Saints and Suffering: A Naruto Fanfiction

Chapter 44- Southern Entrance Shinobi

The Kumogakure Jonin monitored his three chuunin subordinates.

Maybe monitor is too strong of a word though. He watched over them. He was invested in them in a way that monitored cannot really describe properly.

He worried about them, and as soon as that thought came, he quickly shook his head to clear it.

As if shaking his head would physically dislodge the growing sense of discomfort and anxiety that had been building up the entire morning.

His subordinates were his genin team before they were his subordinates. He wasn't used to the dynamic anymore. While the past few years, he had been focused on nurturing them, coddling them, and raising them to become great ninja, well they were now chuunin, and he was under no illusion; they would be expected to serve and meet certain obligations now.

He couldn't handle them with the kid gloves anymore.

So when the first group of refugees came from Yugakure, he had to show them the reality of the situation. They would be ordered to do disgraceful, untasteful, and downright evil things in the future. They would be ordered to do things that they wouldn't understand, and they had to obey. They had to truly believe that even if they don't understand what they are doing, they are doing it for the betterment of the village.

The first group of refugees came by earlier in the morning. A mother and her two children.

He killed her painlessly. A jonin like him was more than capable of sneaking up on a civilian woman, and his chuunin watched with rapt horror as their sensei snuck behind the woman and threw a kunai into the back of her skull.

The woman fell like a puppet with her strings cut, and before her two children could make a noise, the Kumo Jonin silenced the both of them with a light tap on the back of their necks with the edge of his palm.

He called the rest of his team down to him, and the three chuunin stood at attention in front of him, but they did not meet his gaze. They were looking anywhere but into his eyes, squirming uncomfortably.

The jonin felt the sensei persona he had been using for years well back up within him, and he took the moment to impart a few words unto his students, though nominally, they were already graduated from his tutelage.

  "Today, you are ordered to kill non-combatants for the first time in your ninja career. In the same way that your first kills were difficult and kept you up for nights after, in the same way that you still see their face in your nightmares, today the people you kill will live forever in your minds, and that is sincerely what I hope for.

  If today makes you feel nothing at all, then I have failed as a teacher. We are shinobi, and we endure, but we are also people. The things we do in the shadow of day and dark of night are far from glorious, but we do these things so that we may serve our village, our home.

  I take no pleasure in our assignment, but I will do as ordered because I trust my superior officers to take into account everything that I am not privileged to know when they make their decisions.

  They trust me to follow their orders, and I trust them to give me the necessary ones. Without that trust, the entire village breaks down. We live in a world of secrets and conspiracy; this is the way of the ninja.

  You will not know every detail of every mission. You will not understand some things.

  You will have to trust.

  I killed this woman because I trust my superiors when they tell me to eliminate as many information leaks from Yugakure as possible. We are gearing up for war, I know that much, and every second we can delay our enemies knowledge of our workings and missions, that is another life we save of our friends and allies.