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The link is also in the synopsis
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The traditional tatami hall, usually a site of tranquil authority, was plunged into chaos as feared and respected jōnin and tokubetsu jōnin of the Aburame clan demanded answers and threw blame at each other. The top chūnin of the clan sat in the background with heads bowed and worried looks plastered on their faces.
In the centre of it all sat Aburame Shibi. The day only got worse as time passed. Greenhouse Twenty-Seven and Shigeki's house were only the first wave of raids. After more of their people were arrested, their residences were raided as well. ANBU hadn't been this active within the village since the security threat alert a couple of years ago. It had caught the attention of the greater shinobi populace, and it didn't take time for the gossip to spread. The ANBU targeting the Aburame clan was now the talk of the town in certain circles.
"Any sign of Elder Shigeki?" Shibi asked.
The room quietened as the higher-ups of the clan settled down.
"Not yet, sir. No one has seen him since he left the social club," someone answered.
An elder huffed. "It's obvious that ANBU has that fool!"
"Does anyone know what he was hiding from us? Why did ANBU take him?" asked a jōnin.
It was abundantly clear that everything revolved around Shigeki. Whatever he had done, it had the ANBU moving, and it was big enough that the Hokage was going to involve himself.
"I'd like an answer to that as well," Shibi said, addressing the room. "If anyone here has an idea, I'd appreciate them coming forth without fear." Everyone looked at everyone else for a hint of anything, but none of them directed a glance toward Shibi. He expected it; Shigeki was well-connected within the clan and rather good at networking, as some called it.
He gazed down at the greenhouse audit reports in front of him. It wouldn't be obvious normally, but reading them one after another made it obvious that the last three reports were lightly edited copies of each other. He ordered the reports from further back, and while they weren't copies, they were written in a way that wouldn't gain attention. It seemed that the auditor had gotten lazy for the past few reports and took a shortcut, thinking no one would notice, which would've been true if not for ANBU.
Since Shigeki had taken charge of the greenhouse, the same auditor had written all the reports.
And, of course, that auditor had been arrested as well.
It had been hours, and Shibi still didn't know what exactly was happening inside the greenhouse. He had sent his bugs into the greenhouse, and they had reported the presence of the ANBU, pale beetles, and chakra pests, none of which was out of place for that particular greenhouse, as it was exclusively used to breed pale beetles.
The only thing out of place was a possible large fūinjutsu in the sub-basement, but other than that, they couldn't spot anything off.
Shibi felt frustrated. Their bugs were intelligent, but there was a limit to what they could understand and communicate to him. If he could go inside himself, or send someone else to take a look, he could get a clearer view and use that information in his plan. He hadn't been this starved for information since the Third Shinobi World War. He could understand it happening back then, but for it to happen in his own home made it all the more vexing.
———
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"What if Shigeki is the top guy?"
Takuma looked up from the scroll to his subordinate as they sat in one of the breakrooms in the black site. He thanked her for the breakroom coffee and set down the scroll with the most recent updates about the multi-front operation that he had done his best to keep simple and without too many moving parts. But the best plans were only as good as their execution, so he had asked to be updated frequently.
"What if he planned it all and kept it hidden? Does the rest of the clan still share the blame?" she asked.
"Yes, they share the blame," Takuma replied to his subordinate. "They're scum villains if they knew about it and chose to support it because of what they stood to gain. But if they didn't know what was happening under their own noses, I still lose a different kind of respect for them for allowing this to happen because they didn't know."
The entire operation wasn't exactly small. Just today, they had arrested people in the double digits. The scale wasn't something that could understandably go unnoticed. Just the amount of money that the pale beetles earned for the clan justified that they keep a close eye on that portion of their business operation to ensure it was running smoothly.
"The business model is supported by the Aburame infrastructure, utilises the Aburame reputation to build the trust it uses to this day, and runs on Aburame shinobi to breed and distribute both the problem and the solution. So yes, they are to share the blame in the fundamental way that it matters… If you saw what we found, would you believe that the clan head didn't know?"
"… With the money they're bringing in? No, I wouldn't believe it," she said. "It'd be a very bad look on the Pride of the Aburame."
"You have your answer." Takuma took a sip of the terrible coffee.
"But that's an assumption. What if we end up finding that it was maybe one more higher-up, and let's say not the clan head? Lord Shibi doesn't really have that type of reputation, you see," she asked.
Takuma hummed. "Well, it'd change how the blame and punishment will be assigned." They had really stressed the need to properly assign the blame so no one could get away unpunished; if that ended up helping Aburame, then that would be their luck. "However, even if the clan head didn't know, he would still be to blame because his entire clan benefited from Shigeki's actions."
After the active perpetrators were punished, the clan as an entity would have to pay. Extremely heavy fines proportional to the profit and potential harm would be levied against the Aburame clan.
"In many ways, it'd be worse if they didn't know. I mean, what would the Hokage's Office and the administration think about the clan? All the official state responsibilities given to them would come under scrutiny and might even be taken away. They'd be sidelined for future tenders and considerations until they prove that they could earn the people's trust again."
And that was just the state-public side of things. Reputation mattered a lot in the private market; wealthy clients would avoid them or negotiate lower contract amounts because using specialised clan shinobi like the Aburame came at a premium.
"That would happen regardless," said Takuma's subordinate.
"That's also true."
"Sounds like a terrible time for them either way."
"It will be."
———
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"Quiet."
Shibi didn't need to shout; the silence of the hall of high-ranking shinobi did.
"I want to know why we don't have any information about what's happening till now. Any word from ANBU?"
Of the jōnin and high-ranking chūnin of the clan, only those in ANBU were missing, as they had been ordered to stay out and find as much as they could about what was happening. It was expected, but none of their clan members or allies in ANBU were involved in this attack against the Aburame. It also seemed the information had been purposefully kept from their clan, because not even a hint of a breeze coming their way was strange, considering how much they had invested in building their presence in ANBU.
Only a handful of clans could claim to have an ANBU captain as a clan member.
"About that, sir. Seinpachi has sent a message."
"Show me."
Shibi frowned at the thin strip of rolled-up paper. If Seinpachi wanted to send something, he could've sent something more substantial than a piece of paper that could barely fit more than a few words. He unrolled the paper, and there were a few sentences.
「The Aburame got beyond greedy. That elder of yours who we thought was our saviour… he's the devil, isn't he?」
Shibi's brows furrowed in confusion. How did they get greedy? He prided himself on setting realistic, sometimes conservative goals and pushing everyone to complete them flawlessly, and that had allowed them to build a positive reputation. He guessed that the elder in question was Shigeki. Though the context of it all further confused him until he read the final sentence.
「His biggest claim to fame is a lie.」
"Clan head?"
Shibi didn't respond, nor did he move a muscle, as his mind raced towards a conclusion until it came to a screeching stop right in front of it, and he stared at it with his entire mind. He couldn't believe—he refused to believe—that couldn't possibly be what was happening here.
No, he told himself repeatedly. Even the worst-case scenario in his mind hadn't considered something so egregious.
It was at that point that he thought about what his bugs had reported to him. ANBU, pale beetles, and chakra pests. He didn't think of it as much because ANBU was raiding the greenhouse where they bred pale beetles who were exclusively fed chakra pests, so when they were released in the fields, they would be well-familiar with their preferred prey and go right after them.
But what if—
Just the thought made Shibi feel cold and hot at the same time.
What if, instead of breeding chakra pests as feed for the young pale beetles, Shigeki was breeding the pests to spread them to infect fields, perhaps so the clan could continue to sell the pale beetles? He felt weak because if that were true, it would be the greatest crisis for the clan since the last war, when they had lost jōnin.
Shibi tried to deny it, but given what he had seen today, he couldn't think of anything else that would fit.
"Everyone who was arrested today, I want to gather their immediate family and friends here yesterday. I want a list of everyone who Shigeki ever did business with." Shibi paused and looked at everyone in the room, thinking about who else could be in league with Shigeki, and then declared:
"… We are possibly in the worst emergency of our lives."
———
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"So, this sounds like a terrible problem for the Aburame clan." Takuma's subordinate tapped her chin with a finger. She had a curious look on her face as she asked, "What are the chances that this gets swept under the rug because of its sheer size? Like, this extends beyond the confines of shinobi and affects the greater world. What if the higher-ups decide they don't want to deal with the ramifications?
"Because just like if we can blame the Aburame clan for one of their members' actions, others can blame the Hidden Leaf for one of our clan's actions…"
"If the higher-ups wanted to bury this, they wouldn't have allowed it to reach this point," Takuma said with a heavy sigh. "Though, you are right, the Hidden Leaf will have to answer for what the Aburame clan did. It's going to be an absolute headache for everyone who eventually has to deal with it. Lord Hokage, especially."
When Takuma had threatened Shigeki with the fact that the Hokage would be displeased, he had done it knowing that it was the unavoidable truth. In fact, the only reason the Hokage's Office hadn't started preparations for the aftermath was to avoid a leak that would tip off the Aburame clan.
"What if the Aburame clan manages to convince Lord Hokage?"
"That wouldn't happen," Takuma said without a moment's thought.
"How can you be so confident? You should know how much power the clans possess."
"It wouldn't happen because it would set the wrong example. That's something Lord Hokage doesn't want, especially after ROOT."
"What do you mean?"
"ROOT was a result of a flawed system that allowed Shimura Danzō to grow right in the heart of the Hidden Leaf. Many knew what he was doing was wrong, but nevertheless, he was allowed to grow." Takuma ignored the glitter in his subordinate's eyes, who seemingly had a bottomless desire to hear about how ROOT was taken down. "Lord Hokage doesn't want a repeat of that. This is a chance for him to make a statement to those in power that they can't run unchecked and believe they'd be spared punishment because they're old and powerful."
"But the clans do get away with stuff."
"They do, but they need to be taught that there's a limit to it all… When a child does something wrong and isn't punished, he begins checking the limits of what he can get away with. These clans are like that. If we today don't punish the Aburame clan, they and other clans or anyone with influence will see that and know that they can get away with it. So even if this hurts the Hidden Leaf, it needs to be done because power tends to corrupt—and clans possess great power, and without fear and discipline, they'd hollow the Hidden Leaf from within."
Even Takuma, with his paltry level of influence as an ANBU lieutenant, abused his power. He was allowed to do so because the higher-ups thought he wasn't doing any harm. The clans, however, were so big and so powerful that if they didn't keep themselves in check and stepped one foot out of line, any abuse would cause substantial harm.
"At the end of the day, we are doing all this for the betterment of the clans," Takuma said.
"I don't think they'll look at it that way."
"That's okay. It's tough love," Takuma said, making her laugh. "They need to realise that the Hidden Leaf allows them to misbehave not because they're the warring clans of old. They're allowed to misbehave because they're strong. It's their strength, not their name, that gives them power."
Even if the Hidden Leaf was a civilised society, it was still a shinobi society. Concepts like "strength was law" and "might made right" still held true to a great extent.
Aburame or any other clan couldn't be allowed to think they could get richer by schemes like Shigeki's. If they wanted to maintain power, they needed to be strong. They needed to be reminded that at the end of the day, they were shinobi, and martial prowess was their trade.
"And it's our job to drive that point into their heads."
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The link is in the synopsis!