Sand Dune Outside Sunagakure
Yuji lay stretched out on top of the dune, hands behind his head, eyes half-closed against the sun.
Sasori stood beside him, arms crossed, looking down at the village below.
From up here, the entire Hidden Sand Village was laid out beneath them like a map.
"What do you think?"
Sasori asked.
"He's strong." Yuji's voice was calm, almost lazy, but his mind was still replaying every detail of the fight. "Not just strong. That level of power is something most shinobi will never touch in their entire lives."
He paused.
"And with a Kekkei Genkai like his, he couldn't be weak even if he tried. The range, the power, the chakra efficiency... none of that comes cheap."
Sasori said nothing. Just stared ahead.
"Well, he is the strongest Kazekage in history," Yuji added lightly. "And the leader of the village. So there's that."
A silence settled between them. Comfortable. The kind that only existed between two people who had spent six months surviving together.
Then Sasori spoke.
"The Medical Department, Police Force, Anbu, Administrative Department, Intelligence Division, Analysis Team, Economic advisors, Military advisors." His voice was cold and methodical. "All of them need to be purged. But for the plan to work, the most critical target is the Third."
Yuji didn't sit up. Didn't even open his eyes.
"No need to be that extreme."
"Replacing the entire top brass at once, even if we could pull it off, would gut the village's operational strength. And based on how this war ended, the other villages are still bitter about not gaining an advantage over Konoha. That resentment doesn't just disappear. Another war could start within a few years."
He raised a finger.
"If we've hollowed out the leadership when that happens, we're the ones who suffer. Some of those people are genuinely competent. The problem isn't their ability. It's that their thinking is shaped by the Third. His philosophy drives their decisions. So he's the source. Remove him, and the rest can be redirected."
"Besides," Yuji continued, "Sunagakure was developing well under the Second Kazekage. It was only after the Third took over that things started going downhill."
"You have something in mind," Sasori said.
"During the assessment, I was testing more than just my combat ability." Yuji held up a finger. "My Kekkei Genkai is liquid-based. As long as his Iron Sand doesn't increase its density past a certain threshold, he can't fully block my penetration. Give me a few more years of research, and I could develop methods to counter his Iron Sand specifically."
He let the finger drop.
"But Iron Sand is metallic. Its variable density far exceeds normal sand. Even with a few more years of growth, you and I together still wouldn't take him down easily in a straight fight."
"So we use unconventional methods."
"Poison?" Sasori understood immediately.
"Exactly." Yuji finally sat up. "We're both skilled in that area. And no one would suspect us of moving against the Third."
His tone shifted. Quieter. More careful.
"It has to be slow-acting. Hard to detect. Harder to trace. Because if Grandma Chiyo catches even a whiff of it, we're finished. We'd be branded rogue ninja before we could blink."
"Leave the poison to me."
Sasori's voice was perfectly steady. As Chiyo's grandson, no one knew her methods of creating and neutralizing poisons better than he did. The poison didn't need to be powerful. It just needed to be invisible to the one person in the village most likely to find it.
"I'll join the Anbu," Sasori added. "Get close to him. Learn his routines, habits, and private movements."
"Everything."
A long-term project. Patient and Methodical. They needed to know the target inside and out before making a single move.
Getting close wouldn't be difficult. Both of them were the village's prized new generation. Chiyo's status as a senior official meant Sasori had a direct path into the Anbu or even the Kage Guard if he wanted it.
"I'll handle the Third," Sasori said. "Everything else is yours."
Because after the Third was dealt with, certain members of his faction among the leadership would also need to quietly disappear.
"Most of them are manageable," Yuji said. "But there's one who's a problem."
"Rasa."
Sasori said the name without hesitation.
They'd both identified it independently. Rasa was the strongest shinobi of their generation in the village. Already part of the leadership circle. Already trusted. And his personality, his philosophy, and his approach to governance, all of it was a mirror image of the Third Kazekage.
Even if they removed the Third, Rasa would be the obvious successor. The officials would gravitate toward him because he felt familiar. Safe. A continuation of what they already knew.
And if Rasa took the seat, nothing would change. The same thinking, same mistakes, same slow decline.
"Should we kill him?" Sasori asked. No hesitation.
"No." Yuji shook his head. "The village will still need him in the future. We just need to keep him out of the chair."
"You and I are enough. Everyone else will only get in the way."
"Don't be so aggressive," Yuji said with a grin. "If we want the village to actually grow, a dictatorship won't work."
"Hmph." Sasori gave a cold half-laugh.
"The Kage position is elected by the village's power structure," Yuji continued. "But there's one person whose opinion carries more weight than anyone inside these walls."
Sasori knew who he meant.
"The Daimyo of the Land of Wind."
"After this war's performance, the Daimyo has to be dissatisfied with Suna's leadership. If we can gain even a fraction of his support, blocking Rasa becomes much simpler."
Yuji stretched his arms overhead and jumped to his feet.
"Anyway, there's plenty of time. We can deploy slowly." He dusted the sand off his clothes. "I'm hungry. Let's go eat. My treat."
He dropped his hand onto Sasori's shoulder.
"Be serious about this," Sasori said, his face tense. Cold. "I'm not joking. If this doesn't succeed in the end, there's no reason for me to stay here."
Yuji met his eyes.
"Don't worry. If we fail, we'll run away together."
"..."
Sasori stared at him.
He didn't brush the hand off his shoulder.
The two of them walked down the dune side by side, their footprints trailing behind them in the sand. Two long, parallel lines stretching back toward the top.
...
Bonus @200PS