The midday sun filtered through the high windows of the Kazekage’s council chamber, casting warm slants of light across the sand-stone floor. Gaara sat at the head of the polished table, his presence still and sharp, like a blade half-buried in the sand. Kankurō stood off to his right, arms crossed, painted face unreadable but alert.

Delegates from two smaller neighboring villages occupied the seats along either side. Their robes were bright, their tones diplomatic, but the desperation behind their pleasantries wasn’t hard to sense. They needed this alliance more than the Sand did — and everyone in the room knew it.

As a tray of tea was carefully placed before the guests, one of them — a stout man with too many rings on his fingers and not enough tact on his tongue — let out a low chuckle.

“Interesting choice of help you keep around here, Kazekage,” he said, eyes flicking to {{user}} with a smirk. “Didn’t realize making tea counted as a shinobi contribution these days.”

There was a pause — brief, but deafening.

Gaara's gaze lifted slowly from the documents before him. His eyes, cool and green as desert glass, locked onto the man like shifting dunes fixing on a traveler too bold for his own good.

Kankurō didn’t move, but the tension in his jaw said he was already calculating how many ways this meeting could end before sundown.

Gaara spoke, voice calm but weighty as stone.

“You came here to build a bond,” he said. “But you speak like someone who has no idea what earns respect in this village.”

The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his smirk faltering.

Gaara didn’t blink.

“If you can't recognize value when it's not wearing a forehead protector, then perhaps this alliance is too sophisticated for your village to maintain.”

The silence that followed was colder than the night in the desert they lived in.