Chapter 4β: The Avatar of Second Chances
In one corner of the Fortress of White Steel, Mari was busy sending a pack of ingenious morons to their three-bladed doom (a merciful death of sorts, Mari had noted, since at least they could expect to get very extensively laid while they waited). Perhaps it was unfair of Hazō to kill off a group of Orochimaru-worshipping biosealers purely on
suspicion of conducting cruel and non-consensual human experiments. However, in the alpha timeline, they'd been taken care of by the EN punitive expedition, and Hazō couldn't afford to let them run loose in this one. Amidst all the other ripple effects of his past and future actions, he couldn't risk the possibility of Orochimaru acquiring useful resources he hadn't had the first time round, nor was he going to let innocent people die as they surely would if the cult resumed its usual business elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Noburi was in a different part of the fortress, exploiting an in he'd failed to leverage in the alpha timeline in order to reach the Liberator himself and lay out some select facts. Jiraiya didn't have the same immediately useful pawns this time round–that had been the price of Hazō keeping his word to Kei and saving the people of Hidden Swamp (all but three of whom had done nothing to deserve death at Captain Zabuza's blade)–and it would give Hazō's plan here time to play out. The Liberator would be made aware that Leaf Intelligence were already sniffing around. He would, on Noburi's subtle suggestion, go straight to the cult to check on their progress, where he would find that they had suddenly and
urgently abandoned him.
The rest was just a matter of seeding the idea that Neck was a safe haven for missing-nin, and making sure the Liberator's logisticians had been made aware of Hazō's proposed route. That was Kei's job: she didn't need to draw suspicion to herself, only to speak with various fellow professionals over the course of several days, and hand each one a single breadcrumb wrapped in a collection of interesting but ultimately irrelevant intel from Uplift's alpha travels. (Incidentally, the others' disguise talents were far beyond what Hazō remembered. He cringed as they gave him pitying looks during practice upon seeing the best he could accomplish with his self-made disguise kit, even as Kei turned herself into a
flawless copy of Ami and tiny Mari became a huge, bulky ogre of a man who looked like he could carry the rest of the team in his hands.)
Hazō didn't know what would become of Hidden Swamp v2. He didn't know whether the Liberator and Shikigami-sensei would be able to work things out. He didn't know the long-term consequences of fulfilling Shikigami-sensei's dream, only that they would create a significant new point of divergence. Still, he'd seen, now, that it could take the most trivial, most unfair circumstances to create a missing-nin. If he could save the people in front of him and place them among factions that could collectively constrain their ambitions without having the power to simply wipe them out, and incidentally create a new power that owed him its existence twice over… well, he'd already made a promise to go pretty damn far.
But that was the future. Right now, Hazō had had his own mission to carry out–a mission that would lay one of the foundations of Uplift, and therefore was vastly more important. This time, though, he wasn't at the mercy of Kei's monstrous rock-paper-scissors skills. This time, he'd do it his way.
"WHAT IS THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH?"
A few curious faces turned towards him as he stood on a commandeered stealth training box in the training grounds, taking advantage of the brief lull in sparring that he remembered happening around noon (because of course he'd never forget the day he met Akane).
"There are those," he began with projection skills refined over countless inspirational speeches made to the greater Gōketsu Clan, "who say that the Spirit of Youth is the will to pursue one's dreams no matter what it takes. There are those who say that it is the Hard Fist of the heart that can smash any obstacle. There are those who say it is the determination to believe, no matter what the world around you insists is true."
He'd have to work fast. Already the more jaded missing-nin were turning away. But then, this bait wasn't for them. Hazō couldn't swear that he had it word for word, but he
had read Maito Gai's little book once, because what kind of boyfriend didn't take an interest in his beloved's spiritual practice?
"None of them are wrong," he said, "and none of them are right. Yes, the Spirit of Youth possesses all those properties, but for ninja like you and me–people who have seen the world for what it is, people who have fought with everything they have just to survive in this unjust reality–is that really enough?"
They were listening again. Much of Mari's training was a blur now, but even if he didn't remember all the techniques, he understood people now in a way that his blundering younger self had not.
"Every one of us has earned the wisdom to challenge these teachings point for point. We've had our dearest dreams taken away by the villages that abandoned us. We've been forced to run and hide in the face of powers too great to challenge. We've been betrayed by our own faith. Where were the ancestors when the Mizukage sent me on a suicide mission and lied about it? Where was the Sage's Truth when my master needed guidance to stay on the village path? Where was the Will of Fire when my dear friend was framed by a traitor, and her fellow ninja decided to hunt her like an animal instead of taking her side against true evil?"
He'd been worried that his previous lines would capture the attention of the masses at the cost of making her drift away. Well,
that ought to keep her listening.
"These questions tormented me. I'd been brought up a loyal ninja who only wanted to protect my comrades and my village. I never wanted to go missing and leave behind everything and everyone I loved. I never wanted to live my life in a constant state of paranoia, knowing that a single moment of carelessness would be the death of me. How was I supposed to believe in the Spirit of Youth when every moment of my life was a struggle to survive?"
He had them. These weren't random missing-nin he was addressing. These were the people who'd had enough, whose suffering and frustration had driven them to join the Liberator's rebellion against the established world order, who were fired up by the Liberator's speeches rather than put off (and Hazō had listened, and watched what worked), and who had come here to find something to believe in.
Of course, they were only a secondary priority. Hazō was here to save somebody. If he was very,
very good, he was about to save her twice.
"I've travelled further than you can guess. I've spoken to countless different people, some of whom would kill each other on sight. In my quest to understand, I've discovered something very strange indeed.
"The most Youthful person in the world isn't youthful. He's over twice my age. Youth itself, as a philosophy, was invented by ancients personally older than the Village Era. It turns out that the Spirit of Youth doesn't have anything to do with being young. The truly old didn't care about chasing their dreams. They'd lived long enough to know that dreams can fade. They can be stolen. They can betray you when you finally have them in your grasp. They knew from painful experience that not every obstacle can be overcome, and sometimes trying can mean your death. They knew that blind faith is no better than false intel, and no less deadly. What, then, is the secret of the Spirit of Youth that makes it worth following in the real world that you and I know better than anyone else?"
He paused. He waited until the anticipatory silence was almost painful.
"The Spirit of Youth," he told them, "is the spirit of second chances."
Hazō had left his ancestors behind in another world. He'd never truly believed in the Will of Fire. Jashin was… Jashin, and besides, he'd never get a better chance to keep Hidan out of his life. After everything he'd learned, it was hard to have the proper reverence for the Sage's wisdom. But that didn't mean he had nothing to believe in.
The odds of the sealing failure spitting him out precisely where and when it had, at the point when he'd originally awakened to agency within his own life, were a whole new order of improbable compared to just getting a sealing failure big enough to destroy a world while leaving him perfectly unharmed. It was virtually impossible not to see a guiding hand, or more likely tentacle, in what had been done to him.
You couldn't
worship a being about which you knew literally nothing. It was an open question whether you should even believe in it when it had chosen to provide no evidence of its existence. Still, whoever it was, whatever it was, it had left behind exactly one sacrament. Instead of death, instead of the unimaginable horrors worse than death that awaited those plunged into the Out, the path he had been set on was a second chance to get things right.
"Every one of us is here because we
refuse to let things end like this. Betrayed, abandoned, hated, hunted. We all know there's no going back to how things were. The hidden villages are not about to awaken to justice or forgiveness. But there is one thing they can never take away from us. One thing the kami themselves can't take away from us.
"There is
always a second chance."
Hazō's second chance, bought at the cost of everything he'd gained during his first, was no simple thing. In fact, his heart froze over when he thought too far into the future. Somehow, he had to prevent the Battle of Nagi Island. He couldn't let Jiraiya die. Even if Hazō messed up and failed to recreate the Gōketsu, Jiraiya was a good man who had dedicated his life to making the world a better place through the best means he knew, and one of the potential standard-bearers of Uplift who hadn't had to be regularly bribed into it the way Asuma had.
So many others. Shikamaru and Ino didn't deserve to lose their fathers. Akane, her idol. How many other parents, siblings, children, lovers and friends had heroically given their lives to prevent Akatsuki's dangerous and misguided efforts to bring about world peace? How many more had died in the Great Collapse, almost-certainly-Rock's attempt to take advantage of Leaf's unprecedented weakness? Or in the Fourth Great Ninja War, which surely wouldn't have happened if Leaf hadn't looked vulnerable?
Hazō couldn't stand by and let that happen out of vague worries about unknown unknowns, or out of a selfish desire to preserve the personal benefits that had come of those countless deaths. That wasn't who he was, and it wasn't the second chance he was determined to repay. But without Jiraiya's death, he wouldn't be head of his own clan. He'd be just another subordinate whose every idea would have to make it past the judgement of an open-minded man who was nevertheless an aged product of a broken culture.
Lord Nara's survival would mean no rule for the less dominant, more humble Shikamaru, or power for the ultimately loyal Kei. Lord Yamanaka would likely not be big on polyamory. A stronger Hokage would be able to shut down the KEI, if it even happened to begin with. In Mist, Yagura would continue to reign, the four of them would remain in the Bingo Book, and Ami wouldn't come to power. Literally none of the conditions for AMITY would be met.
Pain, if the necessary lives weren't spent to defeat him, would be forced to start on a new plan Hazō didn't know.
Hazō doubted his nightmares were going away anytime soon.
"Every one of you," he continued, "is here because you have the true Spirit of Youth deep within your hearts. You want a second chance. At happiness. At revenge. At victory. A ninja who truly, honestly, didn't believe in second chances would break the moment they faced an obstacle they couldn't overcome.
"You didn't break.
"If you take one message away from my words today, it's this. The Spirit of Youth is immortal. For as long as you're alive, no matter how badly you're defeated, no matter how far you fall, there will always be a second chance waiting for you to seize it. Nothing and nobody can take that away from you. Even if you fail again, even the Liberator's uprising is foiled or the Sage himself strikes you down, there will always be another second chance for those who believe in the Spirit of Youth."
In a way, Hazō was the ultimate missing-nin. He had committed a crime beyond imagination and been forced to leave everything, his entire world, behind as a result. Now, he was fighting for his survival against dangers beyond anything the world had ever faced, with no resources or allies beyond what he could win through his own strength and cunning. He knew the paths his fellow missing-nin were on, and where most of them led.
Now, he'd passed on his second chance to them, and then tried to give them hope that would sustain them on the long journey to the east instead of having them scatter to go back to their solitary lives. The sermon and the blessing having been taken care of, the unappointed high priest and living avatar of second chances stepped down from his box and prepared to anoint his first saint.
"Please accept me as your apprentice!"
