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On the second day of the inquiry, it was time for the panel to hear from the victims of the engineered pest infestation. The first to speak was a man in his forties with weathered, tan skin from working his entire life in the fields.
"Our farmland was passed on to me by my father, who got it from his father, who expanded it with the help of his father. We have cultivated it for generations with care and hard work. The land is my family, and I've looked after it as if it were my own child—my daughter would say that I pay more attention to the farm than to her," the farmer said with a bitter smile on his face.
The man wore his best attire for the inquiry, which was a pair of well-cared-for clothes that were by no means fancy. Everyone could tell this man wasn't one of those landowners who divided and leased portions of their vast lands to different farming families and took a portion of the produce in return—earning a fortune with none of the effort. This was a true farmer with a modest plot who cultivated his own land and had to carefully consider if he had enough saved to hire farmhands after paying the shinobi to infuse his soil with chakra.
"We are grateful for your hard work, Mister Harada. Can you tell everyone gathered here how the chakra pest affected you and your family?" asked the head of the agricultural guild, the representative of the victims.
"…It was the first season, the first time the pests were discovered, before the pale beetles." Harada half-turned his head to glance at the Aburame table. "All of us in the area ended up losing some portion of our crop; breaking even was considered the best-case scenario. My family was among the unlucky ones who lost the entire crop. We had nothing to show for that season… I had to scrounge up money to get the next crop started, and though it was a relief when we found out about the pale beetles, they were another expense that I couldn't afford… In the end, I had to take on debt to pay for the beetle treatment."
"It would be prudent for the rest of the panel to know that a bad harvest is not uncommon for farmers," said the head of the agricultural guild with a heavy frown between his eyes, directed towards the Aburame clan table. "They are prepared for it and have savings. The reason why most of our hardworking farmers were able to survive the first pest infestation before the release of the pale beetles was due to those emergency savings… However, that wasn't the case for Mister Harada's region, isn't that right?"
Harada nodded with a tired expression on his face. "There was a bad harvest the year before the chakra pest infestation. Many of us had to dip into our emergency savings to survive that. My wife and daughter had to take on more work to make ends meet. The extra we had to pay for the repeated beetle treatment was heavy but unavoidable if we wanted to continue farming."
"Were you able to pay off that debt at the next harvest?"
"…No," Harada said feebly before hanging his head in shame. The faces of those on the panel were grave and sympathetic. "We were in debt for the next year. I managed to whittle away at it and was confident I could pay it off eventually, but the creditors couldn't wait anymore, and I had to sell a portion of our land to repay the loan…"
There was a heavy silence in the hall. People felt the plight of Harada and other farmers like him. But they also realised that the Aburame had caused a pest infestation after a widely known poor harvest a year before, and how much of a bigger problem that had caused.
"What reparation would you expect for the injustice done to you?"
A lot of people in the hall looked sharply at the head of the agricultural guild, including Toridasu sitting right beside him, the Hokage in his seat high above, and Shibi at the Aburame table. While it was in the panel's purview to calculate the damages caused and make recommendations on how to make it right with the affected parties, which would include suggestions like paying the farmers reparations, asking an individual farmer in the middle of a public forum was dangerous because it could set certain unreasonable expectations.
The head of the agricultural guild ignored all looks and simply gazed at Harada. He understood he was put on the panel because he had all the motivation and justification to dig into the Aburame clan, putting them under pressure, and he had no problem doing that. But he was there to give those affected a voice, so he was going to do just that.
"…If it were before, I would've said that nothing short of getting back my land would ease my anger, but now, as long as my family can live without worry of debt or making ends meet so we can just focus on cultivating our land, I'd be satisfied with that," Harada said.
Toridasu relaxed and nodded. "Thank you for coming all this way to speak with us, Mister Harada."
The next hour was spent talking with farmers of various sizes, all of whom aired their complaints. Not many were as calm as Harada. Even the larger farms who were able to bear the bad spell and could negotiate for better treatment prices because of their size revealed that there were times when the Aburame shinobi would be late, which would damage crops, further showing the Aburame clan's negligence and how reckless they had been in blindly entrusting such a big operation to a single person without much-needed oversight.
The Aburame countered with their operational records, which showed that cases of delayed service were rare and had been smoothed out over the years, but that didn't help in the battle of public opinion, as the more the inquiry revealed, the worse the Aburame clan looked in the eyes of the public.
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Back at the ANBU headquarters, Takuma was in his captain's office. There were various issues of local newspapers from yesterday evening to this morning sitting on the table.
All the front pages were plastered with big and bold headlines about the first day of the public inquiry investigating the Aburame clan. It was all anyone could talk about, but he noticed some newspapers limited their coverage to one page, while others ran multiple pages of information. He guessed that the Aburame had pulled some strings, promising to buy ad space in future issues to limit coverage as much as they could. He even noticed their clever use of large pictures and illustrations as padding, so it would seem the newspaper was doing in-depth coverage while revealing less in the text.
"It's going to be worse after today," Takuma said, glancing at the wall clock. The inquiry would be on break before the afternoon session.
Itachi hummed in agreement.
The first day had been an introduction to the chakra pest infestation and the Aburame clan's part in it. It covered the origins, the infected regions, the steps taken by the Daimyo's court and the Hidden Leaf Village to find a cure, the Aburame revealing they had developed the pale beetles, how they worked, the eventual distribution, and how the past few years had changed the chakra-enhanced agriculture and the surrounding industry. The second day, however, introduced personal stories, with the panel meeting real people affected firsthand. It attached emotion to the entire subject and gave it life over clinical facts and figures, which were important but difficult to care about without the human aspect of it. And given that the panel was going to listen to everyone from small farmers to manufacturers who were in charge of the livelihood of a few people but had to shut down their operations due to the rising costs of raw materials, the reaction was going to be much more intense, given that people hated the big guy taking advantage of the small people.
And that was what ANBU wanted people to think, which was why Takuma had scoured the infected lands for the people with the best, hardest-hitting stories that would attract sympathy in droves and really drive in the consequences of the Aburame's actions. They couldn't be allowed to escape.
The shinobi clans couldn't be allowed to think that ANBU had abused their authority in the way they had handled the Aburame clan and push the political machine into getting the Aburame clan off easy because, in their mind, if ANBU came after one of them, it could come after them next. The clans knew they were strong, but they also knew they were stronger together. Ironically, that was the same philosophy behind the formation of the Hidden Leaf Village.
Takuma wanted the clans to look around and realise opposing this would be political poison. He was going to do everything in his power to ensure they didn't intervene.
"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Itachi asked.
Takuma had been summoned to speak in front of the inquiry panel in his capacity as an ANBU lieutenant. He'd appear before them in full ANBU garb and answer their questions to the best of his ability. He'd be expected to answer questions about his investigation.
"I know the facts better than anyone, so I don't think I'll fumble on my words in front of everyone." Takuma then sighed. "I'm nervous about Jōnin Toridasu. He's not a big fan of ANBU and doesn't hide it."
Takuma recalled how, when ANBU had tried to question and intimidate him at the Leaf camp after the siege and recapture of the Spring City of Yu, when Takuma had tried to extort them for information, Toridasu was the one to run them off and had been openly rude to them without any worry, which made sense because he was a decorated jōnin with the Hokage's favour. The duo that dealt with Takuma were only operatives; Toridasu had been rude to a captain in front of the commander of the foreign branch in a legendary story inside the ANBU.
"I think he'll know to behave himself in such a public setting," Itachi said.
"I doubt he'd care about the setting," Takuma sighed.
"I know what you're trying to do, but be careful with how you conduct yourself out there. They'll be resentful of you, but you don't want that to bleed into the personal side of your life to the point that they become active in their resentment," Itachi said.
The clans were powerful, and people could be resentful.
"I'll be careful. Thank you for your concern, but I'm not worried. When I accepted your offer to take over the Arborists, I knew I'd be making enemies of some powerful folk," Takuma smiled. Just by taking the position, he had made it so that people couldn't consider him without assuming that he was trying to harm them in some way. "I just need to know that I have you in my corner. As long as I have that, I think I'll be fine."
Itachi leaned forward in his chair and, without any hesitation, said, "You'll have my support always. As long as you're doing the good work I know you've done, I'll always be behind you to protect you. I hope you know that without me needing to tell you like this."
"You show me enough through your actions," Takuma said, smiling. He hadn't seen Captain Tachinid even once since the raid on the Aburame clan.
"You think far too highly of me," Itachi said with a quiet sigh.
Takuma only smiled. He considered the man sitting before him to be the most talented shinobi and one of the best humans he had seen in his life. He hadn't told Itachi that he had told the Hokage that he would want him to be the leader of the Hidden Leaf.
"I don't think so at all," Takuma replied easily. "Though if it makes you nervous, you could always step up until my impression is accurate."
Itachi exhaled softly through his nose—the closest he came to a genuine scoff. "That sounds utterly exhausting. Your expectations have a habit of outpacing reality. You wouldn't be satisfied until I'm using clones as you do and putting them all to work."
"Now that… would be a sight to see."
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