Minato Namikaze used the Flying Thunder God Technique to appear swiftly beside Nara Shikata.
Nara Shikata was helping two old friends hold Rasa in check. A flash of golden light appeared beside him, giving him a start.
Once he saw who it was, his tense back finally relaxed a little, and surprise appeared on his face.
"Minato? What are you doing here?"
"Lord Hokage has come to support us." Minato Namikaze came to a stop and caught his breath. "He's fighting the Third Kazekage and told me to come help you first."
"Lord Hokage is here?" Nara Shikata was stunned, but quickly suppressed his surprise. "That's good. Let's deal with Rasa together first. This kid's no pushover, and his Gold Dust is incredibly troublesome."
Rasa floated in midair, scowling as he saw another "blondie" appear.
Facing Konoha's famous Ino-Shika-Cho trio alone was already giving him enough trouble.
And now another blondie had shown up?
Irritated, Rasa decided to deal with this "unknown nobody" first.
He raised a hand, and some of the Gold Dust at his side broke away, forming a golden stream that rushed straight at Minato Namikaze.
Minato Namikaze answered Nara Shikata, then caught sight of the oncoming Gold Dust out of the corner of his eye. In a flash of golden light, he appeared several yards away.
"Oh?" Rasa stared at the golden light for a couple of seconds.
What kind of ability was that? He was too fast.
Rasa had no time to think about it, because he saw that "blondie" had already joined forces with Ino-Shika-Cho, and they were closing in around him.
Minato Namikaze was having a headache of his own.
When he had fought the Third Kazekage earlier, his opponent had stayed in the air the entire time, leaving him unable to make proper use of the Flying Thunder God Technique.
He hadn't expected this guy to be just like the Third Kazekage, "floating in midair" the whole time without landing.
When Hatake Sakumo came striding over from the other end of the battlefield with the badly injured Third Kazekage in his grasp, he took one look from afar and slowed his pace.
Good grief, four against one, and they still couldn't take down Rasa?
Hatake Sakumo curled his lip. Was Gaara's dad that strong?
He took another few looks and finally saw what was going on. Rasa wasn't strong; he was using his advantage in flight to keep them at bay.
The ones actually "taking him on" head-on were Minato Namikaze and the Akimichi Clan head. As for Nara Shikata and the Yamanaka Clan head, they were just "freeloaders," only able to provide support from the sidelines.
Hatake Sakumo surveyed the fight with his experienced eye and understood the situation.
If it continued, Minato and the other three would be the ones to win in the end.
Controlling that Gold Dust consumed too much of Rasa's Chakra. He was already visibly drenched in sweat and panting for breath.
Hatake Sakumo cleared his throat and suddenly shouted, "All of you, stop!"
His shout exploded across the battlefield like a thunderclap out of a clear sky.
Rasa, Minato Namikaze, Nara Shikata, the Akimichi Clan head and the Yamanaka Clan head all looked toward the source of the shout.
Then all five froze on the spot.
Minato Namikaze was the first to recover, forgetting even to put away the Kunai clutched in his hand. "Lord Hokage... the person you're holding..."
Nara Shikata sucked in a sharp breath and pointed at the man in Hatake Sakumo's grasp. "The Third Kazekage?"
Rasa's body swayed in midair.
His master, the Third Kazekage, had actually been captured?
Hatake Sakumo set the Third Kazekage down on the ground, then raised his head and looked at Rasa floating in the air.
"Rasa." He paused before speaking. "You wouldn't want your master to lose his life, would you?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Hatake Sakumo himself froze.
Wait, why did that sound so familiar?
He belatedly realized he seemed to have seen this sort of scene quite a few times before transmigrating...
Rasa's expression darkened completely.
He stared intently at Hatake Sakumo, his Adam's apple bobbing, but said nothing for a long while.
His master had fallen into their hands and was still bleeding. Facing Ino-Shika-Cho and the blond young man together was already hard enough for him alone, and now the Konoha White Fang had arrived too?
Even his master was no match for him...
No matter how unwilling Rasa was to accept it, he knew continuing to fight would only make things worse for him.
"Konoha White Fang," Rasa forced out through gritted teeth. "What do you want?"
Hatake Sakumo lifted his chin, his smile looking especially punchable to Rasa.
"Simple." He held up two fingers. "Use money and supplies to buy your master's life."
Rasa's fists creaked as he clenched them, but he couldn't get a word out.
Hatake Sakumo was in no hurry and added:
"I'm actually not very interested in your Land of Wind or Sunagakure. That lousy place of yours is too poor and too far from the Land of Fire. Taking it would just leave us with a hot potato." He paused briefly.
"Will you stop now and negotiate obediently, or wait until we defeat and capture you too, then send someone to the Land of Wind to negotiate?"
Hatake Sakumo watched Rasa's expression change again and again, but felt a little uncertain.
If this kid refused to back down and insisted on fighting to the end, I'd have no choice but to capture him too.
But what if, after both of them were captured, the new Kazekage in the Land of Wind wasn't willing to pay their ransom? Then all that effort would be wasted, and I'd get nothing.
Another scene he had seen somewhere before transmigrating came to mind. Supposedly, after Rasa became Kazekage, he used his Kekkei Genkai to extract gold specifically to raise money for Sunagakure.
If nothing else worked, I could capture Rasa and keep him in Konoha as an "ATM."
While Hatake Sakumo was mulling over these thoughts, Rasa finally spoke from midair.
"What will it take for you to release my master?"
Hatake Sakumo exchanged looks with Nara Shikata and Minato Namikaze. It had worked.
At the direction of the "higher-ups" on both sides, the ninjas who had been fighting stopped and retreated to watch.
The higher-ups on both sides formally entered negotiations.
Though they called it a negotiation, there were really only six people...
The captured Third Kazekage and Rasa, plus Hatake Sakumo, Nara Shikata, the Akimichi Clan head and the Yamanaka Clan head.
Even Minato Namikaze was not qualified to take part in the negotiations.
Hatake Sakumo gave Nara Shikata a look.
"Shikata, you do it."
And so the six began negotiations at a rock serving as a makeshift "negotiating table."
As the defeated side, the Third Kazekage and Rasa were constrained at every turn. They lacked confidence even in the negotiations, and Nara Shikata firmly put them on the back foot with just a few words.
First, they discussed the Third Kazekage's price.
Nara Shikata named a figure. Rasa tried to bargain, and after some back-and-forth, Nara Shikata shut him down with a single remark:
"The Third Kazekage is the strongest Kazekage in Sunagakure's history. You're getting a bargain bringing him back for this amount."
Next came the price of the Land of Wind ninjas still alive on the battlefield.
Without these negotiations, if the fighting continued, the Third Kazekage had already been captured and the Fourth Hokage had come to provide support, so the final victory would surely belong to Konoha.
When that happened, those Land of Wind ninjas would either die in battle or be captured. Either way, they would all end up in Konoha's hands.
So they had to pay this "money for their lives" too! Rasa and the Third Kazekage's expressions darkened, but they had no rebuttal.
The last thing they discussed was compensation.
"The Land of Wind started a war against the Land of Fire for no reason," Nara Shikata said, pointing out the cause of the war. "How many ninjas and how many supplies have we lost? We should settle that account, shouldn't we?"
Nara Shikata led the negotiations from beginning to end.
Rasa was outwardly compliant, but he remembered this debt.
Whatever we paid out today, I'd make Konoha pay back double another day.