After the meeting's participants left, only the Third and several advisors remained in the conference room.
Once everyone else had gone, Mitokado Homura, who had remained silent throughout, sighed. "Hiruzen, you shouldn't have hesitated. You let the Uchiha steal the spotlight and ruin our hard-won peace."
Utatane Koharu, beside him, added, "Whether we pursue peace or war should be up to you, the Hokage, not some insignificant Uchiha."
Unlike the other ninja who had witnessed everything earlier, the elder advisors had lived through too much to be easily moved by a few words invoking the will of fire.
What mattered more to them was maintaining the current situation and preserving a relative balance.
The balance between Hiruzen and Danzo, the balance between the Hokage Faction and the Uchiha-Oto's actions had undoubtedly disrupted that unspoken equilibrium.
Hiruzen exhaled a puff of smoke, which lingered near the conference room's ceiling.
Perhaps he, the Hokage, had been the one most deeply affected by that speech about the will of fire. He had proposed those principles about protecting their comrades himself and constantly spoken of them.
Yet just moments earlier, he had actually considered handing over a comrade from the village to avoid further trouble.
The reason he had failed to stop Oto in time was that he had seen something of Kushina and Minato in her.
Perhaps those words had come from Minato and Kushina. After all, Oto had once served as Kushina's guard.
If Minato were still here, surely he would have made a better choice, rather than making concessions as Hiruzen had.
But now the village was caught between a dwindling older generation and a younger generation not yet ready to take over. Many ninja capable of shouldering major responsibilities had died during the Night of the Nine-Tails.
Although there was