Within Akatsuki, the pair dispatched to capture the Shukaku Jinchūriki - Gaara - were the same as they had always been.
Sasori of the Red Sand and Deidara.
And just like before, the one who truly made the decisive move… was Deidara.
That didn't mean Sasori was irrelevant. Far from it. Crossing the borders of the Land of Wind and slipping into Sunagakure would have been far messier without him. Sasori knew the village's rhythms the way a predator knew the breathing of its prey - because he had once been one of them.
Not just any shinobi, either.
He was Chiyo's grandson… the genius puppet master Sunagakure had once praised as its brightest future.
And in this timeline, Sunagakure was even weaker than it had been in the original course of events.
The Kazekage, Rasa, and Chiyo had both marched to war - neither of them present to anchor the village's defenses. Maki, Yura, and the other capable commanders were absent as well. Beyond a few elders, there were only scraps of strength left - Gaara and his siblings among the rare handful who could still fight.
So when Deidara finally confronted Gaara, it became a battle that felt less like a duel and more like inevitability.
The sky turned into a killing ground.
Explosions tore through the air, sand rose like tidal waves, and the village's streets became a chessboard of destruction. Gaara fought with everything he had - calm, ruthless, desperate - pouring will into every grain of sand as if he could build a wall high enough to keep fate out.
But Deidara had always been a nightmare opponent for him.
Aerial pressure. Unpredictable angles. Detonations that turned defense into shrapnel.
In the end, Gaara was taken.
And as news of Sunagakure's defeat in the war around Konoha spread, the village's collapse accelerated. When Chiyo returned to Sunagakure and faced the full weight of it - Rasa dead, Gaara captured - the situation wasn't merely grim.
It was the edge of extinction.
She didn't allow herself the luxury of mourning.
Not when Sunagakure's last hope was being carved apart somewhere in the dark.
So Chiyo chose the only path left: rescue Gaara - no matter the cost.
At her side went Temari and Kankurō, the two siblings who had always stood in Gaara's shadow, now forced to step forward into the storm.
This mission, however, differed drastically from what should have been.
Konoha did not come to help.
It couldn't - because Konoha was now under Chiba's control, and the hatred between Sunagakure and Chiba ran too deep to be bridged by pleading or tradition. There would be no allied support, no familiar reinforcements arriving at the last second.
Sunagakure would bleed alone.
Chiyo led from the front, pushing herself beyond her limits, chasing every thread of intelligence until it finally brought her to one of Akatsuki's hidden lairs.
But when she arrived…
She was already too late.
Shukaku's chakra had been forcibly extracted.
Gaara was dead.
For an instant, the world narrowed into a single, unbearable point, and rage rose through Chiyo like fire through dry brush. All the restraint of an elder who had endured decades of war snapped into something raw and murderous. She stepped forward without hesitation, meeting the two Akatsuki members who remained behind.
One was her own grandson - Sasori of the Red Sand.
The other was his partner - Deidara.
Temari and Kankurō joined the fight as well, their grief turning into motion because standing still would have shattered them.
The battle that followed wasn't clean.
It was bitter.
It was personal.
It was the kind of struggle where every strike carried not only chakra, but a lifetime of betrayal.
In the clash, Chiyo uncovered truths she had never wanted to touch - Sasori's secrets, the depth of his transformation into something no longer human. The Third Kazekage, turned into a human puppet. Sasori himself, who had long since made a puppet out of his own body.
Even Chiyo - forced to face the sickening implication of how thoroughly her grandson had severed himself from the living.
But knowledge didn't win the fight.
Not this time.
Sasori still defeated her.
And in truth… it was only natural.
A puppet master's power was defined by the puppets she could command.
Chiyo's greatest arsenal - Shiro Higi: Chikamatsu Jikkū ("White Secret Technique: Chikamatsu's Ten Puppets") - had been seized long ago. During Sunagakure's invasion of Kirigakure, Chiba had taken the Chikamatsu Ten as spoils of war, stripping Chiyo of the very foundation that made her terrifying.
Without them, her ceiling had been lowered.
Her hands were skilled. Her experience was vast.
But the blade she needed most… was no longer in her grasp.
Even relying on the puppets "Father" and "Mother," Chiyo managed to hold the line for a long time, trading technique for technique with Sasori in a battle that felt less like a fight and more like a slow, grinding dissection of her limits. But the longer it dragged on, the clearer it became - her rhythm was slipping. Her hands were steady, her mind sharp, yet the gap in resources and preparation kept widening until she was forced onto the back foot.
And then, when the moment to finish her finally arrived…
Sasori didn't.
He didn't kill Chiyo. He didn't kill Temari or Kankurō either. Instead, he left Gaara's body behind - as if tossing them a cruel consolation prize - then departed with Deidara, disappearing into the wasteland with the same cold efficiency they'd arrived with.
Chiyo stood over Gaara's corpse for a long time, unmoving.
Her rage was there, burning beneath her ribs, but it wasn't the rage of someone who could still afford to collapse into emotion. It was older than that - tempered by decades of war, loss, and the kind of regrets that never truly faded. As she stared at the stillness of Gaara's face, she sank into a quiet, painful contemplation… and made a decision that could not be taken back.
She would use the ultimate forbidden technique she had created.
Kishō Tensei ("One's Own Life Reincarnation").
A jutsu that traded the caster's life for another's return - reviving the dead, even granting vitality to a puppet if one wished. The price was absolute, the exchange clean and merciless: the one who performed it would die.
Temari fell silent for so long that the air between them grew heavy.
Then, unable to keep it buried any longer, she asked the question that tore at the heart of them all.
"If you have a jutsu like that… and you're willing to sacrifice yourself…" Temari's voice tightened. "Why not revive Father? Why not bring back Kazekage-sama?!"
Kankurō's gaze turned to Chiyo as well, searching for an answer he feared he already understood.
Chiyo let out a slow breath.
"Because your father chose death willingly."
Her words carried neither accusation nor comfort - only truth.
"He was tired," she continued, voice rough with age. "And ever since the war against Kirigakure… he lived inside regret. Guilt. Pain he couldn't escape."
"He drove Sunagakure into a corner. He lost what we could never afford to lose - our wealth, our resources… and the Three Great Secret Arts that have supported this village since the Second Kazekage."
Chiyo's eyes narrowed, not with anger, but with something darker: understanding.
"And then he lost again… to Chiba. That final defeat crushed what little forgiveness he still had for himself."
"If I brought him back," she said quietly, "I wouldn't be saving him. I'd only be forcing him to suffer longer."
She lowered her gaze to Gaara.
"But Gaara is different."
"Even if Kazekage-sama once thought he was a failed creation… Gaara isn't a Jinchūriki anymore. Not now. Not after what Akatsuki did."
"He's simply a shinobi of Sunagakure. A young man who still has a future - if we're willing to pay for it."
Chiyo looked up again, and her eyes sharpened with a resolve that felt almost frightening in its calm.
"I'm placing our hope in the younger generation."
"Not only Gaara."
"You two as well - Temari, Kankurō."
Then Chiyo reached into her robes and drew out scrolls, her movements deliberate, almost ceremonial.
"Kankurō," she said, "I'm entrusting you with the puppets Sasori created - 'Father' and 'Mother.' I want you to carry puppetry forward… and one day, surpass him. Defeat him."
Her gaze shifted to Temari.
"Temari, I'm leaving you everything I can - my ninjutsu, offensive techniques, defensive techniques, medical ninjutsu, fūinjutsu…"
She paused - only a heartbeat - because what came next was a blade hidden inside silk.
"Even the forbidden technique… Kishō Tensei ("One's Own Life Reincarnation")."
"I want you to protect Sunagakure."
Temari and Kankurō nodded, hands tight as they accepted the scrolls. Their grief didn't vanish - but it stopped being shapeless. It became something they could carry, something they could turn into strength.
And then Chiyo drew in her final breath like someone preparing to step into deep water.
Her chakra erupted - thin, fierce, brilliant in its last flare - and she formed the seals with hands that did not tremble.
Kishō Tensei ("One's Own Life Reincarnation").
Life flowed out of her like sand slipping through open fingers - silent, inevitable - pouring into Gaara's body.
At first, nothing.
Then a faint twitch.
A breath.
Color returning, slowly, painfully, as though the world itself was reluctant to let him back.
Gaara opened his eyes.
He lived.
And Chiyo… quietly lost hers forever.
So Sunagakure paid its price.
They had lost their Yondaime Kazekage, Rasa. They had lost their strongest elder, their greatest puppet master - Chiyo herself.
But they had reclaimed Gaara.
If the Sunagakure of earlier days had been battered by defeat against Kirigakure, then steadied somewhat through the alliance with Konoha and a few years of recovery…
This Sunagakure was sinking into something far worse.
Rasa dead.
Chiyo sacrificed.
Shukaku - gone.
A suffocating sense of collapse spread through the village like poison in the water supply. It wasn't just grief. It was dread - the fear that the foundations were cracking and the roof would follow.
Only then did Ebizō, Chiyo's younger brother, finally step forward along with the elder council's veteran figures - Sasori's old contemporaries, men like Sunaue and Teiseki - moving with grim urgency to hold the village together before panic could tear it apart.
The decisions came quickly.
Maki would serve as acting Kazekage, handling day-to-day authority.
Major policies and critical choices would be decided collectively by Ebizō and the elder council - Sunaue, Teiseki, and the remaining senior pillars.
Other operations and village affairs would be executed by jōnin such as Yura, Bukō, Satetsu, Otofū, Masaki, Sajin - names that now carried the burden of keeping Sunagakure functional.
And in the middle of the village's darkest hour, the three siblings - Gaara, Temari, and Kankurō - began to change.
Desperation has a way of dragging potential to the surface.
They grew faster than anyone expected, as if the village's survival itself had reached into them and demanded they become more.
…
With Shukaku stripped away, Akatsuki's bijuus capture plan officially began.
The shinobi world became uneasy overnight.
Every nation that held a bijuus - large and small - fell into a tense, paranoid alert. Even Takigakure, which held the Choumei Jinchūriki, trembled under the shadow of what was coming.
In terms of raw force, Akatsuki couldn't match the Five Great Nations.
But their terror didn't come from numbers.
It came from the unknown.
Their abilities, their intelligence networks, their composition - everything about them was obscured, hidden underground like a venomous nest no one could map. And for the sake of capturing bijuuss, they would use any method, no matter how filthy, no matter how extreme.
Even among great nations, that kind of threat was hard to guard against.
Kumogakure tightened protection around the Nibi Jinchūriki, Yugito Nii, and the Hachibi Jinchūriki, Killer B, layering security so thick it felt like a fortress made of paranoia.
Kirigakure did the same under Chiba's direct orders. The Sanbi Jinchūriki, Miru, and the Rokubi Jinchūriki, Utakata, were placed under strict protection, watched and shielded with unrelenting seriousness.
As for Konoha's Kyuubi Jinchūriki, Uzumaki Naruto…
Chiba assigned that responsibility to Jiraiya.
Chiba hadn't exterminated him. He hadn't crushed him out of spite. Instead, he kept him under close surveillance - tight enough that escape was impossible - but gave him a role that suited him perfectly.
Protect Naruto.
Teach him.
In truth, there was no one more appropriate.
And beyond that… Chiba and Jiraiya still had the wager from the battle at the Valley of the End hanging between them like a blade that hadn't fallen yet.
In Iwagakure, Ōnoki - Nibi? No. The Tsuchikage - moved swiftly to secure the Gobi Jinchūriki, Han, placing him under protection before Akatsuki could even sniff the trail.
But the Son-goku Jinchūriki, Rōshi, had already left Iwagakure long ago, wandering the world as a traveling monk. Even if Ōnoki wanted to guard him, he couldn't find him.
Worse…
Ōnoki suspected that Rōshi might already have fallen into Akatsuki's hands.
If that was true, then Akatsuki already possessed the power of the Shukaku… and the Son-goku.
Outside the Five Great Nations, there was only one small country that held a bijuus: Takigakure.
And now it was drowning in fear.
Once, they had taken pride in that beast. When the Shodaime Hokage, Hashirama Senju, distributed the bijuuss, Takigakure had been the only nation outside the Five Great Nations to receive one. That fact alone proved what they had once been - maybe not equal to the great powers, but close enough that they could stand in the same conversation.
But Takigakure's decline had been self-inflicted.
Long ago, their leadership had forced Kakuzu to assassinate Hashirama Senju.
He failed.
And when he returned, those same leaders blamed him - punished him - treated him like a disposable weapon that had broken.
Kakuzu responded in the only way a monster could.
He slaughtered them all.
And he stole the village's treasure: the secret technique Jiongu ("Earth Grudge Fear").
From that day onward, Takigakure's strength plummeted, never truly recovering.
Even so, with the Choumei, they remained among the strongest of the smaller nations.
But against Akatsuki…
They had no confidence.
So Takigakure reached out to Konoha for help.
For years, Takigakure and Konoha had maintained friendly relations. Even with Hiruzen dead and Tsunade now wearing the Hokage's hat, that alliance didn't vanish overnight.
Takigakure's current leader was Shibuki - a young man with a timid nature, yet stubborn enough to die for his village if it came to it.
When Tsunade received his request, she discussed it with Chiba.
Chiba's answer was calm, practical, and - predictably - coldly reasonable.
"Takigakure is Konoha's ally. Helping them is appropriate."
"And this concerns the Choumei Jinchūriki. If Akatsuki captures it, the consequences will be ugly."
He looked at Tsunade, then waved the matter away with the ease of someone who didn't fear politics.
"Tsunade. Decide it yourself."
She nodded.
Soon after, she dispatched a team to support Takigakure - Hatake Kakashi, Uzumaki Naruto, Sai, and Haruno Sakura.
And Jiraiya, who was responsible for protecting and training Naruto, went with them.
…
At the same time, deep inside one of Akatsuki's hidden bases - so buried in secrecy that even the air seemed to swallow sound - Kakuzu stood facing a figure wrapped in darkness.
He couldn't make out the man's features. Not the shape of his mouth, not the line of his nose, not even the tilt of his expression.
But he could see the eyes.
And that was enough.
Those pupils were like a bottomless well, ringed with concentric ripples that spread outward like waves on still water - the legendary gaze said to belong to the Sage of Six Paths himself.
The Rinnegan.
Kakuzu was a man who had lived too long to fear easily. Pride was stitched into him, arrogance hardened by countless deaths and the certainty that money could buy anything a shinobi needed. Yet in front of those eyes, something in him went quiet. Not respect - something colder than that.
Instinct.
He had challenged this presence once before.
And he had been crushed so thoroughly that the memory alone was enough to keep his spine straight and his mouth careful.
This was Akatsuki's leader.
Pain.
Pain turned his head slightly, indifferent as his gaze settled on Kakuzu like a weight.
"Kakuzu," he said. "How are our finances?"
Kakuzu answered with his usual bluntness, as if refusing to show hesitation could make it disappear.
"Hidan and I completed a number of assassination contracts. We accumulated a decent sum."
Then his tone tightened, irritation slipping through.
"But Hidan is dead now. I can manage alone, but our efficiency will inevitably drop."
Pain didn't seem surprised. If anything, his voice carried the faint boredom of someone confirming a detail he already knew.
"Mm. Sarutobi Hiruzen had more hidden strength than expected."
"Hidan died because he underestimated his enemy. He treated the Sandaime Hokage too lightly."
Kakuzu gave a single nod. "Agreed."
Pain's gaze remained calm, detached, almost emotionless.
"You're right. What Akatsuki lacks most right now is manpower."
Kakuzu's mouth twitched, as though the next part amused him in a way he wouldn't admit outright.
"In that case… I have someone to recommend."
Pain's eyes narrowed by the smallest degree - just enough to sharpen the pressure in the room.
"Who?"
Footsteps sounded behind Kakuzu, measured and deliberate, until a man stepped out of the darkness as if he had been carved from it.
The newcomer lifted his gaze, locking onto the rippling eyes with a strange, wary fascination.
"So these are the eyes," he murmured, voice low and thoughtful, as though rummaging through a memory he didn't want to name. "The Sage of Six Paths' divine gaze… the Rinnegan."
He paused, then added quietly, "I feel like I've seen them somewhere before."
Pain studied him for a beat, something stirring in the depths of his mind - an echo of old images, old voices, old blood.
Then recognition snapped into place like a chain pulled taut.
"You are…"
"Shimura Danzō of Konoha."
So it really was him.
After the battle around Konoha - after witnessing Chiba's monstrous display of power, killing two Kage in a single war and forcing three great nations to retreat - Danzō had finally been forced to swallow a truth he despised. A direct confrontation was meaningless now. Whatever schemes he still clung to, whatever bitterness he still carried, none of it could drag Chiba down head-on anymore.
So while Chiba stood locked in a tense standoff with Sunagakure and Kumogakure, Danzō slipped away without a ripple, leaving the battlefield behind like a sinking ship - then vanished alongside Kakuzu.
Now, cornered with nowhere left to stand, he chose the darkest road available: reaching Akatsuki's leader through the organization's most pragmatic blade.
Pain's thoughts drifted, unbidden, to an old wound that had never healed properly.
Yahiko's death.
He had died by Hanzō of Amegakure's hand - yet Pain had always known the other half of that truth as well. Konoha's Shimura Danzō had conspired with Hanzō. The betrayal wasn't rumor or suspicion. It was fact, a stain that time could never wash clean.
Pain had no reason to feel anything but hatred.
And the instant Danzō's identity became certain, that hatred surged - sharp, violent, and pure - rising from the depths like a flood breaking through a dam.
Pain's voice was cold enough to cut.
"You do remember, don't you?" he said, each word measured, merciless. "Back then, you worked with Hanzō of the Salamander in Amegakure. You helped slaughter the early Akatsuki - killing many of its members."
His gaze sharpened, and the air seemed to tighten around Danzō's throat.
"Among them… was our leader. Yahiko."
Danzō's heart jolted despite himself. For the briefest moment, the mask he wore so habitually threatened to slip.
"So that's how it is," he said at last, voice steady but not entirely free of tension. "Yes… that happened."
He paused, then spoke as if he were presenting a clean report, stripping the past into something tidy and defensible.
"But I wasn't personally involved. Hanzō requested support, and I wanted his strength to help me compete for the Hokage's seat, so I dispatched a portion of Root to participate."
His eyes narrowed slightly, recognition circling back in his mind as he looked at those rippling pupils.
"So you're that boy from then…" Danzō murmured, almost to himself. "I remember Jiraiya mentioning three students he sheltered in Amegakure. One of them had the Sage of Six Paths' divine eyes - the Rinnegan."
He lifted his chin a fraction, the disbelief in his tone carefully controlled.
"So that was you."
"And now you're telling me… you're Akatsuki's leader?"
Pain didn't flinch. His expression didn't change. Only his voice deepened, heavier with contempt.
"After what you did to Yahiko and Akatsuki," he said, "you still want to join us?"
Danzō fell silent.
Not because he felt shame - he was long past that - but because, in that instant, even he could taste the bitter irony.
Too many sins… and sooner or later, they collect.
Yet he didn't retreat. He didn't bow his head. He didn't abandon the only road he had left.
Instead, he stepped into the danger as if it were a negotiation table.
"You just said it yourself," Danzō replied calmly. "Akatsuki lacks manpower."
"And my strength is more than sufficient."
He spoke with the same ruthless pragmatism that had built Root - turning his own existence into a weapon he was offering across the table.
"More importantly, I was Konoha's second-in-command. Now that Hiruzen is dead, no one in this world understands Konoha's intelligence, its secrets, its internal structure better than I do."
His gaze held steady, unblinking.
"You need what I can provide."
Then Danzō's voice dipped lower, not pleading - pressing - like a blade sliding beneath armor.
"So what will you choose?"
"An old hatred you can't erase anymore…"
"Or the present and the future - accepting my strength, and using it?"
He let the title fall from his mouth like bait, like a test of dominance.
"Pain-sama."
Pain's Rinnegan locked onto him, hatred and fury simmering in those rippling pupils - dense enough to feel physical. For a few breaths, it seemed like the decision might be made by emotion alone.
Then the pressure shifted.
The rage didn't vanish, but it cooled - compressed into something sharper, quieter, and far more dangerous.
Finally, Pain spoke.
"What you say… isn't wrong."
"To kill you," he continued, voice flat, "would be worth less than using you."
A pause - thin as a wire, heavy as an executioner's cord.
"Since that's the case, Shimura Danzō…"
Pain's gaze remained steady, unreadable.
"Welcome to Akatsuki."
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