Watching Kazekage Rasa, who still refused to truly see his own son even now, Sasuke's clone slowly lowered his arm, wreathed in white magnetism.
"Listen. The worthless failure you see in him is now Sunagakure's Fifth Kazekage!"
Rasa was horrified. "Kazekage...? What are you saying? Gaara became Kazekage? How is that possible?! He can't even control Shukaku's power! How could the village elders let such an unstable wild card become Kazekage?!"
Sasuke said, "The Akatsuki tried to kill him. Gaara suppressed Shukaku's rampage through his own will and saved Sunagakure!"
Rasa found it absurd. "Gaara... could do something like that?!"
Sasuke said, "Not only that, after the Akatsuki took his Tailed Beast, Sunagakure's Granny Chiyo willingly sacrificed herself to revive Gaara with a forbidden technique!"
Rasa could hardly believe it. "That Granny Chiyo actually used that forbidden technique for Gaara?!"
Sasuke said, "Then... as Kazekage, he attended the Five Kage Summit held in the Land of Iron not long ago. Through his strength and sincerity, he even persuaded the Five Kage to change and establish the Shinobi Alliance!"
Looking at Rasa, whose shock could grow no greater, Sasuke spoke with ringing conviction.
—"'A young, outstanding Kage who has infused the blood of hope into this closed-minded, unyielding ninja world.' That wasn't my assessment. It was what the oldest Kage in the Shinobi World, Ōnoki of Both Scales, said of Gaara at the end of the Five Kage Summit!"
Under this succession of emotional blows, ten, a hundred times more powerful than the boy's Magnetic Storm, Rasa... this man blinded by utilitarianism, finally began to reflect.
Could it be... that I simply failed to recognize Gaara's worth?
Yes. As his father, I never truly looked at him. Worse, I repeatedly tried to erase him as a failure.
*And he never defied