Signing the last document on the stack, Rasa sank back into his chair in the new office building. A marvel of great engineering and artistry, he found himself admiring the glass construction.

From his chair, he could gaze upon the entirety of Suna and there were even runic formations on the walls that could magnify his view so he could inspect the daily life of his subjects from the comfort of his office.

Although whether they would remain his subjects was becoming a questionable point.

He sighed. His political intuition was never wrong. It was what had allowed him to attain the position of the leader of Suna over the other, more favoured candidates like the personal guard of the third Kazekage.

A little rumour about his incompetence being the reason the third had disappeared and he had been to ashamed to compete, withdrawing halfway.

It was this self-same intuition that had warned him that Pakura would be a future thorn in his side. Seizing the chance to get rid of her and nip the threat in the bud, he had sold her off into the hand of the enigmatic monster who had practically commandeered Suna for his experiments.

Who would have thought that the girl had turned out to be a shrewd and lascivious vixen, enticing the man within the span of a day and regaining her freedom.

Not only that, she had started doing the rounds with a clone disguised as him, moving from door to door, apologising to the Suna citizens.

In this time of war and bloodshed, the people of Suna would obviously welcome a strong leader and who better to represent strength than the man who had rebuilt a city in days.

The only problem with him was his indifference to the populace and the lack of consideration for them. It prevented the people from wanting him at the helm. Of course, Rasa had fuelled the animosity by publishing the statistics of how many shops had been ruined and how many people had lost all they owned in the world. The destruction of the graveyard and the Monument of Martyrs had been especially successful in hiring the hatred of the populace.

Now that the man was seen to be apologetic and willing to make reparations, the public opinion was swiftly reversing. There were even infrequent calls for him to become the Kazekage. Some of the elder council had even jumped ships early.

No matter the temporary inconvenience, the new city was extremely beautiful and functional after all. It was like a perpetual, all-encompassing advertisement of what he could bring to the table.

In actuality, the number of poor and homeless people who had found shelter post-reconstruction due to the more efficient use of space and the overall expansion of the city, far outnumbered the rich merchants and shopkeepers who had lost their money.

In them, the man had a growing support base.

Both him and Pakura were occupying the political initiative and Rasa was helpless to resist. He sighed again. He was regretting disposing of Pakura in that manner. He should never have let her contact the one person whose support could help her turn the tables on him.

Well, what was done could not be undone and regret was futile. Hindsight always made one’s past actions seem dull-witted and he wasn’t one to wallow in self-recrimination. Instead, it would do him much good to contemplate his future course of actions, now that the seat of Kazekage was practically forfeit.

He reached into his drawer and pulled out a bottle of sake. It was an extremely expensive blend which he had imported from the Land of Rice. It had been in his residence which was located underground, neighbouring the Suna ANBU training facilities. Thus, it had survived the reconstruction.

Pouring himself a cup, he slowly savoured it as he let his mind wander.

It had always been his dream to be the strongest Kazekage.

His father was a branch member of the Tetsu clan, the clan to which the third Kazekage belonged, famous for their magnet release. The other members though, weren’t very impressive, only able to use their magnetic chakra to manipulate kunai and shuriken and take the path of a ranged weapon specialist.

The Third Kazekage had been the one to study Shukaku and come up with the idea of manipulating iron sand. It didn’t hurt that he had the largest chakra pool and the strongest magnet release since the clan’s inception.

His mother on the other hand was a captive Kunoichi from the Land of Grass. She was from a clan with the ability to manipulate metal. She had been abducted and forcibly made to give birth to him in the hope of strengthening his kekkei genkai, creating another miraculously strong shinobi like the third.

Soon after his birth, she had committed suicide from the humiliation and he had grown up under the cold gaze of his father who drove him to the brink of exhaustion in the name of training day after day.

When he had awakened his kekkei genkai at the age of five after this hell, it was found that unlike the magnet release of other members of the clan who could affect paramagnetic substances like iron, his could only affect diamagnetic metals like gold.

He was deemed a failure and side-lined. His father wanted to remarry, unwilling to give up on his dream of creating the perfect bloodline and joining the main family from the branch family.

One day as he trained alone in his yard, more out of inertia than anything else, the news came… his father had been captured trying to abduct another female from his mother’s clan.

His severed genitals had been sent over as a warning. His fate could be imagined.

He had shed tears in front of the messenger but that night in the privacy of his room, he had laughed. He was free.

Growing up, the third Kazekage had always been his idol for his martial prowess and political acumen. He had decided at a very young age: that was what he wanted to be as an adult.

Training his golden sand required a lot of money. Actually, as it was gold that he used as his weapon, it could be said that he was battering his enemies to death by pounding them with wealth.

He was smart and using the monetary condolence he got from his father’s death, he bought a little bit of gold and started a jewellery shop using his talents, earning the mock of all his peers in the clan.

A solemn combat clan member reduced to mercantile pursuits, they felt shame at their association with him and some even made life hard for him.

Undeterred, he persisted in his goldsmithing and both his powers and wealth grew.

Money can buy everything in the world. If it can’t then, you aren’t using enough. That was his idea once he learnt how to extract the minute amounts of gold from the desert.

He bribed the councilmen, he paid off his enemies or if that didn’t work, he subsidised their enemies and had them fight, he bought expensive equipment and strengthening drugs. In short, he threw money at everything and grew stronger in the process.

By the time the Tetsu clan realised his value and wanted him back, he was too powerful and had too many connections to be touched.

He paid off the Land of Grass and extradited his mother’s clan to Suna and officially proclaimed himself their clan head, giving him a quota in the council.

He fought and bribed his way up the ranks till finally, he was in a position to seize power when the third Kazekage disappeared.

His dream had always been to be the strongest Kazekage, exceeding the third but now, right after achieving half of his goals, he was on the verge of losing his position. And after seeing the power of the man who had caused it all, he had no confidence of becoming the ‘strongest’ anything anytime soon.

He sighed and chugged the sake straight from the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. A trickle of liquor ran down the corners of his mouth and his throat before moistening his robes.

Slamming the empty bottle onto the desk, he belched, his eyes bleary from intoxication.

“Damn it.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling with glazed eyes. He felt lost.

Suddenly, the shadows on the ceiling shifted and darkened, coalescing into a blob of formless darkness.

A crooked maw filled with jagged teeth opened up in its middle and two rounded eyes without pupil or sclera locked onto him.

The moonlight filtered through the glass building, catching a sanguine tint.

It opened its maw and a guttural voice emanated from it.

“Do you want power?”

“Do you want to change the world and leave your mark on it?”

“Join us… Join us in bringing the World of Infinite Dreams to reality.”