"You are the Leader. You are the pri culprit. No matter where you flee, you will be hunted to the ends of the earth.
But if you stabilize the military's morale right now and consolidate all available strength, you might still have a fighting chance to survive."
Negishi Kusanagi followed the direction of the voice carrying on the draft. Shisui was seated not far to his left, looking straight ahead as he casually drank tea straight from the spout of the kettle.
Yet, Negishi was absolutely certain that the voice he had just heard belonged to him.
"Enough!" Negishi roared, slamming both hands onto the table as he surged to his feet.
The squabbling counciln froze and looked toward him. Negishi turned his gaze sharply to Shisui. "Chief Strategist Shiraki, you have a mind for strategy. Why don't you share your thoughts with everyone?"
Shisui sat up slightly, his level gaze sweeping across the crowded room.
The dual declarations of war from the great nations had shattered the morale of Kusagakure, pushing the village to the brink of absolute collapse.
Even Negishi, their newly appointed figurehead, was wavering under the pressure, contemplating whether to abandon his post and run.
A gathering like this is nothing more than a disorganized rabble, Shisui thought.
Of course, he could not allow them to dissolve just yet. If he had intended to let them scatter, he wouldn't have bothered transmitting his voice to Negishi in the first place.
As the room fell silent, every eye fixed on him. Shisui maintained his characteristic, tranquil deanor. Atop his shoulder, Ao the erald dragonfly rested quietly, its translucent wings fluttering with a rhythmic, hypnotic cadence.
After a prolonged silence, Shisui finally spoke: "Do you all want to live?"
"What kind of ridiculous question is that? Who doesn't want to live?!" a Jōnin barked, pushing his chair back as he stood up. "You talk as if it's easy. Staying here is no different from waiting for the executioner's blade! I'm leaving right now, and nobody is going to stop !"
The man didn't even manage to take a single step forward before he was violently slamd back down into his seat by the very Chūnin who had consud the hybrid insect eggs.
Over the past few days, the strength of these six individuals had drastically surged, easily rivaling the standard paraters of a Jōnin.
Furthermore, following the two consecutive rounds of internal purges, only fifteen of Kusagakure's original Jōnin remained active. The six modified ninjas, alongside Shisui, constituted the newly promoted elite.
Out of the twenty-two high-ranking individuals present in the council chambers, more than half were already under Shisui's absolute, covert control. They remained entirely oblivious to this reality, and Shisui intended to keep it that way.
"If you want to live, then we fight," Shisui stated calmly. "If we want true independence, if we want to survive, we must carve out our path through blood.
This is a crucible we can only cross by relying on our own strength."
The room erupted into collective shock. Every veteran ninja in the room knew their current military capacity; attempting to stand against two Great Nations simultaneously was the literal definition of throwing an egg against a fortress wall.
The pinned Jōnin scread again, his face contorted in rage. "Kusagakure was ruined by your hands! Why should the rest of us pay for your catastrophic blunders?! Let go of ! We need to dissolve the village and run before the vanguard arrives!"
Shisui cut through the shouting, his voice carrying an ironclad authority. "Kusagakure was not ruined by our hands.
Every individual in this room understands the absolute truth of the matter: Iwagakure frad us. They assassinated the son of the Hokage to test the waters of the Hidden Leaf and gauge the resolve of Sarutobi Hiruzen.
We are rely the convenient scapegoats they threw onto the board to take the fall."
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing behind his tinted visor. "Even if you dissolve the village today and scatter across the nations, you will find no sanctuary.
You will spend the rest of your days fleeing from black-market bounty hunters. Your severed heads will beco the currency of the underground exchange. Stop indulging in illusions; you have no realistic alternative."
Another councilman countered, his voice trembling with frustration. "Then tell us, what do you expect us to do?! Look at our numbers! Look at our resources! If we don't abandon the village, are we supposed to just sit tightly and let two great nations systematically exterminate us?"
"To survive, we require elite forces capable of shifting the balance of power—a deterrent capable of making a Great Nation hesitate," Shisui explained smoothly. "To achieve this, I propose an imdiate alliance.
To be entirely frank with you all, I hail from an ancient, hidden summoning lineage known as the Dragonfly Sacred Land."
"The summoning beasts residing there possess imnse combat capabilities, though they have been isolated from the affairs of the shinobi world for so long that their existence has faded from history.
If you place your trust in , I am willing to act as your emissary and facilitate the signing of a grand contract. Once successful, every single ninja in this room will be granted a powerful dragonfly summon."
"So what?!" a tactical commander scoffed. "They're just summoning beasts. The Hidden Leaf has internal contracts that outclass anything a minor faction can offer. How can a few insects alter the tide of an entire war?"
Shisui gently extended his finger, allowing Ao to crawl onto his knuckles as a faint, knowing smile played on his lips. "What if I told you that the contract includes a forbidden integration technique? A secret art that allows a shinobi to temporarily rge their physical form with their summon, granting them absolute, high-speed flight capabilities?"
The room fell completely silent. In the theater of war, an army that held absolute dominance over the skies possessed an incomparable tactical advantage.
"Furthermore, we will not fight alone," Shisui continued. "We can forge a coalition with neighboring minor nations.
Salamander Hanzō of the Land of Rain, and the rogue syndicates operating near the Land of Waterfalls—if we form a united front, the Great Nations will be forced to ticulously calculate the devastating cost required to dismantle us."
"You make it sound so simple," an elder muttered skeptically. "Why would nations like Takigakure or Agakure lift a finger to save our skin?"
"It is a matter of basic geopolitics—the classic principle of the lips being destroyed and the teeth turning cold," Shisui replied. "Moreover, Kusagakure is not entering these negotiations empty-handed. We possess significant leverage."
"The Hidden Waterfall Village has held the Seven-Tails, Chōi, inside a dormant sealing chamber for years, entirely unable to locate a compatible vessel to serve as its Jinchūriki.
It just so happens that within our own ranks, we possess an individual whose physical and spiritual attributes are perfectly aligned to host the Seven-Tails.
In exchange for providing them a functional weapon and yielding a portion of our border territories, we will negotiate the imdiate military deploynt of the Seven-Tails."
"That is a Tailed Beast!" a Jōnin shouted, slamming his fist down. "You think you can just borrow a living weapon of mass destruction on a whim?! Who do you think you are?!"
Shisui looked him dead in the eye. "If I state that I can deliver the Seven-Tails to our front lines, do you have the courage to believe ?"
Disbelief washed over the room. The counciln stared at Shisui as if he had entirely lost his sanity.
Yet, Shisui remained utterly unbothered. He stepped forward, raising his hand to issue a formal military oath. "I will stake my life on a military mandate: grant precisely twenty-four hours, and I shall return to this village with the Seven-Tails secured.
In return, every individual in this room must guarantee that within this one-day window, you will maintain absolute internal order. No one panics, and no one crosses the border."
The proposition sounded like the delusional ramblings of a madman, yet the sheer charisma and unnatural conviction radiating from his presence made it almost impossible to outright dismiss his words.
"This crisis is a catastrophe, but it is also our greatest opportunity," Shisui's voice resonated through the timber of the hall. "The mont we repel the vanguard of the Great Nations—even if we only secure a decisive victory in the very first engagent—we alter our destiny forever.
From that mont onward, the Land of Grass will no longer be a spineless fence-sitter. We will no longer be an insignificance that can be casually crushed beneath the boots of the prominent powers."
"And once that first victory is secured, I possess the absolute leverage required to travel into the Land of Rain and convince Salamander Hanzō to sign a mutual defense pact.
The price for his compliance will be the secession of our southern territorial corridor."
As for how a shinobi village could casually partition the sovereign territory of the Land of Grass without the Daimyō's consent, Shisui didn't care to explain; he simply made it clear that the civilian governnt would comply when the ti ca.
Finally, Shisui turned his gaze toward Negishi. "Lord Leader, you have spent your entire career dreaming of a reality where this village could rise to prominence.
Are we truly going to spend the rest of our lives cowering in the shadows, enduring the constant suppression and casual arrogance of the great hidden villages?"
"Why do they deserve to enjoy the most fertile lands and limitless resources, while we are constantly marginalized, blad for their conspiracies, and left too terrified to even raise a hand in self-defense? Why must we exist as spineless cowards?"
He turned back to face the entire council. "The reason is simple: from the day they are born, those elite shinobi are taught that they belong to the strong.
They can lose battles, they can suffer defeats, and they can execute tactical retreats—but the concept of total annihilation never enters their minds. Why? Because behind them stands an invincible village, backed by an infinite network of comrades they can rely upon."
"But look at yourselves. From the very day you were born, you have been conditioned to believe you belong to the weak.
You can win skirmishes, you can achieve temporary victories, and you can escape encirclents—but deep in your souls, you carry the permanent, crippling fear that your demise is always a mont away."
Shisui walked toward the exit, his cloak billowing behind him. "Win this upcoming battle. Even if we only shatter their vanguard in the first clash, you will strip away the label of the weak forever.
You will earn the right to stand tall in the shinobi world and prove to the five nations that the Grass can bite."
"And if we happen to lose... we were slated to die anyway. Isn't a glorious death on the battlefield vastly superior to being slaughtered like sheep in a ditch?"
Shisui paused at the threshold, throwing one final instruction over his shoulder to Negishi. "Lord Leader, issue our official manifesto to the five nations before sunset.
Condemn the tyrannical bullying of the minor villages by the Great Powers. I have already secured ironclad material evidence proving that the operative who executed the Hokage's son was an active Iwa ninja.
Let the world judge whether Sarutobi Hiruzen is truly blind and incompetent, or if the 'God of Shinobi' is simply too terrified to lock horns with the Hidden Stone."
With those final words, Shisui stepped through the threshold and vanished into the corridor.
Inside the council chambers, the silence remained absolute for a very long ti.
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