Just as I was starting to optimize my performance with the "Sandstorm" squad, the Hidden Sand hit a fatal error. It wasn't a slow burn or a gradual decline; it was an earth-shattering upheaval that threatened to wipe the village's entire operating system.
The incident started with what looked like a routine high-level inspection.
With the border situation redlining, the Third Kazekage, the man they called the strongest in history, the master of the Magnet Release decided to personally lead an elite Anbu guard unit to the Northwest Border. It was supposed to be a morale booster, a way to show the world that Suna's "main processor" was still the most powerful unit in the game.
I saw him the day he left. He was a towering figure of high-output chakra, radiating a level of power that made the air itself feel heavy. The villagers cheered. They thought as long as he was on the board, Suna couldn't lose.
Then, the messages stopped.
For the first few days, the routine pings came back: All clear.Status normal. But then, the scheduled return window passed. The pings went silent. No emergency distress signals. No combat logs. No death reports.
The Third Kazekage and his entire elite guard hadn't just been defeated. They had been deleted. They vanished into the sand as if they'd never existed in the first place.
Panic spread through the village like a virus. By the time the Sandstorm squad returned for resupply, Suna didn't look like a military powerhouse anymore. It looked like a headless system. The staff at the Mission Center were whispering in the halls; the villagers were rushing through the streets with faces full of 404-error anxiety.
Captain Iryō was summoned to a high-level briefing. When he came back, his face was the color of ash.
"Captain? What's the status?" Shiori asked, her own "battery" already drained from the atmosphere.
Iryō stayed silent for a long time, his voice coming out like a low-bandwidth rasp. "Mission priority has shifted. The border patrol is offline. New task: expand search radius. We're looking for... the Kazekage."
"The Kazekage?" Lucado snapped, his clan-kid pride momentarily short-circuiting. "What happened to the Kazekage?"
"He's missing," Iryō said, the words clearly costing him a massive amount of internal energy. "Total loss of contact at the Northwest Border. It's been ten days."
Shiori covered her mouth, her face turning ghost-white. Lucado just stared, his mind unable to process a world where the Third Kazekage wasn't there to hold it together.
My heart sank, but not for the reasons theirs did. I'd been prepared for this, but hearing it confirmed still felt like a physical shock to my system. I immediately thought of Sasori. I thought of the "Scorpion's Shadow," the hollow fury in his eyes, and that lethal word: Unforgivable.
A cold, hard truth surfaced in my mind: Sasori did it. Only a genius who knew the village's internal logic, who inherited the ultimate puppet secrets, and who harbored a corrupted core of hatred could have pulled this off.
But I couldn't say a word. I had no evidence, and revealing that data now would just trigger a total system crash or get me silenced by Sasori himself.
The following days were a nightmare. The defense level was raised to wartime status. The streets were filled with patrolling ninjas, but their eyes were full of fear. Every search team came back empty-handed. No bodies. No clues.
This kind of "bizarre disappearance" was worse than a military defeat. It implied an enemy with unimaginable "hacking" capabilities. It suggested that our strongest weapon had been neutralized by something we couldn't even see.
I stood on the street, looking up at the Kazekage Rock. The seat was empty. The pillar of the Hidden Sand was gone, and the roof was starting to cave in.
I knew this wasn't the end of the crisis. It was just the beginning of a much darker era. The Third Great Ninja War was still raging outside, but we were already dying from an internal system failure.
The "Sandstorm" squad was being sent into the eye of the hurricane, looking for a ghost. And as an engineer, I knew one thing for certain: when the core processor goes missing, the rest of the hardware usually isn't far behind.