Chapter 164 - 162: For Profits

"Lord Tsuchikage, this is everything that's been circulating around Ame since yesterday." The ANBU laid out their findings for Ōnoki, the scroll unrolling across the low table.

There were five of them in the room. Ōnoki, his three most trusted confidants, and the ANBU he was grooming to become his future ANBU Commander, a young man with sharp eyes and a sharper memory.

Ōnoki looked calm. His face betrayed nothing, his hands rested flat on his knees, his breathing was even. In truth, he was anything but.

Part of him was still cursing himself for letting his temper get the better of him at the greeting ceremony.

It wasn't that he feared Kumo. He just hated, more than almost anything, letting other people profit off him.

The feeling of being used, of watching someone else take something you handed them and turn it into a weapon, it crawled under his skin like a burrowing insect. And that was clearly what Ame was doing right now.

Hanzo had taken his moment of anger and spun it into a campaign. Profit from his loss of composure from his anger towards A due to the betrayal and profit from Iwa.

"So that's Hanzō's plan? Not as brilliant as advertised." Aoki spoke up, his voice carrying the particular disdain of a man who'd expected better from a legend.

He'd clearly pieced together Hanzō's scheme, tracing the threads of the rumor from its source to its spread.

From where he stood, it wasn't bad, exactly. Hanzo had seen an opportunity and taken it. That was basic politics. But the execution was so... transparent and predictable.

Just deeply disappointing coming from a man called a demigod.

Ōnoki agreed, his voice dry still not showing signs of the complex émotions inside him. "And so what if relations between Kumo and Iwa get worse? Did he think there was any chance of fixing them in the first place?"

The question was rhetorical. Everyone in the room knew the answer. Kumo and Iwa had been circling each other like wolves since the end of the First War until they planned to unite against Konoha, but after A's betrayal, the relationship between the two village became even more worse than ever.

Hanzo hadn't created that hatred. He'd just tried to fan it, which was amateur work. "He's just not as honest as he pretends to be. That's all."

Seeing the Tsuchikage's support, Aoki grew bolder. His shoulders straightened, his voice firmed. "Hmph. In that case, we can turn this to our advantage without much trouble. No matter what we do, Hanzō started it first. Nobody can point the finger at us."

Turn the situation to their advantage.

Iwa under Ōnoki's rule had pushed that philosophy to its absolute limit, far more than the Will of Stone ever suggested.

"I have a plan," one of the advisors spoke up. His name was Genma, older than Aoki. "Why not just flip the rumor back on him? Leak that Hanzō deliberately spread the story about the Tsuchikage insulting the Raikage. Frame it like he wanted to humiliate the Raikage, show his support for Iwa, and prove he's serious about standing against the Konoha-Kumo alliance."

Smiles spread across their faces immediately. Not friendly smiles. When it came to this kind of situation, pitting peoples against each other, manipulating public perception, twisting a man's own scheme into the rope that hanged him, it wasn't an exaggeration to say Hanzō was a child compared to them.

Ōnoki was satisfied with the plan.

But his mind was already running ahead, seeing moves within moves, and he added something that made the room quiet again. "Not only that, we can also let him know we're onto him. Show him we know exactly what he tried to do."

At first glance, that seemed pointless. Of course they knew what he'd tried. The whole point of flipping the rumor was to retaliate. Why add the extra step?

But being cut from the same cloth as Ōnoki, men who'd spent decades navigating the knife-edge politics of a world that had never known true peace, they caught on fast. The flicker of understanding passed through the room like a shared current.

It was to make Hanzō understand that they know he schemed against them, and to appease them, he had to pay something.

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Ōnoki, compared to a certain Hokage, was the decisive type. Once he settled on something, he acted on it, and he was very stubborn about it too.

The very next day, the situation took a new turn as the rumor had shifted with Hanzo's name on every tongue.

"Lord Hanzo, based on our surveillance of the Kage delegations, apart from Iwa, none of the others have engaged in any activities against the village beyond gathering information." Kanzō relayed the spies' observations to Hanzo, his voice steady, his posture straight, every inch the loyal subordinate.

It went without saying that because of this summit, there was practically an Ame spy on every street corner and roughly every hundred meters whenever the rain let up.

Every delegate who sneezed in the wrong direction probably had a report filed about it somewhere. Ame was small, and it was poor, but it was Hanzo's, and he knew how to watch.

"Hmm." Hanzo nodded, reading the report. The paper was crisp, the handwriting precise. Kanzō's work, no doubt.

Hanzo didn't like talking much. Words were tools, and he used them when necessary, but he preferred written reports.

A written report let him read and think at the same time, his mind working through the implications while his eyes moved across the page.

A subordinate's oral report came with pressure, with the need to respond immediately, with the risk of the speaker forgetting some crucial detail or embellishing another.

He read how Ōnoki had spread the rumor that he looked down on the Raikage. How he'd even taken charge of the propaganda campaign to humiliate the Raikage across the ninja world. The irony was thick enough to choke on.

Reading all of it, Hanzo's face stayed expressionless. He hadn't expected things to unfold this way.

He'd anticipated resistance and pushback. But the speed of it, the ruthlessness of it, that caught him slightly off guard.

Still, after everything he'd been through in his life, the wars, the assassinations, the betrayals, the long slow grind of keeping a small country alive in a world full of giants, this wasn't nearly enough to break his composure.

He'd been outplayed today. He'd outplay them tomorrow. That was the rhythm of power.

"Despite everything, I've come to respect Ōnoki." He admitted it freely, finding the man's plan rather ingenious.

Kanzō agreed. "After all, out of all the Kage, we know Ōnoki is the best when it comes to scheming. He's the last person you'd want to ally with."

He said it, the words clean and professional, conveniently leaving out the fact that they'd schemed against Ōnoki first.

That was the nature of politics. The first blow was always forgotten once the counterstrike landed.

"But it also shows he's not truly concerned about our operation," Kanzō continued, his mind already working through the implications. "We already knew it, but confirming there's absolutely no chance of reconciliation between Iwa and Kumo, and likely Konoha too, is enough. With a man like Ōnoki, you can never be completely sure what he's capable of. He might have another goal buried under this one. He always does."

"You're as meticulous as ever." Hanzo looked at Kanzō with something rare on his scarred face: approval.

In Ame, talent was painfully scarce compared to the other villages. They had numbers, but they didn't have prodigies. They had soldiers, but they didn't have geniuses.

Kanzō was one of the few subordinates Hanzo had real expectations for. He knew Kanzō's ceiling as an Elite Jōnin had already been reached, the body could only go so far, but he was far more impressed by Kanzō's brain than his strength.

And so far, he hadn't been disappointed.

Kanzō was pleased by the compliment. But he didn't let it distract him from what mattered. Praise was nice, but survival was better. "Do you have further instructions on how to handle the situation?"

Hanzo thought for a moment before answering.

"For now, don't lower your guard on the other Kage's movements. They can change their minds at any moment. Especially Azula." The others were problems he understood, but she was a variable he couldn't solve.

"And as for Ōnoki," he paused, the silence stretching just long enough to feel deliberate, "let him be. I know he won't cross the line. But don't relax surveillance on any of his movements either. It wouldn't surprise me if everything that's happened so far is just a ploy for one of his strange objectives."

"Understood," Kanzō replied.

(END OF THE CHAPTER)