"Uchiha Shingen of the Leaf Village Security Force. I've long heard of your name, Scorch Release user Pakura."
Hearing that name and seeing Uchiha Shingen's Sharingan, Pakura was startled.
"No, I should be the one saying that..." As someone who could basically be considered half of Sand Village's upper echelon, she understood very well what sort of person stood before her. Her tone shifted slightly. "Thank you for your help, Uchiha Shingen."
"Don't rush to thank me." Uchiha Shingen waved a hand, ignoring how she immediately became wary upon hearing that. He asked the question that had been nagging at him for quite a while. "I'm just curious, but... how did you get caught like that?"
He genuinely couldn't make sense of it.
Wasn't she one of Sand Village's strongest? That was it? She'd been taken down that easily?
It wasn't as though a powerful fighter had to go through some earth-shattering ordeal to be defeated, but wasn't this a little too simple?
Pakura, meanwhile, froze.
Her first instinct had been that Uchiha Shingen had saved her for some ulterior motive after all.
Yet this was what he wanted to ask?
"I came as the village's representative to forge a friendship treaty with the Hidden Mist Village," she said.
She only revealed this because Uchiha Shingen had saved her, and because she herself had already begun to suspect something. After all, this was extremely important intelligence.
During the Third Shinobi World War, Sand Village had allied with Leaf Village so it could focus its strength on Stone Village's invasion. But alliances were only worth so much.
The Third Raikage had died in a sneak attack by Stone Village, yet if necessary, Cloud Village could still ally with Stone Village.
Even the life of a village's Kage was ultimately just that.