"So it's those two..."
One month later, at the Land of Wind border.
The main forces of both villages had assembled. The Iwagakure representative let his gaze move past Rasa and found what he was looking for, two boys standing among the Sunagakure unit's management, visibly out of place among the older faces around them.
Iwate stood behind the representative, eyes fixed on Yuji. The killing intent that surfaced was beyond his control.
Kitsuchi, son of the Third Tsuchikage Onoki, sized Yuji up briefly, withdrew his gaze, and said nothing. He walked directly toward Rasa, who was approaching from the Sunagakure side.
Under the eyes of both armies, the two met and shook hands.
It was symbolic and both parties understood it as such. The handshake marked the official end of hostilities between Iwagakure and Sunagakure.
Both sides had reached a so-called peace agreement, but both sides also knew clearly that this peace was only temporary, each village had its own reasons for the armistice, and the grievances between them could not be erased so easily.
"Congratulations to Sunagakure on the emergence of two such promising rising stars. I didn't expect that besides Konoha, your village would also be so skilled at cultivating newcomers."
Kitsuchi looked at Rasa with a broad laugh. "If it were during the height of the Ninja World War, this Yuji and Sasori might have grown even faster. In the future, it's not impossible for them to become the pillars of your Sunagakure."
The words were shaped like a compliment. Examined more carefully, they carried something else entirely.
Kitsuchi and Rasa were of similar age and had clashed many times, they understood each other well enough for neither to miss what was actually being said.
Rasa gave Kitsuchi a calm glance and turned back to his ranks without reply. He led the Sunagakure force away.
The armistice had come sooner than Sunagakure expected.
Iwagakure had entered this confrontation with the structural advantage. They had always held the upper hand against Sunagakure's military strength, that was precisely why they had felt confident enough to demand territorial concessions, to station a full main force in the Land of Birds, and to apply sustained pressure while expecting it to eventually yield results.
Without that confidence, they would never have declared their intent to annex part of the Land of Wind's territory in the first place.
But after Yuji and Sasori joined the front, and especially after the ninja tool came into play, the battlefield had shifted in ways their planning had not accounted for.
After a series of defeats, Iwagakure ultimately lacked the courage to launch a full general offensive and risk even greater casualties fighting Sunagakure to the death.
Without excessive ceremony or procedure, the two armies that had been clashing since the early days of the Ninja World War saw the curtain fall on this day.
Rasa understood exactly what Kitsuchi's remark had been designed to do. Because what he had come back to find was a unit that regarded two boys with a degree of conviction and respect that went beyond battlefield performance.
Yuji and Sasori had not simply fought well, their reform and training of the unit's personnel were plainly visible to anyone who looked.
The Medical Ninja operated differently. The Puppeteers operated differently. The younger shinobi who made up the bulk of this force had absorbed all of it, and when they returned to the village they would carry those stories into conversations with the older generation.
In this way, Sasori and Yuji's military achievements would spread further still.
These people had originally been soldiers under Rasa's command. Now they had become the foundation of Sasori and Yuji's prestige within the village.
This gave Rasa a faint sense of crisis.
His own standing as the foremost figure of Sunagakure's new generation was not threatened, his military achievements remained unmatched among his peers. And strictly speaking, he was not of the same generation as these two.
But the speed at which they were rising had exceeded any reasonable expectation. Before Rasa arrived, Shimizu, the Overall Commander, and his own old subordinate had already promoted both of them in the final stretch before the ceasefire. Yuji to Vice Captain of the Medical Corps. Sasori to Vice Captain of the Puppeteer Unit.
Most of this Sunagakure army, Shimizu included, were people who had followed and supported Rasa. And yet Yuji and Sasori had already exerted a major influence within this unit.
Back at the camp, the soldiers began packing their things, faces bright, each of them preparing for the return to the village.
That particular happiness, the kind that came not from winning a battle but from going home, was something else entirely. It came from the heart.
Many of them had not been home in years. The longer-serving soldiers had been on this front since the war's early stages, missing everything that had passed in the village while the border held their feet to it.
Yuji and Sasori had joined after the war was already underway, they had not been there from the beginning. But the rule of such deployments was simple: the mission lasted as long as the flames lasted, and not a moment less.
Now the pressure had lifted. The Village would send fresh garrison troops for routine duty, and these veterans could finally step back from it. Many had red eyes. Some wept openly.
Those who had never stood on a battlefield would not understand it. Some of these people had been lucky enough to survive. Many more had not.
They had come here full of ambition, ready to make names for themselves, and what they were going home with was simpler and heavier than that, the fact of still being alive.
Yuji sought out Rasa and handed the military music over to him directly.
His intention was for Rasa to carry it back to the village's higher-ups personally. By doing this voluntarily, without being asked, he was making his position clear, he had no intention of keeping the ninja tool for himself.
Rasa took it and tried to activate it. Nothing happened, which he had already anticipated from Shimizu's account. He set the tool aside and looked at Yuji.
The faint sense of threat he had felt from Yuji and Sasori had not disappeared entirely, but watching Yuji's expression now, open, relaxed, the same natural warmth that seemed to belong to him without effort, Rasa found it difficult to sustain the sharper edge of that feeling toward this particular boy.
Yuji was clearly intelligent, but he gave no impression of someone reaching for power. Whether that was genuine or a layer of disguise, the feeling he produced in Rasa was a good one.
His assessment remained as it had been: Yuji had the makings of a significant asset for Sunagakure's future, but not the disposition of someone who sought to lead. If anything, it would be worth drawing him closer.
It was Sasori that Rasa was actually more guarded about.
"The Village has received word," Rasa said. "Both you and Sasori have been placed on wanted lists in the black market."
Yuji repeated the words quietly to himself.
The black market, something along the lines of an underground exchange network. Previously, his and Sasori's names had circulated only within a limited range. That was going to change.
The parties behind the wanted listings were almost certainly connected to Iwagakure, possibly extending to the Daimyo of the Land of Earth.
The formal ceasefire resolved the open fighting, but it settled nothing underneath. Grudges of this kind found other channels. Even if the listing produced no results, it was an annoyance delivered at low cost.
Shimizu and the others had anticipated this when they spoke about how the two nicknames would eventually reach the wider ninja world.
"Even without the wanted listing, given how much Iwagakure hates me, they would find ways to spread information about my abilities and Kekkei Genkai to other villages anyway," Yuji said, his expression easy.
"If they're clever about it, they might even try to use another village's strength to finish what they couldn't."
He said it without any visible tension, as though the subject concerned someone else.
Rasa studied him for a moment.
"You and Sasori are no longer ordinary ninja. If you intend to grow in this world, you need to be prepared for exactly this. The strong who establish themselves in the ninja world are almost all on someone's wanted list at some point.
Strength is the only answer to it, if you are powerful enough, these methods become irrelevant." He paused. "That said, you should both remain careful."
"Understood," Yuji said.
...
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