The walk through the forest carried the weight of a silent expectation. Akihiro moved in the vanguard, his mind and his Byakugan on maximum alert.
With every shadow, every rustle of leaves, he expected the next puzzle, the next provocation. The escort mission had turned into a game of cat and mouse, and he fully expected the old artisan to be the predator.
Sayuri, with her feline grace, moved beside him, her eyes observing every detail of the landscape.
She was in her element, sharp, calculating. "Dead silence, Akihiro-kun," she whispered.
"Did the old man send us to the slaughterhouse after all?" She didn't smile. Just a glint of caution in her gaze.
The rest of the team seemed just as tense.
Mika kept close to Sato, the air of disorientation replaced by an unusual caution. The old man walked in silence, his cane tapping the beaten dirt ground with a steady rhythm.
The sun was at its highest point, and the forest was bathed in a suffocating heat. Suddenly, the breeze carried the scent of trouble.
Akihiro saw chakra lines spring to life and then dark figures rising.
"Get ready! We have company," his voice made the team instantly take position.
As suddenly as it seemed unreal, a group of men, dressed in dirty linen clothes and torn headbands, emerged from the forest.
They held swords and axes, but their movements were strangely synchronized. They didn't talk, they didn't laugh, and their eyes were empty and lifeless.
The Byakugan only saw a single line of chakra extending backward.
'...puppets...?'
Reika, with her combat instinct high, took a step forward.
"Bandits, huh? I can handle this." Her voice was a growl.
"No! They're marionettes!" Akihiro's voice arrived too late.
Sayuri launched a dozen kunai. The metallic clang echoed in the forest—and the shadows dodged in perfect unison. A dry snap, and one of them exposed a red seal beneath its cracked wooden skin.
"Protect yourselves!" Sayuri shouted, spinning in the air seconds before the explosion. The shock lit up the clearing, burning part of her light armor and opening a cut on her shoulder. Blood trickled, and her teeth clenched in pain.
"Careful!" Akihiro yelled, his voice deep and urgent, drawing his sword.
His eyes scanned the treetops, the shadows of the rocks, looking for a puppeteer, but there was nothing. The chakra pulse he had sensed from afar was faint and distant, almost imperceptible. The chakra lines stretched far away. This was no trap set by Nezuko.
Sayuri reacted with lightning speed, launching another ten kunai toward the aggressors. The sound of metal scraping against metal echoed through the forest, and the ensuing silence was broken by Mika's scream.
"If they're not human..." she cried out, terror in her voice. "Then what do we do?" The panic of fighting something inhuman made her freeze. One of the aggressors, its face covered by a grotesque scar, turned toward her. It raised a small axe, aiming at Sato, the mission's prize.
That gesture broke something inside Mika. The panic of fighting something inhuman was replaced by a primitive instinct to protect. Sato was her burden, the "blind old man" she had to guide, and she couldn't let him be harmed.
"No!" she screamed, extending her hands. A wave of chakra formed and exploded in a gust of wind, a force so chaotic and unexpected that it threw the aggressor backward.
Its body flew, disarticulated, and hit a tree. It didn't bleed. The fabric of its clothes tore, revealing wood and simple metal gears.
Sayuri began weaving subtle Genjutsu, not to cause illusions, but to confuse the senses of the puppeteer she still couldn't locate.
In the chaos, Mika ran to protect Sato. But in her haste, she embraced the wrong target. A puppet masked as the old man—false hair, makeshift cane. The real Sato, behind her, was almost pierced by a blade.
Reika intervened with a kick that broke the puppet's arm and saved the elder. "You protected a piece of wood, idiot!" she shouted, pushing Mika back.
"I thought... I thought it was him!" Mika whimpered, her hands shaking. "They... they move like people..."
The response came in pain. A hidden blade opened a deep cut on her arm. Mika looked at the blood trickling down her white skin. For an instant, she was speechless. Then, her expression shifted.
"No one... cuts me." The voice came out low, trembling. The chakra in her body exploded like a gale. The pressure knocked down allies and enemies around, trees bending under the force. Unstable bursts of energy shot out of her, uncontrolled, distorting the air, tearing chunks of soil.
Reika recoiled, eyes wide. "What the hell...?"
But there was no time. Marionettes advanced with hidden blades, some bearing new glowing seals.
Akihiro limped forward to position himself in front of Mika, blood trickling from his ankle. The wound was minor. His sword gleamed, slicing through invisible chakra lines; each strike disintegrated the threads.
Reika's indecision vanished. She saw Mika, the girl she had called "airhead," overcome fear and protect Sato. She saw Akihiro, the tense boy, become a leader in the heat of battle. Instinct took over. She didn't need hesitation. She only needed her raw strength.
"Get out of my way!" Reika roared, her voice full of new determination. She used her explosive Taijutsu and launched herself against the remaining puppets. Her kicks and punches, charged with chakra, hit the targets with a force that didn't seek to injure, but to destroy. She didn't care about their defenses; she simply broke them into pieces of wood and metal.
The trio fought in a chaotic, yet lethal, symphony. Akihiro used his Byakugan to find the puppets' weak points—the chakra junctions, the articulation points—and delivered precise strikes with his sword, severing the vital connections.
Sayuri, though wounded, danced in the chaos. Her Genjutsu flowed like subtle veils, confusing the hidden puppeteer's senses. Puppets began to stumble, lose synchronization, opening gaps.
Reika exploded forward, chakra-imbued kicks and punches shattering puppets into splinters. But her fury blinded her: a misplaced punch took down an entire tree, which nearly crushed Sayuri.
"Do you want to kill them or us?!" Sayuri screamed, rolling out of the way, blood staining her arm.
"I'm trying to save you guys!" Reika replied, but her voice already sounded less certain.
The field was a graveyard of wood and iron—broken trunks, smoke rising from burned seals, chakra still sparking in the air like stardust. But the dolls refused to die. Even armless, even faceless, they staggered forward, obedient to an invisible will.
Akihiro advanced.
His open Byakugan flooded his pearl-colored eyes with cold light. His sword didn't tremble.
Three puppets closed in a triangular formation, hidden blades snapping in the air. Akihiro did not retreat.
The first strike came from the front—fast, calculated. He spun slightly, the movement precise, and cut the chakra line binding the arm to the torso. The limb fell, useless, like a dry branch.
The second puppet attacked from behind. Akihiro had sensed the flow even before the attack manifested. The blade described a low arc, and the puppet's legs shattered. The body tumbled without dignity, like an abandoned toy.
The third advanced with greater speed than the previous ones. Akihiro jumped. The air opened in silence. A spin high up, and the blade descended diagonally, piercing the wooden chest. Seals tore into blue flames. The doll froze, inert, before collapsing.
From the shadows, two more emerged. But Akihiro was already moving. He sprinted between them, fluid steps, each strike of the sword so clean it seemed to produce no sound. Wood splintered, chakra threads dissipated like smoke in the wind.
A final puppet tried to retreat on a direct order from the puppeteer. The marionette, with its mechanical cowardice, hesitated. Akihiro pursued it. A leap, his body arching in the air, and the blade came down in a straight line. The wood split from top to bottom. The head rolled onto the ground, and the body shattered into fragments.
Then, silence.
The entire forest seemed to hold its breath. The sound of the sword being sheathed echoed like the final punctuation mark of a fight.
Sayuri stared at him, golden eyes wide—and for the first time, without a smile. Reika held her breath in her chest, almost forgetting to breathe. Mika, still panting, let out only a whisper:
"Holy crap…"
Akihiro didn't reply. His gaze swept over the wreckage, then rested on his own hands. Steady. They didn't tremble anymore.
Akihiro, Sayuri, Reika, and Mika turned to Sato. The old man, his clothes intact, only smiled. "I knew you were capable," he said, his voice full of admiration. "Thank you for defending me."
The silence of the forest was broken only by the sound of the team's heavy breathing. The smell of burnt wood and heated iron still hung in the air. Mika held her wounded arm, but there was a different gleam in her eyes—something she had never felt before: pride mixed with fear of her own power.
Reika let herself fall onto a broken trunk, huffing. Sweat ran down her face, mixed with small wood splinters. "If that was a Rank C mission…" she grumbled, "…I don't even want to see when they throw us into a B or A."
Sayuri delicately wiped the blood from her shoulder with a torn piece of cloth, each movement precise. Her golden eyes, however, were fixed on Akihiro. She didn't hide it: it was pure admiration.
"You were cold as ice, Akihiro-kun," she said, her voice low, almost a whisper. "I didn't think you'd have the guts to cut… so cleanly. Impressive."
Akihiro didn't reply immediately. The weight of the sword still felt heavy in his hands, even sheathed. He remembered the sensation of cutting, the clarity of every movement.
Sato, the artisan, approached with calm steps. Unlike before, he no longer seemed so fragile. There was firmness in his body, and his closed eyes seemed, somehow, attentive. "You remind me of something I once was, when youth is tested by itself," he said. "You didn't just fight enemies, but also your fear and inexperience."
Mika stared at him, surprised. "Old man… you're not just a defenseless old guy, are you?"
He only smiled, without answering.
An elegant figure emerged from the shadows.
It was Nezuko. She approached, and the relief was palpable in their relaxed shoulders.
"Congratulations," Nezuko said, her voice soft and full of approval. She looked at the bodies of wood and metal, her eyes narrowed.
Nezuko took a step forward, her arms crossed, as if observing pieces on a chessboard. Her gaze was serious now, without any trace of mockery.
"You survived because you trusted each other. But make no mistake: that puppeteer is still at large. Today you proved that you are no longer just genins. From now on, your every step will attract real enemies."
The weight of the words fell upon everyone.
Akihiro took a deep breath, looking at each of them. Reika with her fists still trembling, Sayuri hiding pain behind a half-smile, Mika fighting back tears, but lifted by the will to protect.
The wind blew through the treetops.