Disclaimer: I don't own the Naruto series.
Clouds began to filter in the skies above Sunagakure, the Village Hidden in the Sand, and its ironclad leader, the Fourth Kazekage, watched them from his office window with a wary but hopeful gaze. It didn't rain often in Suna, and Rasa took the impending shower to mean that things would be looking up soon; that he made the right choice.
With the downpour of rain would come his vessel for Suna's one and only bijuu, Shukaku. The deadly tailed beast was due to be transferred to another human host, and to his disappointment, neither his daughter Temari nor his son Kankuro had been deemed viable candidates for being the next jinchuuriki. Rasa was relentlessly determined not to relegate the fate onto his final child.
When he found out Karura was expecting, his best dream and his worst nightmare had both been realized. She was hesitant about considering their son as the next jinchuuriki host, but in the end was willing to put forth the good of the village before that of her own and her son's. Their son's.
Rasa wouldn't have it. Not this time. He would find another way.
And he did. It was due to be delivered in the form of a small newborn fresh of the womb not more than three days prior. It would be raised as though it were a member of his own family, thus cementing its loyalty to the village and to him. After all, why waste a precious Suna life when other villages had so many to spare?
A speeding form dashing through the village gates pulled him out of his cogitations, and he smiled briefly, thinking of the good he had done for his family and his village. Finally, he thought, something that will bring Sunagakure out of the shifting sands and into the light again.
He ordered his secretary to send word of the incoming quarry to his trusted senior advisor and the only shinobi in the village who was adept enough at the sealing arts for this monstrous task, Chiyo-baasama. She would be the blacksmith crafting his village's newest and strongest weapon, and he knew she would not fail him.
He stalked out of his office, descending like a raging sandstorm toward the basement room of the tower where the sealing process would take place. He flung the door open, and found the former puppetress, along with a number of other ninja he assumed were her picks of the top sealing experts in the village, in the middle of painting ornate seals across the room.
Hunched over on the ground, she paused in her work briefly to turn her head in his direction. "You're late, Rasa," she croaked.
He sneered, and walked up to the examination table, where the newborn had been strapped down and where presumably all the seals around the room would meet at a close.
"Actually, it seems I'm right on time," he countered.
She scoffed, and continued her seal work. "It won't be much longer. We're almost finished here."
He nodded, and turned his attention to Suna's future jinchuuriki. His future weapon, he thought in his mind.
The child was small, sleeping soundly despite the chaos that would soon enter its life. The smallest tufts of dark chocolate brown dotted the crown of its head, a rich olive shade covered its soft baby skin, and black irises peeked out from its eyelids with the occasional flutter of blinks.
"It's a girl, in case you were wondering," Chiyo offered.
Rasa considered that statement. It made no difference to him either way, because his village had produced exemplary ninja regardless of their sex assigned at birth. Its finest examples were in the very room he stood in.
Of course, Kumo's success with Yugito Nii, their female jinchuuriki host of the two-tailed beast, was promising. He knew Suna would raise the child resting on the table before him to be just as strong, if not more cunning and merciless. He had no doubts about the success of his jinchuuriki, his weapon.
At long last, Chiyo and her subordinates reached the table holding the newborn, and she took over to complete the marks leading to the child's upper hip. With painstaking accuracy, she painted what he presumed to be the final sealing mechanism that would jail Shukaku to this child. She stood briefly, wiped her brow, and called an order to her subordinates.
They ran out of the room upon her call, and returned momentarily, carrying a large tea kettle.
The tea kettle of Bunpuku, Rasa recognized, the very first host of the One-Tail.
The subordinates heaved the tea kettle parallel to the table, placing the puppet mistress physically in the middle of the current clay container of Shukaku and its future human container.
Rasa became stern-faced, and turned to Chiyo, awaiting her approval to begin.
She nodded, and uttered to everyone in the room, "We will begin. Move out of the way of the procedure, or you will find yourself caught in a seal with no return to the mortal world."
Rasa stepped back from the operating table until his back made contact with the cool earthen walls of the room.
Chiyo opened the lid of the tea kettle, and placed her left hand into it. Rasa could tell by the twitching of her arm that it latched onto something within, which he presumed to be Shukaku itself. The entire arm glowed green as she channeled chakra into it.
He recalled Chiyo's description of the process. She would act as the conduit for the transfer from the tea kettle to the child, and since she would ensure that the bijuu would never be permanently in her body all at one time, she was spared the deadly effects of bijuu extraction. Rasa had given her one last chance at devising a different method for the sealing, should the operation go wrong, but she was adamant in her decision.
"Suna needs this, Rasa. And so do you."
She wasn't wrong.
Chiyo began to channel chakra into her right hand, the one on the small girl with chocolate hair, giving indication that the transfer was starting.
Almost instantly, the child's eyes burst open and she began to wail. The subordinates immediately restrained her, holding her down and coaxing her into submission. She continued to struggle, and Chiyo's face clenched.
"Hold that child down, or else we'll have more problems than a released bijuu!"
The threat hung in the air, and Rasa watched as one of her subordinates pushed some kind of fluid into the child's IV, artificially inducing some semblance of calm in her. But her black eyes were wide open now, and though her body was as still as stone, her eyes darted back and forth in fear.
Not just in fear, Rasa thought morosely, in pain.
Chiyo continued the transfer for quite some time, her frame evidencing more fatigue with each minute. Rasa grew worried, but Chiyo cackled at his apparently misplaced concern with as much immovable grace as she could.
"Boy, you worry unnecessarily. There's a reason I specialize in an art that requires the utmost chakra control," she rattled out in shallow breaths.
Rasa acknowledged her reassurance hesitantly, but he wasn't fully convinced until the chakra glow on her left arm diminished and she lifted it out of the tea kettle. She pushed one final burst of chakra into her right hand and twisted it clockwise, locking the seal and thus the fate of the child.
She takes a huge breath out, and Rasa literally sees the weight being lifted off her shoulders.
The subordinates fluttered away, taking care of what he assumed were diagnostic tests and other important medical exams. Chiyo cracks a vivacious smile at him, as though she hadn't just spent the past four hours sealing a monster into an infant, and he returns it. He walked over to the center of the room where his weapon was newly shaped, and reaches out to stroke the child's head.
"Is that sentiment I see forming on your face, Rasa?" Chiyo teased.
Rasa couldn't help whatever emotion his face was forming. He truly, utterly, entirely felt that Suna was on its way to its former glory. He had nobody to thank but his trusted senior advisor and the child lying before him, the latter of which was whimpering as though dealt a huge pain, but loosening as though relieved it was over.
"We will name her Sunari," he declared, "after the land she has been tasked to protect with her life."
Unbeknownst to the observers in the room, the soul of "Sunari", the child stolen from a faraway land, would already be dead before she even started.