The square in front of Fushu Castle was jammed; Shikamaru could easily believe every person in the village was in attendance. And not just revolutionaries in their long black coats. Young, old, man, woman, people of all different classes—no distinction made between rich and poor—gathered in the plaza and waited impatiently, eager for the leading man to appear, faces all similarly lit up with passion, eyes all sparkling. They were in high spirits; the people chatting nearby were loud enough to warrant a grumpy look.
Under his long coat, Shikamaru felt his skin dampen with sweat, possibly because of the heat radiating from the people in the square. Ro was next to him. If all had gone well, Soku was hiding in a concrete building in a corner of the plaza.
Ro’s jutsu had transformed Shikamaru’s own chakra into that of the coat’s owner, a perfect copy in quality, amount, and every other detail. Similarly, Ro was cloaked in the chakra of his own coat’s owner. They both wore disguises, again thanks to Ro’s skills. No matter how good a physical disguise was, an enemy could see through it quickly enough if they took a moment to closely examine the nature of the chakra hidden underneath. But Ro’s jutsu took this sort of uncertainty out of the equation. A disguised chakra was difficult to take a closer look at. On top of that, they had this crowd. There was no way anyone there could see that Shikamaru and Ro were enemies of the revolution.
“For the time being, let us draw near that location,” Ro said, voice hushed. He turned his eyes on the bare bones of a stage, nothing but a framework and wooden stairs to step up onto it, with nothing on top of it. There weren’t even any guards, despite the fact that the crowd jostled so close they could reach out and touch the base of the structure.
“Do you believe that Gengo will truly come?” Ro asked doubtfully.
And with good reason. It was simply too dangerous for the leader of an entire nation to stand unprotected onstage. Especially a stage like this one, which seemed to boast that no one involved in its construction had given any credence to the idea that someone might target their leader’s life.
“We’ll get close and wait, anyway. If it’s not Gengo, we can quietly sit it out.”
“Understood, sir.”
They just had to get within range of his Suffocating Darkness technique. Once he sealed off Gengo’s movement, Soku’s chakra would strike the final blow.
“It appears that he has arrived.”
Before Ro had even finished muttering this sentence, an enormous cheer rose up from the crowd near the stage. This rough wave spread in the blink of an eye throughout the plaza and enveloped Shikamaru. In the midst of a storm of voices so loud it threatened to rupture his eardrums, he pushed his way through the crowd toward the raised platform.
Finally, a single man appeared on it.
His jet-black coat was the same design as the revolutionaries’, but the silver-worked fasteners were much more elaborate. A pattern of countless snakes was embroidered on the sleeves in silver thread. The man’s hair was a rich indigo blue, his physique manly, jaw jutting out slightly, nose straight and sharp. The eyes that calmly looked down on the crowd housed a cool intelligence, and a slight beard grew on his chin. He was perhaps in his mid-thirties.
“I would assume that that is Gengo,” Ro muttered, without stopping.
Shikamaru kept pushing forward without responding. In his heart, however, he felt fairly certain the man before his eyes was Gengo.
The man on the stage slowly raised his right arm. Instantly, the boisterous cheering stopped. As if satisfied with this, the corners of the man’s mouth turned up slightly as he closed his eyes. He opened them again after a deep breath and began to speak with a cool composure.
“First, I thank everyone who has come together here.”
His voice was deep and heavy, and yet refreshingly clear, with a mysterious quality, as though it were seeping in through the listener’s entire body rather than through their ears. Shikamaru felt an indescribable itch, like the man’s voice was caressing his heart.
It seemed that Ro felt the same sensation; he glanced in Shikamaru’s direction as he walked. But Shikamaru didn’t meet his eyes as he quietly moved forward.
The man bowed lightly and began to speak once more. “Already ten years since I rose up in this land. Now, many likeminded souls have come together around me, and this land of ours has begun to flourish. However, not a single one of our hopes has yet been realized, not one of our wishes fulfilled.”
The crowd listened in silence. When the man onstage broke off, an abnormal stillness rose up. With just a few words, the plaza had fallen completely under this man’s sway.
“I want to ask all the citizens in the Land of Silence!” the man said, suddenly fierce, with no trace of his previous calm. He threw his arms out to both sides as he let forth this cry from his soul. “This land under the rule of the daimyo, and this land now—which is the better world to live in?”
“Lord Gengoooo!” The citizens raised their voices as one, enormous, loud, full of approval for the man onstage.
“It appears that we are not in error. That man is indeed Gengo,” Ro said.
Shikamaru nodded and stepped toward the platform. A few more meters would bring his target within range of his Suffocating Darkness. All he had to do then was quickly restrain Gengo when a suitable moment came along.
One chance…
Gengo raised his right hand high. The citizens fell silent.