The town of Sābaku-dai sat in the crook of a sandstone ridge where a natural spring fed a wide, shallow oasis. It was small by any real standard, maybe three hundred buildings clustered around the water, but for a trading post in the deep desert it might as well have been a city. Caravans from across the Land of Wind passed through here on their way south toward the border, and the town had grown thick on their coin. Market stalls lined every street within a stone's throw of the oasis. Inns, tea houses, and even some red district buildings competed for space along the main road. Camels were tied to posts on every corner, their drivers arguing over prices in the shade.
Keisuke's face split into a grin the moment the town's low walls came into view. "There she is! Sābaku-dai, prettiest stop between Sand and the border." He patted his camel's neck. "Almost home, old girl."
"You were born here?" Mai asked.
"Born and raised. Reiji too." Keisuke jerked his thumb at his partner, who was already standing in his stirrups to get a better look at the gate. "We buy fabric and ceramics from the southern traders and haul them up to the villages along the ridge. Used to be safe enough to do it alone, but..." He shrugged. "Times change."
They passed through the gate without inspection. No guards, just an old man sitting on a stool in the shade of the wall, smoking a pipe. He raised two fingers at Keisuke in greeting and didn't look twice at the shinobi escort.
The main road was packed. Traders hawked dried meats, leather goods, clay pottery, spices in open sacks that turned the air thick and sweet. A group of kids chased each other between the stalls with wooden kunai. Somewhere nearby, someone was grilling something on charcoal, and the smell of it made Karura's stomach twist with a hunger she'd been ignoring for hours.
Keisuke led them to a storehouse near the center of town, a squat clay building with a heavy wooden door. He and Reiji unloaded the camels, stacking crates and bolts of fabric inside while Ebizo supervised. It took the better part of an hour. When the last crate was inside and the door was locked, Keisuke turned to the group and clapped his hands together.
"That's it! All accounted for." He pulled a folded scroll from inside his vest and held it out to Ebizo. "Mission complete, Ebizo-san. Stamp's on the second page."
Ebizo took the scroll, checked the contents, and tucked it into his pouch. "Thank you, Keisuke-san. It was a smooth journey."
"Smooth?" Keisuke laughed. "We got ambushed by forty bandits!"
"And you arrived with all your merchandise and your life." Ebizo's eyes crinkled. "That's smooth enough, don't you think?" he joked.
Keisuke laughed again, louder, and shook Ebizo's hand with both of his. Then he turned to the three genin. "And you three. You saved our skins out there. If you're ever passing through again, meals are on me. I mean it."
"I'll remember that!" Mai pointed at him. "You better not forget!"
"Wouldn't dream of it." He gave them a wave and disappeared into the storehouse with Reiji, already talking about inventory.
Ebizo watched them go, then turned to his students. "We'll stay the night. It's too late to make the return trip before dark, and I'd rather not cross that canyon again without daylight." He paused, then added, "You have the rest of the afternoon to yourselves. Stay in town. Stay out of trouble. Meet me at the inn on the east road by sundown."
He pressed a few coins into each of their hands. Pocket money. Not much, but enough for food and maybe a small purchase.
"Yes, Sensei," Karura said.
"Yeah, yeah. I won't get in any trouble. What am I, a kid?" Mai was already looking down the main road, bouncing on her heels.
Pakura nodded gratefully as she already knew what was coming.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
Ebizo gave them one last look, "I mean it stay out of trouble." and then walked off toward the inn.
The three girls stood in the street. For a moment, none of them moved.
"He always has to nag us, it's so annoying." Mai said.
Pakura started walking.
"Hey! Where are you going?"
"To look around. Isn't that the point?"
Mai jogged after her. Karura followed the two.
Sābaku-dai was nothing like Sunagakure.
Suna was carved into rock, built deep inside a canyon with walls so high you could go entire days without seeing the open sky. Everything there was stone and clay and wind-worn edges, and the streets were narrow because the village had grown inward over generations, filling every gap between the cliffs like water settling into cracks.
This town breathed. The streets were wide and flat, laid out in a loose grid around the oasis. The buildings were low, only one or two stories, with flat roofs where laundry dried in the sun. There was space here. You could see the horizon in three directions just by standing on your toes.
"It's so open," Karura said, mostly to herself.
"It's small," Pakura corrected.
"It smells good though." Mai had her nose in the air, following some invisible trail through the market. She stopped in front of a stall where an old woman was frying dough in a pan of oil, dusting the finished pieces with sugar and crushed spice. "What are those?"
"Sand puffs," the woman said. "Three for five ryo."
Mai already had her coins out. She bought six and stuffed two in her mouth at once, cheeks bulging. "These are incredible," she said, or tried to say. Most of it was lost to chewing.
"You're disgusting." Pakura looked away.
"You want one?"
"No."
Mai held one out anyway. Pakura stared at it. Then she took it, broke it in half, and ate one piece while looking pointedly at something else. Mai grinned with her mouth full and offered one to Karura, who took it gratefully. Nine more appeared in her invisible box as the notification appeared again. It seems like no gifts are safe from Tenfold.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
It was good. Sweet and warm and nothing like the plain rice and dried fish they'd been eating on the road. Karura ate it slowly, letting the sugar dissolve on her tongue while they walked.
The market sprawled. Stalls selling leather sandals and belts. A man sharpening knives on a foot-pedaled whetstone, sparks arcing onto the packed earth. A woman weaving baskets from dried palm fronds, her fingers moving so fast they blurred. A spice merchant with dozens of clay jars arranged in neat rows, each one a different shade of red or brown or yellow.
"Look at that." Mai had stopped again. She was staring at a stall where a heavyset man was selling wooden training posts, practice kunai, and padded hand wraps. "Real equipment! I didn't think they'd have stuff like this here."
She picked up a set of hand wraps and turned them over. Good leather, tight stitching, padded across the knuckles with something dense. She checked the price tag and her face fell.
"Eighty ryo? For wraps?"
"Quality costs," the vendor said without looking up from his newspaper.
Mai counted her remaining coins. Put the wraps down. Counted again. Put her hands in her pockets.
"Whatever. Mine work fine." She walked away a little too fast.
They drifted through the market in a loose group, Mai out front with Pakura a few steps behind and Karura in the middle.
"Do you think the bandits had families?" Karura asked.
Mai stopped walking. Pakura didn't.
"Who cares?" Mai said.
"They were trying to kill us." Pakura's voice came from ahead. She hadn't turned around.
"I know. I just..." Karura looked at the market, at the people shopping and haggling and carrying children on their shoulders. "Some of them looked young. Not much older than some kids in their final year at the academy."
"So?"
"I don't know. I'm just thinking about it."
Mai was quiet for a few seconds. Then she cracked her knuckles. "If you're gonna do bad stuff, you should be prepared for bad stuff to happen to you."
Pakura said nothing.
They kept walking.
The oasis was wide enough that it took several minutes to walk along its shore. The water was clear and green, fed by a spring somewhere beneath the rocks. Palm trees grew along the banks, their fronds casting long shadows across the surface. A few children splashed in the shallows. An old man sat on a rock with a fishing line in the water, asleep.
Mai kicked off her sandals and waded in up to her knees. "Oh, that's nice. When's the last time you stood in water that wasn't in a bucket?"
"Get out of there," Pakura said.
"Why? Sensei said enjoy ourselves."
"He said stay out of trouble."
"Standing in water isn't trouble." Mai kicked a splash in Pakura's general direction. It fell short by a few feet. "Come on. Live a little."
"I'm fine."
Karura sat on the bank and pulled her knees up. The sand here was different from Suna's, coarser and darker, mixed with small round stones worn smooth by the water. She picked one up and turned it between her fingers.
"Mai," she said. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Why can't you use ninjutsu or genjutsu?"
Mai's back stiffened. She didn't turn around. For a long moment the only sound was the water lapping against her shins.
"Born that way," she said. "I can make chakra fine, but I can't convert it into anything. No jutsus or genjutsu. Nothing." She responded.
"That's why you hit so hard," Karura said.
Mai turned around. "What?"
"All that chakra you make, but you can't mold it into jutsu. So it just... builds up. And it has to go somewhere. So it goes into your body. Your muscles, your bones. Everything physical."
Mai blinked. Then she looked at her own hands, opening and closing her fists slowly, like she was seeing them for the first time.
"Nobody ever explained it like that before," she said.
"It makes sense to me that way."
"Dork."
"Yea, I was the top student in my class." Karura smiled.
Mai grinned.
Pakura had sat down on the bank without either of them noticing. She had her arms around her knees, watching the water.
"What about you?" Mai asked her.
"What about me?"
"Come on. Karura just asked me a personal question and I answered. Your turn."
"That's not how..." Pakura was so exasperated she couldn't finish her sentence.
"It is now. What's your deal? Where'd you learn all those jutsu? You were throwing fire and wind like a jonin out there."
Pakura proudly smiled. "My parents are jonin." her nose rose.
"My mom mastered wind and fire. She started training me when I was four because she said if you wait until the academy to teach a child how to survive, you've already waited too long." Pakura pulled at a thread on her sleeve. "The Scorch Style is mine. She didn't have it. Nobody in my family had it. It just... appeared."
"The mummy thing," Mai said.
"The mummy thing." Pakura's voice was flat. "First time it happened, I was six. I was trying to combine a fire and wind jutsu my mother taught me, and instead of two separate techniques, they fused. A stray cat was sitting on the training post I was aiming at." She paused. "It died."
Karura felt bad for the poor kitty.
"Did you give it a burial?" Karura asked.
Pakura looked at her as if she was an idiot.
"Sure..." She lied with a straight face. She stood up, brushed the sand off her pants, and started walking back toward the market. "I'm hungry. Are we eating or not?"
Mai splashed out of the water, grabbed her sandals, and jogged after her. "Now you're talking! I saw a place that was selling grilled lizard on sticks, we got to try it."
"That's disgusting. I'm not eating a nasty slimy lizard."
"You haven't even tried it yet!"
Karura followed them, smiling. "We could at least give it a look?"
They found a food stall near the eastern edge of the market that served grilled meats, flatbread, and a thick bean stew that came in clay bowls you could eat from while walking. Mai ordered two of everything. Pakura ordered two things and ate them in small, nibbling bites. The lizard being bitten once and considered acceptable enough to continue nibbling on. Karura got the stew, a piece of flatbread, and a grilled lizard and sat on a low wall to eat.
"This is way better than field rations," Mai said through a mouthful of something on a stick. "I hope every mission ends in a town?"
"Most missions don't involve escorting merchants to trade hubs." Pakura ate a piece of flatbread, tearing it into strips.
"Then I want more escort missions."
"Ninjas don't choose their missions."
"Watch me."
Karura ate her stew and listened to them bicker. When she finished eating, she stood up. "I'm going to look around the market a bit more. I'll meet you both back here?"
"Yeah, sure." Mai waved her off. "Bring me something good."
"Don't-" Pakura then looked at Karura. "Nevermind." She figured someone like Karura wouldn't get involved in any trouble.
Karura left them and wound her way back through the market stalls.
She had a plan. A small one.
Ebizo had given each of them ten ryo as pocket money. Her kekkei genkai gave her 100 ryo. She'd spent some on that food.
She stopped at a stall selling small cacti in clay pots. Dozens of them, arranged in rows, each one a different variety. Some flowering, some spiny, some round and green with white tufts.
"How much for one?" she asked, pointing at a small barrel cactus with bright orange spines.
"Two ryo each."
Karura put two ryo on the counter.
The vendor took the coins, wrapped the little pot in a strip of cloth, and set it in front of her.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
Nine more pots appeared in her invisible box. Identical. Same clay. Same soil. Same little barrel cactus with orange spines. Nine of them in a neat stack where there had been none.
"Well here it is, take it."
"Thank you, sir." Karura gathered the pot carefully into her hand. Ten cacti for two ryo. She turned away from the stall and walked three streets before she ducked into an alley and let herself breathe.
Ten for one.
It worked on purchases. The money went to the vendor, so it wasn't counterfeit. The goods just... multiplied. As though the world itself adjusted to give her ten times the return.
Her mind raced.
Two ryo for ten cacti was nothing. But ten sets of puppet materials for the price of one? Ten concoctions of poisons? Ten sets of ninja tools? If the skill worked on everything she bought, then the cost of building a real puppet just dropped to almost nothing.
She pressed her back against the alley wall and stared at the little pot cradled in her hand. Orange spines, green flesh, packed in dark soil. Something warm was building in her chest. She carried it with her as she walked back to find the others.
Mai and Pakura were exactly where she'd left them, sitting on the low wall. Mai was leaning back on her hands, legs swinging. Pakura sat straight with her arms crossed. They weren't talking, but the silence between them didn't look hostile. It looked comfortable. Like they'd run out of things to argue about and discovered that sitting together without words was acceptable too.
"I'm back." Karura held up the cactus pot. "I found a plant stall."
"You spent your spending money on a plant?" Mai looked at her like she'd grown a second head.
"I like cacti."
"Of course you do, loser."
"It's a barrel cactus," Karura said, holding it out so they could see. "They bloom once a year. Orange flowers."
"Thrilling." Pakura barely glanced at it.
"Do you two want to see the rest of the market? There was a section near the oasis I didn't get to yet."
Mai hopped off the wall. "Lead the way, cactus girl."
"Don't call me cactus girl."
"Puppet cactus girl?"
"That's even worse."
They walked three abreast, shoulder to shoulder, this time. Weaving through the evening crowd as the sun dipped behind the ridge and the market stalls started lighting their lanterns. The air cooled and the smells changed, grilled meat giving way to the sweeter scent of dessert vendors starting their evening batches. Children ran between the stalls with sparklers, trailing light behind them.
Mai stopped at a stall selling kunai displayed on a cloth. She picked one up and tested the balance, flipping it end over end between her fingers. The vendor watched her nervously.
"Not bad." She put it down. "The quality is just as good as the ones back home.."
"You know kunai?" Karura asked.
"I know everything that hits things." Mai shrugged. "Kunai, shuriken, knives, clubs, rocks. If I can hold it and it does damage, I've practiced with it." She cracked her neck. "When you can't make wind or want to use puppets, you learn to use whatever's in reach."
Pakura was looking at her. Not with the usual disdain. Something else. Karura couldn't quite name it.
"What?" Mai caught the look.
"Nothing." Pakura turned away. "You're just not as dumb as I thought."
"If that's your idea of a compliment, I should punch you in the mouth." Mai glared at her.
"It was simply an observation."
"Next time keep your observations to yourself." Mai balled her fist.
"Just because you asked, I won't."
"You really want to go, you prissy midget?!"
Pakura walked ahead, not even bothering to entertain such drivel.
Karura hugged her cactus and followed, planning to intervene if they really decided to come to blows.
They found Ebizo at the inn as the last light faded from the sky. He was sitting at a low table in the common room with a cup of tea, reading the mission scroll. He looked up when they came in.
"Any trouble?"
"No, Sensei," Karura said.
"She bought a cactus," Mai reported.
"A fine purchase." Ebizo didn't look up from the scroll. "We leave at first light. Your rooms are upstairs, second and third doors on the left. Eat something from the kitchen if you're hungry, then get some sleep."
"Yes, Sensei."
The three of them headed for the stairs. Mai was already yawning, the day's fight finally catching up to her. Pakura climbed the steps quietly, one hand on the railing.
Karura stopped at the bottom of the staircase. "Sensei?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you for today. For letting us explore."
Ebizo looked at her over his tea. "You're children. You should have some time to be children." He took a sip. "That won't always be possible in this line of work. Take it when you can."
She nodded and went upstairs.
The room was small. Two bedrolls on the floor, a window with wooden shutters, and a clay lamp on a shelf. Mai was already in one bedroll, boots off, feet up on the wall. Pakura had taken the other and was lying on her back with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
Karura looked between them. Two bedrolls. Three people.
"I'll sleep by the window," she said, pulling a blanket from the shelf and folding it into a pad on the floor.
"You sure?" Mai lifted her head.
"I like the breeze." She lied.
She set her cactus on the windowsill where it could catch the morning sun, then lay down on the folded blanket. The shutters were cracked open, and a thin line of moonlight fell across the floor between the three of them.
"Hey," Mai said in the dark. "Today was pretty fun."
Nobody answered. But the silence that followed wasn't bad.