The disappearance of the Third Kazekage didn't just stay a rumor; it became a system-wide crash. Weeks passed without a single ping from the Kazekage's unit. The rumors initially suppressed by the village's "firewall" finally broke through and flooded the streets like a massive DDoS attack of panic and speculation.
"He was ambushed!" "No, he defected to Konoha!" "I heard he was annihilated by a forbidden jutsu that left 404 errors in the desert!"
The speculation was vivid, frantic, and destructive. Trust in the village leadership was flatlining. In the Mission Hall, the number of ninjas accepting tasks dropped to nearly zero. No one wanted to be the next "lost packet" in the desert.
Faced with a total collapse of morale, the High Command, led by Granny Chiyo and Ebizo did the only thing they could: they put the Hidden Sand into Safe Mode.
Emergency orders were pushed to every terminal in the village:
Full Troop Contraction: Every squad outside the walls was recalled immediately. It didn't matter if the mission was 90% complete; they had to return to base.
Mission Control: All high-risk and cross-border missions were suspended. Only domestic patrols led by Special Jonin were allowed, and they were forbidden from staying out past sundown.
Exit Ban: The village gates were locked. No ninja was allowed to leave the perimeter without a signed kernel-level authorization from the High Command. Violators were flagged as defectors.
This hit the "Sandstorm" squad hard. We'd just returned from a grueling border recon, covered in dust and low on chakra, only to find the "Access Denied" sign on the front door.
"What the hell?! We're grounded?" Lucado snapped, scratching his head as he stared at the red-stamped order on the bulletin board. "We're just going to sit here and rust?"
"Shut it, Lucado," Captain Iryō barked, though his own expression was grim. "The village is at its weakest. We're pulling back the reach to reinforce the core. You want to go out there and get deleted by whoever took down the Kazekage?"
Shiori just stood there, her fingers twitching. "The village... it's safer in here, right?"
I looked at the bulletin board, my mind running a simulation of the village's strategy. It was a classic "defensive crouch" protecting the vitals and waiting for the storm to pass. But I knew that by retracting our reach, we were cutting off our own intelligence feeds. We were becoming blind in a world that was already sharpening its knives.
The atmosphere in the streets was suffocating. Every third person was a patrol ninja, armed and ready for a fight that hadn't arrived yet. The villagers were hoarding supplies and locking their windows, trying to isolate themselves from a danger they couldn't even name.
When I got home, I found my dad had been recalled from the front lines too. He was tasked with managing the puppet-defense nodes near the Kazekage building. We barely spoke over dinner. The worry in his eyes was a high-resolution map of the village's fear.
"Stay inside, Sayo," Sharyu said, his voice thick with exhaustion. "It's... unstable out there."
I nodded, but my mind was elsewhere. I knew the truth. I knew the "bug" that had caused this crash was Sasori. I thought about him in his dark workshop, probably already dismantling the Kazekage's "hardware" to build the ultimate weapon. What was his next move? Would he come back to "reformat" the village that had failed his parents?
Knowing the threat was internal while being locked in a "defensive" box made my skin crawl. I couldn't just sit and wait for the system to fail.
I went back to my room and threw myself into the most frantic "overclocking" session of my life. I pushed the "Great Spider" MK 2 to its limits, refined my Magnet Release frequencies, and used the Body Tempering Furnace to pump my chakra reserves even higher.
The Hidden Sand was curling into a ball, waiting for a blow it couldn't see. But in the dim light of my workshop, I was building the tools to survive the crash. The storm was just beginning to gather speed, and I was determined to be the only thing still standing when the system finally went offline.