The training ground was a flat stretch of hard-packed sand south of the village walls, bordered on three sides by canyon rock and open to the sky on the fourth. Wooden posts stood in crooked rows where generations of ninjas had beaten them halfway into the earth. Scorch marks blackened the stone nearest Pakura's usual corner. The sand near Mai's posts was darker than the rest, stained with old blood from split knuckles she never bothered to let heal before going again.
Ebizo sat on a boulder at the edge of the field, arms folded, watching.
Karura stood at one end of the open stretch with Million's scroll in her hand. Mai stood at the other, wrapping her fists in fresh bandages, pulling the cloth tight with her teeth.
"You sure about this?" Karura called.
Mai spat out the tail end of the wrap and grinned. "I've been sure since you told me it was inspired by me. Hurry up!"
Karura summoned the puppet. Smoke burst outward and Million landed on the sand between them, heavy enough to leave prints. Four arms with bandages wrapped around each arm hung loose at its sides. That carved smiley face stared straight at Mai.
Mai looked at it. The smile. The stocky shoulders. The four arms.
Her grin stretched wider.
"It really does look like me." Mai felt.
It did not look like her at all.
Karura connected her threads. Ten lines of chakra fanned out from her fingertips to Million's joints. The puppet's head tilted. Its fingers curled. Its weight settled into a low stance, all four arms raised, fists forward.
"Ready?" Ebizo said from his boulder.
Both girls nodded.
"Begin."
Million and Mai broke toward each other at the same time.
They met in the center of the field and the sound was immediate. Wood against flesh, knuckle against knuckle, a rapid staccato of impacts that kicked dust into the air around them. Million threw a straight right. Mai caught it on her forearm and fired back with a hook that cracked against the puppet's left fist. The lower arms swung in from the sides. Mai answered both with her elbows, deflecting wood with bone, and drove her right fist forward again.
Blow after blow after blow. Neither giving ground. Million's four fists cycled in a mix of combinations, high, low, inside, outside, each one met by Mai's hands or feet or shoulders. Mai's knuckles split open against the composite wood on the fifth exchange. She didn't notice. She was too busy laughing.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! This is so awesome! I am so awesome!"
Her voice rang off the canyon walls. She was beaming, wild-eyed, teeth bared in a grin that had nothing to do with winning and everything to do with the fight itself. Every hit she took, she hit back harder. Every time Million pressed her, she pressed back.
Karura watched from behind her puppet, her fingers moving along. She was smiling too. Million's joints held. The composite wood absorbed Mai's strikes without cracking. The four-arm rotations cycled faster than she'd hoped, each fist recovering before the last one finished its swing.
Good. Better than good.
Time to see the rest.
Million's upper hands shot open and caught Mai's fists mid-swing. Fingers locked around her wrists like vises, holding her in place. Mai's eyes widened. She yanked, but the puppet's grip didn't budge.
The lower arms came in.
Two wooden fists drove straight for Mai's exposed stomach. She saw them coming and threw herself upward, both feet hanging in the sky. The lower fists cut through empty air as Mai sailed over the puppet's head, flipping once, twice, her body rotating as she reached the apex of her jump.
She grabbed Million's upper arms on the way over. Her plan was obvious. Use her momentum, twist, wrench the arms from their sockets before she hit the ground.
Before she could, Million's forearm housings cracked open.
The sound was like a dozen locks snapping at once. All four forearms split apart, and what came out of them filled the sky.
Arms. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Flexible segmented limbs pouring from every forearm like snakes from a nest, wooden segments clicking and rattling as they unfurled in every direction. They spread across the air in a wave, blocking out the sun above Mai, each one that opened and closed as it reached for her.
Mai's laughter exploded out of her.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
She was already moving. Still airborne, she twisted and drove her fist into the first arm that reached her. The wooden segments shattered on impact. A second arm whipped toward her legs. She kicked it aside. A third, a fourth, a fifth, all of them curling in from different angles, and Mai was a blur of fists and feet in the open air, punching, kicking, swatting away everything that came close.
She landed on top of the mass of arms. Her feet found ground on the writhing surface and she ran, sprinting along the connected limbs like a bridge, heading straight for Million's body beneath the tangle. Her eyes were locked on the puppet. Her fists were cocked.
Two arms wrapped around her ankles.
Her legs stopped. Her upper body kept going. The world tilted and the sky swapped places with the sand, and then the arms whipped her downward.
Mai hit the ground back-first. The impact cratered the sand beneath her, a shallow bowl of packed earth splitting outward in cracks. The air left her lungs in a single sharp grunt.
The arms didn't stop. They curved downward after her, dozens of them, and hammered into the crater one after another. The ground shook. Dust and sand erupted upward in a cloud that swallowed the training field.
"Enough!" Ebizo's voice cut through the noise.
Karura's fingers stilled. The arms froze mid-strike, hovering over the crater like a forest of frozen serpents. Then, one by one, they retracted. Clicking and folding back into their fuinjutsu seals, the forearm compartments sealing shut, until Million stood whole again. Stocky frame. Four arms. Smiley face.
Karura disconnected three of her threads and jogged forward. The dust cleared slowly.
Mai lay at the bottom of the crater. Eyes closed. Arms limp at her sides. Her wraps were shredded and her knuckles were raw. A bruise was already darkening along her ribs.
Karura knelt beside her. "Mai? Mai, are you okay?"
Ebizo appeared at the crater's edge, looking down. He studied Mai for a moment.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
Karura couldn't exactly explain what it felt like to have memories of fighting that didn't happen shove itself into her brain. While she could still vividly remember the spar she just had with Mai, she could also clearly remember nine other similar but different battles with her that certainly didn't happen. But the experience of those battles that didn't happen still etched itself into her. The ease of controlling Million, how to better utilize its many mechanisms, and dealing with its weak points. She'd probably be able to shut down Mai several times faster if they fought again.
Mai's eyes snapped open.
She sat up so fast Karura flinched backward. Her grin was back, bloody and wide and absolutely insane.
"Again! Let's go again, right now!"
Karura let out a breath and giggled. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine! That was amazing! Those arms, where were you hiding those?! I want a rematch, let's go!"
"No," Ebizo said.
Mai looked up at him. "Sensei, come on, I almost had it, if I just-"
"You didn't almost have anything." Ebizo dropped down into the crater and crouched beside her. His voice was stern. "You charged straight into a puppet you'd never fought before. When it revealed a new ability, you tried to power through it instead of retreating to assess. And when you found footing on the arms, you ran toward the puppet instead of disengaging or the puppeteer itself." He held up a finger for each point. "A puppet is not an opponent you overpower. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't flinch. It doesn't feel pain. You fight a puppet the same way you'd fight a weapon, by getting past it and going for the person holding it."
Mai opened her mouth.
"You went for the puppet," Ebizo repeated. "And the puppet is not alive. The girl standing thirty feet behind it is." He glanced back at Karura. "That's who you needed to reach."
Mai closed her mouth. She looked past Ebizo, past Million's still frame, to where Karura stood with her threads still faintly glowing at her fingertips.
"...Oh yeah." She rubbed the back of her head, embarrassed.
"Rest. Drink water. We'll discuss this more later."
Ebizo climbed out of the crater. Mai flopped back onto the sand with a groan that was half frustration, half exhaustion.
From the far side of the training ground, Pakura stepped forward.
She'd been leaning against the canyon wall with her arms folded the entire fight, watching without comment. Now she pushed off the rock and walked toward the open stretch of sand, her green hair catching the light, her eyes fixed on Karura.
"My turn."
Karura looked at her. Then at Million, standing idle in the sand. Then back at Pakura.
"You want to spar?"
"I want to fight you." Pakura's voice was flat. "Unless you're too tired."
She wasn't. Tenfold had been rather generous to also include fighting experience, and the fight with Mai had barely taxed her chakra. Controlling Million in a straight brawl was easy.
"Okay." Karura smiled. "Let's go."
They took positions on opposite ends of the field. Thirty feet of open sand between them. Ebizo returned to his boulder without being asked. Mai sat up in her crater to watch, chin propped on her fist.
"Begin," Ebizo said.
Pakura's hands moved immediately. Her fingers blurred through seals. Wind and fire, woven together, the air between her palms beginning to shimmer.
Karura didn't wait for her to finish.
Million's forearm housings cracked open. The arms poured out again, that same flood of segmented limbs spreading across the field. But this time they didn't swarm. They didn't chase. Every extending arm fanned wide and opened its palm, and the wrist launchers rotated to third position.
Hundreds of senbon fired at once.
The air filled with a wall of needles, each one trailing a faint glint of poison in the morning light. The volley covered the entire width of the field, no gaps, no blind spots, just a curtain of steel closing in on Pakura from every angle.
Pakura's eyes went wide. Her hands froze mid-seal.
She abandoned the jutsu and ran.
She broke left, hard, her sandals kicking up sand as the first wave of senbon buried themselves in the ground where she'd been standing. The arms tracked her. Continuous needles following her arc as she curved across the field.
She wasn't running away. She was running toward Karura.
Smart. The correct choice.
A lot more sensible than Mai. Karura internally giggled.
The senbon stopped. Million's arms retracted in a rush of clicking segments, the housings snapping shut, and the puppet threw itself forward to intercept. It landed between Pakura and Karura, four arms spread wide, smiley face turned toward the charging kunoichi.
Pakura's gaze flicked past the puppet. Past the four arms and the trailing bandages and that stupid grin. To Karura, standing fifteen feet behind it.
Karura was dancing.
Her body swayed as her fingers worked the threads. Hips shifting, feet tracing small patterns in the sand, shoulders rolling with each gesture. Her scarf flowed behind her like a ribbon in a performance. Every movement of her body translated into a movement of the puppet, her own movements and Million's combat woven into the same motion.
Pakura stared. For half a second, the sight of it froze her. An eight-year-old girl, dancing behind a four-armed puppet on a training ground, gently smiling like she was having the time of her life.
Half a second was all it lasted. Pakura's hands came together.
"Sorry about your new puppet!"
Three orbs materialized between her palms. Scorch Style. They drifted forward, lazy and slow, glowing that sickly orange-white that turned living things into husks. One aimed at Million. Two aimed at Karura.
Karura's eyes opened a little bit wider. She knew what those orbs did. She'd seen the bandits in the canyon. The cracked skin. The mummy-like corpses.
Her fingers moved. Million surged forward, and the loose bandages trailing from its arms whipped outward. The chakra-imbued bandages caught the first orb and wrapped around it, redirecting its path downward. It hit the sand and the ground beneath it dried instantly, a circle of bleached earth spreading outward from the impact point, but the lethality was spent. The second orb met the same fate, another bandage lashing out, catching it, slamming it into the dirt.
The third orb curved around Million entirely and sailed toward Karura herself. She couldn't just dodge it. Pakura could control them. The heat kissed the edge of her scarf as she was forced to summon one of her giant puppet arms. The arm created a chakra shield that blocked the fireball and hovered behind Karura's shoulder.
Pakura cursed under her breath. Her hands were already weaving again. Faster this time, no hesitation, cycling through signs Karura recognized.
Fire Style.
A torrent of flame roared from Pakura's mouth, wide enough to engulf both Karura and Million in a single sweep. Just raw fire blanketing the field.
Karura pulled Million back, body flickering away. The puppet retreated beside her and both of them moved, skirting the edge of the blast, the heat washing over the sand where they'd been standing a moment before. Glass crackled in the fire's wake.
Distance. That was the answer for fire and wind. Don't block, don't counter, just stay out of range and make her waste chakra.
Million's arms deployed again. Another volley of senbon, aimed at Pakura, forcing her to move, to dodge, to burn stamina instead of chakra. When Pakura wove signs, the bandages came out to deal with whatever orbs followed. When she switched to fire or wind, Karura and Million relocated, always just out of reach, always circling, always making Pakura chase.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Pakura's breathing grew heavier. Sweat ran down her temples. Her hand signs, which had started fast and sharp, were slowing. Not by much. But enough.
Karura still looked fresh. Her movements hadn't lost a step. Her threads were steady. Her breathing was calm. And she still had one of the two puppet arms sealed in the scroll on her hip. She hadn't even needed both of them.
Pakura stopped in the center of the field. Her chest heaved. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and the look on her face was something between fury and disbelief.
She couldn't close the distance. Every time she tried, senbon pushed her back. Every Scorch orb she threw got redirected into the dirt. Every fire jutsu hit empty sand. And the girl behind the puppet was still dancing, still smiling, still moving like this was a game she was winning without trying.
"I'm done." Pakura spat the words like they tasted rotten. Her hands dropped to her sides. "I give up."
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
Karura recalled Million's arms and walked across the field toward her, that warm smile on her face. "Pakura, that was really good! Your speed with hand signs is incredible, and those Scorch orbs are terrifying. If even one of those had landed on me I'd have been-"
Pakura smacked her hand away.
"Don't." Her voice was low. Her eyes burned, and not from Scorch Style. "Don't patronize me."
Karura pulled her hand back. Her smile faded. She didn't push.
"Sor-"
From the crater, Mai's voice carried across the field.
"HEY PAKURA! HOW'S IT FEEL DOWN HERE WITH THE REST OF US?!"
Pakura's jaw clenched. Her fists tightened until her knuckles went white.
"I can see the future!" Mai cupped her hands around her mouth. "Pakura of the Red Face! Pakura of the-"
Pakura flickered. One moment she was standing in front of Karura. The next, she was gone, the sand swirling where her feet had been. Body Flicker. She vanished over the canyon wall without a word.
Mai burst out laughing so hard she fell back into her crater.
"Oh man, oh man, I can't wait to see her tomorrow. Did you see her face?! That was worth getting smashed into the ground for!"
Karura stood in the middle of the field, looking at the spot where Pakura had been. She understood. Pakura was probably the strongest genin their age in the entire village. Scorch Style, jonin parents, years of training. She'd never lost to a peer. And she hadn't just lost, she'd been kept at arm's length the entire fight, unable to touch Karura, unable to even threaten her.
She needed to be alone. That was understandable. Karura would talk to her tomorrow, or whenever Pakura was ready.
"Karura."
She turned. Ebizo hadn't moved from his boulder, but he was looking at her differently now.
"That puppet," he said. "You designed and built it yourself?"
"Yes, Sensei."
"The extending arms. The launchers. The way you used the wrappings against the Scorch orbs. All of that was your own work?"
"Yes, Sensei."
Ebizo studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded, slow and deliberate.
"Keep it up. I may have to introduce you to my sister. To think I would have a budding prodigious puppeteer on my team."
"Lady Chiyo?!" Mai exclaimed on Karura's behalf
"I'd be honored Ebizo-sensei!" Karura's eyes lit up.
"I'll definitely mention you to her. When she gets back with me, I'll let you know." Ebizo ruffled her hair.
"Thank you so much Sensei!" Karura said.
"What about me?! What about me?!" Mai pointed at herself excitedly.
"You don't even use puppets, why would you even want to?" Ebizo was confused.
"Don't you think I could learn a lot from a powerful jonin like Lady Chiyo?" Mai questioned her sensei. "Aren't you always telling me that I should listen and learn more from my elders?" Mai's gaze bore into him.
"Tch." He clicked his tongue. "When I try to lecture and teach you things, you don't want to listen, but when it comes to my sister, your ears are wide open, huh?"
"Ahuh! Ahuh!" Mai nodded with shame.
"You annoying little…" Ebizo balled his fist before catching himself. "Dismissed! You are dismissed. Go about your day." He shooed them off.
"Bye Sensei!" Karura bowed as she walked off with Mai.
"Bye Sensei!" Mai giggled, happy at managing to rile up their sensei. "Next time I won't go down so easily, Puppet gal." Mai poked her shoulder.
"I wouldn't expect you to." Karura smiled.