Chapter 21

Fire built in my chest as I held it in and spoke through gritted teeth, "This is a stupid move, Mei Terumi." For perhaps the first time since shit went to hell, I was no longer in control. My jounin promotion was now in danger. No way would Rasa ever promote me if I succeeded in getting his kids killed. Oh yeah, and they were my siblings too. Couldn't let them die because of that, could I?

"A stupid move? No, I don't think so." I itched to wipe the smug off her face.

"You will surrender now or your brother and sister will say goodbye to their lives." Temari began to struggle against the binds that held her. They'd been taken out of the bags they were chucked in and forced to kneel in front of their captives, facing me.

"Oh no. This is actually a stupid idea. I can get behind coming for me. If you succeeded, you'd have gained a dangerous woman while robbing Suna of one. That was one hell of a way to discourage retaliation. No one wanted to face three Jinchuriki in the middle of the ocean. But do you see why threatening my siblings is such a terrible idea?"

"No? I'll explain it to you then. You kill my siblings. You piss off Suna, and you have no weapons to match one of the great five. You're in the middle of a civil war, divided as ever, and only one of your Jinchuriki is still loyal. But Yagura has been erratic, hasn't he? Utakata has gone rogue. As it stands now, Suna will crush you like a fly beneath its boot. And that's just what happens to Kiri itself," I said, beginning to walk forward, the desert moving with me as it forced the jounin to take their own steps backward.

"As for you? Touch those children, and none of you will survive." I pulled on a trick my body had learned when under Shukaku's control. Killing intent. I could see it slam into them as they saw all the multitude of ways I would kill them if they kept pissing me off.

One of the jounin looked like he actually wanted to take off. Guess Kiri's standards weren't really all that.

"But your siblings will still be dead," Terumi said.

"My siblings? Please go ahead. I couldn't honestly care less," I said, projecting all my honesty into my voice and body language. Maxed out intelligence made deception much easier, but there was no deception here at all. I couldn't care less about their lives. I cared what their deaths might mean for me personally, but their lives? Nah. Not my concern.

Terumi saw something that made her hesitate, and I exploded in motion. A great fireball traveled across the space between us in seconds as I executed the jutsu seallessly. Two clones formed from the sand beneath my feet and blasted at the jounin holding my siblings hostage. Ao tried to get in their way, but I distracted him with an actual waterfall of sand that forced him to dodge out of the way.

The shinobi themselves were little hindrance to my clones. A grinding sound made one of them hesitate, and his head was gone in the Yellow Flash's signature jutsu, and the other lost his life to a slit throat from a wind chakra-enhanced kunai after a single taijutsu exchange. Sand wrapped around my siblings and dragged them over to me. Placed behind me, I commanded a platform of sand to lift itself from the ground and begin flying away. One of my clones joined them on the platform while I dispelled the other for the chakra.

Terumi had fought fire with fire by countering my fireball with one of her own. It was an impressive display of ninjutsu mastery, and I could see why she would become Mizukage one day. Today wasn't that day, however. She was not a Kage-level opponent just yet, and I had to stop treating her like one.

Our fingers flashed in unison as two matching fire dragons clashed in the air between us before exploding and tossing quite a few of her ninja backward. I anchored myself with my sand, and from the way her feet moved, I guessed she'd done the same with her chakra. I ran for her, only for Ao to get in my way, Byakugan flashing. "Fancy eye," I taunted as I sent a kunai I'd summoned from the inventory right at the eye, intent on extracting it. He leaned backward with ease and dodged out of the way of my next attack before landing a counter I was forced to block with my sand. I used the sand to skate past him and make for my quarry.

Of course, there was no hope of catching her off guard anymore. Multiple balls of lava shot out at me before being caught in a sand shield that then had to be reinforced with even more sand until the attack lost momentum and splattered to the floor. In that time, she'd gone through more seals, and the ocean behind me began to rise. Oh, fuck this. When the tsunami crashed, I'd shunshined deeper into the town, chasing her as she tried to escape the impact of her attack.

Ram → Horse → Snake → Dragon → Rat → Ox → Tiger, I went through and sent three flame bullets screaming after her. The fire managed to hit everything except her as it added damage to the waterlogged town.

She turned back to me, fingers spread in the Horse seal. "Fire Release; Great Flame Annihilation," she shouted, and all I knew was fire.

When I finally felt the flames stop licking at my sand dome, I dropped the front of the shield to give me some air and got a good look at the town, or at least what remained of it. Mei Terumi had just unleashed Madara level fire release in the middle of a populated Island. What the fuck?

I searched for her, only to find her nowhere to be seen. What I did see was some of her compatriots escaping toward one of the only remaining ships. No, fuck that shit. My sand platform carried me towards them as I shaped a wall in front of me before sending it flying at them in a barrage of wind release enhanced bullets. They were turned into bloody mists as I searched more and more of the island for the rest of them.

Only my automatic defense allowed me to survive the pressure lance Terumi sent at me. The sand slowed it down enough for me to dive down to the ground. Watching the water shred through the sand clone I'd left behind like it was nothing was a sobering experience. Now on my feet on the Island itself, I did my best to trace the woman. One good thing was that her flames had gotten rid of much of the water from the tsunami she'd created. Well, I guess I was wrong. Mei Terumi is most definitely kage-level in terms of raw power. Two town-destroying attacks in quick succession was something else. Forget that, three. My mind told me as I finally stumbled upon what her and her people were doing.

Another tsunami was taking shape, but this time it was much, much larger. I had to have a concussion or something, because how the fuck was I just noticing the water rising up. The water got higher and higher, casting a shadow not only over me but over the entire island itself.

I could fly away. I could. But I crushed that thought as quickly as it came. For some illogical reason, I wanted to test my ninjutsu against her own. A clone formed beside me as I felt my chakra halve itself. I lifted one hand above my head, and the clone did the same. Wind gathered around us as I controlled and shaped it into what was perhaps my most powerful attack. The shuriken began spinning, going faster and faster.

My clone was doing something far more dangerous. Fire release shaped itself in his raised hand as he controlled and compressed more and more fire to form the core of the attack. When the tsunami slammed down, heading towards us, I threw the rasenshuriken right at it, and my clone flashed forward, with the core of the attack complete, and the shell much the same. He reached the rasenshuriken right before it exploded and thrust the fire attack into its core. The world went white as the wind release took the fire release and turned it into something else.

XXXXXX

"And that's what happened," I told Rasa as we arrived two weeks after the mess in the Land of Water. He just nodded, looking introspective. Baki was gone. If he hadn't died when the kids were captured, then there was no way he survived what went down on the Island.

"Well, I'll write that one off as a success. The good news is that everyone is too focused on what happened to the Island that the merchant's death was never investigated. Just ruled off as one of the countless hundreds that died in the battle." He said.

"By the way, congratulations," He said, handing a book to me. It was the Bingo Book, and the bookmarked page had me staring right at a picture of me. They worked fast, as I noted the description they had of me.

Name: Gaara of the Desert

Moniker; The butcher of Okinawa

Age: 12

Rank: Chunin

Ninjutsu: 5

Taijutsu: 3

Genjutsu: 1

Intelligence: 5

Stamina: 5

Speed: 4

Hand Seals: 4

Total: 27*

Danger Rating: S.

Gaara of the Desert, with the help of Mei Terumi, destroyed the Island of Okinawa in Mizu no Kuni with a series of powerful ninjutsu and killed a dozen Jounin ranked ninja of Mist's rebel forces as well as several hundred civilians.

Bounty: 49,000,000 Ryo

Recommended Strategy: Approach with caution. Teams of Jounin only. Rely on Taijutsu and close-range combat, preventing the target from using ninjutsu. The target has also been shown to ignore all Genjutsu.

"Well, that's something else," I said, my throat aching as I stared at the bounty placed on my head. That was a lot of money. A crap ton of money. Flipping through the book to confirm, the only people with higher bounties were those who had done some serious shit like Itachi, Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Mei Terumi herself. My bounty was somehow even higher than Jiraiya's. Guess not many people wanted the best author in the world dead. The Kage was, of course, exempt. No bounties were placed on the sitting Kage. That was one of the only rules the international Bingo book abided by.

"Indeed. And it is sadly out of date," Rasa said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes as he handed me a Jounin vest.

"This time, I had one custom made in your size." I nodded gratefully as I took the thing in my hands. Some part of me ached to question him. To ask why I was still being honored like this after my mission had ended in an epic clusterfuck. Of course, like any kid with expertise in getting away with shit, I took the win and left it at that.

"Happy Birthday," He said to me, and I nodded as I left. Today, I turned 12. The game had also shut down to 'recalibrate and mark the occasion,' but that was fine. I felt accomplished, powerful. It felt like there was nothing in my future that I wouldn't be able to deal with. I knew it was a dangerous way to think, or even to live, but it was still the life I chose.

I made my way home. A home I hadn't lived in, in months. It was empty, as expected. Yashamaru had moved out years ago. My mother's cousin had since determined that I had little need for him.

My jounin promotion meant I'd be spending much less time on missions and whatnot, so I actually decided to clean the apartment. It was all a matter of removing the dust that had been allowed to accumulate over time and scouring the surfaces with ungodly amounts of disinfectant to match my sudden need to be clean.

I ached to turn off Gamer's mind to feel some of the regret and guilt that any human would after what I'd done. Mei Terumi might have started the escalation, but I was the one who allowed my pride and anger to get in the way of rational thinking. Hundreds of people had just been living their lives. The Butcher of Okinawa they called me. What a fitting name. All I'd done there was butchery. Butchery of the most callous and immoral kind. Butchery not for pleasure or under some misguided sense of righteousness. Butchery because I did not care to prevent it. I wanted Mei Terumi dead, and I'd failed, and doomed an entire village with my failure.

I grabbed the Bingo Book and searched out Mei Terumi's entry. I read it over for the second time, even though I could already recite every line of it from memory. She was on my list now. The list of those I would have to kill before the thought of a peaceful life could ever cross my mind. I added her while crossing Baki off the list. He'd always been more of a gag-addition, but she? I'd drink wine from her corpse.

XXXXXXX

Two months. That was the time between my birthday and the meeting between Rasa and Orochimaru. How did I know? Well, Rasa had chosen to take me with him as a sort of statement. He'd told me I was to act as one of his guards and remain silent throughout the entire thing. I wasn't really sure when Orochimaru would betray Rasa. I wanted it to happen today for my own reasons, but it could logically take place any time between now and the Chunin exam finals.

We moved as a unit, with Rasa forming the tip of the spear, and me bringing up the rear. At this point, none of the ANBU that guarded Rasa would give me more than a second's pause if I actually intended to kill the Kazekage. But no. I'd leave that to Orochimaru. The risk of being caught out for kinslaying was too high. No matter how strong I was, there was no way Suna would bow to the man who actually killed their kage. And if I returned with none of the guards and news of a dead Kage, the effect would be much the same.

When we arrived at the chosen meeting spot, I almost felt a smile break out on my face. We were in No man's Land. The spot of mountainous region that marked the space between the borders of the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth. Orochimaru had chosen his spot well. We were well out of the desert. No space for Rasa to have hidden any of his golden dust anywhere. The ANBU member holding the sealing scroll that contained the mountain of dust Rasa had prepared for this meeting was practically glued to the Kazekage's side as he watched his surroundings warily.

Rasa thought himself stronger than Orochimaru. That had been clear in the way his words to us during the prep for the mission had been placed. If Orochimaru was to spring a trap, he would deal with the Sannin, while the rest of us dealt with what reinforcements and support the Sannin brought with him.

Speaking of the Sannin, when Orochimaru appeared, it was in a motion that most could not track. One of the ninjas next to me actually jolted in surprise and grabbed his weapon, a war fan. Most ninja, not me though, thanks to Gamer's mind, I was able to see through the Genjutsu that hid him and his people from view, but when he appeared he was staring at me, intrigued.

"Seeming immunity to Genjutsu. Oh, what a fascinating ability," he said in a voice that made me want to rush to the nearest bathroom and scrub myself down. The anime really underplayed how creepy the man's voice and bearing were. He was in a body that looked identical to the original, but I didn't allow that to deceive me. Until I saw some evidence, I'd assume this was some sort of trick from the snake.

"Kazekage-Dono, please accept my greetings," he said with a nod of his head. The Kage robes Orochimaru wore were some sort of facsimile of the one used by the Great Five. Rasa seemed to not care about the possible insult, but I could only see his back.

He nodded his own head before replying, "Orochimaru. You spoke of mutual interests." Okay. He definitely cared. That was a bit rude.

"Yes, yes, I did, Kazekage-Dono. We have a mutual enemy, Konohagakure." If Orochimaru was bothered, he did not show it.

"Konoha and Suna are allies," Rasa pointed out.

"What kind of ally steals missions from their own allies? What kind of ally supports efforts to undermine their own ally? Konoha has not been an ally to you for a long time."

"And I'm just going to accept your word as truth?" Rasa asked with played up skepticism.

Orochimaru tossed a scroll that was caught by one of the ANBU members. He stepped away from Rasa before opening it, and after checking it for traps, passed it to the Kazekage with a bow.

Rasa read the entire thing in silence. "And you have evidence of all these accusations?" He asked.

"Of course. I stole a bit of it during my defection."

"Even the assassination of my predecessor. You have evidence that Konoha ordered it?" Oh, Orochimaru, you slimy fucker. I guess this is how Suna got involved in this foolish plan.

"Yes. Yes, I do." If one focused, they could hear the slimy snake in Orochimaru's voice.

"And what kind of alliance do you propose?" Rasa asked, biting the bait.

"An attack on Konoha. When they least expect it. During the Chunin exams. We smuggle as much of our troops into the village as we can, and we begin the attack during the finals. Practically guaranteed victory," he said with a laugh at the end.

"A good plan. A plan that requires breaking the Chunin exam treaty, however," Rasa pointed out, and here the disadvantages of finishing the academy in a single day came out to play. I had no idea what the Chunin exam treaty truly was.

"In the chaos of the mess, after Konoha is gone, who will be able to say who broke the treaty? Who attacked whom? Besides, the other nations will not care overmuch. They hate Konoha as much as we do," Orochimaru said.

"No."

"No?"

"I am Kage to thousands. I will not risk them for revenge. No, this plan of yours. I will have no part in it," Rasa said, making to turn around and leave. I guess that's that, then.

"Then this will be where you die." Or not.

A/N; Forwards and onwards, I guess! Yes, I ended on this cliffhanger on purpose. Any suggestions regarding the dialogue? It really isn't my strong suit.