For their border inspection mission, they were three days out from Sunagakure, checking outposts along the western frontier where the Land of Wind met the Land of Rivers. Simple work for a senior kunoichi with fresh chunin in tow. Chiyo had done it a dozen times. The outposts were always fine. The border was always quiet. The worst you'd encounter was a lost merchant caravan or a pack of desert wolves that had wandered too far from their territory.
This was not one of those times.
They spotted the Konoha squad at the river crossing. Seven shinobi in green flak jackets, discreetly moving through the trees on the far side of the shallow ford.
Neither group had been looking for a fight. Both groups found one the moment headbands were spotted through the trees.
"Formation." She ordered.
Torune reached for his scroll. Sayo's hands began weaving signs. Both of them shifted into the positions any chunin would know.
"I'll handle it." Karura quietly said.
Her hand found the scroll at her hip. One pulse of chakra. Ten clouds of smoke erupted across the riverbank.
Ten Millions stood in a line at the water's edge. Forty arms. Ten grinning faces. Bone-white composite wood catching the afternoon light.
Chiyo's hands paused on her threads. She looked at the ten puppets. At her student standing behind them inside her new puppet's disguised form, ten threads extending from her fingers, each one connected to a puppet that weighed more than the girl controlling it.
She recalled Million and Reaper back to their scrolls with a proud grin.
The Konoha squad saw the puppets. The jonin, a broad-shouldered woman with a tanto and a flak jacket that had seen better days, had about two seconds to process what she was looking at before the nine Millions crossed the ford.
"Retreat!" she shouted.
They tried.
The first Million reached the nearest shinobi before his feet finished moving. Four arms closed around his body, wrappings spiraling from the bandages, binding his arms to his sides and his legs together in under three seconds. The puppet set him face-down in the mud and moved to the next target.
Two chunin tried to fight. One threw a fireball at the Million charging him. The puppet leapt to the side as its extending arms shot toward him, six segmented limbs that caught the man's wrists, ankles, and torso before the next fire jutsu's hand signs were even finished. He was wrapped and pinned in no time.
The second fighting chunin was faster. He got a kunai into the shoulder joint of the Million that grabbed him, jamming the mechanism on the upper right arm. Three other arms compensated. The wrappings caught his blade hand and yanked it sideways. He was bound in four seconds instead of three. The kunai clattered to the riverbed.
Two tried to run. Dozens of extending arms from three separate Millions chased them through the trees, segmented wooden limbs bending around trunks and over branches, reaching further and faster than legs could carry a person in wet forest. One was caught mid-body-flicker, the arms seizing him between the vanishing point and the arrival point. The other made it thirty meters before a Million cut him off from the front while another's wrappings caught his ankles from behind.
The leader fought.
She was good. Wind chakra on her tanto, cutting through the first set of extending arms that reached for her. She severed three before the fourth caught her wrist. She twisted free, slashed the wrapping that tried to bind her legs, and body flickered to create distance.
Three Millions converged on her new position before she finished the flicker. Twelve arms from three angles. She cut four. Eight remained. She cut two more. Six wrapped around her body, her arms, her legs, her weapon hand. The tanto was pulled from her grip by wooden fingers and tossed into the river.
She struggled. The puppets broke her bones. She stopped struggling.
Seven Konoha shinobi, bound and immobilized, sitting in the mud at the river crossing in a line.
[Tenfold has activated!]
[You have gained tenfold fighting experience!]
Ten versions of the twelve-second engagement compressed into her mind. In three of them, she'd caught all seven in under eight seconds by sending the extending arms first instead of the puppets themselves. In two, the jonin had escaped the initial rush and required a different approach, a pincer from five Millions instead of three. In one, the fireball chunin had aimed at her instead of the puppet and she'd had to dodge mid-fight. Every version was a win. The differences were in speed and efficiency of capture.
Twelve seconds had been good. Eight was possible. She'd remember that.
[You have gained tenfold loot!]
Seven sets of Konoha equipment. Kunai, shuriken, explosive tags, ration packs, flak jackets, field supplies, medical kits. All multiplied. The inventory catalogued itself in her mind while her puppets held their prisoners in the mud.
The fight had lasted twelve seconds.
Torune stood on the riverbank with his scroll in his hand, still sealed. His puppet was still inside it. He'd reached for it when the Konoha squad appeared. When Karura said "I'll handle it" and then nine puppets had crossed the river and there was nothing left to handle.
He looked at his scroll. At the puppet inside that he'd spent weeks building. The puppet he'd designed was inspired by both Million and Reaper into something uniquely his. The puppet he'd been quietly eager to test in real combat, to show Lady Chiyo and his new teammates what he could do, to prove that the boy Pakura had embarrassed in the exam arena had come back better.
He hadn't even opened the scroll.
He watched the nine Millions standing guard over seven bound prisoners, thirty-six arms at rest, nine grins aimed at nothing. Karura ran all of them easily. No strain on her face. No sweat. No indication that controlling ten puppets simultaneously was anything more strenuous than walking.
The gap between him and her wasn't a gap. It was a canyon. He could see the other side but he couldn't jump it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But looking at it didn't make him angry. It didn't make him jealous. It made him want to hone his practice and grow even further.
"Well," Torune said. He sealed his unused scroll back at his hip. "That was humbling."
Sayo sat down on a rock.
She'd started weaving genjutsu signs when the Konoha squad appeared. She was planning to create a genjutsu on the area itself, catching all of them in a genjutsu at once, and then ten puppets had crossed the river and the fight was over before her seventh hand sign.
"I barely had to lift a finger. Is it going to be like this on every mission with you?" She smirked.
"I'm not sure. It depends on the mission…" Karura didn't quite know how to answer that.
"Depends on the mission, huh?" Sayo giggled. She looked at the sky. "I'm going to get so lazy on this team."
"I wouldn't recommend being lazy on a mission…" Karura softly advised.
"I'm just kidding, Karura." Sayo rubbed her head. "Wait, can you even feel this inside that thing?"
"No, but I appreciate the gesture." Karura answered.
"Is it cramped in there? Are you comfortable?" Torune asked.
"I'm comfortable." Karura admitted.
She wouldn't design a puppet with such an obvious problem.
"Hmm, isn't it harder to control your puppets from inside one?" Torune questioned.
"I'm still getting used to it but it isn't too difficult. A second layer of protection for a puppeteer is only a positive in my opinion." Karura responded.
"It is for sure. I never had to rely on that trick, but I understand why some would." Chiyo said before looking at the captured shinobi. "We'll bring them back. The intelligence division will want to have a conversation with our new friends. Especially the jonin."
Karura had resealed seven of the Millions while leaving two to carry their seven enemies.
Sayo and Torune handled the clean up, removing any evidence of a battle taking place. Leaving little to no information behind for any Leaf ninjas to find afterwards.
As for Chiyo, she thought about the ten legendary puppets sealed in her personal scroll. The Chikamatsu Collection. Ten masterwork puppets built by the first puppet master, the most powerful puppet arsenal in the world. She'd spent years training to operate them, to control all ten simultaneously, to use them as the ultimate weapon they were designed to be.
But watching Karura now, maybe Karura was the next owner of the Chikamatsu Collection. If she wanted them of course.
Chiyo tucked the thought away for the future. It was still too early.
"Let's move," Chiyo said. "We still have more of the border to inspect and now we have prisoners to deliver. Pick up the pace."
The team moved out. Chiyo in front. Karura behind her inside her new puppet, Protector. The Transformation Jutsu disguising it as Karura herself. Torune to the right, still wondering how the hell did she get the transformation jutsu to work on a puppet. Was she just transforming herself and that somehow also extended to the puppet? Torune knew the Transformation Jutsu was an actual physical transformation but he never really used it outside of the academy. He shrugged. The items a shinobi carried on themselves while using the Transformation Jutsu had to go somewhere, right? He guessed the puppet counted as an item and also fell under the technique? Torune shook his head, this was getting too confusing.
Sayo had her hands in her pockets, scanning the treeline casually as someone who trusted her teammates completely.