Uesugi Shinji's Squad

Uesugi Shinji had Kisame place the corpse on his shoulder onto the ground, then inspected it to confirm that it was indeed the target they had been sent to eliminate.

Aside from an inconspicuous blade mark on the neck, there were no other obvious wounds on the body; it was clear that Rin had killed him with a single strike. Had it been Kisame, with his wild and unrestrained fighting style, the corpse would likely have been reduced to a mangled, unrecognizable mess.

"What about those two Konoha jonin? Did they both get away?" Uesugi Shinji asked while examining the body.

Kisame glanced at the head of Shirokumo Hayama that Uesugi Shinji was holding in his left hand and chuckled strangely. "One was quite slippery and managed to run off. The other, who used Earth Style, relied on his defensive ninjutsu to tank my attacks, so I used a jutsu to blast him into nothingness—a real shame, that. But to think you actually took down Konoha's Shirokumo Hayama; the village is going to be shocked by this."

Uesugi Shinji said slowly, "It was a narrow victory. If we were to fight again, the outcome might not be the same."

Seeing that Uesugi Shinji had finished identifying the body, Kisame stepped forward to hoist it back onto his shoulder. He looked at the wound on Uesugi Shinji's chest and remarked, "In a ninja's battle, there are no 'ifs.' If you killed him, you are stronger than him! But it looks like you've taken quite a heavy hit yourself."

"Taking down a powerful opponent naturally requires paying a price," Uesugi Shinji replied.

Not far from the two, their other teammate, Rin, pulled a vial of medicine from her robes and tossed it toward Uesugi Shinji. She leaned her back against a large tree trunk with her arms crossed over her chest, head bowed and eyes half-closed, striking a cold, "I don't care about anyone" pose.

Uesugi Shinji caught the medicine and said, "Thanks," to Rin.

Rin let out a soft huff. "Hmph, I just don't want you dying on the way back to turn in the mission. It would be very embarrassing for me as a squad member if word got out."

Rin acted as if she didn't care about Uesugi Shinji's injury, as if tossing the medicine was purely for her own sake. However, both Uesugi Shinji and Kisame knew that this woman was merely being tsundere; in reality, she was a highly reliable partner.

"Are all women this troublesome!?" Kisame asked with a strange laugh.

Hearing Kisame's teasing, Rin's face flushed slightly. She bristled, a non-threatening, fierce expression appearing on her pretty face as she glared at Kisame. "You bastard, say that again?"

Kisame was quick to back down, immediately waving his hands to signal his surrender.

Once Uesugi Shinji had the medicine, he began to treat his wound. The potion Rin provided was highly effective for external injuries; as soon as he applied it, he felt the area become much more comfortable. A scan from his Light Brain confirmed that the healing rate of the wound had increased significantly.

Off to the side, Rin maintained her cool posture, but the corner of her eye swept toward Uesugi Shinji's position every now and then.

She had originally intended to mock Uesugi Shinji's technique for treating wounds and then "very reluctantly" step forward to help him bandage and apply the medicine. However, she soon realized that Uesugi Shinji's method was extremely professional, forcing her to abandon that thought.

Glancing at the fellow villager on Kisame's shoulder whom she had killed with her own hands, Rin felt a sense of desolation. She let out a soft huff and said, "What an ugly mission. At this point, only our village treats its own captured ninjas with a 'kill on sight' policy, right?"

Kisame chuckled strangely upon hearing this. "The Fourth Mizukage's policies have become increasingly incomprehensible over the last two years. He's becoming harsher toward the village's own ninjas; who knows, one day you two might even be sent to clean me up."

Although Kisame's tone sounded light and teasing, Uesugi Shinji could still see a look of worry in his eyes.

Of course, what Kisame was worried about was not himself, but Kirigakure.

At this moment, no one in the entire ninja world knew that the current Fourth Mizukage of Kirigakure, one of the five great ninja villages, was being controlled by someone—and that controller was none other than Uchiha Madara, the strongest ninja who had once shaken the world and stood on equal footing with the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama.

(Note: In Naruto, it is not explicitly stated whether the Fourth Mizukage was controlled by Obito the entire time. In the timeline the author has gathered, if the Fourth Mizukage were controlled by Obito from start to finish, the timeline of the "Bloody Mist Village" phase would be difficult to reconcile. Therefore, the author is more inclined to believe that the Fourth Mizukage was initially controlled by Madara, who later transferred control of the genjutsu to Obito.)

During this period, Kisame still held the village in high regard.

If Uesugi Shinji had not transmigrated into this world, the original "Uesugi Shinji" of Kirigakure would have already sacrificed himself in a mission three years ago. It was only through a series of events that Kisame's mindset had gradually shifted.

Especially after he was ordered by the higher-ups of Kirigakure to kill all his teammates on a mission, only to discover that his superior, Suikazan Fuguki, who had issued the order, had been selling village intelligence to other ninja villages all along. At that moment, the worldview Kisame had always held collapsed, and he decided to defect from the village.

Before defecting, he had even killed Suikazan Fuguki with his own hands and seized the great sword Samehada.

But now, with Uesugi Shinji's presence, everything around Kisame had changed, and his mindset had undergone a massive transformation.

Originally, ninjas like Kisame and Rin had always felt that the village came first, and their partners second. However, this philosophy was not shared by Uesugi Shinji.

In his previous life, as the leader of an international mercenary organization, Uesugi Shinji had little sense of national sentiment, but he placed great importance on the members of his organization who lived and died together.

To him now, Kirigakure was merely a platform for his work as a ninja; the only ones truly worth his concern were Kisame and Rin, the teammates with whom he had shared life and death for years.

Uesugi Shinji was not the type to talk much or express himself well, but he would inadvertently demonstrate this philosophy through his actions during missions.

In many cases, he would personally take on the most dangerous tasks, just as he had in this mission by letting Kisame and Rin pursue the target while he faced the powerful Shirokumo Hayama alone.

Influenced by Uesugi Shinji's subtle guidance over the past few years, Kisame and Rin had gradually adopted this same philosophy.

Although they had grown up in Kirigakure and could not, like the transmigrated Uesugi Shinji, view the village merely as an organization with which they had a transactional relationship, they had unconsciously begun to prioritize their teammates over the village.

If the higher-ups of Kirigakure were to order Kisame to assassinate his fellow ninjas, including Rin and Uesugi Shinji, in the name of a mission as they did in the original Naruto world, Kisame would certainly refuse to carry it out.

Simply because, now, he belonged to Uesugi Shinji's squad!