The Great Spider was crude, but the "vehicle" concept was a total shift in Suna's traditional design philosophy. In a village where puppets were either "swords" (attack) or "shields" (defense), I had built a "platform."
Sasori, who lived and breathed puppetry, had been watching. I'd see him standing in the corner of Chiyo's courtyard while I ran mobility tests, his purple eyes tracking the eight-legged gait with a cold, analytical focus. He never said anything, but I could feel the "developer" in him staring at my code.
Lately, Sasori's own workshop had changed. The quiet scritch of fine carving was replaced by the heavy, industrial thud of large-scale assembly. The air around his courtyard felt sharp, like a storm was about to break.
I was heading over to ask about Earth-style frequency stabilization, my usual cover for furnace research when Sasori uncharacteristically didn't tell me to get lost. He just nodded toward the clearing outside his shop.
"Bring your pack animal over here," he said, his voice flat but carrying a heavy weight of authority.
I didn't hesitate. I ran home, climbed into the Great Spider, and maneuvered the prototype over to the clearing.
When I arrived, my heart nearly stopped.
Standing in the center of the yard was a monster. It was streamlined, looking like a massive, armored scorpion crouching in the sand. A heavy steel stinger gleamed with the unmistakable purple sheen of high-grade poison. The back was a thick, ridged carapace, but unlike any puppet I'd seen before, it had a semi-enclosed cockpit built into the "body." Its face was a grotesque, frozen Noh mask, the mouth hiding a dark aperture for a needle-gun.
It was everything the Great Spider was supposed to be, but perfected for murder.
"This is Hiruko," Sasori said. He leaped into the cockpit on the puppet's back with the grace of a ghost. "Let's see if your 'pack animal' has any value beyond carrying luggage."
Initiate combat mode.
The confrontation was instant. I slammed the Great Spider's levers forward, the eight legs blurring as I tried to flank him. While moving, I slammed a hand into the control floor.
"Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu!"
I didn't sink; I sent the chakra pulse forward to liquefy the ground under Hiruko's feet. But Hiruko was too fast. The scorpion tail slammed into the ground like a lightning strike, the raw force of the impact shattering my jutsu formula before the earth could even soften.
"Amateur," Sasori's voice echoed through the puppet's frame.
Dozens of small ports opened on Hiruko's back. A rain of poisoned senbon needles filled the air. There was no way to dodge the spread was too wide.
I pushed the Great Spider into a desperate, skidding retreat. "Wind Style: Gale Palm!" I blasted a shockwave from my hand to deflect the incoming needles. Most of them went wide, but a few chewed through the Great Spider's wooden legs, spraying splinters everywhere.
The Great Spider shuddered. Sasori didn't give me time to recover. Hiruko lunged, moving with a terrifying, heavy speed. A massive steel pincer swung for my cockpit, tearing through the air with a literal scream.
I injected every drop of chakra I had into the leg servos, jumping the Spider backward. Bang! The pincer hit the ground where I'd been a millisecond ago, leaving a creator.
But the tail was already there, waiting for my landing. The stinger flashed, aiming right for my viewport.
I abandoned the levers. Snake - Ram - Tiger!
"Earth Style: Earth Dome!"
A thick wall of rock erupted in front of me. Crack! The stinger punched through the wall like it was cardboard, but the resistance was just enough to buy me a second to scuttle back.
The gap in specs was total. My tactics were solid, and my multi-threading was clean, but I was fighting a main battle tank with a golf cart. Hiruko was a combat fortress. I was just trying to stay in one piece.
"Done," Sasori said. He sounded bored.
Hiruko's mask opened, and a high-pressure jet of poison mist shot out like a water cannon. I was out of position, my chakra recycling from the Earth Dome. I was dead.
Then, the mist strangely dropped, as if an invisible hand had slapped it down to the sand. It sizzled on the ground, melting the dirt.
Sasori pulled the puppet back, looking at me with total indifference. "Your control is efficient. Your tactics are mediocre. The puppet... is garbage."
He turned Hiruko around and walked back into the workshop, a king returning to his throne.
I sat in my smoking, damaged cockpit, drenched in cold sweat. I could feel my hands shaking. For a second there, I'd actually felt the breath of the reaper.
But I wasn't frustrated. My eyes were wide with excitement. I'd just seen the "end-game" for puppet engineering. I'd seen the flaws in my Spider and the path to fixing them.
And I realized something else. In that last second, when the poison should have hit me... Sasori had tweaked the trajectory. He'd spared me.
The cold genius of Suna had just given me the most brutal, high-stakes lesson of my life.
I climbed out of the Great Spider and looked at the scorch marks on its legs. "Okay," I whispered to the empty yard. "Time for the MK 2."