Red Nara

Given that such throwing weapons are always lubed with poison, it was no surprise that the stricken genin fell down paralyzed in just half a minute. And it was time for the first important battle.

I could not bring myself to believe that such a cute little boy with a serious and focused face could turn into a monster, that he would replace almost his entire body with artificial parts for the sake of some imaginary "perfection".

Catching the moment when the genin turned his head and smiled happily for a moment, I followed the direction of his gaze and noticed a statuesque genin with a face very similar to Sasori's, with the not-so-old Chiyo on one side and a beautiful black-haired woman in her thirties in a chunin uniform on the other.

All three of them were smiling and waving their arms encouragingly. The older man sitting behind Chiyo was making faces at her, mimicking her, for which he received a backhand to the nose from his sister, who didn't even look back.

Grunting, I bit my lip to keep from laughing at their antics. Yeah, the elders in Suna are funny. At least these ones are.

- Hajime! - The referee slid against the wall and the tense genin exploded into action.

Naoho jumped back as far as she could, dodging the kunai flying at her from the puppets and folded a few hand seals and exhaled an impressive ball of fire at the red-haired child.

- Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu!

Despite the fact that the technique flew rather fast, the eight-year-old genin showed class - while simultaneously controlling his puppets, he was quite nimble in getting sideways and away from the girl while trying to pincer her and throwing kunai with his free hand. That's pretty good for a shmacoduck (brat), controlling two units at the same time and moving freely while also attacking - not all kugutsu users can do that even with one puppet, let alone control two with one hand. There are too many factors to take into consideration, forgetting your own safety.

Being attacked from three sides and instantly realizing the danger of such a position, the kunoichi did not hesitate and accelerated with a brief release of chakra and sprinted between the dolls, intending to finish off the enemy herself rather than be distracted by his tools.

Though the dolls moved at the speed of an experienced genin, almost chunin, the Senju alumni's strength was on another level and even a tokubetsu jonin might have some difficulty against a well-trained Konoha genin. Not least because of the concentration on the speed of Konoha's fighters - the real punching power of the youngsters would come after they started to mature, but even a body that hadn't grown yet could use some speed.

Therefore, Sasori was a little confused when the opponent was near him faster than expected, throwing kunai at him, intending not to hit him, but just to disrupt his concentration for a short time and distract him from the possibility of hitting her in the back. A pretty good plan, considering the traditional weakness of puppetmasters in taijutsu.

But the minor genius also had tricks up his sleeve - the kunoichi was in dangerous proximity with the kunai in her hand, it was enveloped in clouds of smoke, and Naoho was only miraculously able not to fly into the hospitable open body of the barrel-shaped puppet, trying to rake her into himself.

A desperate upward somersault with a flip took her away from danger, and a rather appropriate head-down position in the air allowed her to spit out several small fireballs without any hand seals.

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