'Dad wouldn't have sent me the letter in such a blatantly open way if he wasn't hinting something with it.'
'Hmm…he has spoken about this matter with the Land of Iron Daimyo…that means he wants them to get involved in this incident?'
'Yes, even if they brought up the matter with him, as long as he wanted, he could've put a stop to their requests and simply assigned the mission to Konoha.'
'In fact, that is what he should have probably done. But the fact that he doesn't want Konoha to get involved means is probably why he sent me the letter-
'-because this would force the Hokage who has probably already read the letter to give me the mission, since otherwise he would be butting his head in a 'private' matter that only the two Daimyo are talking about privately.'
'So is there a reason he doesn't want to involve Konoha? And wants me to participate since I'm more loyal to him than Konoha?'
'Hmmm…kidnapping children…'
'Orochimaru and Danzo?'
'Did they take the children for some other experiment of theirs?'
'If I had any items from the children who were sold away, I could divine their locations and also who could've bought them..'
'There's no way I'm going to be doing any significant damage to Orochimaru given I don't know how many people have his cursed mark and soul…and Danzo…well I don't even know how to even get close enough to him to 'damage' him.'
Tachibana sat with a frown for a while as he thought about the various ways he might try and kill either of them but then an idea struck him.
'System, does being the cause of my enemy's downfall count as dealing maximum damage?'
[ Yes, as long as whatever the host does qualifies as 'damaging' the enemy, by leaving them in a much worse state than previously planned, it will be accepted to complete the mission. ]
'I see…'
'So that leaves me with a lot of ways I could try and plan to cause my enemy's downfall.'
'I can cause financial ruin, loss of reputation, loss of life, loss of power, loss of motivation…'
'Orochimary probably wouldn't care about reputation, but Danzo would since he is an Elder in the village. But I don't exactly know how reputable he is first of all. I can ask Mito that, right?'
Performing the summoning ritual, Tachibana looked at Mito and quickly asked her his question.
"Mito-baa-san was Danzo's reputation good when you were alive? Would he care if his reputation took a sudden nose dive all of a sudden?"
Mito looked at Tachibana with a strange expression as she wondered out loud, "What are you planning now? You're too weak to do anything right now. Just because I taught you the Mind Partition Jutsu doesn't mean you can beat up whoever you don't like."
"Yes, yes, I get that, but would it affect him?"
Mito looked at Tachiabna for a few seconds but seeing his unrelenting gaze she acquiesced, "...Danzo used to care about his reputation quite a bit. He used to want to be the next Hokage after Hiruzen. And without being a respected shinobi people would never accept him as one."
"I see… I should've guessed that. Thanks Mito-baa-san." Tachibana nodded and went back to thinking while Mito hung around and tried to figure out what Tachibana was doing.
'If it is Danzo I already know the location of his secret base which I divined back when children from the orphanage went missing…it's probably only one of his bases so I need to find out the locations of more of them.'
'Then I could damage his bases and simultaneously expose the fact that Danzo is trying to capture children from the Fire nation for experimentations..'
'But how do I leak this information without letting anyone else know that I was the one who did all of this?'
'Since as long as there isn't a clear suspicion on someone else, it will cause Hiruzen to look at Team Seven who is assigned this mission, which involves me. It wouldn't take them long to blame someone on our team using the transformation jutsu to spread around the information.'
'I'm sure as the information is being spread, the ANBU and ROOT will try to do their best to capture the person doing so, and once they get a hang of it they'll quickly figure out who is responsible for it all.'
'So I need to always have a solid alibi and not be seen doing anything suspicious or missing during the time the information is spread around.'
'Hmmm...'
Tachibana pondered on the question for a few seconds before his gaze fell on the old lady who looking at him.
'Hmmm~…?'
"No." Mito said almost immediately.
"I didn't even say any-"
"This ain't the first time I'm raising kids, you little boy. Tsunade had the same expression when she asked me for money after I banned her from gambling."
Tachibana frowned at being called little, but this wasn't the time for arguing, nor was it time for doing anything else, it was time to persuade someone of great importance to his plan.
"Listen to me once! Maybe you'll change your mind!?? I mean what I'm planning is for the benefit of Konoha after all! Pleaseeeee~~~ Ohw Pwetty pleaseee~~!"
Mito looked disgusted at Tachibana's expression and out of a sense of revulsion nodded so that he would make his face normal.
"What is it about?"
"I mean…I have this plan…"
"We'll be here until the next fortnight if you keep speaking so slowly!"
"I mean, like, I have this plan where I will defame Danzo…"
"And you think that is for the betterment of the village? Disrespecting an honorary Elder who advises the Hokage? Do you want all the shinobi in the village to think all in the top brass are corrupt and incompetent?!"
"....well, it doesn't quite sell well if you put it that way, but is the will of fire important..or something? I mean if we get rid of the corrupt top brass, we can grow more leaves on the tree to burn in fire can't we!?"
Mito's expression twitched a little before she spoke calmly and with seriousness, "You don't even know what the will of the fire means. Don't talk about randomly trying to set fire to the beginnings of a coup."
"What is the will of fire if not sacrificing the leaves so that the village grows strong?" Tachibana tried to argue but Mito's eyes dangerously narrowed.
"Just because there are a few people that aren't great in the village, it doesn't mean that everyone in the village is like them.-"
"-A village comes together only when people are sick and tired of continuously losing people close to them. They're tired of seeing their children die before them and they're tired of seeing their hands stained by the blood of children they kill.-"
"-A village's borders aren't the stone walls you see out there. The real walls that protect you from danger are the bodies out there that fight in spite of having lost their heads. Just because they don't want their loved ones to see a place without such borders."
Tachibana frowned as he heard this.
"And yet you send kids into the same war? The same kids are even being experimented on! One of them had to kill his entire clan because of these few people! Who're you protecting? What are you protecting even? A figment of your imagination?"
Tachibana's words seemed to have struck something deep in Mito because her eyes momentarily turned red and her lips quivered, yet she spoke with the elegance of a refined lady.
"A village can't form overnight, that figment of imagination that we protect takes years of sacrifices and violence to perfect. If it was something anyone could achieve by snapping their fingers, the world would've been a much better place.-"
"-Unless you can make the lives of the people around us better, there is no reason I should help you drag the village a few steps back for no reason other than for the 'betterment of the village'!"
Tachibana's frown deepened but then he *sighed* and spoke softly.
"Each longest jump can only be made to the best of one's abilities if one takes a few steps back for a quick run."
Tachibana and Mito looked into each other's eyes before-
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A/N : I tried to depict both the characters as their ideals suggest, I think I did a good job, but let me know your thoughts! I'd love to improve!