Shikamaru didn’t try to suppress his shivers at the chill reaching him through the concrete floor. The windowless walls and the ceiling were all also concrete. The three of them sat in a circle in the dark gray space. They were all wearing the long coats of the revolutionaries, all of them stolen. The room they sat in had belonged to one of the coat owners as well. That owner was unconscious in the closet in the next room, having been hit with Soku’s chakra. They had interrogated them when they stole the coats, and had learned a number of things.
“The situation seems to be precisely as you had surmised, Lord Shikamaru.” It was Ro who got the ball rolling. “This land does indeed appear to be governed by this Gengo, an intensely charismatic man, by all accounts.”
Ro said “intensely charismatic,” and Shikamaru was of the same opinion.
They had captured two male revolutionaries—including Minoichi—for coats for Shikamaru and Ro, and one woman for Soku. Having interrogated all three, Shikamaru could say the same thing about each of them: they had a devotion to and faith in Gengo that bordered on the absurd.
Their confidence in Gengo was in a different category from the faith the shinobi of Konoha had in the Hokage or in Naruto. That was based in love and adoration for another person, respect toward another human being—Shikamaru believed this was the case in Konoha with the Hokage and Naruto.
But it was different with Gengo. Shikamaru saw within the revolutionaries a powerful force, more like the fear and reverence a person might have for a god. They accepted Gengo unconditionally as a being fundamentally different from mere mortals such as themselves.
Just who was this man who could stir people up to such an extent? Shikamaru was aware that a part of him was starting to take a simple interest in the man.
“So we, like, take care of Gengo, and that’s the end of it. The plan right from the start,” Soku said, indifferently. “That’s why me and Pops here were, like, chosen. Opposite style, there’d be, like, nothing for us to do. Opposite, it’d all be, like, fine.” Her use of “opposite” was not quite right, but she was basically on point.
“The feelings the revolutionaries have toward this man Gengo are essentially religious.”
“I, like, totally agree,” Soku said, nodding, and raised her hand. “I mean, adoring this guy that much, must be, like, something to him.”
“What do you mean, ‘something,’ Hinoko?”
“Whoa! Shikamaru! I, like, told you not to use my name!” The ends of her slender eyebrows jumping up, Soku jabbed the end of his nose with the index finger of her right hand, orange chakra lightning glittering and crackling at the tip. “You call me by my name again and I’ll shoot!”
She forgot to toss in a like.
“Why? It’s a cute name—”
“I hate it!” The orange lightning crackled a little louder. “A cool name like Gorai or Shippu or Samidare would have been, like, way better!”
Even if she were a capable ninja, she was still a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl inside. Anyone would find her taste in preferred names childish, and Shikamaru stared at her, pushing back the laugh rising up in his throat. Perhaps mistaking his suppression of laughter for a serious look, Soku swallowed hard.
“Sorry. I didn’t know you hate your name that much. I’ll be more careful.”
“A-as long as you, like, get it…” Soku dropped her head, flustered. A map of Tobari was spread out at her feet. It belonged to the owner of the room.
“Viewing it in this fashion, it certainly is a spiderweb, hmm?” Ro said, arms crossed.
Shikamaru also dropped his eyes to the map. In the center of the village, which spread out in concentric circles, was a picture of an enormous castle. Below it were the words Fushu Castle.
“Fushu…”
“An epithet to refer to prisoners in war or a savage tribe living in a central area,” Ro noted.
“An epithet, huh?” As he nodded at Ro’s explanation, the gears in Shikamaru’s head kept turning. “So did Gengo give it this name then? Or was it called that before Gengo became its master?”
“The Land of Silence has long shunned involvement with other nations. Thus, we of the Konoha Anbu are also unable to speak to the name of this land’s castle.”
Shikamaru felt somehow that Gengo had named it. A gut feeling. Which was why he didn’t say anything to the other two. “Why give a name like that to the key castle in your country…”
“When they were at the center of the five great nations and the smaller neighboring nations, they themselves were in the end the savage tribe living on the borderlands. Perhaps they were being self-deprecating in using the term for themselves.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s, like, ridiculous.” Having listened quietly up to that point, Soku opened her mouth, dissatisfied. “I think it’s, like, way too demeaning, like, an announcement that they’re discriminating against themselves. I mean, you don’t think it’s weird that a bunch of backward-looking dopes like that would be trying to overthrow the foundations of the ninja world?”
She had forgotten her like again at the end. Soku was mad. But what was she mad at?
Probably the people of this country positioning their own selves as savages.
“Maybe you bare your teeth sometimes exactly because you’re cowardly, because you’re backward-looking?” Soku received this reply with a disgusted look. He met it head-on and continued. “The desire for revenge comes from resentment toward an opponent, after all. And you don’t necessarily have to touch someone directly to earn resentment like that, you know?”
“Well then, Lord Shikamaru, do you mean to state that the people of this land resent the other nations?”
“And that is, like, totally ridiculous,” Soku interjected again. “These revolutionaries in charge here now, I mean, they used to be ninja from other countries, though?”