It was just as Soku said. In interrogating their former coat owners, they had learned that everyone in this nation’s ruling class was originally a shinobi from another land. Some of those who had gone missing in the last Great War had made it to this country, along with the rogue ninja who had slipped away from the five great nations to the Land of Silence over the course of the last year, where they became revolutionaries and commanded the citizenry under Gengo.
Apparently, a daimyo had ruled the country at some point in the past. But then Gengo had come along and chased out this head of state, created the revolutionaries, and reformed the nation’s government from top to bottom. Governed by ninja now, the Land of Silence was currently doing well.
“If the revolutionaries resent the other countries, then that, like, means they’ve always resented their own villages.”
“Some ninja do.”
Soku expelled an angry puff of air through her nose.
Shikamaru maintained his cool tone as he pushed on. “The majority of the Akatsuki, the ones that caused the last Great War, were rogue ninja. They were people who possessed unparalleled talents, but couldn’t manage to make life in a group work for them. And they ended up hating the world of the ninja.”
When you were unhappy about the life you were forced to live, dark feelings started brewing inside you. And maybe those feelings led to a resentment of your own country. You ended up blaming your own misfortune and bad luck on the village structure and the world around you crumbling. None of it was your fault: it was the village, this world itself. Maybe once you took this emotional leap, it was only a matter of time before you turned into someone like the Akatsuki or the revolutionaries.
“Perhaps,” Ro murmured, eyes still on to the map. Shikamaru and Soku waited for him to continue. “The revolutionaries are precisely as you suggest, Lord Shikamaru, and hold within them dissatisfaction with the current state of shinobi.”
“Yeah,” Shikamaru managed to get in before Ro went on.
“And thus, they drifted to this land. However, is it not the case that the work they perform here differs in no way from their time in the world of the ninja?”
Ro was talking about how the revolutionaries put food on the table. They were former ninja. If they were so inclined, they could carry out as many ninja missions as they wanted. The revolutionaries of the Land of Silence used independent routes and hired themselves out to the various countries on the continent. They also undercut the standard prices set by the alliance. For countries with small treasuries such as the minor and midsize nations, this was a real boon. And for enormous countries like the five great nations, well, still nothing beat cheap. It was no wonder he had seen the number of requests coming in to the alliance plummet.
Ro was exactly right. These people, who had come to the Land of Silence bitter about the current state of the ninja world, were copying the ways of the ninja here. It was actually funny.
“So, like, a real revolution,” Soku muttered, slowly. She exchanged glances with Shikamaru, and then looked up at the ceiling, embarrassed, as she began moving her thin lips. “Minoichi, like, said it. He and ‘Lord Gengo’ and the others want a real revolution.”
“And that’s why they’re accepting work requests?” Shikamaru asked, and Soku nodded.
“At any rate, we must ensure that we look upon the visage of this man Gengo.”
“We, like, got a pretty good chance for that.” Soku pointed to a slender finger at the plaza in front of Fushu Castle.
“Yes. The public lecture… The ideal stage for an assassination indeed.” A crafty smile spread across the lips of the normally earnest and unaffected Ro as he looked at Shikamaru, almost as though he enjoyed killing. Shikamaru felt a keen, belated understanding that the man before him really was a member of the Anbu.
“Okay, Ro, you and me go into the plaza. We use your jutsu to mix into the crowd. If I get the chance to stretch my shadow out to Gengo, I’ll go ahead and restrain him. Soku, you slip onto the roof of a building where you can look out over the plaza, and wait for your chance. If anything about Gengo changes, let your chakra arrow fly.”
Soku nodded with a malicious smile that in no way paled next to Ro’s.
“I’m counting on you, Hinako.”
“How many times do I, like, have to tell you to quit calling me by my name?!” Swept away by her anger, Soku leapt to her feet and looked down at Shikamaru indignantly.
“Forty times,” Ro murmured.
“What?” Soku glared at Ro, all thoughts of respect for her elders gone from her head, mouth a sharp line plunging downward on either side.
But Ro did not flinch in the face of this wrath. Instead, he turned toward Soku and opened his mouth. “The four of the character ‘shi’ in Shikamaru, and the zero of ‘maru.’ Th-that makes forty times.”
“And what happened to the ‘ka,’ huh old man?!”
Ro hid behind their number-named leader, nimbly dodging Soku’s kick. It was almost sad how he shrank himself, the old man past forty, the old man of large stature, the old man who was, in fact, senior to the girl before him. Perhaps he was simply playing at being mischievous, but it was just too creepy for Shikamaru. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around and actually look at the ninja behind him.
“Is it actually going to be okay tomorrow?” he asked the pair with a sigh.
“It’ll, like, be fine!”
“You have no cause for concern!”
They answered simultaneously, Shikamaru wedged between them as they glared at each other.
He sighed yet again.