About Hanzō

Amegakure.

"No Sensory Barrier."

At the mouth of a concealed drainage pipe, Nishikawa Tetsu withdrew his sensory reconnaissance tool.

"Hanzō may be paranoid right now, but he relies on traditional covert sentries and patrol squads. He doesn't have a large-scale sensory jutsu covering the entire village. That's good news for us."

"Don't let your guard down." Uchiha Fugaku lowered his voice, his eyes—sharp even in the darkness—scanning their surroundings warily. "According to intel, his Arsenal is located in the center of the Lower District."

"Understood."

Namikaze Minato nodded, his expression grave.

Like phantoms, the three of them wrapped themselves in cloaks specially made by Nishikawa Tetsu, using the sound of rain to mask their footsteps as they infiltrated Amegakure without a sound.

Amegakure's structure was rigidly hierarchical. To avoid the dense patrols in the upper levels, Team Five chose to cut through the Lower District.

And the scene unfolding here struck Namikaze Minato—venturing deep into enemy territory for the first time—as utterly horrifying.

On both sides of the streets were nothing but shanties cobbled together from discarded scrap metal and wooden planks.

In the alleys where sewage flowed, countless ragged figures huddled.

They were gaunt and sallow, their eyes numb and hollow. Whenever a patrol of Amegakure Ninja passed by, these people trembled like frightened mice.

"Waa—"

A faint cry broke the dead silence of the rainy night.

Beneath a leaking eaves, a skeletal mother held an infant, trying to feed it, but her prolonged starvation had clearly left her with no milk.

The baby's cries grew weaker and weaker, eventually fading into a wheeze like a dying kitten.

Not far away, two children, no older than five or six, were fighting over a moldy piece of bread.

For that morsel, one child even bit down hard on the other's arm, blood mixing with the rain as it flowed.

Namikaze Minato's steps came to an abrupt halt.

He looked at the dying infant, then at the children scrapping like wild beasts. In his azure eyes, the light trembled violently.

As a child raised in Konoha, though his background was ordinary, the sunlight and prosperity of Konoha had never allowed him to witness such raw, despairing hell.

"This is too cruel."

Minato's voice came out hoarse. He instinctively reached for his Ninja Tool Pouch, where a few high-calorie Ration Pills were stored.

He wanted to save them—even if just these few in front of him.

"Don't move."

A hand clamped down on Minato's wrist.

It was Uchiha Fugaku.

The young Uchiha clan leader's face was cold, his gaze fixed straight ahead. "Put away your useless sympathy, Namikaze Minato. If you give them food now, the scramble it triggers will kill even more people. And if we expose our trail, the mission will fail."

"But isn't the root of all this that warmonger Hanzō?" Minato gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with anger toward the man the world called a demigod. "If he hadn't declared war on the Three Great Nations, how could these people have ended up like this?"

"Is it really Hanzō's fault?"

A calm voice cut in.

Nishikawa Tetsu stepped forward, placing himself between Minato and the refugees.

He didn't look at the refugees. Instead, he raised his head to gaze at this oppressive village, his eyes holding not anger but a trace of appreciation.

"Minato, do you think Hanzō is an absolute villain?" Nishikawa Tetsu asked.

"Isn't he?" Minato shot back. "He exhausts his nation's resources for war, even daring to oppose all the great powers."

"You're wrong."

Nishikawa Tetsu shook his head, his voice cutting clearly through the rain.

"What is Amegakure? It's the only point where the three great nations—Fire, Earth, and Wind—border each other. A natural strategic buffer zone."

He pointed at the mud beneath their feet.

"What does a strategic buffer zone mean? In peacetime, you're the buffer. In wartime, you're the battlefield!"

"The Three Great Nations start wars for their own interests, but they don't want to fight on their own soil, so they tacitly set the battlefields ablaze in Amegakure."

"If you were the Leader here, watching the great powers run rampant in your home, watching your villagers trampled like weeds—what could you do? Could you tolerate it?"

Namikaze Minato was stunned. He had never thought about the problem from this angle.

"Hanzō declaring war on the Three Great Nations—in my eyes, that's a man pushed to the brink."

"Look at these people, Minato."

Nishikawa Tetsu pointed at the shivering refugees.

"Their homes were destroyed not because Hanzō started a war, but because we were slaughtering each other on their land. In their eyes—even in our eyes—the shinobi of the Three Great Nations are the invaders."

Namikaze Minato was frozen. He had never considered the problem from this perspective.

All his life, he had been taught to "fight to protect Konoha," but he had never realized that this protection was built on the suffering of another nation.

"The Three Great Nations have turned this place into a battlefield, yet it's the small nations that bear the suffering."

Nishikawa Tetsu continued, "He's trying to unify this chaos through force, attempting to earn sovereignty by showing his fangs to the great powers. This isn't madness—it's the blood and backbone of a leader. He's fighting for survival."

Nishikawa Tetsu's mind flashed with memories of Hanzo from his past life.

Though this man grew paranoid and mediocre in his later years, right now, at the peak of this shinobi world war, Hanzo of the Salamander was truly the guardian deity of the Land of Rain, a hero who dared to draw his blade against the world for his country.

"So don't define war simply by good and evil, right and wrong—that's too naive."

Nishikawa Tetsu looked at Minato, who had fallen completely silent, and his tone grew serious:

"Hanzo has his justice; we have our stance. We admire his spine, we understand his plight, but that doesn't change the fact that we are enemies."

"War is a clash of positions. There is no right or wrong, only victory or defeat."

Uchiha Fugaku listened and nodded slightly.

As the young head of a prestigious clan, he understood this kind of politics based on power and interests better than Minato did.

His gaze toward Nishikawa Tetsu held a hint of surprise—this commoner boy's insight ran deeper than many clan elders'.

"Well said." Fugaku said in a low voice. "Hanzo is a worthy opponent. But he stands in Konoha's way, so he must fall."

Nishikawa Tetsu patted Minato on the shoulder, his tone softening:

"Minato, I'm telling you this not to make you doubt yourself, but to help you see reality."

"We can't change the will of the great nations, nor can we save this country overnight. But there's one thing we can do—"

"End this war as quickly as possible."

"As long as the war continues, the cries here won't stop. And blowing up that arsenal, weakening Hanzo's war potential, will force him back to the negotiating table sooner."

"That's the fastest and most merciful release for this war and for these refugees."

Namikaze Minato took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as if digesting these words that shook his worldview.

A moment later, when he opened his eyes again, those azure pupils no longer held confusion or cheap sympathy. Instead, they carried a clarity born of bearing a heavy resolve.

"I understand."

Minato said quietly. "Since we're invaders, let's be terminators. For Konoha, and to make the rain here stop sooner."