"Maybe it's possible. Maybe it isn't." Uchiha Gen looked at Sarutobi Enjun and gave him the answer without dressing it up. His tone was calm, almost indifferent, but there was nothing casual in it. He had already weighed the matter from every angle he could see, and none of those angles made it simple.
"That lord is a fool," Gen continued. "Everything in that territory is really decided by the people around him. If someone can put enough benefits on the table, they'll most likely agree. I can't provide those benefits. Ruri comes from a small clan, so she can't either. But you…" He glanced at Enjun. "If you really want to try, then you probably can."
He paused, then added the part that mattered more. "But once we step onto a battlefield, our enemies won't be starving townspeople or frightened laborers. They'll be shinobi just like us, people who can use ninjutsu, tricks, ambushes, poison, and lies. At that point, the other side won't spare us just because we show mercy first."
Gen's voice did not rise. That only made the words sink in harder. "Sometimes all it takes is one moment of softness. You let an innocent-looking child go, and that child leaks information. An enemy squad learns your position. A whole team dies. Every rule written into the shinobi code was paid for in blood by the people who came before us."
He looked directly at Sarutobi Enjun. "To be merciful means being ready for the whole team to die with you."
Enjun scratched his head, frustration plain on his face. "I know what you're saying. I really do." He looked away for a second, toward the fading light between the trees, as if trying to avoid the weight of the decision pressing down on him. "But this time, we should be able to do something different, shouldn't we?"
His voice grew firmer as he spoke. "This isn't the battlefield yet. We have room to maneuver. If that family just wants benefits, then we give them benefits. We finish the mission, and we don't have to kill a bunch of people who were cornered into this. Isn't that better?"
Gen narrowed his eyes slightly. "How much money do you have on you?"
Enjun answered without much thought. "No idea exactly. I've been saving ever since I entered the Ninja Academy. I brought a little over a million taels with me this time."
For a heartbeat, even Gen went silent. A million taels. That was enough to make a decent shinobi stare. The son of the Hokage really did live in a different world. Pocket money on that scale could cover the reward for a high-level mission, and Enjun was talking about it as casually as if he were discussing lunch.
I really do need to fleece this rich second-generation brat a few times later, Gen thought dryly. The idea flashed through his mind and was gone just as quickly. Humor aside, the amount changed things. It meant Enjun's proposal wasn't empty idealism. For once, he actually had the means to back up his feelings.
"Then do it," Gen said at last, giving a small wave of his hand. "But remember this, Enjun. Things like this only work if all your teammates agree. Especially in the future. Especially on the battlefield. Kindness and compassion are not necessary qualities for a shinobi. Most of the time, they only create risks you can't predict."
That was the visible part of his answer, the part he allowed his teammates to hear. Beneath it, Gen's thoughts were moving much faster. Based on everything he knew, Orochimaru was the kind of man who cared little for conventional morality. If they simply tracked down the bandits, killed them all, and completed the mission cleanly, that result would probably satisfy him very well.
In fact, from a pure shinobi perspective, it might even be the correct answer. Swift. Efficient. Cold. The sort of judgment expected from a weapon rather than a person.
But Gen understood his own position more clearly than anyone. To the leadership of Konoha—especially to the Third Hokage—he was not just Uchiha Gen, a newly graduated genin. He was also an Uchiha with talent, one who had already drawn attention. That meant every move he made would be weighed, measured, and interpreted.
What they wanted from him was not simply strength. Strength alone was dangerous in an Uchiha. No, what they wanted was the possibility that he could be influenced, guided, and shaped by the so-called Will of Fire. They wanted someone useful. Someone strong enough to matter, but not so independent that he would slip beyond their grasp.
If he appeared too calm, too rational, too willing to cut everything down for the sake of efficiency, then in the eyes of the Hokage's faction, that would not make him trustworthy. It would make him difficult to control. A genius who thought for himself too much was never a comfortable thing for people in power.
Orochimaru, for all his strangeness, was still the Third Hokage's prized disciple at this stage. Since Gen had been placed on this team, his performance today would not just be judged as a mission result. It would also be judged as a test of character. Of political value. Of whether this Uchiha was worth investing in.
In that sense, Sarutobi Enjun's personality was unexpectedly useful. Enjun was hot-blooded, straightforward, and idealistic in a way that fit Konoha's public values beautifully. If Gen positioned himself as someone who could be nudged by that sort of thinking—someone still reachable, still influenceable—then the script would look much more pleasing to the Third Hokage.
And that would make the old man more willing to spend resources on him. To help him grow. To believe that helping him grow would not become a threat too soon.
Of course, that wasn't the whole truth either. Gen did not think of himself as some naturally good person. He had never been that self-deluded. In his previous life, though, he had still been a normal man—someone who had lived under order, law, and the slow, steady shaping of basic morality. More than ten years of education did not vanish overnight just because the world around him had changed.
From the first day he arrived in the shinobi world, he had understood exactly how brutal this place was. That understanding was why he had worked so hard to change himself, to make himself more suitable for survival here. He had forced himself to think colder, faster, and more practically, because this world punished softness with death.
Even so, if someone asked him honestly whether he preferred a world without killing, without war, without children growing up around funerals and battlefield reports, then the answer was obvious. Who wouldn't prefer that? Who wouldn't rather help people than cut them down?
The problem was that preference meant nothing when reality offered no clean choices. If there had been another road—one that did not end in blood, one that truly protected everyone involved—Gen would not have minded taking it. The trouble was that most people in this world mistook impossible wishes for actual options.
He shifted his gaze to Uzuki Ruri. Unlike Enjun, she understood danger. Gen could see it in the way she listened, in the way she weighed every word before responding. Shinobi from small clans always carried a stronger sense of crisis. Their families had fewer resources, fewer protectors, fewer chances to make mistakes and still survive.
Ruri was trying, just as he was, to improve her odds of living through this era. That alone made her easier to understand. Easier to work with.
Enjun was the opposite. He was talented, well-born, and protected from the day he was born. His father was already the Hokage. In all of Konoha, there were almost no children who stood higher than Sarutobi Enjun. He had never had to smother his sense of justice. He had never had to learn caution the hard way. The world bent around him, and that made him reckless in ways he didn't even notice.
If a person like that did not meet the right teacher, Gen thought, then his future would not be much different from Nawaki's. Maybe talent and family protection would carry him forward for a while. Maybe he would even become a powerful shinobi one day. But sooner or later, on a real battlefield, his warmth and rashness would cost him dearly.
The most unstable factor in this team isn't Orochimaru, Gen realized. It's Sarutobi Enjun—the crown prince of Konoha.
His gaze lingered on Enjun for a moment. That was exactly why he needed as much control as possible over the three-man squad. The more say he had, the less likely it was that the team would be dragged into disaster by a moment of heroism or foolish impulse. And this mission, messy as it was, gave him the perfect opening to establish that authority.
"From now on," Gen said, lifting his chin slightly, "this team moves according to my orders. Any objections?"
Uzuki Ruri did not speak first. She had no intention of fighting for command, not here, not now. In terms of combat ability, judgment, and family influence, there was a clear gap between her and the other two. She understood that well enough. For her, falling in behind the strongest plan was the safest option.
Sarutobi Enjun was the real variable. His strength was not far below Gen's, and his identity as the Hokage's son gave him a kind of invisible authority even when he didn't consciously use it. If he decided to act on his own, then both Gen and Ruri would be dragged into a miserable position.
After all, what were they supposed to do if the Hokage's son ran into danger? Refuse to save him? Impossible. If they rushed to save him, they took on unnecessary risk. If they let him fall, even if the blame wasn't theirs, the consequences later would be ugly. The Hokage did not even need to act personally. There would be plenty of people eager to curry favor with him.
That was the ugly truth of power. Once Enjun was on their team, his existence itself reshaped the danger around them. Fortunately, the opposite side of that coin was useful too. A Hokage's son was unlikely to be tossed casually into the deadliest meat grinder missions. As long as Gen could control Enjun, staying on this team might actually be the safest way to survive the coming years of the Second Shinobi World War.
So his conclusion was simple. Control Sarutobi Enjun, and this squad becomes a shield. Fail to control him, and it becomes a bomb with the fuse already lit.
Fortunately, perhaps because Gen had beaten him in the graduation exam, or perhaps because some part of Enjun had genuinely taken his words to heart, the boy did not bristle. He showed no resentment, no stubborn pride. Instead, he answered at once, voice steady and unexpectedly cooperative.
"No objections."
Ruri followed a moment later. "Neither do I." Her answer was quiet, but there was no hesitation in it.
"Good." Gen's expression remained composed, though inwardly he relaxed by a fraction. "Then from now on, follow my instructions. Ruri, I need you to…"
He had just begun assigning the next steps when, in the grass some distance away, a small white snake lay silent and still. Its body was coiled so neatly that it was easy to mistake it for a pale root beneath the weeds. Its eyes were bright, cold, and unnervingly intelligent.
It concealed its presence perfectly, not even the faintest trace of killing intent leaking from it. While the three fresh genin spoke, argued, and arranged themselves into a hierarchy, the snake listened without moving. Quietly. Patiently. Like a hidden witness waiting for the right moment to carry everything it had seen back to its master.