Chapter 483: Wisdom is Knowledge Gained Too Late
Time to see what's going on!
His easygoing mien vanished the moment Hazō appeared alongside Canzone, the six-month-old mastiff who had boosted Hazō up to the Seventh Path.
Is Cannai not happy to see us? Odd. We haven't said anything yet?
Maybe this is supposed to imply that Cannai knew what was going on (he has senses sharp enough to see lightning travel through the sky at 750,000 mph) and was waiting for us to talk to him?
Cannai nodded expectantly but said nothing, which made Hazō suddenly nervous. Cannai was usually much more engaging.
Ah, yeah. That's exactly what it is implying.
It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path
If you want to emphasize a word that is already italicized, bold it instead of unitalisizing.
"...
It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you
since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path...
versus
"...
It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path..."
I'm unclear what advantage Dog would get out of it." He paused, then hastened to add. "Not that this is inherently a bad thing. Partnerships must be valuable to all parties, but that does not mean that every specific aspect must be useful to both sides. I am not entirely adverse to doing things that are of benefit to you and not us, provided that we gain enough value elsewhere. Still—"
Ok, I love Cannai.
"So you're in?" Hazō asked, excited.
Hazō is literally acting like a puppy. Cannai must know this.
(Also, why is Hazō so excited? Zoo Rush hasn't happened yet.)
Cannai cleared his throat meaningfully. "As I was about to say: Dogs are a social clan who live close to the land. You are asking that one or perhaps a pawful should travel hundred or thousands of miles through enemy territories, across a mountain range, to live amidst a warlike and xenophobic species who have recently been on a conquest spree. Those dogs would be away from our lands, eating unfamiliar foods, and away from their packmates for months or even years. I would never order something so cruel." He cocked his head as a thought struck. "Speaking of the pangolins, that group on our eastern border reached out yesterday. Pandā, your sister's summon? He said to remind you that, quote, Kei's commitment ceremony is coming up soon and Hazō better not forget or I'll thwap him, oh, but he shouldn't tell her that I told him because otherwise he won't get the credit for remembering and I've got his back. Unquote." He snorted. "He sounded like a charming young man."
Hazō laughed. "He really is. The first time we met him was hilarious. See, he fancied that he understood something about human sexual mores and familial bonding, so he said..."
This is a really good line, BirdLord. It's quite clear how Hazō could misunderstand it.
I would misunderstand it if I heard it. It's perfectly reasonable to asume tha----
Hey wait a minute.
You're giving Hazō too much justification here. It's entirely reasonable (for a human) to assume that Cannai would be fine sending someone who was willing to go. Thus, Cannai is going to make a really big deal out of a cultural misunderstanding.
Hazō laughed. "He really is. The first time we met him was hilarious. See, he fancied that he understood something about human sexual mores and familial bonding, so he said..."
That was an absolutely hilarious scene. I really emphasized with Akane, finding it funny and watching everyone else get offended.
"Hang on," Mari said, a note of insufficiently-hidden alarm in her voice. "It sounds like you're saying that Cannai didn't want to send anyone to Pangolin but you're trying to send someone to Pangolin. Are you?"
Hazō shook his head. "Not without his permission, no. He said that he wouldn't order anyone to go but he didn't say that he would stop someone from going if they wanted to. I figured I'd ask around, see if anyone was interested. If not, no harm done. If so then everyone wins—the dog or dogs in question get an exciting adventure and Dog gets a representative at the Conclave."
The noise level in the room plummeted as Mari, Akane, and Noburi all stopped eating to stare at Hazō. Kagome-sensei stopped eating so that he could grab an explosive and look around wide-eyed to figure out what had everyone else so alarmed. Yuno simply looked confused.
CANNAI: "Why exactly did your family have such an extreme reaction to your comment?"
HAZŌ: "Oh, right! That's because I was once almost executed for conducting international diplomacy with terrorists behind my Alpha's back."
CANNAI: "wat"
"Your relatives sound quite perceptive," Cannai said calmly, once Hazō had finished retelling the key points of the conversation. "I am surprised that you waited so long to talk to them."
"What?"
"You have been 'asking around', as you put it, for several weeks now. Yes?"
Wow did Hazō really say this whole thing line-by-line? Damn. That would be hilarious.
Also, yeah, Cannai knew.
"I told you no, Hazō. I was very clear about not sending a dog to Pangolin territory. Why you would hear those words, obviously understand them, and then sneak around behind my back to defy me on something that so clearly had not a hope...I couldn't understand what you thought to gain.
"Now I see that it was stupidity, not malice." He paused, then shook his massive head. "Perhaps 'stupid' is unfair. You are intelligent, so this was not due to stupidity. This was simply you being oblivious, pathologically unaware, and arrogant."
To be fair, you'd have to be stupid to be malicious to Cannai considering the power disparity between them and how good of a relationship they had.
A trace of heat was creeping into the Alpha Dog's words. "I am the Alpha here, Hazō. I am responsible for the safety and well-being of every dog in existence. I decide if and when and where and how we fight, what treaties we make, and how our herds are managed and our lands preserved. You are an outsider with almost no knowledge of our culture, barely more than a child yourself. I rule over a Clan of hundreds of thousands and have done so for centuries. You, according to your own words, are lurching along on the edge of disaster as you learn how to manage a paltry few hundred. The idea that you—"
Uh........
I am responsible for the safety and well-being of every dog in existence.
Every dog? Including those on different Paths? Does he know anything about the origins of the Inuzuka? I want to ask him about this but I also want to never bring this up again.
barely more than a child yourself.
Hey! Our average age is, like, 25!
I rule over a Clan of hundreds of thousands and have done so for centuries.
holy shit
You, according to your own words, are lurching along on the edge of disaster as you learn how to manage a paltry few hundred. The idea that you—"
Ouch. You know that this wasn't intentional. We weren't trying to circumvent your authority and we certainly weren't thinking we knew better than you. No need to bring up our failure into this; we weren't ready to take over after our dad suddenly died.
Cannai's voice had been rising as he spoke, the heat shimmer in the air getting more and more intense. He broke off in midsentence and took a breath; the air went back to normal and the grass stopped rustling. When he resumed, his voice was calm again.
Bosses are scary.
"I am glad to see that this was an issue of misunderstanding on your part, and not an explicit defiance of my authority. Violating pack hierarchy the way you appeared to be doing is not acceptable. I have held my paw this long simply because your actions seemed utterly bizarre and I wanted to find out what you were thinking.
Oh thank god. Plus one for being so stupid that our boss is confused enough by why on earth we would do this that they don't immideately kill us. I wonder if we will eventually get a scene
long in the future where we summon Cannai to the Human Path. I can seem Cannai and Asuma chatting about this very thing and how close they were to killing us because we didn't realize that we were commiting treason.
@eaglejarl how much fun would this scene be to write?
You are an outsider with almost no knowledge of our culture,
Can we take lessons from one of the
hundreds of thousands of dogs? There's got to be at least one cultural attache or lorekeeper or puppy-wrangler that has experince teaching cultural norms. I'd like it if Hazōpilot, at the very least, knew some of the cultural taboos that might come up. (Though I would also love it if the thread gets to see the full deal, I recognize it's going to be a lot of work to write and come up with all this stuff. If it's a Hazopilot thing, however, you can just get an advanced warning if we're running into something problematic.)
"However," Cannai said, causing Hazō's breath to catch again, "the fact that this happened demonstrates that you have an arrogance and essential disrespect that I am not willing to accept from a Summoner. Perhaps a bit of running through the dusty hills of Hyena will help sand off some of those rough edges. I recognize that you have obligations on the Human Path, so I will not insist that it be continuous...five hours per day should be enough. I will assign you to one of the punishment squads."
It's a real shame we don't get any better at running from IC activites. Cannai was driving us hard even before making this be literal punishment. I was genuinely wondering if there was a way to have this be reflected narratively (or perhaps even mechanically) once Hazō had been doing it for long enough.
At the end of every session Hazō is exhausted, shaking, vaguely nauseous, and so sore he can barely hobble even with his cane.
"Hazō's physical consequences shall now take another week to heal."
You're going to need to do some time management because you don't have time to train Harumitsu, train Kagome-sensei, manage the clan, do 5 hours of exhausting exercise each day, run the clan, take care of normal food/hygiene/biology, and also sleep. Figure out which of those things you want to give up on.
I think we should talk to Asuma about letting Noburi help us with teach Kagome when he isn't on mission. I doubt Asuma will care.