The scroll unfurled in Karura's hands and the smoke that erupted was thicker than what Million or Reaper produced, a dense white cloud that hung in the morning air for a long moment before the wind pulled it apart.
What stood on the ridgeline was not like her other puppets.
Moon was tall. Taller than Ebizo, taller than any of them, its long arms hanging at its sides. The face was carved with high cheekbones and narrow eyes, proud and sharp. Its body was slender but reinforced at the joints with iron bands, and the wood was bleached to the same pale bone-sand as all her puppets, catching the morning sun like a skull left in the desert.
In its right hand, it held a war fan.
The fan was massive. Folded, it was taller than Karura. The metal body was dark iron, and even closed she could see the three purple circles stamped into its surface, each one representing a star of power. One star was a gust. Two stars was a cutting wind. Three stars was something she hadn't tested yet and wasn't sure she wanted to outside of a real battlefield.
Mai stared.
"What is that?"
"Moon or Lady Moon as a red-headed boy called her. But Moon for sure." Karura said. She attached her chakra threads to the puppet's frame, ten threads spreading across its limbs and torso. Moon shifted. Its head turned toward the canyon below. The proud face looked north, toward the approaching Iwa patrol, four hundred meters away and closing.
"A fan puppet?" Pakura said.
Fan users were one of the pillars of Sunagakure's fighting styles, as respected and as deeply rooted in Sand's shinobi tradition as puppeteers. Every academy student had the choice of learning the fan or puppets. The village maintained an entire specialized division of fan shinobi ready to deploy in wartime. A puppet that wielded a war fan wasn't just a new weapon. It was two of Suna's proudest traditions fused into one.
"Who is this one inspired by?" Mai grinned.
"Well… I'm going to keep that a secret." Karura blushed as she glanced at Pakura.
Ebizo studied Moon without speaking. His eyes moved across the puppet's frame, the fan, the joints, the stance. He wasn't a puppet specialist. He couldn't assess the mechanical details the way Chiyo or the Puppet Brigade would. But he understood weapons, and what he was looking at was a weapon designed for a purpose his other students' abilities couldn't fill.
Range.
"How far?" he asked.
"I've tested it at three hundred meters. I think it can reach further." Karura said.
"The Iwa patrol is at four hundred."
"Then let's find out." Karura hid her smile with her scarf. Inwardly, she apologized to these enemy shinobi. Not for what she was about to do to them, but for the fact that her pulse was racing over a puppet's first showing and not the six lives it would end.
Ebizo looked at the canyon. At the dark slash below the ridgeline where six enemy shinobi were walking south, unaware of what was standing above them. He looked at the wind, blowing northeast, carrying the smell of iron and cold stone from the mountains.
"Well, let's see it." He smiled at his student.
Karura's fingers moved. Moon's right arm lifted. The war fan began to open.
Captain Daichi of the Hidden Stone Village was thinking about his wife's cooking.
Specifically, he was thinking about the pork dumplings she made on the nights he came home from patrol. Fat little pouches of seasoned meat wrapped in dough so thin you could see the filling through it, pan-fried until the bottoms were golden and crispy, served in a clay bowl with vinegar sauce and sliced scallions. She made them every time he came home from the border because she knew how much he hated the ration bars and dried meat that passed for food on a six-day patrol through the badlands.
Six more hours. That's what he kept telling himself. Six more hours of walking through this red wasteland and they'd hit the mountain pass, and by tomorrow evening he'd be sitting at his kitchen table with a bowl of dumplings and his daughter on his lap and the border would be someone else's problem for two weeks.
"Daichi, you're spacing out again."
He blinked. His Second-in-Command Seki was walking beside him, a fierce and fiery woman. She'd been his partner on border patrols for three years. She was dependable, sharp, and completely incapable of letting anyone enjoy a moment of peace.
"I'm not spacing out. I'm thinking."
"About your wife's cooking again?"
"I wasn't thinking about my wife's damn cooking."
"You were definitely thinking about her cooking. You suck at hiding your emotions. If you ever got captured for intel, you'd be the first to rat us out." She laughed.
"Good thing I'm never getting captured. And I still wasn't thinking about my wife's cooking."
"A dumb liar too. How did you even become a jonin? Did you even go through interrogation and torture training?"
"I did and I aced it, thank you very much."
"You had to have paid them off. I can read you so easily!"
Behind them, the four other members of the patrol chuckled. Genin Roku, the youngest, laughed the loudest. He was seventeen and had been on exactly three border patrols and still thought everything was a joke. The twins, Masa and Kenta, walked side by side like usual, their matching flak jackets and matching haircuts making them look like a mirror had been placed in the middle of the canyon. Jonin Oda brought up the rear, a quiet man without a funny bone in his body who'd been patrolling this border since before Daichi was born.
"Keep it down. We're still in disputed territory." Oda ordered.
"With respect, Oda-san, We haven't seen a Sand patrol in four days. I don't think anyone's out here." Roku said.
"That's when they get you," Seki chuckled. "When you think nobody's out here."
"Has anyone ever actually gotten you?"
"Once. An ambush in the lower canyons, eight years ago. Lost two people in the first ten seconds."
Roku's laughter died. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh." She mocked in an ugly way.
They walked in silence for a while. The canyon floor was wide here, maybe thirty meters across, with walls that rose fifteen meters on either side. Red stone banded with grey. The sky above was a narrow strip of blue between the cliff edges.
Daichi looked up. The ridgeline above them was empty. Just rock and sky and the occasional scrub brush clinging to the edge. Nothing moved.
"I'm going to propose to Yui when we get back," Roku said suddenly.
Seki looked at him. "The girl from the tea house?"
"She's not from the tea house. She works at the tea house. There's a difference."
"Is there really?"
"She's a nurse at the hospital. She works at the tea house part-time since her dad got sick and they need more money in the house."
"And you're going to propose to a nurse. You, Roku. The boy who passed his genin exam on the third try."
"Love doesn't care about failed attempts, Seki."
"Love doesn't, but maybe her parents will."
The twins snickered. Even Oda looked away briefly.
"I've already gained her father's blessing," Roku said, his chest puffing out. "As soon as I make chunin and start earning better money, I'll save up for a ring."
"Then you'd better train harder than you patrol." Daichi said.
"That's messed up, Captain..."
"That's advice, boy. I'd recommend taking it."
Roku grinned. Seventeen years old and in love and convinced the world was going to work out the way he wanted it to. Daichi remembered being that young. It felt like a long time ago.
"What about you, Oda?" Roku asked, turning to the rear. "Anyone waiting for you back home?"
Oda was quiet for a few steps. "My dog."
"Just your dog?"
"He's a good dog."
"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."
"He isn't annoying. That makes him better company than anyone in this squad."
They laughed. Six people walking through a canyon in disputed territory, armed and tired and six hours from home, laughing about dogs and dumplings and a seventeen-year-old's young love.
Daichi looked up at the ridgeline one more time. Empty.
He thought about dumplings.
The wind came from nowhere.
A sound that started as a whisper and became a scream in the space of a single heartbeat, a wall of compressed air that tore down from the ridgeline above them and crossed four hundred meters of open canyon in no time.
Multiple blades of wind. Invisible and silent until it was too late, spreading across the width of the canyon floor in lines that cut through the air.
Seki was the first to die.
The wind blade caught her at the waist. It passed through her body without slowing, through the flak jacket, through the muscle, through the spine. Her upper half separated from her lower half seamlessly as if there wasn't even a cut. Her legs stayed standing for a full second before they toppled sideways. Her torso hit the ground three meters away, her face still about to say something.
The twins died together.
The same blade that killed Seki continued through the canyon and caught Masa across the chest. It split him from shoulder to hip. Kenta, standing beside him, took a second blade across the throat. His head tilted backward until it fell off and he dropped without a sound.
Oda took a vertical wind blade through the skull. His body crumpled and he was dead before his knees hit the sand.
Daichi felt the wind pass him. Felt it pull at his flak jacket, tug at his hair, kiss the skin of his face with a deathly chill that had no business existing in the sunny desert. A blade passed within inches of his shoulder. So close that it split the strap of his pack and the bag fell off his back. He stumbled sideways, his legs moving on instinct, his brain still three seconds behind reality.
He didn't understand. He couldn't understand. One moment they were laughing and the next moment everyone was dead. Seki was in two pieces. The twins were on the ground. Oda was gone. There was blood everywhere, on the walls, on the sand, in the air as a mist that the wind was carrying south.
Roku was screaming.
The boy was on the ground, clutching his left arm. The arm ended at the elbow. Everything below it was gone, sliced clean, the stump spraying blood onto the red sand. He was screaming and staring at the place where his hand used to be and his eyes were the size of plates.
"ROKU!" Daichi grabbed him. Pulled him up. The boy's blood soaked into Daichi's sleeve. "Move! MOVE!"
They ran. South, away from the ridgeline, away from whatever had just killed four people in the space of a breath. Daichi half-carried Roku, the boy's remaining arm thrown over his shoulder, the stump leaving a trail of red drops on the canyon floor behind them.
Thirty meters. Fifty. The canyon curved ahead, a bend that would put rock between them and whatever was up on that ridge. If they could reach it, if they could just get around that corner, they could run, they could hide, they could live.
The wind came back.
Daichi heard it. The same whisper that became a scream, the same impossible sound of air being turned into a weapon. But this time it came from ahead of them. From the direction they were running. The blade they'd dodged, the one that had missed him by inches and taken Roku's arm, had curved. It had gone past them, hit the canyon wall, and come back around.
It was behind them and ahead of them and there was nowhere to go.
Daichi shoved Roku to the ground and threw himself flat.
The wind blade passed over them. So close that Daichi felt it part his hair. It screamed across the canyon floor and hit the far wall and this time it didn't come back.
Silence.
Daichi lay on the ground with his face in the red sand. His heart was slamming against his ribs so hard he could hear it. Roku was beside him, whimpering, his stump pressed against the sand, blood pooling.
They were alive. They'd survived. The wind had missed and they were alive.
He pushed himself up. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. He looked around the canyon. Bodies. Blood. Pieces of people he'd been laughing with ten seconds ago.
He had to move. Get Roku to the pass. Stop the bleeding. Report to command.
He reached for Roku.
Another whisper.
This one was quieter. Thinner. A single blade, narrow and fast, coming from directly above. Daichi looked up.
He saw the sky. The strip of blue between the canyon walls. The empty ridgeline.
The blade hit him at the collar bone and exited through his hip. His body folded around the impact, his torso separating from his waist, and Captain Daichi of the Hidden Stone Village died thinking about his wife's dumplings.
The second blade caught Roku where he lay. The boy with the doomed proposal and the missing arm and the girl at the tea house who was going to say yes. He didn't scream this time.
The canyon was silent now.
Six bodies. Some whole. Some not. Blood soaking into red sand that had been drinking it for generations.
The wind settled. The dust drifted. The sky stayed blue.
Karura lowered Moon's fan.
The puppet stood beside her on the ridgeline, its proud face looking down at the canyon four hundred meters below. The war fan was open to two stars, the first two purple circles visible on the metal surface. The third circle was still hidden beneath the folded section.
Two stars. One swing. Six enemies eliminated.
She'd felt the wind leave the fan through her chakra threads, felt the blades form and spread and cross the canyon. She'd felt the one that missed curve around the bend and come back, guided by a twitch of her fingers that adjusted the wind's trajectory through Moon's fan mechanism.
She sighed.
It never felt good. Killing never felt good, no matter how many times she did it, no matter how justified it was. These were enemies in their land. She knew the reasoning. She understood the necessity. And it still made her chest heavy every time she watched someone stop moving because of something she'd done.
But it was the job. And she did it well.
"What just happened?" Pakura said.
She was standing at the edge of the ridgeline, squinting at the canyon below. From this distance, the Iwa patrol was barely visible, dark shapes against the red sand. She'd seen them walking. She'd seen Karura swing the fan. And then the shapes had fallen over.
"They're dead!" Mai whooped. She'd watched the whole thing through the glasses, had seen every blade connect, every body come apart, from a perspective that was closer and clearer than anyone else's. Her face was still but her eyes behind the lenses were wide. "All six of them. You got them all!"
Ebizo looked at Karura. At Moon. At the fan, still open to two stars.
"Looks like the perfect first showing for Lady Moon." He rubbed Karura's head.
"Thanks..." Karura confirmed. She closed the fan with a flick of her threads. Moon folded the weapon against its body, the metal clicking as the segments collapsed.
"The wind blades. You can control them without using wind chakra?"
"If I adjust the fan's angle through the threads before the wind fully disperses. There's a window of about three seconds after the swing where I can guide the trajectory."
"Incredible."
"It was almost impossible to get it working correctly."
Ebizo nodded slowly. He looked at Moon, standing tall and still on the ridgeline, its proud face and its dark iron fan and its long arms hanging at its sides. A puppet built by an eight-year-old that could kill from a distance most shinobi couldn't even throw a kunai.
"Fan users and puppeteers," Ebizo said with pride. "What an unthinkable combination. The village will be proud."
"Thank you, Sensei."
"This is your third combat puppet. Million, Reaper, and now Moon." He paused. "You just keep building."
"I already have ideas for more after studying the Chikamatsu Collection in Lady Chiyo's possession!" Karura suddenly got excited.
"I can bet." He smiled.
"That was INSANE! One swing! ONE SWING! They didn't even know what hit them! They were just walking and then, and then!" She made a slicing gesture with both hands. "WA-CHA! All of them!"
Pakura was quiet. She stood at the edge of the ridgeline, her arms folded, her brown eyes fixed on the canyon below. She hadn't said anything since confirming the kills. Her expression was unreadable.
"Pakura?" Karura said.
"A fan puppet," Pakura said, not looking at her. "That attacks from a distance where the enemy can't even see you. Where they don't know you exist until they're already dead." She paused. "Are you going to offer that one to the Puppet Master Corps too?"
"I don't know yet. A lot of people already bought Million and Reaper. And Moon is a lot harder to use compared to Million and Reaper. The puppet master has to have really good vision or binoculars to properly use her at a distance that she prefers. If not, half of her use is being wasted." Karura was drowning in money, still trying to figure out how to spend it wisely besides on more materials for puppets.
"I see." Pakura turned to look at her. There was no jealousy or frustration. Just acknowledgment. "Million is close-range. Reaper is mid-range. Moon is long-range. You've covered every distance. There's no gap in your arsenal anymore."
Karura didn't know what to say to that. Pakura wasn't the type to give compliments, and what she'd just said was the closest thing to admiration that had ever come out of her mouth.
"Thank you, Pakura." Karura felt a little awkward as she smiled and looked away. Pakura didn't really compliment people.
Pakura turned back to the canyon. "Don't let it go to your head or I'll still surpass you in my own way."
"She doesn't have a head big enough for that," Mai snickered. "That's more your department, cactus princess."
"I am going to throw you off this ridge."
"You'd have to catch me first!"
Ebizo knelt at the ridgeline and looked down at the canyon one final time. The bodies lay still on the red sand. He stood. "Let's continue the patrol. Mai, keep scanning. If there are more Iwa squads in the area, I want to know before they know about us."
"Yes, Sensei!"
They moved on. Moon was sealed back into Karura's puppet scroll, its image nestled beside Million and Reaper. Three puppets. Three ranges. Three ways to end a fight before it started or finish one that someone else began.
Karura walked at the center of the group, her scarf pulled up, her indigo eyes watching the landscape. The badlands stretched north toward the mountains. The sky was wide and empty. The wind carried the smell of iron and stone and, faintly, of blood.
Behind them, the canyon kept its newest addition, six bodies and a bloodstain that the sand would cover by tomorrow.