The afternoon sun hung low over the western horizon as Yamanaka Yogi landed atop the weathered roof of an abandoned watchtower.
He remained motionless for several moments, allowing his gaze to slowly sweep across the settlement below.
Unlike Tarou's village, there was no illusion of a peaceful disappearance.
The streets were stained dark red.
Several homes had partially collapsed while deep slashes carved through the wooden walls surrounding the village square. Broken weapons and shattered pieces of armor lay scattered throughout the streets, buried beneath drifting sand. Judging from the state of the blood, the massacre had taken place only a few hours earlier.
Yogi's expression gradually became more solemn.
"This is the third village that has been destroyed and by the looks of it, it was all done in a single night."
He quietly disappeared from the rooftop before reappearing near the village entrance.
"…It's already close to noon, I will meet up with them back at the village in a bit."
He slowly walked deeper into the village, every sense focused entirely on his surroundings.
Not even scavenging animals had approached the corpses yet.
The deeper he travelled, the stronger the smell of fresh blood became.
Yogi eventually stopped near the center of the settlement.
His eyes swept across the streets one final time before his right hand quietly rested upon the kunai inside his pouch.
Something felt wrong.
Years of experience had sharpened his instincts to the point where they often reacted before his mind did, and every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to leave immediately. Just as he was about to retreat and continue investigating elsewhere, a faint scraping sound echoed across the desert. It was subtle enough that an ordinary shinobi might have mistaken it for the wind dragging sand across stone, yet Yogi immediately recognized the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal.
His eyes narrowed.
The sound wasn't coming from inside the village.
Without making the slightest noise, Yogi leapt onto the roof of the tallest building overlooking the outskirts of the settlement.
The moment his eyes reached the village square, his breathing nearly stopped.
Dozens of shinobi wearing Sunagakure forehead protectors lay scattered throughout the battlefield.
Some had been cut down where they stood.
Others were riddled with senbon.
Several bodies had been completely dismembered.
Blood covered almost every building surrounding the square.
Standing calmly in the middle of that carnage was a lone red-haired young man dressed in a simple brown vest.
Nearly a hundred puppets floated silently around him.
Some retained completely human appearances.
Others possessed blades, tails, shields and hidden mechanisms built directly into their wooden bodies.
Countless invisible chakra threads extended from the man's fingertips, weaving across the battlefield like an enormous spider's web that connected every puppet together.
Yogi instinctively held his breath.
He had encountered puppet users before.
He had even fought several during the Second and Third Great Ninja War.
None of them had controlled anything remotely approaching this number.
His gaze shifted toward one of the wounded Suna jōnin desperately crawling across the bloodstained sand.
The shinobi forced himself onto one knee before rapidly forming hand seals.
"Wind Release—"
A puppet reached him first.
Its blade flashed once.
The jutsu never materialized.
The wounded shinobi collapsed lifelessly onto the sand.
The red-haired man slowly approached the corpse before crouching beside it.
He quietly examined the body for several moments.
"…Barely Usable."
His voice remained completely devoid of emotion.
One of the nearby puppets stepped forward, effortlessly lifted the corpse onto its shoulder and stood back in the puppet formation.
Yogi's pupils contracted slightly.
His thoughts immediately drifted toward Tarou's village.
The poisoned well.
The missing civilians.
The smell of oil Yuna remembered.
Every clue suddenly connected into one horrifying conclusion.
The perpetrator behind these incidents was not a group of rogue ninja as they had previously believed. It was a single individual whose strength had most likely surpassed most of the shinobi Yogi had ever encountered.
Yogi slowly shifted one foot backward.
The mission had changed.
Rescuing the villagers was no longer possible.
His priority now was returning to Konoha with this information before anyone else encountered the man standing below.
Just as Yogi prepared to leave, the red-haired man suddenly stopped walking.
Although he never turned around, his voice drifted calmly across the ruined village.
"You've been watching for quite some time."
Yogi's body immediately tensed.
There had been no hesitation in that statement.
The man hadn't been guessing.
He had known Yogi was there.
The red-haired man slowly tilted his head upward, his expression remaining as indifferent as before.
"A Konoha shinobi…"
His fingers moved slightly.
One puppet silently detached itself from the massive formation before gliding toward the rooftops.
Yogi disappeared in a Body Flicker the instant the puppet began moving.
A deafening explosion erupted where he had been standing less than a heartbeat earlier, reducing the rooftop into splintered wood and stone.
Yogi never looked back.
The identity of the enemy no longer mattered.
Controlling over a hundred puppets, harvesting human corpses and effortlessly detecting a Konoha jōnin from that distance could only mean one thing.
This was an opponent far beyond Team Eight's ability to confront. Even for Yogi himself, remaining in that village for another moment would have been gambling with his life.
He repeatedly used the Body Flicker Jutsu, constantly changing direction in an attempt to widen the distance between himself and the village. Unfortunately, Sasori reacted almost instantly. Several puppets detached themselves from the formation and fired their wooden cable-like arms toward seemingly empty stretches of the desert rather than toward Yogi himself.
Despite being only a D-rank technique, the Body Flicker remained extremely practical even in battles between elite shinobi. However, it possessed one major flaw. If an opponent could accurately predict where the user would reappear by reading their movement between consecutive uses, even a simple trap could become fatal.
Yogi stopped in his tracks before completing the jutsu and turned around,
His eyes darted across the battlefield.
Every route that led away from the village had quietly become occupied.
The puppets weren't trying to kill him.
They were gradually surrounding him.
Yogi formed a series of hand seals, his gaze locking onto the red-haired man in the distance.
"Mind Body Switch Jutsu."
His chakra shot toward the Sasori, but amidst the one hundred puppets Sasori blocked Yogi's line of sight with multiple puppets.
Nothing happened.
The technique simply passed through it.
"…Of course."
He clicked his tongue, 'I hoped I would be able to catch him off guard with this jutsu.
The moment his attention shifted away from his surroundings, another puppet emerged directly behind him.
Steel slashed through the air.
Yogi barely dodged aside.
The blade grazed across his flak jacket before embedding itself into the wall behind him.
He immediately counterattacked, he unsheathed his short sword, channeled his chakra through it and drove it through the puppet's neck.
Instead of collapsing, the puppet's torso split open.
Hundreds of poisoned senbon erupted outward.
Yogi's pupils shrank.
He threw himself backward and used his short sword to block a lot of the needles. But a handful still managed to bury themselves into his sleeve and shoulder.
His arm instantly began feeling numb.
'Poison…'
He didn't even have time to remove them.
Three more puppets descended.
Yogi kicked one away before weaving between two others, using the narrow street to prevent himself from being completely surrounded.
The battlefield had become suffocating.
No matter where he moved, another puppet was already waiting. Having had enough of being heavily outnumbered, Yogi formed a hand sign and prepared to use the shadow clone jutsu to alleviate some of the pressure.
Then something caught his attention.
One particular puppet that looked unassuming raised its wooden head and looked him in the eyes.
Crimson eyes slowly opened beneath its wooden face, revealing three tomoe that rotated silently.
Yogi's breathing faltered.
'Impossible! A Sharingan?'
The puppet met his gaze.
For the briefest instant…
The ruined village disappeared.
He found himself standing in complete darkness.
A dozen puppet blades pierced straight through his body.
The pain felt was so real, even though he knew that it was an illusion.
He formed the tiger hand sign and immediately disrupted his chakra.
The illusion shattered almost instantly.
Less than a second had passed.
But a second…
Was enough.
His body reacted a fraction too late.
A curved blade sliced across the right side of his face.
Blood sprayed into the air.
Pain exploded through his skull.
Yogi staggered backward, instinctively covering his face.
Darkness swallowed half his vision.
His right eye…
Could no longer see.
'From the beginning of the battle he deliberately kept himself behind his puppet formation. Every time I tried to establish a direct line of sight, another puppet moved into my way. He already knew about my fighting style? A trap? But what would someone like him gain by targeting a genin team?'
After a moment of silence Yogi's eyes widened and his breathing grew heavier.
"Not bad."
Sasori's expression never changed.
"But it's too late."
His fingers moved slightly.
The Sharingan puppet quietly returned to formation as though it had merely completed one assigned task.
Yogi finally understood.
Every puppet possessed a different specialty.
Poison.
Speed.
Hidden weapons.
Now even visual genjutsu.
He wasn't fighting one opponent.
He was fighting dozens of elite shinobi at once.
'A puppet with a Sharingan and can use it effectively, this means he can somehow preserve kekkei genkai of his victims when he turns them into puppets. His most likely target is the most guarded kekkei genkai of Konoha: The Byakugan.
Hyori is a member of the main clan of the Hyuga, this means that she doesn't possess the Caged Bird Seal. If my guess is correct, then she is the true target. No matter what happens here… they must leave the Land of Wind immediately.'
His objective changed immediately, seeing that escape was not a possible choice anymore Yogi decided to buy time for his team to escape the Land of Wind.
Without hesitation, Yogi hurled a smoke bomb before vanishing into another Body Flicker.
Several puppets pursued him without pause.
He crossed rooftops, shattered through abandoned buildings and continuously changed directions. Throughout the pursuit, Sasori calmly maneuvered his puppets into position, gradually shrinking every possible avenue of escape. At the decisive moment, one puppet burst through the wall directly ahead while another descended from above and a third emerged from beneath the street itself.
The blades converged simultaneously.
Yogi twisted desperately.
Two attacks missed.
The third drove straight through his abdomen.
The blade erupted from his back.
His body froze.
Blood spilled across the sand beneath his feet.
The puppet slowly lifted him from the ground.
Yogi coughed violently.
His hands instinctively reached toward the blade lodged inside him.
"So this…"
His remaining eye slowly focused on the red-haired young man walking toward him.
"…is how it ends."
Sasori stopped dozens of meters away.
"Don't worry, your corpse won't go to waste."
His fingers moved one final time.
The puppet raised its second blade.
It descended toward Yogi's throat.
Yogi clenched his teeth and with his numb hand formed a final hand sign, 'Hopefully they will stay away after hearing the explosion.'
Before he could detonate every explosive tag attached to his body or the blade could reach his throat—
A streak of lightning flashed across the battlefield.
A kunai struck the puppet's wrist with explosive force.
The arm separated cleanly before spinning into the distance.
The puppet released Yogi.
He crashed heavily onto the bloodstained ground.
Both Yogi…
And Sasori…
Turned toward the source simultaneously.
A tall man with long white hair stood atop the ruined wall overlooking the village.
Red lines stretched beneath his eyes.
A massive scroll rested across his back.
The newcomer folded his arms confidently.
A loud laugh echoed across the ruined village.
"Hahaha!"
"Looks like I made it in time!"
He looked down at the battlefield with an irritated expression.
"From the north to the south and the east to the west, the one and only Toad sage of Mount of Myoboku— Jiraya the Gallant makes his appearance."
Sasori's gaze narrowed for the first time.
"This day just keeps on getting more and more interesting."