Intermission 『3』 Council Matters

About ten minutes after his conversation with Gaara, Rasa found himself inside the village's meeting room. The members of the council, along with the honored siblings were all present.

"What now Rasa? I was in the middle of doing something! This better be important."

On the other side of the long table, Chiyo was frowning. Next to her, the academy's principal and her brother, Ebizō, tried to calm her down to no avail.

Rasa couldn't help but smile awkwardly. This grandma always made things more difficult than they should be for him. In his head, he was still thinking of the plan his son had introduced to him earlier.

'Although I would like to give credit to Gaara, his words won't have any weight over here. I have to present this myself.'

"Greetings, members of the council. And of course, honored siblings."

"Pardon me for abusing my power to call you all over on such short notice, but I have something very important to announce."

Having gathered everyone's attention, Rasa took a deep breath and started speaking.

"I have decided to end our cooperation with Orochimaru."

...

"What?!"

"Preposterous!"

"The situation is dire! We can't let go of such an opportunity!"

The council started making a fuss, but Rasa raised his hand and everyone quickly became quiet. Feeling the tension in the air, he continued his speech.

"I have thought it over, and in the end came to a decision. We shall provide the leaf with the location of our next meeting with Orochimaru and help them take him down."

"A man that betrayed his own village can easily betray a temporary ally. In order to not jeopardize our safety, I believe it would be wise to become allies with Konoha through this deal."

"Think about it, Orochimaru is their number one wanted man. If we provide them with a chance to kill him, they'll give a lot in exchange. This could even solve our economic crisis."

After Rasa was finished speaking, the room went silent. Everyone was making sense of his words, and they all came to the same conclusion. This was indeed a great idea.

"If we do this… Our value might even rise in the eyes of the fire and wind Daimyo, they might even start increasing the number of missions coming our way!"

"Becoming allies with the strongest village would be much more beneficial than starting a war with them!"

Hearing the council's reactions, Rasa smiled. It seemed that they had understood the underlying message.

...

"Wait! I believe that working with Orochimaru is still the best option! Even if we exchange him for something with Konoha, It's not guaranteed that we'll get land!"

Suddenly, a member of the council spoke up, and hearing this, the room went silent. Rasa's face turned grim, and he looked over to the member in question.

"Oh? What do we have here? Could it be that you're eager to work with Orochimaru?"

"What? Well, I just think that it would be beneficial to..."

Hearing Rasa's words, the council became quiet. Was he accusing one of them? This person had been a member for longer than they could remember.

"Kazekage-Dono, I don't think you'r-"

Rasa smiled, and raised his hand, causing everyone in the room apart from the honored siblings to sweat.

"Anbu! Apprehend this man!"

Like lightning, two Anbu appeared right beside the council member, who immediately panicked.

He abruptly rose from his seat, before retrieving some sort of seal from his sleeve. Seeing this, Rasa smiled in contempt.

"That proves it."

Before the council member could do anything, golden sand quickly covered his entire body, forming a cocoon with only his face visible. The sand started moving, and the small paper seal appeared out of it.

Rasa retrieved the paper and gave it a good look, it had a three Tomoe symbol in the middle, with a bunch of ominous characters written across it.

recognizing the chakra imbued in it, Rasa raised the seal for everyone to see.

"This chakra signature clearly belongs to Orochimaru. Does anyone object?"

Again, the room went silent. But it was soon interrupted by the screams of the spy, who was writhing in pain from the sand.

"I was set up! That's not true!"

"I will check!"

Interrupting the man, Chiyo rose from her seat and grabbed the paper. After looking at it for a while, she sighed.

"This is undoubtedly Orochimaru's chakra. Having met him a couple of times on the battlefield, I am sure of it."

Hearing her words, no one dared to question it anymore. The man was imprisoned, with all of his belongings and family searched.

Next to Chiyo, Ebizō was silently thinking to himself while stroking his long eyebrows.

'With this, the wheels start to turn. I foresee a bright future ahead of the village… A new era is near.'

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AN: Some of you might say: why was Rasa so quick to denounce? Well, he had thought of the possibility of having a traitor earlier, and this was the perfect opportunity to find him.

Although it was really quick, this was an intermission so I didn't want to bother everyone with intricate details or anything.

Also, you might think that Orochimaru would stop the deal because his spy was taken, but he doesn't know that. Rasa will have the spy send false information through brainwashing.

Thanks for reading.