"Hello all," the Eighth Hokage said, dwarfed by the breadth of his conical hat. "I have bad news. It's not urgent, but it's still important. I'll keep it simple. Our ally, the hidden village of Isan, has been destroyed."
Gasps and exhalations went around the Clan Council's table. Hazō quickly decided to put on a troubled frown as he resisted the urge to check how Nara was reacting.
"Shortly after the murder of Lord Seventh, we sent messengers to Isan. They were unable to find the village based on our known landmarks and returned home after a week. We sent out another team to search for Isan, this time equipped with hundreds of skywalkers. The first team had noticed an oddly clear site on the mountainside, and the new team eventually realized that it had to be Isan's former location. The buildings were completely gone, though their foundations remained. The village's trees had all been knocked down and, in many cases, blown up. The area of dead trees seemed to originate from downhill of the village, as if the village had been engulfed in a giant cone-shaped ninjutsu by someone casting it from below. This is what convinced me that the village had actually been destroyed, since it's possible that they all decided to up and leave to the eastern continent or something.
"We searched for more evidence of who or what destroyed them, but didn't find much. There is one thing we noticed that was unusual – we didn't find any caches of seals or ninjutsu. We think that whoever did this also stole all of Isan's techniques once they'd finished casting their genocidal technique.
"In terms of who has the power to do this, this is well beyond any known jinchūriki's ninjutsu in scope. Really, I have to assume it was Akatsuki for some unknown reason. None of Deidara's explosions at Nagi Island were large enough to manage this… but who knows what new techniques he could have developed in the last two years.
"Regardless, we have no evidence to make any accusations. I intend to send a messenger to inform AMITY about our findings tomorrow morning and let the chips fall where they may. I don't think we have anything to gain from trying to cover this up, and everyone will find out about it anyway when Isan fails to show up at the next Chūnin Exams. If anyone has objections, now would be the time to speak."
"If this was indeed Akatsuki's actions," Lady Amori said, "would they raze Leaf for daring to speak up?"
"They cannot expect us to never say a word about the death of our close allies," said Lord Akimichi. "If it was indeed them, and they want their secret kept, I do not think they would hesitate to blackmail us into silence with their village-killing ninjutsu."
"We're well aware of the nature of Akatsuki's tyranny," Naruto said. "But we don't have any evidence against them here besides the sheer scale of the destruction. I assume they're going to take charge of the investigation, and that means there will never be any evidence against them. Still, I intend to try to use this to swing the villages against Akatsuki. Honestly, the combined forces of the Elemental Nations probably isn't enough to take them down, but incremental pushes like this will help us build the alliance we need to eventually get out from under Akatsuki's thumb."
"A whole village," Lady Minami said. "Our allies. An entire culture. Wiped out by some monsters with more power than sense."
Hazō carefully didn't react.
Naruto shook his head sadly. "Whatever happened to them, I don't think they're coming back anytime soon. Anyway, thank you for your time. I mostly wanted to keep you informed and get any opinions you had. As always, you can find one of me if you have anything you want to add in terms of navigating this correctly. We're going to be weakened by the loss of an ally, but I'm confident this is something we can survive. You may carry on with your days now. Dismissed."
