By the faint moonlight filtering through the clouds, Amamiya Ayane finally got a clear look at the opponent.
He wore a floor-length grey robe and a hood adorned with a pair of water buffalo horns. His skin was dark and hard, resembling iron plating, and his face was etched with a lattice of mechanical grooves. To put it simply, he looked like anything but a human being.
"It's a Sunagakure mechanical puppet!" Woodpecker instantly identified the foe's origin.
He immediately hurled a kunai while cursing inwardly. Dammit! Sand ninja, and from the Puppet Brigade to boot! Why the hell are they out here?!
Whirrr—Whiz—
No one was there to answer his confusion. The puppet's mouth unhinged—not to speak, but to allow its entire head to detach and fly off its neck, intercepting Woodpecker's kunai mid-air with its teeth. Then, the puppet's hands split open, firing a hail of tiny senbon needles from its palms toward the duo!
Shoo-shoo-shoo!
"Get back!" Woodpecker shouted as he flickered away, not forgetting to warn the "rookie" behind him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his new colleague's reaction was lightning-fast. At the first sign of the puppet's movement, the girl had performed a backflip to gain distance, her hands moving in a blur of seals. The motion was fluid and practiced, a single seamless action.
While still in mid-air, before her feet even touched the muddy ground, the jutsu was complete. Hanging upside down in a graceful arc, she puffed out her cheeks.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Fwoosh!
A violent gale swept through the ruins, blowing the poisoned needles harmlessly into the muck.
Nice work! Woodpecker cheered internally.
But now wasn't the time for praise. He seized the opening to dash toward the rear of the puppet. To defeat a puppeteer, one couldn't waste energy brawling with the front-end marionette; you had to track the faint chakra threads back to the master's location.
Strike the head to kill the snake!
In the split second the puppet's head had flown off, Woodpecker had spotted a glimmer of chakra string. He didn't have time to explain his plan, but he hoped Ayane would understand her role: pin the puppet down.
"Where do you think you're going?" the puppet rasped. Its hands shifted again, but instead of projectiles, two jagged blades sprang from its palms, reflecting the cold moonlight.
Woodpecker remained silent. He wasn't a long-range "artillery" ninja, which was why he'd dodged the needles, but close-quarters combat was his comfort zone.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Amidst the screeching of metal on metal, the man and the machine exchanged dozens of blows, sparks showering from the edge of Woodpecker's kunai.
"I told you—you aren't going anywhere." The puppet's grey-robed body twisted unnaturally. A steel tail, segmented and lethal, whipped out from beneath the fabric. The tip glowed with a sickly green hue—poison.
"Die!" Seizing a rare opening, the steel tail lunged forward like a striking viper.
But the killing blow struck nothing but air.
Poof!
A cloud of white smoke erupted as a log fell to the ground. Woodpecker had used a Substitution Jutsu to exit the fray, flickering away into the darkness of the ruins.
"Hey, Anbu. Your partner seems to have abandoned you. How tragic," the puppet mocked, its voice stiff and mechanical.
The scene was macabre. The head was still detached, floating like a morbid balloon tethered to the body by thin steel cables.
But the attempt at psychological warfare was amateurish. Ayane had seen enough Naruto clips in her past life to remember Chiyo and Sakura's fight against Sasori vividly. That was, after all, one of Sakura's few high-light reels.
She instantly understood Woodpecker's intent.
"Heh, I think you're the one who should be running," she countered, not minding a bit of banter. "I know for a fact that eighty percent of a puppeteer's strength lies in their doll."
"My, my... looking down on me, are we?" The puppet's tone didn't change, but Ayane felt the temperature of the air drop. "I suppose I'll just kill you first, then go back and protect my master."
The puppet continued to chatter, but the internal winches began to grind, pulling the floating head back toward the neck.
Ayane didn't hesitate. She drew Stormrazor, crouched low to accelerate, and charged toward the floating head like a bolt of lightning.
Clack-clack-clack!
The hidden mechanisms groaned.
Poison Smoke Bomb!
The puppet's jaw unhinged wide, spewing a thick, purple fog toward the oncoming girl. Ayane's speed faltered.
It was common knowledge that the shinobi world had two masters of poison: her own leader, Hanzo, and the Sand's elder, Lady Chiyo.
In some ways, Chiyo was more dangerous; Hanzo's poison was biological and required him to wear a mask to protect even his own men. Chiyo's toxins could be distributed to any puppeteer in her ranks.
However... if you think smoke can stop me, you're overconfident!
Ayane sneered inwardly. She reached into her tool pouch and pulled out three kunai with explosive tags attached. The purple smoke was dense, completely obscuring her sight, but she narrowed her eyes.
The green trait [Precision Tool Throwing] activated.
In that moment, a supernatural intuition guided her. Through the swirling fog, she sensed the exact coordinates of the moving puppet head.
Hit!
The mental command and her physical release happened in total sync.
Whish-whish-whish!
The three kunai flew in an inverted triangular formation, slicing through the smoke. Then—
BOOM!
A massive fireball erupted within the purple mist.
How... how is this possible...
Behind a crumbling wall in the shadows, a red-haired puppeteer shuddered as he reflexively retracted his chakra threads.
Seconds before his vision link was severed, he had been ready to mock the Anbu's desperation. You think a few explosive tags can hurt me? Is this a game of house at the Academy?
But the reality check was so violent it left him reeling. He never expected that while moving at high speed, the girl could pinpoint his puppet's head through the smoke. More impressively, the three tags had landed precisely on the eyes and mouth—the most vulnerable joints.
It was as if she were using a cheat—tracking or X-ray vision.
Is it a sensory jutsu? Or a secret technique? She couldn't have stolen a pair of Byakugan from the Hyuga, could she...
His train of thought was interrupted.
"Found you~" a chilling voice whispered from behind.
The puppeteer froze. An Anbu wearing a woodpecker mask pressed a kunai against the small of his back. "Drop your weapons. Now. Or die."
"Don't kill me..." Without hesitation, the puppeteer raised his hands in a familiar gesture of surrender.
Woodpecker didn't relax. He sneered, "Sever the chakra threads. Don't think I don't know your tricks."
"..." The puppeteer went quiet for a moment. "You seem to know a lot about us."
Woodpecker didn't answer. He pressed the kunai deeper, the blade biting into the man's skin.
"Fine, fine. I give up," the puppeteer sighed, his body going limp. "Take the kunai away. I don't want to die in this godforsaken hole where the sun never shines."
"Then you'd better answer my questions honestly..." Woodpecker reached out to snatch the tool pouch from the man's waist.
Suddenly, blinding flashes of light erupted from the puppeteer's body!
Woodpecker's pupils dilated. A trap!