Ebizo counted them in two seconds.
Four shinobi. One carrying the scroll, moving fastest, already pulling ahead of the group. The other three fanned around him in a loose formation.
His team was three genin who'd been wearing their headbands for less than a month. The smart thing, the sane thing, was to let them go. Pull his students behind the nearest rock formation, suppress their chakra, and let the Iwa squad disappear over the border. File a report when they got back to Suna. Let Intelligence handle it.
That was what a responsible sensei would do.
But Ebizo was not just a sensei. He was a shinobi of Sunagakure. And those men were carrying something stolen from his country, running toward a border they were minutes from crossing, and once they crossed it the scroll was gone. Whatever was on it, it would end up in Iwa's war room, and the next time Sand and Stone bled each other in those badlands, his people could die because of what was on that scroll.
He couldn't let that happen.
He also couldn't take his children into a fight against four enemies that most likely outranked them in every way that mattered.
The seconds bled away. The Iwa squad was accelerating. The scroll carrier's lead was growing. In another minute, they'd reach the ridge. In two, they'd be in Earth Country territory.
Ebizo opened his mouth to give the order to fall back.
Mai was already gone.
She'd launched forward the moment the Iwa shinobi had turned their backs. No announcement. No battle cry. Just raw explosive movement, feet digging into the sand, body low, arms pumping. She closed fifty yards in the time it took Ebizo's mouth to form her name.
"Mai!" He shouted.
She was too far.
"That colossal idiot!" Pakura spat as she broke into a sprint after Mai.
Karura looked at Ebizo. Her indigo eyes were wide, but not panicked.
"Sensei, we can't let them die..."
She didn't wait for an answer. She pulled out her scroll on her hip, and Million burst from the smoke beside her. Then she was running too, puppet and puppeteer side by side, her scarf streaming behind her.
Ebizo stood alone on the trade road.
Three children. Four enemies. A scroll that might decide whether Suna's western garrisons lived or died next year. Or it could be completely inconsequential.
"Stupidly loyal, foolish girls," he whispered.
Then the jonin vanished.
He passed all three of his students in a blur. One moment he was behind them, the next he was ahead, and the moment after that he was between the Iwa formation and his genin, closing the distance faster than any of them could track.
The closest Iwa nin turned. His eyes widened. His hand went for a kunai.
Ebizo's fist was already against his chest.
The ninja's feet left the ground. His body traveled fifteen feet and hit the ridgeline rock face with enough force to crater the sandstone. His neck was cracked at an audible volume.
The formation broke.
The remaining two stone ninjas peeled away from the scroll carrier, spinning to face the threat behind them. The shinobi with the scroll didn't stop. He adjusted the pack on his back and ran harder, his escort shrinking as his subordinates did their job.
Ebizo couldn't chase him. Not with two enemies between him and the scroll, and three genin rushing into the gap behind them.
Mai hit the line first.
She came in low and fast, driving her shoulder into the nearest chunin's ribs before he'd finished turning. The man doubled over her and she planted her feet, grabbed his flak jacket, and threw him over her hip into the sand. He rolled and came up with a kunai, slashing at her throat. Mai leaned back, felt the blade kiss air an inch from her chin, and drove her knee into his wrist. The kunai dropped. Her fist followed, straight into his jaw, and his head snapped sideways.
He staggered but didn't fall. Ninjas are tougher than bandits.
He countered with an elbow that caught Mai in the cheek. Her head rocked. She tasted blood. Her grin came back anyway.
Pakura arrived three seconds behind Mai. The second nin had been circling toward Mai's flank, kunai drawn, looking to end the fight quickly while his partner kept the girl occupied. Pakura's hands finished going through hand signs and she sent two Scorch orbs drifting toward him. The man threw himself sideways, narrowly avoiding the first orb, and watched in horror as it turned a patch of rock behind him to bleached powder. The second orb tracked his movement. He substituted with a rock at the last instant, reappearing ten yards to the left.
"They're kids!" the stone-nin fighting Mai shouted.
"That one isn't just a kid!" the other yelled back, pointing at Pakura as she launched another orb that scorched a trench across the sand.
Karura reached the fight last. Million ran ahead of her, its four arms spread wide, that smiley face bobbing as its legs churned the sand. The ninja dodging Pakura's Scorch orbs saw the puppet coming and drew a short sword. He slashed at Million's torso. The blade bit into the composite wood and stuck. He tried to pull it free. Million's lower left arm caught his wrist. The lower right arm caught his elbow. The upper arms grabbed his shoulders.
Million pulled in four directions at once.
The enemy screamed. His arms dislocated and crushed, his sword clattering to the sand. Million released him and he collapsed, face first into the sand.
Pakura didn't give him time to recover. A Scorch orb the size of her fist sailed into his chest. The heat detonated on contact. The chunin's flak jacket charred and his body seized, the moisture in his torso flash-evaporating. He hit the sand a dried husk.
One escort down. One still fighting Mai. The scroll carrier was almost at the ridge.
Ebizo made his choice. He blurred past the remaining fight and sprinted after the jonin. The scroll was the mission. His students could handle one shinobi.
Except the one shinobi was smarter than the dead one.
He'd been trading blows with Mai, keeping her close, staying inside her range where her fists were dangerous but where he could match her with taijutsu and experience. Then he broke away. Just far enough to form three seals. His fingers moved in a sequence Karura didn't recognize.
Aimed at Mai.
Mai's fist stopped mid-swing. Her eyes glazed. For one horrible second she stood perfectly still in the middle of the battlefield, fists half-raised, staring at nothing.
Then she looked at Pakura.
And her expression changed.
"Die, Stone bastards!" Mai roared.
She pivoted and charged straight at Pakura. Full speed. Chakra already flaring through her knuckles, the same power that cracked scorpion chitin and cratered training grounds now aimed at her own teammate.
Pakura had half a second to process. She'd been mid-seal, her attention on the ninja she'd just killed. Mai's voice was the only warning she got. She turned and saw Mai coming, fist cocked, eyes wild and blank and furious.
"Mai, what are you..."
Mai's fist connected with the space Pakura's head had been occupying. Pakura threw herself sideways, the punch grazing her ear, close enough that the displaced air ruffled her hair. The force of the miss drove Mai's fist into the rock shelf behind Pakura. The rock exploded. Fragments of sandstone sprayed outward.
"Mai, stop! It's me!" Pakura screamed.
Mai didn't hear her. She couldn't. In her eyes, Pakura wasn't Pakura. She was the enemy. And Mai didn't hold back against enemies.
The second punch came faster. Pakura ducked, but Mai followed with a knee that caught her in the ribs. Something cracked. Pakura gasped, her concentration shattering, the Scorch orb she'd been maintaining flickering out. She stumbled back, one hand pressed against her side.
Mai advanced. Her third punch was an overhead strike, both hands clasped together, aimed straight down at Pakura's skull. A blow that would kill her.
The ninja who'd cast the genjutsu was smiling. He'd stepped back from the chaos, arms folded, watching one child try to kill another.
Pakura raised her arms to block, but the force behind Mai's strikes was inhuman. The blow would break through her guard. She knew it. She could see it coming, that clasped fist descending like a hammer, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
A bandage-wrapped arm smashed into Mai's side.
Million hit Mai from the left, one of its base arms catching her in the ribs and sending her skidding across the sand. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough to create distance.
Karura stood thirty yards away, one hand controlling Million, the other clutching the scroll at her hip. Her eyes darted across the battlefield.
Mai was getting back up, still snarling, still lost in the genjutsu. The ninja who'd cast it was already moving, putting distance between himself and the fight, falling back toward the ridgeline. Behind them all, Ebizo was closing the gap on the stone shinobi with the scroll. The ridge was right there. Seconds from the border.
Karura's mind raced.
She could send Million after the scroll carrier. The puppet was fast enough to close the gap. She could support Ebizo and make sure the intelligence didn't cross the border.
Or she could help her friends. Pakura was hurt. Mai was still swinging at them, and every second the genjutsu held was another second she might kill someone on her own side.
The scroll carrier was getting away. The information on it could cost lives. Suna lives. Her family's lives.
But Mai and Pakura were right here.
Then she remembered what she was.
She was a puppeteer.
She didn't have to choose.
"Million!" Her right hand thrust forward, all five threads going taut. The puppet's legs coiled and it launched from the sand, rocketing past the remaining stone-nin, past the scattered bodies, past the broken rock, straight toward the fleeing scroll carrier. Ebizo was already in pursuit, his form blurring across the ridgeline, and Million fell in far behind him, four arms pumping, smiley face aimed at the border.
Karura turned and ran the other way.
Toward Mai. Toward Pakura. Toward the fight that mattered right now.
Her scarf whipped behind her and the desert sand swallowed her footprints as fast as she made them. She wasn't looking forward to facing a taijutsu specialist like Mai without her puppet but right now she didn't really have a choice.