The rift among the ninja became more pronounced.
Some younger ninja, especially Genin and Chunin, privately expressed admiration for Sakumo's refusal to abandon his comrades. They believed that was the true spirit of a ninja.
But more of them, especially those from established clans or the conservative "mission first" faction, criticized him without mercy: "He broke the rules!" "He set a terrible precedent!" "If everyone does this from now on, how are we supposed to carry out missions?"
Kakashi had clearly been off lately, too.
He had always looked lazy, with those dead-fish eyes, but at least he had trained when he was supposed to and gone on missions when assigned.
Over the past few days, Uchiha Makoto could plainly sense how distracted he was. His gaze had grown colder, and he spoke even less. Sometimes, when he looked over, there was a fiercely suppressed darkness deep in his eyes, along with... a barely perceptible trace of confusion.
Uchiha Makoto sat at the control console in the center of the base, tapping his fingers absently on the desk.
The screen was divided into several sections displaying live feeds from different surveillance points. Beside them were a keyword cloud of public opinion and sentiment curves automatically generated by the system.
"You're under a mountain of pressure, Sakumo," he murmured.
This was no simple mission failure.
It touched on the ninja world's most fundamental-and most divisive-conflict:
Which mattered more: cold, rigid mission rules or the lives of flesh-and-blood comrades?
With his choice, Hatake Sakumo had put himself over the flames of that conflict.
Even more dangerous was Konoha High Command's ambiguous stance.
The Hokage Building had only issued a preliminary assessment of "mission failure, heavy losses," without any further announcement of rewards or punishment. But that silence was a stance in itself.