A/N: You know Chiyo deserves a eulogy.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.


The morning came with a mild wind and a golden cast to the sky and sand. Her body was lowered into the ground with a slow reverence that belied the way she had behaved in life.

In her final years, Sunagakure had barely noticed Akasuna no Chiyo, so reclusive was she. Many had believed she was already dead, until the day she had come walking back into the village to look upon her last puppetry student, screaming and dying from a poison her grandson had wrought.

Looking at her, all the casual observer would have seen was a worn old husk of a woman, old and tiny and drained, nothing special at all. It was obvious she had lived a long life, and from the prosthetic hand it was clear she was a shinobi who had lived much longer than shinobi could expect to.

But what the casual observer didn't know was that Chiyo was a legend, the last remnant of an old age, who had died a hero's death.

Chiyo was the final survivor of an old era. Suna had once been full of living legends, people who cast such long shadows that they would be remembered long after Suna fell back to the dust from whence it came.

From the Shodai Kazekage to Sabure Kiyoshi, to Sabaku no Akiyoshi, the Sandaime to his nephew the Yondaime, there had been legends. From Kaisui Sayuki the prodigious water manipulator and survivor of Uzu no Kuni to Monzaemon Chikamatsu, the first great puppeteer, there had been legends. From Chiyo's students Karura and Yashamaru, to her student and grandson Sasori who had arguably been the greatest puppet master who ever lived, to Chiyo herself, consummate medic, deadly puppet mistress, and in her earlier years a faceless, heartless ANBU, there had been legends.

But as anyone who lived in Suna knew, nothing lasts forever, and even legends die.

Chiyo had been the last of an age. She had been the last of the old legends, fearsome and terrible, casting a shadow longer than her body, with a reputation that spread across all five great nations, seemingly unstoppable. People had spoken her name with both dread and awe, but she had deteriorated to a broken old woman, who had roused herself out of apathy just long enough to right an old mistake and take her own life with it.

She had been a legend though, and as a legend she would be remembered. The dawn rose over the dunes, and with it came the end of an age.

The era of old legends was over. The era of new legends was about to begin.