Jomae checked Million's joints for the fourth time that morning.
He sat on a flat rock at the edge of their camp, the puppet laid out in front of him on a cloth he'd brought specifically for maintenance. His fingers worked through the arm mechanisms one by one, testing the tension in the wrapping spools, the flexibility of the shoulder joints, the give in the elbow hinges. Everything was smooth. Everything worked the way it should. He'd checked three times already and nothing had changed, but he checked again because that's what you did when you cared about your tools.
"You're going to wear out the thing before we even fight anyone." Nagi said.
She was leaning against a rock formation ten meters away, arms crossed, Reaper's scroll strapped to her back. Her red hair was darker than usual, caked with dust from the overnight trek through the desert. She hadn't slept well. None of them had. The Demon Desert wasn't built for sleeping.
"I'm being thorough." Jomae said.
"You're being obsessive."
"There is a difference between those two words, you know?"
"Not much of one in my opinion."
Dokuro sat between them, cross-legged, his broad shoulders blocking the morning sun from Jomae's workspace. His own puppet was sealed inside a scroll on his hip, a bulky cylinder that was thicker than the average scroll. He'd built his puppet himself, a heavy armored design made for defense.
He was eating dried meat and watching the horizon. And talking. Dokuro was always talking.
"Do you think there are ant lions near here? The proctor mentioned ant lions. Pit traps wide enough to swallow a building, she said. I've been watching the ground for sinkholes but I don't know what an ant lion pit actually looks like. Does the sand look different? Is it looser? Because all the sand out here looks loose to me. Everything looks like a pit trap if you stare at it long enough."
"Dokuro…" Nagi said.
"And the wasps. She said giant wasps that paralyze you and drag you back to their nests while you're still conscious. While you're still conscious. Do you understand what that means? You're awake the whole time. You can feel everything. You just can't move. That's the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life."
"Dokuro."
"I'm just saying we should be more careful about where we're sitting. This rock could be next to a nest. We wouldn't know until they were already on us."
"Dokuro, man, shut up." Jomae didn't look up from Million's elbow joint. "You've been talking for twenty minutes straight. Take a breath."
Dokuro took a breath. It lasted about four seconds.
"Sorry. I talk when I'm nervous. And this exam makes me very nervous."
"Yeah we know." Nagi sighed.
For all his anxious chatter, Dokuro was a good puppeteer and a better teammate than his nerves suggested. His puppetry was solid when it mattered. His puppet was tough, built for defense and protection, and his instincts in a fight were good enough. He just couldn't sit still without his mouth running, and the Demon Desert had given him more to worry about than his brain could hold quietly.
"We should move," Dokuro said. "We've been in one spot too long. Something is going to find us. A giant scorpion or a sand lion or another team or something. The longer we sit here the more likely something bad happens. That's just how odds work. And I know I sound ridiculous but I'm right about this."
Jomae sealed Million back into its scroll and stood. "He's right. Tower is about eight kilometers northwest."
"Then let's go." Nagi pushed off the rock and fell into formation. Jomae on the left, Nagi on the right, Dokuro in the center. They moved through the desert in a triangle that put their scrolls on the outside and their bodies on the inside.
The terrain shifted as they walked. The flat hardpan gave way to a field of low dunes, dark sand that absorbed the sun's heat and radiated it back at them from below. The air shimmered. Sweat soaked through their clothes within minutes.
"I hate this place." Nagi said.
"Everyone hates this place." Jomae said.
"Some chunin and jonin train here voluntarily, I heard."
"Those people are insane."
"Team Ebizo..." Nagi's voice shifted. "Have you thought about what happens if we run into them?"
"We avoid them, obviously." Jomae said immediately.
"And if we can't?"
"Then we fight. But we definitely don't seek them out."
"Are you scared of them?"
Jomae didn't answer right away. He adjusted the scroll on his back, the weight of Million's sealed form pressing against his shoulder blades.
"I'm carrying a puppet that Karura designed," he said. "You're carrying one too. We bought her blueprints from the Brigade and are trying to further our careers with her innovations. If we fight her, we're fighting someone who created the weapons we're using. She knows every weakness in these puppets because she designed them."
"That doesn't mean she's unbeatable."
"No. It means she has an advantage we can't do anything about. And I might be a little dumb but even I know it isn't smart to fight against an enemy with an advantage against you."
"I heard she completed an S-rank mission," Dokuro said from the center of the formation. "I don't know if that's true or not. It might be exaggerated. People exaggerate things all the time, especially about prodigies. But what if it's not exaggerated? Because usually the truth about people like that is worse than the rumors, not better."
"You're not helping, Dokuro." Nagi said.
"I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to make sure we don't die."
They focused. The dunes gave way to a dry riverbed that cut through the landscape like a scar. The bed was wide, maybe twenty meters across, with banks of crumbled stone on either side. The sand at the bottom was loose and soft. It sucked at your sandals and slowed your pace.
"Through or around?" Nagi asked.
Jomae studied the riverbed. It ran roughly northwest, same direction as the tower. Following it would keep them on course and the banks would provide shade from the sun.
"Through," he said. "It's heading the right way."
"I don't like it," Dokuro said. "The banks are too high. You can't see what's above you. If someone was up there you'd never know until they were on top of you."
"It's the fastest route." Jomae said.
"Fast and safe aren't the same thing."
"Dokuro, we can't take a three-kilometer detour through open dunes because you have a bad feeling."
Dokuro looked at the banks. At the shadows between the rocks. At all the places someone could hide. "Fine. But I want it on record that I said this was a bad idea."
"We hear ya…" Nagi rolled her eyes. "Let's go."
They dropped into the riverbed and followed it northwest.
Goza had been watching them for twenty minutes.
He lay flat on the eastern bank of the riverbed, his painted face pressed against the crumbled stone, peering over the edge. Sayo was beside him, her flat eyes tracking the three figures moving through the sand below. Homura was further along the bank, fifty meters north, in position.
"Puppet users," Goza whispered. "Three of them."
"I see them," Sayo murmured. Her voice was barely audible. "The boy in front is leading. The girl with red hair is on the right. The big one is in the center."
"They're following the riverbed straight to us."
"Straight into us."
Goza's painted face split into a grin.
"Remind me why we're doing this?" Sayo murmured. She was flat on her stomach beside him, her chin on her folded hands. "We're supposed to reach the tower. Not waste time picking fights with other people."
Goza looked at her like she'd just said something remarkably stupid. "Are you stupid or are you dumb? You think they aren't watching us out here? You think they dropped all of us out here into the most dangerous desert in the world and said 'just walk to the tower' and that's the whole test?"
Sayo glared at him. "I didn't say that."
"Then use that smooth brain of yours. The proctor said our performance in the desert would be evaluated. Our whole performance. Every decision we make out here is being graded. How we move. How we plan. How we handle anything." He looked back down at the riverbed. "A chunin needs to know how to plan and execute an ambush. So I'm showing them I can plan and execute an ambush."
Sayo's glare didn't soften but she stopped arguing. She wanted to kick him in the balls for talking to her like that, but the logic was there even if the tone made her leg itch.
They'd entered the desert from the northeast gate and made good time through the night, Goza's experience from two previous exams guiding them through terrain he'd walked before. He knew a modest portion of the Demon Desert's geography. He knew the riverbed and where it narrowed and where the banks were high enough to provide concealment. He knew that teams heading northwest toward the tower would funnel through this corridor because the alternative was a three-kilometer detour through open dunes with no shade.
So he'd set a trap.
Homura had spent thirty minutes planting explosive tags along a hundred-meter stretch of the riverbed floor, buried just beneath the sand, connected by a length of ninja wire that ran up the bank to Goza's position. Goza held the end of the wire between two fingers. When he pushed his chakra through it, every tag in the chain would go off at once.
What mattered was the chaos. Puppet users needed focus and distance to operate. An explosion at their feet would shatter both.
"Wait until they're past the second set." Goza whispered. Sayo nodded.
Below them, Team 3 walked deeper into the riverbed. Jomae in front, scanning ahead. Nagi on the right, arms crossed, Reaper's scroll bouncing against her back. Dokuro in the center, his head turning left and right and left again, his mouth moving in what was probably another monologue about terrifying wildlife or something else.
They passed the first marker, a small stone Goza had placed on the eastern bank. Fifty meters into the trap zone.
They passed the second marker. A hundred meters in. Centered.
Goza detonated the tags.
The riverbed erupted.
Sand and stone blasted upward in a chain of detonations that raced along the hundred-meter stretch like a zipper being torn open. The explosions weren't large but they were everywhere, overlapping blasts that turned the riverbed floor into a churning mess of flying debris and smoke and noise.
Jomae reacted fastest. His scroll was off his back before the first blast reached him, and Million burst from the smoke in a cloud of white, four arms spreading wide, its grinning face emerging from the chaos like a demon's smile through fog. Million's body covered Jomae, wrappings spreading into a shield that caught the flying debris and deflected the worst of the blast.
Nagi wasn't as quick. The explosion closest to her went off two meters from her right side. The concussive force threw her sideways into the riverbed wall. She hit the stone hard, her shoulder taking the impact, and Reaper's scroll tumbled from her back into the sand.
Dokuro took it the worst. He was at the center of the formation, which meant the center of the trap zone. Three tags detonated around him in rapid succession. He was lifted off his feet and hurled backward, landing in a heap of sand and rubble, his ears ringing, his scroll still on his hip but his hands too shaken to unseal it.
"ENEMIES!" Jomae shouted.
"I TOLD YOU!" Dokuro screamed from the ground. "I SAID THE BANKS WERE TOO HIGH! I SAID THIS WAS A BAD IDEA!"
Goza came over the bank.
He dropped from the eastern ridge, kusarigama spinning above his head, the weighted chain whipping in a wide arc. He landed in the riverbed between Nagi and Dokuro, the two who were down, and the chain swept toward Nagi's legs.
She rolled. The chain hit the sand where she'd been lying and Goza yanked it back, the weight singing through the air. His painted face was split with that ugly grin.
"Stay down, puppet girl," he said. "This'll go easier for me if you don't get up."
Nagi's hand found Reaper's scroll in the sand. Her fingers closed around it.
"Go to hell, punk!" she said.
She unsealed Reaper. The puppet exploded from the scroll in a burst of smoke, its slender frame and bladed arms snapping into combat position. Nagi's fingers found the threads and Reaper lunged at Goza, its lead arm slashing in a horizontal arc aimed at his chest.
Goza jumped back. The blade carved a line in the riverbed wall. He landed on the bank above, kusarigama spinning, and threw the weighted end at Reaper's head.
The chain wrapped around Reaper's neck joint. Goza pulled. The puppet's head jerked sideways, the mechanism straining, and Nagi's control wavered as the tension in her threads shifted.
"Homura! Now!" Goza shouted.
Compressed air bullets rained from the northern bank. Homura stood at the top of the ridge, mouth open, firing blast after blast of concentrated wind at the riverbed below. The bullets hit the sand around Jomae and Million, kicking up geysers of grit that clouded the air and disrupted visibility.
Jomae's Million charged through the barrage. Four arms pumping, smiley face leading, wrappings unfurling in every direction. The puppet closed the distance to Homura's position in seconds and launched itself up the bank, its wrappings reaching for the wind user.
Homura leaped back. One of Million's wrappings caught his ankle and yanked, pulling him off balance. He hit the ground and rolled, firing a point-blank air bullet into Million's chest. The impact rocked the puppet backward but didn't stop it. Million's lower arms grabbed the ground and pulled itself forward, upper arms reaching for Homura's throat.
Homura scrambled up the bank, barely staying ahead of the puppet's reach. Million was relentless. Four arms, tireless, grinning, each one grabbing and pulling and reaching while the wrappings lashed at everything within range. Homura couldn't stop moving. Every time he paused to fire, the puppet was on top of him.
In the riverbed, Goza was learning that Reaper was a problem.
The puppet fought differently from Million. Where Million was about taijutsu, Reaper was kenjutsu. Its arms ended in sharpened edges that Nagi wielded with vicious accuracy, each swing aimed at tendons and joints, the weak points that mattered in a fight. Goza's kusarigama had reach but Reaper was faster, its wooden limbs moving in ways that flesh couldn't.
A blade caught Goza's sleeve and opened a shallow cut along his forearm. He hissed and jumped back, swinging the chain in a defensive arc that kept Reaper at distance.
"Sayo!" he shouted. "Anytime now!"
Sayo had been waiting.
She hadn't dropped into the riverbed with Goza. She'd stayed on the eastern bank, flat against the stone, watching the fight unfold. Watching the puppet users. Watching their hands, their eyes, their focus.
Puppet users were vulnerable when their attention was on their puppets. Their eyes tracked the fight. Their hands worked the threads. Their minds processed the space between puppet and enemy. For those seconds, they weren't watching their own bodies. They weren't guarding their senses.
Sayo's style of genjutsu wasn't flashy. It was subtle. A whisper of chakra that slipped into the target's sensory processing and shifted things by degrees. Barely noticeable.
She targeted Dokuro.
He'd gotten back on his feet and was reaching for his scroll, ready to summon his defensive puppet. His hands were shaking. His ears were ringing. And his mind was everywhere at once, racing through a dozen panicked trains of thought: the explosions, the ambush, Nagi getting hit, the banks he'd warned them about, the sounds of fighting in every direction, the chain weapon he could hear whipping through the air, the wind bullets slamming into the sand, whether there were more tags buried under him right now, whether the next step he took would set one off.
His focus was shattered across a hundred worries. The genjutsu slid in through all the gaps.
Dokuro's hands stopped moving. His eyes went glassy. The scroll slipped from his fingers and hit the sand. He stood in the riverbed, swaying slightly, staring at nothing, his broad shoulders slack. His mouth was still half-open, mid-word, whatever he'd been about to shout frozen on his tongue.
"Got him!" Sayo called.
Goza saw the opening.
The big puppeteer was out. Two puppets left, both engaged, both operated by puppeteers who were now fighting two-on-three.
"All together! Hit the puppeteers, not the puppets!" Goza shouted.
He abandoned his fight with Reaper. Turned his back on the bladed puppet and sprinted straight at Nagi. The kusarigama's chain whipped out and caught Reaper's left arm, tangling the mechanism, buying him two seconds. He used both of them.
Nagi saw him coming. Her hands were on Reaper's threads. She couldn't let go without losing the puppet. She couldn't block without dropping her control. She tried to redirect Reaper to intercept, pulling the puppet between herself and Goza, but the tangled chain slowed the response by half a second.
Goza's fist caught her in the stomach.
She doubled over. The air left her lungs and her fingers went slack on the threads. Reaper shuddered, its limbs going loose, the bladed arms dropping to its sides. A puppet without a puppeteer was just junk.
Homura pressed his advantage against Jomae. With Nagi's Reaper down and Dokuro in a genjutsu, Jomae was the last one operating. He had Million out and fighting but his attention was split between the puppet and watching his teammates crumble.
Homura fired three air bullets in rapid succession, not at Million but at Jomae. The boy had to dodge, his body rolling sideways in the sand, and for that second his threads went slack. Million froze mid-stride, its arms hanging, the grin suddenly empty.
Goza was on Jomae before he recovered. The kusarigama's weighted end slammed into the sand next to Jomae's head. A warning shot. The next one wouldn't miss.
"Stop the doll," Goza said. He stood over Jomae with the chain coiled in his fist. "It's over."
Jomae looked up at him. At the painted face and the ugly grin. At Nagi on her knees, gasping. At Dokuro, standing vacant, caught in Sayo's genjutsu, mouth still open on a word that would never come out. At Million, frozen, waiting for strings that weren't coming.
His jaw tightened. His fingers twitched toward the threads.
"Don't." Goza's voice was cold. "I've got your girl teammate down and your big friend is off in genjutsu land. You move those strings and the next hit goes through her, not past her."
Jomae looked at Nagi. She met his eyes. Her face was red. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach. But she shook her head once. Don't give up for me.
"It's three on one," Homura said from the bank above. His voice was quiet. Almost apologetic. "You fought well. But it's done."
Jomae let Million's threads go.
The puppet settled into the sand, four arms folding, its grin aimed at the sky. Jomae put his hands flat on the ground in front of him.
"You win…" he said.
Goza's grin widened. He stepped back and yanked the chain free from Reaper's arm. The puppet's mechanism creaked as the tangled links pulled loose.
"Smart choice, kid." He looked at Sayo. "Let the big one go."
Sayo released the genjutsu. Dokuro's eyes cleared and the first thing out of his mouth was a gasp, then a string of words that tumbled over each other. "What happened? How long was I out? Did we lose? We lost, didn't we. I knew it. I knew this riverbed was a trap. I said it. I said the banks were too high. Nobody listens to me."
"Dokuro… Not now." Jomae said.
Dokuro stopped. He looked at the scroll in the sand. At his teammates on the ground. At the veteran team standing over them. His hands balled into fists.
"This is humiliating…" he said. His voice cracked on the last word.
Goza spun his kusarigama and slung it over his shoulder. He looked at the three puppet users, beaten, dusty, scattered across the riverbed with their puppets lying inert around them.
"A word of advice, losers," Goza said. "Those puppets are impressive. Really. Top-of-the-line stuff. But anyone who graduated from the academy knows a puppeteer's weakness." He tapped his own chest. "Aim for the puppeteer and the battle is over."
Nagi glared at him from the ground. "We know how puppeteering works. We don't need a lecture from someone who's failed this exam twice."
Goza sneered.
"Three times, actually." He turned to his teammates. "Let's move. Tower's northwest."
Team 4 climbed out of the riverbed and disappeared over the western bank. Goza first, Sayo second, Homura last. Homura looked back once, slightly apologetic.
Then they were gone.
Jomae sat in the sand and looked at Million. The puppet lay on its back, four arms spread, that carved grin pointing at the open sky. The same grin he'd looked at every day since he bought the design from the Brigade. The same grin that belonged to a puppet built by a girl who would have probably never fallen for a trap in a riverbed.
"Jomae." Nagi had gotten to her feet. She was clutching her stomach and her face was still red. "Don't. I know what you're thinking."
"We lost."
"We lost because they got us by surprise. Not because our puppets aren't good enough."
"We lost because we couldn't protect ourselves without the puppets. The second they got past the puppets, we were just useless."
Nagi didn't have an answer for that. Neither did Dokuro, who was picking up his scroll with shaking hands, sealing it back to his hip, his face flushed.
They gathered their things. Sealed their puppets. Checked for injuries. Nagi's stomach was bruised but nothing was broken. Dokuro had ringing in his ears that wouldn't clear for hours. Jomae had sand in places sand shouldn't be.
They climbed out of the riverbed and followed behind their attackers toward the tower.
"I still don't even know what the point of that was," Nagi said. "Did the exam lady say anything about attacking others improving your score or something?"
Dokuro shook his head. "She said performance would be evaluated. She didn't say fighting would help."
"I don't remember it being said either." Jomae spoke up.
"You think that three-time failure knows something we don't?" Nagi asked. "Like maybe the point of the second exam isn't just to get to the tower but there's also other stuff?"
"Maybe," Jomae said. "I can't see any other advantage to attacking people unless it helps somehow."
Dokuro was quiet for a moment. It was the longest silence they'd heard from him all day.
"He was right about one thing though," Dokuro said. "About hitting the puppeteer. He wasn't wrong about that."