Tin Mars dashed ahead, slamming his entire metallic frame into the throne room door and forcing the enormous stone wall guarding its front to tumble down. Whatever gear-based mechanism was involved in raising the sandstone blocks to let people in and out of the throne room popped and shattered into their lesser pieces instantly. A handful of Fennec's trusted soldiers turned in the interloper's direction, but it didn't take long for them to identify it as just a puppet.

"Anyone except for Fennec can hit the bricks. I don't care about anyone else," Damisan proclaimed while slowly tapping his sandals over the ancient stone staircase and approaching the hole his puppet had made with a single raised and bent forearm on which gleaming lines of strings shined their base blue chakra coating light that connected to Tin Mars.

"Oh? Sounds personal… And here I was wondering if you were one of the Kazekage's dogs or one of the Sheikhs' paid mercenaries," a man in a long and stuffy black robe decorated with military-style golden lining around chunky silver buttons on both sides of the chest muttered while standing up from the throne. The man's tight lips curved upward, matching his well-maintained lemon-colored handlebar mustache.

"I'm just a man who likes to be a part of big things. Right now, the whole desert seems to be on fire about killing you, Fennec," Damisan pointed his finger at the central and best-dressed figure that just questioned his allegiances. Being pointed out and identified like that must have struck a chord with the tyrant as he pulled out a little hand mirror from his back pocket and examined his appearance, dragging his hand across his up-sweeping hair comprising two horn-like spikes in each direction and nuzzled his sharp goatee before pocketing the accessory to turning his attention back to Damisan.

"So much spite, and yet I hardly remember what I've done to earn it. Must not be too memorable," Fennec waved his hand in dismissal and rested his bottom back on the throne.

"Where's the Sheikh and his court?" Damisan asked, seeing that the rest of Fennec's field commanders didn't really intend to use his gracious suggestion of leaving him and Fennec alone.

"So you are here for the Sheikh? Well then, it's a good thing we have done nothing notable to them yet. Now we can lump all of you together and dust all of you off at the same time," Fennec turned to one of his field commanders–a tall and obese man with a circular plate of armor covering his whole body and another, smaller circle with a decorated face serving as a mask.

The goliath began howling wildly and charged with a bull-rush at Damisan with a massive halberd in hand, but Tin Mars flickered in place, spewing blue flames from its back as it rushed forward with an invisible flurry of blows. The man grunted and staggered back. Even his thick and hefty frontal armor took a few dents from Tin Mars' counterattack.

A slender and tall individual in armor built together from separate bone pieces and layered with stitched together parts of animal pelts stepped up from the left side of Fennec's throne. He hauled a Y-shaped rod with a rubbery string connecting the upper branches and slammed its lower end in front of him while stuffing a handful of marbles into his makeshift grand slingshot. Being a puppeteer himself and having knowledge of various ninja tools one may have stuffed into their machines of murder, Damisan identified a handful of explosive balls before most shinobi would have.

"Tin Mars: Boom Wave!" Damisan chanted, directing Tin Mars to retreat in a dash behind him before rushing straight back and stopping in a snap. The accumulated mass of speed and the explosive inertia of the sudden stoppage caused a popping airwave that deflected the explosive projectiles and scattered them across the throne room, threatening the rest of Fennec's crew.

The commanders all scattered, flickering away and choosing their positions for the upcoming scuffle. Extending his hand and shooting his stray puppetry wires through the smoke and rubble, Damisan hooked on something solid and zipped himself across toward it. A thunderous crack and a burn at the sole of his foot suggested to the puppeteer that he kicked someone solid and sent them slamming onto the other side of the room. When the smoke leveled somewhat, the unfortunate target revealed themselves to be the same slingshot explosion artist that had targeted him before.

Pain and a sharp punch to the back of his shoulder made Damisan's stare blank out. He turned around only to see an arrow sticking out from his shoulder and a scantily clad feminine form with a similar chimera-like helmet decoration on her head, aiming with a longbow right at him. Now that he knew what was coming at him, Damisan had instructed Tin Mars to scurry along and collect the arrows from thin air, slipping them under its armor. They looked sturdy enough and arrows used fine wood that was relatively rare in most Wind Country regions.

"You talk some impressive talk, but can you really take all of us at once?" the woman teased Damisan, realizing that firing at him now that he's noticed her strategy of sniping him from afar was fruitless. It'd be even less productive once the rumbling from the explosion and the shifting building foundations settle down and Damisan can hear her bowstring stretch even without seeing it.

"He can't… Fennec may not remember this guy, but I do…" the obese commander grumbled, pointing at Damisan with a sausage-sized finger. "He was there when we took that town in the desert outskirts. Kazekage's rat. The one that his own town betrayed."

"Don't speak nonsense, Bilaf, that rat suffered Fennec's punishment. I can recall lamenting his fate a bit, such an attractive stud became reduced to a gargling worm-man with a droopy face. He even survived it too, can you believe it? Fennec was so impressed he let him live and redeem himself in his eyes. That freak might still be alive, but there's no way this guy is him…" the woman commander objected.

"You're the nonsensical one, Albasa, I never forget fine carnage and I try to take part in as much of it as I can and this guy smells of it!" the sizable titan Bilaf rushed at Damisan with his halberd once more. Damisan leaned out of the way. He waved his hand to command Tin Mars to pummel this man, but a handful of arrows buzzed right past where his hand would've been had he completed the motion. Damisan found himself a tad short of options in a tight pinch.

A nasty cloth-scraping sound filled the throne room as the cloak he had obstructed his chest with slipped off Damisan's body and revealed a long, crimson gash across his chest. It didn't take long for it to water with red, with the puppeteer stumbling back. He didn't do too well back then when his puppets had been much better equipped, polished, and maintained. Still, back then he was fighting for the freedom of his hometown and his own survival, whereas now he fought to free the entire desert from this scourge. Damisan's mind focused on the light taps of his blood dripping to the floor to stay on his feet.

He'd need the big artillery for this one. One factor he resisted was the temptation of using back then out of fear of wrecking his home. These commanders weren't that impressive one on one, but all together, with Fennec on top, their collective experience added to far too much than Damisan could handle right now. Still, the second he moves his hand to the scroll lid, that woman will try to intercept it. Bilaf will use the opening to impale him on his chest too. Right now, Damisan only had Tin Mars deployed, so he'd have to use the best of what he has in hand.

Damisan's puppet-wielding hand moved up and his fingers began tapping the air as if playing the world's most vivid piano piece. Tin Mars expelled a halo of base blue chakra flames from its back and began scurrying around him so fast that he had become just a blur even to the skilled mercenaries that commonly competed against speedster ninja on the battlefield.

A leathery stretch alerted Damisan, but this was no drawing of a bow. By the time a meaty thump followed that first noise, the smoke bombs had already scattered across the throne room. Flashes of buzzing arrows, also the manic laughter of a carnage-obsessed barbarian, came to define the tense atmosphere of the smoke-filled throne room. Scrapping noises and loud grunts accompanied them in creating a harmony of violence. A tight grip locked around Damisan's wrist. He couldn't command Tin Mars with the precision he needed. Before he could deal with the arm lock, sharp pain and a gush of warm red made Damisan bellow in pain. A thud at his exposed chest sent him sliding to the floor.

When the smoke cleared out, Damisan checked his left to see what was the twinging sensation just under his bicep. It was a dagger that went all the way through. It may have missed the vital artery present in the area through a fortunate accident made more likely by the choking smoke around the place, but it dealt a major blow to Damisan's ability to control puppets. That was what they were going for… That arrow in the back of his right shoulder, now this…

This was a terrible time to realize this strategy.

"You seem to have forgotten that I am here too," the shorter and much pudgier commander shrugged right in front of Damisan. He had stood alongside his slingshot-using partner this entire time, close enough to him for the impression to strike that the two fought as a singular unit and were co-dependent. "Even if I'm more than glad to remind you of that fact, I'm afraid you have something of mine…" the dagger-using commander of greasy and shoulder-length white hair and a hectic stubble began approaching Damisan intending to pull out the dagger and let the puppeteer's blood spray freely.

"Sorry…" Damisan smirked. "I think I'd rather keep it…"

The entire foundation of the palace complex shook violently, leaving even the tempered commanders unable to maintain their balance. When the initial quake subsided at least enough for the sassy Albasa to see puppetry strings extending all the way outside the throne room window, it had been already too late as a colossal fist tore through the throne room with enough weight to rip the upper half of it clean off and expose the throne room to the elements of altitude on the outside. Also, to introduce the crafty commanders to the strongest and most intimidating puppet in Damisan's arsenal.

Clay Venus grabbed a tighter hold around the palace's side as he had to latch onto the palace like a climbing monkey to stay where it was. This caused an even more aggravating quake that threatened to send the whole throne room sliding off of the rest of the palace. Just as Damisan thought, Clay Venus would have occupied the entirety of the enemies' attention, rightfully so. The problem was that with his current injuries, he wouldn't be able to use the ace in the hole as quickly as he normally would. This would leave Clay Venus a tad sluggish…

"I was following your hands the whole time… How did you…?" Albasa turned her attention back to Damisan, who struggled to rise from his kneeling position to prepare for the conclusion of his scuffle in the throne room. "The puppetry strings…" the woman realized, looking at the arm she thought she had nailed with the arrow through the back of the shoulder. She was sharper than Damisan had thought. Who could've thought that a mercenary would have it in her to put together that while Damisan may not have been able to wave his whole damaged right arm, though he could still send puppetry strings to pull out, unravel and unseal a scroll from the bunch on his waist. Ironically enough, that same smoke cloud that blinded him and led him to taking some nasty gashes earlier helped him conceal this motion too.

"Clay Venus: Turret Shot!" Damisan chanted, thrusting his left hand forward through the pain of having to struggle against the dagger stuffed under his biceps all the way through. Clay Venus rumbled, revealing a pair of cannon barrels on each of its shoulders as it took aim at the throne room. The explosive tag ball blasted off from the mounted cannons with a thunderous crack that would've split a mountain just by the merit of their volume alone.

The bundled-together collage of explosive tags wrapped around a steel cannonball slammed into the throne room like an egg, splattering with an uncontrolled, violent blast that resonated throughout the entire room. Knowing the effect of his own attack, Damisan leaped off of the floor and hitched himself a ride in one of Clay Venus' open hands. When the blaze went out and the smoke let the fruits of the boundless devastation be seen, the splattered, gory remains of Bilaf laid in a crimson, unrecognizable pile. Ironically enough, his own hefty frontal armor had squeezed the man out like a toothpaste tube when the brunt of the blast hit him head-on.

The palace began rumbling and collapsing bit by bit. Each of the commanders scurried to find themselves a new, solid platform to oversee the rest of the engagement from. One downside of Damisan changing the scale of the battle was that he now exposed himself to the entirety of Fennec's fighting force all across the place. Both on the ground level in the town, and scattered around the collapsing palace.

"One blast…" Albasa hissed. "He took out Bilaf with one shot…"

As Clay Venus slammed and pounded its massive fists at the ruined palace like some chunk of molding clay, sending chips the size of boulders in all directions and reducing centuries-old architecture to ruin with single swings, the results of the scuffle on the town level became clear as the townsfolk began rushing the palace. The settlers from Damisan's hometown had shown the locals of Fahzad enough bloodshed to where mere terror for their lives was no longer enough to keep them silent and fighting on the other side. With the emergence of a fortress-sized puppet from the throne room, the Sheikhate's townsfolk saw their best chances for survival, aiding that colossus' cause rather than fighting against it.

This couldn't have come at a better time either, as Shakhra quickly emerged from the collapsing ruins and engaged Albasa in an oppressive one-on-one battle the archer wasn't ready for. The constant rumbling and falling rubble made agile relocation impossible for the archer commander, and it only took Shakhra a couple of exchanges to stuff her scimitar through her opponent's chest and stomp her down to pull it back out.

A resonant cascade of explosions sent Clay Venus slipping and leaning off the palace's side. The palace platform that the colossal puppet held clinging on to shattered into pebbles, unable to cope with the pressure of its grip, which left Clay Venus falling all the way down onto the town. Knowing that he'd have to seal it back into the scroll before it hit the ground to prevent massive crushing casualties, Damisan instructed its puppet to aim its mounted shoulder cannons at where the slingshot merc should've been. With a scale of destruction this powerful, he didn't need to be too precise.

"Clay Venus: Turret Shot!" Damisan chanted out while struggling to move his right arm to send puppetry wires to stick onto some surface to prevent him from plummeting and crashing himself. Another thunderous crack signified a merciless blast that punted the whole chunk out of the ruined palace and obliterated the mercenary lurking and taking pot-shots from within its safety. Damisan's own roar of pain almost snapped his vocal cords when he managed to catch something with his right arm, only for the total weight of his slumping body to shift onto the penetrated shoulder.

The falling Clay Venus had dispersed into a cloud of smoke, saving those that still sought shelter from all the fighting below or stayed down to take care of any stragglers still loyal to Fennec's side but knowing better than to chase the advancing Fahzad salvation force into the collapsing palace. Damisan grunted and moaned in pain. In his current predicament, he could neither simply pull himself up nor let go and crash down below.

"Fennec!" Damisan yelled out from the bottom of his lungs, drawing from the rising force of his body's demand to howl in pain to amplify the volume of his voice. "I'm right here! Helpless and alone, just like you want 'em!"

The noise of buzzing steel surpassed even the howl of the wind this high up. Damisan covered his face and scalp up with his skewered left arm out of instinct and saw another dagger punch through the muscle and splatter blood all over Damisan's face. It was the fourth commander, brandishing yet another pair of daggers in both arms as he peeked through a hole in the wall higher up. Damisan's left went numb from pain. He wasn't sure how well he could block another dagger if that asshole tried to throw it right in his face. Just as he was preparing to test that theory because of a shortage of other options, a wrathful feminine grunt spread from somewhere within the palace ruins. Shakhra had tackled the fourth commander to the staircase floor, and the two were struggling inside, though Damisan couldn't make out what was going on.

The grunts went to their highest pitch and volume before being snuffed out by the conclusion of the scuffle. Damisan awaited who would peek through the hole and for them to make their intentions clear with a bad feeling in his gut. Then, just as a much-despised mug of a white-haired commander peeked through the hole, the entire head just flopped right through the hole and the headless body soon followed. Shakhra leaned out from the hole while attaching a chakram to her side and sought a way to reel Damisan back into the palace.

"Sorry for wrecking the palace…" Damisan panted when Shakhra pulled him back in and was checking on the gashes on her own hands from Damisan's puppetry wires digging deep into her hands. Chakra had been flowing vibrantly through them in the shape of a coating layer that was impossible to resist against with anything other than a greater amount of chakra, which came troublesome for an experienced yet relatively untrained desert warrior like Shakhra. "Got my back pressed against the wall there…"

"Did you find the Sheikh's court?" Shakhra turned to Damisan while wrapping up her many scrapes, cuts, and bruises.

"Sort off… Fennec said he had executed no one from the court just yet. They were looking to round everyone up before making an example out of them. They still have to be somewhere," Damisan shrugged before reporting.

"And Fennec?" Shakhra looked at Damisan.

"I… I lost him. He was right there, but then the whole place started going down. Who knows how stable this platform is too. Shit, how I've been taking having a sensor onboard for granted…" Damisan threw a sloppy punch with his right hand against the wall, grunting from the pain that resonated through his entire body.

"Right, then we need to part again. You look for Fennec, I'll look for the court. Fennec can't escape and I won't let some ambitious peasant butcher the court thinking that'll make them the new Sheikh or something," Shakhra jumped up onto the edge of the hole in the wall, looking to slide all the way down to the town level with a little aid of chakra-enhanced wall-running. "Let's just hope Fennec kept them in the dungeons somewhere on the lower levels and not in the actual palace. If you ended up smashing them to bits with your little rampage, I'd never forgive you."

"I need to find Fennec and end this. The chance to face and kill him is the only reason I've come to fight here…" Damisan struggled to stumble up the steps toward a completely missing part of the palace where he hoped to see at least some signs of where he should move his search to next.

"Maybe you should call it a day. You don't look too hot right now," Shakhra scanned her brother in arms, noting the arrow sticking out from his right side and two daggers still stuck in the middle and forearm sections of his left arm.

"No. I can't afford to let him slip away again and wall himself with the whole desert of innocent people. I can't let him make this war become what he wants it to be. It has to end here and now," Damisan shook his head, beginning his slow and torturous walk up to the hole where the passing desert winds howled and curious vultures span in circles, examining new feeding grounds they weren't aware of before.