Deep beneath the Anbu headquarters, Rasa sat strapped to a metal chair.
His hands and feet were locked in heavy shackles, sealing arrays etched all along their surface. Those formulas crushed every last ripple of chakra inside his body. The Jiton (Magnet Release) power he had honed for so many years lay completely dormant, as lifeless and heavy as a stone.
The four walls of the room were pitch black, swallowing up all light and sound until the silence became suffocating. Golden sealing runes flowed slowly along the walls, continuously draining away any trace of energy in the space.
This was a prison built specifically to hold Kage-level shinobi.
Several elders of the Sand Village were confined here as well. They sat on a bench opposite him, their chakra similarly sealed, heads hanging low, faces ashen.
The war was over, but the taste of defeat still burned in every throat.
The Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, stepped into the room.
He wore his ceremonial robes, blond hair catching the room's lone thread of light, almost dazzling.
His mere presence made the elders' bodies tremble. The man known as the "Golden Flash," a legend of the battlefield.
And now this man, who should have been long dead, stood before them once more— as the victor—looking down on them as prisoners.
Rasa lifted his head and locked his gaze onto Minato's face.
He had lost, completely and utterly. But the dignity of a Kazekage would not allow him to bow his head.
Minato did not return his stare. He shifted to the side instead, revealing the person standing behind him.
A teenage boy walked into the room.
He looked to be only around sixteen or seventeen, dressed in simple black clothes, no forehead protector on his brow. Black hair, black eyes, a calm expression—he didn't look like someone who had just come out of a major war at all.
Rasa recognized him.
During the Chunin Exam finals, it had been this boy who appeared out of nowhere and neutralized Gaara's attack with methods he couldn't understand, then displayed a miraculous medical ninjutsu that brought the dead back to life.
His name was Namikaze Shinju, son of the Fourth Hokage—a person even harder to read than his father.
Shinju walked up to the interrogation desk and sat down directly across from Rasa.
Minato, like a bodyguard, quietly took his place behind his son.
The sight made Rasa feel a deep sense of absurdity.
The one presiding over a judgment that would decide the fate of an entire village… was just a boy.
Shinju didn't bother with any pleasantries.
He looked straight at Rasa and spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
"Lord Rasa, war is a foolish choice. You could have joined the Leaf Economic Community and shared in the benefits. Instead, you chose to stand in the way of the New Order as an obstacle."
"Now, we're going to discuss what your village has to pay in order to qualify to continue existing."
"Qualify"
That word struck Rasa like a hammer to the skull.
He was one of the Five Kage—someone whose word could once decide the life and death of tens of thousands.
When had he ever been forced to swallow this kind of humiliation?
And today, he had to discuss the conditions for his village's survival with a teenager.
Rasa snorted coldly through his nose, about to speak.
Shinju didn't give him the chance.
A scroll slid out from Shinju's sleeve and landed on the table, stopping right in front of Rasa.
"Before we talk about the price," Shinju said, "we need to make sure we have the same understanding of the current state of the Sand Village."
Rasa's heart had already tightened with vigilance.
Even so, he unrolled the scroll.
The title at the top made his whole body tense up.
"Report on the Sand Village's Financial Situation and Military Strength Over the Past Five Years."
A storm raged in his chest, but he forced himself to keep reading.
The numbers were accurate down to the last digit.
The village's yearly mission income. Its annual expenditures. The confidential agreements between the village and the daimyō of the Land of Wind.
The Land of Wind's daimyō had been cutting military funding for three consecutive years in order to support other sectors instead. The very words spoken in those meetings were recorded here verbatim.
Rasa's breathing grew more ragged.
He knew these things like the back of his hand, which only made it clearer that the Leaf had obtained all of this long ago.
This was the Sand Village's highest-level intelligence—something only he and a few trusted confidants knew.
How could the Leaf possibly have gotten their hands on it?
The latter half of the scroll was a military map of the Sand Village.
Every outpost in the village. The exact locations, the rotation schedules of the border patrols, the names of every patrol member, the habits and tactics of their captains—everything was written out in painstaking detail.
The Puppet Corps' newest models, the ones they had just finished developing—design diagrams and weak points were drawn neatly beside them.
At the end of the scroll was a list of names.
Every Sand Village ninja who had participated in the "Leaf Collapse Plan" was on it.
Next to each name, written in red, was information on their families.
Bang!
Rasa's palm slammed down on the table so hard the scroll crumpled in his grasp.
There was no trace of the Kazekage's dignity left on his face—only naked fear and shame.
He felt like a clown, stripped bare on stage and still strutting around, thinking he was putting on a grand performance, when in reality his every move and thought had been seen through long ago.
There had never been any war to win here.
His side had never even had a chance.
On the bench opposite, the Sand Village elders caught sight of the scroll's contents and their expressions tightened in shock.
Only now did they understand that the Leaf's victory had been a foregone conclusion.
The Leaf had dug a pit long ago.
All the Sand Village and the Sound could do was jump into it.
"It seems," Shinju said, voice still calm, "that our views have aligned."
A second document appeared in his hand and slid across the table.
"Now," he said, "let's talk about the price."
The title on the cover read:
"Preliminary Proposal on Post-War Reconstruction and Resource Integration in the Sand Village."
Rasa's hands were trembling.
These few pages would decide whether the Sand Village lived or died.
He used all his strength to steady his fingers and flipped open the first page.
Clause One:
Effective immediately and for the next thirty years, all gold mines and rare mineral deposits within the Sand Village's territory—from survey and extraction to processing and sale—will be managed exclusively by the Leaf-controlled "Land of Fire Resource Development Company."
The Sand Village will receive ten percent of the net profit.
The blood vessels in Rasa's eyes seemed ready to burst.
The Land of Wind's most valuable assets were its mineral resources. That was the lifeline of the Sand Village.
This clause was equivalent to cutting off their arms and legs and forcing them to work for the Leaf as beasts of burden.
Grinding his teeth, he turned to the second page.
Clause Two:
The Sand Village must surrender all puppet-manufacturing technology, including all designs for "human puppets" and "loosened crowd-control puppets."
The Leaf will station personnel inside Sand Village factories to provide "technical guidance."
They were digging up the Sand Village's very roots.
Puppet techniques were the foundation upon which the Sand Village had been built—the pride of generations.
Now, they were to personally hand that legacy over to their enemy.
With the last of his strength, Rasa flipped to the final page.
Clause Three:
The Sand Village must carry out large-scale disarmament.
Eighty percent of its current shinobi forces will be disbanded. The remaining forces will be reorganized into the "Wind Capital Joint Security Force," responsible solely for maintaining public order.
The disbanded shinobi will undergo unified retraining and be reassigned as "Resource Exploration Squads" and "Infrastructure Engineering Squads," primarily engaged in mining and road construction.
Rasa finished reading.
All strength drained from his body. He slumped back against the chair, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
This wasn't a defeat treaty.
It was a notice of death.
From this day forward, the Sand Village would be gone.
It would be nothing more than a vassal of the Leaf—a place that produced resources and exported technology.
He, the Fourth Kazekage Rasa, would go down in history as the sinner who had destroyed the Sand Village, nailed to the pillar of shame for all time.
What he had lost was not just a war.
He had lost the future of an entire village, and the honor of every Sand shinobi.
Despair swallowed him whole.
At that moment, the iron door of the interrogation room creaked open.
Rasa turned his head mechanically.
A red-haired boy stood in the doorway, a huge gourd on his back.
His eyes were complicated as they rested on Rasa. The hatred that had once filled them was gone, leaving behind only a sorrow too tangled for words.
It was his son—Gaara.
(End of Chapter)
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