Time blurred into a haze of biological necessity—the endless cycle of a body struggling to sustain its own spark.
Sayo's consciousness drifted in and out of the waking world, his days largely swallowed by the crushing lethargy of his condition. His premature body was a malfunctioning machine, a tattered skiff held together by sheer willpower in the middle of a desert gale. Every breath was a coarse, audible rasp; his circulation was so poor that his limbs often turned a terrifying shade of blue-gray. His father, Sharyu, spent hours by the cradle, meticulously rubbing warmth back into Sayo's tiny hands with coarse, heated cloths.
From his vantage point—a crude wooden cradle—Sayo watched the world through a thin slit in the window curtains. He saw an ochre sky and felt the rhythmic, abrasive howl of the sandstorms against the stone walls. Sharyu was a man drowning in a secondary wave of grief, his movements slowed by the weight of widowhood, yet he never missed a feeding. This silent, desperate paternal devotion bridged the gap between Sayo's thirty-year-old soul and his infant shell.
One afternoon, Sayo felt a rare surge of lucidity. He reached out, his uncoordinated fingers twitching as he tried to grasp a mobile hanging above him—a collection of polished scrap puppet joints and gears that Sharyu had fashioned into a toy.
Suddenly, the atmospheric pressure of the village shifted.
It wasn't a weather event, but a surge of human intent. Distant bells began a frantic, rhythmic tolling. The sound of running feet, heavier and more disciplined than civilians, echoed through the narrow alleys. Even the wind could not mask the sudden, sharp scent of tension.
Sharyu sat at the nearby workbench, cleaning a ball-jointed puppet arm—piecework he took home from the Logistics Yard to supplement their meager rations. His hands froze. He tilted his head, his brow furrowing into hard lines of concern.
A heavy, rapid pounding hit their door.
"Squad Leader Sharyu! Are you in?" a voice cracked with adrenaline.
Sharyu wrenched the door open. A genin no older than ten stood there, his Sunagakure forehead protector slightly askew, his face flushed from exertion.
"Report, Ryoma," Sharyu commanded, his voice regaining its military edge.
"Emergency mobilization!" the boy blurted out. "The stalemate in the Land of Rain has broken. Hanzo of the Salamander has declared war on the Leaf, the Sand, and the Stone simultaneously! The Second Shinobi World War is in full escalation! The Kazekage has ordered all combat units to top alert. The vanguard is already marching for the border!"
Sharyu's face paled. Although he was now a logistics officer, he knew the geography of war. Skirmishes were one thing; a declaration from Hanzo meant the flames would become an inferno.
"Understood," Sharyu said, his voice dry. "And the Maintenance Squad?"
"Direct orders from the Council: every logistics section is to run at two-hundred percent capacity. We need puppets, scrolls, and medicinal supplies moving to the front yesterday!" The boy saluted sharply. "I have five more houses to hit. Move out!"
Ryoma vanished into the dust. Sharyu stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring out at a village that had suddenly sharpened its teeth.
Sayo lay motionless, absorbing the gravity of the exchange. War. In his previous life, it was a tragedy seen through a screen. Here, it was a physical weight. His fragile body wouldn't even serve as a barricade in such a conflict.
The weeks that followed were defined by a grim, industrial urgency. Sharyu's hours at the Yard grew longer; he returned home reeking of machine oil and iron, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. The smell of the village changed—the dry scent of sand was now frequently interrupted by the copper tang of blood as the first waves of wounded were ferried back in medical wagons.
Fragments of intelligence reached Sayo's ears during Sharyu's hushed late-night conversations with Elder Chiyo. One name began to appear with terrifying frequency: Konoha's White Fang.
One night, Sharyu stumbled home late, his face ashen. He sat in the dark, staring at his hands, forgetting even to check Sayo's temperature. A moment later, Chiyo appeared in the doorway. She looked older, her stoic facade cracked by a deep, hollow exhaustion.
"The mission failed," she said, her voice a flat, dead rasp. "They encountered Sakumo Hatake."
Sharyu's head snapped up, his lips trembling.
"To ensure the withdrawal of the remaining units... they stayed behind." Chiyo closed her eyes. "They died as heroes of the Sand."
Sayo felt the chill in the room. He realized then that the "heroes" were people Sharyu had worked with, perhaps friends. The reality of the Third Kazekage's desperate gamble was unfolding: he had sent the village's most elite puppeteer couple on a high-stakes assassination strike to break the Leaf's momentum.
They had met the White Fang at the border of the Land of Rivers. They had not returned.
Through the village gossip that Sharyu later shared in broken whispers, Sayo confirmed the history he only vaguely recalled from the "future." The fallen couple had left behind a five-year-old son—Sasori. The boy who would one day become "Sasori of the Red Sand" had just had his heart hollowed out.
So, Sasori's parents are dead... and I am an infant in the same year, Sayo mused, staring at the ceiling.
He realized with a start that this year—Year 37 of the Konoha Calendar—was a nexus of fate. In the Land of Fire, names like Kakashi Hatake, Might Guy, and Obito Uchiha were taking their first breaths. In the Mist, Mei Terumī and Zabuza Momochi were being born into the "Bloody Mist" traditions.
They were the children of war, born into a world of gunpowder and blood. By comparison, Sayo was a glitch in the system—a premature engineer with a broken body, cast into the harshest environment on Earth.
He felt the crushing weight of his own insignificance. He was a mote of dust in a desert storm, with no guarantee of where the wind would discard him.
As his infant strength failed him, pulling him back into a protective sleep, the howl of the sandstorm outside sounded less like wind and more like the screaming of a world being torn apart.