Chapter 79: Rasa
"Ha! The Kazekage honors us with a visit — this old man is overwhelmed!"
Hiruzen gripped Rasa's hand with both of his, the warmth in his smile precisely calibrated. The Hokage's reception room, formal but comfortable, tea already being brought.
"You're busy enough without entertaining guests, Hokage-dono. I appreciate your time."
Rasa's answering smile was official. Correct. Giving nothing.
"Sand has always been an ally of Konoha. Hosting you is the least we can do."
Hiruzen gestured toward the seat. The tea arrived. They sat.
Sakura stood at Hiruzen's back, silent, and looked at the man across the table.
He's alive.
In every version of events she'd carried in her head, Rasa was dead before the final matches — killed by Orochimaru, replaced, his body used as a puppet for the invasion. The Kazekage who reached Konoha was never Rasa. It was a disguise wearing his face.
This was Rasa.
Did the resource war change his calculations? Did Orochimaru decide it wasn't worth the exposure? Or is he watching — waiting to see whether Hiruzen can still turn the wheel?
She couldn't answer it from the outside. She filed it.
"And this would be—?" Rasa's gaze had moved past Hiruzen to her.
"My newest student. Nothing worth noting."
Hiruzen waved the introduction away with the specific casualness of someone who doesn't want a thing examined too closely.
"A prodigy, from what I've heard." Rasa's tone was pleasant and meant nothing. He glanced back at his own retinue. "Gaara. Temari. Say hello."
Temari — polite, formal — offered a small bow. Gaara looked at Sakura and gave her a single, minimal nod.
Sakura returned it in kind.
Kankurō wasn't present. After the preliminaries, Rasa hadn't brought him to this meeting. Sakura noted this without comment.
Hiruzen watched the exchange between the younger generation with comfortable amusement and didn't interfere. Rasa didn't bother with it either. Whatever the children were sorting out between themselves was secondary.
First, second, third Shinobi World Wars, Sakura thought, standing still and watching the two men make small talk. Sand attacked Konoha first in every single one. Alliance on paper. That paper is worth what it's printed on.
"I expected the Kazekage to arrive closer to the final tournament," Hiruzen said pleasantly. "You've come early."
Rasa's eyes moved, briefly, with the controlled stillness of a man who doesn't show his hand.
The grain situation in the Land of Wind had deteriorated to the point where the Daimyō had issued something close to an ultimatum. Only the Land of Fire had the production capacity to fill the gap. The Daimyō had given Rasa a choice: come back with a trade agreement, or come back prepared for war. And he'd loosened the military budget accordingly, which Rasa intended to use before some future government contracted it again.
He looked at the servants in the room. At the girl behind Hiruzen.
Hiruzen understood immediately. He made a small gesture.
"Give us the room."
Rasa glanced at his children. "You two as well."
"Yes, Kazekage-sama." Temari bowed and steered Gaara toward the door.
Sakura walked out without looking back.
In the corridor outside the reception room, Temari was already positioned near the wall, standing with the patient stillness of someone who has spent years waiting outside closed doors.
Gaara was not patient.
"Haruno Sakura."
She stopped. Turned.
Gaara's eyes were flat and direct, and the hostility in them was not concealed.
"As the Hokage's student — are you strong?"
Temari's composure cracked visibly. She made a quick apologetic motion at Sakura and turned to her brother with the urgent energy of someone trying to prevent an incident in the worst possible location.
We are inside the Hokage's building. If Gaara loses control here—
"Sure," Sakura said. "Try it if you want."
She met his eyes without backing up.
Gaara looked at her. Something in the flatness of his expression became more active — cataloguing, assessing.
"I'm sorry, he doesn't — he wasn't trying to—" Temari's diplomatic instincts were working hard.
Sakura held Gaara's gaze for another moment, then turned and walked toward the corridor's end.
If he actually moves, I hit him before the sand does. Simple enough.
She turned the corner.
Outside, in the open air, she paused and looked back up at the third-floor windows.
Rasa alive changes the map.
Orochimaru's original play — kill Rasa, wear his face, use the Kazekage's authority to deploy Gaara as a weapon inside Konoha's walls — was gone. The invasion hinged on that play. Without it, what was the shape of what came next?
And Ōnoki hasn't arrived yet.
She looked at her hand. Closed it.
Tsunade's back. Jiraiya knows what he's dealing with. Orochimaru doesn't have a Curse Mark on Sasuke and couldn't put one there. And I—
She thought about yesterday. About the arm wrestling. About how close it had been, and where the gap was, and what she was going to do about it.
I'm not made of clay.
If Ōnoki decided to throw his hand in — if the worst case assembled itself — Dust Release was a real problem. Being reduced to a cube of compressed molecules was the kind of thing Hundred Healings didn't have a solution for.
The answer was simple: don't get hit.
One hit. Don't let that one hit land. That's the entire problem with a Kage-level fight — the first hit is usually the last one.
She started walking toward the Third Training Ground.
Yesterday's combination — Heavenly Canopy Method running, Body Flicker, the continuous sensory picture she could now keep active while she moved — she'd barely started testing it before Tsunade arrived. She had half a month before the final matches.
Roads that don't open — break them open.
She kept walking.
Back in the reception room, the conversation had already run its first cycle.
Hiruzen had deflected where deflection was called for, offered consideration where consideration bought time, and generally done what he'd been doing for thirty years: kept the room from becoming something worse. Rasa would come back in two days. They both knew no agreement was coming from a single meeting.
And Rasa, for his part, hadn't expected one. He'd wanted to take the measure of the old man, assess the room, see whether Konoha was the Konoha that had beaten Sand three times before or something diminished.
What he'd found was the original article, inconveniently intact.
He needed the trade agreement. He needed the grain. He needed it before the Daimyō's patience expired and before the military budget contracted again.
Which meant he needed something Konoha had.
Which meant, whatever happened next, he was the one who needed this more.
He drank his tea and showed none of this, and Hiruzen poured him a second cup and showed none of what he knew, and they talked pleasantly about the weather until it was time to stop.
(End of Chapter 79)