- Location
- how about no
I agree that preventing malefactors from accessing FOOM is incredibly important once we start teaching others how to FOOM. I am in favor of finding candidates who truly share in and advance Uplift as an ideology and as a life style and then giving them FOOM, like selecting candidates for Captain America.
I'd like to limit it only to our clanmates and ninja we have adopted in our compound, but each candidate has to have the Hokage's approval to learn SC before they can FOOM in the first place. There's no way we can expand our FOOM capable minions without alerting the tower that we are using SC for something, especially if we want to teach it to otherwise unremarkable ninjas who then start to grow more rapidly, even for having SC.
The Nara probably already know about FOOM from Kei anyway. If anyone could run the numbers on FOOM's potential IC it would be them. It would be ironic if we go to all of the trouble of hiding FOOM when Shikamaru has already told Asuma how FOOM could work.
People aren't this perfectly rational for this to be the complete answer on its own. Given enough bounties eventually grudges will form between villages as clans associate certain foreigners with hunting down their loved ones. Under this system alliances would slowly yet naturally form between villages A and B since they each assign missions to kill village C's operatives. Village C then reaches out to Village D for mutual defense and the pattern continues until there are no greedy unaligned villages left (some villages might choose to stay neutral despite the possible revenue like Isan did).
MfD power dynamics are weird because power does not primarily come from levies, proper military equipment and training, stockpiled provisions, and logistical manpower, but by how fast people can rap in sign language and other esoteric skills. Commerce might be the means by which the villages interact somewhat peaceably with one another, but no amount of cash will save you when an enemy refuses to barter. Villages will put more value on forces that will not abandon them when money can no longer be a factor in dissuading a threat.
The temptation for villages to engage in false flag operations and sabotage against one another seems too high to me for financial A-list mission webs to fully spread across the Elemental Nations. Village A could have a lucrative business relationship with Village B. However, if the reward is high enough and if Village B has become too trusting Village A could very easily make it appear as though Village C and/or D caused harm to Village B as Village A takes all of the spoils for themselves.
Furthermore, how can one village prove to another that a bounty has been successfully carried out for compensation? Bodies are valuable in and of themselves for bloodline secrets (as ick as that sounds) so handing them over means losing out on valuable research. The level of brutality involved in ninja combat also makes it hard to recover enough identifying features for a positive ID. Jiraiya detonated all of his explosive seals at once when he knew he was going to die. Clan ninja especially most likely have measures in place so that their bodies do not fall into enemy hands.
Then we can argue for a case study with Asuma's approval (provided the needs of the war are not too pressing, which they very well might be). We take a selection of (heavily preferably all Uplift aligned, trusted Goketsu) ninja who are barely able to learn SC and are not needed in the field any time soon and then separate them into a control group, SC but no FOOM instruction group, and a FOOM group. If the FOOM groups proves our timetables for accelerating gains we can then argue for the right to teach any Leaf ninja we deem worthy FOOM to better empower Leaf's future forces. We do not necessarily have to explain the inner working of FOOM, only that we believe we have a way to improve SC bonuses. We can probably manage that much of a favor out of Asuma since we temporarily resolved our Oro issues without his explicit help and he still feels remorseful about that.
"For the same reason why you couldn't pass judgment on Orochimaru. You would alienate too large of a portion of Leaf's S-rank population."
As @Inferno Vulpix noted we will have some time before FOOM is accepted as valid by Leaf authorities. By the time Asuma himself sees the benefits of FOOM we will already have plenty of Uplift believing S-rankers supporting us.
