Rin sat silently, cloistered in the close air of the second layer of classified stacks. Here, many of the documents were of such age that scribes were painstakingly recopying them by hand in order to outpace the degeneration of paper, bark, linen, and other bits of idiotic rotting mush. That was to say nothing of the hellacious race a special crack unit of Chuunin and Jounin librarians were on to outpace the blue and black mold overtaking some writings. Those poor souls were quarantined in a separate compound from the main library complex and were required to go through an extremely invasive cleaning regimen in order to enter and exit their workplace. They spent all day simply trying to read and then transcribe via jutsu the words of the long-dead greats.
The ANBU Sennin was poring over a tedious account of the foundation of Kumogakure no Sato, utilizing a stack of equally dry references in order to decode the tantalizingly familiar constructions of Ancient Kumogakurego. The similarity between the vulgar and classical dialects was equal parts frustrating and revealing. While Rin had not allowed her command of vulgar to rot during her retirement, she had not perused any linguistically strenuous texts during the past decade and a half, either, and that left her at not much more of an advantage than a student might have.
She smoothed flat a page attempting to curl in the pre-dawn humidity. Unwilling to allow her a single candle in the archives, the librarians had provided her with a lamp apparently powered by chakra. She suspected it was responsible for making her eyes try to close on their own accord, but it was useful, and its light stronger than that of an ordinary lamp or candle. The risk of fire was too great here to allow any normal sort of lighting scheme, and some virtue of sunlight caused damage to inks and paper and hence no windows were allowed either. The dampness seeped in anyway, and with it, an ankle-chilling draft that bit into the bone. If she stayed too long, she would be sore for the rest of the day. She had already been at this for over a week; her near-daily visits were giving her a reputation again. She had not been a great bookworm as a girl, but she had been a frequent visitor to the library anyway; her mentor and captain had lived in the library. Fortunately, those who had doted on the man were mostly long gone.
The experience was proving somewhat valuable. As she pushed on, she suspected that the text was not simply a historical ledger or book of pseudohistorical fables; there was more to the moralizing asides and insulting ancient marginalia than that. This antique was actually, she realized, a treatise on rulership--on right and on tyranny. 'Tyrant' did not originally mean an oppressive ruler, but had meant dictator or autocrat, and before then, even, had meant a ruler who had come to power outside the sanction of law--as conqueror or usurper, or even popular acclaim. Many of the village's leaders even before the ascent of the Raikage had therefore been tyrants; moreover, the history of Kaminari no Kuni as a whole had long been riddled with tyrants until the rise of a senatorial arrangement of regional war-leaders.
"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men," it read. She parsed the sentence aloud, slowly, in the old high tongue, and marveled at the sound and feel. This was a language which could surely raise the dead and drag even the most unruly spirit into attendance. "Ο πόλεμος είναι η συνέχιση της πολιτικής με άλλα μέσα." The words emerged stilted and halting, and yet they emerged. Emboldened, she pushed on in her studies. The book had become more interesting not purely for its virtue in studying Classical, but also for its contents. Dissecting the text could prove useful in helping her govern her turbulent, recusant ANBU.
Laid out within was an original account of the philosophy which had informed much of her and her predecessors' decision making as ANBU commanders, and a refutation of that logic. However, even this old sage had to make note that not all men were gifted with equal comprehension, and even among those the quality of virtue varied. She mused on the notion of expedience and came to understand that much of what she had read over the past twenty years had been practically exegetical texts surrounding this one man's life and work. Even the sacred works of the Santaru and Raiden did not seem to have so much ink and pulp dedicated to explaining, contradicting, and supporting them. Moreover, for the thinking class, this writing was much more dangerous--it was no wonder the philosopher had been given a capital sentence.
So much the better for him that he had had the opportunity to commit suicide. She would not have personally chosen to drink poison, but the man was no warrior. Give me a knife and a sword-wielding second any day, she thought grimly. Rin had in her heart of hearts expected a command to present herself for execution or commit honorable suicide when the Raikage revealed himself that day in the Susukino district; that she wasn't dead and buried or ashes strewn from a pyre or a corruption oozing down the side of the Gates was something of a wonder. Stronger ninja than she had been killed for less cause, and even for milder words. She knew she represented a threat to the established order, and even Masao recognized his own potential in that regard; they had stayed away a long time to avoid putting Kumogakure no Sato into that position. Now, however, they were back, and even more than that, they had been reinstated to their old positions--there had to be some ressentiment.
And hadn't that feeling been the major factor in so many major events in the village's recent history? The emotion certainly formed the impetus for many ninja to try to go missing, and probably had been a motivator for those who had again and again seized power. If those men and women later found those positions to be not of their liking and abandoned them, well... Leadership was not its own reward, nor was power.
