Time blurred into a hazy cycle of naps, feedings, and more naps. My consciousness drifted in and out, mostly swallowed by the sheer exhaustion of existing. I could feel how precarious this new life was my body felt like a glitchy piece of hardware that was one power surge away from a total fried motherboard. Every breath had a tiny, wet rasp to it, and my limbs were constantly freezing, even in the desert heat.
My dad, Sharyu, was a rock. Even though he was clearly drowning in grief his eyes were usually bloodshot and he moved like he was walking through waist-deep water he never missed a beat with me. He'd wrap my tiny legs in warm cloths and rub them for hours just to keep the circulation going. That kind of quiet, desperate dad-love hit me hard, bridging the gap between my thirty-year-old soul and this fragile new vessel.
Mostly, I just lay in my cradle, staring through the cracks in the curtains at the ochre-colored world outside. The wind was a constant character in this story, a low-frequency howl that never really stopped.
Today, I actually managed to stay awake for more than ten minutes. I was busy trying to get my uncooperative hand to grab a mobile Sharyu had rigged up over the crib. It wasn't some store-bought plastic thing; it was a collection of gears and joints ground down from scrap puppet parts. As an engineer, I appreciated the craftsmanship. The tolerances were surprisingly tight for something made of wood.
Suddenly, the vibe in the village shifted.
It wasn't a sound, exactly more like a change in the air pressure. A heavy, formless tension rolled in. Then came the bells. Sharp, rhythmic clanging echoed from the distance, followed by the frantic thumping of boots on the street outside. Even the wind couldn't drown out the feeling that the world was about to catch fire.
Sharyu was sitting at the table, scrubbing oil off a puppet's forearm side work he'd brought home to make a few extra bucks without leaving me alone. He froze. His head tilted toward the door, his eyebrows knitting together into a hard line.
A heavy knock rattled the frame.
"Sharyu! Squad Leader, you in there?" a voice shouted. It sounded like a kid, maybe ten or eleven, but he was breathing like he'd just run a marathon.
Sharyu was up in a second, pulling the door open. A kid with a metal headband and flushed cheeks stood there, looking like he was vibrating with anxiety.
"What is it, Ryoma?" Sharyu asked, his voice low and steady.
"Emergency mobilization!" Ryoma blurted out, the words tripping over each other. "The situation in the Land of Rain just went nuclear. Hanzo declared war on everybody Fire, Wind, Earth it's a total free-for-all! The Kazekage is putting everyone on high alert. Combat squads are already heading for the border!"
I felt my stomach drop, even if it was the size of a walnut. The Second Great Ninja War. I knew the history from the shows, but hearing a ten-year-old talk about "full-scale mobilization" made it feel way too real.
"Understood," Sharyu said, his voice sounding like he'd swallowed a handful of sand. "What about Maintenance?"
"Council orders: Logistics has to run at 200%. We need puppets, parts, and meds flowing to the front yesterday. You're gonna get your official orders within the hour!" Ryoma gave a quick, shaky salute and vanished back into the dust.
Sharyu stood in the doorway for a long time, staring out at the village. The sand was thick in the air, but the atmosphere was sharp with something else now. Killing intent.
War, I thought, letting out a tiny, pathetic-sounding sigh from the cradle. Back home, war was something I saw on a news crawl or a Twitter thread while I ate my lunch. Here, it was a physical weight. And in this body? I wasn't even cannon fodder. I was just a liability.
The following weeks were a blur of stress. Sharyu was barely home, and when he was, he smelled like industrial grease and old wood. He'd come back with his face gray from exhaustion, his frown etched so deep it looked permanent.
Sometimes, the wind would carry the sounds of the wounded being brought back muffled groans and the frantic shouting of medics. It cast a permanent shadow over the neighborhood.
I picked up bits and pieces from Sharyu's hushed conversations with Lady Chiyo when she dropped by. One name kept coming up, spoken with a kind of hushed terror: Konoha's White Fang.
Supposedly, this guy, Sakumo Hatake, was carving through Suna squads like they were made of paper. Every time his name was mentioned, the room got five degrees colder.
One night, Sharyu came home so late the sun was almost up. He looked like a ghost. He didn't even turn on the lamp; he just sat in the dark, staring at nothing. He almost forgot to feed me until I let out a weak whimper to remind him I existed.
Then, Lady Chiyo appeared in the doorway. She looked older than she had a week ago, her face a mask of cold stone.
"...The mission failed," she said. Her voice was flat, totally drained of emotion. "They ran into the White Fang."
Sharyu's head snapped up. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
"They stayed behind so the rest could get out," Chiyo said, closing her eyes. "They died as heroes of the Sand."
Even without the details, I knew what had happened. I'd seen this episode. To break the stalemate, the Third Kazekage had sent Suna's most talented puppet-master couple on a high-stakes hit against the Leaf. They'd met the White Fang at the border of the Land of Rivers.
And they never came home.
That meant the kid down the street a five-year-old named Sasori was now an orphan. The future "Sasori of the Red Sand" had just had his life ruined, and the seeds of the monster he'd become were being planted right now, just a few blocks away.
So this is it, I thought, staring at the ceiling of my room. The year I was born was the year everything went to hell.
I knew the timeline. In the Leaf Village, the "Golden Generation" was being born right now. Kakashi, Obito, Guy, Rin... even Mei over in the Mist and Zabuza. We were all part of the same year's "crop," born into the smoke and the blood of the Second War.
But while those guys were destined for greatness or tragedy, I was just a sick kid in a workshop, struggling to breathe in a village that didn't have enough water to go around. I was a speck of dust in a hurricane.
A wave of helplessness and the usual infant fatigue started to pull me back under.
Outside, the sandstorms of Suna continued to howl, but for the first time, I could swear the wind smelled like iron.
Konoha Calendar, Year 37: The Second Great Ninja War begins.