Chapter Text
The Beifong family were a noble family of merchants and directly related to two diamyo families. They made a tidy profit transporting goods between regions, investing in start up projects, and with the mines they operated.
Nobody knew the main family had a daughter, at least not until she disappeared. The anxious Beifongs took out contracts with Suna, Konaha, and every other mercenary organization who could be trusted to retrieve the girl unharmed. Rasa sent some of his best trackers on that assignment but they found nothing. He received, many, too damn many, angry missives from the diamyo during the months the child was missing.
Eventually Rasa’s spies located the girl in Kumo. His spies reported that she ran away of her own volition and was happily living under an assumed name. Thankfully, the girl was mature enough to return to her parents when it was explained to her that her absence could cause a war.
The girl’s parents continued to believe that she had been captured by Kumo nin and only trusted Rasa’s forces not to let her disappear again. This is how the Beifong girl came to spend quite a bit of time in Sunagakure; which is how she met Gaara.
Rasa didn’t learn about this until a long while after they formed their friendship. Although the Beifong parents were clueless, it was obvious to Rasa that Toph had skill in manipulating her chakra. Exactly what skills she possessed he never concerned himself with as she was not a member of his village. Also while there were S ranked nin with disabilities, conquering blindness required specialized training that he doubted anyone would teach her.
He also knew of Toph’s relationship with his two older children. He’d initially chalked Kankuro’s fear of Toph up to him being nervous around outspoken girls and Temari’s affection for Toph being maternal instincts she inherited from her mother. The truth of it was that Toph had beaten them both until they agreed to include her and Gaara in their games. He’d taught Temari and Kankuro a certain amount of fear and distain towards their little brother. But since Toph’s introduction they’d waned on those feelings, spending more time with Gaara and subtly protecting him. But again, those details escaped his notice. He was almost proud of the children for keeping a secret so long.
Gaara was strong but uncontrollable, he couldn’t reign in the tailed beast and therefore presented a liability. As the Kazukage, Rasa continued to quietly send assassins after him; at random intervals so Gaara couldn’t anticipate the attempts nor grow frustrated enough to just attempt to level the entire village.
Not that Shukaku didn’t occasionally rampage during a full moon. One such evening, a partially transformed Gaara tore through the town square. Kankuro and Temari cowered behind Rasa while the rest of the shinobi forces got civilians out of the way.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on?!” A kid pushed and ducked her way through the crowd. A genin should stop her. “Gaara! Where’s Gaara!?” Toph apparently proved too much for Rasa’s genin and joined Kankuro and Tamari at Rasa’s side.
“That thing is Gaara! He’s a monster!” Kankuro continued freaking out.
“What!?” Toph kept shouting. Thankfully Temari pulled her to the side and spoke quietly to her. Rasa looked around to find available jonin. Which resources should he apply to get Gaara under control? Or he could always step in himself.
“Why didn’t you say so?!” Toph stepped away from Temari. Toph bit her left pointer finger to draw blood, in what looked like a summoning. But she didn’t produce a scroll instead her right hand pulled up the hem of her shirt, revealing two black stripes down her back. She touched her bloody finger to one. Rasa signaled for his forces to hold back. A surprisingly large summons appeared, a grown man could easily ride on its back. Toph stood near her summon’s head and communicated briefly with a series of grunts.
Shukaku had paused at the sudden summoning and eyed the badger-like creature wearily. The spirit creature charged. It knocked Shukaku’s sand attack away with a flick of its claws and clamped its jaws on the back of Shukaku’s neck. Rasa prepared to intervene , before it broke Gaara’s neck but Shukaku roared in anger rather than pain. The massive badger lifted Shukaku by the scruff of his neck and shook him like a disobedient pup.
Shukaku’s true form would be far too large for the badger to do this. Rasa expected Gaara to transform further, instead this treatment seemed to settle Shukaku a bit, his roars changing to growls. Then Toph strode forward while completing a series of hand signs, and the three of them vanished in a puff of smoke. Reverse summoning. Well, that explained why Rasa’s scouts hadn’t been able to track her.
Roughly, thirteen hours later, Toph and Gaara reappeared. Gaara stood tall and proud for the first time ever when he reported that he and Shukaku had spoken and come to an agreement. Shukaku would stop tormenting Gaara in exchange for training with the Badgermoles. A never before heard of summons. Toph refused to provide any details regarding them other than that they ‘lived underground’.
The Beifong’s witnessed enough of that night to realize their daughter was not who they thought she was. After a massive argument among the three of them, Toph reverse summoned herself away. Of course Rasa had a person watching their argument. The Beifong’s packed their things and declared that if Toph ever came to her senses than she would be welcome home, until then she was Rasa’s problem.
Small badgers delivered news of Toph to Gaara and Temari but the girl herself didn’t return months. When she rejoined the human world it was with a new wardrobe, charkra markings and a declaration that she was now officially adopted by the matriarch of the badgermoles.
Spirit animals were from a different plane of existence. They were rare in the human world and when they did appear they didn’t share much information about themselves. Nobody really knew anything about them, even less about their relationship with the biiju. The spirit animals Rasa knew of refused to speak about the biiju or outright hated them. The Badgers treated Shukaku like a bratty child.
Rasa prided himself on being a practical man and quickly accepted this change of arrangement. Gaara’s dependence on Toph’s approval presented a new way to control him. As long as he had Toph to impress he could be led into doing just about anything.
Toph fancied herself strong enough to do whatever she wanted. Rasa put her on a team with Temari and Gaara and ordered his elite jonin to ‘train’ them. That beating cured her of her pride, if not her willfulness. Alone she might have abandoned Sunakuge (or the human world entirely) but cared too much about Gaara to leave him. With the children taken care of all that remained was to tell the rest of the elite nin.
“Put her in a team with Gaara?”
“Sir, you yourself said Gaara was too unpredictable.” Of course, they were initially displeased.
“As long as they’re kept together they will be an asset. She calms him. And he covers for her blindness. One of my other children will be their third member. Whoever’s left will lead their own team.”
“There aren’t enough advanced students for a second team.” The Jonin in charge of the school said.
“Then train more.”
“With Gaara how many could we possibly need?” The Jonin frowned at the prospect of extra work.
“The Fire Nation has over a dozen coming of age and one of those is Kyube’s host.” The Kazukage gave an indirect answer in a tone of voice that didn’t allow argument.
“Yes sir.”
“I’ll review the remaining students immediately,” the Jonin in charge of the school gave in.
“Train that older kunoichi with wind release, Matsuri.” Although he focused mainly on his own children, he did know almost every member of his village. “Choose whoever you want as a third,” he waved his advisors away.
Toph quickly became an asset to the village, despite her bad habits of insubordination, loudly defending Gaara at the slightest provocation, animalistic behavior, and reverse summoning herself (sometimes with Gaara and Temari) to disappear for days at a time. Punishing Gaara and Temari for her disobedience kept her in line.
…
“Happy Birthday, Scardy Cat!” Toph held an ornate scroll in front of Kankuro.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Stop being scared of bugs. Hold the other end.” Kankuro did as she instructed and the scroll unlocked. “There now, only you and I can look at it.” Toph let go and he unrolled it.
“Storage?” He activated a portion of it and an ancient tome popped into existence.
“It’s also a gift from Mom. I told her you were looking for seals to make puppets so she called in a favor with the Toad spirits. Apparently the Toad spirits are sealing masters. So they are letting us borrow some books on sealing and stuff for six months. Don’t damage any of it or they will be pissed. Oh, and one of those scrolls is on jinchuriki seals so we can improve Gaara and Shukaku’s connection.”
“What favor was worth this in exchange?” Rasa asked.
Toph frowned, as if she might not answer but wisely decided not to push her luck. “Mom said she sealed off some old snake tunnels. The snake king and toad king had a falling out a while ago and the toads hired Mom to make sure the snakes couldn’t dig into their mountain.”
Nothing Rasa didn’t already know, then.
…
“That’s a dumb mission. Give it to someone else.” Toph objected loudly in the middle of a meeting.
“Control your student, Baki.”
“Ugh, you’re just like the Daimyo, sitting behind a desk and letting everyone else do the work. Can you do anything yourself?”
Normally, disciplining a student would be far below the Kage. But Toph compared him to civilian, claiming he didn’t earn his position, in front of everyone. If she were older or higher rank such an insult could be considered treason. Was she really so stupid or did she have plan? Temarri continued to whisper to Toph to take back her words and apologize. Kankuro and his team were genuinely frozen in terror. Gaara’s kept glancing between Toph and Rasa in a way that gave away his concern. If this was a plot, the others weren’t in on it. Shukaku might be, but that didn’t concern Rasa.
Baki waited for instruction, he’d be willing to handle Toph again, but…Why not? Rasa wasn’t going to live forever. Now that Gaara was stable and improving his standing in the village, he could take over Rasa’s place as Kazukage. He’d failed his children more than enough. To make them stronger, he could be the villain for them to defeat.
Faster than most eyes could follow, a gold spear struck Toph in the shoulder.
The stone clone smirked triumphantly even as it grumbled. In quick succession clones materialized from the floor and walls, impressive considering they were on the second story. He dispatched these easily even as they came at him from different angles. The majority of his gold he send downwards, searching for her. Her strongest advantage was also her biggest weakness. She didn’t need to be within vision but she needed to be connected to the ground. She’d be underground lurking at the edge of her range. That was why he’d had Baki train her in clones, against an unwitting opponent her stealth was excellent. Against someone who knew her abilities, he just needed to scatter his dust and find where she was hiding.
Someone on the council shouted with surprise as the building started warping. Ah, that was new. The walls stretched so the window’s closed spikes came at Rasa from the floor and ceiling. These were too large to block with the gold he had remaining so he dodged. He spared a glance to the council who had retreated to the far side of the room. Elder Chiyo looked amused, Elder Ebizō annoyed, Baki and Isago were unsurprisingly busy restraining Gaara.
Toph must be touching the building to have this level of control. He hadn’t found her underground yet so he recalled most of his gold. Rasa signaled to his subordinates to cast an illusion on the outside of the building. The whole village didn’t need to see this. He then broke through the wall to the outside and carried himself on his gold dust. He flew to the roof and found Toph there.
“Took you long enough,” Toph continued to goad him as if he should have looked for her on the roof immediately. She had both palms pressed to the stone and metal building, using that hand sign-less jutsu the summons taught her. It was one step away from sage mode, as far as he could tell. For her to initiate this fight, did that mean she’d unlocked sage mode? But no, she created a blinding flash of light as diversion before coming at him with weapons and an innovative mix of air jutsu.
She tracked him surprisingly well in the air, better than she could have years ago. Still, she wasn’t kage level and he couldn’t tolerate this disobedience. He put her down hard with a series of blows to fast for her to block all of them. He then set the building right with a quick doton and told Baki his team was on D ranks for the foreseeable future.
End of Rasa’s POV
When they were a hundred percent sure nobody could over hear them. Temari fixed a bandage around Toph’s injured arm.
“What were you thinking?” She lectured her for her stunt.
“I’m thinking that the bastard never fights. Now I know what his chakra feels like.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.” Temari sighed.
“Nah, I’m still a genin and he knows he can’t afford to loose all of us. We’re going to be the next elite in this village.”
“Warn us next time.” Gaara grumbled. Shukaku had been in on the plot and prevented Gaara from jumping in.
“Of course. Next time we assassinate him for real.”