This line made me laugh. Thanks.
It's OK, EJ. Y'all have a lot on your plates.
No no no, Grandpa Warcrimes is Ryugamine. Let's not get Snuncle Warcrimes and Grandpa Warcrimes mixed up now.
*laughs in extra coil*
Who said anything about good? They'd be hesitant because the implication of "we kidnapped your entire village and then gave you shinies" is "we have so much power that we can afford to strengthen a potential enemy instead of killing them, you really shouldn't make us mad" and"if you cooperate with us, you might get more shinies" and also "we're genuinely willing to be allies and are not trying to backstab you, because if we were going to do that we could have done it right there". I'm relying on greed, fear, and recognition of overwhelming force, not some nebulous sense of obligation.
As @JustForThis said, Leaf is not safe that way. I suppose if it takes years to discover that Moon was destroyed, people might not care enough to connect it to us, but is it really likely to take years? It takes one Moon ninja to be on a mission and find their village gone, one fleeing group of civilians who manage to survive the crossing to another island after their ninja vanish, even one missing-nin who visits the island, realises there are no ninja anymore, and talks till the information reaches a spy network.
I guess? We'd also be giving up the element of surprise (though I don't know how much that matters in this case).
Started an giant effortpost on Infosec, and the likely leak vectors, who would pursue that info and how, but it doesn't super matter.
Zoo rush and Essie Rush are now known capabilities of Leaf. When Leaf beat Akatsuki within 24 hours of Moon's destruction, people will do the maths.
This seems very out-of keeping with the intelligence networks we've seen so far. Everyone in Moon's area of protection will learn very quickly, and even if this area somehow homes exactly 0% informants, any trader who visits will learn about it, then the info will reach merchant groups and the Yaks, both of witch work for/with one intelligence agencies.
Traditional IRL quote for that is "I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all." Scene in The Train Job - Wikipedia with the repeated "here's all the money we got from Niska" speech is also a handy point of comparison. Mal had no grand expectation of moral virtue on the captives' part, just pattern recognition, plus either self-preservation OR a slightly more nuanced sense of duty. "Your boss would want to hear about this, and I'm giving you an option to survive so you can tell him." Though in this case it's more like "the next generation of Moon ninja would want to exist, and I'm giving you the option to survive so you can raise them."
If they cooperate and allow us to hire them for a "chakra donor" mission, we don't need to knock them out at all. Them backstabbing us mid-mission, after accepting an advance payment, would be a slam-dunk causus belli. Either they somehow manage to pull a "no witnesses" ambush, with no prep time, on an anti-Akatsuki strike group which includes Orochimaru... or whoever got away simply explains most of what happened to the rest of AMITY, who then point and laugh at Moon for having thrown the first punch and missed, giving Leaf official permission to retaliate.
Alternatively, they backstab us by one of them sneaking off to Akatsuki at the Rift site and saying "hey, Leaf is going to kill you somehow, and since you're guaranteeing AMITY we'd prefer that that not happen", at which point Akatsuki murders us and Moon maybe gets money/shinies/political power as a reward. Besides, even if they did the ambush thing you describe and did kill most of our group, the assault would be wrecked, so Akatsuki would still be alive and would still be in charge of AMITY, so Leaf would not get official permission to retaliate.
For that to work they'd have to already know the destination - Akatsuki is presumably not exactly trying to advertise their rift fortress, while Leaf's forces don't need to explain much beyond "follow my lead" or "wait here" - and either be able to run significantly faster than us over the open ocean, or slip out through the staging-area perimeter defenses which we set up immediately on arrival. Could construct a 5SB'd MEW bunker for our honored guests, with all the luxuries that can fit in a storage seal, and air holes exactly wide enough to fit Water Whip. Assuming they somehow bust out of that field-expedient killbox, and evade radar runes (which they'd have no way of knowing of in advance), they then need to attempt parley with literal Jashin cultists, primed to be unusually suspicious of intruders.
How sure is Moon going to be of that, given that Leaf is widely known to have already taken out Kakuzu in self-defense / opportunistically, and seems to have an actual plan this time? A plan which they're sufficiently confident in to be polite about, rather than rushing for maximum surprise and conventional efficiency.
I maintain that this should definitely qualify as sufficient narrative grounding to replace Hazou's mechanical Trouble Aspect "Foot in Mouth" with "Pretty Damn Far."
>me getting the biggest "eh, mid" of my entire life ready to go in response
If they like Akatsuki so much, we shouldn't be killing Akatsuki in the first place.
To be fair they have to be sort of mid, this is a minor village weak enough to get stomped by five people. I expect they'll have bloodlines Orochimaru barely cares about, some jonin-tier techniques, but nothing as busted as Strength Of The Storm.
They're still a hidden village, so they should have some noteworthy or niche-but-useful stuff, even if it's not, objectively amazing.
If Hidan wants to throw hands with Oro, Tsunade, and Cannai he's more than welcome to
I worry about him showing up with a posse, one of whom slips through the dragnet. I guess we're probably going to be sufficiently well-prepared against both escapees and those who stumble upon the Slurp, but I'd still really rather not spend time going through the scrolls that they have lying around. Heck, I don't even want Hazo to step foot in Moon. If Mari sees something cool I'm all for her grabbing it as long as it takes less than half a second.
And that's assuming we ever get mechanics for any of them. The QMs where barely able to keep up with rune research so expecting them to create any jutsu that aren't reskins of stuff that we already have and don't care about is just wishful thinking
Obviously we wouldn't be properly looting it before the rift battle, but plunder will presumably still be there when we get back - especially if we re-enclose the place with a force dome on our way out. That's also fully compatible with scenarios where they more-or-less voluntarily cooperate. Defensive bubble can be spun as keeping chakra beasts from wandering into their homes while they're away, and overt looting replaced with longer-term trade agreements.
I want to get back to Leaf as soon as humanly possible. Unless one of them says something that strongly convinces us that visiting Moon will accelerate Rift exploration it's just not worth it.
Don't condition on this. It's not happening. There is no universe in which we back out at this point. Come hell or high water, we are doing this.
