—As if he'd had a beautiful dream.
When Gaara woke from the dream, he felt a little cool, and a little warm.
His chest was cool, but his heart was warm.
A good dream.
In the dream, a gentle woman had been smiling at him.
"You have a very kind mother, you know."
A mother's strength.
The strength of sand—it didn't come from Shukaku. It came from his mother. From the maternal love that wanted to protect him.
Was it a genjutsu?
Or was it…
"Gaara's awake!"
Temari's voice rang out.
Gaara opened his eyes.
His head was pillowed on Temari's leg, with Kankurō standing guard beside her.
Seeing Gaara wake, both of them relaxed.
Gaara, the perpetual insomniac, had just experienced infant-like sleep for the first time.
What was more surprising was that Shukaku hadn't appeared.
That woman's ice sword had actually suppressed Shukaku.
Gaara sat up.
He said nothing, but both Kankurō and Temari had startled expressions.
This was the first time the two of them had seen Gaara so calm.
The Gaara who had just woken from that dream for the first time felt completely different from how he usually did.
"I… no, that woman—what else did she do, afterward?"
The earlier Gaara had been nearly mad, but now Gaara seemed unbelievably calm.
"…She talked about Sunagakure. And about the Daimyō," Kankurō said. "Sunagakure right now is in financial trouble, with its talent withering. At root, it's because the Daimyō has been handing all his missions to Konoha."
This was also why Suna held hostility toward Konoha.
Because their jobs were being stolen.
But Hanabi's words had made Kankurō and Temari think.
—Why were Suna's jobs being stolen?
Was it Konoha doing it?
No.
In fact, Konoha had done nothing. The Hidden Leaf had simply accepted mission commissions from the Wind Daimyō.
Refusing money on the table would be the act of a bastard.
You couldn't expect Konoha to just throw the money back, could you?
[Holy crap, this is a dig at something, isn't it]
[Don't, please. You're doing shounen manga—just stick to shounen manga, don't get political]
[Get political, get political]
[This isn't really anything, but maybe ease off—this is a livestream]
[Hold on, why do I get the feeling Hanabi is about to stir trouble?]
[Now that you mention it, yeah. The three Suna ninja knew nothing before, but now they're actually thinking!]
"I see…"
Gaara closed his eyes.
He could feel that Shukaku's power hadn't returned, but the sand still seemed to be protecting him.
All of it, just as that woman had said…
"Looks like this side worked out too."
Hanabi, master scriptwriter, nodded with satisfaction.
Gaara and Naruto's fight in the original story was, honestly, pretty moving—from the start of the fight all the way to Naruto winning Gaara over at the end.
Quite a textbook shounen storyline.
But… how to put it.
That was only if you didn't look at later developments and the whole work in context.
Because of the "each generation's god replaces the last" effect, as a parade of new characters with tragic backstories kept showing up, Gaara and Naruto's experiences started to look awkward, even clownish.
And Naruto's "don't laugh at Obito" line in defense of the man who'd killed his own father was a moment that made readers lose it.
Hanabi had even come up with a dark joke: Naruto wasn't even as close with his own parents as he was with Obito.
That won't do!
A storyline like that cannot stand!
Correction! It must be corrected!
Hanabi turned to Sasuke beside her.
While Naruto was in training, Sasuke had also started his own.
Sasuke hadn't told Hanabi about "Madara."
In Sasuke's view, even if that person was of the Uchiha clan, he couldn't possibly be a "historical figure" who'd been dead for decades.
"Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation… Dragon Flame Song…"
Sasuke was currently going through the Uchiha clan's ninjutsu from memory.
The Uchiha clan had a lot of techniques, but Sasuke could only self-teach.
For Sasuke, though, the biggest problem was that his own chakra reserves couldn't keep up.
Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation, Dragon Flame Song—they sounded cool, their power was high, but Sasuke couldn't actually use any of them.
His strongest "ultimate" right now was the Dragon Fire Technique.
The gap wasn't a small one.
"But…"
Sasuke closed his eyes.
Even though that person had hidden his form, the Sharingan could still pick out his movements.
That taijutsu, that ninjutsu…
Sasuke had copied it all down completely—but his body couldn't keep up.
Still, Hanabi was asking Sasuke to follow the movements as best he could and simulate them.
"Faster, faster…"
"Not bad, not bad."
Hanabi nodded, satisfied.
Then there was Naruto.
When Hanabi came to the training hall to check on Naruto, he had split into more than a dozen shadow clones and was trying to mold a Rasengan.
But Kushina, it seemed, hadn't picked up the "balloon training method" Jiraiya had used to teach Naruto in canon.
"Dammit, why is this so hard." Naruto had already burned through his chakra.
He'd gotten the genuine article from Kushina firsthand, but he was still falling just short.
"Here."
Hanabi tossed Naruto a stack of balloons.
"What are these? Balloons? Are we having a party?" Naruto asked, baffled.
"No—they're to help you study your current ninjutsu better," Hanabi said.
"Hanabi, you know what I'm training in?!" Naruto's eyes lit up.
"Ah, once I sensed that vortex-like chakra, I figured it out," Hanabi said. "It's the ninjutsu of the Fourth Hokage—the Rasengan."
With that, Hanabi opened her hand, and a sphere appeared on her palm.
"So cool, you can do it too, Hanabi!"
"My Fire Style: Enten can be seen as a fire-nature transformation of the Rasengan—a flame vortex," Hanabi said. "On a whim, I copied the Fourth Hokage-sama's technique. Roughly like this."
[On a whim]
[That ninjutsu is pretty strong though, it can hold its own against one of the Sannin]
[But how come Hanabi hasn't used this move?]
[Enten she's used a few times]
[A ball's no match for a blade]
[Then doesn't that mean Pillar Number Two already knew it?]
[Enten and Rasengan aren't really the same, are they. Enten bursts open, Rasengan stays compressed. Burst-once vs. continuous maintenance—the difficulty isn't easy to compare]
The danmaku was often ridiculous, but every now and then it landed right on the mark.
Pillar Number Two… ptui, Sasuke's Enten was the simplified version: when the turbulent chakra burst open, it produced attack and defense. Compared to a ball you had to keep molding continuously, the difficulty wasn't on the same level.
"I don't know where you heard about the Fourth Hokage's move, Naruto, but you can't just learn this stuff blindly. No—you might die."
[Kushina: Excuse me?]
[Dying. One dares to teach, the other dares to learn?]
[No wonder Naruto couldn't learn Adamantine Sealing Chains. Case closed, lol]
"Anyway, Naruto, your job right now is to use chakra to break the balloon."
To make sure his next "highlight moment" landed, Hanabi had decided to put Naruto through a round of intense training.