Perhaps she wasn’t after Konoha’s secrets. Perhaps the tense mood at the meeting itself had been her goal.
But Shikamaru’s thoughts stopped here. He couldn’t see her true intent for disrupting the peace between the five great nations. She was probably hiding something in Iwagakure. He couldn’t make his next move until he saw what that was. If he sat here twiddling his thumbs, waiting for the next meeting, they would end up behind the behind the eight ball.
Defeat is not an option in this game. He’d had a bad feeling sitting heavy in his heart ever since the meeting.
“I assume that the Lord Hokage promptly rejected such a motion?” Ro asked, nostrils flaring, perhaps because he was indignant at the Tsuchikage’s unreasonable demand.
“No.”
“What reason did she give for her demand?”
“She brought up the scientific ninja tool Boruto used in the chunin exams and the subsequent attack by Otsutsuki. Plus, as a bonus, she even railed about Sasuke’s work as a spy. She came in hard with this idea that Konoha was trying to pull away from the other countries. It was all Naruto could do to protest that she was wrong. And small wonder. Anyone’d be flustered after getting put through the wringer like that. The Tsuchikage wasn’t interested in hearing what we had to say. She demanded we have an answer for her before the next meeting and stormed out. There wasn’t much to be done after that.”
“Not, like, much to be done with a woman like that,” Hinoko spat.
Kurotsuchi was his comrade, someone he’d spent a lot of time in discussion with when he was younger. She was not a “woman like that”—intractable, fractious. He wanted to defend her on that point, but it seemed inappropriate when he was about to send these two Anbu into Iwagakure because of her.
“It makes no sense, Iwagakure saying all that. So I want you to look into it.”
“Which is to say, you wish us to investigate the internal situation of Iwagakure?”
“Exactly. There has to be something.” He was very nearly convinced of it.
“But…” Hinoko said in a clear voice and crossed her arms as she stared into space. Shikamaru turned his gaze on the talented ninja and waited for her to continue. “If it’s like you say and something fishy’s going on in Iwagakure, like, it might be difficult to get in. If the enemy’s already on alert, security inside the village’ll be tight.”
“Which is exactly why I chose you two.”
“Wha—?” Hinoko looked at Shikamaru, her face red.
“Who was it who snuck into the Land of Silence with you? I know better than anyone what kind of power you have.”
“With such praise heaped upon us, you do make it impossible for us to refuse.”
Ro could freely manipulate chakra. He could make his own chakra look like someone else’s and even cloak the chakra of nearby comrades, an ability that had a wide range of applications. Using this jutsu, he should be able to easily slip past even the most vigilant of guards. Hinoko, meanwhile, was able to sever her targets’ chakras with fine chakra needles she released from her fingertips. In other words, she was a brilliant assassin. If she temporarily cut off the chakra of any watchful eyes, she would make the target feel that they were carrying out their duties perfectly while she waltzed in right in front of them.
“Additionally, I’ll enact one more plan.”
“Any more reinforcement and, like, they’ll just be in the way.”
“I’ll leave the actual work to you two,” he said. “I’ll be moving on my own.”
“What?!” Hinoko shouted, caught off guard. She might have grown up now, but she had not outgrown her habit of crying out when faced with surprise.
After the dust settled in the Land of Silence, Shikamaru had invited Temari out on their first date. Hinoko had been standing off to one side, and the instant the question left Shikamaru’s lips, the Anbu ninja shrieked with delight, sounding much more like an average girl her age than a hardened warrior. The cry had made a distinct impression on him. But he hadn’t heard of this girlish side causing her to make any major blunders. She managed to draw an impressively sharp line between the two sides of herself when she was on duty.
“I’m going to Iwagakure, too,” Shikamaru confirmed.
“Do you mean to say that you will be accompanying us?” Ro asked.
“No, I’m going to hold my head high and walk in through the front door. I haven’t played shogi with old man Ohnoki in a while, and I’ve already sent him a letter. If I just go ahead without waiting for his answer, he’ll curse and call me names, but he’ll let me in.”
“I see.” Ro nodded several times. “If Lord Shikamaru, Konoha’s second-in-command, will be travelling that route, then the eyes of the guard will turn in his direction. We are to enter the village during this opening.”
“That’s exactly it.”
“You don’t have to, like, do that.” Hinoko pursed her lips tightly. “We can do it just us, like.”
“That’s not it, Hinoko,” Shikamaru replied. “I have something I want to confirm directly with the old man.”
“I-I told you, like, don’t call me Hinoko!”
“You just said so yourself, though.”
“Shut up!”
“Will you just stop, Soku?!” Ro snapped. “Well, perhaps you could have some kinoko mushrooms and calm down?”
“Don’t go dragging out the kinoko trying to get a play with Hinoko!” she yelled. “There are, like, limits. The quality of your jokes lately is, like, seriously going down, old man.”
“Ngh!” Ro looked wounded.
It was precisely because the two of them could pierce the tension in a room like this that he could trust this difficult mission to them.
“All right. I’m counting on you both.”
“Don’t just, like, go getting the last word in there!” Hinoko nodded at Shikamaru, a wry smile coming across her face.