"Excuse me," Keiko interjected icily. "We are getting off track. You have offered to save my sister's life in exchange for...what? What is it that you actually want?"
Wakahisa grinned and lounged back in his chair, one arm draped over the back of it. "Hey, it's not just that. I'm offering the world on a string—your sister's life, koi for the Gōketsu, training and barrel maintenance for Nobby, money, all kinds of things. As for what I want...make me an offer."
Hazō pondered him for a moment, then glanced at Mari. She met his eyes and nodded slightly.
I'll back your play, her face said.
"Keiko, is Panashe on duty tonight?" Careful phrasing; mustn't let this little dipshit know that Keiko had previously been stripped of her tessera. Hopefully that had been reversed after her spectacular success against the Condor Summoner.
Keiko arched an eyebrow. "She is."
"Could you please summon her?"
Keiko studied him for a moment, then pricked her finger and made the requisite handseals to produce a puff of orange smoke from which stepped a human-sized, whip-slender scaled killing machine with an incredibly intimidating personality.
"Summoner?"
"My brother asked me to call you, Specialist."
Deep-set eyes turned to Hazō, the slight head-tilt a question that the assassin felt no need to voice.
"Thank you for coming, Specialist," Hazō said politely. "Am I correct that you would be able to carry objects back to the Seventh Path with you? Say, something about a hundred and eighty pounds and a little under six feet long?" He wasn't actually sure if the pangolin could or not; he'd seen them
appear with things but he couldn't offhand remember if they'd ever taken anything back. Still, the assassin would be smart enough to pick up the cue.
"Yes, although I do not take orders from you."
"Hazō," Mari scolded. "Whatever you're planning, stop."
Yasuji's eyes were growing steadily wider and flicking back and forth from one face to another around the room, then to Panashe's dagger-long claws and back to Hazō.
"Please hold," Hazō said to Panashe. He turned back to Yasuji. "Tell me about Ami, and about the barrels."
"Uh...what about her?"
Hazō smiled coldly. "Kid, here's what I know about you: You're a skinwaste partyboy whose rich daddy got him sent out of the city, probably two steps ahead of some scandal. You show up right after my sister's"—he paused for a moment, trying to find a word that would encompass the relation between Keiko and Ami, then gave up—"sister gets arrested by Mist ANBU. You spin us some wild story about how we're doomed and only you have the solution. A story that, based on everything that Kagome-sensei knows, is barely conceivable but insanely dangerous for the Wakahisa to have done. In short: You're threatening us and you're probably full of shit. The only question is which parts of it are half-digested kernels of truth mixed in with the shit?
"Now, the Gōketsu have a pretty good place here in Leaf. I love this city, and it's the best possible place to bring my dreams to reality. That said, I know my priorities and family comes first, no matter
what that requires. Which means that Keiko and Noburi come first." He glanced at Noburi and chuckled. "I think my family all know that I'm willing to go
pretty damn far to protect them. That said, it would upset me a great deal if you did anything, including withholding information, that endangered Ami or that increased the risk of Noburi losing access to chakra."
He trailed off, letting the only-barely-veiled threat hang in the air. Mari had drilled it into him: Threats were most effective when they were either extremely specific or utterly vague. The target's imagination could always find something worse than what you would think up on your own.
As a side benefit, offering no specific threat allowed the Gōketsu to maintain a paper-thin fiction of prosocial behavior.
Some distant part of him wondered if this was the optimal strategy, if there was something wrong with him that threats of murder were his first resort in this situation. He pushed the thought away; Yasuji was a clan kid, and a noble one at that. He would have grown up with privilege and power and it would never dawn on him that he might not be in control of a situation. He needed to be shocked out of that smug comfort.
"Hazō," Mari said, her voice cracking like a whip. "Stop. This is not becoming."
His eyes snapped to hers and he paused, considering, until she gave him a millimetric nod.
He relaxed and blew out a breath. "You're right." He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment. Yasuji remained pleasingly silent, not even shifting position.
Hazō's eyes opened and his face smiled. "Please excuse me, Yasuji—may I call you Yasuji? Thank you, and please feel free to call me Hazō." He glanced aside at the pangolin killer standing casually beside her Summoner. "Panashe, thank you for being available. I apologize for wasting your time."
Panashe looked at Keiko and cocked her scaly head in query. At Keiko's nod she turned back to Hazō. "Not a problem, Summoner's brother. 'Hurry up and abort' is pretty much the nature of my job whenever High Command gets involved." She eyed Yasuji consideringly. "If there's anything you need help with, feel free to call. We have some excellent garbage dumps on the Seventh Path." Without looking away from the Mist ninja, Panashe vanished in a puff of smoke.
"I hope you'll forgive me if I came on too strong," Hazō said, giving Yasuji a friendly smile. "I'm very concerned about Ami and Noburi and sometimes I get a little out in front of myself. Speaking as a current Clan Head to a future one, I appreciate the fact that you brought this offer to us so quickly after the opportunity presented itself." Pause. "So
very quickly." The Iron Nerve blinked his face butcher-cold again, just for one moment, and then restored the welcoming smile.
"So, tell me, why exactly are the Wakahisa elders willing to sell clan secrets to traitors? They
do still regard us as traitors, yes?"
Yasuji eyed him for a moment, then visibly made himself relax. "Well, I don't know that I'd say 'traitor', exactly...."
Noburi snorted. "Yeah? What would you say?"
"Ah, Nobster—"
"Excuse me," Hazō said, raising a hand to cut Yasuji off. The young man froze at the tone.
"Noburi," Hazō said, his voice full of smiles, "I got the feeling you weren't on the best of terms with Yasuji. Are you all right with him using nicknames for you or would you prefer that he not do that?"
Noburi eyed Hazō carefully. "It's fine. We're all good here...right?"
"Of course." He turned back to their guest. "Yasuji, please continue. You were telling us what your family calls us instead of 'traitor'?"
"Yeah...you know, I just realized that I'm really tired. Just got in today, got settled in, then came straight here. How about we pick this up tomorrow?"
"Oh, my. I thought this was going so well." The smile widened. "Are you sure you can't stay just a little longer?"
Mari sighed in disgust and rolled up to her feet. "All right, Hazō, that's enough. This poor young man has been traveling, undoubtedly for days. He's tired, but he came straight here to give us vital information. He's been nothing but courteous and helpful and you're being very demanding." She held out a hand to Yasuji and helped him to his feet, curling her arm around his like a courted noblewoman taking her swain's arm.
"I apologize for him," she said sweetly to Yasuji. "He can be so pushy. I'd be so grateful if you'd forgive us. Please?" The last words were spoken in an imploring tone and with her very best hopeful-kitty eyes.
"Of...of course," Yasuji said, recovering a little bit of his swagger in response to her clear flirtation. "How could I ever do anything to upset such a beautiful flower?"
"Excellent!" She gave a wide smile and a happy bounce. Yasuji's brain melted. "Now, you wanted to sleep, yes? Let me show you one of our guest rooms."
"I...I have quarters," he said faintly. "With Ambassador Kurosawa."
"Oh, pish!" She waved dismissively. "It's dark outside, and cold. No, I won't hear of it. You're staying with us tonight. Now, come along so that I can get you settled. Personally." Her lips twitched in a tiny and (to Hazō's eyes) disturbingly saucy smile. The eye contact she gave Yasuji left the air in the room more electric than any Lightning Element technique could have. Yasuji couldn't look away.
o-o-o-o
The rest of the clan spent several minutes in awkward silence as they waited for Mari to return so that they could continue the conversation. After fifteen minutes, when it became clear that she was doing more than showing their guest where the room was, they attempted to restart the planning discussion. Mostly, it ended up going in circles due to lack of information.
It took Mari a good two hours to finish getting their guest 'settled' in one of the guest rooms. One of the guest rooms on a different floor. And when she returned her hair was wild and her movements languid.
"Ahhh," she said, dropping back into her seat and gratefully accepting the mug of tea that Noburi wordlessly offered. "Damn, I forgot what it's like to fuck a nineteen-year-old."
Haru's eyes, already suspicious and judging, bugged out. "You slept with him?! He's a Mist ninja! He—"
"He's a young barely-a-man that I can lead around by his dick," she said flatly. "He's had his free sample, and he'll dance to my tune from now on in hopes of getting more." She stretched languorously, then grimaced. "Ugh. Teenagers. Enthusiasm and stamina are about the only things they've got going for them. No skill, no experience, and they get angry if you try to
tell them how to do a good job. I practically had to move his head myself in order to get him to—"
"Thank you, Mari!" Hazō said quickly. "Did you learn anything from him?" It seemed a good plan to head off Haru's horror and Keiko's incipient explosion of impatience.
She chuckled. "I did, but hold on." She looked over at Haru. "Get this straight: I'm an adult woman who is in charge of her own sexuality. If I want to fuck someone for my own satisfaction then I don't give two shits about your prudery or the scandalized wagging of Leaf's collective tongue. If you have a problem with that, keep your mouth shut or get the fuck out of this clan." She paused, sipping her tea without dropping her frank and barely-not-threatening eye contact. "On the other hand, I'm also a trained infiltration and seduction specialist. Men, especially men your age, are stupid. Haul their ashes one time and they can't keep their mouths shut. They want to impress their fuck so they brag and boast and spill out every secret they have if you simply nudge them vaguely in the right direction.
"Little Yasuji up there"—she gestured dismissively towards the upstairs bedroom—"wouldn't have been my first choice of partners, but it's been too long since I boned a ninja. Civilians don't scratch the itch all the way, you know? Anyway, first choice or not, it was useful. I now know everything the little bastard knows about Ami, his mission here, and a lot of nonsense that I don't give two shits about."
"AND?!"
Mari nodded a mild apology to Keiko for making her wait. "It's not as bad as we feared. Ami is probably not going to get more than a very stern talking to. She's a complete pain in the ass to her Kage, but executing her would cause problems with the AMI. I'm sure that Ren wouldn't hesitate to do it if Ami pushed her luck too far, but she probably hasn't done that yet.
"Founding the AMI and recruiting the Mist jinchūriki interfered so much with the Mizukage's power that I frankly don't understand why she wasn't executed on the spot...except that she basically asked to go into exile almost immediately by coming to Leaf. Once here, she founded an equivalent organization that will interfere with the
Hokage's power, and she didn't keep all the power to herself." She tipped her head in a 'and then there's the other thing' gesture. "Of course, then she went and got Leaf another Summoning Scroll, which is probably what triggered this recall."
"But—!"
"It's okay! I promise, it's going to be okay. Ami is a pain in the Mizukage's ass but she's useful and she hasn't
quite crossed the line into treason. Or, at least, not enough that it would be worth the shitshow that would happen with the AMI ninja—which, don't forget, is made up of most of the younger ninja in Mist, clan and clanless alike. She's definitely dancing on the line, but she's stayed barely on the right side of 'more useful than treasonous'." She nodded to Hazō. "A lesson which perhaps we should all take to heart: As the Sage said, success covers many sins but you need a consistent and well-established pattern of big successes if you're going to commit those sins."
Hazō frowned. "I don't think he said that."
"Eh, close enough." She wiggled down in her chair and stretched her legs out (purely by coincidence, causing her robe to ride up to two inches above her knees and Haru's face to ignite). She crossed her legs at the ankle and turned her gaze to the ceiling as she organized her thoughts.
"So. Ami's unlikely to be executed. She'll get a stern talking to, maybe some administrative punishment, but there's a good chance she'll be sent back here relatively soon. If Kurosawa has a brain, Ami will be placed under the command of this new ambassador.
"As to Yasuji, he's a lot like a dumber version of Hazō, except more at ease with the ladies. And richer. And grew up in a clan with a position of power and prestige. Anyway, he's trying to pull some kind of sky-brain political move. He's coming to us, claiming he's got the sun and the moon on a string and is willing to sell them to us in exchange for the stars and the hills. He then takes the stars and the hills back to his father and convinces him to give us the sun and the moon."
"He has nothing?" Hazō asked, wanting to be sure. "No authority to negotiate?"
Mari wobbled one hand back and forth, then immediately wrapped it around the heat of her steaming teacup again. "He's not impotent"—she paused and smiled, taking a sip of her tea in order to leave the words hanging in the air—"but he's not a free agent either. My guess is that in his role as junior ambassador he can't negotiate on his own in the name of Mist—only the senior ambassador, Kurosawa Hinji, can do that—but he can negotiate for his clan in his role as an important member, provided that those negotiations don't interfere with his ambassadorial duties. Basically, if it's clan-internal then neither Kurosawa nor the Mizukage will care too much."
"Can he actually deliver on what he promised?" Noburi asked. "The barrel. Is it actually going to fade? Can he get me a replacement?"
Mari sighed and sat up, biting her lip and meeting Noburi's eyes apologetically. "I'm sorry, Noburi. I don't know for sure, but I think he probably wasn't lying. He talked, but he was bragging and spinning things so much that I can't be certain. My guess is that he wasn't completely making it up; yes, your barrel will fade and yes, there is a solution. Whether it's what he said or something else, I'm not sure, but we can at least be confident that there
is a solution."
Noburi digested that.
"Was he being honest about the time horizon? Do I really have several years?"
She nodded. "I would assume so. If it were imminent then it would have been to his advantage to say so."
"Okay, good. Then let's put that aside and focus on Ami." He glanced at Keiko and smiled. "She's the important thing right now. What can we do there to make sure it works out as well as possible?"
"Recruit Asuma's help," Hazō said immediately. "He needs to hear about all of this right away."
Everyone nodded, decisively and thankfully.
"Mari already said the important part," Hazō continued. "Ami is unlikely to die but the Mizukage wants to declaw her. She could be sent back here and placed under Kurosawa's authority. She could be sent to run some research facility or holding area way in the back of beyond. She could be sent on a scouting trip through the eastern continent if Mist is still interested in expanding their territory in that direction."
"When it comes to direct personal threats, Ami is a coward," Mari said. She held up a hand to silence Keiko's protest. "I am in a better position to judge this than you are, and it's true. She's brilliant at social manipulation"—she preened for a moment—"although, of course, not quite in my class. Actually, she's not that good at I&S in general; she's too...unusual for that. Very good at politics, interrogation, and manipulation, moderately good at combat, but terrible at infiltration or seduction. She would make an abysmal scout, although she'd be great at contact and recruitment with any of the eastern nations. That means that she couldn't be sent alone; she'd need a bodyguard, either another jōnin or two to three combat-spec chūnin. That's a significant force for the Mizukage to tie up simply to get Ami out of her hair. She would be good as a commander for a seal research site out in the back of beyond, but sealmasters are valuable and hanging them out in the breeze is a big risk."
"The Nagi Island seals are a goldmine," Kagome-sensei noted. "Kurosawa saw them, so she's got the picture in her head. If she didn't realize how important they are then her brain must be made of cat poop."
Hazō nodded slowly, working through the logic. "At the same time, those seals must be incredibly powerful. An infusion failure while researching them could be cataclysmic. The other villages will undoubtedly have a problem with anyone else researching the seals alone; I would guess that Asuma has already sent a guard group to keep an eye on the site while the various Kage sort out what to do with it. Still, the Kurosawa must have at least one seal master, so the best plan would be to send that person to Nagi Island in order to absorb the image of the seals, then use them as the core of a research group somewhere far away from Mist itself. Ami could be put in charge of that group."
"What are you talking about?" Haru demanded. "'Absorb the image of the seals'? What?"
Hazō frowned, then nodded in realization. "Right. We never got around to talking about bloodlines, did we? It wasn't lack of trust, it's just that there's been a lot going on and it slipped my mind." He gestured apologetically. "The Kurosawa bloodline is called the Iron Nerve. It allows me to reproduce any conscious muscle action I've ever made in any part of my body. Once I've successfully drawn a seal, I can flawlessly reproduce that seal every time. If I get stumbling drunk, I can perfectly reproduce being a stumbling drunk in the future when I'm actually sober." He shrugged at Haru's envious frown. "It is what it is. Anyway, the Kurosawa family's Iron Nerve is apparently an offshoot of the Uchiha family's Sharingan from generations ago. Just as the Sharingan allows them to copy jutsu, the Iron Nerve allows me to copy seals. Any seal that I see, I maintain an image of it in my head forever. I can't necessarily draw it perfectly on the first try, but I have the image. It makes it much easier to research other people's seals and to practice drawing them." He didn't bother going into the fiddly bits, the bits that no non-sealmaster would care about, such as how it allowed him to reproduce the seals of other sealmasters such that those sealmasters could infuse those seals. No one who didn't make seals would understand how ridiculous that was or how badly it violated the natural order.
Haru blinked. "You're just...telling me that? About your bloodline?"
Hazō took a deep breath. "Haru, you need to get this through your head: You are part of this clan. Yes, of course I told my clansman the nature of my bloodline. You might need that information some day and we wouldn't have recruited you if we didn't think you were trustworthy."
"But..."
"Look, do we really need to spend time on this right now or can you just put a pin in it and think about it on your own time?"
Haru straightened in his chair. "Yes. I can do that, sir."
"Good to hear," Mari said. "One more aspect of being in this clan? I'm the matriarch and therefore your boss. Sneer at my sexuality again and I can legally kick your ass through a wall headfirst without anyone saying boo."
"Mari," Hazō warned.
Ice blue eyes turned to him. "Do we have a problem?" The tone was clear.
Hazō thought about that carefully. "As your Clan Head, I do not like it when you threaten other Gōketsu. You are a role model for the clan members and a symbol that defines the perception of the rest of Leaf."
A fine-lined eyebrow rose. "So you don't want me to use
physical means to express my displeasure when insulted by the most junior member of our little pack?"
"Um...."
"Good to know. Now, we were talking about Ami?"
"Hazō was saying that she will be sent to head up a doomed research project into seals that should not be known to humanity." Keiko's voice was cold. "I do not accept this possible future. Figure out how we can avoid it. Now."
Hazō digested that for a moment, forcing himself to push down the instinctive hackle-raising caused by her tone. He took a slow breath, debating whether or not to call her out on it. On the one hand, she was already stressed enough and pushing her too much farther could have bad consequences. Also, derailing the conversation into a debate about power politics would not address the actual issue at hand. He needed her help in figuring out how to talk to Asuma, and a moment wasted was a moment not used.
"Since you ask so nicely, dear sister." He allowed his smile to express the reproof that he would not spend time or words on. "As I said, the very first thing we do is talk to Asuma. Tell him everything that happened here tonight, ask for his help. The floor is open on how exactly to word that. Also, it's late and he probably isn't at the Tower. Do we interrupt him at home or wait for morning?"
o-o-o-o
"...and then we came here," Hazō said.
Asuma had been sleepy when the Gōketsu arrived but had become steadily more alert as the debriefing continued, especially as he got some very strong tea inside him. Now he looked at Mari, his face a mix of surprise and displeasure.
"You slept with the amba—"
"Before you finish that sentence, My Lord, be aware that I'm a jōnin of the Leaf. My personal relations are my own insofar as they do not interfere with the performance of my duties or reflect poorly on the honor of the city or its command. The little prick came to us in his capacity as a Wakahisa, not as an ambassador. I slept with him as a tactical maneuver aimed at extracting information and compliance from a foreign ninja, no different from any seduction or honeypot mission. I am now providing all acquired intelligence to you, in full, as is my duty." She smiled. "Granted, it was made easier by the fact that I hadn't gotten plowed in a few days and he was a middling-good lay once I gave him a little training."
Asuma's ears pinked.
"Sir," Hazō said, hoping to spare his Hokage (and himself) further embarrassment and also prevent a moralistic debate, "if you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer them. If not, I would be grateful if we could discuss next steps with regard to Lady Nara's sister."
Asuma chuckled and shook his head in amusement. "Well played, Hazō. Not 'Ami', who is a thorn in my side and a headache. Not 'Keiko's sister', since Keiko is one of many Leaf ninja and not even a jōnin. 'Lady Nara's' sister, since the Nara are my primary allies." He held up a hand to cut off the protest. "Who are some of my
closest allies. A status which it might be possible for the Gōketsu to achieve." He hesitated, studying Hazō carefully. "
Possible."
"We will do our best to prove that we are," Mari said. "And, if you judge fairly, I think you'll find that we have never been anything but. We put everything we had behind your bid for the hat, we took care of the people of Leaf after the Collapse and we have done our absolute best to model the Will of Fire. We may have been overzealous, perhaps overstepped our bounds, but we can and will learn from prior lessons." She chewed her lip for a moment. "In the interest of full disclosure, I wish that Jiraiya were still Hokage. Still, with him dead I am glad that you wear the hat."
Asuma smiled sadly and nodded respect to her. "In the interest of full disclosure,
I wish that Jiraiya were still Hokage. He was a bit of a blunt instrument and didn't have a lot of respect for the political process, but he was a brilliant organizer, he cared deeply about the Leaf, and his raw power went a long way towards securing our future." He sighed and shifted in his seat, staring into the flames that crackled on the hearth of his sitting room.
"You've given Hazō a very good framing, Mari." His voice was distant and he didn't look away from the flames. "You're right that I cannot afford to lose the support of the Nara and it would be a bad plan to force Shikamaru into choosing between loyalty to his Hokage and the 'troublesomeness' of living with a furious wife." He glanced up and met Hazō's eyes. The fire in the hearth had duplicated themselves inside the Hokage's eyes as he said, "Please do not take the wrong lesson from that statement, Hazō. There are limits to how far I'm willing to be maneuvered."
Hazō swallowed nervously.
Asuma blinked and the fires vanished. "Still, in this case I think it's wise to intervene. I'll need to be circumspect; making Ren feel that a foreign Kage is interfering in disciplinary action against a Mist ninja is more likely to get Ami executed than saved. I will have someone take all of her personal items back to Mist and deliver them to the Mizukage, along with a polite thank-you for sending Ami as the initial ambassador. They'll remark that, although Ami was challenging to deal with, we are grateful for her efforts to bring Mist and Leaf closer together."
Asuma raised a hand in warning before either of the Gōketsu could respond. "That's as far as I'll go, and as far as I think it would be productive for me to go."
Hazō, Mari, and Noburi all bowed deeply. "Thank you, Lord Hokage," Hazō said. "We're very grateful."
XP AWARD: 2
Brevity XP: 1
It is now about 1am. This interview covered a few hours.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, at 12pm London time.
