Side Story: The Abandoned Outpost

## The Story

Our story starts with an urgent mission posted on the mission board. There isn't much information on it, just that one of Konoha's outposts on the western border has gone silent and a team needs to be sent out to investigate. At this point, we're still hoping for the best... perhaps a virus, or just a defect radio.

A team of shinobi composed of Kaze, Fuya, Benko, Karasu, Toruma and Shino is sent out to take a look at the village and report back their findings. The trip is rather uneventful at first, but as they get closer to the outpost they notice signs of struggle. Very one-sided struggles, for not a single body is found along the way.

When they enter the outpost it genuinely looks deserted, and the team decides to split up into Group A with Kaze, Fuya and Shino and Group B with Benko, Karasu and Toruma. Group A encounters a series of wooden toy snakes at the market while Group B encounters a series of toy crocodiles at the blacksmiths.

The wooden toys turn out to be small puppets, the snakes being able to bite with poison and the crocodiles having teeth as sharp as kunai. They beat the puppets, but by now it was clear that this wasn't just some virus which'd swept over the village.

The groups move on, Group A quickly being blocked by a much larger snake while Group B encounters a larger spider puppet. The large snake puppet is quickly chopped into pieces by the group but sprays acid on them in the process. The spider puppet sets traps along the way, but the group manages to avoid them by launching over and digging under the street.

Then, both teams encounter a shinobi in need of aid. They look like one of the jonin stationed at the outpost, and ask for assistance from the group. As the groups get close enough they open their flak vests to reveal themselves to be suicide bombers, though they're not in control of their own limbs. The puppeteer was using them as human puppets and blows both of them up, dealing the first real damage to the group.

By now, the groups regroup into one group and have their first good view of the puppeteer who appears to be wearing a puppet armor. Shino and Kaze recognise her from the war on the beach, Hitomi of the Hidden Sand. Shino tracks her with a bird while the group sets out to catch her. They run into a porcupine puppets which shoots a load of poisoned senbon spines at them.

After a while of chasing they come across a wall of ten human puppets, with the puppeteer standing behind them. She explains that she's been collecting shinobi to create a live puppet army, that she was experimenting on being able to use the human puppet's jutsu. When a fight is initiated the wall of human puppets surrounds the wooden one as a protective barrier. By now some in the group are starting to figure out the wooden one is a dummy and the puppeteer is actually among the ones in the barrier.

It doesn't matter anymore though, for Karasu Uchiha, the glorious SoaB decides to slap an explosive tag off on the wooden puppet. It sets off all the human bombs, creating an explosion large enough to level the street. Benko and Karasu narrowly avoid it by hiding underground, Toruma in a building, Fuya by cloning himself into a shuriken and tossing himself away and Kaze was far enough to run out. Shino throws up a protective dome around the explosions, but isn't quick enough to complete it. The dome decreases the intensity of the explosion but explodes itself soon after, heavily injuring Shino in the process.

The group manages to find and save a large group of civilians and shinobi in one of the nearby buildings, the corpse of the puppeteer is not recovered and assumed to be burned.