"Miss Kushina, there are traces of bodies here"
Kushina followed the directions and found marks on the ground that looked like a person, however, judging by the traces, they had been dragged along the ground only for a short moment before being lifted.
"Follow me", Kushina said, running in the direction where the body had been dragged.
As they moved forward, it did not take long for her to find footprints and broken leaves and branches, clear signs that someone had passed through there.
Following the marks, they moved farther and farther away from the camp, and after a while they finally found something.
"What is that?"
"Who would do something like this?"
The ninjas following her showed expressions of shock, but after that they quickly calmed down. As ninjas, even if they had never seen something like this before, they had still seen many things, and they were trained to maintain their composure.
In the air in front of them were dozens of people hanging from threads piercing their limbs, suspended from the trees.
"Do not get closer!" Seeing some ninjas about to approach to investigate, Kushina stopped them immediately.
At that moment, some of the bodies opened their eyes and began to groan in pain, as if they had no idea what was happening to them. They fixed their eyes on Kushina and her team and immediately began to ask for help.
"Help!"
"Help me, I do not know where I am!"
"Please, save me!"
"Save my son!"
Faced with dozens of injured and pitiful people begging for help, even the trained ninjas showed some empathy and wanted to approach.
But before anyone could do anything, Kushina raised a hand toward the people and conjured dozens of fireballs, one for each person hanging.
As soon as they reached their targets, they exploded.
Kushina moved her hand like a fan and a gust of air diverted all the explosion and smoke to the side.
"Fall back!" Kushina ordered as she jumped back several meters, and everyone obeyed, following her immediately, even without understanding the situation.
At that moment, hundreds of darts fell where the ninjas had been just moments ago.
"So you noticed", a voice sounded as a black haired young man appeared in front of them.
"Those were dozens of puppets and wasted poison", he declared as if he had lost a precious toy.
"Sasori of Sunagakure, what are you doing here?" Kushina asked.
"You know me", said the black haired young man. "That explains how you knew about the puppets and the poison".
As soon as he said that, Sasori moved and attacked Kushina with his own hands, but Kushina knew it was not the real one, so she used wind on her legs to propel herself forward and collide with him head on, while surrounding her fist with earth magic before striking.
The impact shattered the puppet into pieces.
The moment the puppet was destroyed, Kushina immediately blew from her mouth, using wind magic directly to push away any kind of poison in the air.
Wind magic is one of the few things Kushina can use without needing to create it directly.
This is because everything in the ninja world has chakra and no mana, so she cannot manipulate existing elements and has to create her own directly using her own mana.
However, since her body has mana, the elements within her also possess it, so she can use the air inside her own body and manipulate it with mana, achieving the effect from before, where she can use magic directly without needing to create the element first and then use it.
However, even though Kushina knows all this and understands the logic behind it, Sasori had no idea, so he immediately became interested.
Behind Kushina appeared a girl around fifteen years old, with short brown twin tails.
"Incredible, what kind of chakra usage was that?!"
"Teach me!"
"I will study your body later!"
Each phrase she spoke sounded less and less like a fifteen year old girl, her tone becoming more monotonous, as if the girl's identity had been erased and replaced with Sasori's, creating a strange dissonance between her body and her words.
The girl attacked again, but this time she did not attack recklessly like before, instead she controlled various threads to move through the air like an acrobat and also to attack.
Kushina, however, with her vision saw every single thread and used fire magic to burn them whenever they came close, while cutting others with wind magic.
After only a few minutes of fighting, the girl fell to the ground, since she not only had no threads left to attack, but also no threads connecting her to her controller, turning into nothing more than a corpse.
Kushina performed the same attack as before, using fire magic to destroy the corpse and wind magic to carry the poison away.
This repeated for about three more puppets, with Kushina destroying each one, however after destroying the last one something changed.
Kushina looked around, waiting for Sasori to return using another one of his puppets, but instead she felt something.
"Everyone gather!" she shouted, calling the ninjas around her who had stayed on the sidelines until now.
They took a moment to realize she was speaking to them and to follow her orders, since most of them were watching in amazement at how easily Kushina dealt with the puppets in seconds, even repeating the same attack again and again, something that normally should not work against a ninja, but due to the overwhelming difference in power between Kushina and her opponent, he could not defend himself even while knowing her movements.
As soon as they gathered, a massive cloud of smoke exploded in all directions, enveloping everything within dozens of meters, but Kushina diverted it again with wind magic, this time outward with them at the center.
When the cloud dissipated, a large number of puppets appeared surrounding them.
"Ah, I planned to paralyze you all and use you as hostages, but it seems you won again.
You have some annoying abilities there, normally even a jonin would already be dead".
"You are not strong, you just have a lot of annoying tools", Kushina replied with a smile toward Sasori.
"I got bored, we will meet again", said another puppet with the same voice.
"As if I would let you", Kushina said, wanting to pursue the direction where she felt someone escaping, but before she could do so all the puppets attacked at once, so Kushina could not leave the area, since the puppets and the poison inside them would harm the others.
"Do not destroy them, they have poison. Just cut the threads", Kushina ordered.
After saying that, she followed her own orders, cutting as quickly as possible all the threads of the puppets she could, together with the rest of the ninjas.
By the time they finished, several minutes had passed and Kushina decided to go after Sasori, but Kaito told her not to.
Trusting him, Kushina gave orders to gather all the puppets to destroy them together.
"Wait, what about that one?" she said, approaching one of the ninjas who was carrying a small puppet.
"Ah, Miss Kushina, I did not destroy it, its arm broke on its own, so it seems it was poorly made. I thought it might have poison, but nothing happened, so there is no need to worry", the ninja explained.
With the passive ability of the demonic rank, many people already admired her just for her power, so after fighting alongside her and having her save their lives several times, they respected her even more, which is why his voice carried so much respect.
"Give it to me, I will take care of it".
"Of course".
As soon as Kushina took it, she immediately set it completely on fire.
Sasori looked at her, and despite dying, he showed no expression of pain.
"Burning me alive? How cruel. It seems I failed to deceive you again".
"You turn people into puppets, you deserve nothing better".
"Can I at least know by whose hands I died?"
"Kushina Uzumaki", Kushina replied simply before increasing the power, turning Sasori into ashes in seconds.
"Was that...?" asked a doubtful ninja who had seen the situation.
"It was Sasori, he knew he could not escape, so he tried to hide in the least expected place", Kushina nodded.
"Incredible!"
"Miss Kushina defeated Sasori!"
"They say Sasori is a natural born genius who could already kill jonin, even so Miss Kushina defeated him while being a chunin!"
Kushina saw everyone praising her, however she herself was not happy, so she simply accepted the thanks and praise before returning to the caravan.
The merchant repeated the scene from earlier, but much more exaggerated, thanking her after learning what he had almost run into and promising to pay her more, something Kushina of course did not refuse.
While she was lying on top of one of the carts, looking at the clear sky but with her mind clouded with thoughts, a window appeared in front of her.
[Are you okay?]
"I am fine, I just... feel like I fought a puppet".
[In what sense?]
"The fight felt empty, with none of the epic feeling you would expect from a battle, just patterns and identical movements. His attitude, his movements, his personality, the way he spoke, everything, every part of it felt more like he was just an emotionless puppet than a person.
Even when he died... he showed no emotion at all".
[Not everyone is the same]
Kushina showed a faint smile.
"How can you know what I am thinking?
Anyway, are not all ninjas basically puppets that follow others' orders without caring about themselves, even facing death without showing emotions?"
[As I said, not everyone is the same.
Listen, Kushina, there are many people who enjoy their lives, there is no need to think of everyone as soulless puppets, and above all, there is no need to believe that you have to save everyone.
We are not here to save everyone who is suffering, we are here to expand the side that enjoys life enough to completely overshadow the other side.
We will not change the present, we will create a better future]
"Alright, I know", Kushina wiped away the tears that had fallen without her noticing. "How did we even end up talking about this?"
[I would like to ask you the same thing, how did fighting a puppeteer lead you to think about the state of the ninja world?]
"But... the world is very big", Kushina said with doubt in her voice. "Can I really change the entire world?"
[You cannot]
"W-what? At times like this you should comfort me, you know nothing about girls", Kushina was surprised by Kaito's blunt answer, but somehow, she had expected it.
[You would hate it if I comforted you anyway.
And no, you cannot change the world, but it does not matter, you do not have to.
I will change this ninja world, you just focus on always staying by my side and supporting me, that way you will be able to see a better ninja world]
"You are an idiot, that does not help me at all, and you say you are better? You are just a show off", Kushina said, pretending to be indignant, even though her smile betrayed her true feelings.
"But... you are the only person I know who would not lie to me, so I will believe you. Show me... a better ninja world"
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)