It was a small comfort. A reminder that life persisted even after witnessing so much death.
Unlatching his chest plate at the shoulders and sides, Shin slowly doffed his blood-stained silver armor. Each piece came away with resistance, the straps sticky with gore that wasn't entirely his own. Placing the ruined armor on the ground beside his desk, he could feel the wet filth of clinging blood holding his tunic to his skin beneath. The fabric had fused to his wounds in places, dried crimson mixing with the golden light that still seeped through cracks in his flesh like liquid fire refusing to be extinguished.
Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he pulled it up and over his head with a sharp intake of breath, exposing his bloodied torso and the gilded fractures that spider-webbed across his chest and arms. The chakra burn damage from converting his life force into raw power gleamed with an unnatural luminescence, each crack pulsing faintly with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He wasn't sure how long these breaks in his flesh would last—hours? Days? Permanently scarred as a reminder of how close he'd come to burning out entirely?
They lingered now like visible scars of what had happened atop the village. Like proof written into his very skin that he'd been willing to die to protect them all.
Setting the bloodied tunic aside, Shin moved to the refreshment table and poured himself a cup of cold brew coffee with hands that still trembled slightly. The bitter taste helped ground him, helped pull his scattered thoughts back from the battlefield where bodies still lay waiting for recovery teams. He'd heard reports that some of the Genin and Chuunin had investigated the tunnels ahead of the track underneath the explosions on the surface and cleared the ways, preventing what could have been a catastrophic secondary collapse. Their quick thinking had saved countless lives in the underground city.
Shin had ordered an immediate withdrawal into the subterranean world following the battle, along with instructions to increase the city's pace of relocation by twenty percent. They needed to move deeper, faster, to position themselves in sections of the tunnel network that couldn't be easily compromised by another surface assault. Before the Baron Twins had a chance to strike again. Before Sunagakure could be caught vulnerable while still licking its wounds.
His mind roamed back to the battle, replaying moments in fragments that refused to organize themselves into coherent narrative. The corrupted sun of Akkuma's Sol Fire Tempest falling like divine judgment. The Desert Tendrils erupting to impale everything in their path. Harupia's silvery maelstrom stabilizing the tunnel entrance when everything should have collapsed. Michino's blade cutting through fleeing mercenaries with the cold precision of death incarnate. Kureji's insane symphony turning wild creatures into allies.
And Akkuma...
Standing beside him when he'd nearly fallen from the sky. Offering strength freely through the Energy Transfer link. Pulling souls back from death with techniques that shouldn't exist.
You came for me.
Twenty-three shinobi confirmed dead. He'd memorized their names already, had read each one multiple times on the casualty reports. He wasn't sure how many Akkuma had been able to revive with his Medical Assistant clones—three? Four? Each resurrection was a miracle, but miracles couldn't undo everything. There would be loss that resulted from this conflict. Families who would receive notifications. Children who would grow up without parents. Shinobi who would carry survivor's guilt for being the ones who made it to cover in time.
The weight of those deaths settled on Shin's shoulders like a physical burden, pressing down until his spine wanted to curve under the pressure. But he forced himself to remain upright, forced his posture to remember what command looked like even when exhaustion threatened to drag him down.
He turned and half-sat, half-collapsed against the edge of his desk, letting out a heavy sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire battle within it. His bare torso was a canvas of blood and golden light, a stark contrast to the carefully maintained order of the office around him. The flowers blooming. The refreshments waiting. The surface-level normalcy that couldn't quite hide the reality of what they'd just survived.
Shin had summoned four of the key players in this combat to join him. The moment Harupia had ensured the safety of the sands and the tunnel entrance had been declared stable, he'd reached out through the Mind Thread connection to each of them individually:
`"Meet me in the Kazekage Tower. There is much to discuss.`
Not a request. Not quite an order. Something in between—the voice of someone who'd stood beside them in hell and now needed them to walk back into the fire one more time.
They needed to talk about what came next. About the Golden Sanctuary and the Baron Twins who'd watched their battle from a distance and learned everything they needed to know. About Jigoku's escape and what intelligence she was likely reporting even now. About the puppet Daimyo and Wind Country's compromised government. About building teams in seven days to launch an assault that would either secure Sunagakure's future or doom them all.
But first, they needed to talk about what it cost. What it would continue to cost. What Shin was about to ask them to sacrifice.
The Kazekage took another sip of his coffee, feeling the cold liquid trace down his throat, and waited for the knock at his door. His sapphire eyes remained fixed on the entrance, dim with exhaustion but still burning with that stubborn refusal to surrender that had defined every moment of the battle.
The flowers bloomed. The coffee waited. And Chikamatsu Shin prepared to ask the impossible of people he cared about, knowing full well that some of them might not survive what came next.
The door would open soon. And then...
The real work would begin.
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