Extermination
Note to self: Face worms spat acid.
...really, really NASTY acid.
Kankuro glared down at his upper sleeve, which was persistently smoking despite his best attempts to stare it into submission. After patting vigorously at the material he peered around the large rock he had chosen for cover.
His target was writhing on the sand, making a noise akin to mica being ground between two large stones. The poisoned dust he'd blown at it was apparently not a problem, more an annoyance.
It'll be easy, they said. Kankuro thought to himself as he tried to keep track of the legs. Just a faceworm problem, no sweat. I'm gonna kill Dragon.
Faceworms were one of the Desert's many hidden dangers. Carnivorous beasts resembling the centipedes of Fire Country on a frighteningly massive scale, faceworms dug colonies with numbers ranging from five or so to twenty, and they had appetites that matched their size. Faceworm juveniles, caught in raids on colonies, were brought to Suna where they were pitted against the more talented genins in betting pools disguised as sparring matches. More than one of Kankuro's acquaintances (for he had no friends) had lost an eye or worse to a baby faceworm.
None of them had ever had to size up an adult.
"Shit," the puppeteer repeated in a chorus as he dug through another pouch for smoke bombs, "Shit, shit, shitty shit- AHA!" he pulled two out and flipped over easily, balancing on his toes as he watched his enemy.
She was thirteen feet if she was an inch, a queen faceworm; old and without a colony, but still hungry enough to stalk a tribe of the inner Desert's nomads. Her mandibles and long lower horns surrounded the handsome features of one of the Tribe boys she had not yet fully digested. Her twenty spindly legs were clicking, making sounds not unlike Karasu and Kankuro wished bitterly for his weapon but such sophisticated puppets were useless against something that big, in an area with little cover and no backup.
Kankuro tested the wind and pulled the pin on the bombs, tossing them over the rock. They landed a few yards away from the worm and burst, sending a wave of acrid black smoke over their small battlefield. The creature screeched in irritation as the smoke invaded her weak, milky eyes, clogging up her sensitive sense of smell. Kankuro was already running, chakra powered to his feet to keep from sticking in the unforgiving sand (And damn it if Gaara were here, then there wouldn't be a problem, because the sand always hardened up for Gaara, like running on a cobblestone road-) moving fast and low, a black blur against endless golden dunes.
The worm twitched, turning. She could barely smell the solo mission paint.
Kankuro reached for the scimitars crossed on his back.
A jerk to the left, a slash to the right, and the worm was lacking in six legs. Her turnaround radius was just large enough that he ducked underneath her, shuddering at the feel of sharp exoskeleton across his back, rolling up on her other side as she screeched. The dead face she was using opened his eyes- in life, they had been blue; a half blood, not fully of the desert's stock- and opened his mouth.
The acid spat out in a harsh stream, but this time Kankuro was ready and dodged to the right, hands running through transport seals, bringing him back once more to the outcropping (If he made it out of this alive, he'd give the thing its own personal plaque, and then he'd commemorate it and maybe plant a shrub that might survive in this gods forsaken sun.)
Her massive tail slammed down by his shoulder; he jerked away, staring fascinated at the large, wicked looking barb dripping bright orange fluid onto the sand.
The wind, an ever-changing constant, began shifting slightly, lifting the edges of Kankuro's cowl, in the same way it did when Temari was about to open her fan. He blinked, inhaled and tasted ozone and hot dust, and for a single instant in his mind's eyes Kankuro saw the flash of dead green eyes and the hoarse command to 'Move, trash.'
He swore.
Sandstorm.
The worm couldn't sense it coming. She was concentrating on finding the wretch that had blinded her.
Kankuro slid his scimitars back into their sheathes, watching the dune closest to him. The rasping sound was getting louder, an echo of millions of sand grains rattling together. He reached under his gloves, pulled at the white wrappings tied around his forearms. They were acid-burned, but still serviceable. He reached for two kunai, clenched them in even white teeth.
In the playhouse, there was a calming exercise they used before taking the stage. Dragon had taught it to Kankuro when he was five, a series of counting, taking in breath to the count of seven, holding it for seven counts, then releasing it to the same count. Kankuro felt his breath fall into this rhythm as he tugged a pair of goggles down over his eyes.
The faceworm would be helpless, her sense of smell still besotted by the smoke, her weak eyes blinded by the storm.
This was crazy. Stupid and reckless, Temari would call it. Foolhardy, Baki would say.
Gaara wouldn't say anything.
The storm raged over the dune like the pictures of tidal waves Kankuro had sometimes seen in books. The sun was blocked out, sudden shade warning the creature that all was not right. The wall of sand hit like Baki's windsword, but Kankuro was no ill-seasoned child; he was the son of Yondaime Kazekage, a puppeteer of Red Sands. He had survived Sabaku-no-Gaara. He kept his feet steady and got ready to move.
Blinded by the grains of sand, the worm began to curl, going into defensive mode. She never saw the little black creature she had been hunting leap over the rock it had been hiding behind, running straight for her.
The wrappings shot out like ribbons on chakra strings, their ends tied to narrow-bladed and wickedly sharp suna kunai. Once, twice, three times each they wrapped around the middle and back of the worm, jerking at Kankuro's direction into the rock he had been using as cover. With a surprised screech, the faceworm found itself hogtied, its long body no longer of service.
Moving around the sand, with the sand, Kankuro let the wind carry him over the bound faceworm. A single scimitar, burrowed into the softer midsection of the worm's body, stopped his ascent. Hand spikes were produced, chakra pushed to feet. He crawled up, past the spasming legs, to the single dented crease between armored back and neck.
The scimitar came down, smooth as glass. The sandstorm's tail end scratched over his shoulders and down his back as the worm gave a single protesting screech and spasmed, head severed from body. Kankuro jumped from the carcass, performing a somersault that brought him just out of reach of the spray of blue-black blood.
The storm had passed and the sun returned to find puppeteer victorious.
The head had to be returned to the tribe of Deep Sands Nomads who had hired the village's services, as proof that the creature had been shuffled off the mortal coil. Kankuro was pleased with his acting skills- not a hint of emotion as the blue eyed boy's mother screamed over what was left of his face, still balanced between the faceworm's huge jaws.
The Tribe Elder looked at him for a while, after all the mourners had gone.
"You," he informed the painted wraith from Suna, "Are fearless."
Kankuro had to blink at that one. "What makes you say so?" he asked tonelessly, waving off the young medicine woman who had been seeing to his arm.
"The storm passed us by. It must have hit your battlefield. Yet here you stand, and here the worm is, and you are alive. Do you fear nothing, ninja hidden in the sand?"
Kankuro considered.
"Old man," he said, with a small smile, "Fearing nothing is stupid and reckless. Knowing WHAT to fear, now- that's another thing altogether."
The old man nodded slowly, eyes hidden beneath thick white brows; he had lived a long time in this forsaken place. "You are wise, ninja. Beyond your years." He gestured towards the head, which lay on a copper plate on the table of his tent. "Take the horns, then, and the tail. You have earned them."
"In the name of Sunakagure I would be honored," Kankuro said, and he knew that the Elder knew he was full of shit but he took them anyway. That barb had all kinds of potential.
His bounty in a sack on his back, Kankuro walked home under the light of a full moon. Reflected in its face he saw a tanuki curled in sleep.
When he walked through the arc of the Kazekage's tower he was almost relieved to see Gaara perched on the roof, red sash flying like a banner in the soft wind.
"Right where I left you." He murmured with something dangerously close to affection, and went to find some sleep.
---
Gaara turned the paper over.
He had commented only a few days before on his brother's scar- the gritty, scraped mark on his upper arm that looked so much like a sand burn Gaara wanted to be positive that it hadn't been he who had done it.
"No," Kankuro had replied, with habitual smirk and halfway wink, "No, little bro, I promise it wasn't you."
Gaara leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand across his eyes. For a moment his heart clenched and he almost placed a hand over it, but the days when that was habit were slowly becoming dim memory.
There was one more report to read.