Chapter 58.1- Gamer of the Desert

He returned to a village in a much better state than he had feared. As he flew down to the Land of Wind, all the while regretting not spending any energy on time in trying to reverse engineer the Flying Thundered or even a basic teleportation seal of his own. He knew it was illogical. He could have spent every day for years working on it, but without a base to work off of, it would have been the work of decades of intensive effort. It hadn’t been worth it to him then. Not by any means. But that had quickly changed with the realisation that he had no way to get back to his village when it was in danger. Someway, somehow, he had come to care for Sunagakure. It was his. The massive skyscraper made with glass that he had blown himself with his sand and fire release, the farms that he’d designed bespoke climate alteration seals for, the rich marketplaces that he’d had to spend hours negotiating with merchant after merchant to get them to adopt, the sewer system he had banged his head against for weeks until he managed to create a system where every drop of sewage was repurposed to water that was funnelled into an internal cooling g system for the city. All that and more.

Just as much as Hashirama had built Konoha, he had built the new Suna with his own hands. His knowledge, efforts, and creativity went towards making life as easy as possible for his citizens. An already hard people used to hardship, they came to love him for every innovation, and he could not lie that he felt the same. With every problem of theirs he took on, he’d come to learn that he cared for them even more. And with Gamer’s mind a thing of the past with Shukaku in his control, there was nothing stopping him from losing himself in that feeling. Just as wholly and completely as anyone else would have.

So when he arrived to find that only parts of it had been burnt in fires that Temari, Kankuro, and the Jounin had had an easy enough time stopping, he was happy beyond words. But he was also confused. He raised the issue up with his siblings instantly, and Temari had explained it away by saying they probably caught on to her before she could do anything too dangerous. But he knew Mebuki. He also knew the amount of trust he’d placed into her hands. She could have poisoned the water that his Grandfather provided at subsidised prices. She could have ruined any of the dozen delicate sealing matrixes that kept the village running. He’d blessed her with access that went beyond the pale for a personal assistant to any Kage. She had the power to cause untold harm, but she hadn’t. He couldn’t explain it away with classic small-minded incompetence that came so easy to people, because he knew Mebuki. She was sharp, and smart, and intelligent.

She knew how to get things done, so he was certain that there was something more going on here. And his curiosity would not let him leave it be.

A/N; Very short snippet. Guess who has a date tonight? Not me, I want to watch the season’s finale of HOTD and go to bed- but hopefully one of you does.