5

5

The space was so vast that the Hokage’s office didn’t begin to compare. Shikamaru was seated somewhere near the middle of a scarlet carpet that led straight from the magnificent double doors of the entrance to the other side of the room. Handcuffs bound his hands behind him. A revolutionary stood guard on either side to keep him from standing up or doing anything they considered stupid. They too were former shinobi. If Shikamaru tried anything, they’d be on him pretty quickly.

Behind him were Ro and Soku, also in handcuffs and under guard. The one thing that was different was the bruises and cuts covering their faces. It was clear from their exhausted expressions that they had been subjected to horrible torture.

Judging from the number of meals they had brought him, ten or so days had passed. During that time, Shikamaru had not been tortured once. Gengo came to him several times, but each time he had merely rambled about nothing and soon left. He would talk about truly trivial matters like how the weather was good that day or speculate on what he would have for dinner, and then leave.

“Bow your head,” the revolutionary to his right said before grabbing Shikamaru and pushing his forehead to the carpet.

“They are our valued guests. We must not treat them with violence.”

He heard Gengo from far ahead of him. At the same time, the revolutionary crouching beside him to press his face into the floor stood up as if ashamed. His head got lighter.

“My subordinates were rude. Lift your head.”

Before the words were in his ears, Shikamaru had lifted his face and was looking at Gengo. At the end of the red carpet were marble stairs, with another large space at the top, perhaps a quarter the size of the larger hall, where a chair sat, its long backboard a sculpture of a magnificent dragon. Gengo sat in that chair, legs crossed, left elbow on the armrest, cheek resting on the palm of his hand. He looked down on Shikamaru calmly, body angled to the left; he was very much the ruler of this land.

“Come closer,” Gengo said, and the revolutionaries on either side of Shikamaru grabbed his arms and stood him up. They sat him down again a short distance from the stairs. The other revolutionaries did the same with Soku and Ro.

“Are you in the mood to hear what I have to say now?”

“I doubt I’ll be able to make sense of it.”

Gengo smiled slightly at Shikamaru’s declaration. A dozen or more revolutionaries filled the space around Gengo, looking down on Shikamaru with the arrogance of close aides.

Sai was among them. Dressed in a long black coat, he was the epitome of a revolutionary. As he stared down at his supposed comrade, Sai did not waver or flinch. It had always been rare for his eyes to be touched by emotion, but even so, the look in them had never been as cold as this.

“You, famous for your intelligence… You think you’ve discerned my intentions, hm?”

What does Gengo want?

He had had a gut feeling for a while now. But it was so preposterous and so completely impractical, he simply hadn’t said it out loud.

“Be one of my hands, Shikamaru. With you, I can give rise to a new world. I see in you a man capable of such a task.”

“No thanks,” he uttered promptly, glaring at Gengo with eyes shining with bloodlust.

But the master of the land met his fiery gaze coolly, with the air of a gentle breeze blowing somewhere. “I have no interest in a man who would jump to say ‘yes’ when asked to be one of my hands. That’s fine, Shikamaru.”

“Y’know, that tone of yours is really getting on my nerves. You act like you’ve seen through everything. What do you even know about me, anyway?” Shikamaru wasn’t really angry; he wasn’t foolish enough to lose his cool over something like this. He just wanted to see his opponent’s attitude when he tried to pick a fight.

“A person can never completely know another person. Which is exactly why we are talking like this, is it not? I haven’t seen through you or anything like it. It’s only that I’ve lived just a little longer than you, so I can get a glimpse of your emotions. If this manifests as arrogance, then I apologize.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s that attitude that’s getting on my nerves.”

“I see.” Gengo lowered his eyes and smiled self-deprecatingly. And then, for a brief moment, he was silent. He let his gaze wander through empty space, clearly considering things and weighing options, before bringing it back down to Shikamaru.

He deliberately created an interval to deflect my anger…

As he made a show of thinking, Gengo was already preparing the next topic of conversation. If he had pushed ahead with their conversation without pause, Shikamaru’s response would have been forceful and hateful, full of pseudo-angry posturing. To avoid a futile exchange, Gengo deliberately paused to change the topic. He took a breath and left a moment of silence to change the air flowing between the two of them. Shikamaru could have kept sputtering indignantly to stop him from changing the tone of their conversation, but it would have been nothing more than empty bluster.

All that was left was the silence Gengo invited.

This man’s used to tactics like this.

“There’s just one thing I’d like to ask you. Will you answer?”

“What?” Shikamaru regretted his straightforward response. But it was already too late.

“Why must shinobi be so persecuted?”

Shinobi are persecuted?

He didn’t really understand what that was supposed to mean.

Looking at the silent Shikamaru, Gengo began to speak, as if to give background for his question. “The adjective ‘hidden’ is always attached to the villages where the shinobi live. Why must shinobi hide? And what percentage of the realms of this continent are ninja land? It is insignificant, is it not? Others rule over this world. The daimyo.”

Gengo was exactly right. The ninja villages did have the word “hidden” in their names, and the majority of the land of the continent was governed and held by the daimyo. But what did that matter? Even if the daimyo did govern the realms, even if the adjective “hidden” was in there, the ninja weren’t persecuted or anything like it.

Shikamaru was the central pillar of the Allied Shinobi, which was precisely why he presumed to understand a little better than most ninja the true state of the world. The daimyo, and the citizens living in the lands they ruled over, were building good relationships of coexistence and coprosperity with the ninja.

“Answer me, Shikamaru. Why are the ninja persecuted by these people?”

“Exactly when have we ever been persecuted by the daimyo?”

“It’s not only the daimyo. It’s everyone other than ninja living on this continent.”

It looked to Shikamaru like flames blazed up in Gengo’s eyes.

“Well then, I’d like to ask you one more thing.”

“You said just one quest—”

“I want to ask you one more.” Cutting Shikamaru off firmly, Gengo continued. “Ninja have powers different from all other human beings. Would you agree with me on that?”

Chakra and ninjutsu…

Ninja did indeed have powers very different from normal people. Shikamaru nodded wordlessly.

Gengo looked at him, satisfied somehow, before speaking again. “The powers of the ninja are already so strong they cannot be contained within a human framework.”

Once more, Shikamaru nodded.

The fighting of the Great War two years earlier was so tremendous that the fate of the entire planet had rested on the outcome. If the Allied Shinobi had been defeated, Gengo and Shikamaru wouldn’t have been sitting here chatting like this. Uchiha Madara had tried to pull the people of the world into a dream with unimaginably enormous magic, and Uzumaki Naruto had fought to end the war with the nine beasts in his body, the source of his chakra. Neither could have been called human. The very fact of possessing powers that could give rise to people like this perhaps pushed the ninja beyond the category of human.

“Why must those who surpass the human framework conceal themselves and live in villages with the adjective ‘hidden’ in their names? Why must they do the work of maids and earn money by the day? Who was it that saved the world in the Great War two years ago? It wasn’t the daimyo, and it wasn’t the citizenry.” Gengo pulled his elbow off the armrest and sat up tall, thrusting his right arm up high. “Was it not the ninja?”

Full of ambition, Gengo’s voice overwhelmed Shikamaru.

What is this power…?

His heartbeat grew distant. An exultation he had never before felt flooded him.

Why?

It might have been that Gengo had put into words those thoughts that lay sleeping somewhere in his heart.

Exactly.

Two years earlier, the ninja had saved the world.

“Ninja sacrificed their lives fighting to protect this world, and yet precisely how many people know this? The people do not know the name of even Uzumaki Naruto, revered so in the ninja world as the hero who ended the Great War. And Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Obito, Uchiha Sasuke, Hatake Kakashi, the five Kage, Akatsuki—are they not all names to be passed down through the ages in the world of ninja?”

Gengo was exactly right. No matter how the ninja put their lives on the line to protect this world, word of their feats would never reach the people populating it.

“And yet the daimyo rest on the laurels of a peace built on the corpses of ninja, and rule carefree over the citizens of the continent. The shinobi were even thoughtful enough during the Great War to put up a powerful barrier over the battle zones for these fellows. And what did the citizens and the daimyo do for the ninja who had gone to such lengths for them?”

Nothing had changed. And it was no wonder.

Uchiha Madara, who had gone up against the Allied Shinobi in the Great War, and Otsutsuki Kaguya had tried to trap the people of the continent in a spell and turn them into a battery to generate chakra. As a result, in the middle of fierce fighting, the citizens and the daimyo had all fallen asleep. But still, it wasn’t as though there weren’t people who knew what had happened.

“Why must the ninja, with their superior powers, live secret lives in hidden villages?” Gengo stood up tall. “Are the ninja really here for them to toy with, to persecute?” He took a step forward.

The stairs.

One stair, then another, Gengo advanced. “Shikamaru. What I am about to say now is what I truly wish to ask you.” He was already at the bottom, so close now that if he took another few steps, he would be standing directly in front of Shikamaru.

“Should this world not be ruled by those possessing these ‘ninja’ powers?”

Shikamaru was unable to spit out a hard “No.” He was stuck wavering between “yes” and “no.” He no longer knew what was right.

One who endures and perseveres. A ninja. Whatever the power he or she might have, a ninja was a ninja because they used that power on behalf of the people without ostentation or affect.

However.

The chakra and the possibilities of the ninjutsu a ninja possessed were unfathomable. If Gengo was right, and the ninja governed instead of the daimyo, wouldn’t that be a remarkable step forward for this world?

What was the right choice for the people?

Shikamaru had no answer.

“I will unify this continent under the power of the ninja. I will end this era of warlords and infighting, an era that has gone on for astonishingly long. It is possible with the power of ninja!”

Should Shikamaru really kill Gengo? He no longer understood this man.