Chapter 14

Kankuro (approximate time: 7:00 AM)

As Temari walked away, he became aware of the young Academy kids snickering behind him.

He already knew his sister was planning on attending every training session—it was his sister's way to prepare for everything, but Kankuro was still on the edge. He kind of already disappointed his father, and he knew there was nothing he'd be able to do to impress him—something Temari knew as well, the reason why she preferred to train away from her father and his men as she trained for herself, not for her father... But him? He liked his alone time—but not exactly alone time training.

And those runts were ruining his alone time.

"What d'you want?" he asked without turning around. He was already irritated by his father, and those kids definitely weren't helping.

With a smile, a thought occurred to him. He might as well have some fun.

Discreetly, he transferred a marginal amount of chakra between himself and the puppet wrapped in bandages on his back for a soft Substitution Jutsu followed by a Puppet Jutsu, substituting his body for that of the puppet's without the plume of smoke and then controlling his puppet with his mind via barely visible chakra-threads through the bandage wrap.

A bit of a prank was forming in his mind, and if he was lucky, he wouldn't have to worry about them sticking their nose where it didn't belong for a while.

The kids laughed. "You just got told by your sister!"

Kankuro rolled his eyes. It wasn't like the kids didn't "get told" by their parents on a daily basis.

From within the bandage wrap that usually held his puppet rather than himself after the substitution, Kankuro knitted chakra strings to the puppet's body. A genjutsu concealed the fine spidery threads, and the switch itself. The thin muslin bandage wrap, unlike a standard taijutsu-type thickly woven bandage, enabled him to see straight through the bandages by simply pressing his face to them close enough.

The puppet dressed as Kankuro twisted its head 200 degrees around, getting a good "look" at the child farthest to the right of its forward facing body while Kankuro simply relaxed, watching the scene rather boredly (with slight amusement) from his bandage "hammock".

The kids gasped in horror. Twisting one's head more than ninety degrees was not something inherently natural.

"Something wrong with that?" his puppet asked coyly, referring back to himself "getting told" by Temari.

The kids recoiled at the freaky unnaturalness of Kankuro's jutsu.

"H-h-his head!" a boy gasped.

One more little nudge, Kankuro thought before jumping out of the back of the wrapping. "RRRrrrooaaarrrr!" he yelled at them.

"AAaaaahhhhh!" the kids screamed in response before running away.

It was Kankuro's turn to laugh. Even without his puppeteer uniform and war paint, the appearance made it look like a monster sprouted out of "his" back.

Stupid little kids, they just don't get it. They don't know what it's like—being the Kazekage's kid—it's not all as good as they think it is.

Still, the little prank he pulled helped his mood, if just a little. Kankuro extricated himself from the bandage wrap, chuckling to himself.

Least those punks are good for something.

Kankuro's mind quickly flicked to Gaara, another "runt", his mood souring again.

But damn those little kids.

Baki (approximate time: 9:00 AM)

Baki left the Kazekage's office to work on his team's dossiers. Gaara's file was bound to be the most interesting to sort through, and Temari's the easiest since they'd already known each other for years. Kankuro, he'd save for later and talk to his tutor from the Puppeteer Corp. Baki pulled the sheaf of papers out from under his left arm en route to the underground archives of the Kazekage's compound, a room accessible only to the most loyal of the Kazekage's and the ANBU. With a salute, he was allowed in by the guards. Turning left, he entered the room.

He had a blind spot on that side—his left—from a botched mission. The eye now blind and hidden behind a veil. He knew the dangers of every shinobi mission. Each and every one had the potential to go wrong, and each and every shinobi had the chance of losing something more precious than an eye.

The training he'd give would push the young shinobi, even harder than before, but it was necessary for them to survive in the field.

He pulled two files from the folder and laid them side by side. Gaara's and Temari's. She was indeed a prodigy, quickly becoming one of the strongest wind-style shinobi. His hand trailed the words on Gaara's file. Unlike Gaara, she had trained for every ounce of strength she had.

The look she gave Lord Kazekage yesterday…

Baki remembered the time she stayed at a training ground one day, a day she had off, from sunrise to moonrise.

"Insufficient training."

As if she didn't train herself into the ground as is. Being born as the Kazekage's daughter only gave her so much natural talent.

It was ironic how little her own father knew about her.

Katiya (the next day, approximate time: 7:00 AM)

Back on her journey, the wind was winding down from the night before. She took the opportunity to let the sweat gathered beneath her headscarf dry out. Finally unrestrained, her lopsided bob waved in the light breeze. After wearing the headscarf out of necessity to keep sand out of her face and mouth for the past year, the bare sun on her face felt freeing.

The road had been quiet the past few… days? Weeks? Months?

Days, Katiya realized. Only days.

Katiya dropped her hand to the bottom of her new staff. It had only been a few days since she faced the last team—the last teams of shinobi and shattered her old wooden staff.

Apprehension clawed at her gut.

Like her old staff, the new one was short and only went to her shoulder from the floor. But unlike her old staff, this new one would never shatter. A staff of liquid water, held together by chakra, would never shatter. It took some concentration to maintain, but the longer she did so, the easier it was. Not even a hint of dampness on her hand revealed that the staff was indeed... water.

Sandwiched between her knapsack and her back like the previous one, the weight of the staff assured her.

But the apprehension was stubborn.

Temari (approximate time: 9:00 PM)

Temari wretched open the door of the refrigerator tiredly. Long training meant late dinner.

A lot of the Kazekage's staff had been laid off in the early years of Suna's economic slump. Food was made by Temari herself while Father stayed late in the office, food brought to him by whoever he managed to bark at. She nor Kankuro were cooks, so they ate out often. As such, Kankuro was eating out that day, undaunted by the stares he'd get for smelling like a pig.

She took out a meatloaf and a napa cabbage head habitually grown herself in the Kazekage compound's greenhouses. Getting anything in or out or even growing anything was impossible in the desert. Even the medic-nin grew their own vegetables out of concern for patient health with the semi-sporadic imports of withered dung.

Lucky me. Cold meat and cabbage for dinner as the daughter of the most powerful man in Suna.

Wrapping chunks of meat in the cabbage, she ate her meal.

Cold cabbage wrapped around a cold meatloaf, a chill of the night lingering. She'd force herself through the training, no matter how hard. Her anger at her father honed like another blade, to be used against enemies.

Sharpen your sickle at sunset. Prepare for the coming storm, Temari told herself, So you'd survive Gaara.

Katiya (approximate time: 9:00 PM)

Katiya made her way to the next village, traveling much faster now that the sun was down. Apprehension still tugged in her gut, as if her gut knew the messenger hawks had already reached their destinations, carrying messages boding her death.

…

Sometime later, Katiya… felt something. Barely there, but there nonetheless: a feeling of being watched. Katiya wasn't usually one to make decisions solely on gut feelings, but in battle, muscle memory and reflex always responded faster than a consciously thought out action. She learned to trust her instincts. After the last time.

A split second later, Katiya leapt up from the ground, a scorpion-like puppet explosively sprouting out of the sand where she once stood. Katiya knew immediately that something had changed since the last attack. That these people were no longer asking her to return, but forcing her to do so by dragging her back in a body bag, the silent ambush working to that regard.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. She twisted in mid-air, kicking her leg just in time to push away a giant metal fan's guard that was aimed for her back.

Earth-style—the puppeteer—and a wind-style user. Who's next?

She knew shinobi generally operated in teams of three or four—or if they were dispatched in fewer than three, solo. There was one more member she had yet to see. Katiya did a backflip to avoid kunai flying in the opposite direction, all of them on target for vital locations.

That person. A weapons specialist, maybe….

She landed, and used the momentary pause as an opportunity to measure her opponents. All of them had their faces hidden by veils and heads wrapped in bandages, hiding themselves. They surrounded her. Two of them, the puppeteer and the person who threw the kunai carried swords as well—meaning they were skilled with kenjutsu. The fan-wielder's extended hip pouch that took up the majority of his? her? their lower back marked them as a possible medic-nin.

Katiya had no doubt that these were ANBU, some of Suna's finest.

Katiya shifted her feet. Nearing the more eastern provinces of the Land of Wind, the sand was hardened and compacted like rock. There was no large amount of dust she could use to blind them, nor sand she can manipulate into quicksand. She pulled the headscarf from her mouth. She'd need it later.

They waited, seeing who would move first. Even with their eyes hidden by shadow, Katiya could tell their eyes were narrowed in concentration, gauging her every move as she did to them.

The puppeteer shifted his weight. They made their move first.

With a slight whoosh of air, the puppeteer's puppet appeared behind her, attempting to grab her around the waist. But Katiya was ready. The staff on her back liquified and exploded, pushing the puppet away with concussive force while she herself lunged for the one who threw the kunai, her own kunai in hand.

That person pulled out a whip Katiya didn't know they had, which with an underarm flick, wrapped itself around her ankle. Katiya was yanked back, but Katiya threw the kunai she had, thinking quickly.

The person did a sideways dodge, the kunai sailing past, but Katiya didn't pause to watch it land. Riding on the ANBU agent's dodge of her kunai to put them ever so slightly off-balance, Katiya threw herself back, back flipping and pulling her legs and thus the whip around her foot upwards from her attacker. The ANBU agent let go of the whip rather than be pulled to the ground like Katiya would've preferred.

She did a spinning kick with the opposite foot to hit the puppet behind her. Then a duck to dodge the brunt of an incoming Wind Scythe Jutsu. Water gathering back up into her palm, her staff reformed. But before she had the chance to use it, she had to do a series of hand-to-foot-to-hand backflips to avoid incoming kunai, flying out of scrolls with a whirlwind. Then a sideways block against a heavy overhead cleave of an odachi from the same person.

Katiya wasn't sure if a long, drawn out battle was to her advantage or not. On one hand, it'd exhaust them, but there were three of them; she wasn't sure of their chakra amounts, and she was out and about in the desert for weeks, while they could've just woken up from a nap as far as she knew.

I have to keep this short then. I don't have the moral comfort of mercy. It's them or me—they're ANBU, they'll kill me otherwise, as their attack pattern indicates.

They were relentless, however. They switched out as necessary, attacks coming in every direction, even from the ground below.

The weapons specialist charged their sword with lightning.

Great. A lightning-style with a full range of attack.

She leaned back to avoid the lightning-sword while the ground rumbled with another earth-style jutsu. She made a tendril of water from her staff to pull the weapons specialist to her knees.

The puppeteer and the wind-style user were her biggest threats. The puppeteer's movements were smooth and calculated with years of experience and use. Her Wind Scythe Jutsu was much weaker than the Suna native's—as she was using a staff rather than a fan, and with only less than a year of experience casting it.

And with the weapons specialist, lightning-style was a weakness against her water-style. It left only her fireballs and maybe kunai as long-range damage-doing attacks. Every time she got close enough for maybe a mid-range attack for close-range taijutsu, they'd kick her away.

She threw a fireball.

A fireball again, this time hiding a few follow-up explosion-tagged kunai.

Then another fireball enhanced with her own Wind Scythe Jutsu. Then some hurled kunai made from water flicking out of her staff combined with a Wind Style: Great Slashing Tornado Jutsu to hurl them faster than naturally feasible, breaking her staff to form the kunai mid-swing. A follow-up water tendril in an attempt to hold the puppet nearby still and break it from the inside (which failed since the puppet had the ability to disjoint and reform).

She was running out of any potential recourse, and she needed more time for a strategy. Instead of her wearing them down, she was the one becoming increasingly worn out.

A dodge too late from an attempt to take out the puppeteer, and the puppeteer's chokuto grazed her left arm, armpit to shoulder.

The battle lulled—the puppeteer did no follow-up attack when she reeled from the dodge. They jumped back, exchanging glances with the fan-wielder. The wound stung, but was bearable.

The fan-wielder, who sounded like a gruff man, spoke, revealing that he was indeed a medic-nin. "You might as well give up now. That blade was poisoned. You'll be dead in less than an hour—but that amount exponentially decreases as you keep moving."

Then it was the weapons specialist, a woman, who spoke: "You can surrender now, and we can guarantee a merciful death."

Katiya shifted her feet and glanced at the wound. As they spoke, the wound began to numb, giving not even the slightest sting that would've been an injury drunk on adrenaline. The wound was numb, and without looking at it, she couldn't even be sure whether it was deeper than it appeared to be—the blood obscuring the wound.

They're not bluffing.

She looked at the weapons specialist. Blood was rushing to her head, her heart pounding from the sudden stop in action. In a tired monotone, she said, "I don't suppose I can get out of this alive, now can I."

The puppeteer (another male, judging from the voice) replied with a small, humorless laugh. "Heh, is that a surrender then?"

These are ANBU—no way I can talk them out of killing me… or giving me an antidote…

Despite being unable to age, Katiya could still die. Minor wounds and any age change was reversed as she slept, whenever she slept, her chakra network's expansion and growth the only thing exempt from the reversal. But major wounds, she learned, still had the potential to kill her. She healed faster than average but if the damage exceeded her healing capabilities, she'd still die.

And she had yet to test what would happen should she die during her sleep from poison.

"How long do I have again?" Katiya asked, her voice still monotone.

"Is that a no then?"

It was a rhetorical question, Katiya knew. With narrowed eyes and a Body Flicker, she appeared behind the ANBU before they made their move. The weapons specialist was the first to respond. She responded with lightning-charged kunai.

Damn. The lady's a strong lightning-style user too.

Behind her goggles, Katiya activated her Sharingan and dodged. She needed this fast—no hesitation—the risk of overextended chakra or her origins' discovery now much less pressing than her winning the battle. No hesitation. Not for ANBU that have slaughtered more than thousands for a Kazekage that attempted the murder of his own son for a little "test". It was all in—Sharingan included.

… I can extract the poison later… buy myself some more time. This battle… I should avoid moving physically… spare myself the maximum hour… extract the poison later…

Katiya only knew how to extract poisons in theory. She'd only seen her mother do it once before, all that was necessary for a full three-tomoe Sharingan wielder (which Katiya wasn't). But she certainly never practiced how to extract a poison from herself. But to even have a chance of making it out alive and even deal with the poison, she'd have to escape the ANBU and the battle first. But they were elite, and weren't going to let her slide like the last three teams of shinobi.

And they, by waiting there for her to die, indicated that they were under orders to ensure her death.

Katiya continued mentally, But an antidote… making one…

Poisons and antidote making were not among her specialties.

Well… now is as good a time as any to learn antidote-making, Katiya thought dryly.

Nezumi, tora, inu, ushi, usagi, tora—Fire Style: Phoenix Fire Jutsu!

The three dodged. Katiya tilted her head, eyeing the fan-wielder. He was used to long-ranged fighting, meaning he was used to stationary fighting, but his footwork… she made the same water tendril she used on the other two members of the team, stretching it far to where he was standing, wrapping it tight around his legs and twisting them. The ANBU agent fell with a thud and a scream.

One down. Her entire left arm was now numb.

With the opposite hand, she pulled out a Storage Scroll full of water. It was the second of the three scrolls of water she had. A mini-tsunami rushed out as it unfurled.

Katiya pushed her chakra into her reformed staff for a hand sign-less Wind Style: Great Slashing Tornado Jutsu, which spun atop the layer of water. The pressure from the wind and water combined was concussive enough to rip the wooden puppet and the puppeteer's flak vest to shreds.

Two down, both temporarily…

Katiya did a Body Flicker to a spot a quarter of a kilometer away. The weapons specialist pursued, leaving her teammates behind. Katiya waited for her to leap to unfurl her scroll of weapons—only Katiya lunged into said leap in the spare moment before the weapon's specialist's scroll was completely unfurled. Katiya's staff of water that was reformed from the not yet evaporated puddle of a former tsunami soon found itself embedded into her opponent's body. Straight through the sternum.

One down permanently.

She paused, dizzy.

She leaned on her staff, whose bottom end slowly dribbled blood onto the sand. The fan-wielder was painstakingly attempting to heal his wounds with one hand and scoot-crawl to his teammate with the other. The glow of chakra radiated to Katiya's eyes.

She watched them and then advanced towards them. "You know, you never said what crime I'm guilty of. Isn't the condemned allowed that much?" she asked slowly, calmly, and deliberately to hide her exhaustion and developing dizziness.

The fan-wielder grunted a reply, deep in pain. "Katiya Shiratori. You have been found guilty for attempted murder of the Kazekage's son. The punishment is death."

Katiya gave the fan-wielder a cold, almost sadistic smile. A bitter smile, at the irony of it. "Isn't that so."

She pulled herself off of her staff, the world spinning. She threw her staff at him. Her aim was off, but it was still a killing blow, going through his eye and into the ground. She called the water of the staff to back to her, the water now heavy and red tinged with the weight of blood. She repeated the motion to the puppeteer, who grunted as the staff found its home in his upper right rib.

Katiya fell to her knees. Pulling the scroll she got her water from, she called it all back to her, storing it back in it. Her thinking was coming in warm and fuzzy now. She had to put her stuff away—in case—she stuck the scroll back into her rightmost hip pouch and then looked down to her arm, her thinking clouding over completely—in case someone came back—and attacked… There must've been an anticoagulant in it, her arm, as it wouldn't stop bleeding. Her white kimono-style shirt was drenched in red—it was too much blood, wasn't it.

She won the battle. Only if fortune shined on her would she win the war within her body.