Instead of waiting for Yumi’s response, I let my words be the last thing for her to remember me by. Being a shinobi was an overall shitty hand, but instances like these would help me feel just a little more optimistic about the things I’d have to do in the future.

I returned to the village, wandering about for a couple of hours more to see what else I could find out. No one on this side of the village was likely to provide me with as firsthand an account of Goro Tanimoto as Yumi, but there was still the chance that I’d overhear conversations about other Jagged Blades members.

After wandering about for a solid hour, I returned to The Empty Plate for lunch where I asked Chie for any other sources but all the ones she named were on the other side of the village. The things she knew about the Jagged Blades weren’t all that different to Yasuhiro’s information either, so after finishing my meal, I returned to our lodging.

Of course, I hadn’t forgotten the bottle of sake Asuma had requested. It was a strange request seeing that he wasn’t much of a drinker, but I obliged anyway. Hinata was awake when I arrived and Choji had returned before I did, sitting on the foot of the bed while Asuma smoked a cigarette on the far side of the room.

“...I’m back?” I said, though it came out as more of a question.

Hinata smiled, still looking tired but nowhere near as exhausted as before. “Welcome back, Naruto.”

“When did you get back, Choji?”

“Uh, not too long ago; half an hour ago at the maximum,” he replied.

“Did you find anything useful?”

A dark look crossed his face. “In a way.”

“We were waiting for you to return,” said Asuma, finishing his cigarette in a single drag before dispelling the acrid scent. He moved closer to the bed and sat cross-legged. “And now that you’re here, we can finally put our heads together.”

I sat down and passed him the bottle.

“Cheap-looking, but it’ll do,” he said with a wry smile, setting it down on his left.

“What is it even for?” I asked.

“You’ll find out—now, who wants to go first?”

Choji and I looked at each other for a long moment.

“Do you—” “You go first—”

I blinked. “I’m not going to say anything for the next ten seconds.”

“...Okay, thanks,” said Choji, shaking his head. He readjusted his sitting position and cleared his throat. “When I went to the eastern side of the village, I walked around for a while to get a mental picture of the area. There were places packed with people like streets full of stalls but I didn’t overhear anything except gossip.”

“Same here,” I said and we shared a nod.

“But then I found a smithy.”

I perked up at his words—Yumi had mentioned a village smith so it stood to reason that there’d be a smithy somewhere.

“The Jagged Blades put in a big order of kunai and shuriken at the start of the year. The thing is, they shut down the trade routes in and out of the village, but they provide smiths—Mr Naomichi and his apprentices—with the materials from their raids.”

Hinata frowned over her blanket. “Are they getting paid?”

“No.” Choji shook his head, looking legitimately angry. “Mr Naomichi and his apprentices have families but apparently, Goro Tanimoto says that providing the raw materials is payment enough.”

“If he hadn’t shut down the trade routes, he wouldn’t have to supply the materials in the first place! And it’s not like he’s giving them the materials to do with as they please—he’s commissioning them without pay!”

I remained silent as the two of them seethed over the Goro Tanimoto’s cruelty—they weren’t wrong at all.

Asuma hummed. “This Goro Tanimoto seems like a cruel sort of guy, doesn’t he.”

The two of them nodded firmly.

“We’d be doing the village a whole lot of good by dealing with him as well, right?”

Again, they nodded.

“Okay,” said Asuma, adjusting his position, “tell me, what have we been hired to do?”

I opened my mouth. “To—”

“Not you, Naruto,” said Asuma, holding up his hand. “I’m asking Choji and Hinata.”

I held back my grimace because I could see what Asuma was about to do from a mile away.

“We’ve been… instructed to deal with the Jagged Blades on behalf of Yasuhiro Ohashi, the Chief of Tenka Village,” said Hinata, looking slightly confused while she spoke.

“Choji, what does that involve? Hinata was a little vague by referring to our mission as dealing with the Jagged Blades.”

Choji frowned. “We’re going to—uh… kill them.”

“Right you are. Goro Tanimoto is a bastard through and through, there’s no doubt about that, but we’re going to kill him—is that the right thing to do?”

“We’re putting an end to his evil!” Hinata’s eyebrows rose into an arch. “If he hadn’t tormented the villagers, they wouldn’t have hired us to kill him. The Jagged Blades are reaping exactly what they sowed.”

“And we’re some kind of moral authority now?”

His words gave her of them a moment of pause.

“I think,” said Hinata, speaking slowly, “that we are doing the right thing.”

“You two are misunderstanding something crucial about being a shinobi. You’re kind children, and that’s something I want you to hold onto, but not before you hear this,” said Asuma, looking at me. “Naruto, what is a shinobi?”

“A shinobi is a blade for hire who will do whatever is instructed of them by their kage.”

“And what is the Will of Fire?”

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I pulled my lips into a thin, hard line. “The Will of Fire is the dominant shinobi philosophy in the Leaf, impressing the need to sacrifice everything for the village and its people.”

“It sounds like it’s all well and good doesn’t it?” Asuma nodded, returning to Choji and Hinata. “But one day, you could be hired to go and do something your conscience will immediately say, “hell no!”, to. What then?”

Hinata frowned into her blanket and Choji looked contemplative.

“We might be doing the moral thing now, but our job is anything but moral. To convince yourself otherwise is hypocrisy—and there’s nothing more dangerous than a hypocritical shinobi.” Asuma frowned deeply, his face looking more grave than I’d ever seen it.

Despite that, it didn’t look like Hinata had truly understood what Asuma had said. I saw a retort forming on her face before she shook her head and leaned against the bedframe and Choji remained silent, still thinking things over.

Right and wrong, as it related to shinobi, would be a difficult thing for them to grasp… at least, until they experienced it firsthand; that was where the real cost of being a shinobi reared its ugly head.

Following orders was an easy thing to do when those orders aligned with your worldview—but what happened when they didn’t and the cost of disobedience was death?

“You might not understand it now, but one day, you will. I just hope you remember my words,” said Asuma, sighing softly, and pointing at me. “Naruto, what did you discover today?”

“Mostly the same thing as Choji,” I said. “I ended up speaking to a serving girl from The Empty Plate; Goro Tanimoto killed her husband and orphaned her son.”

Hinata’s gaze snapped onto me and I could see the righteous anger wrinkling her brow. Asuma saw it too and closed his eyes for a long moment, taking a breath.

“Go on,” he said.

“The Jagged Blades treat the village as a free resource and because they shut down all trade in and out of the village, they’ve made everyone reliant on them,” I said, running my tongue along the inside of my cheek in thought. “But I also discovered that a group of shinobi might be trying to take the bounty on the Jagged Blades.”

“How?” said Hinata. “I scanned the village before we entered and then watched the outpost. There weren’t any above-average chakra signatures.”

“The serving girl told me that three people came to the village around a week ago and were asking about the Jagged Blades. When she inquired if they were Leaf shinobi who’d come to exterminate them, they didn’t deny it and no one’s seen them since.”

“Sensei, what are we going to do?” asked Choji, looking troubled. “They could be enemy shinobi.”

“They probably are enemy shinobi.” Asuma frowned. “Standard procedure says outside interference by other shinobi—foreign or otherwise—is enough grounds for us to turn around and go home. People will hold you retreating on your very first mission over you for a while; it’s not career-ending at all, but I’ll leave the choice in your hands. Do you want to continue the mission, or should we leave Tenka Village?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? On the one hand, we could avoid having to fight enemy shinobi of unknown rank. Tenka Village would still be freed from the Jagged Blades and we could count the mission as a success in a moral sense.

We wouldn’t be abandoning the villagers to the Jagged Blades’ cruelty, anyway.

But where did that leave us? The next thing we’d have to deal with would be an invasion of Sand and Sound Village shinobi, Orochimaru, and Gaara. Not only that, we would have to deal with all those threats without any prior battle experience.

Asuma could probably hold his own against most threats—especially since his taijutsu was only second to Maito Gai’s in the village. Choji, Hinata, and I had been training hard for years so we weren’t the typical genin. If not for that, I’d vote to go home in a heartbeat.

This… it was doable—we were in the dark about the shinobi’s identities, but it wasn’t an impossible task.

I clenched my fist—the decision was made. “I think we should do it. We need the experience, even with the threat. So long as we’re cautious, we shouldn’t be taken unawares and we can change our strategy with an ambush in mind.”

Choji folded his arms. “I’m not sure…”

“...I’m with Naruto,” said Hinata, even if she looked hesitant. “The threat of unknown enemy shinobi… it’s a big one, but I think we can handle it if we keep a calm head. You said shinobi execute their orders to completion, right?”

“Naruto said that not me,” said Asuma, smiling, “but I get your point. Fine, we’ll go ahead with the mission, but we’re going to change the plan of attack. Instead of having you and Choji split off when Naruto and I make our rush at the outpost, we’re going to storm it as one. Then, we’ll deal with the rogues as quickly as possible.”

“What if we get ambushed on the way there?” Choji asked.

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t make sense. Why attack us when we’d be expecting it the most?”

“I agree,” said Asuma. “If they’re going to ambush us, it’ll happen either during or after we clear the outpost; they’ll take advantage of the chaos, or get us when our guard is down.”

“Can we use that against them?” asked Hinata.

“How?”

“Well, if they attack during the battle, we can use the Jagged Blades to defend against them just by running away.”

“What happened to morality?” He smiled at her with a raised brow. “Isn’t that kind of evil?”

She blushed but was still fighting off a smile. “It’s tactical,” she huffed out, “and it’s the least they deserve!”

“Alright, alright, I’m kidding—” Asuma raised a hand, chuckling—“but what if they ambush us afterwards?”

Choji’s hand shot up. “We can pretend we’re tired and then ambush them right back!”

“That’s… not how an ambush works,” I said with a snort, “but you’ve got the right idea. We won’t even have to pretend to be distracted—none of us have killed anyone before.”

Whatever optimism our brainstorming had brought swiftly evaporated with my reminder. It was a topic we’d been deftly avoiding on the journey here but seeing that we’d committed to a course of action, I decided to rip the bandaid off.

Choji very visibly didn’t like the idea of becoming a killer, but I could see the logic warring with his emotions—he had a very expressive face.

“Something tells me I won’t have much trouble with the Jagged Blads,” said Hinata, frowning.

Asuma rolled his eyes. “Saying it and doing it are two different things.”

“Exactly,” I said, setting my jaw. “And besides, I’m not looking forward to killing them either. Their shittiness aside, a life holds weight.”

She broke eye contact with me and pushed open the shuttered, wooden window, looking onto the village below.

“Here,” said Asuma, making a sudden move for his back. He rummaged inside it, pulling out the lids of our flasks. “Here’s a drink for each of you; take a glass and wait on my call before you drink anything.

I watched him open the bottle of alcohol and pour about a shot’s worth into each lid. Choji, Hinata, and I took the three lids, clutching them awkwardly as he poured out a fourth using his own flask lid.

“Why are we drinking?” Choji asked. “Isn’t it for adults?”

I tilted my head from side to side. “Legally speaking, we are adults.”

“Physically speaking, we’re children,” Hinata shot back, eyeing the wine inside her flask. “Though it’s not exactly forbidden. I used to drink diluted wine all the time at clan gatherings.”

Choji stared at her in surprise. “Really?”

“It’s nothing compared to the real stuff,” said Asuma, holding his lid out. “Come on, hold yours out too, kids.”

We did so tentatively, watching him to see what would happen next.

“Naruto’s right—no matter what happens tomorrow, you’re going to take human lives. Lives, not life. It’s an experience that will change you, no matter your thoughts on it—” he looked at Hinata, and then at Choji, before his gaze settled on me. “—but don’t let it overwhelm you. Accept it for what it is—don’t shrug it off—and when the mission is complete, we will talk. I won’t leave you guys alone, so you can take a little comfort in that, alright?”

We nodded and his usual easy smile slipped across his face.

“Good—and now that we’ve got that over and done with, bottoms up!”

He threw his head back and we mirrored him. Choji and Hinata let out two simultaneous sounds, wrinkling their noses. I swallowed the sake a beat after them—feeling its bittersweet burn down my throat. That night, we went to sleep, knowing that we’d receive a baptism in blood the very next day.

The realisation sat in my stomach and I didn’t quite know how to feel about it. Like Asuma said, taking life and thinking about it were two vastly different experiences. I just hoped that when the time came, I wouldn’t hesitate—because if I did, I could just as easily lose mine.

I had to be able to stomach murder not only because it was a necessity, but because I’d do just about anything to avoid the powerlessness of feeling my very existence slip away into nothingness.