"Speaking of," Ami said, "ninety seconds before we reach the first safety margin for the secondary seals. I suggest we get moving before we find out whether love really gives you wings." She reached towards the nearest of the seals, clearly planning to terminate it in a controlled way.
An idle thought tripped through Hazō's mind, born of the thoroughly-chewed thread of worry that he'd been lugging around ever since all this began. It unpacked itself into an idea and the idea pushed its way to the front of the line of Things I Need to Consider.
He considered it and decided that yes, this was something that should be at the front of the line. It was important, which meant that he needed to get it right, which meant he needed to run it by his most important advisors. Mari was back at the estate, but it wouldn't hurt to lay it out now with Keiko and Ami now and then rerun everything again when they caught up with the Gōketsu matriarch. 'More practice, more success', Mom always said.
The motto made him smile. He could tell that he had internalized her lesson, because he had started optimizing the way he presented ideas to be optimized by his friends and family members whose cheating bloodline cheatiness allowed them to cheat their way to unfair levels of optimization. Well, Hazō didn't need that. He could do a decently good job on his own. Not as good as people who literally had magic brains, but still pretty good. In less than the blink of an eye—and, more importantly, in complete silence—he had had a complex conversation inside his own head.
Asuma will be pissed if he catches us in a clan war, said the idle thought.
We should go to him, lay out everything that's happening, and make sure this is all okay, said Don't Get Killboxed Hazō, the one who amused himself by wondering what would happen if he asked T&I to keep a cell reserved for the next time he was in. Perhaps with turn-down service?
That's an explosive tag with an oversensitive timer, mused Thoughtful Hazō.
We're already on shaky ground with him, so we'll want to manage the presentation carefully. Point out that the Hagoromo are violating social norms and setting political precedents that are going to be harmful to Leaf as a whole. Can't have religious power being used for political gain.
Oooh! We could bring lists! said Whimsical List-Maker Hazō.
And charts! And pictures! Maybe even graphs! We could do a cost-benefit analysis for how much better things would be for Leaf if the Hagoromo were run by the cheating optimization abilities of the Nara and aligned with the Uplift goals of the Gōketsu.
Mari-sensei did used to say that listening was the secret to controlling someone, Thoughtful Hazō mused further.
Understand what they want, give it to them, and they're yours. Asuma wants Leaf to prosper because he's a good man, and he wants respect and veneration because he's a human. Bringing this to him and asking his suggestions would be a good plan.
'Hazō! How could you say such a thing?!' shrieked Mental Model of Keiko.
'You promised you would help me annihilate the Hagoromo! If you outright tell the Hokage he will never allow us to proceed!'
'You have made my Keiko sad,' growled Poorly Understood Intuitions About Ami.
'Prepare to die!'
'You have shamed your blood, and endangered the plans of the Nara,' grumbled Mental Model of Shikamaru, adding a few iterations of
'troublesome' just for flavor.
'I shall now do weird things with my hands and try to decide if I should mock you for foolishness or actually declare you an enemy of the clan who must be destroyed with all the power of the Wood Element that we definitely have.'
'Why not both, beloved husband?'
'An excellent point, beloved wife. Yes, we shall mock him and then tell Mari embarrassing stories about him so that she ruffles his hair non-stop for months. And then destroy him with all the power of the Wood Element that we definitely have.'
Ok, stop, said Sensible Hazō.
Stop being drama queens, all of you. I have every intention of hurting the Hagoromo to the absolutely greatest extent that can be managed without actually damaging Leaf. I also have every intention of keeping the Gōketsu alive and undamaged as much as possible, and that means making sure we toe the line where Asuma is concerned. All I want to know is how do we factor him in?
'Oh,' said Poorly Understood Intuitions About Ami, in chorus with Mental Models of Keiko and Shikamaru.
'That's a much more sensible question. Why didn't you lead with that one?'
"Actually," Hazō said, raising a hand to halt Ami before she could pre-emptively deactivate the Air Dome seals. "I had one thought that I wanted to run by you guys."
Voting is closed.
@Velorien may open it if he wishes, but I think the current plan is that he's going to write the 'Hazō, Keiko, and Ami discuss how to handle Asuma' part of the conversation.
Author's Note: This plan was well considered and well written, but it boiled down to "Ask Asuma for permission to destroy the Hagoromo." I read it multiple times and tried on different interpretations but couldn't really get past that point. Yes, dealing with Asuma is critical and you're smart to be considering it, but if I had written Hazō laying out this plan as written to Keiko, etc, they would have felt that he was doing a complete 180 from the 'bring the paaaainnnn!!' train that he's been on for the last seven chapters and was now chickening out. It would have deeply hurt Keiko and caused Hazō a lot of grief. After discussion with
@Velorien I decided to basically call a mulligan. No XP, no harm done. He will have a conversation that reflects the spirit of the plan but doesn't follow its letter.
