The academy bell rang at three.
Karura was already there, leaning against the low clay wall across the street, her yellow scarf catching the afternoon breeze. She'd arrived early. She'd spent the last twenty minutes watching the building and listening to the muffled sounds of children reciting something in unison through the open windows.
The academy was smaller than she remembered. She'd graduated less than a year ago, but the building felt like it belonged to a different life. The same sandstone walls. The same wooden doors with the Suna emblem carved into the lintel. The same training yard behind the building where she'd first learned to throw a kunai.
The doors opened and children poured out like sand from a cracked jar. Dozens of them, ages five to twelve, clutching bags and scrolls and blunted practice weapons. They scattered in every direction, some running, some walking in clusters, some immediately starting fights with each other in the street because they couldn't wait until they got to the training grounds.
Karura scanned them with the Byakugan, hidden behind her transformation, until she found a familiar chakra signature bouncing down the front steps three at a time.
Yashamaru hit the street at a full sprint. His sandy-blond hair was a mess, his bag was half-open with scrolls threatening to fall out, and he was looking in the wrong direction entirely.
"Yasha."
He whipped around. Saw her. His face lit up like a signal flare.
"NEE-CHAN!"
He crossed the street in four seconds, nearly tripping over an older student who swore at him, and slammed into Karura's midsection hard enough to push her back a step. His arms locked around her waist.
"You came! You actually came!"
"I promised, didn't I?"
"You PROMISE promised!" He looked up at her, violet eyes enormous. "Where are we training? Can we go now? I've been waiting ALL DAY! Sensei kept talking about chakra control and I already know chakra control because he never stops talking about it. Its SO BORING, nee-chan."
"Chakra control is important. You should be listening to him."
"I DO listen. I just already know it." He grabbed her hand and started pulling her down the street. "Come on come on come on!"
Karura let herself be dragged. She caught a few looks from other parents and older siblings picking up their children. An eight-year-old wearing a Suna headband, being hauled along by a six-year-old who couldn't contain himself. She smiled at the ones who stared.
They went to the training ground south of the village walls. The same flat stretch of hard-packed sand like most training grounds, bordered by canyon rock on three sides. The wooden posts stood in their crooked rows, battered and splintered from years of abuse.
Yashamaru dropped his bag against the wall and bounced on his feet. "Okay! I'm ready! What are we doing? Are you going to teach me a jutsu? Can I see your puppets? Can I fight Million?"
"You're not ready for the puppets yet."
"Aww."
"Today it's just you and me." Karura walked to the center of the training ground and turned to face him. She rolled her shoulders, loosened her stance, and settled her weight onto her back foot. Her arms hung loose at her sides. "Come at me."
Yashamaru's eyes went wide. "For real?"
"For real."
He launched himself at her.
There was no form to it. No structure. He ran straight at her with his fists up and his chin exposed, his feet slapping the packed sand. He threw a punch aimed at her stomach with everything his six-year-old body could produce.
Karura's hips turned. Her body swayed left and the punch sailed past her ribs. Her back foot slid and she spun away from him, her scarf trailing behind her, her weight flowing from one foot to the other in a half-circle that left her facing his back.
She tapped him on the shoulder with two fingers.
"Dead," she said.
Yashamaru spun around. "No fair! You moved!"
"I didn't say I was going to stand still for you." She giggled.
He charged again. Another straight punch, thrown harder this time, his teeth gritted with the effort. Karura swayed back. Her spine bent just enough for his fist to pass over her chest. She stepped around him, her feet tracing a pattern in the sand that looked more like dancing, and tapped the back of his head.
"Dead again."
"Stop doing that!"
"Stop running in a straight line."
He tried a kick. It was better than the punches, actually. His leg came up with decent height and his hip turned into it, which meant someone at the academy was teaching him the basics. But his balance was wrong. He leaned too far back and the kick lost its power before it reached her.
Karura caught his ankle with one hand, gently, and held it.
Yashamaru hopped on one foot, arms windmilling. "Let go!"
"If I was an enemy, what would you do right now?"
"I'd... punch you?"
"You'd fall over."
She let go. He stumbled but caught himself. His face was red and his breathing was heavy and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He looked frustrated.
Karura knelt in front of him.
"Yasha. Look at my feet."
He looked down. Her sandals were barely touching the sand. Her weight was centered, balanced, ready to shift in any direction.
"When you throw a punch, your feet stop. You plant yourself, you swing, and then you have to start moving again. That's a problem. A pause where you're standing still and your enemy isn't." She stood and demonstrated. Her feet moved in a slow rhythm, a rocking step that shifted her weight from side to side without ever stopping. "Don't plant. Don't pause. Keep your feet moving. Always."
"Like dancing?"
"Exactly like dancing."
She showed him. Slowly. The basic footwork pattern she'd taught herself in her bedroom, the one that had evolved into the current dancing, kick-heavy fighting style she used in combat. She stripped it down to its simplest form. Step, shift, step, shift. Weight on the ball of the foot, never the heel. Hips loose. Shoulders relaxed. Everything flowing.
Yashamaru watched her feet with intense concentration. Then he tried.
He was terrible at it. His steps were too big. His weight kept settling onto his heels. He tripped over his own feet twice in the first minute and ate sand once. But he got back up every time, wiped his face, and tried again.
"Smaller steps," Karura said. "You're not trying to go anywhere. You're trying to never be where someone expects you to be."
He adjusted. Still clumsy. Still off-rhythm. But his feet were moving, and they didn't stop.
"Good. Now throw a punch without stopping your feet."
He threw one. It was weak and off-balance and would have missed anything that wasn't standing perfectly still.
"Again."
He threw another. Slightly better. His feet stuttered but they kept moving.
"Again."
Again. And again. And again. For an hour, Karura walked him through the basics. Footwork. Weight transfer. How to throw a kick without losing your balance. How to move after the kick instead of freezing. She didn't correct him harshly. She showed him, let him try, showed him again when he got it wrong, and praised him when he got it right.
He got it right more often than she expected. He wasn't particularly talented, she didn't think, but Karura thought it was because he listened. He watched her feet and copied them with the single-minded focus of a child who wanted nothing more in the world than to be like his ninja big sister.
By the end of the hour, he was drenched in sweat and his legs were shaking and he could barely stand, but his feet were moving in something that almost resembled a rhythm.
Karura caught him when he finally wobbled and sat him down against the canyon wall.
"You did great, Yasha." She smiled at him.
"I was..." He panted. "I was terrible."
"You were terrible. But we all start off terribly. Usually…" She rubbed the back of her head. She was an exception, not the standard.
He laughed. A tired, breathless, six-year-old laugh. "Nee-chan, that doesn't make sense."
"It will."
She sat beside him and handed him a water flask from her pack. He drank half of it in one go.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold teaching results!]
Karura glanced at the notification. That was a new one...
Tenfold teaching. Every lesson she gave, every correction, every demonstration. Yashamaru had absorbed ten times what he normally would have from a single hour of training. It wasn't him becoming ten times stronger or anything. But the fighting style, all of it had settled into his body and mind with a depth that would normally take days or weeks of repetition.
He wouldn't notice today. Maybe not tomorrow either. But the next time he stepped onto the academy training ground and moved his feet, he'd feel it. Something that stuck a little deeper. Clicked a little faster. His instructors would notice too, eventually. A student who retained things unnaturally well after training with his sister.
She looked at Yashamaru, slumped against the wall with his eyes half-closed, his cheeks flushed, his sandals scuffed and dusty. A six-year-old who'd just had the training session of his life and didn't even know it.
She could teach him whenever she had free time after a mission. And every training session, he'd absorb ten times what he should.
The thought settled into her quietly.
"Nee-chan."
"Hmm?"
"Can we do this again tomorrow?"
"We'll see."
"That means yes, right?"
"It means we'll see."
He grinned. "It means yes."
She ruffled his hair and didn't argue.
…
The Scorpion's Table was the kind of restaurant that had been in Sunagakure longer than most of the buildings around it.
It sat on the corner of the main road and the market street, a two-story clay building with a wide open terrace on the second floor that looked out over the canyon walls. The ground floor was a kitchen and bar. The terrace was where people ate, sitting on cushions around low wooden tables. Above was a stretched canvas that filtered the sun into something bearable. The smell hit you before you saw the menu: charcoal smoke, roasted lamb, cumin, the tang of pickled vegetables, and underneath it all, the warm flatbread baking in the clay ovens that the restaurant had used since its founding.
It was where people went to celebrate after something good. Graduation, birthdays, celebrations, and more. The prices weren't cheap, but the portions were hearty and the food was the best in the village. Everyone in Suna knew the Scorpion's Table. If you hadn't eaten there, you hadn't really eaten.
Mai had claimed a table on the terrace before Karura and Pakura arrived. She was sitting cross-legged on her cushion, bouncing with barely contained excitement, a menu in each hand.
"Over here!" She waved them up the stairs. "I already got us the best table! You can see the whole village from up here!"
Pakura climbed the stairs with reluctance. She sat down on the cushion furthest from Mai and folded her arms.
"I'm only here because Karura asked nicely."
"You're here because you love us," Mai said.
"I despise you."
"Pakura-chan, let's stay civil." Karura requested, sitting between them. She picked up a menu and opened it. "This place is nice. Have you been here before, Mai?"
"Twice! My dad brought me here after I graduated from the academy. And then again when I beat Riku from the year above me in a spar." She slammed her palm on the table. "The lamb skewers here are incredible. And the flatbread. And the spiced rice. And the grilled scorpion tails."
"Grilled scorpion tails?" Pakura's nose wrinkled.
"It's a desert delicacy! Don't be a prude!"
A waiter approached the table. He was an older man with a lined face and an apron that had seen better decades. He looked at the three girls, clearly young, clearly shinobi based on the headbands, and pulled out a pad of paper.
"What can I get you three?"
"I'll have the lamb skewers, the spiced rice, the grilled flatbread, the pickled vegetable plate, and a water," Mai said without looking at the menu.
The waiter wrote it down and turned to Pakura.
"Grilled chicken. Rice. Water."
"And for you?" He looked at Karura.
Karura studied the menu. Then she looked up at the waiter and smiled politely.
"One of everything, please."
The waiter's pencil stopped. He looked at her. Then at the menu. Then back at her.
"One of... everything?"
"Everything on the menu. One of each."
Mai's head turned slowly. Pakura's eyes narrowed.
The waiter glanced at the two-page menu in Karura's hands. Lamb skewers, grilled scorpion tails, roasted goat, spiced rice in three varieties, flatbread with garlic butter, flatbread with honey, flatbread plain, pickled vegetable plate, desert melon soup, fire-roasted peppers stuffed with ground meat, charcoal-grilled quail, spiced lentil stew, date cakes, honeyed almonds, cactus fruit pudding, and about fifteen other items she hadn't finished reading.
"Miss, that's... that's thirty-seven dishes."
"Is that a problem?"
"It's... no, it's not a problem, but that's enough food for a..."
Karura placed a stack of ryo on the table. More than enough to cover it.
The waiter looked at the money. Looked at the eight-year-old girl sitting politely with her hands in her lap. Picked up the money.
"Thirty-seven dishes. Coming right up."
He left. His pace was noticeably quicker than when he'd arrived.
Mai stared at Karura. Her eyes were burning. Her grin was spreading like a crack in a dam.
"Karura."
"Hmm?"
"Did you just order one of everything?"
"I did."
"You realize what this means, right?"
"I'm getting one of everything?"
"THIS IS A CHALLENGE." Mai slammed both palms on the table. She whipped around toward the stairs. "WAITER! COME BACK! I WANT ONE OF EVERYTHING TOO!"
Pakura's head dropped into her hands. "Mai. You can't eat thirty-seven dishes."
"WATCH ME!"
"You'll die."
"I'LL DIE A WINNER!"
The waiter reappeared at the top of the stairs with an expression that suggested he was reconsidering his career. Mai slapped another stack of bills on the table and jabbed her finger at the menu.
"One of everything. Same as her. I'm not losing."
"Losing what, exactly?"
"Just bring the food, mister!"
He took the money and left again. Faster this time.
Pakura turned to Karura with the flat, unblinking stare of someone who didn't want to be seen next to two people.
"Why."
"I was just hungry." Karura's expression was innocent. Perfectly, flawlessly innocent. The face of a girl who had absolutely not done this on purpose.
"You were 'just hungry' for thirty-seven dishes."
"The menu looked good. I couldn't decide."
"So you ordered all of it."
"It seemed easiest."
Pakura closed her eyes. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. It didn't help.
The food arrived in waves.
First came the flatbreads, three kinds, stacked on clay plates with little bowls of garlic butter and honey. Then the skewers, lamb and chicken and scorpion tail, lined up on a long wooden board that barely fit on the table. Then the rice, three varieties, in deep clay bowls. Then the soup. Then the stew. Then the quail. Then the stuffed peppers. Then more things, plate after plate after plate, until the table was covered and the waiter started putting dishes on the floor beside them.
Mai attacked the food like it owed her money.
She started with the lamb skewers, ripping meat off the sticks with her teeth, barely chewing before swallowing and reaching for the next one. Her cheeks bulged. Grease ran down her chin. She was grinning the entire time, even while chewing, which should have been impossible but Mai had always been talented in ways that defied explanation.
Karura stored most of the foods into a storage scroll as she ate only one meal. The rest of it being tenfolded into her divine space.
By the tenth dish, Mai's pace had slowed. By the fifteenth, she was breathing hard between bites. By the twentieth, she was leaning back on her cushion with her hand on her stomach, staring at the remaining food with the look of a warrior facing an enemy she wasn't sure she could beat.
"Stuffed?" Karura asked, taking a calm bite of the cactus fruit pudding.
"Never." Mai grabbed a stuffed pepper and shoved it in her mouth. Her eyes watered. "I've never... lost... an eating contest... in my LIFE."
"There is no contest," Pakura said. She'd finished her chicken and rice twenty minutes ago and had been watching the spectacle with absolute disgust. "You made it up."
"She ordered everything first! That's a declaration of war!"
"It's a dinner order."
"Same thing!"
Karura sipped her water and smiled.
Mai pushed through twenty-six dishes before her body betrayed her. She slumped sideways on her cushion, her stomach visibly distended, her face a shade of green.
"I... can't..." She groaned. "My stomach... is going to explode..."
"You ate twenty-six full dishes," Pakura said. "Your stomach should explode. Maybe I can get a new teammate who isn't a disgusting pig."
"How... are you still eating..." Mai pointed weakly at Karura, who was calmly working through a plate of honeyed almonds with a cup of tea.
"I pace myself."
"That's... not... fair..."
Karura smiled and ate another almond.
Pakura watched Karura. Her eyes moved from the plate of almonds to the table, where most of Karura's thirty-seven dishes had been "eaten," the plates clean and empty, scraped bare. Then she looked at Karura's stomach, which was completely flat. Then at the slight bulge in the sash around Karura's waist where something cylindrical was tucked.
"Karura."
"Hmm?"
"You didn't eat all of that."
"I ate plenty."
"You're storing the rest."
Karura blinked at her. Then she smiled as if she'd been caught but didn't particularly mind.
"Some of it. I want to bring food back for my parents and Yasha. My dad would love the flatbread with honey, and my mom has been wanting to try the spiced lentil stew. And Yasha will eat anything, so..."
It was a lie. A nice, warm, perfectly reasonable lie wrapped in the image of a thoughtful daughter bringing food home for her family. The kind of lie that would make anyone feel bad for questioning it.
Pakura looked at her for a long moment. Her eyes were sharp, always sharp, but what she was searching for and what Karura was showing her were two different things, and the gap between them was filled with a story that made too much sense to doubt.
"That's... actually disgustingly sweet," Pakura said. Grudgingly.
"Right? She's the best!" Mai groaned from her cushion. "Even when she's... destroying me... she's thinking about... her family..."
"I wasn't trying to destroy you, Mai."
"You destroyed me."
"You destroyed yourself."
"Because…of…you..."
A nice little silence settled over the table. The evening breeze moved through the terrace, carrying the sounds of the village below. Merchants closing their stalls. Children being called inside. The low murmur of conversations from other tables where other shinobi and families were eating.
Mai recovered enough to sit upright, though she kept one hand on her stomach as insurance. Pakura refilled her tea from the pot. Karura leaned back on her cushion and looked out over the canyon walls, where the sky was turning from white to gold to the deep burnt orange that only existed in the desert.
"This was nice," Karura said.
Mai blinked. "Yeah. I enjoyed it!"
Pakura's teacup paused halfway to her mouth. She looked at Karura, then at Mai, then at the ruins of thirty-seven dishes spread across the table and floor around them. A terrace at sunset. A teammate groaning about her stomach. Another teammate smiling at nothing.
"I'd rather have done anything else than watch you two pig out like swines," Pakura said. She sipped her tea. "But, the food was decent."
Mai's face split into a grin. "Pakura just said she had fun."
"I said the food was tolerable."
"That's Pakura for 'I had the time of my life.'"
"I will push you off this terrace."
"You love me."
"I will push you off this terrace and use a fire jutsu on you afterwards."
Karura couldn't help but laugh. This was good. Her teammates. Her friends. Alive and fed and arguing about nothing under a sky that was turning the color of fire.
She liked her team.
…
The cacti fruited.
Every barrel cactus in the courtyard had pushed out clusters of reddish-orange buds that had swollen and ripened over the past several days into full, plump fruits the size of her fist. They grew in rings around the crown of each cactus, bright against the dark green flesh, their skin smooth and waxy in the morning light.
Karura knelt in front of them on the packed earth of the courtyard, examining the closest fruit. She'd been waiting for this. The buds had appeared before she left for the Land of Dust, and whatever Tenfold was doing to the plants had accelerated the fruiting cycle far beyond what was natural for barrel cacti.
She picked one. It came free with a soft twist, heavy in her palm, warm from the sun. The skin was firm. She turned it over. No bruising. No rot. It smelled sweet, almost floral, with something underneath that reminded her of aloe.
She'd never eaten cactus fruit before. She knew some species were edible, knew vendors in Suna sold dried cactus flesh as a snack in the market district, but she'd never grown any herself. These weren't normal cacti, though. Tenfold had changed them in ways she was still figuring out.
She broke the fruit open. The flesh inside was a vivid pink, juicy, studded with tiny dark seeds. It looked like something that should taste good. She brought it to her nose. Sweet. Fruity. Inviting.
She'd eat one later. Right now, she had a promise to keep.
Yashamaru was waiting by the front door when she came inside, his bag over his shoulder, his sandals already on, bouncing on his feet with the same manic energy as yesterday.
"Nee-chan! Training time!"
"After your classes, Yasha."
"But—"
"After."
He deflated. Then perked up. "You'll pick me up again?"
"I'll pick you up again."
He rocketed out the door. Karura watched him go, a blur of sandy-blond hair and violet eyes disappearing around the corner at a speed that suggested he wanted to get to the academy as fast as possible so the day would end faster.
She smiled. Then she looked at the cactus fruit in her hand.
She put it on the kitchen table for later and went to her workshop to start on Moon's frame.
The day passed in wood shavings and measurements. She'd bought a war fan from a metalworker in the market district the day before, a standard iron-ribbed combat fan used by Suna's wind style specialists. It was heavier than she'd expected. The ribs were thick and the surface was wide enough to generate serious force when swung. She'd need to reinforce the rivets and widen the surface area, but the base was good.
She built Moon's shoulder joints first. Scaled up from Reaper's assembly, widened for the longer arms, reinforced at the pivot points to handle the torque of a full swing with a heavy weapon. Then the arms themselves, long segments of layered ironwood and cedar, pressure-bonded and sanded smooth. She carved channels into the forearm segments where chakra could travel from the threads through the joints and into the hands, and from the hands into whatever the hands were holding.
The scroll mounts she built into the lower back. Six cylindrical housings arranged in two rows of three, each one sized for a standard storage scroll, each one accessible with a quick pull. She tested the fit with empty scrolls, sliding them in and out until the motion was smooth and fast.
By the time she left to pick up Yashamaru, the frame was half-finished and the workshop smelled like fresh-cut wood and adhesive.
They trained again. The same footwork from yesterday. Step, shift, step, shift. Yashamaru was better. Noticeably better. His feet moved with a rhythm that hadn't been there twenty-four hours ago. The footwork made his academy instructors' eyebrows rise when he'd demonstrated it during class, according to the breathless summary he gave Karura on the walk to the training ground.
"Sensei asked me where I learned it," Yashamaru said, throwing a punch while keeping his feet moving. "I told him my sister taught me. He said he'd never seen footwork like that."
"Keep your chin down."
"He asked if you'd come talk to the class sometime."
"Chin down, Yasha."
"Is that a yes?"
Karura swept his front foot out from under him. He hit the sand on his back and stared up at the sky.
"Chin down," she said.
He laughed and got back up.
They went home after the hour was up. Yashamaru was panting and drenched but smiling, practically skipping despite his shaking legs. His retention was remarkable. Things she'd corrected once yesterday had stuck. Patterns she'd shown him twice were already settling into his muscles. The tenfold teaching was invisible but undeniable if you knew what to look for.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold teaching results!]
In the kitchen, Yashamaru spotted the cactus fruit on the table where Karura had left it that morning.
"What's that?" He picked it up before she could answer, turning it over in his small hands. "It smells good. Can I eat it?"
"Yasha, wait-"
He bit into it.
Juice ran down his chin, vivid pink against his skin. His eyes went wide. He chewed, swallowed, and made a sound that was half gasp and half laugh.
"Nee-chan! This is amazing! This is the best thing I've ever eaten! What IS this?"
"It's from my cacti in the courtyard. Yasha, how do you feel?"
"I feel GREAT!" He bounced on his feet. His legs had been shaking from exhaustion thirty seconds ago. They weren't shaking anymore. "My legs don't hurt! I'm not tired! I feel like I could run back to the training ground and do the whole thing again!" He took another bite. Pink juice everywhere. "It's so sweet! It tastes like melon and honey and something else, I don't know what, but it's amazing!"
Karura watched him. Thirty seconds ago he'd been wiped out from an hour of hard training. Now he was bouncing around the kitchen like he'd just woken up from a full night's sleep. His breathing was normal. His color was good. The fatigue was gone, all of it, replaced by the vibrating energy of a six-year-old at full capacity.
"Yasha. I need you to tell me exactly what you feel. Everything."
He stopped bouncing, sensing the seriousness in her tone. He scrunched his face up in concentration, the way he did when his academy teachers asked him a hard question.
"I'm not tired anymore. Like, at all. My legs feel fine. My arms feel fine. Before I ate it, everything was sore and heavy, like after a really long day at the academy. Now it's like I didn't even train." He paused to make sure he got everything.
Health and stamina. Both restored from a single fruit.
Karura took the remaining half from his sticky hands, ignoring his protests, and examined it. The flesh was still that vivid pink. The seeds were dark and plentiful. The smell was sweet and clean.
Her cacti, boosted by months of tenfold cultivation, were producing fruit that restored the body.
She sat down at the kitchen table. Yashamaru was chattering about how they needed to grow a hundred more of them, a thousand, they could give them to everyone at the academy, his sensei would love them, could he have another one please?
Karura wasn't listening.
She was thinking.
The village struggled. Everyone knew it. Suna's economy was thin and its resources were thinner. Shinobi came back from missions exhausted and injured, and the medical corps was always stretched beyond capacity. Civilians went hungry when the trade caravans were late. Water was rationed during dry spells. The desert took more than it gave, and the people who lived in it paid the difference with their own bodies.
And in her courtyard, she had cacti that grew fruit that healed those bodies.
Not just one or two cacti. Rows of them. And every time she cultivated them, Tenfold multiplied the results tenfold. More growth. More fruit. More potency. She could plant more. Expand the courtyard. Use other spaces. The training ground had empty corners. The academy had a garden plot that nobody used. The edges of the residential streets had bare patches of earth that could hold a pot.
"Nee-chan? Are you okay?"
She looked at Yashamaru. He was staring at her with his head tilted, a worried crease between his eyebrows.
Karura smiled.
"I'm perfect, Yasha. I'm going to need your help with something, though."
"Anything!"
"I need you to help me plant more cacti."
His grin was blinding. "YES! I love cacti! When do we start?!"
"Tomorrow."
"You PROMISE promise?"
"I promise promise."
He cheered and sprinted out of the kitchen to tell their parents that he and nee-chan were going to plant cacti everywhere, and it was going to be the best thing ever, and could they have cactus fruit for dinner?
Karura sat at the table, pink juice drying on her fingers, and thought about a nation that didn't have to rely on others anymore.