Karura's windowsill had run out of room two days ago.
The original barrel cactus sat in its clay pot near the left edge, right where she'd placed it the night they came back from Sābaku-dai. The nine copies from Tenfold were arranged beside it in a tight row, identical orange spines catching the morning light. But the windowsill was only so wide, and ten pots was already pushing it.
So she'd moved them to the courtyard.
The house was small, a single-story clay building wedged between a tailor's shop and a dried-goods store on one of the residential streets in Suna's lower district. There was no yard, but there was a courtyard behind the house, a square of packed earth about fifteen feet across, enclosed by low clay walls. Her father used it for storing flour sacks and firewood. Her mother hung laundry there. Now, one corner of it belonged to Karura's cacti.
She'd arranged them in rows. Three rows of three, with the original in front. Each pot sat in a shallow bed of sand she'd carried up from the canyon floor, packed around the bases to insulate the roots from the worst of the midday heat. She watered them once every three days with a measured cup, the same way the vendor in Sābaku-dai had told her to.
This morning, she knelt in front of them with a small bag of nutrient powder she'd bought from a plant stall near the academy. A pinch per pot, mixed into the topsoil with her fingers.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold cultivation results!]
The barrel cactus in the front row swelled. Its body thickened, the green flesh darkening to a deeper shade, the orange spines lengthening and hardening until they looked less like needles and more like thorns on an ironwood branch. The root system, invisible beneath the soil, pushed outward hard enough that the sand around the pot shifted.
The other nine followed. Each one pulsing with the same growth, their bodies expanding, their spines stiffening, their colors deepening. One of them in the back row split at the base and sprouted a second lobe, a baby cactus budding off the parent like a limb.
Karura stared. She reached out and touched the nearest one. The flesh was firm, almost hard, nothing like the soft give of a normal barrel cactus. The spines were rigid enough that when she flicked one with her fingernail, it rang, a faint metallic hum that vibrated through the pot.
That wasn't normal.
She touched another. Same hardness. Same sound.
She wiped her hands on her pants intent on figuring it out later.
"Karura! Breakfast!"
Her mother's voice came from the kitchen window. Karura stood, brushed the sand from her knees, and went inside.
The kitchen was small and warm and smelled like fresh bread. Her father stood at the counter with his back to her, kneading dough on a floured board. He was a broad man with thick forearms and flour permanently dusted into the creases of his knuckles. He spent twenty years punching down dough and pulling loaves from hot ovens. His bakery, a storefront two streets over, opened before dawn every morning. He'd already done his first batch and come home to eat before the second.
Yashamaru was already at the table, his legs swinging beneath his chair because his feet didn't reach the floor. He had a smear of honey across his cheek and a half-eaten roll in one hand, and he was talking with his mouth full.
"Nee-chan! Papa made the cinnamon ones!"
"I can smell them." Karura sat down beside him and wiped the honey off his cheek with her thumb. He squirmed but didn't pull away.
"There she is." Her father didn't turn around. "The kunoichi of the house graces us with her presence."
"Good morning, Papa."
Her mother set a plate on the table. Rice, pickled vegetables, a thick slice of bread with a stripe of honey across it. Her mother was a slender woman with the same sandy-brown hair as Karura, tied back with a cloth. She wore a plain dress and an apron that was cleaner than her father's by a wide margin.
"Eat. You have a mission today, yes?"
"Yes, Mama. We're leaving after breakfast."
"What kind of mission?" Her father glanced over his shoulder.
"C-rank. Wildlife control in the deep desert. Animals and things have been attacking people."
"Can I come?" Yashamaru asked immediately. His violet eyes were enormous.
"No, Yasha."
"But I've been practicing! I can do the clone jutsu now! Almost! The hair is wrong but the rest is really good!"
"You have academy today."
"Academy is boring. I have to stay here and learn about, about history and stuff."
"History is important."
"History is old people doing old things. I wanna do new things! With you!"
Karura ruffled his hair. "When you graduate, you'll go on your own missions. For now, focus on your clone jutsu. Get the hair right."
Yashamaru pouted. It lasted about three seconds before the honey roll recaptured his attention and he went back to eating.
"Animals huh, how dangerous." Her father repeated.
"We'll be fine, Papa. Ebizo-sensei will be with us."
"I know." He tore the dough, folded it, pressed it flat. "I know you will."
Her mother sat down across from her and watched her eat.
"Be safe," her mother said. "And do our village proud."
"I will. Please take care of my cacti while I'm gone." Karura requested.
"I'll water them!" Yashamaru's hand shot up.
"Thank you, Yasha." Karura smiled at him.
He beamed.
Her father pulled a small cloth bundle from behind the flour sacks and set it on the table. "For the road. Honey rolls. Made them this morning."
Karura opened the bundle. Four golden rolls, still warm, the tops glazed and glistening. She could smell the honey and the faintest trace of cinnamon.
"Thank you, Papa."
"Bring me back something cool!" Yashamaru called as she stood from the table. "Like a scorpion! Or a really cool rock! Or a scorpion ON a really big rock!"
"I'll see what I can do." Karura giggled.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
Thirty-six more honey rolls appeared in her inventory. She picked up one of the four visible ones and took a bite. It was perfect. Crispy shell, soft inside, the honey hitting her tongue in a warm wave. Her father made the best bread in Suna. She'd believed that since she was old enough to chew, and nothing had changed.
She finished her breakfast, washed her plate, and went to her room to gear up.
The mission pack was already laid out on her bedroll. Standard field kit: water canteens, ration bars, first aid supplies, a bedroll, wire, kunai, explosive tags. Her puppet arms scroll on her waistline. Million's scroll hung from her hip right next to it. A second pouch held senbon, poison vials, and a set of smoke canisters.
She dressed in her usual outfit, wrapped her scarf around her neck, and slung the pack over her shoulders. In the mirror by the door, an eight-year-old girl with sandy-brown hair and indigo eyes looked back at her. Forehead protector tied across her brow. Scrolls on her hip. Scarf trailing past her knees.
She looked like a kunoichi. A small one, but a real one.
Her family were waiting at the front door. Her father had flour on his cheek. Her mother had her hands clasped in front of her apron. And her brother was going to be escorted to the Academy by her mother.
"I'll be back in a few days," Karura said.
Her father put his hand on her head. Heavy and warm and dusted with flour. "Go."
Her mother gave her a quick and tight hug.
"Bye nee-chan!" Yashamaru waved.
Karura stepped into the street and walked toward the village gate, the morning sun already hot on the back of her neck.
The desert beyond Suna's walls stretched flat and white under a sky so blue it hurt to look at. No clouds. No wind. Just sand and heat and the shimmer of distant rock formations rippling like water on the horizon.
Team Ebizo moved in a loose formation along a trade route that wound southeast toward the Demon Desert. Ebizo was in front, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes scanning the area. Karura walked behind the group. Mai and Pakura took the sides, keeping a gap between them that was wider than it needed to be.
"The Demon Desert," Ebizo said without turning around. "Who can tell me about it?"
"Sandy terrain with very few freshwater sources. Poisonous cacti, quicksand, sandstorms, rock formations, old ruins. Home to giant scorpions, ant colonies, and other wildlife that doesn't exist anywhere else in the Land of Wind." Karura recited what she learned at the Academy.
"Teacher's pet," Mai muttered.
"Correct." Ebizo ignored Mai. "The caravans that pass through the southern territories have been reporting increased animal attacks over the past three weeks. Two merchants dead, several camels lost, and one caravan turned back entirely. Our job is to clear the route and eliminate any wildlife that's moved too close to the trade path."
"How big are these scorpions?" Mai asked.
"The three-tailed variety can grow to the size of small houses."
Mai cracked her knuckles. "Good."
Pakura said nothing. She walked with her arms at her sides and her eyes on the horizon, her green hair tied back against the heat. The scorch of the desert didn't seem to bother her.
They reached the outer boundary of the Demon Desert by midday. The terrain shifted from open sand to a rougher landscape of rock shelves, dried gullies, and low dunes packed with thorny scrub. The fortress wall rose in the distance, crumbling in places where centuries of sandstorms had worn the stone down to stumps.
Ebizo stopped at a ridge overlooking a wide basin of sand dotted with rock formations. He crouched and studied the ground.
"Tracks," he said. "Scorpion. Three-tailed, by the depth. Heading northeast, probably toward the shade of those formations." He pointed. "There's more. See the furrows? Ant trails. A colony nearby, likely underground."
"How should we do this, Sensei?" Karura asked.
"Spread out. Cover the basin in a sweep from south to north. Kill anything that's large enough to threaten a caravan. Stay within shouting distance of each other." He looked at each of them. "These are animals, not shinobi. They don't use jutsu and they don't think tactically. But they are fast, they are venomous, and they will kill you if you're careless. Understand that."
"Yes, Sensei," Karura and Pakura said.
"Let's go already!" Mai was already jogging toward the basin.
______________________________________________
The first scorpion found Mai before she found it.
It burst from the sand twenty feet ahead of her, a spray of grit and rock marking its emergence. Three segmented tails arched over its back, each one tipped with a stinger the color of old bone. Its body was the size of a large horse, armored in plates of dark chitin that scraped against each other as it turned toward her. Pincers the width of a man's torso opened and snapped shut with a crack that echoed across the basin.
Mai's face split into a grin.
She charged.
The scorpion thrust its center tail at her. Mai dove under it, rolled, and came up inside the arc of its pincers. Her fist connected with the joint where the left pincer met the body. Chakra flared through her knuckles. The chitin cracked inward and the pincer sagged, half-severed at the joint. The scorpion shrieked and whipped its remaining two tails at her in rapid succession.
Mai caught the first tail with both hands. Her feet slid back in the sand. The second tail came around wide. She let go of the first and dropped flat, the stinger passing over her head close enough to snag a strand of hair. From the ground, she kicked upward into the scorpion's underbelly. The softer chitin there caved under the impact and the creature lurched sideways, legs scrabbling.
She was on her feet before it recovered. Two steps, a leap, and she landed on its back between the tail bases. Her fist came down on the area where the tails joined the body. One hit. The tails went rigid. A second hit. They went limp.
The scorpion collapsed under her, legs folding, pincers twitching. Mai hopped off and dusted her hands.
"Next!"
______________________________________________
Forty yards east, Karura had summoned Million.
The puppet stood in front of her as two scorpions approached from opposite directions, drawn by the vibrations of the first fight. Million's forearm housings opened. Extending arms poured out, not all of them, just enough. A dozen from each forearm, fanning out in a net. The first scorpion ran into the web of limbs and was caught, arms wrapping around its tails and pincers, pinning it in place while they squeezed and crushed it. The second scorpion tried to flank. Million's base arms caught its pincer mid-snap and wrenched it sideways, flipping the creature onto its back. An extending arm punched through the exposed underbell, killing it.
Pakura worked at a distance.
A scorpion twice the size of Mai's emerged from behind a rock shelf and charged her. She finished her seals before it closed half the distance. Three heat orbs drifted forward, lazy and floating. The scorpion didn't slow down. The first orb touched its left pincer. The chitin dried and cracked, the moisture inside flash-boiling until the entire limb crumbled to dust. The second orb caught its body. The armored plates warped and split and the flesh beneath them shriveled, collapsing inward until the scorpion looked like it had been dead for years. The third orb wasn't needed. Pakura dismissed it with a flick of her wrist.
They swept north through the basin. More scorpions. A nest of them, juveniles the size of large dogs clustered around a burrow. Mai stomped through them with gleeful abandon. Karura used Million's arms to drag them out of their holes and crush them in bunches. Pakura burned anything that moved on her side of the formation completely bored.
The ant colony was worse.
They found the entrance in a gully between two rock shelves, a hole in the sand the size of a wagon wheel. The first ant emerged as they approached, mandibles clicking. It was the size of a large dog, segmented body covered in a reddish-brown exoskeleton, six legs churning the sand.
Then ten more came out behind it.
Then thirty.
"Group up!" Ebizo called.
The three genin closed ranks. Mai took the front, her fists already swinging. Karura deployed Million at the left flank, mimicking Mai's taijutsu and crushing the ants. Pakura held the right, her fire style turning the gully into an oven. Ants that made it past the flames were caught by the heat still radiating off the stone and stumbled, legs cooking against the ground.
When one slipped through Mai's guard and lunged for Karura's back, Pakura put a Scorch orb through it without breaking stride. When a cluster of them tried to overwhelm Pakura from below, Mai was there, stomping and punching and throwing ant bodies into other ant bodies with a savage smile on her face.
The wave lasted ten minutes. When the last ant retreated back into the burrow, Ebizo stepped forward, made three hand signs, and sent a focused blast of water into the hole. The ground rumbled. A muffled collapse echoed from deep underground.
"Colony's flooded," Ebizo said. "They won't surface here again."
Mai was panting, covered in yellowish insect fluid and grinning. She planted her foot on the largest ant corpse in the gully and flexed.
"Did you see the size of mine? That one was easily three times bigger than yours, Pakura!"
Pakura didn't look at her. She was cleaning insect residue off her sleeve with visible disgust.
"Stunned by my greatness? I know. Who wouldn't be?" Mai cackled at her own greatness.
Pakura finished cleaning her sleeve. Then, without looking, she extended one hand behind her and launched a Scorch orb directly past Mai's head.
Mai's entire body locked up. Her face twisted from triumph to fury in an instant. "ARE YOU INSANE?! YOU THREW ONE OF THOSE THINGS AT MY-"
A sizzling hiss came from behind her. She turned.
A giant ant, easily four feet tall, stood two paces behind where she'd been posing. Or rather, it had been standing. Now it was a dried husk, collapsing in on itself, its exoskeleton crumbling to flakes as the last of its moisture evaporated. Its mandibles had been open. It had been close enough to take her leg off.
Mai stared at the husk. Then she turned back to Pakura.
Pakura's smile was telling.
"You were saying?"
Mai's face went through several colors. Red, white, back to red. Her fists clenched. Her jaw worked. A vein pulsed at her temple.
She turned away and punched the next ant she saw so hard it split in half.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
Karura momentarily paused after the fighting had all ended. Several different experiences that would help her if she ever had to fight creatures in the Demon Desert again. Things like weaknesses that weren't covered in the Academy, preying behavior for specific creatures, and exploiting natural flaws that nature didn't account for when it came to protecting them from shinobi or even just humans.
The sweep took the rest of the afternoon. By the time the sun began its descent toward the canyon walls in the west, Team Ebizo had cleared three miles of the southern trade corridor. Scorpion nests, ant colonies, and a swarm of venomous sand vipers.
They made camp on a flat rock shelf overlooking the basin. Ebizo built a small fire. The genin sat around it, eating rations and passing a canteen between them. Mai had added several ant mandibles to her pack as trophies despite Pakura telling her they were disgusting.
"Good work today," Ebizo said. "We'll sweep the remaining two miles tomorrow morning and head back."
"Easy." Mai leaned back on her hands.
"It was boring," Pakura allowed. She glanced at Karura. "You really based that puppet off of her?"
"Yep." Karura smiled. She pulled a honey roll from her pack and broke it into thirds, handing one to Mai and offering one to Pakura.
Pakura took it without comment. Mai shoved hers in whole.
"Still think you should've tried to create one of me instead."
"Didn't my puppet clone kick your butt?" Mai pointed out.
"..." Pakura didn't engage with that stupid idiot.
"You know I'm right, that's why your face is scrunched up like that." Mai mocked her.
Pakura stayed silent, her hand slowly balling up into a fist.
The fire crackled. The desert cooled. Stars appeared one by one in the darkening sky, more of them than Karura could count, scattered across the blue-black expanse like thrown sand.
She slept well.
…
Morning came in no time.
Team Ebizo broke camp with the sun and moved northeast along the trade corridor, finishing the last stretch of their sweep. The wildlife was thinner here, a few stray lizards, oversized foxes, sand tigers, huge spiders, roadrunners, and a nest of sand beetles that Ebizo crushed with a casual water jutsu, nothing that slowed down talented genin.
By mid-morning, they were done. The Demon Desert was less dangerous for the time being. Ebizo checked their position against the sun and pointed west.
"We'll cut back toward the main road and-"
He stopped.
His head turned. Not fast, not slow. Just a shift, his eyes narrowing against the glare as he looked toward a ridge of sandstone a quarter mile to the northeast. The border between the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth lay somewhere beyond that ridge, a disputed stretch of rocky badlands where Suna and Iwa had killed each other for generations.
Karura followed his gaze.
Figures. Four of them, moving fast along the ridgeline. They wore dull grey and brown, the colors of stone and earth. Flak jackets with high collars. Headbands with twin rocks carved into the metal.
Iwagakure.
One of them carried something on his back. A scroll, massive, nearly as long as he was tall, strapped diagonally across his shoulders. He was running, and the others flanked him in a tight formation, heads turning constantly, checking their surroundings.
They weren't patrolling. They were fleeing.
One of the Iwa shinobi looked south. Directly at Team Ebizo.
The distance collapsed. For a single frozen second, the two squads locked eyes across the sand.
Karura saw the Iwa shinobi's expression change. She saw his hand move to the kunai at his hip. She saw the scroll carrier's pace quicken, his escorts closing ranks around him, their formation shifting from travel to combat readiness.
Beside her, Ebizo's hands slowly fell from behind his back.
The desert was silent.