Chapter 192: The Puppet Binding Array

Shizuka had selected Tonbo before speaking to him.

Nadeshiko Village required its women to seek strong partners through combat. Strength came first, but nothing in the tradition prevented her from preferring a man whose face, posture, and calm she also found attractive.

Tonbo looked as though no disaster could disturb the clarity of his eyes. The composure was partly experience and partly the pleasure he took in the new clothes. Shizuka interpreted all of it as proof that the handsome stranger concealed formidable power. Her guard reached a similar conclusion and tried not to show it.

The news that he already had a family ended the challenge before it began.

"You are married?"

"Very much so," Tonbo said. "You arrived too late."

Nadeshiko custom did not include taking another woman's husband into the village. Shizuka's determination collapsed.

Tonbo considered the two unmarried men he knew best.

"I can recommend alternatives. Kakashi Hatake, the Copy Ninja, and Might Guy, Konoha's Azure Beast. Both are powerful and possess considerable masculine charm. Defeat either one and invite him instead."

Shizuka repeated the names until she remembered them.

"Then I will challenge them."

Tonbo concealed his anticipation. Kakashi and Guy could decide what to do with the tradition once it arrived at Konoha's gates.

A loud voice interrupted them.

"Lady Shizuka! Fight me again. When I win, you will become my wife."

A man in a bright purple-pink suit approached upon a massive puppet. He sat inside its raised head and controlled the machine through an array of handles and chakra lines.

Tonbo's attention shifted from the gaudy rider to the mechanism.

The Second Kazekage had founded modern puppet ninjutsu, but Sand no longer possessed every branch of the discipline. This machine used inferior materials and unexpectedly advanced control principles. It resembled an early scientific ninja tool as much as a traditional puppet.

Shizuka's face darkened.

"I told you I will not marry you."

The rider saw Tonbo beside her and assumed the worst.

Jealousy mattered more to him than the fact that Shizuka had rejected every earlier challenge. He treated her as a prize already assigned to the man strong enough to take her and therefore regarded any conversation with another man as theft.

"Get away from my woman."

He pressed a control before Tonbo could answer. Rows of short arrows launched from both sides of the puppet.

The bolts came from alternating ports so that blocking the first line exposed the defender to the second. Poison reservoirs fed the narrow heads. A third control prepared the puppet's heavy arms to close upon anyone who moved inside the ranged attack.

Shizuka and her guard reached for their weapons.

"I will handle it," Tonbo said.

He took one step.

To the observers, the ground seemed to contract beneath him. Tonbo crossed the distance before the first arrow passed his former position and placed one palm against the puppet.

Branching neural patterns covered the machine in less than a second. They followed its control lines into the rider's hands and spread beneath his skin.

"What is this?"

"Do not be afraid."

The puppet's structure and the man's memories entered Tonbo together.

Contact Evolution read the machine through the chakra control passing across it, then continued into the human nervous system at the other end. Construction diagrams, practiced movements, private humiliations, and the secret purpose of the society arrived without distinction. Tonbo separated useful information from noise at the speed his evolved mind allowed.

Shizuka's guard froze with her sword half drawn. If Tonbo had chosen them as targets, neither woman would have completed an attack. Shizuka understood that her proposed marriage duel would have ended before she saw him move.

Tonbo found the secret hidden inside the machine.

The Hundred-Puppet Soul Binding Technique placed a condition upon a target through successive puppets. Once that target destroyed the hundredth puppet in the sequence, the completed array seized the target's soul and transferred control to the technique's user.

Each puppet carried one part of the binding formula. Destruction released that part toward the attacker, disguising accumulation as progress through an enemy force. The victim believed the hundredth puppet marked victory. In reality, the final destruction closed the array assembled by the previous ninety-nine.

The local Hundred-Puppet Society had developed it to capture powerful women. Members measured status by the number of female shinobi they controlled.

Tonbo absorbed the control method, the puppet designs, and the binding technique. A chance encounter had given him a form of soul manipulation more indirect than the Reaper Death Seal and more perverse in purpose.

The society rewarded members for selecting capable targets because strong captives became both proof of skill and weapons for the next hunt. Its obsession had driven real innovation. Tonbo found the motive contemptible and the resulting ninjutsu valuable.

He immediately considered its limits.

If the Ten-Tails destroyed one hundred puppets with a single Tailed Beast Ball, would the completed condition bind it? The answer depended upon whether the creature possessed a soul in a form the technique recognized and whether one simultaneous attack counted as a sequence. Tonbo doubted the easy victory, but the principle might still work against other enemies.

The rider remained conscious long enough to realize Tonbo had read him.

He tried to release the controls. The nerves no longer answered in the order he expected. Tonbo's network had already passed beyond the hands and reached the roots of the impulses governing the rest of the body.

Tonbo destroyed the root nerves governing sexual function. He disrupted the hormonal control connected to them as well, leaving changes that would continue long after the man woke.

The man would survive, remember the encounter, and lose the physical function around which he had built his pursuit of women. Tonbo did not remain to learn how the Hundred-Puppet Society would judge that result.

The punishment matched neither a court nor a mission order. Tonbo chose it because the man had built his status around capturing women as property.

The rider collapsed across his controls.

"What did you do?" Shizuka asked.

"He will no longer be capable of the performance he valued."

Tonbo turned away. Itachi remained missing, and the Shinigami Cult remained somewhere beyond the town.

"I have other work. Goodbye."

His body twisted out of sight.

Shizuka's guard stared at the unconscious man.

 

"Village Head, should we continue challenging strangers?"

Meeting one handsome traveler had exposed the difference between their confidence and the strength waiting outside Nadeshiko Village.

Shizuka looked toward the place where Tonbo vanished.

"He gave us two names. Kakashi and Guy are in Konoha, where we are already traveling. We will test them when we arrive."

If neither challenge succeeded, Shizuka still had her teacher's unfinished task involving Jiraiya and his disciple. She no longer imagined completing any of it without further training.

Her teacher had once failed to claim Jiraiya for the same reason: strength without victory changed no tradition.

"We become stronger first," Shizuka said. "Then we challenge them."

The guard looked once more at the fallen puppet rider and silently hoped Kakashi and Guy were less terrifying than the man who recommended them.