"Good afternoon, fellow foreign conspirator!" Mari greeted Hazō as he walked into the main building.
"Good… afternoon?" Hazō asked cautiously.
"Have you seen today's broadsheet?"
Hazō rolled his eyes. "Mari, you are aware that I have spent the entire morning figuring out how to save the world at the experimentation facility. What do you think?"
Mari rolled her eyes right back. "This is why you're not going to take Jiraiya's place as Leaf spymaster anytime soon. I bet you whoever's got the job—and clearly, they were a good pick, since I still have no idea who they are—gets a copy slid under their door every morning before they wake up."
She paused.
"Also there's all the treason. Gets in the way of government work, or so I'm told."
"Mari, I don't even
want to be Leaf's spymaster. If you don't think I have my hands more than full running the clan and preparing Uplift, you haven't been paying attention. Also, just in case you're right about our new spymaster's competence"—he raised his voice slightly—"nobody in this clan has ever committed treason, or has plans to do so in the future.
"So is there anything of actual interest in the broadsheet, or was that just a setup for a weak joke?" he asked.
"The Hagoromo strike back!" she proclaimed dramatically, twisting the broadsheet into a tube with a single unfollowable wrist motion and waving it at him like an Academy instructor's pointer. "Gōketsu Clan tries to pay off debts with currency from foreign collaborators! Dumps sackful of Hidden Rock ryō and other foreign currencies on clan head's desk in calculated insult to the Will of Fire! Hazō, did you
actually send them a sackful of Hidden Rock ryō?"
"The hell I did!" Hazō exclaimed. "I specifically ordered an even mix that couldn't be taken to mean anything except that we have zero respect for the Hagoromo. And, you know, to cripple them financially."
Mari sighed. "Anyway, well played, them. Either the Hagoromo or one of their conservative allies knows how to spin a story. Bet you a sackful of foreign currency that people in the street are already being quietly reminded how the Gōketsu compound was untouched by the Great Collapse while Leaf's most loyal clans were crippled, and how the second it happened we were ready to move to press homeless civilians into service and bribe suddenly destitute KEI ninja to serve as our private army in violation of clan adoption codes. It's what I'd do, anyway. Well, at least I'll have something to keep me busy."
"They're flailing," Hazō said firmly. "Causing trouble for us isn't going to stop them haemorrhaging money out of every orifice. Mari, are they on fire enough to give in on the marriage thing yet?"
"Yeah," Mari said, "about that. A little bird from the KEI Intelligence Division tipped me off earlier this morning that a certain Hagoromo Gisei has been placed in solitary confinement by his clan for trading in tainted foreign money. Apparently, this overly loyal but not too pious junior priest took it on himself to go around Leaf's moneychangers with a sack of foreign coins, changing them for Leaf ryō to take back to the clan. Terribly shameful. I don't think anyone with half a brain is going to buy that cover story for a second, but it does mean the Hagoromo get a sudden cash influx when they need it most."
Hazō's mind was stuck on something else entirely. "The KEI has an
intelligence division?!"
"Pfft, of course not." Mari gave him the look of mixed pity and incompletely suppressed disgust reserved for small children who insisted that the Mizukage's secret police were really there to protect the innocent. "It's just that quite a lot of I&S happen to be clanless, because there aren't many infiltration specialist clans in the world compared to, say, combat clans, and being clanless gives you a natural advantage when it comes to learning to adapt to a hostile social environment. And if someone were to make sure those guys coordinate, and maybe give an occasional suggestion about what it would be good for the KEI to know… Obviously, there's a line to tread so they don't get caught out by clan secrecy laws or piss off the Hokage, but Leaf law is a lot more tolerant than Mist's when it comes to common-or-garden espionage. It has to be, because they don't have the infrastructure to force the clans to play nice the way Yagura did, and having them play spy vs spy is a much safer form of competition for Leaf than economic warfare or worse.
"Oh, we also owe the KEI a tiny favour for the heads-up."
A chill went down Hazō's spine. "During the… during that exchange earlier, Ami said she knew the skillset of every KEI ninja in the Gōketsu compound. You don't think…?"
Mari shrugged. "Sure, but what are we going to do? Declare that everyone's allowed to be a friend of the Gōketsu and receive the material benefits except people with infiltration training?
That's not going to backfire badly enough to be written into legend."
Hazō sighed. "At least she doesn't want the hat."
"No," Mari said, "just to be the power behind it. I don't see what else the AMI was for, at least until she decided to come to Leaf."
"Enough about Ami," Hazō said with one last glance at the broadsheet. "That way madness lies. Instead, how about we take a leaf from her book and ask someone for a favour? From what I saw at the Clan Council meeting, Tsunade has about as much patience for the Hagoromo's bullshit as anyone with a grain of common sense. I'm not saying ask her to punch Lord Hagoromo in his smug face—though bringing her to our duel of champions would be hilarious—but if she just tells them to get Yuno and Noburi married, that deals with the deadline and gives us all the room we need to tear the Hagoromo into tiny bigoted shreds at our own pace."
Mari leaned back in her chair with a jōnin's sense of balance that stuck its tongue out at gravity. An ordinary person in that position would collapse if he so much as breathed in her direction. She was silent for a while.
"I wish we had more time to work with. I know exactly how I'd get her in a more cooperative mood, but doing it now when she knows we're on a deadline is going to scream manipulation, and she has a nose for manipulation like you wouldn't believe. Eh, some you win, some you lose."
She sobered up. "It could work. But there's a price for everything. I've walked the streets, and chatted to a few friends, and no one's hiding the fact that right now, we're Leaf's foremost spectator sport. Everyone wants to know how the foreigner clan is going to handle its first inter-clan conflict. Are we going to roll over for the Hagoromo? Are we going to negotiate? Are we going to outmanoeuvre them? Maybe do what the Nara are doing? Or just punch them in the face and take the consequences? If we get Tsunade to do our fighting for us, it'll look like we're getting Tsunade to do our fighting for us. It'll make us look weak."
"How?" Hazō asked incredulously. "We'll be demonstrating that we have one of the most powerful people in the world on call. If there's anyone
not afraid to challenge the Gōketsu after that, then the Hokage would only thank us for taking them out and raising Leaf's average intelligence."
Mari winced. "First off, do not
ever use that phrase in public. Tsunade
will come and make an example of you if she hears you think you've got her on call, and nobody will lift a finger to save you.
"Second off, you're forgetting Asuma. Jiraiya was a hardcore village loyalist who was given huge amounts of power because he could be trusted with it. But he's… gone. All Asuma has to count on now are Naruto, who may or may not have divided loyalties, Tsunade, who's only attached enough to the village not to want it gone, and Orochimaru, who only cares because it's where he keeps his stuff. Asuma has to maintain a monopoly on their military power, because if someone strolls into his office to demand the hat with one of those three at their back, he can't be one hundred percent sure that the other two will back him.
"I don't know exactly what he'd do if he thought we were subverting Tsunade, but I don't think it would be pretty. So no, it's not in our interest to pretend this is anything more than a one-off."
Hazō sat still for a while. He didn't
actually intend to rely on Tsunade's power forever. Half the point of the Hagoromo's destruction was meant to be to show the other clans that the Gōketsu were a power to be reckoned with on their own terms. On the other hand, the deadline was pressing. If they hit September without a Gōketsu marriage, Asuma might simply conclude that they'd failed the test, and that they didn't
deserve to be Leaf's primary representatives on a sensitive diplomatic mission if they couldn't even get a single concession out of the Hagoromo. Yuno had no rights until she got married and became a Leaf citizen—if Asuma ordered that she marry Hyūga, the Gōketsu would have no legal grounds to complain. In addition to simple concern about the pair's happiness, the humiliation for the Gōketsu would be devastating—they'd even held an engagement party, with clan heads in attendance—beyond anything they might suffer from getting Tsunade to intervene.
"Let's do this," he concluded. "Gather the clan. Today's forecast for the Hagoromo: Sunny, with a chance of fist."
-o-
"This is not how I saw my lunch break going," Tsunade grumbled. "What does your little horde want with me?"
"Little horde" might have been overstating it. Obviously, the Gōketsu had to be present for this, including Keiko and soon-to-be-clanswoman Yuno. Since Keiko was being attacked over her marriage to Shikamaru, he needed to be present as well. At that point, Keiko had argued for the presence of Tenten, whose existence was at the heart of the Nara-Hagoromo conflict, and while no one was sure of the justification for the last member of the Keiko Four (better name still needed), Shikamaru's personal assistant was at least trying to be useful by taking notes on his behalf. Still, that was merely eleven people. Nothing to raise an eyebrow at.
Maybe Hazō should have come alone.
"Naturally, this concerns the Hagoromo," Keiko said. "You were present at the meeting where they demanded that I apologise for being who I am."
Tsunade snorted. "Yeah, that was bullshit. Never apologise for who you are. Apologise for what you do."
She paused briefly.
"Actually, don't do that either. If it's worth apologising for, then just skip the apology and make amends. If pretty words could balance out mistakes, we wouldn't have debt collectors."
She considered Keiko. "Do you think you've made amends, girl?"
Keiko's eyes flared.
"For being who I am?!" she demanded, then shrank back as if remembering she was talking to someone capable of wiping her off the face of the planet with a single gesture.
"For what you've done," Tsunade said. "Or do you not get it?"
"What specifically are you referring to?" Shikamaru asked. "If it is our attempt at introducing new legislation, then I assure you—"
"There's a couple of girls living together down the street from me," Tsunade interrupted. "They try to be subtle, but they're just bad at it. So bad
I noticed, and I don't stick my nose in people's private business. Some of their neighbours don't care. Others get creeped out. But nobody goes to their place with torches and pitchforks, because when you're home from a mission and tired to the bone, the last thing you want to spend your energy on is a moral crusade. When it comes down to it, half the reason our society is so tolerant is no one can be
bothered to go out and make people's lives miserable.
"Only you, girl, have gone and made everyone pick a side. Those girls think they can be like the great and mighty Nara Keiko, who's not afraid to be what she is. They go out holding hands in public. Only
they're not clan consorts. How do you think people treat them?
"Then I get to deal with this bullshit at work. People looking at each other sideways, spreading rumours, interrogating to make sure their co-workers are as bigoted as them because if you're not loud enough, maybe you're on the wrong side. Ugh."
"I—I do not believe I need to make amends for the critically-flawed nature of our society," Keiko said. "It is not a crime to expose flaws in the village's moral framework."
"Let's stay focused," Hazō said before Tsunade could reply, and especially before she could take Keiko's words as a comment on the Will of Fire. The meeting was already going off-script, and Keiko was the wrong person to call on for improvisation.
"We came here to talk to you specifically about the Hagoromo," he said. "You've agreed that their treatment of Keiko is unacceptable. We certainly don't intend to apologise to them. Screw that. All we want is for Yuno and Noburi, two people who are in love and who, frankly, don't have anything to do with Hagoromo bigotry, to get married. And we want it to happen now, because that's what the village needs. The Hokage has made that much clear."
"I'm guessing the Gōketsu aren't about to make amends to the Hagoromo either," Tsunade said with wry amusement.
"We don't owe them anything," Noburi said. "Keiko's personal life is her own business, and there's no law that says they have to approve it before she can get married. If they want us to bow and scrape because we didn't respect their precious prejudices, then screw them."
"Oh, boy," Tsunade said. "Mari, I expected better of you."
Mari looked at her even more alertly than before.
"This was never about what the Hagoromo believe. You do get that, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Hagoromo are responsible for Leaf weddings," Tsunade said patiently. "They convey the blessings of the Will of Fire on a marriage, in accordance with ancient rituals. And then the marriage is blessed and perfect and happy, at least until people inevitably fuck it up because even the Will of Fire is no match for human stupidity.
"This time, the Hagoromo are the ones who fucked up. They didn't notice they were conducting a wedding that went against the Will of Fire, and they blessed something they aren't allowed to bless. It's like if ANBU raided the wrong house and sent an innocent to T&I. Something like that goes public, people are going to be asking if they can really trust ANBU to do their jobs, and maybe they'll be slower to cooperate next time a guy in an animal mask knocks on their door.
"I'm not saying the Hagoromo aren't being assholes. They're being assholes. But they're not being assholes for shits and giggles. They're being assholes for damage control."
"Too bad," Hazō said. "I think I speak for both the Gōketsu and the Nara when I say there's little we care about less than protecting their reputation."
"More power to you," Tsunade said. "Half the world won't lift a finger for fear of dirtying their reputation while the other half's dying.
"Now tell me why I should care about your problem. Is there a reason your little horde has to waste my time instead of fixing your own shit?"
"Timing," Hazō said. "Just timing. We're not asking you to resolve our dispute with the Hagoromo. We've got that well in hand. But the Hokage wants the wedding done by the end of the month so Leaf can start dealing with Yuno's village, and the Hagoromo might not know when to quit. So screw the politics stuff, Aunt Tsunade. Could you step in just this once to get this pair happily married, for their sake and for Leaf's?"
Tsunade eyed them one by one. Her eyes stopped briefly on Keiko, who shivered ever so slightly, before moving on.
"Front row seat," she finally said. "And you're all going to owe me big-time for wasting my time on this shit when I've got students to train."
"Done and done," Hazō said.
Shikamaru opened his mouth, but closed it again after a glare from Keiko.
"Fine," Tsunade said. "Wait here."
-o-
Half an hour later…
"Here," Tsunade said, tossing a slip of paper to Noburi as if it was rubbish she expected him to throw away for her. "Invitation on my desk before I leave work tomorrow."
Then she simply walked out without waiting for thanks.
"Huh," Noburi said after a second. "Says here that since Yuno is an ignorant savage with no understanding of life in civilised society, she cannot be held responsible for the Gōketsu Clan's improper actions during Keiko's wedding. The Hagoromo are prepared to grant her special dispensation in order for her to be inducted into the Will of Fire through the holy sacrament of marriage."
"I think I should introduce them to Satsuko," Yuno said thoughtfully. "It sounds like they have ever so much to learn about savagery." She gave a slow, happy smile.
"Save it for after the wedding," Noburi advised. For some reason, Yuno blushed.
"Hey, are you OK, Keiko?" Noburi asked.
"Snowflake," Snowflake corrected him. "Kei understandably did not wish to be in the same room as Tsunade without need, even with a numerical advantage."
Yuno nodded sympathetically.
After a second, Tenten laid her hand, fingertips only, on Snowflake's shoulder. Snowflake flinched, but didn't shake them off.
"But enough about Kei's terror of a woman who has doubtless long since forgotten her threat of vicious murder. There is a wedding on the horizon. Hazō, you must prepare us more post-interaction survey forms."
-o-
You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.
-o-
You practised with summons on the Seventh Path. However, you presently only have one summon: Candoru, who has respectable melee combat skills (his bite is at least half as good as his bark), and is justifiably proud of his wall- and water-walking skills, both of which are less common on the Seventh Path than they are among human ninja. Details relating to training with the summon candidates require spoons and will be available on specific request.
Noburi reports running into difficulties. The Toads avoid mention of the summoner before Jiraiya, but with his superior social skills, Noburi has managed to determine the following. Jiraiya personally curbstomped the summoner and his summons, which was deeply humiliating for the Toad Clan, and was the reason they welcomed Jiraiya so readily despite the fact that he'd just violently murdered their summoner. Jiraiya then made a point of not recruiting Toads stronger than himself (not that there were many, given that he was a hardened jōnin at this point), preferring to use his chakra on Toad ninjutsu, until he was such a badass that people just set his power level at "Jiraiya" and stopped counting. This means that Noburi not only has enormous shoes to fill, but also has to avoid any appearance of weakness lest people associate him with the nameless summoner. High-level Toads dismiss him as having done nothing to prove himself, and he thinks pushing would be dangerous. He has, however, managed to open negotiations with a Water ninjutsu user (a common element for Toads) who bought into the "rising new legend" narrative, with details to be left vague for now in case
@eaglejarl wants to write the scene.
-o-
6 days remain before Asuma's deadline.
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday 24th of October, 1 p.m. New York time.
