"W-what did you just say?"
Kurotsuchi stepped in front of Shirozumi, her eyes wide with shock as she stared straight at him.
"Kill the Daimyo. What, have the shinobi of the Five Great Shinobi Villages all had an Ideological Steel Seal planted in their heads? Has Kotoamatsukami forced you to serve the Daimyo?"
Shirozumi smiled faintly, repeated himself, then turned the question back on Kurotsuchi.
"..."
Shirozumi's words stirred Kurotsuchi's rebellious streak, but she still could not bring herself to agree with him. She tried another angle.
"If Iwagakure killed the Daimyo and took control of the Land of Earth, the other four Daimyo wouldn't sit back and do nothing. They'd rally their shinobi villages to attack Iwagakure. Then I'd be the one to blame."
"Honestly."
Shirozumi shook his head and sighed.
Without another word, he continued toward Amegakure.
Kurotsuchi stood frozen, baffled by his reaction.
She had been waiting to hear how he would persuade her. Was that it?
"Tell me what was wrong with what I just said!"
Kurotsuchi gritted her teeth and used the Light-Weight Rock Technique to catch up. She grabbed Shirozumi's arm, her voice almost pleading.
"You want progress, but you refuse to change."
"You want to be first, but you're afraid to make the first move."
"From the shinobi village system to the Ninja Academy to the Anbu, you've copied Konoha again and again, living off its ideas. You've never tried to change anything yourselves.
Do you think this is a children's game?
This is a revolution. It means bringing down the Daimyo and the remnants of the old era."
"In an age of struggle, the strong grow stronger and the weak perish.
If you won't kill the Daimyo or make a change today, someone else will kill him one day.
And they won't stop at him. They'll kill the people of Iwagakure and the rest of the Land of Earth too.
But you won't care. All you have to do is keep obeying the Daimyo and wait to be carved up by the Otsutsuki Clan.
Then you can watch, kneel, and beg the heavens to send you a savior.
If you're lucky, that savior will succeed, and you'll keep scraping by.
If you're unlucky and the savior fails, you'll all die."
At that, Shirozumi glanced back at Kurotsuchi, who still held his arm. "I thought the Tsuchikage's goal was to lead the Land of Earth and Iwagakure to prosperity. I didn't realize the Tsuchikage was just a servant."
"Ah!"
Shirozumi's words struck Kurotsuchi so deeply that she nearly let go.
Her chest rose and fell. She opened her mouth to argue, only to find she had nothing to say.
"Come to think of it, is being a Daimyo really that useful?
Konan, the Daimyo of the Land of Rain has been gone for ages, right? Why don't I become the Daimyo of the Land of Rain?
Then I could call a meeting with the other Daimyo, offer them a few benefits, and get them to send me young, beautiful kunoichi like Kurotsuchi. How does that sound?"
"Don't ask me."
Konan rolled her eyes at Shirozumi and said nothing more.
"Damn you. Do you think we're goods you can trade?"
Kurotsuchi's stifled voice came from behind Shirozumi.
"What gave you the idea that you weren't?"
"Let me ask you this. If the Daimyo of the Land of Earth really gave that order, would you obey?"
"Don't tell me you can bring yourself to obey an order to break a peace treaty and start a war, but you'd defy the Daimyo over a 'small matter' like this.
Look at it another way. Suppose the Daimyo of the Land of Earth gave you two choices: help him start a war, or come here and wash my feet. Which would you choose?"
Shirozumi glanced over his shoulder.
"..."
Some things were hardest to face once they had been said aloud.
Kurotsuchi fell silent again.
Shirozumi had stripped away the last thing she could hide behind.
He had said it plainly: as Tsuchikage, she was nothing more than a servant.
She put neither her village and comrades nor herself first. The Daimyo's orders came before everything else.
"Then what should I do?"
Kurotsuchi's resolve softened.
Her voice softened, and so did her grip on Shirozumi's arm.
"Abolish the Daimyo system. Take full control of the Land of Earth as Tsuchikage and put your ambitions into practice.
Bring all its resources together, distribute them sensibly, and develop its economy, technology, diplomacy, and everything else."
"And don't tell me you aren't capable of it.
From the intelligence I've gathered on the Daimyo of the major nations, I can say that they and the powerful people around them are all useless parasites sitting in positions they don't deserve.
Even the Shinobi World's future development will center on the shinobi villages. Every new technology comes out of them.
The Daimyo do nothing but suck the blood of the shinobi villages and ordinary villagers.
Put a dog in any Daimyo's seat today, and nothing would change.
If you think you're less capable than a dog, forget I said anything."
"..."
After hearing the first half, Kurotsuchi had been about to say she had no experience governing a country. But Shirozumi had anticipated that too, leaving her at a loss for words once again.
"Wouldn't it be exhausting?"
Kurotsuchi asked quietly.
The question itself showed she had begun to accept Shirozumi's ideas.
"No. I've also reformed the office of Kage for after the revolution. The Kage only has to make decisions on major matters."
Shirozumi took out a new Scroll and tossed it behind him. "The Fifth Mizukage of Kirigakure has already taken my Scroll and is preparing to change Kirigakure."
"The Fifth Mizukage? Isn't the Fourth still in power?"
Kurotsuchi caught the Scroll and looked at him in confusion.
"The Fourth stepped down voluntarily because of the damage the Blood Mist did to the village. If you have a spy in Kirigakure, get in touch and find out for yourself."
"All right."
Kurotsuchi asked no more questions.
If Shirozumi said so, it was surely true.
After all, they only needed to contact an undercover spy to check.
And even if they had no spy there, they could send someone to investigate. A new Mizukage taking office would hardly be a secret.
Learning that the Fifth Mizukage shared her newfound views finally gave Kurotsuchi confidence and motivation.
"I didn't expect you to convince the Mizukage before me. You could've said so sooner..."
Kurotsuchi smiled.
With an ally and a precedent, it was much easier for her to accept doing something that had once seemed unthinkably rebellious.
"So what are you going to do?"
Now it was Shirozumi's turn to ask Kurotsuchi.
"I'm not strong enough yet. I want to train here with you, get stronger, and then deal with—"
"No need."
Deidara cut Kurotsuchi off. He raised his ringed hand and chuckled.
"After I heard what Itachi, Kisame, and the Strategist did in the Land of Water, I figured out the Strategist's grand plan. So on my way back to the village, I dropped a modified C4 over the Daimyo of the Land of Earth's residence.
So thank me, Kurotsuchi.
And hurry back to be your Tsuchikage. Don't even think about joining the organization! Yeah!"
The C4 Deidara meant was not the bomb from Counter-Strike.
It was C4 Garuda, a jutsu he had originally developed to kill Itachi.
Garuda was a clone-explosion technique similar to the Second Mizukage's Steaming Danger Tyranny.
It created a doll identical to its user, packed with countless explosive spiders too tiny to see with the naked eye.
When the doll exploded, the spiders spread through the surrounding air and were inhaled.
Countless tiny blasts then destroyed the victim's body completely.
Deidara's modified C4 simply removed Garuda's first step.
Instead of exploding a doll for the initial damage and dispersal, he scattered the microscopic explosive spiders straight from the sky like artificial rain.
They no longer needed to be detonated manually, either. Once enough gathered in one place, pressure would set them off automatically.
In other words, they did nothing while floating in the air. Only after someone inhaled them would they settle and blow the body apart.
And because the explosions were microscopic, there was no sound or flash. To anyone watching, the victim simply turned to ash, as though Thanos had snapped his fingers.
For Deidara, who loved loud, spectacular explosions, developing one this quiet must have taken some effort.
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