Either Dirty Your Hands or Lose Your Life

At those words, Shisui nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his head.

Give up?

Even as utterly lost as he was, those two words had never crossed his mind.

But after that whole barrage from Jin Uchiha, he felt as though his entire worldview had been ground into the dirt.

He had never imagined the Uchiha were already in such dire straits.

And then there was the Sarutobi clan.

He recalled what he had seen on his last few visits to the Sarutobi compound to report on the Uchiha to Hiruzen Sarutobi.

House after house, ninja packed everywhere.

Back then, he had marveled at just how deep the Hokage's clan's resources ran.

They were thriving!

Now that he thought back on it, something smelled wrong.

Of course it did!

When the Hidden Leaf was first founded, the Sarutobi had been an insignificant little clan.

How many years had Hiruzen Sarutobi been Hokage? Where had the Sarutobi Household gotten all that money, and how had so many ninja suddenly sprung up?

Jin had just handed him the answer.

The village's money!

Then there was the Uchiha Police Force, scraping by every year while the village begrudged them even the smallest allocation.

Where had the more than two billion the daimyo approved every year gone?

The village had barely changed. If anything, it was quieter than it had been a few years ago.

The rewards ninja earned on missions came from their clients.

Not only did the village not have to pay out, it took a cut from every mission.

The Hidden Leaf Hospital?

That could hardly burn through much money!

The ANBU did swallow money, but even their annual expenses topped out at ten or twenty million.

What about the Interrogation Division? The mission hall? The Ninja Academy?

He could count them off on his fingers, and none was a major expense.

Only during wars did spending really spike, when they had to buy things like kunai and explosive tags.

But then again, the daimyo provided separate funding for every war!

So where had the money gone?

However reluctant Shisui was to admit it, he knew Jin was absolutely right.

It had all gone into the pockets of that whole bunch of ninja clans headed by Hiruzen Sarutobi, to support their own ninja.

He sighed.

At that thought, helplessness filled his face.

Looking back on the things he had done, he even felt a chill down his spine.

The Uchiha were already rotten enough, and he had put his trust in a Hokage like that.

If this kept going, just imagining what lay ahead was enough to frighten him.

"Is there really no other way?" Shisui asked in an unsteady voice.

Jin Uchiha merely shrugged. "I'm just a little kid."

"Honestly, I don't really care what happens to the Uchiha in the end."

"But you've been too good to me, Shisui. I don't want to watch you take the wrong path and get yourself killed."

"You're my friend. I have to keep you alive."

A bitter smile tugged at Shisui's lips.

He had never imagined that Jin, the boy he worried himself sick over and treated like a little brother, saw him this way.

Still, when he laid out his thoughts and took a good look at them, that really did seem to be the case.

In front of Jin, he was the one who seemed like a child.

All his earlier ideas had been far too detached from reality.

What was he supposed to do?

He knew he could not change Jin's views of the clan anytime soon.

But he could not let go of his feelings for his clansmen either. As Kagami Uchiha's descendant, he had to keep walking this path.

After a long, brooding silence, he spoke again.

"Jin, I won't force you into this."

"But I have a direction I want to follow. If you really consider me a friend, then show me a way."

"What should I do?"

Yes, right now, he was completely lost.

Having suddenly discovered that the direction he had been charging toward with everything he had was utterly wrong, he was desperate to find a path with some light ahead.

Jin Uchiha, meanwhile, was taken aback.

He truly had not expected things to go this smoothly, or Shisui to be so easy to reason with.

But on further thought, Shisui really had no one he could trust in the original story.

Itachi might have counted as a kindred spirit, but he could offer Shisui no guidance. Instead, Shisui had to look after him.

Now that Jin was here, things were different. Shisui was kindhearted and ran himself ragged for the clan, but he was not stubbornly fixated on his own ideas.

As long as someone laid out a sound argument, he would listen.

In that respect, he was far more likable than that ever-so-filial son, Itachi.

"Shisui, this won't be an easy road." Jin Uchiha sighed. "The Uchiha as they are now have to tear down the old before they can build anything new."

Shisui merely shook his head. "I don't care if it's easy. I just need a way forward."

"Well... all right."

Jin Uchiha lowered his eyes and thought for a moment before slowly speaking. "If you want to turn the Uchiha around from top to bottom, the first thing you need is to bring all the clan's voices together. At the very least, you have to speak with one voice to outsiders."

"To do that, you first need to gather your own people. Only once you have followers will you be in a position to contend with the other two groups."

"What you need to do now is find a solid platform, just like the Radical Faction and the Moderate Faction have. Something people can get behind."

"The first hurdle is the toughest nut to crack."

"But once you get past it, the rest won't be quite so difficult. You will, however, have to harden your heart."

"Because at that point, you'll need to ally with one faction against the other, using every dirty, underhanded trick available to devour the other two factions and strengthen your own."

"That includes, but isn't limited to, smear campaigns, trumped-up accusations, stirring up trouble, and getting others to do your killing."

"For example, find some trivial issue and talk both sides into fighting. At the crucial moment, secretly kill someone and pin the blame on the other side, leaving them no choice but to fight."

"Once they've battered each other, strike from the shadows and make sure both sides' leaders die under mysterious circumstances. If you can't kill them, cripple them so badly they can't get back up."

"Then wield public opinion as a weapon, just like they did against Sakumo Hatake, and ruin their reputations completely!"

"Finally, step in to clean up the mess, absorb both factions, and kick Fugaku out of his seat."

"Only once you've forged the Uchiha into a single fist will you barely have enough leverage to sit down and negotiate with the village."

"As for everything else, think about it once you get that far."

Shisui trembled all over, his fingertips going numb as his mind went blank with a deafening buzz.

Yes, he wanted to save his lineage, but he could never accept saving them this way.

"Isn't that far too vicious?" Shisui finally blurted out. "Does it have to be like that? Isn't there a gentler way?"

Jin Uchiha rolled his eyes skyward.

"This is a struggle. A life-or-death struggle!"

"Shisui, you need to change the way you think. Fighting for power isn't a dinner party. If you want to seize control of the Uchiha, you're taking away someone else's livelihood."

"They'll fight you to the death. This won't end until one side is dead!"

"If you can't bring yourself to be that ruthless, I suggest you give up right now."

"If you show even a moment of softness in a struggle for power, Sakumo Hatake's fate is a ready-made example of what awaits you."

"In this kind of struggle, there are no good people or bad people, only winners and losers. The winner takes all!"