It was not a close vote.
Kakuzu and Sasori were aligned, which meant that by any reasonable measure of how decisions actually got made in a group of three people who were present for the discussion, Finn had lost. He appealed to the absent member, which Kakuzu dismissed by pointing out that Orochimaru would not have supported the Azure Dragon Study Group either, which Finn could not confidently refute.
"You're killing a piece of my childhood," Finn said.
No one responded to this. The Yorozuya it was.
Sasori, who found the naming discussion marginally less interesting than watching water move through rock, shifted immediately to the more practical question. "So. How do we make the name mean something?"
"Make a big splash," Finn said, and felt himself on firmer ground. He had experience here, in a specific sense — not personal experience exactly, but the experience of having guided someone else through the process. Early in his Marine career, he had shown a then-rising pirate named Doflamingo a clear path toward the kind of notoriety that converted into institutional legitimacy. The principle was simple: do something so visible that your name becomes impossible to ignore, and let the reputation do the subsequent work. "One significant enough operation and people start paying attention. Two, and they start being careful."
Kakuzu nodded. "Agreed. I've been cataloguing options." He reached into his coat and produced a scroll. He was about to unroll it across the table when he registered the dinner still spread across it. Finn lifted everything with a casual application of gravity and shifted it to a secondary surface. Kakuzu spread the scroll.
It was dense with entries, organized by bounty amount in descending order. Kakuzu scanned toward the top of the list, found one entry, and drew a line through it with a pen he had produced from somewhere.
"I should have crossed this out earlier," he said.
The crossed-out line read: Third Raikage of the Hidden Cloud Village — 120 million ryo.
Finn looked down the rest of the scroll.
The five Kage were all present. The Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, was listed at two hundred million ryo — significantly more than the Third Raikage had been worth, which struck Finn as interesting. It was entirely possible that figure reflected Danzo Shimura's private opinion of Hiruzen's removal value, expressed through dark world channels in a way that left no traceable connection to Root.
Hanzo of the Salamander led all individual ninja entries at two hundred thirty million ryo. This made a certain kind of sense. Since the deaths of Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha, Hanzo had occupied the position of "strongest living shinobi" in the ninja world's general consensus for long enough that the title had calcified into something treated as fact. He held a formal designation — demigod, a rank explicitly positioned one step below the God of Ninja title Hashirama had carried — and his reputation was backed by a track record that made it credible. The Sannin themselves had received their title from Hanzo after a battle in which they were the only survivors on their side. That was the kind of evidence that shaped a reputation.
Below the individual bounties were several that operated on different logic. The Sharingan — not any specific Sharingan, but the general category — was priced at fifty million ryo per pair. Same for the Byakugan. These were acquisition bounties rather than assassination orders; someone was paying for the genetic material itself, indifferent to where it came from.
Further down: Hashirama Senju's body, at three hundred million ryo. Uchiha Madara's body, at two hundred forty million. Both men had been dead for decades, and someone in the dark world was still offering extraordinary sums for what remained of them. Tomb raiding, Finn thought. The most literal possible interpretation of that business model.
And at the bottom of the upper tier, with a note indicating the figure was currently rising and the listed amount was already outdated: any tailed beast, captured intact and delivered to the buyer, at seven hundred million ryo each.
"These tailed beast prices keep going up," Kakuzu said. "The war context. Any tailed beast deployed against either Konoha or Iwagakure right now would be decisive. The deterrent value creates demand."
Finn and Sasori both nodded. The logic was straightforward. Uzumaki Kushina was currently the Nine-Tails jinchuriki in Konoha. If someone extracted the Nine-Tails from her during an active war against Iwagakure, the power differential shift would be immediate and severe. Iwagakure's own tailed beast would be deployed within days. The strategic value of the capture translated directly into the acquisition price.
"The Five Kage targets," Sasori said, returning to the top of the list. His attention had developed a specific quality — the inventory interest of someone with two Kage puppets who was considering the collection as a project. "What's the realistic approach?"
Kakuzu shook his head. "Not worth it at current pricing. The Kage are in their villages. Taking any of them means either waiting for an opportunity that may not come, or making the attempt in situ — which means effectively fighting the village. The bounty on any single Kage doesn't compensate for what it would cost to operate against their full complement of guards and respond to whatever retaliation follows."
He paused. "The Third Raikage was different. He was already in the field, already isolated, already past his limit. That was a specific window that won't repeat for any of the remaining four."
Sasori absorbed this and returned his attention to the tailed beast entries.
"The Nine-Tails," he said. "If we're thinking about impact and value simultaneously, it's the obvious target. Strongest of the nine, highest deterrent value, currently held in a village that has the most interesting collection of enemies."
Kakuzu tilted his head slightly. "The Seven-Tails is in Takigakure Village. I have familiarity with their operations. The target is more accessible."
"Takigakure is too small," Sasori said flatly. "Taking their tailed beast makes us seven hundred million ryo richer. Taking Konoha's makes us seven hundred million ryo richer and gives us a reputation that changes everything else."
Before either of them could continue, Finn pointed at an entry near the bottom of the upper section.
"What about this one?"
Both of them looked.
The Daimyo of the Land of Earth — 300 million ryo.
Kakuzu and Sasori exchanged a look.
"Difficulty is relatively low," Finn said. "He's a political figure, not a combat specialist. The reward is three hundred million, which is more than any single Kage except Hanzo. And if it works, it disrupts Iwagakure's entire war financing and decision-making structure."
"You're not a real ninja," Sasori said, in a tone that was not quite an insult but wasn't entirely not one. "So you probably don't understand what that specific target means."
Finn frowned. "Explain."
Kakuzu set the pen down. "Killing a Kage has predictable consequences. The village puts bounties on the killers. If the killers are missing-nin, those bounties are high. The other villages treat it as a serious offense but ultimately an internal matter for the affected village. What we got after the Third Raikage was your S-rank wanted designation from the Hidden Cloud. Significant on paper. In practice, it adds your name to a list that already has people like Sasori and me on it."
"Killing a daimyo is categorically different," Sasori said. "No one has done it in decades. Since the Warring States Period. There's a reason for that."
"The daimyo occupy a different social position from shinobi," Kakuzu continued. "To the ninja world's political structure, a Kage is a military commander. A daimyo is something else — a representative of civilian governance, the figure at the top of the social hierarchy that the ninja villages technically serve. When a Kage dies in conflict, that's military violence, which is normal. When a daimyo is killed, it's an attack on the system that defines the relationship between the shinobi world and the civilian world. Every daimyo in every country feels personally threatened."
"The response isn't a single village's bounty," Sasori said. "All five countries designate the responsible organization as a terrorist threat. Every major village is required to prioritize elimination. Open cooperation with us — contracts, purchases, intelligence — becomes politically impossible for any village-affiliated party."
Finn was quiet for a moment. He thought about Kisame. One of the charges that had eventually made the Fourth Mizukage's relationship with Kisame untenable had involved the attempted assassination of a daimyo. That category of action carried a weight that killing shinobi, even Kage, didn't produce.
"Then why are the bounties listed at all?" he asked. "If the consequences are that severe, why would anyone post them?"
There was a pause.
"You've guessed it, haven't you?" Sasori said.
Finn had. The logic assembled itself as he sat with the question. The bounties on daimyo existed, and yet no one acted on them. The amount was clearly tempting enough to attract attention. The consequences for acting were severe enough to deter rational actors. But if the bounties had been posted by the daimyo themselves as a deterrent mechanism — essentially paying to be left alone — they would have no reason to set amounts that tempted anyone. The figure had to come from somewhere else.
"The hidden villages set them," he said. "Privately. The daimyo don't know."
"Correct," Kakuzu said. "I was a high-ranking operative in Takigakure for years before I defected. I know how this works. The villages post private bounties through dark world channels on each other's daimyo. The reasoning is exactly what you'd expect: if someone stubborn enough and capable enough actually takes the job and eliminates the target, the war potentially ends in your favor overnight. Meanwhile, whoever did the job can be found, labeled as rogue terrorists, and eliminated — which provides both a convenient scapegoat and the removal of an asset that just demonstrated it can't be trusted to stay inside lines."
"You use them, then eliminate them," Finn said.
"It's a contingency offer. It's never been acted on. But it sits there in the dark world as a theoretical option, renewed every war."
Finn looked at the entry again. Three hundred million ryo. The Daimyo of the Land of Earth, who had no combat capability and whose strategic importance to Iwagakure's war effort was absolute.
"So if we did it," Finn said, "we'd have three hundred million ryo, Iwagakure's war machine would be thrown into serious disarray, and every country in the ninja world would commit to eliminating us."
"Yes," Kakuzu said.
"That's a significant downside."
"Yes," Sasori said.
Finn tapped the table once and returned his attention to the rest of the scroll. There were other targets. Other approaches. The point of the exercise was to find the right combination of impact and consequence — something that put the Yorozuya's name into circulation across the ninja world's awareness without making every major power simultaneously committed to their destruction.
The right job was somewhere on this list.
He kept reading.