Chapter 2.3

Rasa I

The man before him leaned back in his seat, that infuriating smile still plastered on his face. Rasa didn’t buy the act for a second.

Baki and Gaara’s report had been thorough enough to cover the basics. A routine civilian rescue and bandit elimination mission – the latter of which was certainly the only cause for Gaara volunteering, the monster loved bloodshed like nothing else – had turned into something fantastical, almost mythical.

They had spoken of arriving at the bandit camp, expecting to find an allied ninja, and had instead found a man, tall, beautiful but unassuming at first glance, with powers that seemed plucked straight out of the Monks’ teachings. They had spoken of his healing of some peasant boy who suffered from sleeplessness, of Gaara being put to his knees by a song that seemed more akin to a genjutsu than anything else. Rasa had noted that part with great disquiet – a genjutsu that was able to overwhelm a Jinchūriki’s natural defences so suddenly was no laughing matter.

Gaara had described, with great reluctance, meeting Shukaku, of reconciling with the beast. So much of what he said had been garbed in half-truths and falsehoods, but Rasa let it slide for now. The boy’s powers had long eclipsed his, insofar as his ability to punish him without killing him were concerned. Unless he wanted the entirety of the world to know he tried to kill his son, he could do little more than reprimand him verbally. Perhaps he could send him out of the village to deprive him of the chance to go on missions.

Baki had narrated the tale of their battle with the ninja. Three Suna-nin, two of them children of the Kazekage and no slouches, the third one of their foremost Jonin, defeated by a man who was holding back. Of the fight, four things stood out to Rasa.

The first was that the man had the ability to create some kind of an invisible shield. Rasa was unsure of what exactly that shield did, beyond that it had the capacity to block both Ninjutsu and taijutsu. The second was that the man was in ownership of some strange chakra-based weapon, one that had the capacity to deflect even one of Baki’s charged kunai, which he could seal or unseal at will without any of the usual signs. The third was that he wielded fire techniques like a natural – a prodigy, in fact, for he had not used a single handsign during the battle.

Fourth, and this was perhaps most worrying, was that he had improved substantially in the middle of the fight. He had not done so even when Baki had approached him with the intent to kill but substantially after. The fact that Suleiman had won the bout led him to eliminate the possibility that he was simply too idiotic to stop holding back, which left only other possibility. Somehow, against all the dictates of common sense and Rasa’s decades of experience, this man had the capacity to improve his martial prowess to an unheard of degree in combat.

The way Baki had described it was that Suleiman had gone from being a fast, strong opponent, but seemingly untrained and with poor reflexes, to seemingly being in complete control of his body. ‘A taijutsu master’ with an economy of motion that Baki had ‘never seen in all his years’. His Jonin was not a man prone to exaggerating, so Rasa took his words seriously. Though Baki had been able to hold his own, if barely if his report was to be believed, he had struggled to change the situation to his advantage at all. Suleiman had incapacitated two of his Genin in perhaps as many seconds.

That spoke of a precision of attack one rarely found outside the most vaunted fighters in the Elemental Nations. Certainly, if such a formidable fighter with as versatile a tool belt had existed, Rasa would know it.

And yet, no one did. His ANBU Commander didn’t, his Jonin Commander had never come across a report mentioning any Suna-nin encountering a ninja like him, and his Spymaster was completely clueless as to his true identity. It was as if the man had appeared out of thin air.

His motives, too, remained a mystery. Why help a villager who could offer nothing? The initial assumption, that Suleiman needed a guide, was thoroughly trounced by his later display of strength. Why take on the risk of angering Suna by interfering with its Jinchūriki – and, to Rasa’s great discomfort, Gaara seemed more stable than ever. Not once had he spoken of his ‘Mother’. In fact, if Gaara’s words were to be believed, he had reached an accord with his Biju.

Rasa didn’t know what benefits that gave him, if any, but just the fact that killing intent hadn’t been dripping off of Gaara was enough proof that something had fundamentally changed. Hell, a stable Jinchūriki was exactly the sort of weapon he’d wanted when he’d instructed Chiyo to seal the Ichibi within his son, hadn’t it?

It wasn’t that his actions had caused him or the village harm that concerned him. It was that they’d benefited him tremendously with seemingly no return for the man. What was his angle? What did he want? Money? Suna had little to spare of. A village to call home? He could think of many places a foreigner like him would rather live in than in the middle of a desert. A favour from a Kage? Perhaps, but what could he possibly give in return?

The last part of Baki and Gaara’s report, the creation of a sizeable emerald from thin air – that now hung from his daughter’s neck, Rasa noted worryingly – was almost too fantastical to believe. If the man could replicate that feat, and he didn’t seem fatigued by it at all, then much of Suna’s financial woes could be eliminated, especially if that technique could produce other materials.

Rasa had sold gold dust over the years to support the village, but one man could only do so much, and gold dust wasn’t too valuable for a ninja that couldn’t make use of it – its material purity left much to be desired.

If the man offered his allegiance, Rasa was prepared to give much in return – even if what he ended up asking for was Temari’s hand. But any such negotiation, any such agreement, would have to be on Rasa’s terms – such a man would know what his worth was. If Rasa didn’t dictate the negotiations that would follow, Suleiman might be tempted to seek other avenues of benefiting himself.

He was getting ahead of himself. He needed to focus on the present, not on what the present could potentially mean.

“Do you know what souls are, Lord Kazekage?” Suleiman asked him calmly, utterly unruffled by the not-so-veiled threat.

Rasa blinked at the non-sequitur. “I know what the Monks teach, but I can’t say to have studied them particularly,” he admitted. He left the question of souls and ponderings on existence to the academics and the religious. Ninja did not live in a world of theoreticals – they had to be practical, pragmatic.

“That’s alright. Tell me then, what is chakra?”

He frowned. Where was this conversation going? Rasa decided to humour the man. “I would describe it as the energy composing life. Yin and yang – mind and form. What one is mentally – one’s experiences, the life lived – determines yin, whereas yang is made from one’s body – how strong and powerful it is.”

“And all ninja use chakra, correct? A fire jutsu, for example, would use chakra in some form or the other.”

Rasa nodded uncertainly.

“Are you able to sense chakra? Say, when its used for a technique?”

“Yes. Get to the point, Suleiman-san. I don’t have much patience for your ramblings.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” the man said softly. “And do try your best to sense it as it happens.” Then, slowly, the man raised a hand into the air, palm facing the ceiling. Slowly, a tiny ember of flame appeared, growing steadily till a sphere of fire swirled around in his hand.

From the peripherals of his vision, Rasa knew that Baki had a kunai in his hand ready to throw. He signed to him to stand down.

“Was there a point to this?” Rasa drawled out, inwardly marvelling at the control one had to have to do such a thing without any handsigns at all. This man’s chakra-control must have been truly prodigious. Yet another strength to slot under Suleiman’s mystery. “You can use fire techniques. Very impressive. So can a thousand other ninja.”

Suleiman’s expression turned gentle, as if he was the one humouring him, not the other way around. “Did you sense any flare up of chakra? No matter how prodigious my control might be, at this small a distance, such a display must have signalled something to you.”

Rasa stilled. He hadn’t sensed any build-up of chakra, and perhaps some ninja had the capacity to do that at such close quarters, but manifesting one’s chakra outwards, especially when one applied an elemental transformation to it, had to create a signature. This was a law of chakra that all ninja knew, that all ninja relied on. Did that mean-

Rasa’s breath caught in his throat.

The ball of fire disappeared, dissipating into a warm wind that ruffled Gaara’s hair.

And then he sang, a soft, short note that drew something from within him out.

Suleiman shifted, and suddenly it wasn’t merely a useful, powerful unknown that was sitting before him. What sat before him could hardly be described as human at all. He was glorious, magnificent, beautiful. Rasa desperately ran chakra through his system to shock the genjutsu away, but failed utterly. Not a genjutsu-? Suleiman straightened from his chair, folding his arms behind his back. He somehow grew in height, or perhaps he just became more imposing, something more than just human. Wisps of silver light danced around his eyes, scattering Rasa’s office in sharp relief, and his skin glowed a burnished gold, accenting every too-perfect feature on his face.

No matter how hard he tried, Rasa knew deep within himself that what he was witnessing was the truth – that his eyes had fooled him earlier into believing the lie Suleiman told to the world by merely existing on this plane. This- this was no man, Rasa realised with dawning horror. It was as if one of the Kami had descended from the heavens, radiating warmth and sincerity for all to know him. When Suleiman had spoken of souls, this must have been what he was referring to. The soul was one’s true form – a vision of themselves that hid no stain, harboured no lie, made no promises save that it was what it was.

The soul was the truth in a world made on the back of lies. Rasa thought he could puke.

“Do you understand?” Suleiman asked gently. And understand he did. He did not know what Suleiman was, only that he wasn’t human, only that his existence had a weight to it that, so far, only the One-Tailed Beast had inspired in him. And even that had been more of a physical thing, marred with fear and hate and rage. This was almost spiritual, as if a part of Rasa he had not known existed had been awakened suddenly, forcibly made to witness something not meant for man’s eyes.

It was Baki that replied in lieu of his speechless leader. “It is one thing to understand,” he said quietly, “And another to witness. What are you?”

“Even if I tried explaining it to you, it would all seem too fantastical to you. Let us simply agree that I am who I am, that I am what I am, and that I pose you no harm. This, I swear on the name of Eru Ilúvatar,” Rasa didn’t know what language that name was said in, nor who he was referring to, but the sheer sincerity of that promise settled all doubts, cleared all misgivings. “What you should be asking is, how can I help you?”

To his side, he could see his son – and it was his son, it had always been his son – was shaken too. Whatever effect that vision had had, it had been focused almost completely on Rasa, for Baki and Gaara seemed to be keeping up with what they were seeing almost as if it was second nature to them by now.

“How?” Rasa’s voice came out weaker than he had thought possible.

The spirit before them smiled.