Shikaku sighed gustily and rested his chin in his hand. "That this man is not a shinobi is a damned tragedy.
"
"Are we still sure he isn't?" Fugaku grunted, pointedly not looking at Danzo.
"We've investigated thoroughly. If he's a ninja, he's both the best and least effective damn spy in all of written history," Ibiki replied.
"Also, I disguised myself and 'ran into' him the evening after. Said I saw him coming out of the Hokage Tower and asked him what it was like to be a civilian inside.
The man looked at me like I was insane for thinking he wouldn't make me – even though I fooled experienced ninja with the same trick and half the effort. He then told me, very seriously over his armful of copper thread, magnets and rubber bands, that he wouldn't know because he was too busy potentially signing his own death warrant in service of 'defending his doctoral thesis in political science.
' I didn't even have to fake my laughter, I thought him seeing through me was just a lucky shot in the dark, that his self-awareness was an act, after all, what kind of doctor is that?"
"Isn't he though?" Homura mused. "He identified the symptoms, diagnosed the disease, investigated the subject's medical history and provided treatment recommendations.
"
"Quite," Ibiki agreed. "Seeing as the man has literally invented an entire new scientific field just for this, I figure he can title himself whatever he wants.
"
'Entire new scientific field' was putting it mildly. It had taken three hours for Masanari Hanzo to finish 'defending his thesis', five more for him to flag under their questions about his methodology (which came with a stack of papers even thicker than the thesis itself, and that wasn't even counting the appendices, whose collective volume exceeded everything else combined), a night-long closed door Council session just to understand the procedures used, three days for them to go over it individually, an entire week for them to discuss it in council, and now they were trying to figure out where to go from here.
Not very successfully.
The introduction of the 'thesis' amounted to just over ten thousand words all on its own. The man then provided 'background' in the form of an extensive 'literature review' covering every fact about the Uchiha Clan history and Konoha Military Police that wasn't restricted or classified.
The man then dedicated fifteen thousand words just to the description of his methodology, the scope of which even Danzo found, quite frankly, intimidating. A 'quantitative research of police action trends' using pragmatist philosophy' based on a 'statistical analysis of verdicts and appeal outcomes between the 745 - 739 AS period.
' Except that statistical analysis was actually six different kinds of statistical analysis, four of which nobody in that room – or elsewhere – had ever encountered before. Masanari Hanzo seemed to have come up with them himself, and even included extensive documentation on the procedures and calculations, altogether exceeding the actual final content of the thesis itself.
There was something called 'analysis of variance,' another named 'Finn rank correlation' after his odd pen name and 'explained' as 'a nonparametric measure of rank correlation showing the statistical dependence between the rankings of two variables', a positively torturous descent into Yomi called 'polynomial regression analysis' (that came with almost as many pages as everything else combined just to illustrate the mathematics involved), and a four procedure called a 'prescriptive analysis' full of more graphs and charts than all the others combined 'in service of guiding fture decision-making. ' Masanari 'confessed' that one of these methods actually belonged to someone name Carl Gauss who died long ago.
It did not appease anyone. At all.
It had taken Hiruzen an entire sleepless night to understand. A success matched only by Shikaku, before the man rubbed his tired face, burst into laughter and loudly proclaimed that he was stealing all of it.
Ibiki needed two days, but at the end of which he also declared the same as Shikaku soon after.
Feeling vengeful, the Hokage, Ibiki and Shikaku had pulled up their sleeves and meticulously checked all the man's numbers. Good news, they found errors.
Bad news, they only spotted those errors after painstakingly inputting what little they could of the data into their computers, which civilians didn't have access to. Worse news, fixing those errors only made Masanari's results and conclusions tighter and his many tables and charts look even more damning.
And then after the 'quantitative' part of the 'thesis', as if to show pity to the poor sods who couldn't keep up with his calculations, the man also devoted some thirty thousand words to a 'qualitative thematic analysis of unstructured interviews' with 'an ad-hoc sample of Konoha's citizenry' on 'the perceived impact of the Konoha Military Police on the social dynamics involving Uchiha clansmen. ' Which came with their own appendices in the form of yet another stack of papers, this time filled with transcripts.
Wrapping up everything was a 'metanarrative discussion' of the 'trends' and 'themes' in the context of the official laws, regulations, decrees and statements given by the Hokage Tower relative to the Uchiha Clan, versus the latter's official responses 'as published in the Konoha Sage journal since the first issue to the present day. ' An itemized list of all excerpts used was included in the 'bibliography,' alongside the extensive list of books consulted and cited throughout the paper, complete with author name, title, date of publication, and volume or issue number where relevant.
Typewritten, formatted and 'referenced' to 'standard' with matter of fact, vicious factualness. A standard Masanari himself had set and was already being followed on by others, according to reports from Konoha and elsewhere.
Civilians have no less pride than shinobi, it seems, Hiruzen pondered somberly. But they don't draw it from violence and death.
"I don't suppose we have any better idea of who the man's been talking to?" Fugaku was looking at Danzo quite pointedly now. Danzo ignored him.
Fugaku grit his teeth.
"He was very conscientious about protecting his sources," Ibiki answered instead. "I know he's not a ninja, but I still want him in my department.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
◆ Consider joining my PATREON to have a
early access of 10+ chapters.
https://www.patreon.com/DEVIL_DIKTATOR
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~