28 - The Puppeteer

"I hope he has red hair. Red hair is cool," Hoka remarked as she burned away another batch of poisoned senbon.

Sakura and Chiyo eyed her suspiciously. The former brought up her question. "Who are you, anyway? Why are you helping us?"

The auburn haired girl gave the two a 5 second version of Tsunade's hesitant approval for Kyomu to assist in Akatsuki ass kicking, as well as the Shadow Star name copyright infringement. Sakura had never met Kyomu and his group, but she had heard enough from Fuyuka and Naruto to know they were bad news.

Sasori did have red hair.

"I thought he should be older than this!" Sakura shouted, turning to Chiyo. However, the old woman didn't seem to have any idea how the boy hadn't aged either.

"I don't like to take too long," the puppeteer commented, retrieving a scroll. "We'll see how you like this."

Chiyo stepped back in horror, earning glances of confusion from the younger kunoichi. "That's... the Third Kazekage! He went missing a decade ago... you're telling me..."

Hoka let the other two question the red haired puppeteer. However, she herself had no interest in Kazekage stuff, nor did she have much patience or attention span. Instead, she resumed her attacks.

Crimson Flare Jutsu was a relatively simple but definitely not weak fire style jutsu, where the user punches at the air to shoot a beam of fire. Honestly, most fire type jutsu were just slightly different versions of the same thing- shoot fire. Hence, Hoka liked fire. Head empty, just set things on fire.

It wasn't soon after that Chiyo brought out her own puppets- copies of Sasori's parents he had made himself as a child, yearning for the attention he never got due to his parents' death. However, despite Chiyo's surprisingly strong puppeteering, Sasori used the Third Kazekage's iron sand jutsu to disable her Sasori-dad puppet.

"Girl- Hoka, right?" Chiyo asked, managing to save Sakura from the poison gas by using her chakra strings to control the chunin. "You say you're a fire jutsu master?"

Hoka winked. "Yep, that's me- fire jutsu expert, or the arsonist, or the pyromaniac, or 'Hoka don't burn down the cave I know caves can't burn but I can't be too sure,'"

"In that case," Chiyo decided. "Iron sand is still iron- can you melt it?"

The fiery-haired girl nodded, smirk on her face as she formed the hand signs for Crimson Flare Jutsu. "Got it, granny-san."

Hoka cast Crimson Flare Jutsu to burn away the majority of Sasori's next iron sand attack, but a bit managed to slip past her fire, but Chiyo managed to deflect it with Sasori-mom puppet and a chakra shield in her own prosthetic arm.

The fiery haired girl continued to melt away the iron sand, but in the end her jutsu were primarily focused and offensive- not suited for deflecting large amounts of particles.

Hoka was facing one problem. Crimson Flare Jutsu was pretty simple- burn enemies to crumbs. That meant it wasn't meant for long term defense. Sasori proceeded to expertly maneuver his Third Kazekage puppet, forming shapes of steel to launch an attack.

Hoka could immediately tell they were far too condensed to melt. "I can't melt these, you'll have to try to dodge!"

Chiyo and Sakura nodded, but Sasori only attacked the latter. Hoka shot out another beam of fire, managing to slow the attack just enough for Sakura to dance out of the way. Her mega-strength knocked the steel into the hideout wall, causing the whole place to collapse.

Their red haired foe quickly let the iron sand form a massive 'forest' of poisoned steel, spikes intersecting everywhere.

But Sakura could no longer dodge this many attacks. Meanwhile, Chiyo had been trapped under the falling stones from the collapsed hideout. Hoka formed a few hand signs, pointing her fist at the spikes right above Sakura. No fire appeared.

"I don't have enough chakra," she growled, muttering some colorful curses she heard from Rina and Kessho's regular arguments.

"That's right, it's all poisoned," Sasori laughed. "Three days at most, but I'll finish her now."

"Um, no you won't!" Hoka retorted. The fiery haired girl summoned one last blast of fire, blasting poor Sandaime in the face. It was damaged slightly, but not enough to stop him.

Surprisingly, Sakura was not immobilized at all, standing up and punching the puppet and breaking it in one blow, monster-power-kunoichi style.

The pink haired girl rushed over to Hoka and Chiyo, freeing the latter as well as healing them both, and revealing her antidote. Despite most of her wounds being now gone, Hoka was still entirely dry of chakra. Ugh.

The three kunoichi turned back to Sasori, who muttered something about not wanting to waste more human puppets before unzipping his stupidly long Akatsuki cloak.

"Listen, now, boy, don't go undressing in front of a girl now," Hoka warned. Leave it to her to sass in dangerous situations- the fire jutsu specialist reminded Sakura of Fuyuka.

However, any sarcasm evaporated (for now) when Sasori's body was revealed to have been turned entirely into a human puppet himself.

Weapons protruded from his arms and body- easily making himself just as dangerous as Hiruko or the Third Kazekage or any of his puppets. He held his arms out to the three exhausted fighters, shooting a beam of fire at them.

"Woah now, that's my move!" Hoka complained. Still, without any chakra left, Hoka could not fight back. Chiyo attempted to throw the broken head of the Third Kazekage, only for it to be incinerated (Hoka settled for glaring coldly whenever he used fire).

Sakura proved herself to be incredibly strong, literally, by avoiding Sasori's attack and tanking his poison with the temporary immunity granted by her antidote. When at last, with a Tsunade-style punch, the red haired puppet was shattered to pieces.

The three were about to celebrate, when the puppet reformed itself with relative ease.

"Well, this is bad," Hoka remarked, trying to summon another flame on her fingertips only for it to sputter out. "I still don't have enough chakra."

"Don't worry about it," Chiyo declared coldly. "I will do this."

Ten puppets appeared at her aid, a number quite out of a normal puppeteer's league.

"I should have expected you to be able to control that many puppets, granny," the red haired puppeteer- or should he be called a puppet himself now, commented. "But how about... this."

He whipped out yet another summoning scroll, causing the three kunoichi to brace themselves. Instead of one, or two, or ten puppets, instead before them, stood a hundred.