At this moment, Hagoromo's inner self was screaming. Kushina-sensei, where do I even begin to roast you?
First: Is there a teacher in this world who encourages their student to be a thief?
Second: I know about that place too, okay? Even with my limited Naruto knowledge, I know exactly what kind of item that "miraculous scroll" is!
Third: You can go there whenever you want and touch the scroll as you please, but if I go, I might get slaughtered on the spot! And after they kill me, they'll probably whip my corpse and extract my memories!
But did he dare—no, could he—roast her freely? He couldn't. One must respect the master-disciple relationship.
Alright, truth be told, he was just too afraid of the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero.
So, Hagoromo looked at Kushina with piteous eyes and said, "Teacher, can I not go? My subjective first impression of that place is that it's very, very bad."
"Even though I'm young, I'm quite superstitious. First impressions are extremely important to me..."
Kushina listened and then slammed the table again—though with a bit less force this time.
Heh, her hand must still hurt from earlier.
She continued in a tone of unstoppable momentum: "This is to help you steal—I mean, acquire ninjutsu. How can you not go? It's just steal—taking an item, why so much nonsense?"
Hey, hey! Teacher, you definitely said 'steal,' didn't you? Twice?
"What are you afraid of? If anything happens, this old man—I mean, I—will cover for you!"
Am I hallucinating? Did the youthful Kushina-sensei just refer to herself with a masculine 'old man' pronoun (washi)?
"Anyway, it's settled! We act tonight!"
Kamishiraishi Hagoromo: Unable to refuse. Kamishiraishi Hagoromo: Collapsed on the floor. Kamishiraishi Hagoromo: Abandoning all treatment. Kamishiraishi Hagoromo: Beyond resuscitation.
Kushina stood up, pulled out a sheet of white paper from who-knows-where, and began plotting the route to infiltrate the Hokage's office.
"What are you standing there for? Clean the table, quickly."
"Ah? Oh!" Hagoromo snapped out of it and hurriedly cleared the dishes.
Kushina spread out the paper and began drawing a floor plan of the Hokage's office building. First, she drew an old turtle in the center. Needless to say, that represented the Third Hokage. Then, she drew a small circle around the turtle: the top-floor office. Two larger circles followed, representing the lower floors of the building. Finally, she drew stick figures to represent the guards. One shouldn't have high expectations for a ninja's artistic skills.
"There are 24 ninjas guarding the first floor—all Special Jonin rank or higher." "About sixteen on the second floor—all Jonin." "Hidden inside the office itself are elite Anbu squad leaders... Entering without alerting anyone and stealing the Scroll of Seals is basically impossible."
It wasn't surprising that Kushina knew the security layout. What was surprising was that she was seriously calculating the feasibility of a break-in!
"Should we create a distraction outside and sneak in? No... the mission of the four guards in the office is to protect classified documents. Those blockheads won't leave their posts for anything."
"Or should we just blow up the building?" Kushina immediately shook her head. "No, too much noise... disturbing the neighbors late at night is bad manners."
Is 'disturbing the neighbors' really the main issue here? Your priorities are bizarre!
"And the scroll might be hard to find in a pile of rubble."
Of course, she was just thinking aloud. She wouldn't actually do something as insane as destroying the Hokage's office. But her imagination was clearly running wild.
Just then... Ping! Your friend and unprincipled thief Kamishiraishi Hagoromo has come online.
As the saying goes: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Since he couldn't avoid it, Hagoromo chose to participate actively to prevent Kushina from doing something truly catastrophic. He'd resigned himself to his fate; he was just an accomplice, she was the mastermind.
"Kushina-sensei, I don't think we need to fight those ninjas at all," Hagoromo suggested.
"What do you mean?" Kushina asked. Could they really enter the building peacefully?
Yes, they could. In fact, it wouldn't even be an "infiltration."
"With your status, we can walk in through the front door. The ninjas on the lower floors won't stop us. The only problem is the four elite guards in the office."
"We need to neutralize them silently before they can make a sound."
With Hagoromo's reminder, Kushina realized she had fallen into a mental trap. With her identity, entering the office was like visiting a neighbor. Why was she being so cautious? She didn't realize that in academic terms, her previous state was called "having a guilty conscience."
"Go on," she said, pondering the feasibility.
"To avoid suspicion, we can't act too late or too early. Too early, and the Hokage is still there. Also, we shouldn't take the scroll out of the office. We record as much as we can on the spot."
Stealing a glance at a couple of jutsus was a very different crime from stealing the entire scroll; Hagoromo was already planning their legal defense.
The difficulty wasn't the entry—it was the timing. They had to know exactly when the Hokage left. This was hard but manageable, as the village leader's schedule was relatively regular.
The second challenge: how to silently take down four elite ninjas. Hagoromo couldn't do that. It had to be Kushina. The goal was to incapacitate them without killing them—after all, they were committing "burglary," not "robbery and murder."
If only Minato Namikaze were here. His Flying Raijin is the ultimate skill for picking locks and sneaking around. He could take out four ninjas in a blink. But wait... if Minato were here, he wouldn't help us—he'd report us to the authorities.
So, neutralizing the guards was entirely up to Kushina.
Current Strategic Status: You have transitioned from "victim" to "planner." By making the heist a "visit" rather than a "break-in," you've lowered the risk of immediate execution.