Would Nagato show mercy?
The answer was no.
Because in the brutal world Nagato had experienced and witnessed, mercy was a luxury, a fatal weakness.
He had seen firsthand how his homeland, a Small Country wedged between great powers and ravaged by war, had been trampled, fought over, and destroyed at will by the ninja armies of the Lands of Fire, Wind, and Earth.
For their own interests, for so-called "strategic positions," and to wear down one another's military strength, those great nations had brought the flames of war to the Land of Rain without hesitation, dragging innocent civilians into the meat grinder called war.
Homes were destroyed by ninjutsu, farmland scorched by war, loved ones killed by stray arrows and explosions, and children cried amid the ruins until they fell silent...
Had those great nations' ninja, those lofty Kage, ever shown even a shred of mercy?
Had they ever halted their slaughter because of civilians' anguished cries?
No.
Not once!
They merely calculated casualty figures with cold indifference, weighed their gains and losses, then inflicted still more suffering on the weak.
They fought one another, yet chose the Small Country's soil as their battlefield. Were their own people human, while the people of the Small Country were not?
The rules set by great nations, the peace dictated by great nations, came at the cost of the Small Country's blood and tears.
To Nagato, Iwagakure belonged to one of the Five Great Nations that had once invaded others and caused countless tragedies. The suffering it endured today was merely cause and effect coming full circle, retribution arriving without fail.
When Iwagakure's ninja had plunged kunai into the chests of Amegakure's villagers, had they ever imagined this day would come?
When Ōnoki had ordered his troops into another nation's territory, had