(all underlines added)
"We are presently one day away from Leaf," Orochimaru said. "With effort, Leaf is three days from O'uzu. Ideally, we attack in four days. As to which members are on-site, I sent Endō to observe with a telescope from a vast distance two weeks ago. Not only was she unable to identify any individuals, any recovered information could have changed by now. We must prepare for every option. In the best case, it is a weaker pair of their members, perhaps Hidan and Deidara. In the worst case, they have already opened the rift and are defending it with their full force.
If our best opportunity is in 4 days I doubt we will have enough time to not only undergo 2 major surgeries but also to recover adequately enough to be ready to fight and kill S-rankers. Anything that could potentially interfere with our ability to infuse Runes is too much of a risk at this point IMO. We can't have everything and Oro cannot make accurate medical calls when Hazou withholds relevant potential complications like Noburi's ability to overcharge us which we rely heavily upon in our plan making. For all we know the new coils will burst as soon as we try to overfill for the first time.
"If I were them…" Orochimaru trailed off. "Assuming the rift isn't open, but Sasori has reported that completion is near, I would assign either Konan or Itachi to watch over Leaf – using either paper ninjutsu or genjutsu to infiltrate deep into otherwise secret areas. As for their pair… Sasori is occupied, Hidan is useless, and Deidara's flight does not enhance either Konan or Itachi, so they will take Kisame. They could assign four at the rift, as the next international meeting is a year away, and Konan has no doubt built an adequate diplomatic cadre in Rain to free her time for more important matters.
"Adequate" is not necessarily the same as "robust". If we can cause an international incident that is both large enough and dire enough to require AMITY's overlords to intervene with an emergency session we could potentially avoid fighting some members of Akatsuki at the Rift site. The incident could not be anything that could be misconstrued as an attack on an AMITY member polity, so instead we should systematically EM nuke the ocean.
By disrupting shipping lanes to such a degree AMITY's member nations will demand that Akatsuki convene an AMITY meeting to then lead and/or intervene to solve the humanitarian crisis. Of course, to obfuscate our involvement we would have to stage our EM nukes in such a way that their weather phenomenons look like a highly unusual weather pattern originating from an unexplored corner of the ocean.
We'll need our team's feedback, especially Kei's, on whether this weather based distraction could work against Akatsuki but I believe it is worth bringing to our team's attention. Of course, we should
not mention the existence of EM to Oro if we can manage to do so (
instead we should tell him we are junior Illuminati members learning how to control the weather).
Orochimaru gazed upwards for a second. "I have a number of subjects at this laboratory that are suitable for draining, yes. I would use one for your transplant. The subjects are not prepared for transport, and moving them across the continent seems logistically challenging, even though they number only a dozen. I have never before needed to transport so many subjects swiftly over vast distances including an ocean… but with a Wakahisa, it would be doable. At a guess, it would take two weeks – uncomfortably long – and of course, this would still be a small fraction of the chakra available with Leaf."
If Oro thinks two weeks is pushing our luck I would be much more comfortable with any plan(s) that call(s) for the attack on the Rift to happen by the end of this (in game) week.
"Consequently, here is my model of the world at present. Akatsuki will have used their position as lords of the current international regime to establish control over chakra redistribution bloodlines, preventing Leaf from executing an attack by recruiting a hapless Wakahisa and pressing them into service. Additionally, Akatsuki will be monitoring Leaf as close as possible without grossly violating Leaf's sovereignty, so that if any sign of either of our returns is noticed, Akatsuki will immediately prepare for an attack or for retaliation.
I am curious how Akatsuki are enforcing this if all of their other members are (assumed to be) accounted for handling the Rift and AMITY (even with the next scheduled meeting being a year away). If Akatsuki's control is anything remotely similar to how they treated Leaf after Asuma's murder we might be able to convince some Wakahisa to assist us by supplying us with chakra for the Rift fight. If Noburi is the battery equivalent of a special jonin Wakahisa with his current chakra reserves we could have Kei run the estimated numbers to see how many Wakahisa's we'd need to make such a detour and its time commitments worthwhile. We can even ask her and the rest of our team their thoughts on Oro (and maybe Endo too?) assisting us in helping the Wakahisa if it would make the trip even faster. If none of the 6 S-rankers are there I am confident in Snuncle's ability to blitz through whatever is keeping the Wakahisa "controlled".
We would not tell them
why we want the chakra other than we plan on fighting their oppressors (or that the chakra would be payment for services rendered to oust the Akatsuki mooks giving them trouble and/or promises made that would be fulfilled long after J-Dad is back and ready to handle international obligations) and to meet us at a certain location close enough to not let the over-chakra-capacity burn us too much before the fight yet close enough that our techniques will be mostly still running by the time we arrive at the Rift site.
As a stretch goal we could try to recruit the new Mizukage to the rift fight as another jinchuuriki would be a welcome addition to our raiding force, but we'd have to explain the merits of the Rift and expand the OPSEC circle of people who know about Necromancy so eh, probably not. Maybe we could throw it to Kei as an option to see if she or anyone else on the team shoots it down hard.
Furthermore, this would be necessary reconnaissance to see if, instead of forcibly subjugating them, the Wakahisa have been bribed by the Akatsuki to give Akatsuki preferential access to chakra recharging. If the Rift is being defended not only by S-rankers but S-rankers sipping chakra juice for who knows how long we will need to factor that into our attack plans. WOOSH-like Itachi or even worse, all of them with extra shadow clones, would absolutely necessitate revising our plan of attack.
"My instinctive reaction is that I would rather fight a prepared and assembled Akatsuki with Tsunade at my side than fight alone against a subset, but that may be irrational. More importantly, attacking alone isn't resilient to the possibility that they may have all six at the rift site, whereas if we work with Leaf, we would at least retain surprise in that situation. On margin I would prefer to involve Leaf. However, my information is incomplete regarding your team's capabilities and the practical performance of these runes, which I assume you've tested extensively. What would you have us do, and why would you have us do it?"
Honestly, it is time for us to go back to our team and talk about our options while Oro finishes digesting our research notes. Both he and Hazou need to catch up on what the other has been doing and Oro himself noted that haste will only bring ruin down upon us all without sufficient prep for such a fight.
