Chapter 600: The Consequences of Ambition
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"With the information available to us, the situation looks grim. Our best opportunity to act is now. Before we take drastic action, I need your advice. What more reasons do we have to not destroy Isan before Elemental Mastery spreads and causes the end of the world?"
o-o-o
Earlier…
"Thank you all for coming here," Hazō said, cutting through the sitting room's quiet chatter. "I'm honored that everyone would give up their afternoons to celebrate my good fortune with me. Before we begin, a moment of silence for those who fell in the line of duty too soon."
Hazō hung his head for a moment. Akane should have been the one enjoying a new promotion. She should have been the one with a party thrown to celebrate her. Instead, all they could do was remember who she had been while the rest of the world moved on.
After a moment, Chōji elbowed Hazō's arm. "Anything else you want to say to everyone?"
Hazō shook his head. "No. Let's focus on the reason why anyone ever comes here, the Gōketsu board game collection!"
He gestured dramatically to the pile of games laid out on the large table behind him. He had chosen all Akane's favorites, but he wasn't going to point that out so blatantly. Those who knew would also know what they meant to him.
Snowflake quickly snatched the set of Strategic Dominance with a glare at Ino and Shikamaru over their unfinished grudge from the last game night, and the rest of the party broke towards the tables to find something to play.
o-o-o
Elsewhere…
Takahashi Sahō smiled to herself for a fraction of a second, before smoothing her face into a pleasant neutrality. For the third day in a row, Gasai was out in the front yard of his house, practicing his morning stretches and his basic taijutsu kata. This was slightly improper, as front-facing taijutsu practice was meant primarily for youth who had not yet achieved the first rank of mastery, but none could doubt Gasai's skill. No, the part that interested Sahō was that Inoue had told Gasai that Sahō took morning walks just after dawn on this route exactly three days ago. Three mornings had passed, and of all the times she had taken this walk, it was these three days alone that she'd seen him training.
Sahō lowered her eyes respectfully as she passed his house. He stopped his training to give her a slight bow.
"It is auspicious for the morning sun to cast its rays upon the land like so, is it not?" she asked.
"Your wisdom is evident," he said, raising his eye level slightly, to be staring at her feet rather than his own. "Perhaps the day will be pleasant and bring us fortune."
She raised her eyes too, little by little, taking in the way that he also slowly drew his gaze upwards without pausing anywhere immodestly.
Their gazes met for two and a half-seconds. Something supernatural passed between them, and Sahō felt tingles go all over her body. It took all her self control to break her gaze away from his rich, brown eyes.
"Perhaps it will be," she said, struggling to keep her voice from faltering even as she flushed. "May our morning at least be pleasant."
"Indeed," he said, bowing again. Unnecessary, but perhaps he needed something physical to break his side of their eye contact. "May our paths cross again, Takahashi."
"If Ui wills it so," Sahō said.
Ui's blood, Inoue had been right! Maybe if she followed her friend's advice, Sahō could have Gasai propose within the month!
So much planning remained to be done. Before she could let the devious plots in her mind run free, though, there was a morning walk that needed finishing. She continued with a slight spring in her step. Slightly improper, but what did it matter?
o-o-o
"As I see it, our suppression measures have failed," Shikamaru said in monotone. "We secured an exclusive ninjutsu trade agreement with Isan, and we have no evidence of intentional defection on Takahashi's part. Naturally, they attempted to trade Elemental Mastery to us, the scroll of which was lost in transit.
"There were two primary failings. First, inadequate consideration of Isan's multiplicity. Isan as a cultural institution is unlikely to defect from its trade deals, and the individual clans in Isan feel similarly bound by such agreements. However, Isan is still composed of hundreds of individual actors who have motivations of their own. One Isanese ninja at the Chūnin Exams elected to trade the Elemental Mastery technique to a ninja from the Land of Wind, presumably upon being successfully manipulated with stories of the heat of the desert sun and the parallel cold of winter.
"The Wind Country ninja has been assassinated, but the risk profile is evident. Isan, while insular, has exploitable cultural weaknesses that will be found in time, especially in Isan's underclass which will form the most connections with outsiders. Additionally, as time and foreign culture progress, Isan will likely shed even more ninja as missing-nin. Controlling all of their behavior is impossible, and if one of them leaks the technique, it will likely be too late.
"Second, all evidence indicates that we have failed to displace Elemental Mastery with Lord Seventh's Heat Control technique. Whether due to cultural inertia, xenophobia, or more practical factors, it does not appear like Isan will take any steps to remove Elemental Mastery from their ninjutsu canon. The technique will continue to propagate."
o-o-o
"Look, I get that you've been busy, but you can still find something better than this!" Ino said, gesturing around to the red granite floors, walls, and ceilings of the Gōketsu's hastily-constructed main building. "Especially now that you're in Leaf, it should be way easier to source materials."
"Sourcing materials isn't the issue, Ino, it's figuring out the final design. This is going to be our home forever – hopefully – and I want to make that decision carefully. Gaku's been bugging me to make it, but I just haven't had time to figure it out."
"Fine, then just put anything up that's not this. Shika!" Ino said to Shikamaru as he entered the room. Shikamaru flinched at Ino's sudden enthusiasm, paused for several seconds as he calculated escape options, then reluctantly turned to face her.
"Ino."
"Tell Hazō that his house is ugly and that he should build a new one."
"Hazō, I must compliment the utilitarian ethos that fuels your constructions. Extravagant construction schemes, while beautiful, distance the architect's mad creation from the original purpose of a house – namely, to provide shelter from the rain, protection from the wind, and optionally less access to dirt. Your estate's main building communicates these ideas clearly by stripping away extraneous components and making the true purpose of a house evident to the observer."
"Shika! You made it sound like a good thing."
"I did," Shikamaru said with a sigh. "I support Hazō's architectural decisions. Extravagant clan compounds are all far too troublesome. Keep it this way, Hazō. Don't let the madness consume you."
o-o-o
Yoshida made his ceremonial bows with all the twisting and flailing of the arms as appropriate to greet the conquering hunters. They'd stepped up the size of their hunting groups after the Azai siblings had been lost, and by the size of the spiderboar that they'd dragged back into town, the hunts had remained fruitful.
After the long line of elaborate festivities, Yoshida clasped the hand of Aida, as was fitting for brothers that had passed the trial of the blade by each others' sides. He looked into Aida's eyes. The grief was still there, but fading. Good. With Akio and Ui's favor, Yoshida would soon be able to fight by his side again, but until then, Aida was still healing through his duty.
Aida stepped back and wrinkled his nose. "What exactly are you wearing?"
Yoshida raised his nose and pulled the sash from his shoulder so he could throw it over again. "It's from the trading group that went to the Hot Water Country. It's from a distant land."
"Isn't everything they brought back from a distant land? Aida asked innocently.
"Not like that!" Yoshida said, earning Aida a light swat on the arm. "From a very distant land. Another Path, in fact."
"Ooh, which Path?"
"The Seventh."
"Fascinating, the world has so many summoners. What else might those barbarians be holding back in their treasuries, I wonder?"
Yoshida pulled the sash from his shoulder again to flip it again. It was very useful for being dramatic. "Who knows. It's a wide world out there. You never know what you'll find."
o-o-o
"I have an idea for what the practical reason might be," Mari said. "Kei, you said that the Takahashi had a technique called Elemental Focus, right? If that's a part of their ninjutsu canon, then no wonder they wouldn't want to switch off of Elemental Mastery. Losing a foundational building block would cause everything else to crumble."
"That may have been a Takahashi clan technique," Kei said.
Mari shrugged. "They may have discarded Lord Hokage's replacement prematurely if they knew already that there was no chance that they would use it personally. Or some other reason. The Takahashi would undoubtedly have been at the head of this trade."
"Their reasoning doesn't change the facts," Asuma said. "Shikamaru, the thing which convinced me was your analysis. If you would share?"
Shikamaru flipped open a journal and slid it to Kei. Hazō quickly crowded as close by her side as he could safely dare, while Mari simply read it upside-down from across the table.
"This is my attempt at a full projection of the future of civilization, made with all reasonable resources available to me as a Clan Head of Leaf. Additional time and information may improve accuracy dramatically, but this is, to my knowledge, our best analysis at the moment. As you can see, the total annihilation of civilization is almost certain within a hundred years, with the lion's share of the risk coming from Elemental Mastery. Other lines represent other sources of existential risk, such as the Dragons whose median risk is only the vaguest of guesses, Akatsuki who might somehow attempt another world-altering ritual, or some unknown factor which I am currently unaware of, a category whose purpose I had reason to doubt until the Dragons enlightened me. I am now certain there are plenty. Only the small line at the bottom includes civilization's survival in any form."
"It's still going down, even at the end of the chart," Hazō said.
"Yes."
o-o-o
"So, Uchiha," Hazō said to the clan head sitting on an out-of-the-way couch while a Naruto chatted amiably with Yūma. "Asuma mentioned to me that you were recently promoted to jōnin. How did that happen?"
"Oh," Naruto said, breaking off his conversation to butt in with a giant grin. "It was a hell of a mission, right Sasuke?"
Sakura groaned from the other side of the room. "He's gonna tell the story again," she said, standing up and bowing her surrender to Tenten in their card game. "It's so embarrassing. I was useless on that mission."
"Just like usual, right, Sakura?" Naruto said.
Sakura stomped over and thwacked Naruto on the head with chakra-boosted strength. Naruto exploded into a puff of smoke. Smoothly, another Naruto stepped into the room, and Sakura turned on him.
"Don't start with that again! You assholes can't tell an acolyte from your own armpits without me. If we take a mission to kill a big beast, what's there for me to do?"
With that, she stormed out of the room. The new Naruto smoothly sat down on the depression in the couch where the last Naruto had been sitting. "Well, like she was saying, we'd been assigned a special mission. Reports out of Wave country told us about a giant monstrosity emerging from the sea and terrorizing the local population. Some thought it was the return of the Three-Tailed Beast, so of course we were assigned to go and find out what it was…"
o-o-o
"...and with that final word, the vault gates opened and the man saw his beloved, torn away from him so long ago. He reached out to her and caressed her face, which was acceptable as it was after dusk but before the moon's zenith in the harvest season, and she awoke and gave him a loving stare. And they laced their hands together and left the dragon's wretched domain to live happily ever after."
Kazuno had long since fallen asleep, of course, and Natsuo gently adjusted her covers so they wouldn't slip off in the night. He could have stopped reading earlier, but he didn't like to leave stories unfinished. His daughter was too young to hear the real stories that happened in the world, the ones where the good guys didn't always win.
Still, for her and for the future she deserved to have, he would try to make that future for her. By Akio's breath and the Martyr, he wouldn't let Isan's story end here.
o-o-o
"The end of the Chūnin Exams gives us the widest window of opportunity. They will not be expected anywhere for several months. Perhaps as much as a year will pass before their absence is noted, as their location is still secret to most other countries. The vast majority of their people will be inside the strict bounds of the village, while the remainder will be on short-distance patrols. To our knowledge, they have no extant long-term, long-distance missions. This not only ensures the efficacy of our intervention, it also grants us time to complete it. We will hopefully have months to search for and destroy technique caches that may contain the technique, as well as remove evidence of Elemental Mastery's use. If all goes well, this would have the dual benefits of removing risk of AMITY retaliation against Leaf as well as permitting Elemental Mastery's use against the Dragons."
"Months of clean-up time is a lot," Mari said. "But can we hide it from AMITY well enough?"
Asuma nodded. "It's my biggest uncertainty. Our scouts suggest that the nights in Tea are dark and foggy, so other ninja will have low visibility and may not notice the stormcloud, and the almanac suggests that these conditions will remain for a little while. Most importantly, I created a slight modification to the Elemental Mastery technique that limits how long it lasts after casting to only five minutes. That means that the window of opportunity for someone to notice the active stormcloud is much, much smaller."
Shikamaru's face soured. "It continues to be unwise to create any modification of the technique which makes it easier to use."
Asuma waved a hand to Shikamaru. "We've had this discussion. Unfortunately, there isn't any real way to kill four hundred ninja with certainty with any other tool."
"Well, that's not true," Mari said. "We have the tools to do it. Let Orochimaru go wild in Isan, and surround the village with a skyslicer perimeter so anyone fleeing is chopped. People that go around are covered by a second perimeter, say of Naruto, ANBU, or Zoo Rush-style summons if none need be sent to support Orochimaru. Throw on another outer perimeter of skyslicers, because why not. On the off chance there's even a single escapee, we have aerial superiority. If they go underground, Hyūga will be able to notice signs of their passage. We can mind-dive anyone we capture for rendezvous points, and- Oh, what am I saying? With the Dog trackers, we'll trivially find the tiny fraction of people that escape the trap.
"With all of Leaf's tools: summoners, S-rankers, bloodlines, and seals? Slaughtering four, no five hundred people in a single night without casualties or survivors is possible."
She paused for a second. "Not exactly subtle, though."
o-o-o
"Execute Operation Green."
"Ugh, is it really my turn again?" Kiba said. Akamaru whined.
"Yes," Hinata said, fixing him with a pupilless stare. "You owe me one. Unless you want me to remind people how you were at the public baths the other day and slipped, or dare I say, 'slipped', and-"
"Fine, fine!" Kiba said. "I get it. I guess an hour of Rock Lee exposure isn't that bad."
"Not just Rock Lee exposure," Hinata said, placing a gentle hand on Kiba's shoulder. "Gōketsu exposure. Best of luck, soldier."
Kiba, stiff-lipped, firmly nodded. Akamaru nodded firmly too. Together, they marched back out onto the game floor to take Hinata's spot, where Noburi was emphatically trying to explain to Rock Lee that no, a chakra plague was not in any way youthful and that yes, all his civilians were going to die, while Shinji simply pinched his forehead.
o-o-o
"Father?" Minori asked. "I have a question."
"Yes?" Saburō said.
"Why did we deny this deal with the Land of Earth? They offer resources we lack. I would have thought that easy access to tutoring in medical ninjutsu would have been enough to swing the deal."
"To preserve the alliance with Leaf, of course," Kenji said. "The Land of Fire and the Land of Earth are mortal enemies. We can only pick one or the other, and we've picked."
Elder Takahashi slowly meandered over, and neither of his two children spoke, for they could tell their father was considering something.
"It is true that at any moment, we can only pick one or the other. However, this is not an absolute rule to abide by. In the Elemental Nations, alliances and accords flow like water through sand. They follow well-worn grooves, but those grooves are not solid, and may shift at any moment to a new arrangement. Leaf and Sand once bore blades to one another; now they break bread. We are allies with Leaf for now, but we are not their allies forever."
"Then why ally with them, when their enemies would pay dearly to peel us away from their side?" Minori asked.
"Precisely for that reason. Leaf's enemies do not care for us beyond how we can be used to hurt Leaf itself. They will treat us well up until the moment we are no longer useful to them."
"And Leaf would treat us better?" Kenji asked, crossing his arms.
Elder Takahashi considered that for a moment as well.
"No, the Hokage thinks the same of us: that we are useful pawns for his games. However, the Pangolin Summoner wields great political power and does care for us. She does not prioritize our interests above all else, of course, but she wants to treat us fairly. It is much more than any other party on this continent would offer us.
"However, the Pangolin Summoner is not wily. She is a slave to her own conscience, and does not have the willpower to abandon an ally, even when required to save another. While this trait favors us now, it means that, in the long term, she will burn away all her favor in minor acts of defiance, leaving her with nothing to spend to protect us. No, what we must fear is not Leaf today, but Leaf in a year or a decade when the snakes come to feed, and none remain to speak for our justice."
o-o-o
"You paint a horrifying picture," Asuma said, wiping the light sweat from his brow, "but it's real. Killing them with Elemental Mastery is not so different from killing them with the sword. These people are not just allies of Leaf, they're people that have fought in Leaf's defense. They've put their lives on the line and some of them have bled and died for our people's safety. They don't deserve to die by our hand. But in the end, they are not Leaf, and their lives are not sacred."
"The operation you describe has far too great a scope to be done in absolute secrecy," Shikamaru said to Mari. "Too many people would need to be looped in. Additionally, we cannot account for every possible escape technique they may use and any survivor could cause an AMITY-led destruction of Leaf."
"Why is this required at all?" Kei asked. "If we must contemplate the complete extermination of Isan, can we find no lesser measure? Subjugation, mass mind-wiping, any alternative short of outright genocide."
"The dangerous component is the knowledge of Elemental Mastery itself," Shikamaru said. "In what way can we subjugate Isan that prevents them from spreading the technique? Would we appoint minders, two of our ninja to every one of their own, in order to ensure they would never tell anyone? Would we keep them as prisoners in the depths of our dungeons forever, and would this be worth more than death to them, especially when we can afford them no hope of freedom? Even if the Yamanaka could remove knowledge of a technique – which they cannot – how would we deploy this capability onto a third or more of Isan's ninja without inviting AMITY retaliation?"
"A lesser form of subjugation would suffice. Blockade them, ensure they cannot interact with any party but Leaf. Hunt down their missing-nin, prohibit other villages from having unstructured engagement with them. Any course of action is preferred to slaughtering them to the last," Kei said.
"Setting aside AMITY," Shikamaru said, "the primary risk is that any one leak can be catastrophic. Lord Hokage?"
Asuma nodded. "We also discussed this heavily. Isan may not have any competitive pressure forcing them to make every ninjutsu useful in combat, but every ninja in the Elemental Nations does. Elemental Mastery can be used to make cold rooms warm or warm rooms cold, but it doesn't take any creativity to realize it can make a warm room intolerably hot – that is, a form of area denial. Improving one's skill increases the area effectively denied and the speed at which it is denied, meaning that once a ninja realizes its combat utility and the ninjutsu enters that ninja's combat suite, it is a matter of time before that ninja attains sufficient mastery to cause the hellstorm."
Shikamaru spoke. "Controlling Isan to prevent a single leak is possible for a year. It is implausible for a decade and impossible for a century. By the time we hear of another instance of the hellstorm, it will likely already be too late, and our next warning will be a cold wind over Leaf. A single Isanese ninja escapes our blockade. To earn money, learn techniques, or gain alliances, they trade away their least useful technique as they travel the continent, a technique that many would be glad to learn due to its utility otherwise absent in Elemental Nations ninjutsu canons. Is this a story that any lesser measure can prohibit?"
o-o-o
Ami truly was a mastermind. At his request, she'd solved the "sorting problem" that he requested, carefully guiding people between games to ship other partygoers out of the room, while importing only those peers of Hazō's that had been at the Chūnin Exams, with the addition of Naruto's team.
"So Hazō," Inuzuka Kiba said, walking by and clapping Hazō firmly on the shoulder, "what bribe did you give the Hokage for him to promote a schmuck like you? Or did you pull the wool over his eyes with some fancy footwork? I still remember that 'Great Fireball' seal you tried to pull off at the Chūnin Exams. Was it just a few more tricks like that, stacked up in a trenchcoat?"
Hazō laughed and pulled away. "No trickery needed when I'm the best damn sealmaster in Leaf, Inuzuka. And before a bonehead like you asks what that's worth, how many S-rank missions have you completed?"
"Genin have completed missions beyond their ken by being in the right place at the right time, and very, very lucky," Hyūga Neji said. "If the mark of a skilled sealmaster is their seals, where are yours? If I recall correctly, even skywalkers were your uncle's creation in the end."
Hazō rolled his eyes. "And if you're so close to your own promotion, what are your combat techniques? How would you take down a jōnin-level opponent? The seals I've shown publicly are already enough to kill S-rankers when used right. I'm not going to reveal the clan secret seals I hold in reserve."
"Setting aside the way you arranged a party in your own honor," Neji said, "I'm not sure what the point of your promotion even is. Assuming there are sealing missions for you to take, you would presumably be doing them solo."
"It accurately represents what I can do for Leaf. Jōnin are feared for their combat power, but they're respected because they're leaders that can do more than anyone else to defend and protect their village. Which one of you," Hazō said, looking around the room, "is going to reach that rank next? You, Neji, with your strength as a summoner? Maybe you, Shino, with the heritage of your clan to draw on?"
"I see little purpose in such a promotion," Shino said. "As a clan head, my ability to take field missions is strictly limited, so any missions I take are carefully selected, rather than given to me based on perceived rank. Broad categorizations such as genin, chūnin, jōnin, do not adequately describe narrow specializations."
"Then let me ask the real question," Hazō said. "What are your goals? How do you want to change the world we live in? There are many dangers. Rock, Cloud, Akatsuki. We need to rise to the challenge of facing them. And there are more abstract threats. Famine, disease, and chakra beasts. I intend to conquer those too. If you can't even look as high as a rank in a well-defined progression, what are you going to achieve in the real world?
"What's the point of power if you can't use it for something great?"
o-o-o
Arikada Hibiki laughed to himself in the quiet of his workshop. He'd been doing that more often recently, now that the last of his fellows had left him. Orochimaru's appearance in Isan had been miraculous for the Sacred Spiritual Seekers of the Scaly Sage – like one of the miracles of the old kami that killed half those that witnessed it and left the remainder blind and deaf. The survivors had been catalyzed by his presence, and they'd started a grand project to impress him and earn an apprenticeship by his side.
Now, Hibiki was alone in his workshop. He'd agreed to abide by Takahashi's prohibition on human experimentation, but his acolytes had left to seek greener pastures. No doubt, they had anchored themselves on the stories of the marvels that Orochimaru had worked on the human body. Fools, all of them. Orochimaru was a prodigy in human biomanipulation. They had no chance of producing a project that would earn his approval there.
No, what they forgot was that before becoming a master of human biomanipulation, Orochimaru had researched chakra beast biomanipulation. Hibiki wouldn't attempt to compete with a master in the field (not that he could, when his wife had always been the human body specialist). Instead, he would come with a work that would remind Orochimaru of a long-forgotten lover, of a gentler time when there were fewer annoying cultists to kill. That would surely melt his master's heart.
He reached for the ink-laced needle and laughed again, this time forced and desperate. He was overstaying his welcome in Isan, forced to use sub-par materials. He'd formulated this ink himself after Takahashi had refused to procure biosealing ink for him at the Chūnin Exams. Takahashi knew his innocence, but the other villagers thought him responsible for their patrols' disappearances to chakra beasts over the past year. Why did they blame him for their own weakness? And why did they force Takahashi to deny him what he needed? They too would suffer if he caused a sealing failure on a specimen of this power.
They still resented him and blamed him for the disastrous quisling hunt all those months ago. What narrow-minded people. They didn't realize the true value that lay before them on that day.
Hibiki lowered the needle into the quisling tyrant's open torso cavity and steadied his hand. With its chakra coils suitably enhanced, it was now time to augment its aetheric nodes. Then, no one would be able to resist its suborning pulse. Once he'd finished this work, all of Isan would dance to his tune. Gōketsu would arrange his audience, and Orochimaru would finally grace him with the acknowledgement he was due.
Hibiki paused for a moment as he noticed a small lump within the ink. He laughed again, slightly manic. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He sunk the needle into the primary aetheric node and pushed down on the plunger.
o-o-o
"I have two objections," Hazō said. "Though I'm morally against visiting death on people who aren't even aware of the crime they committed, I do want to raise some practical considerations."
He could almost see the hope rising in Kei's eyes, behind her tightly controlled expression, before his next words crushed it.
"I don't know if this is enough to shift the balance against their destruction. It probably isn't. But please consider it at least."
Asuma gestured for him to go on.
"First, if our suppression measures are failing and are expected to fail due to unexpected risks, do we strongly believe that killing Isan will make them guaranteed to succeed? As you've said, Isan is a complex ecosystem with many, many individual actors. How sure can we be that we'll actually get everyone? That we'll actually raid and destroy every one of their hidden caches?"
"We do need to account for unexpected risks," Shikamaru said. "However, Isan can be controlled. Targeted mind-dives can be used to confirm stragglers' locations, if extant, and we will have up to a year to search out their caches. We cannot account for all truly unpredictable risks, as the attack on Akane demonstrates, but in expectation razing Isan should simplify the situation if only by removing the vast majority of the risky actors."
"Modifying our strategy due to Akane's death is solely superstition," Kei said. "If our suppression measures previously sufficed, and our conspiracy is uncompromised with certainty, then no justification remains to alter our plans. This drastic course of action feels drastic because it is unwise."
"I never claimed that previous measures sufficed as a long-term panacea," Shikamaru said. "Merely that they would preserve us until after the Chūnin Exams. Now, Isan sequesters itself away from the world for another year, and faster action will be rewarded even setting aside the favorable weather conditions. Our previous measures were adequate for months. If we want civilization to survive more than months, we need to take drastic action."
"Is this truly the right time to act? Even if our best shot is only once a year, why this year?" Hazō asked.
"When else would we act?" Shikamaru asked. "Every passing year induces more risk. Would you accept killing Isan's next generation instead of this one? Or the one thereafter? Knowing, of course, that every step down this ladder risks the rest of the world as well."
"Fine," Hazō said. "My second objection: Isan has valuable lore preserved for hundreds of years. If we wipe them out, we lose lore that could be crucial to winning the fight against the Dragons."
Asuma nodded. "Good forethought, Hazō. It would likely take years to seduce the knowledge out of their loremaster clan by hand, but we can do a targeted mind-dive in order to take it now before their destruction. Apart from lore on the Dragons, what else would be important for the mind-dive to look for?"
Hazō paused. He hadn't considered everything that could have been useful, and now he needed to decide quickly before Isan could be killed.
"Lore on the Paths. Lore on the Sage, or on the Sage's companions." He bit his tongue before his next request could emerge. Hazō didn't know how Shikamaru or Asuma might respond if Hazō continued to show interest in the dark god. "Anything they have about sealing, whether about Summoning Scrolls, three-dimensional sealing, or anything at all. There's too much unique knowledge they have for nothing there to be valuable."
Asuma nodded. "We'll extract that information for you. Good catch, Hazō. We need to make sure that our swift action doesn't also cause unforced errors. Still, we can't exchange a potential apocalypse on another Path for a certain apocalypse on this one."
o-o-o
"Oh, hey, Shika!" Chōji said as he stepped into the quiet back room where Shika was reclining in a chair, facing a long-since burned out fireplace. Chōji stepped over and set down his drink before grabbing a poker and prodding at the fireplace. Ash flaked off a few of the remaining coals and showed they were still glowing. Chōji quickly grabbed a log from beside the fireplace and fed it in, using the poker to arrange it so it rested above the coals.
Chōji sank into the other chair by the fire with a relaxed sigh. "Everyone else is packing up, but I figure we can get a nice fifteen minutes before they try to corral us out of here. How's it going? What did you think about Hazō's speech? He's a bit bizarre, but he sure has a way of lighting a fire inside of you. Sasuke was awfully quiet afterwards. It looked like he was thinking about something deep."
"Chōji," Shikamaru said. "You are aware that once you're a clan head, you'll have to make many hard decisions, correct?"
Chōji nodded slowly. "Yeah?"
"Once that day comes, and you're faced with a choice where you're forced to make sacrifices for the good of the clan, what would be better? For the decision to be so hard, so agonizing that you struggle for days to make it and remain in guilt for weeks or years afterwards? Or for the decision to be easy? For if, despite the sacrifices and the tradeoffs, simple calculus dictates the correct choice and once that calculus is made, no more input is required on your part no matter how harmful the consequences."
Chōji considered that for a moment. The exposed flesh of the log in the fireplace was starting to shrivel and blacken as it slowly caught fire atop the embers. "I think it would be better for it to be too easy. It may be callous, but sacrifices are always necessary. Not everyone can live. If the right choice is that evident, then you should just make it. But I'd be careful, too. I think if I made too many sacrifices because I was doing some math that made hard decisions seem easy, I would worry about whether I was making the right calls at all. If my choices seemed wrong despite the math telling me it was right, I'd doubt the math first."
Shikamaru sighed. "You cannot doubt math, Chōji. Some answers, at least, are objective."
"That's where you and I differ," Chōji said, tapping his head. "When you do addition, you always get the right answer. Me, I'm very bad at math."
"That's not the math's fault."
"I'll blame it anyway," Chōji said, as the log caught fire. "After all, if it wanted me to get the right answers, why did it have to make everything so complicated?"
o-o-o
Sahō felt her heart lift up again. He'd come. She'd hoped and chastised herself for hoping in equal measure, but he'd listened.
It was a dark night, with thick fog rolling up the mountain to envelop them while the slivered moon overhead was only barely noticeable through the thinnest sections of cloud cover. It was brutally cold, especially this far up the mountain, away from the village and its walls and roofs and Elemental Masteries (it was vaguely offensive that those foreign countries called themselves Hidden Villages when they used fire for heating).
There Gasai was, bundled up in a long coat and hood and scarf. His face was red from the cold wind blowing around them, but he was beaming in an unreserved, positively indecorous manner. Extremely improper.
Sahō looked down, breaking eye contact but not letting the embarrassment she felt take the smile away from her face. He wouldn't be able to see her flush with the cold making her cheeks red. What was she afraid of?
"A nighttime walk could be considered pleasant," she said.
"By some, perhaps," he said in return. "Others may prefer the warmth indoors, but fortune strikes the man that braves the wilderness more than the man who lives in comfort."
She looked up, going more quickly this time. No one could chastise them for exceeding three seconds here, but some part of her couldn't wait. She met his gaze and again she felt it, that electric, tingly sensation running up and down her body. For a moment, she forgot that it was a cold winter night at all, and her heart was filled with warmth.
The night did not care. The cold wind intensified.
o-o-o
"There must be another way," Kei said, staring dully at Shikamaru's prepared report.
"With my full understanding of the situation and my position as the clan head of the Nara, with all that entails, I do not see any other way," Shikamaru said. "I understand what this means to you, Kei. However, the logic is inescapable. Remember your duty."
"I have many duties, and representing Isan as the Pangolin Summoner is one of them. They would never have been put into this situation without my desire to claim the Pangolin Scroll."
"I understand," Shikamaru said. "However, if you hadn't, we would have had no chance at all to intervene in this potential apocalypse. Would you rather have stayed far enough away to not be morally culpable, and remained ignorant as storms claimed the continent? Even setting aside Leaf's safety, we must do this for the sake of humanity itself. We must act as the first to know. We cannot navigate this situation as one of many actors that know Elemental Mastery's true potential when a first strike wins everything and there is no possible defense."
Asuma nodded, his face already an impenetrable mask. "Very well. My decision is made. May the Sage's hand grant us fortune in what is to come."
o-o-o
Hazō dropped his hand with a satisfied sigh after showing the last guests out of the Gōketsu estate. He'd enjoyed the game night, though hosting always tired him out. He took a minute to appreciate the distant sunset over the far walls of Leaf.
He tensed again as he saw a messenger jogging down the path towards the Gōketsu estate, wearing the gold and blue ribbons of the Hokage's personal staff.
"Lord Gōketsu," she said, bowing quickly. "The Hokage summons you and Lady Mari for an urgent meeting."
He arrived at the Tower to see a smoldering Kei, a disheveled Shikamaru, and a stormy-faced Hokage with three ANBU at his back. Asuma and the ANBU were wearing field gear. Either they'd just come in from a mission, or they were planning on moving out tonight.
o-o-o
Sahō carefully stepped forward through the snow, holding Gasai's gaze far, far beyond what was merely slightly improper. She walked until she was inches from his chest, looking up into his eyes. The cold air made her fingers numb, but she still reached out and took his hand in hers.
The cold wind around them intensified, but the fire within her heart made her heart beat faster and faster, keeping her warm. She took another step closer, now chest to chest with the man of her dreams. Horrendously improper, but the needs of survival in a cold night made certain sacrifices of decorum necessary.
Would he crane his neck down and kiss her? It would be fast, too fast for a courtship barely out of the cradle, but she still looked up at him, aware that he could take her lips if he wanted them. Perhaps she had gone mad. Perhaps she should have stepped back, lowered her eyes, and preserved her modesty. That fire within her heart refused to let her do so.
The wind grew harder, and she used chakra to pull her feet down to the mountainside. It was unnaturally strong. In the span of a heartbeat, Sahō turned to face downhill, towards Isan.
Through the fog, she barely got the impression of a vortex of ice and water forming in the air above and slightly beyond them.
A heartbeat passed. She felt a spray of something over her face and clothes. It was cold beyond cold. She tried to move.
A heartbeat. The cold gave way to numbness. She could not escape.
A heartbeat. Numbness gave way to nothingness.
Her heart beat no more.
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