Chapter 39- Plans

The young and brash fourth Raikage, Ay, stared angrily at the letter in front of him. As his hand curled into a fist and his face turned red, the paper crumbled before burning to ash as the sparks flew across it.

He took a deep breath but before he could fully squash his anger, the Hachibi jinchuuriki, his brother, Bee, interrupted him.

“Yo, big bro, you mad as hell, that ain't so swell.

The Daimyo got you full of ire

About to spit fire

What he saying now?

Plans going keblow?

The same as last week?

Super paranoid freak?

Spies out the yin yang?

Too bad we too good

Spies fall with a bang

As we said they wood…”

Ay was trembling, but he nothing outwardly acknowledged the presence of his brother, or his awful, awful raps.

Bee thought to himself.

Maybe Aniki just ain't hearing so good.

Lemme check, see if he could

“ Kono yarou, Baka yarou!”

Ay erupted.

“GET THE FUCK OUT BEE!”

As Ay jumped up to physically persuade his idiot rap mumbling bother of a brother to leave if the oaf didn’t get the message, Bee crossed his hands in a cool gangster pose, leaning up against the wall, and disappeared in a flash of sparks.

Ay settled back into his seat, more than upset that Bee had guessed exactly what the letter the Daimyo had sent to Kumogakure was about.

The old doddering fool was paranoid beyond all belief, and he was worried about all of the penetration attempts on the border.

In the past week, no less than 8 ships and 14 people were caught trying to cross the border. They were immediately executed on the spot, and none of them got far enough through the perimeter to suggest that the perimeter wasn't working, but nothing that Ay could say could assuage the frantic fear of the Daimyo.

The man was possessed with the planned invasion. He could not allow anything to get in the way of it, and any threat to it had the Daimyo bouncing off the walls.

Ay, on the other hand, was used to the normal ups and downs of shinobi life. People tried to get information every day of every year. It wasn’t even that big of an uptick in illegal border crossings versus normal times.

Ay snorted to himself. The Daimyo was truly a fool. If it was really that easy to get information out of the Land of Lightning, then Kumogakure would’ve fallen years ago.

Still though, the Daimyo could not be persuaded.

He wanted to move the schedule up.

While he had initially planned on six months preparation for the civilian army, he wanted to push the tempo.

The unilateral change to the plan now had Kumogakure making its initial assaults in a little over a month. Ay collected himself before calling his advisors in, he’d rather not have this discussion more than once if he could help it.

As soon as Ay finished spreading the news, the various commanders and clan heads seated at the conference table were at a loss for words.

One of the elderly commanders took a harsh look at his subordinate, who then grimaced.

The junior commander looked pleadingly at his superior, but the apathetic look on his mentor's face told him that he was indeed betrayed, and it would be expected of him to fall on the grenade that was an upset Raikage.

The junior commander slowly stood up, collected his breath, said his last prayers, and spoke.

"Raikage, I don't think our forces will be able to ready themselves in that timeframe..."

Ay pointed at the man.

"Get out."

The junior commander hastily fled from the room, thankful that more serious repercussions had not been exacted. Maybe his senior commander could breathe life back into his now smoldering career in the comings months.

Ay glared around the room.

"The Daimyo has shifted his plans. We're adapting. End of discussion.

You are not here to question my orders. You are here to help me find solutions.

Our task from the Daimyo is as before, but now earlier with some extra stipulations.

Decapitate Shimogakure and Yugakure by the Lunar New Year. Create chaos in the Land of Rice Fields.

Establish a Safe Area for the nation's soldiers to station themselves and base their invasion.

We have to scrap our current plans with Shimo and Yu, who's got ideas?

Also, we have the soldier's transport issue? Speak up people!"

Koga, his black ops commander, was the first to speak.

"Well, my report that is due later today will get you more information about it, but the short of it is that my men have successfully infiltrated Shimo and activated the sleeper cells.

We are in position to take action there already, over a month ahead of schedule. Our lead informant found himself with new responsibilities and privileges. The exact details will come to you, but for this discussion, they will be kept compartmentalized; they are impertinent.

As for Yu, our men are still in the surveillance stages of infiltration, though they have established contacts with our embedded spy ring.

We have two options for Yu, either we get our men in at risk with less than actionable information, or we can use our spies already there."

Ay was impassive.

"Explain further."

Koga continued.

"Well, as you know, standard procedure dictates that only Kumo born shinobi are allowed the clearance and rank to activate sleeper cells.

That's why we're trying to infiltrate right now.

However, if we were to deliver activation instructions to our embedded spies, they would be able to do so, and with the increased man power, our infiltrators would be inside within the year.

The only question is whether we trust our spies."

Ay started to frown. It was Koga's worst habit. He would just stop talking and wait for people to prompt him to continue. Ay sighed and humored the man,

Koga, though eccentric, was excellent in his job, and Kumogakure probably had the best Black Ops division of any hidden village.

"Well Koga, you know better than I do. Do we trust the spies?"

Koga scratched his chin thoughtfully before replying.

"Not even a little bit."

And Koga's normally stoic face broke into a Cheshire cat grin. The man continued.

"However, some of them are easily manipulated."

The grin started to morph into something a little more ugly, and the people around the room felt their skin crawl and the hair on the nape of their necks stick up.

"In the past few years, we have finally penetrated into the Cult of Jashin.

For those of you unfamiliar with the group, simply put; they are religious fanatics devoted to the god of pain and slaughter.

They, like all ideological people, are prey to honeyed words and misdirection.

If we give them what they want, they will undoubtedly help us."

Ay who hid his smile at the good news, decided to play off his commander.

"And pray tell, what do they want?"

Koga laughed.

"They want war and death. They will help us with anything that brings war to the land of Hot Springs."

Ay slammed a fist onto the table with a thundering crash.

"EXCELLENT! This is the type of news I want to hear!

Next issue: Soldier transport?

Come on people. We are not leaving until the issue is decided."

Those in attendance slowly looked around the room, but no one made a move.

Ay's humors changed with the wind, and his tumultuous personality did not lend itself to emotional stability.

So when no one said anything, he started to get upset.

The sole remaining junior commander in the room was doing anything he could to not meet eyes with his superior.

It didn't help, the mans eyes were boring holes into the younger man's head.

As the sweat beaded up on his forehead, the junior commander slowly looked up, and saw his superior officer glaring at him.

Time to jump on the Ay Grenade.

The junior commander slowly stood up, collected his breath, said his last prayers, and spoke.

"Raikage-sama, what if we use sleds and oxen. The sleds will help us travel faster through the Land of Frost during the winter."

Ay flashed over to the man, grabbing him by the throat, and instantly hurled him through the nearest window.

"WHAT ARE YOU, FUCKING RETARDED?

SLEDDING? THIS ISN'T RECESS YOU IDIOT!"

The junior commander was already halfway across the village, and Ay was yelling at no one in particular.

The large man sat back down, glowering at the remaining members seated at the conference table.

A shriveled old man slowly tottered to a standing position.

Ay addressed him.

"Hayatatsu, what do you think?"

Old man Hayatatsu spoke quietly and slowly with a tremor in his voice.

"Well, I didn't want to say anything, as this is just hearsay, and I'm not that fond of that type of talk..."

Quite literally every other person in the room rolled their eyes at the comment.

Hayatatsu had been the foreign intelligence chief since the village was created.

The man loved hearsay, lived it, breathed it. Rumors had it that he would sneak into hotsprings not to ogle Kunoichi but instead to listen to the rumors the floated through the steam.

"but well, the land of frost has been developing something they call a train.

Supposedly it can traverse the entire country within a day and can carry troops in the thousands and supplies in the hundreds of tons per trip."

Ay smashed the table again with his fist, putting a noticeably large crack into the wood.

"Great News. Confirm it and we'll preserve it during the initial assault.

Brings us to the next issue: Initial Assault

We'll act as soon as Yu is compromised. We need as much time as possible to create the soldier's staging areas on the border of the Land of Fire."

Koga however interrupted him.

"I disagree Raikage-sama.

Even if this so-called train works as plans, it will still take weeks to transfer the Daimyo's forces and supplies.

The Daimyo had given a deadline of the Lunar New Year, and we should take every single second of that we can.

We're still in the process of reactivating veterans and integrating Shinobi and Soldiers.

Besides, Lunar New Year is perfect."

Ay humored the man again.

"Perfect for what, Koga?"

Koga smiled.

"Why, Raikage-sama, when better to start an invasion than during a celebration?"

Meanwhile, in Konoha, a great military parade was occurring on a cold and dreary December First.

The past several weeks had gone by fast, and Yama and Shijin found themselves extremely preoccupied with training the Operations Division.

Today was the first day of deployments. The required forces to man all five bases were leaving today, to include the 100 genin of the Operations Division of the Genin Corps.

Yama and Shijin had made the executive decision to send the worst one hundred of the 450 genin in the first wave.

Even though they were deployed first, they would be at the bases spread throughout the Land of Fire, and they would be the furthest from the front lines.

Yama and Shijin attended the parade as required by their station, but they simply observed in pained silence.

The both of them called on long forgotten memories of the fourth shinobi war. They had been too young at 17.

Some of these genin were only 13.

Yama swallowed the shame back, and held the bile down as it threatened to spill from his lips. He had done the best he could to prepare the genin, but you could only do so much in four weeks.

It came down to stopping the war. If he and Shijin couldn't think of something fast, people would die.

Sadly, even with the help of Ginou, they were running dry on ideas. The worst part was that there was no actionable intelligence.

Yama, even with his Captain's Position giving fairly high clearance, couldn't get anything.

He and Shijin had to operate purely on rumor and assumption, which of course were great ways to start wars, but they lacked a certain quality when it came to using them for the opposite.

The village was still on edge, and all signs pointed to war on the horizon, but the rumors hadn't even said who with any certainty.

Some said that Iwa was coming for revenge now that the Yondaime had been absent from the public eyes since a little after the Kyuubi attack.

Others said that Kirigakure was preparing to invade the mainland from their peninsular strongholds. The area had a long history of intense and bloody combat. In the first war, it was one of the largest fronts, and the battles between Konoha and Kiri had been savage enough that the surrounding areas were dubbed as the Killings Fields.

There were even those that swore that Suna and Kumo had allied themselves while facing a weakened Iwa and Konoha.

Later that night, Yama and Shijin found themselves seated across from each other at the Hatake Compound, caught in the same old argument that had been rehashing itself for the past month.

Yama was emotional, while Shijin was not.

"I already told you it's not an option, I don't have enough life energy to control my power anymore.

I'm getting better with chakra, but its still abysmal, I'm as likely to shatter a forest as I am to tree walk right now."

"My point still stands, Yama. The destabilization of the nations happened due to the removal of the tailed beasts.

The only way to stabilize it is if something fills the power vacuum.

I am unable to do it, while you are. The decision is already made for us."

"And I'm telling you I can't do it.

I can't control my power at all. How would it even work?"

Shijin shut his mouth and ate his words.

He knew what had to be done, but he was still working on how to tell Yama.

There was only one option. The only problem was communicating it to Yama without destroying their relationship.

Shijin wanted to sigh, but nothing came out.

Yama leaned back in his chair and sighed for the both of them, letting the emotion drain from his frame,

"Did you hear anything today about our situation?

I heard a little here and there myself."

Shijin quirked any eyebrow.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I spoke with Heguri a little bit, and he trusts me after seeing the rapid improvement of the Operations Division.

Apparently the village is trying to re establish communications with our spies in the other villages.

We've gotten in contact with at least one spy in each minor village except Amegakure obviously.

Apparently, we're finally no longer flying blind in Kirigakure or Suna.

It's still taking a while to make contact with Iwa and Kumo though, they're both patrolling their borders super hard.

Nothing is coming out of them at all."

Shijin's mind was racing with the new information, but even he couldn't get anything that useful out of it.

His stony mask remained unchanged, but Yama would swear his friend's eyes would twinkle the slightest when he truly put his brain to work.

Shijin finally opened his mouth after a few dozen seconds.

"I haven't got much new information myself, I spoke with some of the secretaries at the Hokage Tower today while I was working on paperwork.

Apparently there has been an uptick in communications going out to 'Forward Deployed Special Units'.

The secretaries are convinced these units are ANBU agents, and if they're right, Konoha is probably getting ready for something big.

I don't know what though."

Yama grimaced for the both of them.

"So what do we do?"

Shijin shook his head.

"We've still got our hands tied. We have no actionable intelligence.

I think our current plan is still our best option."

Yama stood up and slammed both palms onto the table.

"We're just sitting here doing nothing though!"

Shijin calmly retorted.

"Exactly. We have already proven that our actions are as liable to cause problems as they are to solve things."

Yama flinched at the comment, and Shijin continued.

"Thus, we should curtail any large actions until we know enough about the scenario that we can actually predict what the consequences of what we do are."

With a look of defeat, almost close to despair, Yama sat back down.

"I know.

I know.

We're just running out of time though.

I can feel it.

Something bad is going to happen. I don't know how I know, but I know.

We're not doing enough."

The Sandaime Hokage sat in his office at the top of the Hokage Tower as his door flew open and the sound of a flustered secretary leaked in.

"Please Hime-sama, if you wait for one second..."

Hiruzen looked up from the massive piles of paperwork on his desk and met eyes with his student, Tsunade Senju.

As the blonde firebrand stormed into the room, she immediately started yelling at the Sandaime.

"What the hell is the missing nin bullshit, Sensei?

I'm a fucking Senju for God's sake

And what the hell is this fucking note?"

Hiruzen's heart leapt into his throat, but the God of Shinobi coolly asked his former student.

"Did you look inside?"

Tsunade scoffed and threw the note back into the old geezer's face.

"You literally begged me not to, I'm not that curious."

Hiruzen picked up the note he had written and instantly flared fire chakra through it, destroying it completely.

"What note?"

The slug princess sputtered.

"You can't be serious..."

The Sandaime Hokage leveled his steely eyes at the ever young Princess of Konoha, granddaughter of the First Hokage.

"I have no knowledge of any note you might've spoken about."

Shikaku, who was lazily propped up against the wall, doing his best impression of non-sentient room decorations, was also doing his very best to ignore what was happening in front of him.

What a drag!

Tsunade, realizing she wouldn't be getting anything further out of her sensei, the man was sometimes as hard as the rock his face was carved from on the Hokage monument, she plopped down onto a visitor's chair and addressed him.

"So why am I here?

Better yet, why are you here?

Didn't we get some hotshot fourth out of the last war?"

the Sandaime smiled grimly.

"Indeed, both questions have the same answer.

He is currently in a coma due to self-inflicted injuries."

"Now I know you're not serious.

You're telling me our Hokage tried to kill himself?"

Hiruzen filed away that she had unconsciously used the word 'our' to describe the Hokage; it spoke to good tidings.

"I'm am afraid that I can't discuss the specifics for now, but yes, it was indeed by his own hand."

Tsunade chuckled, pulling a particularly large sake bottle from its hidden position in her cleavage. Hiruzen flinched at the display.

She continued after taking a big swig.

"That seals the deal for me. That seat is a fucking death sentence.

I don't care if aliens invade and the sage walks the earth again, there is not way in hell that I'm ever even sniffing at the chance of doing that job.

Shinigami take me first."

"So will you heal him, Tsunade?"

She scoffed.

"I don't much believe I have a choice. Yeah, I'll do it."

Hiruzen let a sigh of relief out and gestured towards the Nara in the background.

"Shikaku here will handle whatever you need. You have my authorization for any and all expenses."

Tsunade's face lit up.

"Within reason."

And her face fell.

"Getting our Hokage back into fighting shape is our number one priority right now as a village, and we need you."

Tsunade started to wave the man off.

"Alright, alright, that's enough smoke up my ass. I already said I'll do it.

C'mon you lazy brat, let's get going."

Shikaku closed his eyes and looked up to the heavens, his thoughts clearly readable on his face.

What a fucking pain!!!

As Tsunade and Shikaku were about to leave the room, Tsunade stopped and turned back to the Sandaime, the closest person in her life to a father figure.

"What would you do if I read the note?"

The Sandaime aura darkened and quieted.

"Do you have to know?"

"Yes."

"Commit suicide in dishonor following the end of the war."

Tsunade and Shikaku walked out without another word. Hiruzen didn't move for quite a while.

Every decision, every act, every order. Oh how they gathered on his back and weighed him down more and more as the years passed.

Sarutobi Hiruzen was waiting for the last one.

The one that would break him.