On the Mission

The sky was overcast, and it looked like rain was on the way. The wind in the mountains had turned chilly, and a faint moisture hung in the air, warning that a downpour was imminent.

For ordinary people, weather like this was a reason to hurry home. But for ninja on a mission, the weather might affect their performance and make the mission harder. Still, getting caught in a little rain was no big deal if it meant completing the mission.

They lay low among the rocks, watching the people below. A band of mountain bandits, armed with samurai swords, were driving a group of captives tied together like a chain of sausages toward the heart of the forest. Their arrogant laughter carried clearly all the way up to the cliff where the team was hiding.

"Bandits really are a bunch of shameless bastards. I want to go down there and kill them all right now." The boy had unruly black hair that stuck straight up like a hedgehog's. His hairstyle resembled Madara's, but he was stockier and a little shorter.

"Not yet. Once Hitomi finishes scouting the area and confirms there aren't any rogue ninja, we'll make our move. We can't let anyone get away." The calm words came from a handsome young man.

The team out on a mission beyond the village consisted of Uchiha Kaede, Uchiha Hitomi, and Uchiha Hakuno.

The reason they were allowed to leave the village on a mission was simple: they were Genin now.

In his spare time, Kaede found himself thinking again about what had happened a few years ago. The memories were still fresh, and they left him seething.

The first matter was treating Hitomi's congenital heart condition.

Just as Kaede had expected, Tsunade was reluctant to treat Hitomi. She said she had never performed heart surgery before and couldn't guarantee the outcome, so she turned them down.

Kaede then haggled with Tsunade in private, bargaining back and forth until they settled on a fee equivalent to Asuma's weight. He refused to budge after that. He had to admit, Big Fat Sheep had a heart of blackest coal. She'd managed to squeeze every last coin from the assets a Jonin family could get their hands on.

Fortunately, Tsunade really was a medical genius. Under her care, Hitomi's heart defect was completely repaired. After a year of recovery, she was as good as new and able to continue pursuing her dream of becoming a ninja.

But Kaede still couldn't let the matter go, because the bill had been charged to him. He still remembered his father, Mingye, telling him, "Since you took responsibility for this, then as a man, you have to see it through. The thirty million ryo will be split between me and your Uncle Tangdong. But my half is a loan. You'll have to pay it back."

At the time, he had just stood there, blinking at his father. This wasn't at all how he'd expected things to go. Even his mother, Xiang, hadn't taken his side.

From then on, he'd been saddled with a huge debt and forced to work to pay it off.

That was when he decided: let Big Fat Sheep's husband get his heart ripped out. He'd deserve it.

The second matter made him even angrier whenever he thought about it.

It happened after the classes were merged. He spent more than half a year languishing at the Ninja Academy. Hitomi was recovering from her surgery, so she was on leave. Though Class C had plenty of familiar faces, none of them wanted to hang out with him!

The only ones he got along with were Obito, another Uchiha, Lin, and, to some extent, Kakashi and the unbearable Gai. Everyone else acted like they were classmates who sat in the same lessons but barely knew each other.

Some of them even wore sour expressions, as if he owed them thirty million ryo. Kaede wasn't exactly easygoing either. You ignore me, and you expect me to suck up to you? Dream on!

One day, Kakashi suddenly announced that he was graduating early—and then passed the graduation exam. He hadn't even celebrated his sixth birthday yet, and became the first in their year to graduate.

The others, spurred on by his achievement, threw themselves into more intense training than ever before.

From that day on, Kaede sensed that war was drawing near. After weighing his options, he decided to graduate early, as long as he could do so without attracting attention.

The Third Great Ninja War was the bloodiest conflict in the Shinobi World. The Five Great Nations had all been badly weakened, and countless ninja had died. That was why the world remained peaceful for decades after the war: everyone had exhausted most of their strength and was at home licking their wounds.

Konoha narrowly won the war and came close to running out of supplies. Even children from the Ninja Academy were sent to the battlefield. Kaede knew that if he stayed at the academy for all six years, he'd likely end up as cannon fodder. Only by adapting to a ninja's life early could he have a decent chance of surviving on the battlefield.

So he showed promise, working hard at everything he could: Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and his academic studies.

The year after Kakashi graduated, an event that shocked the Shinobi World took place in Konoha. Hatake Sakumo, known as Konoha's White Fang, died by suicide. He had abandoned a mission to rescue his comrades, causing it to fail.

The whole village condemned White Fang. A ninja who abandoned a mission was no different from a traitor. Even the comrade he had saved didn't speak up for him.

The village leadership watched as the affair escalated and White Fang was viciously attacked, making no effort to stop it. That only emboldened the other villagers.

Kaede thought White Fang must have been lost at the time. He no longer understood what the village had become.

He had always upheld the Will of Fire, and he couldn't understand why people couldn't accept that a failed mission could be tried again, but a comrade who lost their life could never come back.

Hadn't he upheld the Will of Fire by abandoning the mission to save his comrade? Then why... why did no one agree with him?

The collapse of his faith had turned his ninja way into a joke.

Kaede saw it as a perfect opportunity. Was Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo, strong? Of course he was. No one could survive the White Fang Blade.

At this crucial moment, when he had lost all faith in life, all it would take was for the Uchiha to speak up in his support. Like a drowning man clutching at the last straw, White Fang would see that someone agreed with him. It wouldn't matter that they were Uchiha.

Most importantly, he would see that someone believed in his ideals.

For the Uchiha, offering White Fang a lifeline at such a critical moment would take away his reason to kill himself. He would still have something to stand by. A ninja wasn't a fragile creature.

If White Fang survived, who would he be grateful to? The Uchiha who had supported him and agreed with him, of course.

The Uchiha could earn the favor of a powerful ninja like Konoha's White Fang just by saying a few inconsequential words. Wasn't that a great deal?

When Kaede told his father everything and asked the influential members of the Uchiha to speak up for White Fang, he figured the Uchiha were already on the Third Hokage's bad side. What difference would one more grievance make?

Mingye and his friend Tangdong went to speak with the elder of their faction. The elder didn't dare make the decision himself, so he went to the clan head. In the end, things escalated to the point where a clan meeting had to be called.