"I can't imagine the Daimyō of the Land of Wind must be very happy to have a rogue city-state in the middle of his territory!" Sakura shouted over the wind whistling in her ears. "Does the Hidden Sand always harass your people like this?"
"The land surrounding the Ryūmyaku has always belonged to Lōran's royal line," Sāra said haughtily, clinging to Sakura's back for dear life as she leapt from branch to branch through the dense forests of the Land of Rivers. "In the days when our nomadic people still wandered the desert, Sunagakure paid us little mind, but once we made our home atop the Ryūmyaku and raised our grand city using Lord Anrokuzan's marvellous technology, they began to harass us and waylay our trade caravans— or so Lord Anrokuzan tells me. They're envious of our prosperity, the peons."
Just as Sakura had been about to begin climbing the cliff that separated this slice of the Land of Wind from the Land of Rivers, they were ambushed by Sand-nin, whom Sakura had promptly knocked out without so much as breaking a sweat. She had found the timing slightly suspicious, but then again, it was normal for the Hidden Sand to guard its borders, especially in these troubled times, with the Fourth Great Shinobi War looming on the horizon. Again.
"Nomads, eh?" Sakura remarked.
In Sakura's opinion, there was a strong possibility that the people of Lōran were connected to Kahiko's nomadic caravan, who were the guardians of the Gelel Vein. Temujin was a descendant of the royal family that oversaw the Gelel stones, so could he be distantly related to Sāra and her mother Sēramu, who were the guardians of the Dragon Vein?
Temujin had returned overseas, and Sakura had lost the Gelel Stone imbued with his blood to Danzō; and with that, eternal youth now seemed out of reach. She knew where the Gelel mine was buried, but without the proper blood to draw out its powers, the Gelel Vein would remain inert and would not produce useable stones…
Yet, perhaps hope was not entirely lost. If the two royal families had interbred in the past, as royals are wont to do, there was a distinct possibility that possessing Lōran's royal bloodline might allow her to forge a new stone from the Gelel Vein and obtain longevity…
"You seem to hold this Anrokuzan fellow in pretty high esteem," Sakura said after a while, just to make conversation as they travelled. "He's the one who controlled all those puppets back there, right? He's pretty good, as far as puppet masters go. Is he a ninja?"
"First of all, rude! When speaking to royalty, you must use proper etiquette! You may call me Royal Princess, or Your Highness! As for Mother, she would be Your Majesty to you!" Sāra exclaimed in a huff. "And second of all, it's not Anrokuzan-no-yatsu, it's Anrokuzan-daijin! As in, mi-ni-ster! He's a good, peace-loving man who has served our royal family faithfully for six years! And he's not just some puppet master! He's a genius who revolutionised our way of life and helped us build our grand city! It's thanks to him that the Hidden Sand does not dare attack our prosperous city directly!"
Sakura frowned.
Mother and daughter seemed to have wildly differing opinions concerning Anrokuzan. The mother seemed to view him as a threat to her reign because of his soaring popularity amongst the people, but the daughter seemed to hold a great deal of respect for the man who had improved the populace's living standards.
When Sakura had first arrived in Lōran, all she had seen were dilapidated ruins, yet perhaps that was merely the effect of some barrier concealing the city's true grandeur, an illusion designed to avoid drawing undue attention from the Hidden Sand…
"Don't tell my daughter about my suspicions," Queen Sēramu had confided to her in secret, just before their departure. "Anrokuzan will surely target her if he believes he cannot mould her into a figurehead."
And just a few kilometres away, they had been ambushed by Sand-nin… the timing was convenient.
Perhaps there was some truth to Queen Sēramu's fears, but Sakura simply did not know enough to make an informed judgement yet. If her civilisation was rapidly advancing past the need for royals, perhaps Sēramu was merely afraid of being left behind by the times as a relic of the past. Or perhaps her minister did indeed secretly wish to overthrow her rule; it wouldn't have been the first time such a thing had happened.
Whatever the case, Sakura's task for now was to escort this bratty princess to Konoha… and discover where in the world her team had vanished. She had briefly entered Sage Mode earlier, yet she had found no trace of Captain Yamato, Karin, or Tenten for hundreds of kilometres around.
"Maybe they thought I was dead and went home?" Sakura muttered to herself. "Too dangerous to linger in enemy territory just to retrieve a corpse…"
After travelling for a few more hours, Sakura waltzed over the border separating the Land of Rivers from the Land of Fire, and she finally allowed herself to relax. It was flat, grassy plains from here to the forest surrounding the Hidden Leaf. If any more enemies wanted to fight, she'd beat them up as she went!
…
Meanwhile, in the shadow of an undisclosed sand dune near the Kingdom of Lōran…
"This is unacceptable," Anrokuzan growled. "How could four so-called elites from the Hidden Sand fail to kill a single little girl, whose hands were tied protecting the princess? Did you even try? I don't see so much as a scratch on any of you useless fools!"
The four Sand-nin bristled at the insult, but the menacing puppets standing at the fat man's side dissuaded them from taking any unwise decisions. They had seen those puppets in action, and they were quite deadly… not to mention impossibly numerous.
"The plan was for you to kill the princess's protector, so that I may charge in and chase you off!" Anrokuzan raged on. "Now, thanks to you bumbling fools, the Hidden Leaf is going to get involved in our affairs! Is that what you all want!?"
He sighed and shrugged, shaking his head helplessly.
"Last I heard, Sunagakure won a great victory against Iwagakure on the Land of Earth front, yet in doing so, you left your flank quite unprotected," he continued. "Now, far be it from me to dictate how Suna conducts its affairs, but if it were me, I would recall your so-called Hero of the Hidden Sand from the north and have her squad guard against any incursions from the east… if you take my meaning."
"…I'll pass on the message," the Sand-nin squad's leader said through gritted teeth. "But the Honoured Siblings and the other higher-ups fear her power and her popularity with the masses. They won't allow her to gain any more renown on the field of battle, so I cannot guarantee that they won't simply place her under house arrest or dispatch her on some meaningless mission…"
"This hero of yours has designs on the Fourth Kazekage title, does she not?" Anrokuzan said lightly. "One does not simply become Kazekage without funds to campaign on… whatever would she do without Lōran's generous support?"
In Sunagakure, every Kazekage, without exception, belonged to the same lineage. Another funny anecdote was that every Kazekage, again without exception, had met their end by assassination…
For an outsider lacking the First Kazekage's blood to overturn a tradition that had endured for just under eighty years, they would need to be exceptionally charismatic… and fantastically wealthy. And thanks to the riches Anrokuzan had extracted from the Kingdom of Lōran, the Hero of the Hidden Sand stood to be popular, prosperous, and very well connected indeed…