'Fucking Shido.' Ren unhappily thought as he watched Gaara's sand tendrils take several slips of paper with seals and randomly burrow them deep under the sand, slightly apart from each other.
They were doing this for the last two days, and even Gaara looked bored out of his mind by now.
Unfortunately, Ebizo's answer to Ren's question was both satisfactory and not. No, Suna will not let Shido off just because he was a noble. But also, Suna currently could not retaliate.
Why?
Because they would be the first target of suspicion, and in the end, Shido was the Wind Daimyo's unofficial right-hand man and his best friend. They already had the Earth Daimyo raving mad at them. They did not need to change the Wind Daimyo's mood from heavily displeased to furious enough to send his army at them.
If Shido died right now, and there was even the slightest suspicion of foul play, the suspicion would instantly fall on Sunagakure. And that was the biggest thing that kept the village in check for now.
It was... maddening!
If Ebizo said no, Ren planned to give Shido an unannounced nightly visit and persuade him to depart from this mortal coil. But Ebizo said no, and Ren realized he could not do that! It would just put Sunagakure in even bigger trouble!
Fucking politics!
Shido will suffer, but apparently, it will not be immediately. Ebizo said they needed to let him be for at least a year before they could secretly do away with him in a way that would not implicate them. And any nightly stabby-stabby rendezvous plans with Shido instantly went poof in Ren's mind. He didn't like it, but he had to admit it made sense.
Ren's shoulders slightly slumped as he was thinking about the depressing situation.
Sometimes, he wondered if he shouldn't just make sure the Wind Daimyo had an accident. He doesn't even know how that piece of shit looked, and the man was the source of most of his problems right now without even trying.
Imagining wringing his neck was cathartic for Ren. It was a nice daydream. Sadly, it was going to stay a daydream for now.
It's not as if he could take over the country if he killed the Daimyo. There were only two ways that could go. The biggest nobles would either band together and declare a crusade against Suna for daring to kill their Daimyo. And absolutely nobody would help Suna in that case. Not even their allies, Konoha. The Fire Daimyo would pressure them into staying their hand. Worse, some Daimyo might demand that their hidden villages go to war with Suna.
It was much the same as if a big mafia family assassinated the president of their country. The other countries are not going to congratulate them. They will just declare them a public enemy number one.
Not even Orochimaru was mad enough to kill the Daimyo of the Land of Rice when he created Otogakure.
The second option was that the nobles would start squabbling among themselves over who would rise as the new Daimyo, which would create a civil war in the Land of Wind. And the common people would suffer the most in that case.
Even if Ren managed to shift the blame from Sunagakure somewhere else, ensuring the village did not become the public enemy number one and nobody could connect the murder to him, he couldn't accept that outcome. He did not want to be the reason why a massive nation like the Land of Wind went to a civil war. Like it or not, the Daimyo was a stabilizing factor.
So, unless he had a good and reliable way to take over the reins without much bloodshed, he simply could not kill him.
Being rational sucked. In the fics he read in his past lives, the main characters did whatever they wanted, damn the consequences! It was probably why he liked them. Oh, somebody pissed you off? Just go and kick his ass, yeah!
Alas, the reality was different. He had to think about how his actions would affect the overall situation. There were consequences Ren was willing to accept and those he was not.
'Well, maybe later.' Ren wishfully thought with a hint of vindictiveness, 'Can't really think about taking over the country during war.' He mentally sighed. 'Suna will have to be fully in Temari's hands and not at war before I can start having any regime change aspirations.'
"I think we are done here." Gaara suddenly spoke as he appeared in a swirl of sand next to Ren, causing him to look at the box where he stored his special exploding seals, finding it empty.
"Yeah, it seems like it." Ren hummed and turned toward Gaara, "Did you have enough seals? Are you sure there are no massive gaps?" He asked since Gaara, with his sand manipulation, could easily feel the buried seals.
Gaara impassively shook his head, "No. I had enough and then some, so I just put the remaining ones randomly among the already placed ones, filling the empty spaces a bit."
"Eh. In that case, I think it's time for lunch." Ren shrugged with a small smile.
They were finally done here. And it took them only two and a half days of suffering to seed the entirety of the northern border of the Land of Wind with special exploding seals.
Sure, they could have covered only the important parts where the Iwa forces would most likely attack. They had the data from the previous wars, geographical analysis, strategic analysis, and much more. It wasn't hard to guess where Iwa's main forces would try to push through into Wind Country's territory.
But Ren wanted to be thorough. He asked Gaara to cover the entire border. His special seals acted like mines. If anybody stepped on the sand above them with chakra? They would go kaboom.
This way, no random merchant or unfortunate civilian would be caught in an explosion because of his seals.
Ninjas, however, always used chakra to not sink into the sand while running in the desert. If they didn't? If an entire army was forced to go at a civilian pace without chakra? It would slow them down to a crawl, making them lose their momentum and giving the Suna forces time to prepare.
Plus, any explosion would alert the nearest hidden border outpost, just in case they tried to sneak some forces into the country to cause trouble behind the enemy lines. Ren inwardly rolled his eyes. The hidden villages always did that during a war. Harrassing the supply lines was the go-to strategy in ninja warfare.
He was pretty sure the seal mines would pay off in one way or the other.
Ren had already given Ebizo the matching sensory seals that could sense the chakra signature of the exploding mines. He could send them to the leaders of the outposts, so the Suna raiding parties would know where the mines were located. With that, they could bypass them even when using chakra and quickly raid Iwa's supply lines.
Hell, if they were discovered and chased, they could just go back to the minefield, and that should stall any pursuit dead.
That said, the majority of Suna ninjas should not need to step over the impromptu minefield anyway. This was going to be a defensive war anyway. Suna did not have the numbers to go on the offensive. Just keeping Iwa out of their borders was good enough.
Compared to other villages, Suna was maybe the second smallest, with only around fifteen to eighteen thousand ninjas. A pittance compared to Konoha's twenty to twenty-five thousand.
And Iwa, much like Kumo, had more. Yes, their quality kind of sucked, but after a certain point, quantity was a quality of its own.
Looking at the innocent-looking sands hiding a deadly surprise, Ren shook his head and decided to stop thinking about it. He was honestly quite bad at this whole strategy thinking. Just like politics, it was not his forte. He did what he could, and that's where it ends for him. Hopefully, it will be enough.
Motioning toward Gaara, he started walking toward the minefield, intending to stroll through it. "Come on. Let's have lunch in some nearby town in the Land of Fangs across the border. We might even do some reconnaissance there. Man~, I am tired!"
With a resigned air, Gaara silently sighed to himself before following the cheerful Ren, feeling a bit resentful. While he worked during these past few days, Ren just stood there and watched him. Beyond sometimes summoning a clone before sending him off somewhere, he did exactly nothing!
'What do you mean, you are tired!?' Gaara disgruntledly thought as he swiftly walked around the seal mines.