Uesugi Shinji's Squad

Uesugi Shinji had Kisame set the corpse down from his shoulder, then examined it to confirm that it was indeed the target they had come to deal with.

Aside from an inconspicuous knife wound on the neck, there were no obvious injuries elsewhere. Clearly, Rin had killed him with a single strike. If Kisame, whose attacks were broad and forceful, had dealt the blow, the corpse might have been mangled beyond recognition.

"What about the two Konoha jonin? Did they both get away?" Uesugi Shinji asked as he examined the body.

Kisame glanced at the head of Shirokumo Hayama hanging from Uesugi Shinji's left hand and said with a wicked grin, "One slippery bastard got away. The other one used Earth Release and relied on his defensive ninjutsu to take my attacks head-on. I blasted him to smithereens with ninjutsu. What a shame. But you actually took out Konoha's Shirokumo Hayama. The village is going to be stunned."

Uesugi Shinji replied calmly, "I barely won. If we fought again, I might not be the one who came out on top."

Once Uesugi Shinji had confirmed the corpse's identity, Kisame stepped forward and hoisted it onto his shoulder again. Looking at the wound on Uesugi Shinji's chest, he said, "There are no 'what ifs' in a shinobi battle. You killed him, so you're stronger than he was! Though it looks like you're pretty badly hurt, too."

"Taking down a powerful opponent naturally comes at a price," Uesugi Shinji said.

Nearby, their other teammate, Rin, pulled a bottle of medicine from her clothing and tossed it to Uesugi Shinji. She leaned back against the trunk of a large tree, arms folded across her chest and head bowed, her eyes half-closed. She struck a cold pose that said, "I don't care about anyone."

Uesugi Shinji caught the bottle and thanked Rin.

Rin merely gave a soft snort. "Hmph. I just don't want you dying on the way back to turn in the mission. It'd be embarrassing for me as a member of your squad."

Rin acted as though she didn't care about Uesugi Shinji's injuries, as if she had tossed him the medicine only for her own sake. But both Uesugi Shinji and Kisame knew that she was just putting on an icy front. In truth, she was a very reliable partner.

"Are women always this troublesome?" Kisame said with a wicked grin.

At his teasing, Rin's cheeks flushed slightly, then she bristled. Her pretty face took on a not particularly intimidating threatening expression as she glared at Kisame and snapped, "You bastard, say that again!"

Kisame was quick to back down. He immediately waved his hands to show that he surrendered.

Uesugi Shinji began treating his wound as soon as he got the medicine. The potion Rin had given him was highly effective on external injuries; the moment he applied it, the wound already felt much better. A scan by his Light Brain showed that the wound was healing much faster, too.

Rin still held her cool pose, but the corner of her eye kept stealing glances at Uesugi Shinji.

She had originally planned to mock the way he treated his wound, then reluctantly step in to bandage it and apply the medicine. But she quickly realized that he was very skilled at treating injuries, so she gave up on the idea.

Looking at the fellow Kirigakure shinobi she had personally killed, now slung over Kisame's shoulder, Rin felt a pang of sorrow. She gave a soft snort and said, "What an ugly mission. Right now, we're probably the only village that orders its own captured shinobi to be killed without exception."

Kisame responded with a wicked grin. "The Mizukage's policies have been getting harder and harder to understand these past two years. He's becoming more and more ruthless toward the village's shinobi. Maybe one day you two will be sent to clean me up."

His voice sounded casual, with a hint of teasing, but Uesugi Shinji could still see the worry in his eyes.

Of course, Kisame wasn't worried about himself. He was worried about Kirigakure.

At the time, no one in the entire Shinobi World knew that the Fourth Mizukage, the current leader of one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, had been controlled by someone. That person was none other than Uchiha Madara, the strongest shinobi, once feared throughout the Shinobi World and renowned as the equal of Senju Hashirama, the First Hokage.

(Note: Naruto never clearly established whether Obito controlled the Fourth Mizukage from the beginning. According to the timeline I've put together, if Obito controlled the Fourth Mizukage the whole time, it's very difficult to make the timeline of the "Bloody Mist Village" period fit. So I lean toward the Fourth Mizukage being controlled by Madara at first, who later handed control of the genjutsu over to Obito.)

At this point in time, Kisame still cared deeply about the village.

If Uesugi Shinji hadn't crossed over into this world, the original Uesugi Shinji of Kirigakure would have died on a mission three years earlier. Then, after a series of events, Kisame's outlook would gradually have changed.

In particular, after Kirigakure's higher-ups ordered him to kill all his teammates on a mission, he discovered that his superior, Suikazan Fuguki, the one who had given him that mission, had actually been selling the village's intelligence to other shinobi villages all along. In that moment, the beliefs Kisame had always held collapsed completely, and he decided to defect.

Before defecting, he personally killed Suikazan Fuguki and took the greatsword Samehada.

But now that Uesugi Shinji was here, everything happening around Kisame had changed, and his outlook had changed dramatically as well.

Shinobi like Kisame and Rin had always believed that the village came first and their comrades came second. But Uesugi Shinji didn't share that belief.

In his previous life, Uesugi Shinji had been the leader of an international mercenary organization. He hadn't felt much attachment to any particular homeland, but he had deeply valued the teammates who stood by him through life and death.

To him, Kirigakure was merely a platform for his work as a shinobi. The only people he truly cared about were Kisame and Rin, his comrades of several years who had repeatedly faced life and death alongside him.

Uesugi Shinji wasn't talkative, nor was he good at expressing himself. But during missions, he would unintentionally show what he believed through his actions.

In many situations, he took the most dangerous missions himself. Just as he had on this mission, sending Kisame and Rin after the targets while he faced the powerful Shirokumo Hayama alone.

Under Uesugi Shinji's influence over the past few years, Kisame and Rin had gradually come to share his beliefs.

Though they had grown up in Kirigakure and couldn't see the village as merely an organization with a transactional relationship to them, as Uesugi Shinji did, they had unknowingly begun to place their teammates above the village.

If Kirigakure's higher-ups now ordered Kisame, under the pretext of a mission, to assassinate fellow villagers—including Rin and Uesugi Shinji—just as they had in the original Naruto world, Kisame would never carry it out.

Because now, he belonged to Uesugi Shinji's squad!