A/N: Thanks to GreatSwordsmith for supporting me on Patreon! I think from now on I’ll just make it an official rule that anyone who subscribes to my Patreon gets a shoutout in one of these author’s notes, since I think people tend to prefer it if they feel like they’re getting something in return for their investment. : )

-o-

“Fine,” Temari said, a look of ice-cold murder in her eyes. “Switch to plan B.”

Kankuro body-flickered over to his sister before Naruto could do anything to stop him, and then all of a sudden the two pairs of fighters were facing off against each other on either side of the street. Smoke rose up from the ruined buildings around them, and for one second Naruto thought they were about to have a fair and even fight, but of course it never worked out that way. Temari drew a bloody finger across the summoning seal inscribed on her fan, and the next instant a Konoha ninja was flanking her on either side. She had summoned Kiba and Chōji back to fight as Kankuro’s living puppets once again.

A black pool of despair welled up in Naruto’s stomach. Sasuke and the others were going to murder him for teaching Temari that technique, assuming he did not die from his injuries first. The cuts across his chest and back were burning feverishly with what he feared was poison, and the less he thought about his ruined left hand the better. His endless experience with shadow clones dying over and over had left him with an odd sense of detachment, but the pain was still there, and in combat a second’s distraction could be fatal.

The Sand Siblings seemed to have a different plan for their puppets this time around, however. With a twitch of his fingers Kankuro pulled Tenten down from her vantage point and positioned her behind her fellow Konoha genin, her eyes white with what Naruto hoped was only temporary blindness.

Lee narrowed his eyes at the sight. “Using the bodies of our friends, forcing us to fight against each other in the hopes that we will prove unwilling to fight at full force… I can understand wanting to gain every possible advantage for the sake of your country, but even so, I do not like the way you fight.”

Kankuro grinned at Lee with an almost child-like, impish malice. “Oh, that’s right – you Konoha guys are supposed to value your precious comrades above all else, aren’t you? Well, let’s put that theory to the test!” He flicked his fingers, and a sizzling sound emanated from each of the three living puppets as their coats opened to reveal explosive tags attached all along their bodies, every last one of them about to go off and blast their bearers to pieces. “You’ve got exactly two seconds to save your buddies; think fast!”

Naruto shot a panicked look at Lee, but it was too late to say anything, and Naruto was not sure he would have tried to stop him even if he could. The air seemed to shimmer around Lee as he activated his Eight-Gates technique, chakra building up around him as his muscles tensed as though in slow motion, and then he blasted off. Lee launched himself towards Kiba and tore the explosive tags off his body in a green blur, the resulting shockwave hurling the feral boy off his feet and scattering the tags to the winds even as Lee catapulted himself to the next closest person with no consideration for who he cared about more. Chōji received the exact same treatment as Kiba, and then finally it was Tenten’s turn.

There was still one second left.

Lee was doing it, he was actually doing it. Naruto could barely believe his chakra-enhanced eyes as Lee began to remove the last of the tags from Tenten’s body with over half a second to spare. There was a spark of white as the tags ignited, and Naruto’s brain had just enough time to realize that Kankuro had lied about the timing before the tags went up in a blast of white-hot fire that enveloped Lee and Tenten both. The other tags which had been scattered to the winds detonated as well, and the shockwave hurled Naruto across the street once more, broken masonry and shards of glass raining down on him.

Distantly, he could hear a building groaning as one of the larger Uchiha structures finally decided it had taken enough punishment and collapsed to its foundations, blowing up a cloud of grey smoke that caused him to collapse into a fit of coughing. When he looked up, he saw that Kankuro and Temari had retreated to the far end of the street, looking none the worse for wear. Lee and Tenten, however…

Naruto’s stomach knotted together. There, among the rubble, Lee’s body lay burned and half-buried, his arm still stretching out towards Tenten’s broken remains. He had tried to protect her until the very end.

Kankuro strolled over to Lee’s body. “Huh, so much for overcoming the impossible. I guess he really should’ve learned his lesson from your fight with him during the exams. Ninjas cheat.”

“You,” Naruto choked, “you’re dead.”

“Eh, I don’t think so. It’s two against one and you’re missing a hand. That’s pretty good odds. But since we’re already on the topic of not playing fair…” Kankuro gave a twitch of his fingers, and a moment later Chōji and Kiba were standing next to him and his sister once more. “Four against one! I should thank your buddy for being considerate enough to save two of my precious new meat puppets. They’re not as good as my own artisanship, of course, but hey, an artist has to work with the tools he’s given.”

Naruto gritted his teeth, well past the point where mere words could serve to express his fury. There was a pressure building up inside of him that seemed to be responding to the roiling maelstrom of resentment, guilt and burning rage that was threatening to overwhelm his senses – like a pair of fires that drew heat from one another until at last they joined together to become a raging conflagration…

Distantly, Naruto noticed that there was a tingling sensation in his ruined left hand where there should have been only pain. When he glanced down he saw that his skin was very slowly starting to reknit itself.

“Do you see it, kit? Can you understand now, if only a little bit, the appeal of hate?”

Naruto blinked. For a second there, it was almost as if he was standing back in – back in the village of the ice and snow, as he lay dying. He was talking to – at the very edge of hearing, he could hear a familiar voice…

“Let the world burn. What has it ever done for us? Family, only family – that is the one and only thing of value in this world…”

Naruto shook himself awake. Kiba and Chōji were charging at him once more, and he no longer had the ability to weave signs. Instead he raised his right hand and channelled all his chakra into his flash seal. Light burst out without any semblance of control, brilliant strands of red and orange bouncing off ruined structures and scattering in every direction at once without any care for who they did or did not blind.

Naruto charged forward and picked up his sword with his right hand as he ran, the chakra-forged metal hungrily lapping up his light-release chakra and forcing it into its desired shape. He leaped into the air and slashed downward, a blindingly bright beam of light radiating from the tip of his sword and carving straight through the area between Kankuro and his living puppets. This time Naruto did not bother to restrain Kiba and Chōji as they fell, and instead went straight for their master. He raised his blade and fired a condensed beam of blazing red light at his enemy, willing it to burn straight through him. Light was only another type of energy, after all, readily convertible to heat. All was fire, in the end…

Temari stepped in front of her brother, blocking the beam with her fan while swinging it at the same time to send one of her hurricane gales roaring towards Naruto. In response Naruto stopped channelling light chakra and instead focussed purely on his own element of wind – on the concept of movement, of change, and the refusal to accept the way things were. He filled his sword till bursting and then brought it down against the onrushing storm. The narrow beam of wind easily cut through Temari’s wider attack, splitting her hurricane gale down the middle while his own attack travelled onwards and slammed into his opponent. Temari was lifted off her feet and sent flying backwards with a strangled scream of pain.

The air had been scalding hot, Naruto realized dimly. Even now, his wind chakra was swirling around him like a cloak, feeling strangely warm and comforting to the touch. He felt as though he were an orphaned child whose home had just burned down, only for a kindly caregiver to wrap a warm and comforting blanket around his shoulders. He could see that alternate reality now, one where Jiraiya had reneged on his duty to raise him and left him with that blazing inner fire as the only thing to keep him company…

“That is the way it could have been – would have been but for the intervention of a few. And if they were willing to do that to you, if they would have killed and tortured you if not for luck and chance alone – then is it not the same as if they had done it after all? In the eyes of the ones that never were, those who are willing and those who do are equally guilty. Equally deserving of our hate…”

Kankuro grinned weakly at him in spite of the fact that his clothes were still smoking from the blast of light, though there was no hiding the fear in his eyes. “So you’re a monster after all… I was starting to wonder how someone like you could ever have beaten Gaara. But then, I suppose that’s what backup plans are for.” He flicked his fingers and a horned puppet landed on the ground next to him, its broad chest bulging as though it had swallowed someone whole. When its wooden ribs opened up Naruto saw that this was exactly the case: Inside it, a young, sharp-faced chūnin was chained up in an infernal contraption with a thousand spikes jutting against his skin at every possible angle. More than ever before, the teenager looked like he desperately wished he had stayed in bed that morning.

One by one the fires went out inside of Naruto, only to be replaced by a cold despair. “Shikamaru…”

“Behold, the Black Ant!” Kankuro presented the mechanical contraption with manic glee. “See these spikes? Every single one of them is coated in a slow-acting poison designed to inflict the theoretical maximum amount of agony. If you so much as touch my Black Ant, the spikes will pierce his skin and he’ll feel a pain worse than he can possibly imagine – and if you do anything to disrupt my control over the puppet, all of the spikes will penetrate his body at once for three hundred times the same effect!”

Naruto stared weakly at the device, feeling as though he was about to throw up. “I – I’ve promised myself not to give in to threats,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’m not gonna give you extra reason to hurt my friends by giving you what you want whenever you threaten to do so…”

“Oh, but I’m not threatening anyone,” Kankuro said cheerfully. “I’m just letting you know what will happen if you do anything to fight back against me. Of course, if your friend wants to save you from the dilemma, all he has to do is intentionally impale himself on the spikes in order to make the whole thing a moot point. How about it, Leafy? Would you care to nobly sacrifice yourself for the sake of your friend?”

Shikamaru’s eyes began to turn towards Naruto, but they stopped short – not quite finding the courage to look his fellow chūnin in the eyes. He half-opened his mouth as if to say something, but the spikes immediately began to press against his chin, and although his lips moved no sound would come out. After a few seconds he gave up and merely stared down at the ground, defeated. It was the saddest and most wretched sight Naruto had ever seen, and he knew right then and there that he would never be able to abandon his friend, not even if there was no chance in the world of saving him.

“Hey, that’s alright,” said Kankuro, “not everyone can be a hero.” He leaped onto the back of the horned puppet as though it were some kind of demonic steed and began to fly directly towards Naruto, six spindly arms reaching out to grasp him from every angle at once. “Now, let’s see how long you last!”

“Wait,” said Naruto, frantically dodging backwards as he tried to avoid the erratically flailing limbs. “Can’t we make some kind of deal? There has to be something you care more about than killing me!”

Kankuro grinned at his sister. “Hey look, he’s trying to bargain with us. That’s how you can tell we’re winning.”

Temari stared at Naruto from behind strands of bloodied blond hair, a deathly cold expression in her eyes. “You murdered my little brother right in front of me while I watched,” she said. “What could I possibly want that’s better than watching you die pointlessly trying to save your friend?”

Naruto dodged to the side as the monstrous puppet came at him once again, hidden blades flashing from its arms, but despite all the danger his eyes would focus only on the spikes that were juddering dangerously close to Shikamaru’s skin. “Look,” he gasped, “I get why you want to kill me – after what you did to Lee and Tenten, I kinda want to kill you too. But, you’re not thinking this through! If one of those spikes touches my friend and kills him, what exactly do you think is gonna happen next? You’ve already watched one little brother die in front of you while you did nothing – think about how much more you’ll hate yourself if you make the exact same mistake a second time.”

Temari looked more surprised than outraged. “You’re actually threatening me? In this situation?”

“Not so much threatening as-” he grunted as he ducked underneath one of the sweeping arms, striking upwards with his sword at the same time and cutting so cleanly through the limb that none of the spikes around Shikamaru so much as twitched. “-warning you. This entire attack goes completely against the Sand’s interests – There’s no way you can actually win in the long term, and that means someone must have somehow tricked your father into doing this.” Temari was the Kazekage’s heir, and that meant there was a chance that she knew about Akatsuki. The question was, just how much did the Kazekage trust his own daughter? “If I’m right and this whole thing was designed to weaken the Sand and the Leaf at the same time, what do you think they’re gonna do to your father once he has served their purpose?”

The look in her eyes was one of pure incredulity, but the brief hesitation before she replied told Naruto all he needed to know. “My father is the Kazekage,” she said. “The most powerful person in the Sand bar none, and second only to Elder Chiyo in terms of combat ability. You’re really trying to get me to be worried about him?”

“You thought Gaara was unbeatable too!” Naruto felt just as desperately helpless as when he had tried to convince Lee to listen to reason, but this time he was painfully aware that he could no longer afford to fail. “The whole point I’m trying to make is that you should try to learn from your mistakes, but you’re still just doing the exact same thing that got him killed in the first place.” The broken puppet limb that Naruto had severed twisted in its socket, and all of sudden a volley of needles came flying at Naruto which he only barely dodged. He staggered backwards, his sword trembling in his only functional hand.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry I killed your little brother – I wish I hadn’t done it! But the fact is that he didn’t die because I was stronger than him or because I was the bigger monster; he died because he was insane. He put himself in danger just for the fun of it, and you acted like it was okay because he was supposed to be invulnerable, but he was always gonna get himself killed eventually. Gaara died because of your own refusal to acknowledge reality, and if you’re just gonna keep standing there like an idiot your brother and father will die the same way and you’ll end up regretting it for the rest of your life!”

There was a pause in the puppet’s attacks as Kankuro turned to shoot a worried glance at his sister. “Hey, you’re not seriously gonna do as he says, are you? You’re the one that wanted to risk everything just to get a chance to avenge Gaara, and now we’ve almost got him!”

But Temari only stared straight past her brother, and it took Naruto a second to realize what she was looking at. The Sand’s forces seemed to be drawing closer, following in the wake of what appeared to be a giant golden egg directing them from the air above. The egg and its followers were rapidly moving towards them, with the Leaf fighting and harassing the Sand ninjas every step of the way.

“We’ve done enough here,” Temari said at last. She cast a glance at the bodies of Lee and Tenten, which still lay half-buried in the broken remains of the Uchiha homes. “Let’s go.”

Kankuro looked back at Naruto, unable to tear himself away from his demon-puppet and his perfect victory set-up. “But, sis…”

“You should listen to your sister,” a voice came down from above. “Older siblings always know what’s best for their little brothers.”

The three of them looked up at the rooftops in alarm, and Naruto’s heart skipped a beat as he recognized that familiar black outline, not to mention those blazing crimson eyes. There was one brief moment of panic when he realized he might be dealing with a different Uchiha entirely, but really, there was only one ninja in the world who could spout a line like that and somehow get away with it.

“Sasuke,” he said, breathing a faint sigh of relief.

His panic resumed almost a second later, however, when he realized that the battle-lust in Temari’s eyes had returned with almost twice the force. From the corner of his eye he could see that her hand was gripping her fan so tightly her knuckles were white from the pressure.

“Uchiha…”

This time it was Kankuro who intervened, his eagerness having vanished the instant he realized that they no longer outnumbered their enemy. He dropped down from his puppet and tugged on the sleeve of Temari’s kimono. “You know what, sis? You’re right. We don’t want to keep father waiting – he’s gonna be mad enough at us as is. Come on; he’s gonna put Lady Chiyo in charge of our punishment if we make him wait any longer.”

Temari said nothing. She allowed herself to be pulled along, but her eyes never left the spot directly underneath Sasuke’s own – not being willing to look into his Sharingan but never once showing any fear of them.

At last Sasuke dropped down from the rooftop, landing next to Shikamaru. The young chūnin had been unceremoniously spat out of Kankuro’s puppet at the last moment, and now lay motionless on the ground. Sasuke was carrying a strange object on his back, Naruto distantly noticed, wrapped in cloth.

“Shikamaru?” Sasuke nudged the fallen Nara heir with his foot, but the sharp-faced teenager gave no response. Enough time passed for Naruto to worry that Kankuro must have injected him with some kind of poison after all, but then he realized that Shikamaru was only staring up at the clouds.

“I was right after all,” Shikamaru said at last. “Being a chūnin is definitely… way too troublesome.”

Naruto stifled a groan. Shikamaru, at least, was still himself. The same could not be said for the others, however: Sasuke took one look at Lee and Tenten with his Sharingan and confirmed that their chakra had gone completely still. On Naruto’s urging he attempted to cast a genjutsu on each of their bodies, but it had no more effect than if he had cast it on a rock. Kiba and Chōji were more responsive, but although Chōji had merely been drugged Kiba’s injuries were more severe. Naruto had not even noticed it during their fight, but his ribcage had been caved in at some point by Temari’s fan, and he must have had a punctured lung at the very least. It was entirely possible that the raw nature chakra from his combat drugs was the only thing keeping him alive, which would make it nearly impossible to treat the feral boy unless he was kept in a permanent state of genjutsu to prevent him from attacking his helpers.

“I will take care of him,” a voice behind them said. “Why? Because he is my comrade, after all.”

Naruto spun around, his heart contorting in his chest with what must have been his fifth heart attack of the day. “Shino? When did you… just how long have you been standing there?”

The hooded boy pushed up his dark spectacles, though this time there were no insects to crawl over his hands and face to complete the effect for maximum creepiness. “I was forced to use your summoning scroll to escape after my allies were destroyed. I had hoped to find help and return in time to save the others, but my lack of insects made this more difficult than expected. I have nonetheless managed to contact my clan, and they shall be here soon.” He turned in the direction of Chōji, Kiba, and Shikamaru, the last of which lay there just as motionlessly as the others despite the fact that he appeared to be unhurt. “It is good that you were able to save at least three of our comrades.”

Naruto stared at the strange boy, unable to find any words. He had never quite been able to figure out if Shino thought of his insects as friends, or of his friends as insects. The monotone voice in which Shino had delivered his statement was not helping to clear up the matter.

“Fine,” said Sasuke. “We’ll leave them in your care, then. Naruto? We’ve still got a mission to fulfil.”

Naruto allowed himself to be dragged along in a way that reminded him far too much of how Temari had been pulled away by Kankuro. He kept quiet all the way to their destination, letting Sasuke take the lead as they flitted from shadow to shadow – always on the lookout for enemies that might have strayed away from the main fight as Kankuro and Temari had. It was not until after they caught up with the crowd of civilians streaming into the caverns hidden under the Hokage cliff faces that Naruto turned to face his Uchiha teammate – only for Sasuke to grab him by the shoulders and slam him against the wall.

“Twenty minutes! I leave you alone for twenty minutes and you almost manage to get yourself killed. How, Naruto? How do you do it? I left you in a secret tunnel, leading into an abandoned district, moving away from the enemy forces, and you still manage to get into a fight with both of the Kazekage’s heirs.”

Naruto stared back at his teammate, open-mouthed, once again finding himself without words. “You – you’re blaming me? Sasuke, you abandoned the team! You left me and Lee alone in the middle of a warzone after Kakashi-sensei sent the three of us on a mission.” His mind flashed back to the very first time Sasuke had tormented him in front of everyone at the academy, and how Sakura had explained that different rules had always applied to clan heirs, as though that somehow made it right. “If – if you were anyone else, literally anybody else, you could be executed for that! And all because you, you wanted to…” He gestured furiously at the object on Sasuke’s back. “…to go looting?”

Sasuke opened his mouth. “That’s not – that’s none of your business! And in any case, Kakashi assigned Lee on a mission to guard me, not the other way around, so how the hell is it my fault if he couldn’t even fucking defend himself?”

Naruto did not say anything in reply, content to stare back and leave all his contempt on full display. For the first time in his life, he was winning an argument with Uchiha Sasuke, and all it had cost him were the lives of two of the only people he had ever called friends.

“It’s not my fault,” Sasuke said again. Ever so slowly, he seemed to be shrinking under Naruto’s gaze.

Naruto turned away, unable to talk about it any longer. Under their watch, the bulk of the civilians managed to make their way into the caverns with surprisingly little difficulty. There had been a few instances where someone got dragged down in the press of bodies and needed to be pulled out before they got trampled, but Konoha had organized enough emergency drills for them to mostly maintain discipline. It also helped that there were Leaf shinobi stationed all around them at highly visible positions, and with no sign of Sand ninjas moving towards them – but then, it had been painfully obvious from the start that their real mission had always been to evacuate themselves. Kakashi had just wanted them out of the way.

“I don’t get it,” Naruto whispered. “The first thing you ever did was to humiliate me in front of everybody, but everyone just kept on talking about how great you are to the point where I couldn’t tell if I had gone crazy or if the whole world had gone mad. Then the next thing I know we’re on a team together and all of a sudden you’re cracking jokes and saving my life, and I start to think that maybe you’re not such a bad guy after all. But then you mind-control Hinata and turn my friends against me, and after all that you abandon us in the middle of a warzone, only to come back at the last possible second. So what are you after, really? Are we friends, or enemies? Just… what the hell am I to you?”

Sasuke stared silently at the crowd passing by in front of them, his expression unreadable. Just when Naruto was about to conclude that his teammate was simply ignoring him, Sasuke reached for the item he had been carrying on his back, drawing it by the wooden handle that jutted out from underneath the cloth that had been tied around it. As the wrapping fell away, a wooden war fan was revealed underneath, carved in the shape of the figure eight and covered in a sheen of brown lacquer with a black border. On either side at the top of the fan, a trio of red tomoe were drawn in a circle to form the unmistakable symbol of the Sharingan.

“Do you know what this is?”

Naruto’s mind raced to do the one thing his sense of recall was any good at, which was to gather and store seemingly insignificant details that seemed like they might provide hidden pathways to power and spitting that knowledge back out the moment he needed it to save his life.

“That – that’s the Uchiwa Gunbai,” he said. “Tenten told me during the exams that only the Sand knew the secret to making them, but that Uchiha Madara had one too. Temari accused your clan of stealing it from them, but you said it had gotten, uh, misplaced.”

“Well,” said Sasuke, “I unmisplaced it.” He held the ancient weapon up against the light, and as the brown lacquer gleamed against the sun, intricate symbols could be seen sprawled all across the wooden surface. “Its wood is said to have been carved from the great tree itself, though that’s probably just another fairy tale. What’s not, however, is the fact that Madara wielded it against the First Hokage at the Valley of the End. They say that its seals could withstand the awesome power of the Nine-tails itself, and that by combining its winds with his own fire nature Madara could produce his legendary Mythic Destroyer Flame – a technique so powerful that it could set even the First Hokage’s wood-style ablaze.”

Naruto stared at the ancient weapon in awe. Though he somehow suspected that those feats were just as much an exaggeration as the stories of its origin, and that it was ultimately a war fan like any other, he still could not help but feel a sense of reverence at the sight of it. There was just something surreal about seeing with his own eyes a weapon that he had only ever heard described in legend.

It took Naruto several long seconds to realize that Sasuke was holding it out to him.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Sasuke said. “I’m only lending it to you, not giving it away. But it’s not like I can use wind-style anyway, and I doubt Madara’s spirit would approve if I just left it gathering dust somewhere. And hey, at least this way it gets to stay in the family.”

Naruto gingerly accepted the ancient relic, only to nearly let it fall from his hands again when he realized what it was that Sasuke had just said.

-o-

“You lost it? It was attached to your bloody arm! How could you possibly have lost it?”

The old woman seemed to shrug, though it was hard to tell with her body slumped back the way it was. Chiyo had collapsed against the inner shell of their golden vessel the moment Rasa had picked her up, and now lay there with her eyes closed in weariness.

“Well, you know how it is at my age,” she said. “Forget me own head next.”

Rasa glanced down at the wooden stump where her prosthetic puppet limb abruptly ended. “I get losing to Hatake Kakashi,” he said. “I can understand losing your arm and being unable to pursue him any further. But I am able to sense my golden sand anywhere on the planet: How can it just be… gone?”

Her eyes cracked open ever so slightly. “If you must know, the White Fang went and invoked a forbidden technique I never heard talk of nor saw described in legend, channelling his last dregs of power through that cursed red eye of his to open up a portal to the void itself. A yawning abyss opened up before me then, a swirling black maelstrom that devoured all air and life around it as black tendrils of pure emptiness clawed at me like the ghosts of my sins made manifest. It swallowed my whole arm in one big gulp, and it would’ve gone and taken the rest of me with it if I hadn’t managed to cut it off in time.”

Rasa stared at the old woman for a long, silent moment. “You know,” he said, “if you ever do become senile instead of just pretending for the sake of it, it shall be very difficult for me to tell the difference.”

Chiyo cracked a smile at that, which was a rare thing to see. She seemed strangely calm – at peace, almost – especially considering how she had just lost her one chance at vengeance. Rasa supposed Hatake Kakashi was not likely to get far, assuming Yūra’s surprise at the hospital had gone off as planned, but still. He could not pretend to begin to understand what was going on in that crazy old woman’s mind.

He shook his head and forced his attention back on steering his floating vessel. He had not left any holes in the golden walls to see through, for obvious reasons, which meant that he was entirely dependent on the vision afforded to him by the golden eye that flew along with them outside. The clone that he had left back at the guesthouse had dispelled itself after their explosive tags ran out, which left him with no more than a dwindling cloud of poisoned sand with which to support his troops in the battle below.

“Hey Rasa,” Chiyo said. “Thank you.”

“What?” He glanced back at his companion, but it looked for all the world like she was sleeping, and he almost convinced himself that he had just imagined it. After a moment he returned to steering his vessel.

Crazy old woman…

It was not long before he spotted his children down in the streets below, running towards them at rapid speed. He instantly slammed his flying vessel down onto the cobblestones, eliciting an indignant yelp from his sleeping passenger. The top of his vessel split open in accordance with his will, folding down into four parts until the gleaming alloy was no more than a star-shaped slat of gold lying on the ground.

“Ugh,” said Chiyo, standing up and stretching out her limbs with awful popping sounds. “My poor back! I swear, Rasa, if you’d just be a little less miserly and expand that bloody golden egg of yours a bit…”

Rasa ignored her, having stepped out even before the vessel had fully completed its landing. He strode towards his two remaining children, his household guard falling in next to him on either side. Konoha had not attacked their forces for several minutes now, which could not possibly be a good sign.

“Father!” Temari pulled herself loose from her sensei, Baki, who had been loudly scolding her in a vain attempt to save her from Rasa’s wrath. “Father, I’m-”

His hand slapped across her face before he even knew he was doing it, and he hit her with enough force to send her spinning head-first into the cobblestones. When she looked up there was a look of terror in her eyes, as well as a bloody gash across her cheek to add to the scrapes and cuts she had already acquired.

“You disobeyed my orders,” he said. “Abandoned your assignment in the midst of battle, compromised the mission and endangered my troops – all for your own selfish attempt at vengeance. You are a failure not only to me but to all shinobi.” He turned towards Kankuro, who instantly wilted under his gaze. “I would lecture you as well if I thought there was even the slightest chance that you had any agency in the matter. As it is, you are merely a broken tool, used ineptly.” He paused a moment to allow the faintest glimmer of hope to appear in the boy’s eyes before crushing it completely. “Chiyo will handle your punishment.”

There was a choked-back wail of anguish rising from the throats of his children as Chiyo cackled maliciously, but he was already turning to address the commanders of his forces. Baki and Yūra looked just as pale as his children, for all that they had done nothing wrong. “What’s the situation?”

“The enemy has pulled back,” Baki said hurriedly. “They seem to be preparing for one final push. We have lost nearly half of our forces as well as all of our explosive tags, and are unlikely to last much longer.” He hesitated. “Kazekage-sama, their communication techniques appear to have been disrupted somehow, which may be what has been holding them back until now.”

Yūra bowed low, his veil falling away momentarily to reveal side-swept bangs of black hair underneath. “My lord, our allies from Sound have successfully completed their attack on the hospital, but they appear to have disappeared afterwards. It… it is possible that we may have been double-crossed.”

Rasa glanced back at his daughter, who barely even seemed to be listening to Chiyo’s increasingly manic threats. There was a fearful look in her eyes as she mouthed a single word at her father.

Akatsuki.

There was a sinking feeling in Rasa’s gut. There had been a time once, long ago, when his own father had tried to warn him never to try to explain the inexplicable: That there would be a time in his life when coincidence after coincidence started to pile up, things going oddly well at first only to then make a sudden downturn, and that if he ever allowed things to get to that point his own death would follow shortly thereafter… because it would mean that he had been played.

Without any sound, without even the slightest movement or tremor in the air, shadows began to appear at the edge of his vision. Clad in featureless black cloaks, with hoods turned up to reveal faceless white masks beneath, they appeared as uncertain shapes suspended underneath bridges and walkways, clinging to doorposts or manifesting as faint shimmers hidden behind closed windows.

Konoha’s Anbu. Rasa had wondered why they had not shown themselves yet.

He turned around. On the other side of the street, three figures were waiting for him. One of them was a man built like a bear, with a face like a carved-up slab of meat and a look of pure murder in his eyes. To his left stood a slender, scantily-clad woman with an expression that was equal in murder yet twice as feral, making her look distinctly unhinged. And in between them, clad in white robes and with a pipe and conical hat, standing there as if it were the most normal thing in the world…

“You,” he choked, “you’re supposed to be dead! How on earth are you still…” He stopped, remembering his late father’s words. “Oh, but you’re not, are you? You’re just a shadow clone that was created beforehand. The real you is still spewing up his lungs back in your little hidey-hole, praying feverishly for your student Tsunade to come and save you. You’ll have to wait a long time, I fear.”

“Indeed,” said the Hokage. “I’m afraid it is just as you say. That was quite clever of you, coating your golden dust in a slow-acting poison and sneaking it in particle-by-particle through my skin, while at the same time using explosive tags to cause the maximum amount of chaos and attacking our hospital to ensure that medical aid would not arrive in time. That was all Lady Chiyo’s plan, I assume?”

“Yūra’s, actually.” Rasa smiled thinly. “He’s also the one who came up with the idea to deduce your true location by tracking the movement of your shadow clones. You can sneak them around as much as you like, but they still need to be recreated eventually, and they all seemed to come from a single point of origin. Like I said, he is the least incompetent head of security I have ever had.”

The Hokage looked thoughtfully at the young man standing next to Rasa, lingering on his black goatee for a moment before moving on. “Indeed. Well, however you managed it, you have succeeded in your vengeance, so I see no need for further bloodshed. I will permit you and the remainder of your forces to leave unmolested as long as you agree to resume our alliance and return to your homeland in peace.”

For a moment, Rasa was unsure if he had heard correctly. “Resume our alliance? Peace? You killed my son! I attacked your village, poisoned you and left your real body to writhe in agony even as we speak. What are you talking about?”

The Hokage held up his hands. “I had nothing to do with the death of your son, despite what you may have been led to believe. And if our mutual enemy did have a hand in that, then they are most likely responsible for everything else that happened today. Regardless, our bond was forged not of love but out of strategic necessity, and that necessity remains. Even if you and I die, the alliance between Leaf and Sand must continue, or else it will surely be to the benefit of all that we oppose in this world.” There was a glint in his eyes, and for one moment his mask seemed to slip as some of the fury that he must be feeling showed through. “I know it is too late to convince of you of this, Kazekage, but my predecessors entrusted me with a mission, and that mission must be passed on for however many generations it takes to see it through. The cycle of hatred must be broken – even if it means forgiving my own death.”

There was a moment of silence, but then Chiyo let out an incredulous snort. “Do you honestly think we‘re that gullible? Come Rasa, this is obviously a trap – he’s planning to attack us the moment we turn our backs.”

“No,” Rasa said slowly. “He is sincere. Nobody could fake that much raw naivety. An actor would feel the need to tone it down somewhat: To demand compensation, hostages, anything to make the offer seem less ridiculously over-the-top. No, he is genuinely, sincerely, willing to overlook the fact that I just murdered him.” He suddenly burst out laughing. He could not help himself: The whole situation, this whole bloody world in which people died for no reason and everything just kept going as if nothing had happened, it was all just too ridiculous. “Very well then, I accept your offer! Your death in exchange for our safe passage. You shall have your beloved peace, Hokage.”

Sarutobi nodded appreciatively. “I knew you could be counted on to see reason, Kazekage-sama.” He turned to face Morino Ibiki, who had gone red in the face with barely suppressed fury. “Order everyone to stand down. If anybody so much as touches the Sand ninjas they will answer to me – understood?”

Rasa shook his head, still laughing madly despite himself. He turned back to face his troops. “Well, you heard the man! Let’s pack up and head home. This little expedition of ours is officially over.”