Shin's heart was racing.
Months of groundwork—
Months of prep—
He kept his breathing paced and used his chakra to double- and triple-check that no part of his body was trembling.
For almost his whole career, he'd simply acted as a diplomat, working towards Konoha's interests in 'acceptable' ways, ways that—importantly—did not violate Konoha's duty to the Daimyo.
And then the Kiri War had begun.
And the new Daimyo—
He'd—
He'd been foolhardy, been too willing to follow his father's reluctant example.
Shin knew very well that the former Daimyo had a reputation for knowing 'exactly when' to step in, 'exactly when' to intercede and become the hero, but in practice, it was more that the former Daimyo knew that at some point he would have to bend.
He kept the nobles in order, kept his country stable, and—for the most part—let the ninja do their own thing.
Succeed on their own.
Fail on their own.
Konoha would have to ask over, and over, and over again for help.
And he'd refuse over, and over, and over again.
Until Konoha finally convinced him that yes, actually, they really did need the offensive help of the samurai.
It hadn't been a perfect system—if the Daimyo had interceded earlier, Fire would likely have won every war more decisively—but it functioned. It worked.
And then the Daimyo had died.
And the Daimyo had risen.
And he'd—
The nobles were upset.
They didn't like the changes the recent inventions were bringing, they didn't like the mass migration towards Konoha and Konoha's Uzu colony instead of their own lands, they—
They didn't like a lot.
And the Daimyo, he knew as well as anybody else that the greatest historical threat to his position was the nobility.
The samurai.
So he'd pulled back, sharply, on requiring samurai to work with ninja at all.
Even in the previous wars, samurai had stepped up intra-Fire patrols during wars—they'd accepted as a simple fact Konoha's inability to patrol as much as they usually did, and pulled extra hours long before they were officially pulled in.
Today…
Today there were no such requirements.
Samurai protected their noble's territory, and that was it.
It was something.
It amounted to nothing.
This needed to change, Shin was told.
He needed to change it, Shin was told.
And that—that Shin could do.
(Probably.)
Diplomacy alone was insufficient—that's why they'd called on him. Shin might have been a diplomat, and ambassador to the Daimyo, but more than that—more than that, he'd been trained for sabotage.
In less euphemistic terms, treason.
Certain nobles were, for one reason or another, pro-Konoha.
Fine, good. No need to do anything about them.
Others were pro-war—usually because they wanted their troops to get more experience, they wanted the chance to elevate their own positions.
Also good. Also not a worry.
And then there was the anti-Kiri contingent—those whose mainland territories were on the east coast, as well as those who had Uzu-territories that were easier to raid.
They were, if anything, the most vocal about the need to stop Kiri's unending assault on Fire's coasts.
They were, if anything, the most aware that Konoha couldn't do that alone—Konoha, after all, wasn't the one with the navy.
And then there was the last crowd.
In terms of sheer numbers, they were not the majority.
In terms of sheer power, they might as well have been.
These nobles were the ones that were upset with Konoha, upset with the recent social, technological, and political upheaval. They were the ones that already had the best positions, didn't want to give their competitors a chance to elevate their status. They were the ones whose territory was entirely inland or protected by a crappy enough coast to have so far forestalled any Kiri attacks.
These nobles were the ones with the more powerful samurai, the ones the Daimyo was the most afraid of.
Shin had begun by weakening their armies.
He hadn't wanted to kill—too messy, too cruel, and everyone he was targeting was a Fire citizen besides, someone he'd sworn to protect.
Instead, he'd gotten a few key commanders, a few key captains and secretaries and other higher-ups… addicted.
He'd chosen different vices, varied it both because not everyone would become addicted to the same thing and to deter anyone from putting together the pieces.
This had actually been far easier than he'd suspected—as it turned out, a lot of high-ranking samurai already had one addiction or another, so all he'd had to do was worsen their addiction, make it obvious enough that it couldn't be ignored, that the noble would have to get the samurai out of the position one way or another just to ensure they couldn't do any more damage.
(Mostly, he'd promoted gambling. The most socially acceptable, yes, particularly with the Daimyo's own proclivities, but also the most likely to lead to the samurai dipping into their noble's coffers to cover their debt, and once that happened, it was a simple matter of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.)
Weakening their samurai was good, but not enough. They had political, social, financial power too—there were many reasons the Daimyo was reluctant to go against them.
The next step was financial.
That was partly dealt with by all the addicts paying off their debts with their nobles' accounts, but nobles tended to watch their funds very closely—the samurai were caught quickly.
So: finances.
He needed to give them something more to spend their money on.
It took a few simple conversations to convince the Daimyo to hold a summer military parade, where each noble sent a contingent of their samurai to display the glory of their noble. The Daimyo's contingent was, of course, the most opulent and largest, but that didn't mean that many of the other nobles didn't want to try to show off themselves.
Even better, Shin convinced the Daimyo to formally waive an appearance from any noble whose lands were being attacked; instead, during the opulent parade, speeches were made of the samurai actively defending their lands, bringing even more glory to those nobles who were most aligned with Konoha's aims.
But the parade wouldn't be enough.
So Shin didn't stop there.
He whispered words into the right ears and slipped coins into the right pockets—he managed to accelerate the current fashions, requiring nobles who spent their time flaunting their power to spend even more money to keep up with the trends. He (secretly) promoted a group of anti-chakra artists, which in a few short months all-but-required anti-ninja nobility to buy several of their increasingly expensive works as a display of their beliefs.
He convinced the Daimyo—and the Daimyo's assistants—that a once-a-month set-cost poker tournament would be the easiest way to manage his gambling tendencies (which had never gone away, which were always draining just a bit from national coffers), and then used varying techniques (including straight-up cheating) to ensure that the Daimyo won more than he lost—and, more importantly, that he won against Konoha's dissidents.
Funding was a difficult target, always being a focus of the nobility, but Shin made inroads anyway.
But he didn't stop there.
Social power was also a factor, after all.
And so Shin played matchmaker, pairing up couple after couple after couple in mutually advantageous marriages and even adoptions that—importantly—never, ever advantaged those that were against samurai intervention.
He had the right conversations with the right people to convince this or that high-ranked shinobi to promote one of their underlings over the other.
He set up those who were most supportive of Konoha and least charismatic with actual, official tutors.
And then, finally, he turned to their relationship to the Daimyo.
For as long as Shin had been stationed in the Capital, his primary aim had been to ingratiate himself with the Daimyo's family.
He had been very, very successful.
Even when the Daimyo began distancing himself from Konoha, he did not distance himself from Shin.
Even the advisors liked Shin.
Everybody liked Shin.
Everybody liked that he told great stories, that he remembered their interests, that he found out secrets and (seemingly) told no one (that was why it was so important to have a fall guy, someone who could be directly blamed for the leaked information.)
He was a shinobi; he was inherently untrustworthy, but he was a willing ear.
He was a fixture of the Capital, there for years without once appearing to so much as sway from the Daimyo's side, from his faith in the Daimyo's line.
And so everyone began classifying his loyalty as to the Daimyo, first, instead of Konoha.
And he never bothered to correct them.
Why would he? It was exactly what he wanted.
Now, after years of effort, his work was paying off.
The final block was set in place, the table was set.
The latest official petition for samurai intervention had arrived, specifically requesting the samurai fleet to actively patrol the eastern waters, and the traditional arguing had begun.
Shin watched the Daimyo out of the corner of his eye as the Daimyo took in who was in support, who was against.
He was less interested in their arguments—a flaw of the man, but one that could be worked around—and more interested in who was on either side, what power they had that might be a risk to him, a risk to Fire's stability.
Shin watched as the Daimyo's eyes became more piercing, as he began to notice that a lot of the up-and-coming nobles were for getting involved, that a lot of the stumbling nobility were against.
He took in the numbers.
He took in the military power—how the most powerful forces were increasingly those that were on the east coast, that had the most recent experience.
He took in the financial power—more evenly split than ever before, but still in favor of no war—but then, as Shin had oh-so-recently reminded him, wars were great ways for reducing noble coffers, if done right.
He took in the social power—how his strongest allies were in favor, how he needed to keep them on his side so that his side was too strong to mount any sort of attempted coup.
He took in the political power.
He took in the risks, and as the arguments wound down he took in a breath.
"I agree to the request."
The room stilled.
Months and months of rejecting every Konoha rejection—
Over.
Shin didn't smile, but oh did he want to.