In need of a brief chat.

Okey. Time for Draconis to practice some moderation, seeing as the Hokage gave him the go ahead to dispose of the trash.

Making hand seals, he formed a shadow clone, which picked up the bucket of trash for him, the one that was specifically mentioned to be metal, for such an eventuality. Fortunately, this waste basket being even more sturdy than a certain legendary indestructible desk, there was little chance of Draconis managing to destroy much of anything besides the contents of the waste basket, however, it never hurt to be careful, so the Shadow Clone was there to try and help maintain control of the thing if necessary. Such controls mostly involving panicking and asking the Hokage for help with what was supposed to be an amusingly simple task, or pitching the wastebasket out the window, the act of defenestrating potentially a searing hot one that Draconis did not want causing damaging burns on his own fingertips.

So, wastebasket in hand of the clone, Draconis gestured at the waste basket and spoke: “Don’t mind me, I’m still listening”, this being inserted in a convenient gap in Jason Senju’s speech.

Weaving hand seals, he would try for something weird, and foreign to his normal style, which was to lessen the force, and to aim for efficiency. Carefully, a stream of fire swiftly left his lips. It was not an all-encompassing stream of Fire like the Great Fire Annihilation, that was designed to make people cower in fear, so much as a small controlled jet, that seared the insides of the wastebasket, not noticeably affecting the incredibly sturdy over glorified trash can, so much as slowly burning up the plastic and paper, until there was not much left. Except for a little molten plastic slag that had not vaporized, at the bottom, it was gone. Awesome!

Draconis began stuffing more paper and plastic into the can, while listening to the boss man speak up. Interesting. So the head honcho wanted Draconis to be an advisor, and to regardless, to help facilitate his own idea, by gathering information on the other ninjas of the village, so that they could be better sorted out into groups. “That should not be a problem, Lord Hokage, With a little luck, none of the ninjas will be on long missions so information should be relatively quick to gain. I may be calling a meeting later to the ninjas, so that they will be easier to keep track of in one place. Granted, this would have to go on for a while as they have other things to do as well. I do believe however, that, considering I have not made much of myself as a Jounin yet, that you may need to collect information on other ninjas of higher rank than me. I think anyone of my rank present will be ok with talking to me, but any masters in the village, might not be so cooperative, in those cases, hate to say it, but it might be better for you to talk to them instead, to get their information. After all, our loyalty is to you first, and the village.”

He thought over things for a bit, there were questions about his new task, and old questions that still needed to be asked. Looks like this meeting might take longer than expected. Hopefully the Hokage had a bit of extra slack in his schedule. One such question was whether clans should be asked to reveal at least some of their secrets, the ones which were not entirely bloodline based, anyway. However, he suspected he did not have enough influence to suggest such a thing yet, so he did not.

Instead he asked a different question. “Before I forget, there were some questions that arose with the Kozai Yuki debacle.”

He paused, mostly so that someone besides the young jounin could watch the Hokage sweat over the potential questions that could arise from this, though Draconis was not conscious of doing this in reality since there was an omnipotent force that controlled his actions instead of him. “What I was wondering was, if we are faced with invaders, and us grunts are unable to complete our objective, which is usually to fight them off, what would you like us to do? Assuming diplomacy will not work. I ask as, on the one hand, we could pull out to reserve our fighting strength, on the other hand, if we cannot truly damage or block the enemy, we could try to distract them, though this would be limited in usefulness. The upside of the latter, and the counter to the former, is that the civilians have more time to escape, however, the catch is that the enemy may realize we are helpless to destroy them, like what happened with Kozai Yuki. Man, he had some way of hardening his body, or coating it in fluid armour or something, that blocked every one of my attacks, he could have been asleep frankly….”

Draconis’ expression soured with anger, as he recalled his helplessness in dealing with the missing ninja. He wanted to ask what else might have happened with the missing ninja to warrant the kill orders, and such, but the Hokage bro looked kinda stressed so he figured this was not such a great idea at this time.

Jason watched as Draconis created a clone of himself which picked up the waste basket. Next the real Draconis spewed forth a small controlled stream of flames to burn everything in the bucket to almost nothing before continuing to pick up more trash and fill the waste basket again while Jason continued speaking. When Jason was done talking Draconis would begin to respond. Jason listened as Draconis agreed to gather the information Jason requested. He said that it should be pretty easy to get the information. He did however say that it was probably a better idea for Jason himself to gather information on Master ranks and higher since Draconis was still a pretty new Jounin and most likely wouldn't be able to get the information needed from them too easily. 

Next Draconis would bring up the Kozai Yuki incident. He said he had some questions that arose because of it. Jason listened as Draconis inquired as to what they, they being the village ninja, were supposed to do if they found they couldn't take down their target. Draconis explained that with Kozai, he wasn't even able to scratch him. Something about a fluid like armor that covered Kozai's body. Even Jason didn't know about that technique. It made Jason more wary of Kozai than he was before and that was saying something. Draconis made a good point on two options. One being retreat and save their forces from being destroyed. The other was to distract the enemy long enough for the civilians to escape and possible back up to arrive. The downside to that was the enemy may notice that they are being distracted which could cause more harm than good. Even if the Konoha shinobi were able to let the civilians escape it wouldn't be of any use if there was no acceptable backup coming. 

Jason let Draconis' words hang in the air for a moment before he answered. He was trying to gather his thoughts. It was a difficult decision but one certainly should be made. "To be honest both options would be beneficial. My answer would vary greatly depending on who the enemy is and how many we are facing. For now I say use your own discretion. The highest ranking shinobi on sight would make the decision of whether to fall back or stick it out. One of the very first things that should be done when encountering an enemy within the village however should be to get as many civilians out of the area immediately. We don't want any civilian casualties. I hope that answers your question. I can tell there is more on your mind than just that. Please, speak your mind."

Okey, so the Hokage was not disturbed at Draconis’ slightly unorthodox method of eliminating the trash in the bin. Good thing that thing was indestructible. More indestructible than a certain linked desk, but far less of reknown to the world, for better or worse, probably worse, since it could be made into a shield. Too bad nobody, not Draconis, nor anyone else, would be able to make use of this fantastic weapon, shield, armour in one, except as a trash can, because they were truly pitifully clueless people. Everyone in the whole wide world. Was it mentioned yet that it could cut through maximum strength attacks? Anyways, enough about the super powered trash can.
 
Back to regular business. So The Hokage mister boss man head honcho pal dude, he wanted Draconis to do either, depending on the situation. Draconis had better think about this stuff long and hard later.
 
Now back to the conversation. “Okay.”
 
Draconis lit another pile of trash in the waste basket, on fire, using the heavily regulated and modified small stream of fire, that was far less intense than the burning sun over Sunagakure. The smoke eventually sizzled out, and the waste basket had not become very hot, so evidently his chakra control was improving.
 
He had to think a little bit about how to formulate his next question. If the Hokage spoke up at this time, Draconis would wait for the other male ninja guy administrator to finish, and after replying anything necessary, he would pipe up again with his next question for debate. Of course, if the Hokage did not bother saying much that required some kind of specific response, Draconis would wait a respectful amount before launching into his next question. “To back track a bit, to the previous thought, of collecting information on the other ninjas, would you be willing to pass word along to the other ninjas, of specific ranks, jounin and lower I guess? If you ask the village ninjas to keep an eye out for me, or such, then that will speed things up a bit, and time is of the essence.”
 
Draconis shrugged. “I would certainly be willing to try to track down everyone on the roster for the village, but that would take some time, and it would be far less efficient. I had been considering setting up a meeting in the village, or at least a booth, in the middle of the village, or maybe near the Ninja Academy, so that it is highly visible. I think that would be more efficient and quite possibly faster than any other methods, at least, that I can think of.”
 
He paused for breath, as he had been turning a little blue due to not inhaling all this time. “Speaking of teaching, would you be able, or do you have the time to do teaching of your own for some of the ninjas? Every teacher would help, since we can potentially cross train, or spar with each other, but then again, you have the most important role in the village, so I would not be surprised if you were extremely busy.”
 
Draconis chuckled at the thought.

(there are several more topics I want to get through with Jason ic, but if i feel that if i make them a lot longer it will be a pain to post lol)

Jason listened as Draconis spoke about possibly notifying all of the ninja Draconis was to get information from that they were to give Draconis the information that he needed. It would speed things up and definitely make things much easier for him. He spoke about perhaps setting up a booth of some sort for the ninja to come to and give their information to Draconis. This was a good idea as well and Jason saw nothing wrong with it. Finally Draconis would ask Jason if he would be able to teach some of the ninja as well seeing as they needed all the teachers they could get. Jason was pretty bust but he could make some time to teach one or two of the ninja in the village. After all that was what was needed. 

"Very well. I'll send out notifications to the ninja of Jounin rank and below to meet with you at this booth you set up and comply with your questions. As for me being able to teach, I'm usually pretty busy but for the benefit of the village I should be able to make some time to train one or two of the village ninja."

(this might go faster if we have "two separate conversations" at the same time, so everything after the asterisks takes place after the entire first conversation I start)

"That's ok, don't stress too much."

Draconis took a deep breath. He would just bring up the topic sooner or later anyway so it was time to broach the one he was not so sure about. "What do you think of trying to get other allies besides Hoshigakure? There are probably other people who may or may not be looking for allies, as well, not just the new kids on the block. For instance, Sunagakure may be reasonably friendly. Of course, there is a separate decision on whether we can trust any of those ninjas that are not affiliated with villages, the ones that are strong enough to actually matter."

This was a potentially touchy subject, given how sudden the orders to kill Kozai Yuki, an S rank missing ninja, had been. hopefully Jason understood where Draconis was coming from, however. "Village alliances could be permanent, at least for the time being. The missing ninjas and wanderers, however, perhaps not all of them are bad? In the very least, we may be able to secure the cooperation of some, depending on how their interests align with ours. It would also be much more... temporary, unless they truly have a reason to want to stay in the village. Once we get stronger, we will not need to depend on others. A risky strategy, but depending on how many enemies we may or may not have, potentially worth it in the short term. Long term, well, it depends on how closely people think we associate with those we recruit, and such."


He paused for a few moments. "I do say this with a grain of salt, so to speak. Many missing ninjas are undoubtably dangerous, but there are possibly some ninjas that are merely survivors of destroyed villages, and may be interested in a new home, a new allegiance. Regardless of the decision though, this would have a big impact on public policy, since that kind of news would be extremely hard to repress, not without domineering the minds of all the citizens. It is probably worth some thought. One potential way to do this, is a general amnesty for any missing ninjas who have not overtly shown hostility to Konoha, or proven particularly hostile in other places. Of course, this does rely a bit, well, a lot, on word of mouth reputations, since many of these unaffiliated ninjas do not have very well known biographies."

Despite the serious topic, Draconis chuckled a little. “Of course, the most desirable result, is that any we let into the village are assimilated, and become one of us, leaving behind prior affiliations and allegiances. This will not always happen though, so we would have to be careful about who we let into the village, or whom we invite, in the first place.”

Draconis paused for breath, the color returning to his face. “I do realize that this idea is potentially distasteful, and other villages could possibly look down on us, but we need the strength for the time being, and possibly the reputation. Alliances with other villages may not be as hard to come by, depending on their inclination. If memory serves, Konoha had a lot of allies before, but I don’t know if contact has been maintained. A lot of changes in the world have happened relatively recently.”

************************
Separate from the conversation about the missing ninjas and village alliances, Draconis wanted to bring up a couple of other topics. Well, the less touchy one first then. He would start talking about this after everything to do with the previous topic was over with. “Just a couple more points I want to bring up. The first being, in the past, villages have had elite forces, separate, or possibly more elite than the Anbu corp. Do you think the formation of one such group at one point, would be helpful?”

He paused for breath and also because he wanted the conversation to take longer for various reasons. “Some examples I am thinking of would be like the Kinkaku Force, of Ancient Kumogakure. I believe the 7 Swordsmen of the Mist, and the 12 Guardian Shinobi would be considered similar groups as well, from that time period. This would give us a goal to work towards when training, both for the trainers and the trainees, if a subset may be selected to join the elite group. We may or may not need to ask them privately, however, when you feel they are ready. What do you think?”

Just one more potentially contentious topic to ask the Hokage about but honestly, it was likely that would be a long discussion by itself, hopefully the Hokage did not fall asleep or something, since these were all serious ideas.

(ttl wc: 3065+769=3834)

Jason listened as Draconis continued to talk. He sure was long winded. He had a lot of important things to say and Jason welcomed his opinion. Jason listened as Draconis talked about trying to make alliances with other villages and not just Hoshigakure. He suggested that Sunagakure might turn out to be friendly and a good ally as well. Jason had already contemplated making alliances with other villages. In fact, Jason was thinking about trying to ally with Xyxer in the Hidden Mist village. They had exchanged letters before and Xyxyer hadn't been entirely unfriendly. He had been thinking about holding a joint Chuunin exams with Hoshigakure and perhaps a joint Jounin exams with Kirigakure and Hoshigakure combined. 

Draconis went on to talk about possibly making alliances with wanderers and missing ninja as well. He suggested that not all missing ninja were hostile and untrustworthy. He did however say that village alliances would be more permanent than those made with wanderers and missing-nin. He also said that he knew most missing ninja were dangerous but some were merely survivors of destroyed villages. Draconis would go on to suggest granting complete amnesty to those missing ninja that would ally themselves with Konoha that haven't been hostile towards Konoha or overly hostile in any other country or village. This idea would rely highly on word of mouth since missing-nin and wanderers don't usually have bios that are readily available.

Of course another downside to this suggestion was that allying with missing ninja would be distasteful and perhaps cause other villages to look down on Konoha because of it. There was another problem with this that Draconis hadn't mentioned, probably because he didn't know about it. One of the conditions for the alliance with Hoshi was to not align Konoha with missing ninja unless they were to become official ninja of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. That meant that the options for potential allies in missing ninja were cut drastically since Jason was sure that most missing ninja wouldn't want to join a village. 

"I have already considered making alliances with other villages besides Hoshigakure. I hadn't considered Sunagakure but I have been thinking about trying to make an alliance with the Mizukage Xyxer Gyojin. We've exchanged letters in the past and he was never unfriendly. As for allying with wanderers and missing ninja, well that's a different situation entirely. One of the conditions Maku laid out for the alliance with Hoshigakure was that Konoha was not to ally itself with missing ninja unless they became official Konoha shinobi. On top of that, Konoha and its ninja are not to affiliate with anyone from Kumogakure from here on out. Maku obviously knew what Kumogakure has turned into after the Demon Priest took over as Raikage. This makes your suggestion of allying with missing ninja a bit more difficult than you had realized. I will however consider looking for potential allies in missing ninja that aren't hostile and perhaps would be willing to join Konoha. I also intend on sending a letter to Xyxer about potentially forming an alliance." 


*****************

Jason listened as Draconis brought up potentially making an elite force separate from the ANBU such as the old Seven Swordsman of the Mist and even the Twelve Guardian Shinobi. In fact Jason thought it would be a good idea to revive the Guardian Shinobi as Konoha's own elite force. He would definitely have to take Draconis' suggestion about keeping this in mind as we train new ninja and even speak to them privately about joining the Guardian Twelve. "I think it's a good idea to create a new elite force separate from the ANBU. We should definitely keep it in mind while training ourselves and other ninja under us. Speaking to them privately when we see potential for them to join this elite force. I also think it would be a good idea to revive the Guardian Twelve as this new elite force for Konoha."

Yes indeed, Draconis was quite long winded. In fact, well, this had originally been intended to be a brief chat, but unfortunately things were not going to work that quickly. Hopefully this did not piss off the Hokage or something since that would be detrimental indeed.

So yeah, Draconis recovered while he listened to the Hokage, who was far less talkative. He, referring to Draconis and not the Hokage, burned up the last of the trash that his clone had been collecting while he had been talking. The clone had himself been burning stuff up too, and the slightly, ok, more than slightly acrid scent hung in the air. Walking to the window, Draconis said “Mind if I open the window to clear the air a bit? Gassing ourselves would be an embarrassing way to go, especially if our bodies are found.” He had a wry grin on his face as he spoke.

“That’s good news, hopefully Kirigakure works out ok, they have a pretty good reputation so that might buy us a little time. Good thing he seems not unfriendly.”

Thinking over the rest of Jason’s words, he then spoke again. “If that chuunin managed to beat you, that Demon must be pretty tough on his ninja if they are so strong. Too bad it might be hard to gain information on them, they sound like they could be a threat.”

Oh, and before he forgot. “Speaking of missing ninjas, what happened with Kozai Yuki? I had no knowledge of his entering the village before, until the kill order went out. Was he here to steal village secrets or something?”

He was curious to see what Jason would say.

************
“Ok, sounds good.” It was honestly hard to say much if the Hokage agreed and Draconis had a bit of work to do. Well, more than a bit, but you get my drift yo.

“Now, one last question if I may….”

Draconis paused, trying to figure out how he might word this. “I am well aware that some clans like to keep their secrets, but these are trying circumstances. Do you think it is worthwhile to talk to the clans about sharing at least some of their techniques? Some abilities may be complimentary to each other, and be definitely worthwhile sharing. If we can make some matchups between abilities and ninjas, we may find some powerful combinations. However, this will have a number of road blocks, firstly that I need to collect information on the village ninjas, secondly that some clans are relatively secretive. In the latter case, what happens, if specific ninja want to share their abilities, but their clan does not wish the same?”

This was potentially the most stressful thing Draconis had said thus far and he hoped Jason Senju did not crack from the strain, but hopefully his constitution was reasonably good and he could at least only blow up later.

(3834+485=4319)

So Draconis had finally said what he probably came here for in the first place. He wanted Jason to tell him what had happened with Kozai Yuki to warrant the kill order. In fact Jason was pretty ashamed of the whole Kozai incident. After a short pause Jason decided it was best to tell the Jounin what he wanted to know. Taking a deep breath, he would begin. "I'm very ashamed of the entire Kozai Yuki incident. He came to me, luring me in with delusions of grandeur and talk of a power I could gain by obtaining Uchiha dna and a couple pair of sharingan eyes. We made a deal that he would have to ask some of the Uchiha in the village to offer up their sharingan willingly. I didn't trust him. I never should have made the deal in the first place. Figuring out I was being used, I sent out the kill order after Kozai had left my office that day. I managed to stop him from taking the eyes of one Uchiha before convincing him to leave the village. It was a rash decision, both deciding to work with him and deciding to put out a kill order on him and i regret it thoroughly. It is all my fault that you had to engage him. Things could have ended up much worse than they did. I'm truly sorry."


*****************

"I don't think we should make the clans share their secrets with other ninja. Instead I think we should find out what each clan specializes in and pair them together with other ninja that would compliment their fighting style and vice versa. Now, if a clan member decides to share their abilities of their own accord but their clan does not approve of it, I would like to respect the clan's wishes however I can overrule the clan if the information trying to be shared is detrimental to the Leaf."

(ooc: 1 more post each should do it)

Oh, my. Draconis was rather surprised by how candid the Hokage was being about all this. Its ok bro, people make mistakes, is what Draconis might have said if the Hokage was instead another jounin or such. Instead, because of the rank and such, Draconis said “Every one of us makes mistakes, its whether you can learn from them that counts. Granted, this assumes you can recover from said mistakes, but I think you probably get what I mean.”

Draconis cut short his own dialogue before he could start rambling off with his train of thought utterly derailed with no hope of return. “At least some of us were saved then. Hopefully he has no intention of returning, I can hardly think we proved very intimidating at the moment.”

There was not a lot more he could honestly say about all this without going into wild conclusions, delusions of grandeur, or pessimism of a kind not seen since Jason Kaguya last walked the earth. Where was that fellow anyway? Was he a relation to the John Kaguya he had seen more recently? Any way, it was time to cut this part of the conversation short for there were more important things to do and more important things to discuss now. Aside from potentially studying the Uchiha. And trying to figure out what powers they were that people sought them for. He knew they were supposed to have awesome eye powers, but what was the basis? Who knows. He needed some Uchiha DNA to sample later.

****************
Indeed the rest of the conversation was more important. Yes to village alliances, a “probably not though it would be nice” to recruiting unaffiliated ninja, meaning the village would be relying on local talent. A yes to making an elite corp of ninjas separate from Anbu, though whether they would fill all twelve seats, he was not sure. Hopefully yes. “Makes sense with the clan stuff. Some things are very hard to share after all. Just means that collecting information is even more important.”

He thought the entire conversation over, it had gone far longer than he had expected, truth be told. “Oh, one other detail before I forget. The Twelve Guardian Shinobi of the Land of Fire, historically, they were essentially wanderers working for the Fire Daimyo, I assume the new version would have a slightly different directive?”

Almost done this and he was going to need to make a booth for everyone to come and sign in with their specialties and such. Almost done. God he needed a nap.

(4745)