The mission scroll was waiting for them at the assignment desk.
No jonin attached. No special instructions beyond the standard operational parameters for a B-rank. Just a destination, the Land of Dust, a task, investigate and report, and a payment guarantee stamped with the Kazekage's seal.
The chunin behind the desk handed it to Karura with a strange look. She'd seen that look on the faces of other shinobi around the village since their last mission.
"Your sensei is still hospitalized," the chunin said, stating the obvious. "You'll be operating without a commanding officer. Chain of command defaults to the senior team member."
"Then it's between us two." Mai looked at Pakura. "We're the oldest."
"You're a cripple so, obviously I'm in charge." Pakura stated.
"I'll show you a cripple." Mai balled her fist and got in a fighting stance.
The chunin shrugged. "Figure it out amongst yourselves. Report back as soon as possible."
They left the assignment building and gathered in the shade of the outer wall to read the scroll together. Karura unrolled it on the ground while Mai crouched beside her and Pakura leaned over her shoulder.
"Land of Dust," Pakura read. "Western border of Wind Country. Suna Intelligence has received reports of civil instability and unusual activity. Nature and scope of activity unknown. Team is to travel to the Land of Dust, assess the situation, and return with a full report. Engagement with hostile forces authorized only if necessary for self-defense or mission completion."
"So we're spies," Mai said.
"We're scouts," Pakura corrected.
"Same thing."
"It's not the same thing."
"It's exactly the same thing."
Karura rolled the scroll back up before the argument could gain momentum. "We leave at dawn. Pack for two weeks in arid terrain. The Land of Dust is drier than Wind Country, and the water sources are unreliable."
"Have you been there before?" Pakura asked.
"No. The area where the Land of Dust is was talked about in the Academy." Karura tucked the scroll into her belt pouch. "Let's leave at dawn. We can't disappoint sensei." Karura answered.
"Imagine still remembering stuff from school." Mai mocked her. "Such a dork." She laughed.
Pakura was quiet, trying to remember any lessons about the Land of Dust or anything near that area.
They eventually split, with Karura going back home to pack. And to finish one last thing.
Reaper hung from the ceiling of her workshop on two hooks, complete.
The puppet swayed gently in the draft from the window, its hooded cloak shifting with the movement, the blank smooth face disappearing into shadow beneath the cowl. Lean frame. Long arms ending in the oversized scythe housings. The spinning waist joint she'd spent three days calibrating until the rotation was frictionless.
Ten of them. The original and nine copies, all sealed in individual scrolls lined up on her worktable like a row of ink-black cylinders. Tenfold had handled the duplication the moment the first one was complete, the same way it had with Million. One puppet became ten. She along with tenfold the experience of manufacturing puppets.
She ran her fingers along Reaper's right arm, testing the scythe mechanism. The blade segments clicked out of the wrist housing one by one, extending in a long chain of linked steel edges connected by wire joints. She locked it rigid. The scythe held straight, solid enough to cleave. She released the lock. The blade went flexible, hanging like a bladed whip. She swung it once, gently, and the segments rippled through the air with a sound like a snake moving through dry grass.
Good.
The Blastsword was sealed separately, wrapped in cloth inside its own scroll, tucked at the bottom of her mission pack beneath her ration bars and water tablets. She still hadn't figured out a story for it. For now, Reaper would fight with its scythes. The sword could wait for a situation desperate enough that nobody would have time to ask questions.
She sealed the last Reaper copy into its scroll, packed her tools, her poisons, her medical supplies, and the small wind-up mechanical bird sand-nin used for long-distance messages. The bird was a simple thing, a toy-like construct of wood and copper with a tiny scroll compartment in its chest. Wind the key, set the destination seal, and it would fly in a straight line until it reached the corresponding seal tag at the assignment desk in Suna. Reliable enough for a report.
She looked around her workshop one last time, at the wood shavings on the floor, the tools hanging from nails, the empty hooks where Reaper had hung. Then she shouldered her pack and closed the door.
They left at dawn.
The entrance of Sunagakure opened onto the trade road that wound through the canyon and out into the open desert. The morning air was cool, the sun still low enough to paint the cliff walls gold and amber. By midday it would be brutal, but for now, the desert was almost pleasant.
Team Ebizo ran out of the village, intent on reaching their destination at a good time. As shinobi, they can travel several kilometers in no time with little to no exhaustion. Especially Mai and Karura. Mai has no choice but to focus entirely on physical conditioning. Karura is somewhat cheating through her unique kekkei genkai. Pakura isn't suffering that much either it appeared. Her secret training with Mai is significantly improving her body.
"This mission is going to be a breeze!" Mai boasted.
"Don't be stupid." Pakura scoffed.
"Hah?" Mai angrily replied. "What are you talking about, cactus head?"
"You think they would just trust three genin with no real background and no jonin sensei with a B-rank mission? This is obviously a test to see if we're worth anything to the village."
"Sink or swim…" Karura realized.
She didn't know how to feel about the fact that her village was throwing her into the water and seeing if she would drown or survive. Did she think it was right? No. Did she know she was going to come out of this incredibly stronger if she survived? Of course. She didn't like it though. Mai and Pakura could get hurt or worse…
"Oh." Mai understood now. "Ha! No problem then! This'll only help us become chunin even faster once we complete this mission!" Mai realized.
"I wish I could see the world through the eyes of a fool." Pakura sighed. "B-rank missions are normally given to experienced chunin. We, genin, who haven't even been ninjas for an entire year yet, are given a B-rank mission."
"So, the village thinks we're awesome. What's bad about it? We get paid more, the village trusts us more, and we get stronger faster too."
"Karura. Speak some sense into this blockhead before I lose it." Pakura spoke through her teeth.
Mai looked at her with bright eyes and a smile on her face.
"The missions are going to be more dangerous. We are going on missions that ninjas a decade older than us don't even go on. For ninjas of our rank, we shouldn't be handling missions like this yet."
"Ahuh. Ahuh. But how is that a bad thing?" Mai was still trying to figure out.
"Because we are not ready for harder missions yet. At least, that's how it's supposed to be… Genin who haven't even been out in the field for a year going on a B-rank mission is a sign that things aren't well for the village or we are not just mere genin."
"Ahuh! We aren't just mere genin! We're top of the bunch! We're the best of the best!" Mai exclaimed.
"Even you can't get it through that idiot." Pakura smirked.
"No, she understands." Karura shook her head. "She just isn't afraid of a challenge. She's looking at the positives of the situation instead of the negatives." Karura explained.
"Yep. Yep." Mai nodded, more than happy to not be insulted.
"Shut up, Mai. You don't even know what she's talking about." Pakura hated that look on her face.
"Yes I do!" Mai shouted.
"You-" Pakura's voice momentarily rose before she regained control over herself. "Let's get this stupid mission over with so I have to spend less time with you than I have to." She increased her running speed.
"That's what I've been saying the entire time!" Mai sped up as well.
Karura softly giggled as she did the same.
…
The Land of Dust lived up to its name.
They crossed the border on the third day, and the change was immediate. Wind Country was desert, but it was a living desert, cacti and scrub brush and the occasional oasis surrounded by date palms and hard grasses. The Land of Dust was something else. The ground was cracked and pale, a bleached white hardpan that stretched to the horizon without a single green thing breaking the surface. The wind carried fine powder that coated their clothes and hair and settled into every crease and fold of their packs.
"This used to be fertile," Karura said, looking at the terrain. "You can see the old irrigation channels. There." She pointed at faint lines in the hardpan, shallow depressions that had once carried water to fields that no longer existed. "Someone farmed here. Maybe a generation ago. Maybe two."
"What happened?" Mai asked.
"The water left. Or the people who managed it did." Karura shrugged.
They passed through two abandoned settlements before reaching the first inhabited one, a cluster of mud-brick buildings huddled around a well that looked like it produced more dust than water. The people here were thin. Not starving, but close to it. They watched the three girls pass with flat, incurious eyes.
"Friendly place," Mai muttered.
"They're scared," Karura said.
"Of us?"
"Of everything."
They kept moving. The capital, if it could be called that, was another day's travel inland. A city named Sajin that had once been the seat of the ruling family. According to the mission scroll's sparse intelligence, it was also where whatever instability Suna had detected was centered.
They made camp that night in the ruins of a farmhouse, its roof collapsed and its walls crumbling but enough structure remaining to block the wind. Karura took first watch. Pakura took second. Mai took third. They didn't argue about the rotation. It was one of the few things they never argued about.
…
They heard the fighting before they saw it.
It was midmorning on the fourth day, the sun high and white and merciless, when the sounds reached them. Shouting. The clang of metal. A death scream.
Mai was moving before Pakura could speak. Full sprint, her pack bouncing against her back, her feet kicking up plumes of white dust. Pakura cursed and followed. Karura was already pulling Million's scroll from her hip.
They came over a low rise and saw it.
A boy, ten or eleven, running across the hardpan with three men chasing him. The boy was thin and dark-haired, wearing clothes that had once been fine but were now torn and filthy, a tunic with embroidery that was coming unstitched at the seams. He ran with the desperate, stumbling run of someone who'd been running for a long time.
The three men behind him were not in a hurry. Two of them were large and armored in mismatched leather and metal, carrying swords. The third was smaller, faster, and carried no visible weapon, which meant he was either a fool or a shinobi. He was gaining on the boy with a casual stride, like a dog chasing a rabbit it knew couldn't escape.
The boy tripped. His foot caught on a crack in the hardpan and he went down hard, skidding across the pale ground. He rolled onto his back and scrambled backward on his hands, his face twisted with terror, watching the three men close the distance.
Mai didn't slow down.
She hit the first swordsman at full speed, her foot crashing into his midsection, and the impact folded him in half. His feet left the ground. He hit the hardpan on his back and Mai was already past him, pivoting toward the second.
The second swordsman swung. Mai ducked under the blade, stepped inside his guard, and drove her fist into his chin. His head snapped back. She grabbed his sword arm, twisted, and used his own momentum to throw him over her hip. He hit the ground and she stomped on his wrist. The sword clattered free.
The third man, the fast one, stopped. He looked at Mai. He looked at Pakura and Karura cresting the rise behind her. His eyes moved across the forehead protectors they wore.
"Suna," he noticed.
His hands came together. Shinobi. Definitely a shinobi.
Million burst from its scroll in Karura's hand, the puppet hitting the ground in a dead sprint, four arms spread wide, smiley face grinning. The shinobi's eyes widened. He broke his hand seals and leapt backward, putting distance between himself and the charging puppet.
Million's extending arms launched. Segmented wooden limbs shooting from the forearm housings, reaching, grasping. The shinobi dodged the first two, twisted past the third, and caught the fourth on his forearm. The impact knocked him sideways but he kept his feet.
He looked at the puppet. Looked at the two downed swordsmen. Looked at Mai standing over them with blood on her knuckles and confidence in her eyes. Looked at Pakura with a Scorch orb forming in her palm. Looked at Karura with ten threads of blue connecting her fingertips to the four-armed puppet between them.
He ran away at full speed, the Body Flicker technique carrying him out of range in two bursts. The swordsmen scrambled up and followed, one limping, the other clutching his jaw.
Silence settled over the hardpan.
The boy sat in the dirt, staring up at the three girls with wide, wet eyes. His lip was split. His knees were skinned raw. His fine tunic was grey with dust.
Mai turned to him. Her expression shifted from ready to fight into something else.
"You okay, kid?"
He nodded. Then shook his head. Then he started crying.
Mai clicked her teeth and shouted.
"Shut the hell up! What kind of man cries!?"
This startled the boy, his sobs stopping immediately as he flinched.
"S-Sorry…" He wiped his tears and tried to put on a brave face.
Pakura walked up behind them and stopped. She looked at the crying boy. At Mai kneeling in the dirt. At the dust clouds on the horizon where the three men had fled.
"Great," Pakura said. "We've been in this country for half a day and we're already picking up strays."
"He's a kid," Mai said without looking up. "They were going to kill him."
"We don't know that. They could have been anyone. He could be anyone."
"They had swords and a ninja. He's ten. What exactly do you think was going to happen?"
"I think we're here to investigate and report, not collect crybabies."
The boy's crying stopped. His head came up. His eyes were still red and streaming but something harder came behind them.
"I'm not a crybaby!" His voice cracked, half fury and half humiliation. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and glared at Pakura. "I'm not a stray!! I am Soran, son of Lord Hakurei, ruling prince of the Land of Dust! And those weren't random bandits! Those were assassins sent by Burai to capture me and use me as a puppet so he can steal what's left of my home!" He was on his feet now, shaking with anger and adrenaline, pointing at Pakura. "So yes, it IS your business whether I live or die, because I am the reason your village sent you here! I'm what's going on in this country!"
The silence that followed was absolute.
Mai looked at Pakura. A shit-eating grin at full mast.
"Look who's wrong," Mai said.
Pakura's eye twitched rapidly as she tried to regain control over her breathing.
The boy, Soran, stood there trembling, apparently surprised by his own outburst. He looked between the three girls, unsure of whether he'd just saved himself or made things worse.
Pakura stared at him. Her jaw worked. Her nostrils flared. She looked at Mai's barely-concealed satisfaction and at this skinny, dirty, teary-eyed child who'd just handed Mai a win on a silver platter, and for a brief, vivid moment, Karura was certain Pakura was going to punt the prince of the Land of Dust across the hardpan.
She didn't. She blew air through her nose, hard, and crossed her arms.
"Fine," Pakura said through her teeth. "Talk. Tell us everything. And stop crying. It's disgusting."
Soran wiped his face again. He straightened his ruined tunic, tried to compose himself, and mostly succeeded.
"My father was Lord Hakurei. He ruled the Land of Dust for eighteen years. He was a good man." His voice wavered on the last word but held. "He died three months ago. They said it was a fever. That he got sick and it took him quickly. But I know that's a lie."
"How?" Karura asked.
"Because my father was the healthiest man I ever knew. He never got sick. Not once. And three days before he died, a new physician arrived at the palace. A man named Dokku, sent by Burai as a gift." Soran's hands curled into fists. "My father was dead within a week of that physician arriving. And the day after the funeral, Burai moved into the palace with thirty armed men and told me I was under his protection."
"Poison," Karura said quietly. She looked at Pakura and Mai.
"I didn't know what was happening at first. I was... I was grieving. I didn't understand why Burai's men were everywhere, why the servants were different, why I wasn't allowed to leave the palace grounds. Then one of my father's old advisors, a man named Jirou, came to my room at night and told me the truth. He said Burai had my father killed. He said Burai planned to keep me alive as a figurehead, a child prince who signed whatever Burai put in front of him while Burai sold off the country piece by piece."
"Sold it to who?" Mai asked.
"Anyone. Everyone. The mining rights. The trade routes. The water tables that are still viable. The Land of Dust is dying, but it's not dead yet, and what's left is worth a fortune to the right buyer." Soran's jaw tightened. "Jirou helped me escape. He created a distraction and I ran. That was six days ago. I've been hiding in the outer settlements since then, moving every night."
"And the men chasing you?" Pakura asked. Her tone had changed. Still hard, but the dismissiveness was gone.
"Burai's people. He has people working for him. The one you just fought was one of them. There are worse ones." Soran looked at the ground. "Jirou is probably dead by now. He knew he wouldn't make it out. He told me to run west. To find Suna. To ask for help."
The three girls were quiet for a moment.
Karura knelt in front of Soran so they were eye to eye. "Your country. How many people are left in the capital?"
"Maybe two thousand. There used to be ten times that. Most left when the water started failing."
"And Burai. How many men does he have?"
"I don't know, a lot..."
"Against that, what's left on your side?"
Soran's face crumpled slightly before he caught it. "Me. And whatever's left of the people who were loyal to my father. I don't know how many. I don't know if any of them would fight."
Karura nodded. She stood up and turned to her teammates.
"This is what Suna sent us to find out about," she said. "A minor nation's government has been overthrown by a warlord who's ruining the country. The legitimate heir is alive and being hunted. We have our intelligence."
"Great," Pakura said. "We report back."
"We can't just leave him," Mai said. "You heard what he said. They'll find him if we leave. They'll use him or kill him."
"Our mission is to investigate and report. We investigated. We have our report. We go home."
"And what happens to him?"
"Suna sends a proper team. Jonin. Resources. People equipped to actually handle a regime change in a foreign country."
"That'll take weeks. He'll be dead in days."
They stared at each other. The familiar heat building between them, the same fire that had burned through a hundred arguments before this one, each of them certain the other was wrong.
Karura stepped between them. Literally. She put her body in the gap and looked at both of them.
"Both," she said.
They looked at her.
"We report back AND we stay." She pulled the scroll containing her mechanical bird from her pack. "I'll send a message to Suna now. It'll take two days to arrive, another day for the council to decide, another two to send reinforcements if they choose to. Five days. We can keep one boy alive for five days while we gather more intelligence on Burai's operation. We're not abandoning the mission. We're extending it."
"That's not what the scroll says," Pakura said.
"The scroll says engagement with hostile forces is authorized if necessary for self-defense or mission completion. Protecting a key intelligence source is mission completion." Karura held Pakura's gaze. "He IS the intelligence, Pakura. Everything Suna wants to know about this country is in his head. Letting him die is failing the mission."
Pakura glared at Soran, who was watching the three of them argue about his life with the wide-eyed expression of someone who'd never seen anything like this before.
"Five days," Pakura said. "That's it."
"Five days," Karura confirmed.
She knelt on the ground, unsealed the mechanical bird from its scroll, and began winding the key in its back. The copper wings twitched. The tiny glass eyes caught the light. She wrote a quick report on a tiny scroll, rolled it tight, and slid it into the compartment in the bird's chest.
"What is that?" Soran asked, leaning closer despite himself.
"A puppet of sorts," Karura said. She set the destination seal, held the bird up, and released it. The wings snapped open and it launched from her palm, rising in a straight line toward the southeast, toward Suna, getting smaller and smaller against the white sky until it vanished.
Karura stood and dusted off her knees. She looked at Soran.
"Five days," she told him. "You've got us for five days. So help us find out what's going on." Karura said with a gentle tone.
"Tell us everything you know about Burai. His men, his shinobi, his schedule, his weaknesses. Where he sleeps, where he keeps his money, who he trusts. Everything." Pakura demanded.
"One thing at a time." Karura softly said.
Soran nodded. He wiped his eyes one last time, took a breath, and began.