"My belly is definitely bigger than it was before."
Congratulations, Hazou! I'm sure Ino will be quite interested in finding out you have had...
"You have a little piece of a dead man inside of you."
...a yikes.
Probably best not to tell her about it right away. If we're going full pragmatic might as well go full OPSEC too in that regard.
Hazō scanned the scroll of post-surgery information.
I am SO GLAD that addition made it into the plan.
No exploding coils for us and it flows nicely into the next part of the plan.
"And frankly, he's right. He's not going to contribute anything of value to the fight against Akatsuki. He doesn't have the reserves to summon a Boss summon, or even relevant jōnin summons, and none of his seals are going to be game-changing. Anything he can do, you can do better. Rocket Boots? You have your stronger, reusable version. Force Walls? Force Claws are just as deadly and far easier to deliver to an enemy when we're initiating the attack. Your explosives obviously knock anything he can make out of the water. He left a stack of privacy seals, Banshee Fuckers, and a few thousand skywalkers. He's being reasonable. Honestly, disengaging when he gets overwhelmed is real growth for him. He's just also being… Kagome."
Yeah this one hurts more than being awake for one of Oro's more creative surgeries. I really hope we can find a way to establish a line of communication with Kagome sooner rather than later because the dude is our family member and he is in more danger on his own. While Hazou may be the ultimate prize in ninja lootboxes for a village to capture Kagome ranks up there as well and he no longer has his best line of defense: anonymity from his pre-Hazou days.
...I really hope Hidan doesn't have blood samples of our other team members or this is gonna get real bad, real fast.
"Will it be a problem if he's not there for Naruto to give the retroactive 'you were never actually missing-nin' orders?" Hazō said. "It should probably be fine. Getting his old life in Leaf back should make things easier on him, at least."
Mari smiled sadly. "I don't think we're ever getting our old lives back. Things are never going to be the same as they were. Still, there's no giving up. We've dilly-dallied enough – come on back to the skytower so we can set a plan for the next few days."
'Crossing the Rubicon' vibes intensify.
As they stepped in, another Orochimaru standing over one of the people glanced at them, raised an eyebrow, then quickly stepped out. A couple of the people on the gurneys turned their heads to Hazō and Noburi, tracking them with dull eyes. Hazō felt a faint chill in his back. Many of the ninja Orochimaru had captured were genin, kids younger than Hazō.
Time to set aside our normal morality indefinitely and be a perfect utilitarian for the sake of the planet.
If only we could punch all of Akatsuki in the face and be done with them.
"Do you intend to involve Mist, or is the intention to convince the entire Wakahisa Clan to commit high treason against Mist for a gain primarily to Leaf?" Kei said.
"...is that an option?" Hazō asked.
"No."
"Then let's get Mist's approval to take the Wakahisa. With Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Leaf's summoners, we'll have a ridiculous amount of firepower to help us 'negotiate' the Mizukage or the AMI, whoever is in power in Mist now, into helping us. We could have internal support as well – for instance, Kei, would the Mori back us?"
"That question is premature," Kei said. "We should first ask whether Naruto would accept inducting Mist into the conspiracy."
...Could we just buy chakra from the Wakahisa while telling Mist we plan on using it to kill Akatsuki and nothing more? It's not like they need to know what the chakra is for beyond that as long as they don't approach the Rift site too closely. By only giving chakra they could maintain enough plausible deniability if our attack falters (they could blame Noburi transferring chakra and Hazou being bullshit-tier when it comes to novel inventions) to survive AMITY reprisals.
Sure the Mori will probably suspect some further plot is afoot but we don't need to worry about reprisals from them in the first place if AMITY is already going to be dropped on Leaf or our heads in its entirety. I'd rather sow some chaos in AMITY when the call goes out to dogpile Leaf and then Mist starts dragging their heels. Furthermore if the Wakahisa are the ones filling our Leaf reinforcements up that means our team does not need to rendezvous with the other Leaf ninja before we attack the Rift site, but I'll go into more detail at the bottom of this post.
A simple: 'We plan on killing Akatsuki so how much chakra could we buy from you for that purpose? Don't ask any more questions than are strictly necessary for obvious OPSEC reasons' should be more than enough IMO. The less they know about the plot the better for them if we fail.
"As an aside," Mari said, "I don't see how Akatsuki wouldn't find out a Leaf-Mist alliance against them. We're going to need hours of set-up on site, and that's plenty of time for any of their agents to notice the Wakahisa disappearing and warn their bosses. I know intelligence networks are generally terrible, but unless we find and kill every single spy in Mist, they're going to know."
"That's fine," Hazō said. "For the right quantity of chakra, we can deal with Akatsuki having forewarning."
"Even if it means Akatsuki taking the offensive on our unprepared forces, before we have all the summons and shadow clones ready? Even if it means you get attacked mid-infusion on a rune?" Mari asked.
"We can work around it…" Hazō said hesitantly. "Getting them out of their fortress would itself be a win."
Gah, if only we still had Kagome so he could set up a fallback point as a contingency to Akatsuki bumrushing us. Seeing Kagome's entrenched defenses going up against Akatsuki would have been sooooooooooo satisfying. Sure his defenses would not be able to hold out indefinitely but I'd like to think he could buy us enough time for Hazou to infuse a Dome rune to protect us more thoroughly.
"Okay…" Hazō said. "I want to preface this with the obvious point that this seems like an Orochimaru-flavored idea, and that I am proposing this idea because I am willing to take extreme measures to kill Akatsuki, not because I am somehow being puppeted by Orochimaru. What if we didn't ask for their agreement?"
I hear some
theme music in the background.
I'm sure it is nothing to worry (more) about.
"Right, so we're clear that this is a morally atrocious idea," Mari said. "Let's be pragmatic. I think it would work. We would definitely kill some of them by accident in the fighting, but we could probably capture enough ninja to be worthwhile. Moon's less than a hundred ninja. Given Hidan being Hidan, maybe less than fifty? We could do it, but we wouldn't get the amount of chakra you want, Hazō. Tea is probably out – their clans and ninja are too spread out, and I don't think there would be a big population center of ninja better than Moon. Noodle though…"
Do the minor villages just NOT report to AMITY nor have Akatsuki spies in them?
I am confused that we can rationalize spending so much time on this when a few hours after contacting Mist would be too much.
"Are there logistics to consider here?" Noburi asked. "How far out of the way is Noodle? How much prep do we need for the attack? Noodle is farther from O'Uzu. How much harder would it be to transport all their ninja than transporting people from Moon?"
"Point," Kei said. "It is three days from Noodle to O'Uzu. Carrying captives will slow us further. That is ample time for a Noodle ninja on mission to return to their village, notice the massacre, and travel immediately to their closest ally, Leaf, to request aid in dealing with this problem. Unless Akatsuki's surveillance can be foiled, this prompts an investigation, at which point Akatsuki observes that Tsunade and all Leaf's summoners are mysteriously on a mission, in a world where Zoo Rush is a known capability. Akatsuki will be informed by Seventh Path communication of our incoming attack, and AMITY retaliation is certain. Each step in this chain seems much more likely than not. I cannot judge the aggregate risk immediately, but my intuition suggests that this will be unacceptable."
Man, we are REALLY shitty allies: first Isan and now Noodle
almost got got just because it would further our
ambitions needs.
No warnings, no negotiations, just pure EM-cold calculations deciding the fates of thousands of people we've never met and neither personally hate nor love.
"Your proposal for claiming Hidden Moon's chakra however… it is interesting. Viable, even. I did not think you had the audacity to attack hidden villages head-on, though I suppose with the power you now wield, you are starting to recognize the possibilities now open to you. Yes, let us take Hidden Moon's ninja. The two days of additional time required are grating, but the additional chakra will be invaluable."
I'm still confused by the logistics. Wouldn't Moon's fate alert AMITY and/or Akatsuki while we are transferring the comatose population?
What does our team expect the potential catalysts for Akatsuki's retaliation to be? Does it differ based on which village we raid and if so to what degree does Kei model that chain of events unfolding for each of the scenarios we proposed?
But now, with the Superchiller rune giving him the untamed power of Elemental Mastery… no matter what, Akatsuki was going to lose.
As ominous as inventing a WMD we plan to use should be.
10/10 line.
"Tsunade can heal you on the way if required," Orochimaru said. "I will contact her immediately with the following instructions: first, contact all Leaf summoners currently on mission via the Seventh Path and instruct them to abandon their missions and meet us at a pre-designated meeting point. Then, instruct the Fox to gather any Leaf summoners except the Turtle Summoner – who is unlikely to be able to summon a Boss summon and thus provides minimal value while making the simultaneous disappearance of all Leaf summoners obvious – along with a limited selection of trustworthy jōnin and chūnin, no more than fifty in total. Send those chūnin and jōnin on reasonably-obfuscated missions, in random directions with varied timings, with similar instructions to meet us at a pre-designated meeting point. From there, we will proceed to Moon, then to O'Uzu.
If possible we should use Neji as a mule to smuggle in as many rune blanks and seals into Leaf before the fighting begins to better arm Leaf for AMITY's reprisal(s). Even the threat of Hazou just suddenly dumping a whole bunch of not-easily-identifiable seals should be enough to give any Akatsuki stationed in Leaf pause as they would hypothesize those seals could very well be countermeasures for them specifically. Ideally we'd get at least one Dome rune blank through so Naruto could have it positioned in the center of Leaf for Hazou to infuse ASAP should the need arise for us to hole up in Leaf (ideally once we move the Rift). Have normal Air Dome seals around the rune blank so Hazou can stay protected long enough for the big dome to activate.
Bringing Conjura along to the fight with Itachi may be ill advised given their history at the Dragon fights. Other than that the more boss summons the merrier.
I'd still like to workshop the Wakahisa deal option without the assumption that we must inform Mist about the Rift. We're certainly mad enough to do something stupid to Akatsuki after they killed Asuma and we don't really need Mist's fighters, only the Wakahisa's chakra. We desperately need to have Kei calculate hypothetical response times from Akatsuki based on where we source chakra. If we could have Leaf secretly contact Mist's leadership about only seeing if massive quantities chakra
could be bought that might save us some response time too (the less time spent negotiating after Akatsuki has been alerted the better). I admit I'd really prefer NOT to be involved in another village's eventual destruction, but if we are going full pragmatist then having the Moon chakra
and the Wakahisa available would be a huge boon to our chances. Our team can focus on securing Moon ninja while Naruto can look into hashing out a deal with Mist. There's no gaurantee either option will work so it is only logical to pursue multiple solutions when are forces are already divided. If Mist really pushes too far in the secret negotiations Naruto can always walk away; it's gonna be his call anyway.
Huh, now that I think about it, we should encourage Naruto to establish some red herring anti-Akatsuki plots to obfuscate what we are doing even more. It would be suspicious if Leaf didn't have
any brainstorming or preparations going on about how to defeat Akatsuki and with the proper anti-espionage efforts we might buy ourselves more time before Akatsuki realizes which plot is actually underway when it starts.
We should slip a note to Naruto via Neji the mule about Kagome once we have the opportunity (but ideally before the fighting starts). If we could ensure a friendly face (maybe Honoka if she is ready?) could meet up with Kagome under the pretense of another mission and then bring him safely back to Leaf it would be one less loose end for us to worry about. He's frankly too valuable to risk him leaking knowledge of runes to another major player and by using friendly Leaf assets we can ensure Kagome survives his reunion with Leaf after the Rift fight kicks off. We can use 7th path communications so Kagome can verify for himself he isn't walking into an ambush by staking out his rescue squad personally and that has the added benefit of ensuring there is almost no chance of mind control affecting the messengers we use to contact him.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Still gonna Lore Update vote since the holidays are near and free time is limited.
All in all a very satisfying chapter with both parts. Cannai giving warm fuzzy feelings neatly contrasts with the cold horrors of what we have done and what we must do.
