The Land of Dust looked different.
It wasn't like super green and lush now or anything. The desert was still the desert, cracked earth and pale sand stretching toward a horizon that shimmered in the heat. But there were signs. Patches of scrub that hadn't been there before, clinging to the edges of irrigation channels that someone had dug since the last time Karura walked these roads. A field of desert squash, young and stubby, growing in rows along the trade route. And cacti. Barrel cacti with orange spines lining the main road into Sajin, the descendants of the ones she'd planted in the market square.
They'd survived. They'd spread. Some of them were fruiting.
The capital itself had changed more than the land. The market was open. Stalls lined both sides of the main street, selling grain, dried meat, cloth, tools. People moved with their heads up instead of down. Children ran between the stalls, chasing each other, laughing. The palace was partially rebuilt, the west wing still scaffolded but the main structure standing, the throne room restored with new stone that was lighter than the old.
A woman at a fruit stall noticed them first. Her eyes went from the Sand headbands to Karura's face, then down to the barrel cacti growing in clay pots beside her stall. Her mouth opened.
"That's her," she whispered to the vendor beside her. "The one who planted the Hero's Cacti."
Karura's step faltered. "The what?"
The whisper spread faster than she could walk. Heads turned. Fingers pointed. A boy selling roasted seeds from a cart craned his neck to look. An old man sitting on a bench outside a tea house squinted at her, then nodded slowly, the kind of nod that carried recognition and weight behind it.
"Hero's Cacti?" Sayo murmured from behind her. "Captain, what are they talking about."
"I previously had a mission where I saved this place from being taken over by a bad guy who was helping Iwagakure. It looks like they named the cacti I planted… Hero's Cacti…" Karura said, her face heating.
"Geez, I'm jealous. When I was a genin, the only kind of missions I went on were boring escort missions and dealing with regular ole bandits." Sayo smirked.
Karura pulled her scarf higher and walked faster.
Soran met them at the palace gate.
He was taller. That was the first thing Karura noticed. The scrawny boy who'd sat on a throne with his feet dangling above the floor had grown into something closer that resembled royalty. His shoulders had widened. His jaw had sharpened. He wore a formal robe of deep blue with gold trim at the collar and sleeves, fitted properly. His hair was combed. His back was straight. Looks like he had a growth spurt in the time she was gone.
He saw Karura and his composure cracked.
"Karura-chan!" The formal tone lasted exactly one word before the boy underneath broke through. He straightened himself immediately, clearing his throat, squaring his shoulders. "I mean. Welcome to the Land of Dust, Karura-san. I trust your journey was uneventful."
"It was, Lord Soran." Karura bowed. "Thank you for requesting us."
"Of course. I wouldn't trust anyone else with..." He trailed off, taking a deep look at her. His cheeks colored slightly. He cleared his throat again. "With this request. It's an important diplomatic situation and I wanted the best. The Hero of the Land of Dust."
Karura blushed. "People in the market were calling the cacti that. Hero's Cacti. Did you start that?"
"No! It just happened. People remembered who planted them." He paused. "There's also a statue of you being built."
"What?! Why?! Can they stop it? I don't need a statue!" Karura shook her head rapidly.
"It's too late. I can't stop it now. Plus, the people wanted this. They wanted the person who changed the Land of Dust for the better to be known and celebrated." Soran didn't mention he was also a heavy supporter of this statue.
"That's so..." Karura couldn't say something mean about the way people felt about her actions. So, she just covered her face with her scarf and accepted it.
From behind Karura, Sayo leaned toward Torune. "They're cute." she murmured.
"Shush." Torune whispered back.
Soran's eyes moved to the rest of the squad. He nodded to Sayo and Torune. His gaze lingered on May, the fourth member, who stood at the rear with a large fan strapped across her back.
May was fifteen, lean, with sun-darkened skin and short brown hair that she kept out of her face with her headband worn as a bandana. She'd been a chunin for two years, had a respectable mission record of B and C-ranks, and specialized in tessenjutsu.
She was also deeply uncomfortable taking orders from a girl half her age.
She'd been at the Chunin Exams. She'd watched from the gallery as Karura showed her stuff. She knew what this girl was capable of. She respected the ability. That didn't make it less strange to call an eight-year-old "taicho."
"May, reporting for duty, Soran-sama." She bowed to Soran.
"Thank you all for coming," Soran said. "Please, come inside. We'll discuss the route and the timeline over dinner. The caravan departs at dawn."
He turned and walked toward the palace. Halfway through the gate, he glanced back at Karura. Then he faced forward again and kept walking, his ears red.
"He's definitely blushing." Sayo said.
Karura just smiled. Happy to see that her efforts with the Land of Dust have helped them for the better. She can be a positive influence even without killing. Perhaps she could do this for all the places in the Land of Wind eventually...
A woman appeared in the palace doorway as they entered. Dark blue hair, pulled back in a tight knot. A mole under her left eye. She wore a clean, well-fitted dress with a sash that marked her station, and she carried herself with dignity.
Hina.
She looked different too. Thicker in the waist and younger. Headmaid. The highest domestic authority in the palace. Soran had given her the position the week after he took the throne, and nobody had argued. She'd held the palace together and she'd earned it.
"Karura-chan." Hina's voice was warm. Her eyes were warmer. "Welcome back."
"Hina-san." Karura smiled. "You look great."
"I am well." She glanced at Soran's retreating back. Something knowing crossed her face. "He's been talking about your arrival for two weeks. He had the guest rooms prepared three times because the first two arrangements weren't good enough."
"Three times?"
"He wanted the flowers to be right." Hina's lips twitched. "I told him you wouldn't care about flowers. He didn't listen."
Karura giggled. "That's very kind of him."
"It is." Hina studied her for a moment. "You've grown."
"I hope so. I can't be the shortest person wherever I go forever."
"That's not what I meant." Hina touched her shoulder, briefly, gently. "The old doctor at the clinic, the one you left those herbs with. She trained two apprentices. They built a proper medical station near the east well. People don't die from simple infections anymore." She squeezed Karura's shoulder once and let go. "Thank you. For what you did. For what you're still doing. This country wouldn't exist without you."
"It would exist. It just would've been someone else's."
Hina smiled but internally she disagreed. Not just anyone would do what she did. And with the funds they had, they couldn't afford a mission for a shinobi that would've been strong enough to handle Burai and the stone ninjas.
Dinner was formal but friendly. Soran sat at the head of a long table in the restored dining hall, with Karura's squad on one side and his senior advisors on the other. The food was good, simple desert fare but plentiful. The conversation covered the route, the timeline, the political stakes.
The Land of Glass was a small nation southwest of the Land of Dust, known for its artisan glass-blowing and trade in luxury goods. The engagement was arranged between Soran and the Glass Lord's daughter to secure trade agreements and diplomatic ties. Standard political marriage. The ceremony would last three days, followed by a formal banquet, then the return journey, no actual marriage on account of their young ages.
"The caravan will include twenty household guards, twelve servants, four carts of gifts and ceremonial supplies, and my personal retinue," Soran explained. He was using his ruler voice, which was deeper than his real voice by about half an octave. "Hina-san will oversee the domestic staff during the journey."
"Twenty guards is light for a lord's escort." May pointed out her professional assessment.
"We can't afford more yet." Soran said. "The Land of Dust's military was gutted during Burai's takeover. What we have is what we've rebuilt. Most of them are former farmers who volunteered for guard training after the regime change."
"We'll take care of security." Karura guaranteed. She didn't specify how but nobody doubted her.
The caravan departed at dawn.
It was larger than Karura expected. Four camel-drawn carts loaded with lacquered boxes of gifts, bolts of fine cloth, ceremonial robes, and enough supplies to sustain forty people for three weeks. The twenty household guards marched in formation around the carts, proper armor and weapons that ranged from swords and spears.
Soran rode in a covered palanquin carried by four bearers, the curtains drawn back so he could see the road. Hina walked beside the palanquin, managing the servants properly.
Karura's squad took their positions. May on the left, fan at the ready. Torune on the right. Sayo at the rear. Karura walked ahead of the palanquin in Protector's guise, the transformation jutsu making the bulky puppet look exactly like her.
The Byakugan was active behind the technique. Several kilometers in every direction. Three hundred and fifty-nine degrees of unbroken vision. Every rock formation, every sand dune, every living creature within range mapped and visible in her mind. Birds. Lizards. Desert foxes. A caravan of merchants to the east, heading the opposite direction. Nothing hostile.
She maintained this for hours. The drain on her chakra was negligible. Her reserves made sustained Byakugan use feel like breathing. Although it was quite a change whenever she deactivated it. From being able to see everything to seeing much less. It still took some time to get used to.
The first day passed without incident. They covered good distance before the heat forced a halt, made camp in the shelter of a rock formation, and settled in for the night. The guards posted watches that Karura's Byakugan made redundant, but she let them maintain the rotations for experience. They probably needed it.
The second day was harder. The trade route curved south through a stretch of open desert that offered no shade and no cover. The guards sweated through their armor. The camels slowed. Hina distributed water rations.
Karura's Byakugan swept the landscape in constant rotation. Sand. Rock. Heat shimmer. More sand. A cluster of giant desert scorpions to the south, too far to be a threat. A dry riverbed running east to west, cutting across their path further ahead.
Then she saw something moving beneath the sand. Deep. Very deep. A massive signature, moving through the earth quickly. It was three hundred meters below the surface, traveling roughly parallel to the caravan's path, and it was big. Bigger than anything Karura had ever seen.
She watched it for minutes. It stayed deep. Stayed parallel. Didn't rise.
Then it turned.
The massive signature curved upward. Slowly at first. Then faster. Three hundred meters became two hundred. Two hundred became one hundred. The thing was rising toward the surface at an angle that would intersect with the caravan's position in approximately forty seconds.
"EVERYONE STOP!" Karura's voice cut across the caravan. "SQUAD, ON ME! NOW!"
Sayo was beside her in three seconds. Torune in four. May in five, fan already half-open.
"Something massive is coming up from below," Karura said. Her voice was calm despite her heart hammering. "Directly beneath us. Thirty seconds. It's huge."
"How huge?" Torune asked.
"Bigger than the palace."
May's eyes widened. "What is it?"
"I don't know. Everyone off the road! Guards, move the carts! Get the lord clear!"
The household guards reacted. Slow, confused, but they moved. Bearers lifted Soran's palanquin and ran. Cart drivers whipped the camels sideways. Servants scattered.
Twenty seconds.
The ground vibrated. A low rumble that Karura felt through her feet and up her spine. The sand around them began to shift, grains rolling downhill toward a point fifty meters ahead where the surface was starting to sink.
Ten seconds.
"MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!"
The earth split open.
Sand erupted in a column that reached toward the sky, a geyser of brown and gold that blotted out the sun. The sound was deafening, a grinding, roaring, tearing noise that shook the ground and sent shockwaves rippling outward. Carts toppled. Guards fell. People screamed.
Through the cascading sand, something rose.
A head. If you could call it a head. A blunt, armored mass of segmented chitin, wider than a house, rising from the earth on a body that kept coming and coming and coming. Segments. Dozens of them. Each one the size of a cart, plated in thick natural armor, connected by flexible joints that rippled as the creature moved. Smaller legs, hundreds of them, lined the underside of each segment, churning sand and stone as the worm breached the surface.
It rose thirty meters into the air before the body curved, the head turning, the massive eyeless face sweeping across the caravan like a lighthouse beam. Sand fell from its armor in sheets, raining across the road, burying everything beneath in a layer of brown.
A giant sand worm. The kind that lived deep beneath the desert and surfaced rarely. The kind that merchants told stories about and prayed they'd never see. People were on the ground. Guards crawling. Servants screaming. One of the carts was half-buried, the camels thrashing in their harness. Soran's palanquin had been dropped, the boy pulling himself from the wreckage, his ceremonial robes torn and covered in sand.
Hina was on her knees beside him, shielding his body with hers.
Karura stood at the head of her squad. The worm's body was still emerging from the hole, segment after segment pulling free of the earth, and the ground around the breach was collapsing inward, sand flowing toward the opening like water down a drain.
"Form up." Karura ordered. "Protect the caravan. Nobody dies today."
The worm's head turned toward them.