Naruto : Domination: Chapter 94
Shikamaru walked through the crowded city, taking notice of more than what his conscious mind was capable of keeping up with, luckily enough.
Fucked up Nara as he was, he instinctively linked elements that appeared completely separated, from the high pitched voice of a woman that offered a particular brand of perfume to a man in tatters, to the slight frown that often appeared for a single instant on the face of many that spotted his hitai-ate, to the way in which the akasen children seemed to scatter from their position once an elderly man hammered the bottom of his sandal against a section of the cobbled road.
There was no reason whatsoever for Shikamaru to feel like he was walking into a trap.
Then why does it feel like I'm the bottom of someone's joke? He grimaced as he turned his head towards his officer commander: "Are you sure it's okay to..."
"The Uzumaki will be handled by our people," Hatake replied without moving his gaze away from the courier the duo of Konoha-nin had been following for the past hour, "if the target doubles back once more, we'll assume that he's paid to act as a diversion, and we'll need to figure out who holds the string of his purse."
"When you say handled..."
The flat stare that the Nara received made him grimace as he returned his focus on the mission, which had luckily just had a development: "He wasn't a diversion."
"No, it doesn't appear so."
"I'll enter openly," Shikamaru opted, "can you look around?"
"You're choosing this plan only because this way you won't have to run around." Kakashi flatly accused the young Nara, who shrugged as an answer.
"I'm his student, but I'm still me." he snickered as he followed the man he had been tailing for the previous hour. He had just joined another before quickly ducking in a side alley.
With a seamless application of chakra, Shikamaru duked briefly, as if he had to pick up something from the gorund, and in his place a burly, bald man rose, his eyes of a clear blue and his hands calloused by the many years spent as a carpenter.
He follwed in the alley and nodded to a man that was clearly placed as a sentry of sorts before finally entering what he realized was an empty warehouse.
Inside the large space, there were roughly 50 civilians muttering to each other and exchanging nervous glances even as they gave hard pats on the back of people that they occasionally recognized.
The presence of actual red flags made his hackles rise. Not only that, there were strips of red cloth being given freely on oe side of the warehouse.
To a distracted eye, the sight would be strange, but ultimately uninteresting, to Shikamaru's eye, however, the people appeared blatantly on edge, almost as if they were about to...
"Thank you for joining us!" a thunderous voice made everyone turn towards one side of the warehouse, where a man was standing over an upturned wooden box. Immediately, everybody quieted down, as if eager to hear the words of the man.
Shikamaru saw the way they clenched their fists, the way in which they squared their shoulders, as if waiting for orders.
"You all know why you're here!"
Oh shit. Shikamaru thought, immediately starting to think about a way to deescalate the situation, when his eyes focused once more on the grim faces of the everyday Joes around him. Nervous droplets of sweat on their foreheads and slightly too heavy breaths told him that many were just shy of being tipsy, likely they had drunk something just before going to the warehouse.
"Too long we've had to fear knives in the dark!"
Some of the men around Shikamaru answered the man with raised fists that shook with rage, other outright shouted a wordless scream to express their agreement.
"Too long we've had to wonder if someone with a large enough purse would buy off our lives! Too long their wars have plagued us, made us feel hunger and fear! Too long, we have seen the understanding of our world break the will of our sons and daughters! Now they've stopped to deliver food to the ones in need so that they can spend it to fuel their wars!"
This is so bad... The Nara's eyes darted around, considering what would happen were he to try and speak against the man busy rallying the people in the warehouse. When the first punch flies, my cover is blown, and their fears about shinobi will all but be confirmed, I'd only add fuel to the fire.
"They have even closed down the House of the Rising Sun! Those books are being withdrawn from the market, the copies found are being taken away, the owners have to pay a fine, or are paid less than a tenth of their value when they're returned freely! What will come next? What else will they take? What will they do when we say no?" the man at the other side of the warehouse shouted.
"They'll kill us! That's the only thing they're capable of! But what will they eat when we no longer sow their fields? When food rots in the silos and doesn't get treated nor transported across the country? What will they do, when the city and the Fire Lord will see his own forces strike down the helpless people he is sworn to rule fairly?"
Shikamaru walked quickly outside of the warehouse, dropping his henge and quickly joining Kakashi on the top of a nearby roof: "Whatever the mission was, Daiki is likely to have something to do with the brewing riots."
"Riots? As in, more than this one?"
"They're organized." Shikamaru shook his head, "And they're ready to die for... whatever they're fighting for."
"Killing the one rallying them won't help." Kakashi sighed heavily before he tilted his head: "I could take his place and deescalate..."
"What about the other groups doing the same across the city? 50 People aren't enough to reach the ear of the Fire Lord, even they know that." Shikamaru hid a grimace at the idea of killing a civilian whose only fault was not being a shinobi.
It set a dangerous precedent... The precedent is already set, isn't it? The thought burned itself inside of the Nara's brain, echoing words that he had long thought forgotten: 'What is the measure of a civilization's value?'
In hindsight, it was obvious that Daiki had been building up to something on a scale that almost escaped Shikamaru's ability to understand it. Your lives are yours. Not of the Village, not of your Clan, not of your Kage, and not mine.
The words of Daiki-sensei were like thunder within a lighting storm, and the Konoha-nin could see with stark clarity how his teacher had left a trail of crumbles for him to follow in the form of apparently disjointed lessons that made him think about his own role and place in the world.
"Once you decide, do." he muttered to himself, quoting Daiki-sensei without even realizing it.
"Ideas?" Kakashi's disinterest expressed itself with an arched eyebrow as he turned towards the chunin.
Shikamaru's mind was working overtime, connecting dots that didn't even appear on the same page, feeling as if a puzzle was just beyond the tip of his mental fingers.
It had started with the very first meeting with Daiki-sensei, when he introduced Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji to Failure. Every 'story-time', every sarcastic retort... like hoops around which team 10 was made to jump through.
No, not made to, their teacher had been far more oblique in his approach and execution: he forced Shikamaru and his friends to break themselves against the obstacles he created in the hope that they would rebuild themselves as someone capable of seeing the world as Daiki saw it.
No, to see the forest and not the trees, to see the land and the forest and the trees...
Ino and Choji took different directions, as did Shikamaru. But Daiki wasn't done with the Nara, was he? He had left a book of pieces of information that nobody had any idea about under his own pillow before facing Orochimaru, claiming to be following orders... Did it even matter?
Whether Daiki was actuìing under orders or not, it was Shikamaru that had managed to keep going through endless tests and endless painful thinking-sessions that made him question his own sanity, however briefly, when compared to the views that everybody else had.
Shikamaru was the one sent to the Capital, to try and unravel whatever secret there was behind an economical empire that was born far too fast and that was far too diverse to be able to survive without someone guiding it.
...
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