Puppeteers were Sunagakure's ace. Every war, they delivered. The bounties posted by other villages for confirmed puppeteer kills were always bumped up a full tier.
Kill one, and you didn't just eliminate a threat. You put a dent in Sand's morale.
The problem was simple: if you couldn't end the fight fast, it became a war of attrition. Your flesh and bone against the enemy's tools. And tools didn't bleed.
Shadows flickered through the surrounding trees. Kurenai had given up on staying hidden. Every minute that passed was another minute Teju lay poisoned in the undergrowth.
She searched with mounting desperation. Corner after corner, loop after loop, finding nothing, unable to stop. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. Her movements grew erratic, her breathing ragged.
Not behind this trunk. Not in that thicket. The knot in her stomach pulled tighter with each empty result. She had no idea how long Sora and Teju could hold on.
A squad like theirs couldn't afford a medical ninja, not with Kurenai on the roster. Genjutsu specialists and medics filled the same role in the early stages: weak in direct combat. Stack both and you'd be short-handed the moment the fighting started.
The Cricket Puppet was fast. Sora had zero advantage in close quarters.
His Taijutsu was trained for fighting people. Human joints, human timing. Every time his blade was about to connect, the puppet twisted at some impossible angle and thrust a poisoned blade from a direction he couldn't guard.
Those four head-mounted blades attacked from every conceivable vector, slashing past his body again and again. He was forced to burn Gale Palms just to create breathing room, and the reprieve lasted seconds at best.
Kurenai or Teju would have died in two exchanges against this thing.
Sora could manage six Gale Palms total. Two spent on the dead Genin. As the fight dragged on, his arms grew heavier and his chakra thinner.
Where is this puppeteer hiding? How can anyone conceal themselves this well?
The fight had reduced itself to a single question: would the puppet grind Sora down first, or would Kurenai find the operator?
He refused to believe he'd stumbled onto some elite puppeteer. If that were the case, he'd already be dead. This Genin-level operator had outstanding combat instincts and a gift for concealment, but Sora was missing something. Something obvious.
Puppets were controlled by chakra strings. Chakra strings couldn't pass freely through solid objects or human bodies. If he sprinted a full circle around the puppet in a short enough window, the strings would have to shift. The puppeteer would be forced to reposition.
Sora pressed his palms together in the opening form for a Gale Palm. This time, he ignored the tentacle blades whipping toward his face and slammed the compressed air downward, under one foot.
Only one foot got the boost. His gait turned lopsided, lurching and ugly. But the speed was extraordinary, because he'd abandoned defense entirely. One goal: circle the puppet as fast as humanly possible. Catch the operator off guard.
Each footfall, amplified by Taijutsu and wind chakra, kicked up a storm of dead leaves.
His last stride outran his balance. He crashed to the ground in a graceless heap. But the circuit was complete.
The puppet pivoted smoothly on its segmented legs, reorienting toward him.
Sora ignored it. His attention was locked on the treeline, scanning everything. The forest held only Kurenai's darting figure.
No one else.
The puppet saw him sitting on the ground and struck. Two tentacle blades lanced forward.
Got you.
White smoke erupted. The blades punched through a handful of scattered leaves.
Above the puppet's head, several drifting leaves burst into a second cloud of smoke and became Sora.
He watched the puppet's movements. There it was: a split-second hitch, a tiny freeze in its joints as the operator processed what had happened. Sora spent the last of his chakra on one final Gale Palm, fired straight down, pinning the puppet flat to the earth. The recoil launched him clear of the puppet's reach, and he landed on his feet.
"Kurenai! The puppeteer is in the canopy above!"
She didn't hesitate. She rocketed toward the treetops at full speed, not bothering to search carefully. A fistful of kunai flew from her hand, each trailing an Explosive Tag, and detonated across several clusters of dense foliage overhead.
That's how rich people fight. Straightforward. Elegant in its brutality.
When you're broke, you improvise tactics. When you're loaded, you carpet-bomb.
If I had even one Explosive Tag, would I have needed to go through all of that? Just saturate the area and call it a day.
The blasts echoed through the forest. A figure burst from the smoke, trailing fire.
The little rat, flushed out at last. The body couldn't hold its balance, crashing onto a horizontal branch. Charred and broken. Not long for this world.
Kurenai charged in to finish the job, kunai raised.
Behind Sora, the puppet's joints clicked to life. His stomach dropped.
"Kurenai! Watch out!"
The burned Sand ninja in front of her dissolved into white mist. From inside the haze, two black-purple blades shot forward. Kurenai managed to deflect one. The other drove into her forearm, and she watched it punch clean through, her free hand grabbing uselessly at the wound.
Sora's heart seized. Their first real battle, and both his teammates were going to die on this field. He'd watched over them the way you'd watch over children, because that's what they were. Ten years old, and the world had already put them in front of enemies who wanted them dead. The cruelty of it was staggering.
Rage wiped his mind clean. He threw himself at the puppet's former position, wanting only to bury his blade in the puppeteer and end this in these godforsaken trees.
The smoke cleared. His sword was through the Sand ninja's chest.
The puppeteer's face held no defeat. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He was smiling.
A low-rank puppeteer exposed on the battlefield was already dead. This one had been brilliant. He'd nearly dismantled Sora's entire squad single-handedly, a credit to Sand's finest combat specialization.
When he knew survival was no longer possible, he'd chosen the Substitution Technique. Sent his strongest puppet to kill the weakest of them. Traded his own life with open eyes and a clear mind.
This goddamn war.
Sora dropped beside Kurenai. Numb fingers pushed antidote into her mouth. Numb hands wrapped her wound. The skin around the puncture had already turned blue-green.
He sealed the Cricket Puppet into a scroll. The only hope left was that the medics back at camp could synthesize a counter-agent from the puppet's poison.
He hoisted Kurenai onto one shoulder, sprinted to the thicket where he'd kicked Teju, hauled him onto the other, and ran for the frontline command camp as fast as his legs would carry him.
Whatever punishment came for a failed mission, he'd take it. None of it would fall on these two.
The mission was a complete and total failure. What a useless squad leader I turned out to be.