"We have entered the Fourth Shinobi World War."
WWIV Get HYPE Music
It's been a long time coming. We might as well make the best of the situation and redraw some country lines in our/Leaf's favor.
Ino was looking at Kei and Shikamaru, trying to work out what was going on, but not there yet—or maybe just hoping for a cue to make sure she didn't get in the way of Shikamaru's incoming master plan.
Lady Kei was tense, unreadable.
Representative Shimura met Hazō's eyes briefly, then looked away.
Somebody, please. If it ended like this…
Hazō's eyes searched the room for someone, anyone—at this point, he'd even accept a debt to the Hagoromo—and for an instant, they stopped on the other last person he'd expect to challenge Orochimaru on Kei's behalf.
Hinata's lips had just made a perfect little "o" of realisation as she looked at the snow-white statue that was Kei.
No one is talking about how Hinata saved us. We have another ally in our aspirations to not get Basement'ed.
I don't like it, either, but we really have no other viable alternatives within the narrative. Make a competing plan.
Gladly. I staunchly refuse any plans advocating vivisections.
In the hypothetical scenario where Hazou goes through the procedure he personally has nothing else to give when Oro comes asking for more. Do we convince Noburi and/or Kei to go through with such a surgery as well when Oro makes additional demands?
Appeasement will only postpone Oro's interest in us and what's worse, encourage him to continue pressuring us because it gets him what he really wants. It is at best a medium term solution.
Furthermore, we would forever be branded as the crazy guy willing to consort with someone who wants to steal bloodline secrets. I absolutely do not want to have Hazou socially ostracized by the rest of Leaf by choosing the Snake and all of his crimes against humanity.
"This is not, and cannot be, about Orochimaru and the Tower. This is about Orochimaru and you. In this instance, you have options the Tower does not. There are two people in this village with both the raw strength and the moral code to stand in Orochimaru's way. If they do stand in Orochimaru's way, as private individuals, I strongly doubt his pride will let him run crying to the Hokage. Even if he does, making me choose him over Tsunade or Naruto is a very different thing to making me choose him over you."
Hazō didn't know what to say.
"My advice to you," Asuma said, "is to cooperate with him to the fullest extent possible. Let him examine you, or whatever it is he wants to do, in a place of your choice, with witnesses. If you want those witnesses to be officers of the Tower, I can arrange it. Maybe he'll decide that's good enough. Maybe he'll lose interest. Maybe new opportunities will arise. Deaths happen during war, and sometimes there isn't enough left of a body to recover, and Kurosawa and Mori are no exception.
"If you have any solutions of your own, I am prepared to be flexible. As long as you don't make me choose between you and Orochimaru, and as long as you don't do anything so stupid that I have to execute you myself, and as long as you talk to me before any Gōketsu-brand shenanigans, there may be room to prioritise the spirit of the law over the letter."
His voice softened. "I know this isn't fair, and it isn't what you want to hear. I dearly wish I could act to protect you, and damn the consequences. I'll even forgive, once and once only, the fact that you tried to base Leaf's military strategy on your private interests. But I am the Hokage. As my father warned me, no Hokage gets the luxury of doing what they want."
This quote is the most important part of the latest update and what we desperately need to basing all of our planning on.
(I will note though that if Oro only wants to do a small non invasive series of tests with Hazou to learn about the Iron Nerve we will have major egg on our face. He never explicitly said he wanted to cut us open and he might use that if we have to confront him in public again)
Hot take: we ask Asuma for a secret S-rank mission (to properly execute once the war is over) to either adjust Oro's core values so that Oro respects the dignity of human life or permanently kill him. We should ask for authorization now so that we can prepare adequately for when the time comes and we will not be caught flat-footed facing him again.
Our best defense (now that appealing to the Tower in an official capacity has been denied) is to appeal to the other S-rankers in Leaf: Naruto and Tsunade. Without the support of both of them Leaf will not be safe for us and that is unacceptable: we will never find a better base of operations to spread Uplift from.
Hazou can make the same basic argument to both Naruto and Tsunade: the village will lose the meaning behind the Will of Fire if we collectively do not stand against malfeasance, even by those who are S-rank. Would Tsunade's grandfather approve of her standing idly by while her old teammate betrays her neighbors? Would the Third or Fifth approve of Naruto abstaining from protecting his friends and comrades from an internal threat?
This can also be used to sway Asuma (credits to the quoted poster):
Win at chicken. Obviously.
Right now, Oro knows that if he defects against Asuma, Asuma will have to keep cooperating, because a defect/defect outcome leads to Oro taking his toys home and dooming Leaf, which Asuma would be unwilling to do in the moment. However, if Asuma destroyed his future self's ability to do that — if he publicly committed, right now, to ousting Orochimaru if Oro defects against Leaf, regardless of whether Oro has any plausible deniability or not, regardless of what would happen to Leaf afterwards — the calculus would change. Oro would be choosing not between the status quo and a play that may lead to a massive win or a moderate loss of resources, but between the status quo and the certainty of a moderate loss of resources.
It would be politically expedient to do, too. Invoke a bunch of cultural incantations like the ones he mentioned in relation to his father: that "there is no greater crime against the Will of Fire than to betray a comrade", that if Leaf ninja tolerated that sort of thing, it would be the death of Leaf more certain and terrible than if they were actually killed by their enemies, etc., etc. (Obviously he shouldn't mention Oro explicitly, it should be some generic-sounding speech about village loyalty, but one that would manipulate the public sentiment such that if Asuma allowed Oro to dissect anyone important, it would ensure that Leaf clans outright abandon the village or something, not simply depose him.)
Can we, like, suggest that right now, if we're still with Asuma? Game-theoretical coercion is counter-intuitive, so I get why Asuma wouldn't have thought of it in these terms, but surely Kei would get it and back us up.
Better yet we can have Asuma frame his public speech as admonishing the Hagaromo and the Goketsu to cooperate with undercurrents alluding to Oro's alleged past deeds.
While Asuma is still processing and doubtlessly feeling miserable about the choice he just made, desperately looking for any options that would let him protect Leaf while retaining personal integrity, and before he had time to harden his heart and come to terms with failing to live up to his father? Yes, absolutely.
This is the best time possible to give Asuma FOOM. He feels like shit because he does not have the personal strength to act as he thinks a Hokage should and we have the means to help him achieve that strength. There's no point in hoarding it when we could very well die and it would earn us enormous amounts of good will from Asuma especially because we will probably need to do some crazy shit to resolve our Snake problem.
Now, back on the topic of Naruto and Tsunade, we can also have the other clan heads approach them to better express the seriousness of the situation. This is not only a problem between Hazou and Oro, but one that will affect every ninja in Leaf, starting with the clans and their bloodlines. We have Hinata in our corner when it comes to wanting to protect our precious bodily secrets so combining her arguments with Shikamaru's and other clan heads we can hopefully convince the remaining S-rankers to help us out, not for our sakes in particular, but for the good of Leaf as a whole.
If there are any other arguments that could help convince Naruto and Tsunade to help us I'd love to hear additional tenable suggestions. We will not survive without them.
