Moves on the Board
12th November, year 13 AK
KAKASHI
The Hokage's office was a circular room, with a tall library behind the desk where Tsunade Senju was currently sitting, nursing a cup of sake while her eyes roamed over countless reports. At her left, in fact, stood an impressive pile of paperwork, the same bane said to bring ruin to all the Kage of the Elemental Nations.
By the jittery drumming of the Hokage' fingers on the edge of the cup, Kakashi could tell that she was less than joyful at the prospect of having to go over that many reports and orders before the workload of the day could be called 'completed'. The door Kakashi came through had been modified with a sturdier wood panelling not long after the Sandaime's death, but the twin, tall windows on both sides of it had been maintained, both because they flooded the room with light and because the ANBU needed a privileged road to access their Kage. If Tsunade ever took some time between her cups and paperwork, she'd know that the left window allowed the one sitting at the desk to see the mountain with the faces of the previous Hokage, while the right one allowed to keep an eye on the roof of the Academy.
Kakashi remained still in his slouched position, even if his arms were kept behind his back, knowingly exposing himself to several lethal attacks from his Kage should she decide so. It was a tradition from the first years in which the Kage had to interact with shinobi from other clans, and it had been accepted as the proper way to greet a superior in which you had the utmost faith.
Tsunade's fingers stopped drumming on her cup and she made a twirl in the air with her left pinky, causing all the ANBU in the room to vacate it quietly and swiftly, closing behind them the windows and remaining on guard duty to stop other sudden messengers for the Kage who wished for a private talk with Jonin Hatake.
"The next time you wish for a private meeting, I suggest being actually sneaky about it." she grumbled while putting down her empty sake cup.
"Mah, mah, I am me, and so I'd never rely important information in any official manner." Kakashi eye-smiled to the well-endowed woman in front of him, knowingly ignoring her unimpressed stare as he lifted his head-band, immediately opening the eye beneath.
Instead of the red and black Sharingan that Tsunade expected to see, there was a regular eye. It was a beautiful one, with an ice-blue iris that seemed to almost mirror the world it peered upon, but nevertheless not what should have been there: "I'm guessing that you haven't suddenly learnt how to turn it off, and I'm going to assume that only the one that took it knows, otherwise I would have other whispers warning me of this paper-bomb you dropped on my lap. Anything else that I should know?"
"It was Daiki."
Tsunade's frown deepened as she poured herself another cup of sake: "Of course it was." she muttered.
"He told me that he was acting on Sandaime-sama's orders."
Tsunade gulped down the liquor without a wince, returning to study the Jonin in front of her with a predatory gaze that she didn't often use: "Saru-sensei would have made Jiraya aware of such orders, or left a message for me in his office, Kami knows that we have used unique methods of communication before and that he was sharp enough to foresee his own death."
"Daiki also is acting under the speculation that 'Konoha's Higer-ups are compromised', his words not mine."
The cup in Tsunade's hand was filled once more while she rose from her seated position, her balance perfect despite the liquor she was attempting to drown herself into. She took two steps towards Hatake and trailed with medical-chakra clad fingers the orbit of Kakashi's newest eye: "At least he did a clean job here."
She put the cup into Kakashi hands while she leaned on her desk, her hand instinctively grabbing the jar of sake from where she had been keeping refilled her cup: "I never met the upstart,
"Difficult to read." Kakashi tilted his head, thinking to the few meaningful interactions they had: "If you don't think plausible the existence of orders from the Sandaime, maybe he is acting under the speculation that the Sandaime himself was compromised."
Tsunade' eyebrows rose openly at that: "And how would he have discovered this 'compromising position' of higer-ups he never even met? Saru-sensei's council wasn't a public one. Still isn't, to tell the truth."
Kakashi lowered his headband and drank what the Hokage had left in his hand, trying to not think that someone else had his eye.
"There are better ways to ensure dissent, aren't there? A vague 'the higher-ups are compromised' sounds a bit out there, doesn't it?" Tsunade mused, "And his disappearance with Orochimaru never truly sat down well with me, now he's alive, and my traitor of a teammate hasn't been seen since, it's even possible that the snake took the upstart's face, it's a trick he used to great success before."
"It was Daiki, Hokage-sama, of that I have no doubt: the way he fought, the way he felt." Kakashi couldn't deny that.
The Hokage hummed: "As I said, you know him, your opinion?"
Kakashi shrugged, he had been trying to put together an answer to that question since he awoke in that cave: "There are several options, obviously. One, what he's saying is somewhat true, even if I doubt that Sandaime-sama ever gave him orders not shared with Jiraya-sama or you, Hokage-sama, it's still a possibility. Two, he's a traitor working with Orochimaru, the latter's fascination with the Sharingan is hardly a novelty, but it doesn't fit with leaving me alive. Three, he wanted that eye and everything he told me is to throw us off his tracks."
"Yes but there are elements that you haven't considered." Tsunade added, "Your chakra is no longer being constantly drained, even minutely, by your teammate's Sharingan, which gives you greater endurance. This leaves Konoha with one of her best shinobi capable of being deployed immediately. Were he a traitor, it would have been infinitely easier to simply kill you. For now, nobody knows that you no longer have that eye, but it will eventually leak, this will lower indefinitely your threat rating, we both know how foolish that is, and will bring a Shitstorm on Daiki that I can hardly conceive."
Tsunade walked back to her seat, where she slumped briefly against the high back of the chair, taking a deep breath: "Now you know one thousand jutsu, if we are to listen to your nick-name on the Bingo Books, and are free to ration your chakra."
The Hokage freed a clear sheet of paper where she started jotting down notes: "Shizune is your medic from now on, you'll see her once a week since I haven't the time to do so personally, for the next month, you'll eat following what I wrote here, and train in the Hokage Training Ground, I believe Minato showed you how to get in?"
She rose her head in order to see Kakashi's tentative nod before returning to her note-taking: "In two weeks, I'll punt you into the ground, and I want to see what you're capable of when giving it your all: you were hailed as a prodigy, grow up to that title, adapt your fighting style to the absence of your Sahringan, test your stamina, you'll give an oral report to Shizune after her tests, which are to be kept without a paper trail, and that she'll refer orally to me, and only me. By the time this information gets out, you'll be ready to take advantage of it."
Kakashi's mind abandoned all of his musings regarding Daiki as he started to look at the sheet of paper he was being offered like it was a snake ready to strike. When it was handed over, he picked it up with the tip of his thumb and pointer finger, his only exposed eye-widening horrifically as he read the coded orders on the paper.
"You may go." Kakashi carefully folded the paper before placing it inside of his flak vest, and he turned to leave when the Hokage's voice sounded behind his back: "Oh, and Hatake? If you don't do exactly as I say, I will find the time to become your medic, which will cause a great deal of annoyance in me, and an ever greater deal of pain in you."
12th December, year 13 AK
SHIKAMARU
The convocation from the Hokage had come as a surprise, since he should have been free from the front lines for the whole month.
For chunins, regulations of wartime set 5 months on the front and a single month back in the village, either for reviews on the work done outside the safe confines of Konohagakure no Sato, for evaluations about a change in objectives, promotions, specialized training and whatnot. In Shikamaru's opinion, it was done that way in order to remind to the shinobi what they were fighting for, and that Konoha's safety was their only chance to unwind.
That meant that Shikamaru should have spent a total of 5 months giving his all to the war effort. Should have. He repeated to himself, shaking lightly his head.
If because of his status in the Clan, because of the obvious skill showcased by Daiki when he took down Orochimaru and the two reanimated Kages, or something shady organized by people Shikamaru knew only through the pages left him by his sensei, he couldn't tell. The only thing he knew was that after having played messenger with Kiri, he had been shackled to tents of command, learning the craft of the Master Tactician everyone expected him to be, and offering his ideas when required.
At the end of the day, it was the first time he returned to Konoha, since his last assignment had been stretched for a few weeks longer than protocol would have dictated. Shikamaru remembered growing up without war. It almost looked like a long stretch of time, but he remembered it like a drowning man remembers the last breath. Fleeting, gone a long time ago, and exceedingly meaningless.
Everything would have been difficult even without the secret instructions left him by Daiki-sensei. To be perfectly honest, he doubted that those were orders given to him by the Sandaime. Given the deceitfully casual questions that his parents, along with Ino and Chouji' ones, had made about Daiki, Shikamaru wouldn't be exceedingly surprised if everything had been made up by the Sage.
Even so, he had quite readily chosen to follow his sensei's lead. Not out of a sentiment of loyalty, for being loyal to someone who wished to use you for his own gains was exceedingly idiotic. And Shikamaru, while being accused of being many things in the course of his brief but full life, had never been called an idiot.
The Nara Heir had however understood the sharp difference that those few months of instructions under Daiki-sensei had carved between him and the rest of the population, shinobi and civilian alike. It was a shift in perspective, likely one on the same magnitude present between shinobi and civilian. It made Shikamaru able of applying all of his considerable brainpower to not only the battlefields where the Higer-ups wanted his focus, but also on the internal politics of Konohagakure no Sato, along with the causes and consequences of the current war, which he understood had been in the working since the end of the previous one.
Keeping a secret what his sensei had revealed to him, besides coming with the uncomfortable flavour of keeping his own teammates in the dark (admittedly easier now that Ino was constantly on the front and Chouji kept on guard for this or that outpost), forced him to be careful when giving the reasons behind his plans. He couldn't admit that he wanted to keep the war from reaching Ame because in there there was someone capable of deep-frying Jiraya-sama's ass without breaking a sweat now, could he?
It was with an impassible face that he walked in the Hokage's office, noticing the subtle differences that showcased the applications of wartime regulations, as well as the rule that forbade shinobi and civilians alike from smoking inside of the tower.
"Chunin Nara." Tsunade spoke when he was inside, closing the door with a twitch of a chakra string so thin that Shikamaru couldn't spot it even if he knew that it was there, "Do you know why you're here?"
Shikamaru lazily closed his eyes before opening them again: "I thought that this was my month off? Despite it being late, I as looking forward to enjoy the occasion of relaxing."
A snort shattered his hope without possibility of recovery: "Yeah, that would be true if you were a normal chunin, you're not."
"Is this again because nobody knows if Daiki-sensei is still alive or dead? I thought I was done with that part. And splitting my team wouldn't help you figure out if we knew or didn't either way." the Nara groaned: "We don't by, by the way, I thought that at this point it was obvious."
"And yet you don't seem too upset from the apparent death of your sensei."
"If the reports you've read are correct, there should be my declaration that until I can personally see Daiki-sensei's dead body, I'll think him alive and laughing at something inane."
"Something inane?"
"For Daiki-sensei, most things are inane." Shikamaru clarified his previous statement.
"Would it be inane for him assaulting the Capital of Kiri, and killing off the whole family of the Daimyo?"
Shikamaru straightened at the information: "He's been seen?"
"Oh, he made quite the spectacle out of it." Tsunade handed over the most recent copy of Kiri's Bingo Book.
"Ino won't understand..." Shikamaru sighed as he looked it over: besides a portrait picture of his sensei clad in his personalized version of the Nidaime Hokage's armour, was written his name, along with a series of notable kills ascribed to him. Besides Orochimaru, there were a couple of A-rank nuke-nins, and another info that made Shikamaru raise his eyebrows in surprise: "He defeated Hoshigaki Kisame?"
"He sold Samehada back to Terumi Mei, the recently named Mizukage of Kirigakure no Sato. Congratulations, your suggestion about what to do with Kiri have established a good rapport, which will give us a leg up for the rest of the war."
Shikamaru handed back the Bingo Book, since despite what they had written about his sensei, his experience made it clear that there was much more that hadn't been noted about his capabilities.
"You said: 'Ino won't understand', presuming you were referring to the Yamanaka of your team, which is making a name for herself might I add... do you understand what she won't be able to?"
"Sensei's whole let-us-pretend-to-be-dead-skitch?" Shikamaru asked for a clarification, "Because I have no idea why he would do something like killing the Daimyo in order to reveal himself to be alive. It doesn't quite make sense if his purpose was getting out cleanly from shinobi life, which was the main reason I supposed behind his hypothetical disappearance."
The flat gaze he received as an answer forced him to straighten his back once more: "I never knew sensei to be one to enjoy bloodshed, but then again, if I knew him well enough to suspect his defection, I would have dutifully reported him."
The answer was straight out of protocol, Shikamaru knew that much, as did Tsunade, if the exasperated sigh she let out was indicative of her actual mental state. The Senju and the Nara both knew that as a genin, the latter couldn't have spotted anything that his sensei didn't want to let him witness, and that asking him about his sensei because of some hope of meaningful insight was grasping at the straws.
Fuck you sensei. Shikamaru thought with a tired sigh, the world was complex enough without you painting everything in shades of grey.
AN PART 0
Yeah, I didn't want to write out the selling of Samehada and what may or may not have happened between Daiki and Terumi Mei. The randomness that brought Daiki to kill the current ruling body of the civilians in Kiri is completely random and not at all a cleverly hidden plotting device, not at all.
AN PART 1
Hello to everybody!
I just wanted to say that I have finally planned out the arcs necessary to continue this story to its completion. I have to say, it's a bit longer than I would have liked (I wanted to stay under 150k words, but I'll likely bust through the 200k), so maybe I'll separate Revolution in two parts, the first one, which proceeds up to the chapter FUBAR (included), and from Laying the Plans of Mice and Men 'til the Epilogue.
With my current perspective, I realize that I could have gone a bit deeper both with the characterization and the characters' interactions in the first part, but I was eager to reach this war and I was short of time to play with the 'Background', which I wanted to write by my hand nevertheless.
But, I'll keep to my philosophy of not rewriting stuff. Fanfiction is something I do to explore the Lore and in more recent months to train myself to not shy away from characterizations which I know sort of 'must' be the centre of the plot.
AN PART 2
Having said that, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I wanted to shout out that I've begun a crossover between this story and the MCU, despite my resistance about using that particular universe to play with. It's called Greater Revolution and can be found on my profile and on my site both. While it is set after the epilogue of Revolution, I want ot remember to everyone that in no way, shape or form what I wrote there reflects on what I'll be writing here. Greater Revolution is not a spoiler of Revolution's end.
I hope you give it a try and let me know what you think.
Toodles!
