The Good Intentions

Water Release: Miniature Waterfall Jutsu!

"Idiot, stop! It's already hard enough to find clues on these Sand Shinobi. You're using Water Release now—are you trying to wipe out what little evidence we have?

"And searches are done with your hands. What are you doing with those two broken branches?

"Nawaki, don't be afraid of getting dirty or tired. You need to be thorough. Hey, don't throw away their briefs! Some weirdo might have hidden a secret in them!"

Weak, pitiful, and helpless were the best words to describe Nawaki at that moment. At first, he'd complained and roared angrily at Shudan from time to time. But after Shudan had repeatedly insisted there were no orders to deliberately mess with him, Nawaki had finally broken down!

After a long while, following Shudan's instructions, Nawaki finished searching the Sand Shinobi, stripping off all their clothes and even shaving their heads. Senju Nawaki, whose hands were now stained with the lives of billions, wore a broken smile as he pointed at the pile of searched scrolls and shuriken beside him.

"Shudan, I've finished my work. Heh. Hehehe!"

"Mm, thanks for the effort!"

Seeing Senju Nawaki looking like he'd been thoroughly broken, Shudan felt a little guilty. After all, Nawaki was his teammate. There was no need to go too far. With that in mind, Shudan said nothing more. He pulled out a pair of gloves, put them on, and began examining the pile of things they'd collected from the four Sand Shinobi.

"...Hey, Shudan, something doesn't seem right!"

Watching Shudan take out the gloves, Nawaki's eyes instantly reddened.

"Why do you have a pair of gloves?"

"Hm?"

Shudan looked surprised.

"What's wrong with putting on gloves to handle filthy things? You know I gave each of you a whole stack of them!"

"Then why didn't you tell me to do that just now?"

"Oh, I forgot!"

"Bullshit! With your brain, how could you forget something like that? You clearly just wanted to torture me!"

"Come on, don't sweat the little details! Here, use Water Release to clean this stuff up!"

"Holy shit, are you even human? You just forbade me from using Water Release. Why can you use it now?"

"Hey, that's not fair. At first, I thought there was still hope for these ninja tools, so they couldn't be contaminated a second time. But now they're already so filthy that rinsing them with water won't make things any worse!"

"Shudan, do you have any humanity left? Is that something a person would say? Fine, I'll fight you! Water Release: Water Bullet Barr—"

Smack!

A sharp crack sounded beside Nawaki's feet. He looked down and saw a shattered potion bottle at his feet. Through the purple liquid still inside it, Nawaki stared in despair and uttered two words.

"Holy shit!"

Like flames surging through his heart, an endless rush of excitement flooded his mind once more, and the desire to conquer everything reignited his reason!

Swift as the wind, invading like fire, moving like thunder!

When the familiar feeling passed, Nawaki knew what was coming. Even so, he despairingly discovered that although he'd managed to grab a different tree, he was still uncontrollably thrusting back and forth against the one in front of him!

"Shudan, I'll kill you!"

Nawaki let out the shrill, dying-animal howl of a beast. After five minutes of roaring in vain—

"Shudan, if you let me go now, I'll forgive you for everything you've done!"

Five minutes later—

"Shudan, I was wrong. Let me go. I won't question anything you do again!"

"Shudan!"

Watching Shudan take out the antidote and end Nawaki's tree-humping state, Hyuga Hyakusho couldn't help feeling that they'd gone a little too far.

"Too far? I don't think so!"

Ignoring Nawaki, who lay on the ground like a dead dog, Shudan took out his scroll and unsealed a basin of clean water, then began washing the Sand Shinobi's ninja tools.

"Putting everything else aside, if I'd made you clean up the four Sand Shinobi corpses here, using the same method as I did with Nawaki, would you have done it? Would you have complained?"

"..."

"I would've cleaned them up without a single complaint, because..."

Hyuga Hyakusho fell silent for a moment, then understood what Shudan meant.

"Because we learned about this in school. Your orders were completely reasonable!"

"Exactly!"

Shudan's expression turned serious.

"The world of shinobi is cruel. Searching a few filthy corpses is nothing at all. The only reason you thought I'd gone too far with Nawaki was that the idiot only knows how to charge headfirst into trouble, and he influenced you!

"We're about to head to the front lines. Compared with what awaits us there, this battle is nothing. The front lines are where the battlefield becomes a meat grinder. To be brutally honest, we graduates are cannon fodder sent to ease the pressure there. Only the elite fighters, the jonin and above, have a chance of surviving. The rest of us can only leave it to fate!

"Don't let the fact that Water Gate and I ranked first and second among this year's graduates, or that you're in the upper-middle tier, fool you. Nawaki's completely abnormal combat instincts can drag us all down. You saw it yourself: when we were facing a large number of Sand Shinobi and Karui ordered us to retreat, Nawaki still wanted to fight them. If I hadn't grabbed him in time, he would've charged in, convinced we could win despite the difference in strength!

"His mindless personality is bad enough, but the most dangerous thing is that Nawaki doesn't even realize he's doing anything wrong!

"I'm sure Nawaki wouldn't listen to any of this. Or even if he did, he wouldn't care. So I have to carve these lessons deep into his bones. He can ignore me and dismiss what I say, but when he faces situations like these, he has to respond in the right way!

"The facts prove that everything I did wasn't useless!"

Shudan pointed at Nawaki, who was lying on the ground with a despairing look on his face.

"Did you notice just now? Nawaki attacked me with a D-rank Water Release technique, which he could perform faster—not the A-rank Earth Release technique he'd used when we first met, which took forever to release!"

"...I understand."

Looking at Shudan, Hyuga Hyakusho spoke seriously for the first time, finally stepping out of his usual role as the one who made sarcastic remarks.

"Shudan, when I received my assignment and found out my team leader wasn't a chunin but a genin who'd graduated alongside me and was younger than I was, I wasn't happy about it. But today, I, Hyuga Hyakusho, formally approve of everything Hatake Shudan has done. I officially recognize Hatake Shudan as my team leader!"

"Hyakusho, I'm so moved! At last, someone understands how hard I've worked!"

Shudan was so touched he could barely contain himself. He almost burst into tears.

"At last, someone understands that my experiments with potions in the village were the right thing to do!"

"Uh!"

Hyuga Hyakusho looked bewildered.

"Are we talking about the same thing?"

"At last, someone understands that even though those potions have serious side effects, they're still very effective!"

"Uh, maybe we should talk about the battle ahead instead!"

"Hyakusho, you finally understand that although my test subjects did some bad things to Kage Rock, their contributions to the village matter more. What does Kage Rock even matter?"

"Hey, hey, I never agreed to that!"

"Since that's the case..."

Shudan looked at Hyuga Hyakusho with a fervent expression.

"I happen to have a potion here that's great for improving a shinobi's physical constitution. Hyakusho, as a gesture of accepting me, drink it!"

Hyuga Hyakusho: "..."