“Mari-sensei, when I talked to you about this before, you thought we might be able to get Leaf citizenship. What about taking it a step farther, and founding a clan?” Hazou asked. “Like you talked about when you pranked me back in Leaf, only serious this time? The innovations and discoveries we make could be protected as clan secrets.”

Hoping to finally settle the matter, he had very carefully broached the subject only after everyone was stuffed with Kagome-sensei's spicy seafood stew, and would therefore be disinclined to flee.

It was Noburi who answered. “Leaf’s current clans would probably fight tooth and nail against having outsiders added to them, especially a group that isn’t actually related by blood. At least, that’s what I expect my family would do if a group showed up in Mist requesting clanship.”

Keiko nodded in agreement. “That fits my own model of the situation. I expect this is something you were not really exposed to because of your separation from the Kurosawa at large, Hazou, but anything that risked permitting the power of the clans to influence the Kage to be diluted would be viciously opposed.”

Hazou grimaced. “You’re probably right, but if we can’t argue for keeping our secrets in a way that makes it politically inconvenient to take them from us… they probably will be taken.”

Mari-sensei shook her head. “Protections for non-clan nin are weaker since you can’t just wiggle your fingers and say ‘clan secrets, ooooooh’, but nobody will be happy with their village trampling on people they’ve promised to protect.”

“What about temporary clanship, until we can, er, get our own established?”

“That would just dilute the idea of ‘clanship’ even further,” pointed out Noburi.

“Point,” Hazou admitted dejectedly. “Okay, so citizenship probably on the table, clanship almost definitely not. I want my mom out of Mist as part of the deal. Ideally before any kind of war breaks out, but maybe once it does Jiraiya will be less reluctant, and there may be opportunities to extract her from field ops. What would you guys want from the deal?”

“How much weight is on our side of the scale to begin with? What are we bargaining with?” asked Keiko.

Hazou began enumerating items on his fingers. “Skywalkers, eventual bloodlines, another summoning scroll, three near-chuunin, a medic, a logistics expert, an infiltration expert, two sealmasters, upgraded macerators, banshees--”

“If you don’t think the Toad-stinker has louder versions of that alarm seal, I don’t know that anything I’ve been trying to cram into that head of yours this whole year has made it through,” interjected Kagome, his sudden break from silence catching everyone off-guard. “He said he fought a whole clan of sound-stinkers, and you don’t think he thought of sound-based weapons?” He looked up from his carving -- some kind of flower, Hazou thought. “That’d be a million times dumber than not thinking of skywalkers or skytowers.”

Hazou sighed. “That’s probably a fair point. Okay, drop banshees. Add future innovations, obviously. That’ll probably be a big part of the draw of getting us on-board. Add our ability to influence Isan, combining Mari-sensei’s understanding of their politics with Keiko’s status as the Pangolin Summoner.”

“We still have no idea how significant our influence on Isan will be,” pointed out Mari-sensei. “For all we know there’s been a conservative coup and we’ll be attacked on sight to try to steal the scroll back. I’d hold off on listing that in either column until we get more information somehow.”

Mentally, Hazou crossed off the suggestion to officially join Isan and work to take control of its politics.

“In any case,” Mari-sensei continued, “add a little bit of outdated tactical and security information from an ex-jounin of Mist, though I’d feel pretty awful about increasing the chances that all my former comrades will end up dead.”

“Speaking of people we like dying, regardless of whether we decide on being Leaf citizens, I would really like to try to find a way to keep my immediate family out of Leaf’s bullseye if war does break out,” Noburi said, “but I have no idea how to even begin bargaining for that.”

“I feel similarly,” added Keiko. “The closest thing that comes to mind is helping swing the scales toward a swift and overwhelming Leaf victory rather than a protracted war, and thereby reducing the chance that our loved ones become casualties.”

“I don’t wanna add jack to the deal. I don’t want any deal with stinkin’ murderin’ cheating Leaf stinkers,” Kagome spat, cutting a particularly vicious wedge of wood from his creation. “At least not until we start running low on paper and want to go clean them out again. Give them some tiny improvement to the macerator in exchange, keep all the good stuff for ourselves.”

“Keep them for ourselves? How?” Keiko asked. “Unless we feel like sending Mari-sensei into the village by herself to negotiate, the rest of us are inevitably going to give away information. Unless we completely break from Leaf, the truth will eventually come out.”

Kagome’s face soured. “Then let’s do that. Disappear into the wilderness until we can emerge and tell all the village stinkers to stop being idiots. Maybe pick some towns to protect, if you’re feeling especially do-goody.”

“I don’t know if I’d be okay with doing that,” said Noburi. “As appealing as the idea of just living on a beach training to be super-badasses sounds, it means we can’t affect anything if a war comes. And it probably loses us a lot of goodwill with Leaf and the Pangolins, plus whatever influence we might have had over what happens with Isan. Whatever we do, I think it needs to be active.”

“What would it look like to be active without fully joining Leaf, though?” asked Hazou. “Being deployed as deniable assets by Jiraiya? Swooping in to try and protect random civilian settlements?”

Noburi grimaced. “Yeah, neither of those sound especially appealing. Especially since we might end up in combat with people we know.”

“Joining Leaf as citizens would not avoid front-line deployment,” Keiko stated, “and as I said last time, we would be unable to refuse those orders. They would likely keep Hazou and Kagome under heavy guard to ensure they could continue to perform research, but the rest of us….”

“Surely that depends on what exactly we manage to negotiate from them, right?” Hazou asked. “If they value Kagome and me staying reasonably happy and stable, they’ll need to keep you guys safe.”

Mari-sensei sighed. “I don’t know if our side of the scales is heavy enough for that, Hazou.”

“Well then let’s make it heavier! Show them how to make long-term sky bases and offer to set one up and man it as neutral ground, maybe?”

Noburi raised a deeply skeptical eyebrow. “Neutral ground?”

“Yeah. It’s an idea I’ve been toying with for a while. Hidden Heaven, a village in the sky. A trading post, or maybe a meeting ground for diplomatic negotiations. Put it over the Hanguri Gulf, so it’s between Leaf, Sand, and Isan, who will presumably all be allied.”

“Wait, then how will any of the foreign dignitaries get there? And the merchants? Are you thinking we should just hand out skywalkers willy-nilly? Are you nuts?”

“I was thinking airships, actually.”

“Oh, just airships that can carry hundreds of storage seals full of high-altitude bombing payload, that’s a much better thing to leak.”

“You’ll have to change the name,” said Mari-sensei. “Big-wigs won’t want anything that even sounds like a rival village. On top of that, no village leaders are going to acknowledge any diplomatic power that they aren’t forced to by some pressure, whether it’s military or economic, which is really just two ways of saying military. You want to make this happen, you need the raw power to back it up. A Leaf empowered by aerial seal technology and whatever insanity you dream up tomorrow might be enough to cow them into coming to the negotiating table, but in that case Leaf will want it to be at the heart of Fire, not on neutral ground. There’s very little space between Leaf being unable to coerce the other villages at all, and Leaf being so overwhelmingly able to coerce the other villages that the Hokage can just unilaterally decide where negotiations will occur.”

“In any case, physically, a sky base is just a skytower writ large,” added Keiko, slipping into a lecture-like voice that wasn’t quite the monotone of the Frozen Skein. “As a large, permanent, populated structure it has logistical issues that a more basic skytower lacks, but we have solved none of those issues and cannot share them. We have already shared skytower technology, so we have nothing more to offer here. Until we have, there is no point in mentioning it.”

“I have to agree,” added Mari-sensei. “A sky base is good for two things: a sheltered location for people to live in, and a staging ground for military strikes by a side that has skywalker technology or an equivalent. It isn't essential for that role; there's no reason the base couldn't be on the ground except convenience. Developing it as a pure living space will be a major undertaking with limited payoff for anyone who doesn't share our uplift goals, so Leaf is unlikely to care, at least for now. If we gave them skywalkers as part of a package with the sky base concept and all necessary supporting technologies, that would be more likely to catch their attention.

“As to whether giving Leaf skywalkers and sky bases is a good idea...on balance I'm going to say yes. If we can figure out how to make a real base and solve the logistics issues that Keiko mentioned, then giving all that and skywalkers to Leaf would be my vote. Mist is obviously pushing for another war someday soon, and their takeover of Hot Springs both pushes up the timetable on that and gives them a solid base from which to deploy hunter-nin. Giving Leaf a military advantage -- especially one that isn't as massively destructive as some of the things I've heard from you -- sounds like a great idea. If Mist finds out about it, maybe it will make them slow down a bit. “

Keiko cut in. “Sensei, I think you underestimate the potential that accompanies sky towers when you say they aren’t massively destructive. They open up the possibility for high-altitude bombing of villages and production centers, from altitudes so great that no reply is possible.”

Mari-sensei shrugged. “Yes, but there's a safety/accuracy tradeoff: drop from high up, which means you're inaccurate, or from low down where you do less damage and can be shot at with long-range jutsu. Either way, you won't get everyone in the first salvo. The majority of jōnin and, in fact, the majority of ninja as a whole, will survive the attack and E&E out of the area. Once you finish they will gather up and go attack your village as a retaliation strike. High altitude bombing is mostly going to kill civilians and destroy property. If I'm being really cold about it, that doesn't matter to a nation's war-making capacity.”

“But that is only at the current state of the art. New techniques will be developed--” Keiko insisted, before being interrupted by Kagome.

“Who cares? Sure, give 'em sky bases. Not like we're going anywhere near stinking Leaf and their stinking cheating cheater eyeballs, so doesn't matter for us. Absolutely not skywalkers, though. Need to be able to get away from their stinking hunter teams before they stuff lupchanz in our ears. And if it makes 'em go to war and kill each other off then huzzah! Less of the stinkers for us to worry about.”

“Kagome-sensei,” Hazou said steadily, “I completely understand why you are opposed to a closer relationship to Leaf. Could I ask you what kinds of commitments they would have to make to us to make you feel the idea was slightly less dangerous?”

“Huh? Why would I believe anything one of those lying stinkers said?”

“That’s a good point sensei, actions would speak a lot louder than words," Haozu answered patiently. "What would Leaf need to do to convince you they did not have malicious intentions toward our team, after accounting for the fact that we know they would be doing those things with the intent of convincing you?”

“I… Uh. Hmmm,” Kagome-sensei responded, his brow furrowing. He set his carving to one side, withdrew a blank sheet and a brush set from his pack, and started working out the interactions that question entailed. “Gimme a second. This is worse than one of Noburi’s tricky cheaty deals in Strategic Domination.”

“Take your time, sensei. In the meantime, Noburi, maybe we can talk about a concern you brought up previously, regarding our loss of agency as Village ninja. Perhaps we can come up with ways to mitigate that worry?”

Noburi frowned. “Like what? We’d be right back to the cycle of taking missions and following orders that we all loved oh so much in Mist.”

“Not necessarily. Even if we can’t secure a promise not to deploy members of the team at all, we might be able to influence the kinds of missions we get handed. All of us have skills that are better leveraged off the front line. Medicine, logistics, interrogation, sealing….”

“They have Yamanaka for interrogation, and I’m a jounin,” Mari-sensei said. “At some point, I’m getting deployed, but hopefully it’ll at least be with a purpose-built team. Maybe we can even convince them not to send me against Mist directly.”

Noburi absently tossed another hunk of wood on the fire. “That kind of assumes there will definitely be a war, Mari-sensei. Which, at this point, I can’t see a way for us to prevent, but I really wish that weren’t the case.”

Hazou nodded grimly. “If I’m honest, it’s sounding like our biggest opportunity for minimizing suffering and death in the near future is coming up with some way to ensure Leaf immediately crushes everyone, and then hope that they act merciful and don’t provoke any desperate, last-ditch resistance.” He sighed. “What’s wrong with me that it’s so much easier to picture ways to win wars than ways to stop them?”

Mari-sensei leaned over to ruffle his head sympathetically. “Breaking things is usually the easier option, little Hazou. Of the things that are wrong with you, that isn’t one of them.”

“That’s why I like explosive seals,” said Kagome-sensei. “Easy. Boom. Squish. No hassle. Except cleanup, sometimes.” He checked his paper one more time, then nodded. “I figured out your tricky question. For Jiraiya-stinker to convince me he didn’t want to chain us up in a secret sealing slavery facility and threaten to send us body parts from the rest of the team unless we came up with a new seal every day, he’d have to tell us how that meeting room was blocked from those cheating Hyuuga, let us build a base that was shielded, let me set up as much security as I wanted, and give us notes on whatever kinds of seals we ask for to help make it double-extra-secure.”

“That’s… a lot more straightforward than I was expecting, if I’m being honest,” Hazou admitted. “I thought you’d want to be allowed to blow up their lupchanz farms or something.”

“What? Nah, don’t be ridiculous. I’d have no way of knowing I’d gotten all of them, and then their lupchanzed zombie slaves would just make more. Totally wasted effort on my part. Oh! And none of us ever get mindscanned. That’s another thing. And we get a Leaf genin who tastes random samples of the food we buy. Maybe that Akimichi kid, he wasn’t as sneaky as the rest of them. And--”

“So, we’ve established some basics for what joining Leaf might look like, at least initially,” summarized Hazou. “What about longer-term? We’d be positioned… maybe not well, but not terribly for influencing the course of the village’s future. We have an in with Jiraiya, we’d be supplying valuable skills, we have at least a start on good relationships with several members of major clans--”

“They were assigned to build good relationships with us,” Noburi pointed out. “We’ve talked about this.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean the foundations aren’t there,” Hazou insisted.

“Speaking of relationships, there’s a factor I notice you haven’t brought up yet,” Mari-sensei prodded.

“Yeah, getting to be with Akane again would be… nice,” Hazou replied. “I’d like to think that isn’t biasing me too much, but that’s why I’m asking all of you! Am I just seeing this all in too positive a light?”

“Could be,” Noburi said, shrugging.

“Helpful, Noburi, very helpful.”

“What? As much as I don’t want to admit it, at this point I don’t think that changes the final result. The idea of Team Uplift galavanting around the world delivering the miracles of sealing, medicine, and badass Pangolins is a spectacular one, but the more we talk about it, the more it seems like gambling that we’ll come up with enough amazing ideas to fundamentally change civilization before we slip up one too many times. Frankly, I’m willing to take that bet. It sounds like Kagome is too. But Keiko and Mari-sensei seem to think Leaf is the best of a lot of non-ideal options. Ultimately, it comes down to your decision. It always has - your ideas are the chips we’re bargaining with, and you need to be wholeheartedly behind whatever option the team goes with. Whatever you choose, we’ve all gotta stick together, and we’ve all got your back.”

“I… wow, Noburi, that was remarkably insightful. Thank you,” Hazou responded.

“You’re not the only one who’s allowed to make speeches out of nowhere,” the other boy replied with a grin.

The team was quiet for a long minute.

“Well Hazou?” Mari-sensei prompted. “What do you think?”

“I think… I think we have to go with the course of action that has the best likely outcome, that maximizes the impact that we’ll probably have, instead of maximizing the impact we could have. On balance, I’m not even sure that staying missing-nin satisfies that second condition -- having access to more sealing resources and the potential to influence a superpower might mean that joining Leaf raises the ceiling on how much we can do more than having to take orders lowers that ceiling -- but I’m almost positive that joining Leaf fulfills the first condition. So.” He drew a deep breath. “I guess that means our path forward is pretty clear. We spend some time making ourselves as attractive a package as possible, and then… we go see about making Leaf our home.”