Year 43. Suna was still coughing up dust from its loss in the last war. The village was broke, the mood was sour, and everyone was just trying to keep their heads down. I was sticking to my usual routine Academy in the morning, workshop or temple in the afternoon, and deep-dive research at night. I was making progress, but it was the kind of slow, incremental growth that doesn't make for good headlines.
Then, a report from the Land of Fire hit the village leadership like a cyber-attack on a power grid.
The news was short, but it was a total game-changer: Konoha had just promoted a kid named Kakashi Hatake to Chunin.
He was seven years old.
A seven-year-old Chunin. Let that sink in for a second. In my old life, seven-year-olds were still struggling with long division and trying not to lose their lunchboxes. In this world, Konoha had a kid who was officially qualified to lead a squad into a war zone.
At first, the news was kept behind closed doors, but the shockwave was impossible to contain. I heard the whispers in the Maintenance Squad. The Third Kazekage was apparently in a total tailspin. To the brass, this wasn't just a "cool story" it was a PR nightmare. It meant that while Suna was struggling to replenish its ranks with toddlers like me, our biggest rival was churning out literal monsters.
"Sakumo Hatake's kid..." I heard an artisan mutter, his voice shaking. "Seven years old. How the hell are we supposed to compete with that?"
The Third Kazekage knew he couldn't let Konoha own the "prodigy" spotlight. If Suna looked weak and talentless, the Daimyo would cut our budget even further, and our enemies would start smelling blood. He needed a counter-narrative. He needed a genius of his own to market to the world.
He sent for Granny Chiyo.
I wasn't in the room, obviously, but I could piece together the transcript from the fallout. The Kazekage didn't ask; he ordered. He needed Sasori, Chiyo's grandson to be the face of Suna's future. Chiyo wasn't thrilled about it; she knew Sasori's "genius" came with a side of emotional detachment that was borderline pathological. But in a village this desperate, personal feelings didn't stand a chance against political necessity.
And just like that, the "Sasori of the Red Sand" marketing campaign was live.
Official channels started "leaking" stories about Sasori's feats. At eleven, he was supposedly mastering puppet arts that took masters decades to learn. They called him a "once-in-a-century prodigy." They hyped his design philosophy, his precision, and his lethality. They took a kid who just wanted to be left alone in his workshop and turned him into a national monument.
It worked. The villagers, desperate for a win, ate it up. People started talking about Sasori like he was the second coming of the First Kazekage. It washed away the bitter taste of the last war and gave everyone something to brag about over tea.
I sat in my corner of the workshop, polishing a tiny joint for the Spider's MK 2 legs, and watched the hype-train roll by. I'd met Sasori. I'd seen his work. The propaganda might have been over the top, but the "hardware" was legit. The kid was a freak of nature when it came to engineering.
But to me, the whole "Genius vs. Genius" thing felt like a distraction. It was all about optics and morale moving pieces on a board I wasn't playing yet.
I thought about Kakashi. Seven years old and already a Chunin. That was my new benchmark. I didn't care about the fame or the titles, but I cared about the specs. If a seven-year-old could hit that level, then my "low-spec" body wasn't an excuse. It was just a problem that needed a more creative solution.
I lowered my head and went back to filing my part. Let Sasori be the face of the village. Let Kakashi be the terror of the battlefield. My path wasn't under the spotlights. It was here, in the grease and the dust, building the tools that would eventually make those "prodigies" look like they were running on outdated firmware.
The race was on. I just happened to be the only one who knew I was running it.