"Someone, feed the Kazekage sand."
Just as Rasa seethed with humiliation, Garp had already stepped out of the crater left by his punch. He tossed out a single sentence, and his figure vanished from Rasa's sight.
"Even if I die, I won't let your fists have their way."
A look of fierce resolve flashed through Rasa's eyes.
But before he could refine Magnet Release chakra, the staggering silhouettes of Chiyo and Ebizo suddenly walked up to him.
"Elder Chiyo, Elder Ebizo, wait… what are you two doing?"
Seeing that the siblings were somehow still able to stand, Rasa first felt a moment of relief.
But the next instant, as though realizing something terrifying, his expression twisted into shock and fury.
"Feed the Kazekage sand," Chiyo said, forcing a tragic smile.
Ebizo said nothing, he only gave a silent nod.
"Are you two insane? Garp is obviously taking revenge on the three of us for attacking him.
You think doing this, cough, cough, you think helping him humiliate our village will make him spare you?
Don't delude yourselves. Back then, the number of shinobi and samurai who died under his fists was probably greater than the entire population of our Sunagakure."
Rasa shouted hoarsely at the siblings, his emotions nearly exploding.
"And have you forgotten?
Earlier, Garp said.
'Either crawl back to the Land of Wind and eat sand like the first Kazekage or go meet him.'
Those words weren't just for me. He said them to all of us.
From the moment we demanded that old monster to leave, the three of us were already worms tied to the same rope."
He pleaded desperately.
"He did say that to us," Chiyo admitted calmly. "But the one who demanded Garp to move aside… was you, Kazekage-sama."
"You…"
Rasa stared at her in disbelief.
But after thinking back, he realized it was true, he was the only one who had spoken those words.
Although the siblings had joined him in attacking, they had never once opened their mouths to attack Garp.
In contrast, Rasa shouted again and again, insulting Garp.
"Kazekage-sama," Ebizo sighed when he saw Rasa's expression, as though he wished he could skin Chiyo alive.
"Don't think the two of us are afraid of death. Death is but a moment. It's the living who suffer."
"This isn't 'not afraid of death', what you're doing defines cowardice. No, what you two are doing is an insult to the very concept of cowardice."
Rasa roared, glaring at the siblings with bloodshot eyes.
These were Sunagakure's elders?
No wonder the title of Kazekage passed down for generations, yet their village still scraped out a life with bare minimum resources in the Land of Wind.
Even in the years when Garp disappeared, Sunagakure never managed to step beyond its borders.
With elders like these, how could any Kazekage through the ages not end up failing?
"We never thought we'd walk out of this place alive. Kazekage-sama, don't assume that just because we didn't personally attack him that Garp wasn't forcing us to choose as well.
Either return to the Land of Wind, or go meet Lord Reto. Kazekage-sama, we've also chosen to go meet Lord Reto."
Chiyo shook her head.
She had been born in the twilight between the Warring States and the founding era of the villages.
Who among the living could understand Iron Fist's terrifying reputation better than she did?
People thought that because Garp was known as a 'hero,' he must be compassionate, righteous, a gentle giant who protected the weak.
But in the Warring States Period, when even four or five year old children carried blades and took lives, what child didn't already have dozens of deaths on their hands?
The so-called 'hero of the shinobi world' title didn't come from Garp's kindness, or from saving others, or performing noble deeds, it came from the sheer number of shinobi and samurai clans that had been crushed beneath those iron fists.
There hadn't been many clans left standing in that era's fractured map of the shinobi world.
Without Garp, how could there have been endless wars? How could the Warring States Period have lasted so long?
It wasn't just that he ended that period, even the birth of the shinobi village system was because the few surviving ninja and samurai clans, terrified of Garp's brutality and pressured by sheer survival, had been forced to unite.
That was how shinobi villages, nations, and the current 'era of shinobi' had come to be.
Chiyo had not witnessed it with her own eyes, but she had heard plenty.
And because of everything she knew, she had never once believed she would walk back to Sunagakure alive.
"If we're going to die either way… why are you doing this?"
Rasa had originally been furious, furious enough to die from the shame of their cowardice.
But after hearing Chiyo's explanation, he suddenly noticed that both siblings had hollow, lifeless eyes, dead gray, devoid of even a flicker of hope.
Eyes like that didn't belong to people who wanted to live. They belonged to people who had already accepted death.
"Kazekage-sama, you ignored every warning Ebizo and I gave you, insisting on sending troops to the Land of Lightning. For that, I can choose not to blame you."
"When you demanded Garp to go back to Konoha and dragged us into this mess, I can also choose not to blame you."
"But the lives of two thousand Suna shinobi, and the fate and future of Sunagakure itself, Kazekage-sama, as the Fourth Kazekage, you must take responsibility."
Chiyo looked at Rasa with a complex expression.
Not blame him.
Before the campaign began, she had pleaded with him again and again.
But as Kazekage, young, ambitious, prideful, Rasa refused every warning.
Even if the more than two thousand shinobi returned alive, the moment she remembered how Rasa, through one ruinous battle, had caused the deaths of three Kage-level leaders…
How he had weakened Sunagakure so badly that even their place at the bottom of the Five Villages might be lost…
She felt nothing but regret and dread.
Since the disappearance of the Third Kazekage and the defection of Sasori, Sunagakure had only four Kage-level fighters left.
And today… three had been lost in one stroke.
How could she not hate him?
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