The Kazekage's office was quieter than the mission assignment hall below it.
The room sat at the top of the administrative building, behind a heavy wooden door flanked by two ANBU who didn't acknowledge the three genin as they passed. Inside, the walls were bare stone, unadorned except for the line of Kazekage statues along the far wall. The First. The Second. The Third, whose living counterpart sat behind the desk at the center of the room.
The Third Kazekage looked the same as the last time Karura had seen him. Dark-blue hair, narrow yellow eyes, the white cape draped over his shoulders. But the desk in front of him was different. Stacked with scrolls, reports, intelligence summaries. The desk of a man managing a village that couldn't afford to make mistakes.
He looked up when they entered. His eyes moved across the three of them the way they had during their first mission report, slow and appraising, but this time something else sat behind the appraisal. He'd read Takeshi's preliminary message. He knew what they'd done. He just didn't know the details yet.
"Team Ebizo," he said. "Sit."
Three chairs had been placed in front of the desk. They sat. Karura in the center, Pakura to her left, Mai to her right. Mai fidgeted for about two seconds before catching Pakura's sidelong glare and going still.
The Kazekage folded his hands on the desk. "Jonin Takeshi's advance report reached me yesterday. I've read it twice." He paused. "I'd like to hear it from you."
Karura told him.
She gave him the full account. The dying country. Soran on the hardpan. The decision to stay and extend the mission. The infiltration. Burai's operation, the rerouted trade, the mining contracts, the slow liquidation of a nation's remaining assets. And then the part that mattered most.
"Iwagakure is building a forward staging ground in the Land of Dust," Karura said. "Burai was funded and directed by Iwa's intelligence apparatus. The lead shinobi referenced the Tsuchikage's council directly. They planned to station hundreds of shinobi inside Wind Country before the dry season."
The Third Kazekage didn't move. His hands stayed folded. His expression stayed level. But his eyes changed. Something behind them sharpened.
"Hundreds," he repeated.
"That was the number discussed. Forward operating position, intended to give Iwa a head start when the next conflict with Suna begins."
"And the Iwa shinobi stationed there?"
"Two dead. One escaped. He'll have reported back to Iwagakure by now. They know their operation has been compromised."
The Kazekage was quiet for a long moment. His gaze drifted to the statues along the wall, to the stone faces of the men who'd led this village before him, each one inheriting the same problem: a village in a desert, surrounded by enemies with more land, more water, more people, more everything. Suna survived by being sharper than what came at it. Intelligence like this was the edge that kept the blade from dulling.
His eyes returned to the three genin.
"This mission was assigned as a B-rank," he said. "Investigate and report. No jonin commander. No real expectation of hostile engagement." He let that sit. "Your sensei, Ebizo, is still recovering in the hospital from injuries sustained on your previous assignment. You were operating without supervision in a foreign nation, outnumbered and outranked by enemy forces, with no reinforcements and no extraction plan."
None of them spoke.
"And you not only completed the mission, you exceeded it in every capacity I can measure." His voice was the same low, even tone it always was, but the words carried weight that pressed against the air. "You uncovered a covert military operation that could have threatened this village's security for years if it had gone undetected. You eliminated hostile forces, secured a foreign government, and stabilized an allied nation's capital. As genin. In your first year of service."
Mai opened her mouth. Pakura's hand landed on her knee. Mai closed her mouth.
"I'm reclassifying this mission to S-rank," the Kazekage said. He pulled three envelopes from beneath a stack of scrolls and placed them on the desk. "Your compensation reflects the updated classification."
Karura took the envelopes and passed one to each of her teammates. She didn't open hers. Neither did Pakura. Mai weighed hers in her hand and grinned.
"The intelligence you've gathered is invaluable. What happens next is above your rank, but you should know that what you've brought back will shape how this village prepares for the coming future." He looked at each of them individually. Karura. Pakura. Mai. It wasn't a smile but it was gentle and warm. "I will be watching your careers closely. I expect to continue being impressed."
He straightened the scrolls on his desk.
"You're dismissed. Take time off to rest. You've earned it."
They stood. Bowed. Turned to leave.
"Team Ebizo."
She stopped at the door. Pakura and Mai paused beside her.
"Ebizo chose his students well." The Kazekage's narrow yellow eyes held hers. "Make sure to visit him. I'm told he's been asking about you three every day."
Karura smiled. "We will, Kazekage-sama."
They left the office. Down the stairs, through the assignment hall, past the chunin clerks and the jonin waiting for scrolls and the genin teams filing in and out. Nobody looked twice at the three girls walking through the crowd. Just another team returning from a mission. Nothing special. Nothing worth noticing.
Outside, the sun hit them like a warm hand. Suna's canyon walls rose on either side of the main road, the clay buildings stacked along them in uneven rows, the sand-colored streets busy with merchants and civilians and shinobi going about their day. Home.
Mai tore open her envelope before they'd made it ten steps.
She counted the bills. Counted them again. Her eyes went wide.
"Holy..." She looked at Pakura. "Pakura. Pakura, look at this."
"I can see it."
"This is more money than my parents make in a year!"
"Don't shout that in the street."
"I'm going to eat so much food." Mai clutched the envelope to her chest. "I'm going to eat everything. Every restaurant. Every stall. I'm starting right now."
She was already veering toward the nearest food cart. Pakura grabbed the back of her collar.
"Visit Ebizo-sensei first. Eat later."
"But..."
"First."
Mai's shoulders slumped. Then she perked up. "Fine! But you're both coming with me to eat after!"
"I'll visit Sensei with you," Karura said. "But after that, I need to go home. My family doesn't know I'm back yet."
"Tomorrow then! Big team dinner! My treat!" Mai jabbed a finger at both of them. "You're not allowed to say no!"
"I'm saying no," Pakura said.
"TOO LATE! You're coming!"
They argued the entire way to the hospital.
Ebizo looked better than the last time they'd seen him.
He was sitting up in bed when they entered, propped against a stack of pillows, a cup of tea balanced on his knee. The bruising on his face had faded from deep purple to a mottled yellow-green. His right hand was still wrapped in a splint, but he could move his fingers. The medical nin had done good work.
He looked at the three of them standing in his doorway and his eyes softened.
"There you are."
Mai crossed the room in three strides and dropped into the chair beside his bed hard enough to scoot it back a foot. "Sensei! You look way better! You looked like a mummy last time!"
"Thank you, Mai. As always, your bedside manner is unmatched."
Pakura leaned against the windowsill. Karura took the chair on the other side of the bed.
"We just reported to the Kazekage," Karura said. "About our last mission."
"I heard." Ebizo's expression didn't change, but something moved behind his eyes. Pride, maybe. Or the complicated feeling of a teacher who realizes his students have outgrown the lessons he planned for them. "I'm glad you all returned safely and well."
"Of course." Pakura smirked.
Ebizo smiled. "I'm proud of all three of you. I want you to know that."
"Sensei..." Mai's voice went thick. She cleared her throat aggressively. "Shut up, you're going to make me cry."
"Then cry. It's a hospital. People cry here all the time."
"I'm NOT gonna freaking cry!"
She was a little bit crying.
Pakura smirked.
Karura smiled, reached over, and placed her hand on Ebizo's unbandaged one. She squeezed gently.
"Get better soon, Sensei. We need you back."
"I'll be back before you know it. Now go home, all of you. Rest. You've earned it."
They left the hospital together. Mai wiped her face with both hands and pretended it was sweat. Pakura walked a little bit further away from Mai with disgust and embarrassment. Karura walked between them with her hands in her scarf pockets, smiling.
They split at the main road. Mai went south, toward her family's home near the training grounds. Pakura went east, toward the residential district above the canyon. Karura went west.
Toward home.
She smelled the bread before she turned the corner.
Warm wheat and honey, drifting from the open window of the bakery two streets over, carried on the dry afternoon air. Her father's second batch of the day, probably. He always baked a second round in the afternoon when the first sold out before noon.
Karura's pace quickened.
She turned onto her street. The low clay buildings sat in their familiar row, the tailor's shop, the dried-goods store, and between them, the small house with the courtyard behind it and the bakery down the road. The front door was open. It was always open during the day. Her mother liked the air.
She stepped inside.
"Mama. Papa. I'm home."
The kitchen was warm. Her mother stood at the counter chopping vegetables, her sandy-brown hair tied back with the same cloth she always wore. She turned at Karura's voice and the knife stopped mid-cut. Her eyes swept over her daughter, head to toe, checking for injuries. Looking for bandages. Bruises. Anything wrong.
"Karura!" Her mother crossed the kitchen in two steps and pulled her into a hug that smelled like onions and soap. "You're back! You were gone so long, we were starting to worry."
"I'm fine, Mama. Everything went well."
"You're thinner." Her mother held her at arm's length, frowning. "Have you been eating?"
"I've been eating."
"Not enough. Sit down. I'm making dinner early."
"Mama, it's barely afternoon..."
"Sit."
Karura sat.
The front door banged open and her father filled the doorway, flour on his forearms and a towel over his shoulder. He must have seen her from the bakery window. His broad face split into a grin and he crossed the room and scooped her up off the chair in a hug that lifted her feet off the ground.
"There she is! Our family's talented kunoichi returns!" He squeezed her hard enough that her spine popped. "Two weeks, Karura! Two weeks! Your mother nearly made me walk to the Kazekage's office and demand answers."
"I nearly did," her mother confirmed from the counter. "I still might."
"I'm sorry I was gone so long." Karura said, hugged between her father's flour-dusted arms. "The mission took longer than expected."
Her father set her down and looked at her. Really looked, the same way her mother had, searching for the things she wouldn't say. He didn't find them. Karura's worries were the kind that didn't leave signs on the outside.
"Was it dangerous?" he asked.
"Every ninja mission is dangerous, Papa." She sat back down at the table. "But we helped a lot of people. The place we went, the Land of Dust, it's this country west of here where everything is dying. The water is almost gone, the food was running out, and the people there were suffering. They had nothing."
Her mother turned from the counter. Her father pulled out a chair and sat across from her.
"We found a boy, the late Damiyo's son, who'd been chased out of his own home by a man who stole his father's throne. We protected him. And after things were settled, I used some of my savings to buy food and water and medicine for the people in the capital. Grain, vegetables, medical herbs, seeds for planting. I distributed them across the city. Door to door."
"Savings? Look at my daughter!" Her father proudly smiled.
"There was this old man," Karura continued, and the memory came back so clearly she could see his face. "He grabbed the water jug with both hands and drank half of it standing in his doorway. He was crying. He said thank you. I told him to thank the new lord, not me."
"And there was a woman with a baby. She asked me why I was doing it. Why I was giving them food." Karura looked at the table. "I told her it was because someone should."
Her father reached across the table and put his big, flour-dusted hand over hers.
"That's my girl," he said with pride. "That's my girl."
Her mother came around the counter and sat beside her. She didn't say anything. She just put her arm around Karura's shoulders and held her.
They sat like that for a while. The afternoon light moved across the kitchen floor. The smell of bread drifted in through the window.
Karura didn't tell them about the palace. About Burai's throat opening under her kunai. About the reception room filled with bodies, the poisoned dead and the exploded dead and the ones she'd cut apart and beaten apart and shredded apart until the moonlight turned everything silver and red. She didn't tell them about the scarred shinobi or the big one or the dozens who came after, running into the corridors of a ruined palace and never running back out.
She didn't tell them because they didn't need to know that her daughter was a murderer. A highly efficient one at that.
Instead, she thought about what her mother said. About what her father's hand felt like on hers. About the old man and the water jug and the woman with the baby.
People were suffering in the Land of Dust. But people were suffering here too. In Suna. In the streets she'd walked every day of her life. The village's economy was thin. Families stretched meals. Merchants closed shops. The desert gave nothing for free and the village's budget bled from cuts that never quite healed.
She'd helped a foreign country in a week. What could she do for her own home if she really tried?
The thought sat in her chest like a seed in dry soil. Waiting.
"Karura!"
A small body hit her from behind. Thin arms wrapped around her neck with the full commitment of a six-year-old who hadn't learned what restraint meant yet.
"Nee-chan! You're home! You're home you're home you're home!"
Yashamaru. Sandy-blond hair, bright violet eyes, and a grin that could light a room on fire. He was small even for six, barely reaching her shoulder when she was sitting, and he clung to her back like a barnacle made of enthusiasm.
"Hey, Yashamaru-kun." Karura reached back and ruffled his hair. "I'm home."
"You were gone forever!" He climbed over the back of her chair and dropped into her lap, apparently unbothered by gravity or personal space. "Mama said you were on a mission and it wasn't fair because I'm going to be a ninja too so I should get to go on missions!"
"You're still in the Academy. Academy students don't go on missions." her mother said.
"So? Nee-chan was seven when she graduated!"
"Your sister is... exceptional."
"I'm exceptional too!" He puffed his cheeks out. Then he looked up at Karura with those wide violet eyes and his expression shifted. Softer. "Nee-chan. Will you train with me?"
Karura looked at him. At the little fists balled in his lap, the serious look on his face, the way he was sitting up straighter than he needed to, trying to look like he was ready.
She was tired. Her body still ached from five days of running across the desert. Her mind was still mending from all the corpses.
"Tomorrow," she said. "I just got back, Yasha. Let me rest tonight."
His face fell. Just for a second. The crash of a six-year-old's hopes hitting the ground.
"But," Karura said, and she watched his eyes flick back up, "I'll pick you up from the academy tomorrow. I'll train you after your classes."
The grin that split his face could have powered the village for a week.
"Really?! You promise?!"
"I promise."
"You PROMISE promise?!"
"I promise promise."
He launched off her lap, pumped both fists in the air, and sprinted out of the kitchen screaming. "MAMA! PAPA! NEE-CHAN IS GOING TO TRAIN ME TOMORROW! SHE PROMISED! SHE PROMISE PROMISED!"
"We're right here," her father said, but he was smiling.
Her mother shook her head, but she was smiling too.
Karura watched Yashamaru tear through the house, bouncing off walls and furniture, vibrating with the pure uncontainable energy of a child who'd been given exactly what he wanted. His voice echoed from the courtyard, then the bedroom, then the courtyard again. She could track him with the Byakugan without even activating it. He was that loud.
She loved him so much it hurt.
After dinner, after her mother finally stopped trying to feed her a fourth helping, after her father went back to the bakery to close up and Yashamaru passed out on the floor of his room still wearing his sandals, Karura slipped out the back door and into the courtyard.
Her cacti were thriving.
The rows she'd planted before the mission had grown in her absence, the tenfold-boosted barrel cacti spreading their root systems deep into the packed earth, their spines long and rigid and faintly metallic in the evening light. One of them had fruited. A small, reddish bud sat near the crown, tight and unripe but there.
She watered them. A measured cup each, the same routine. The achievement system dinged in the corner of her vision.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold cultivation results!]
The cacti swelled. She watched their flesh darken and thicken, the spines hardening, the roots pushing outward beneath the soil. The fruiting one sprouted two more buds.
She smiled. Then she dried her hands on her pants and went to her workshop.
The room was exactly as she'd left it. Wood shavings on the floor. Tools hanging from nails on the wall. Scrolls stacked on the workbench beside jars of adhesive and coils of wire. The hooks in the ceiling where Reaper had hung were empty. Everything was sealed in her scrolls now, her arsenal portable, her workshop just a place to build.
She sat at the workbench, pulled a blank sheet of paper from the stack, and picked up a pencil.
The Land of Dust had taught her things.
Million was a taijutsu-specialist. A brawler. Four arms and bandages and brute force, designed to get in someone's face and not leave until one of them stopped moving. Reaper was a kenjutsu-specialist that could work up close or at a distance. Scythes and the Blastsword, reach and cutting power, built to carve through whatever stood between her and the objective.
Neither of them were made explicitly for something far away.
In the palace, that hadn't mattered. The corridors were tight. The rooms were enclosed. Everything was close. But the desert wasn't a palace. The next fight might be on open ground, across dunes, across canyons, and if the enemy was a hundred meters away, or two hundred, or five hundred, Million and Reaper couldn't reach them.
The Byakugan could, though.
She'd stood on the palace rooftop at dawn and seen ten kilometers in every direction. Every person. Every chakra signature. Every grain of sand shifting in the wind. She could see further than any weapon she owned could reach, and that gap between what her eyes could find and what her puppets could hit was a problem she intended to close.
She needed range. Real range. Something that could strike from distances that made the fight unfair before it started.
The pencil moved.
A tall frame. Longer arms than her other puppets, built for leverage, for the wide sweeping arcs that generated the most force at the tip. She sketched the proportions quickly, the lean torso, the extended limbs, the broad shoulders that would anchor the swing.
She drew the face. Not a smile like Million. Not blank like Reaper. She carved arrogance into the lines. A lifted chin. Proud, narrow eyes. The expression of something that looked down on whatever stood in front of it. Something resembles Pakura's regular look.
Moon.
The weapon came next.
A war fan. Human-sized, metal-bodied, heavy enough to generate wind with pure mechanical force when swung by arms built for exactly that motion. Every citizen knew about fan wielders in Suna. Wind style users who carried giant folding fans on their backs and used them to amplify their jutsu. But those were tools for shinobi who channeled their own chakra through the fan.
This would be different. She'd channel her chakra through the puppet's threads, into the puppet's arms, into the fan itself. The puppet would swing. The fan would cut the air. And the wind would go wherever she pointed it.
Three power levels. She sketched three circles along the fan's metal body and labeled them. One star for a gust strong enough to push a person off their feet. Two stars for a cutting wind that could slice at range. Three stars for something she didn't have a word for yet. Something that leveled what it hit.
She could mix sand into the wind. Use the desert itself as ammunition. A gust that carried a wall of sand would blind, choke, strip footing, turn every surface into something slippery and treacherous. And from the distance the Byakugan gave her, she could direct those strikes with a clarity no other puppeteer could match. She'd see the target's chakra flare before they moved. She'd see the wind hit them before they knew it was coming.
Then she stopped sketching and stared at what she'd drawn.
Sand was just the beginning. If the fan could carry sand on the wind, it could carry anything.
She flipped to a fresh section of the page and started listing.
Poison. A storage scroll loaded with airborne toxin, deployed on a single swing. One gust and the poison rides the wind across hundreds of meters, an invisible cloud spreading over an area so wide that dodging it means outrunning the weather. At one star the mist drifts. At two stars it races. At three, it covers a battlefield.
Fire. A scroll containing combustible material or stored fire release. The fan's wind doesn't just throw the flame, it feeds it. Oxygen and force turning a ball of fire into a wave that swallows everything in its path. Wind and fire together. The oldest combination in the world, and she'd be launching it from half a kilometer away.
Oil. Not lethal on its own, but it didn't need to be. One swing coats an area in something slippery and flammable. The enemy loses their footing. Then the next swing comes with the fire scroll loaded, and the ground ignites. A two-swing kill.
Smoke. A wall of it, thick and choking, blanketing a valley or a canyon or a road in seconds. Most shinobi could throw a smoke bomb. Nobody could drown an entire battlefield in smoke with one swing of a fan. And with the Byakugan, she could see through every particle of it. Her enemies would be blind. She wouldn't.
Poisoned kunai. A scroll packed with dozens of them, launched on a gust that doubled their speed beyond what any arm could throw. A volley that covered a wide area or focused on a single point, each blade carrying enough poison to drop a man in minutes.
She stared at the list. Six ammunition types. Six scrolls, interchangeable mid-fight, swapped in and out depending on what the situation demanded. The fan wasn't just a weapon. It was a platform. And the scrolls made it modular, adaptable, different every time she swung it.
She'd need scroll mounts on Moon's body. Slots built into the torso or the back, easily accessible, quick to swap. She sketched them in, six cylindrical housings arranged in two rows of three along Moon's lower back, each one sized for a standard storage scroll.
She kept sketching. The fan's defensive applications. Opened wide, it could block projectiles, deflect jutsu, shield herself or others. Lodged into the ground, it became a stationary barrier. Held flat, it could carry the puppet through the air, gliding on its fan.
She wrote notes in the margins. Materials she'd need. A metal fan of that size would require a smith, someone who worked with iron and steel, not the composite wood she used for puppet bodies. She'd need to buy a regular war fan and modify it. Reinforce the ribs. Widen the surface area. Add channels along the metal body where chakra could flow and amplify.
The composite wood for the puppet itself she had. Cedar and desert ironwood, pressure-bonded with resin, the same construction as Million and Reaper. The joints she could adapt from Reaper's shoulder assembly, scaled up for the longer arms and the heavier weapon.
She'd start with the frame. Buy the fan tomorrow. Modify it in the workshop. Build the puppet around the weapon instead of the other way around. Moon existed to swing that fan. Everything else was secondary.
She pinned the sketch to the wall above her workbench and sat back in her chair.
Three puppets now, once Moon was built. Four, counting the self-defense arms on her back. Close range, mid range, long range. A puppet for every distance. And behind all of them, the Byakugan watching everything, a pair of eyes that could see the battlefield in ways that made the word "hidden" meaningless.
She wasn't done. She'd never be done. There were more designs in her head, more ideas, more ways to close the gaps and cover the angles and turn puppetry into something the world hadn't seen before.
But tonight, Moon was enough.
She turned off the lamp, closed the workshop door, and went to bed.
Tomorrow she had a promise to keep.