The companions beside him eagerly agreed, shuddering inwardly at how close they had come to being fooled.
"Honestly, I was completely brainwashed before! The moment Chou mentioned the Celestial Dragons, the Otsutsuki, and a thousand years of upheaval in the shinobi world, I swallowed it all! I thought that was the truth behind the shinobi world!"
"But one remark from Sarada snapped me out of it! Intelligence handed to us out of nowhere by some unknown faction could easily be fake. Who can say Chou wasn't lying, or that the people he knew were genuine?"
"Now I'm starting to think those secrets might have been made up by the Veil Organization!"
"You're just a fence-sitter. You're too easily swayed, believing whatever anyone tells you without a single opinion of your own. Sarada said a couple of things, and you changed your mind again."
The crowd argued noisily, their opinions divided.
Some felt Sarada was too calculating, too suspicious to show anyone much kindness.
But far more rank-and-file shinobi strongly approved of her way of thinking.
"Only someone that meticulous, someone who always keeps something in reserve, can hold on to power as a leader!"
"When you're caught in the middle of several factions' schemes, you can't trust anyone! Even if they've helped you time and again, you still have to stay wary! Anyone else would've been led around by the nose by the Veil Organization long ago!"
"Kisame got to the heart of it, too. The Uchiha Clan were born troublemakers in the shinobi world."
"Exactly! Couldn't be truer. One look at them tells me they're not the sort to stay out of trouble."
"Not a single powerful member of the Uchiha Clan throughout history was content to behave themselves. They were born unwilling to settle for mediocrity, born unwilling