone nin, every one of them, their Iwa headbands catching the moonlight wherever they lay.
The variety was what made Mai's stomach clench.
Some had been poisoned. They lay in twisted positions, mouths frozen open, skin discolored, foam dried on their lips. Some had been exploded, their bodies torn apart in blast patterns radiating outward from a central point, flak jackets shredded, limbs scattered meters from their owners. Some had been slashed apart by something long and curved, clean arcing cuts that had separated arms from shoulders and heads from necks. Some had been beaten to death, their faces unrecognizable, their skulls collapsed inward by blunt force repeated over and over. One man had been split vertically, from crown to pelvis, the two halves having fallen in opposite directions. Two more had been sawed through at the waist, the cuts ragged, the work of something serrated spinning at high speed. A cluster near the far wall looked like they'd been shredded, their bodies reduced to ribbons of flesh and cloth and armor, as though something with many bladed limbs had passed through them without stopping.
Mai counted. Stopped counting. Started again. Lost count again.
Dozens. There were dozens of them.
In the center of it all, Karura stood.
She was no longer transformed. Still small. Still eight. Her puppets flanked her, Million on the left with its cracked smile and splintered hip, bandages soaked dark and hanging loose, Reaper on the right with its cloak torn and stained, a strange weapon in its hand still smoking faintly. Her giant puppet arms hovered behind her back, the massive wooden fists spotted red.
She wasn't smiling. She wasn't frowning. Her face was blank in a way that unsettled Mai more than the bodies did. Not satisfaction. Not horror. Something tired.
Her eyes moved to Mai and Pakura. The recognition was instant. Her posture shifted, the blankness cracking just slightly, something warm flickering behind it. The weapon in Reaper's hand was unsummoned as soon as she saw them.
"You were supposed to wait until I didn't come back," Karura said quietly.
Mai stared at her.
She looked at the bodies. At the walls painted in red streaks and black scorch marks. At the rubble, the craters, the severed limbs, the poisoned dead with their grey skin and frozen faces. At the two puppets standing like guardians beside a girl who hadn't grown since the last time Mai measured herself against her, who still had to stand on her toes to reach her height.
And who had just killed every single person in this palace by herself.
Pakura hadn't moved from the doorway. She stood there with her arms at her sides, staring. Not at the bodies. At Karura. Her lips were parted slightly, the beginning of a word she couldn't find. Her hands, the hands that could form Scorch orbs hot enough to mummify a man in seconds, hung limp and still.
She'd known. They'd both known. Since the first spar, since the first mission, since the day Karura deployed Million. There was a gap between them. A distance that training and talent and hard work hadn't closed, no matter how many hours Pakura trained.
But this...
Was it really this wide?
Was she really this far ahead of them?
Had she always been?
The silence stretched. Moonlight poured through the broken ceiling. Somewhere deep in the palace, a beam groaned and settled. Dust drifted through the silver light like snow.
Mai swallowed it. All of it. The shock, the awe, the small cold thing in her chest that felt uncomfortably like fear. She grabbed it, balled it up, and shoved it down where it couldn't reach her face.
She grinned.
"Damn, Karura!" She threw her arms wide, gesturing at the carnage like a showman presenting a stage. "You couldn't save any of them for us? We ran all the way here for nothing!"
Karura blinked. Then she gave a fake smile.
"Sorry."
"You better be! Pakura was all fired up too! Tell her, Pakura!"
Pakura said nothing. She was still staring.
Mai elbowed her. Hard.
"...Not bad," Pakura managed. Her voice sounded strange. She cleared her throat. "We need to move. The intelligence you gathered. Is it enough?"
Karura nodded. Sandy-brown hair falling around her face, indigo eyes catching the moonlight.
"It's Iwa," she said. "The whole thing. Burai was a puppet. Iwagakure was building a forward base here, a staging ground for a future conflict with Suna. They wanted hundreds of shinobi stationed in this country by the end of the dry season." She paused. "Burai is dead. I killed him."
Mai whistled low.
Pakura's expression hardened. "Then all we need to do is stabilize the country while waiting for reinforcement. Sounds easy enough." She rolled her eyes.
"That's right." Karura sealed her puppets back into their scrolls. The giant arms vanished from her back. Without them, without Million and Reaper flanking her, she was just a little girl standing around a small mountain of corpses. "We grab Soran, we put him where he belongs, and protect him in the meantime."
"And if there are more of them out there?" Mai asked.
Karura looked at the room full of dead Stone nin. Then she looked at Mai.
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
They left the palace the way they came in.
[Congratulations on defeating a chunin as a genin by yourself! You are rewarded with the item Dojutsu Glasses (Byakugan Loaded)!]
[Congratulations on defeating a jonin as a genin by yourself! You are rewarded with the bloodline of the Hyuuga!]
[Congratulations on defeating a squad of shinobi above your rank by yourself! You are rewarded with chakra reserves on par with tailed beasts!]
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]