Chapter 44- Southern Entrance Shinobi

The Kumogakure Jonin monitored his three chuunin subordinates.

Maybe monitor is too strong of a word though. He watched over them. He was invested in them in a way that monitored cannot really describe properly.

He worried about them, and as soon as that thought came, he quickly shook his head to clear it.

As if shaking his head would physically dislodge the growing sense of discomfort and anxiety that had been building up the entire morning.

His subordinates were his genin team before they were his subordinates. He wasn't used to the dynamic anymore. While the past few years, he had been focused on nurturing them, coddling them, and raising them to become great ninja, well they were now chuunin, and he was under no illusion; they would be expected to serve and meet certain obligations now.

He couldn't handle them with the kid gloves anymore.

So when the first group of refugees came from Yugakure, he had to show them the reality of the situation. They would be ordered to do disgraceful, untasteful, and downright evil things in the future. They would be ordered to do things that they wouldn't understand, and they had to obey. They had to truly believe that even if they don't understand what they are doing, they are doing it for the betterment of the village.

The first group of refugees came by earlier in the morning. A mother and her two children.

He killed her painlessly. A jonin like him was more than capable of sneaking up on a civilian woman, and his chuunin watched with rapt horror as their sensei snuck behind the woman and threw a kunai into the back of her skull.

The woman fell like a puppet with her strings cut, and before her two children could make a noise, the Kumo Jonin silenced the both of them with a light tap on the back of their necks with the edge of his palm.

He called the rest of his team down to him, and the three chuunin stood at attention in front of him, but they did not meet his gaze. They were looking anywhere but into his eyes, squirming uncomfortably.

The jonin felt the sensei persona he had been using for years well back up within him, and he took the moment to impart a few words unto his students, though nominally, they were already graduated from his tutelage.

"Today, you are ordered to kill non-combatants for the first time in your ninja career. In the same way that your first kills were difficult and kept you up for nights after, in the same way that you still see their face in your nightmares, today the people you kill will live forever in your minds, and that is sincerely what I hope for.

If today makes you feel nothing at all, then I have failed as a teacher. We are shinobi, and we endure, but we are also people. The things we do in the shadow of day and dark of night are far from glorious, but we do these things so that we may serve our village, our home.

I take no pleasure in our assignment, but I will do as ordered because I trust my superior officers to take into account everything that I am not privileged to know when they make their decisions.

They trust me to follow their orders, and I trust them to give me the necessary ones. Without that trust, the entire village breaks down. We live in a world of secrets and conspiracy; this is the way of the ninja.

You will not know every detail of every mission. You will not understand some things.

You will have to trust.

I killed this woman because I trust my superiors when they tell me to eliminate as many information leaks from Yugakure as possible. We are gearing up for war, I know that much, and every second we can delay our enemies knowledge of our workings and missions, that is another life we save of our friends and allies.

You three are responsible for any more people that come from the southern entrance of Yugakure. Work it out among yourselves how to share the burden, I will be taking a more supervisory and hands off standpoint from now on. I have my own missions as well, and you will need to act independently for now.

The one thing I will spare you is the children. Capture them, and I will handle them at the end of the day."

With the final word, the jonin sensei picked up the two kids that had been brought along by the woman and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

The three chuunin stood there for a few more seconds in silence. They tightened their fists and grit their teeth. At the injustice, the unfairness, the callousness. Everything.

There were times when the regretted becoming shinobi. When there bones were broken, their guts exposed to air, when they were fighting for their life, and death was breathing down their necks.

This was the first time that they hated being shinobi. Still though, they loved Kumogakure.

They trusted their superiors. It was that or defect and die.

What a fucking choice!

It wasn't until sundown that their superior officer revealed himself to the three of them once more.

The three chuunin were obviously in a bad place, mentally speaking, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to help them right here and right now. It would have to wait until they were back home.

Time and place. Time and place. The mantra of every Shinobi in the field. It could wait. It had to.

He broke the silence.

"How many came today?"

One of the three stepped forward and reported with his best attempt at a mask of indifference. His sensei watched on in pain. The indifference would eventually come though. that or his acting would get better.

"We broke the past twelve hours into three 4 hour shifts, with two of us on shift at any given moment, monitoring the path from the southern entrance.

Beyond the group of three this morning, we had 4 show in the first shift, 2 in the second, and 12 in the third shift.

We have not seen anyone in the two hours following dusk.

No children were among the refugees."

The jonin was almost smiling on the inside. Either his team had gotten incredibly lucky and there were no kids fleeing along the path, or the three of them were hiding the children's presence from him to save their lives.

Part of following orders was knowing when to not follow orders. He could never teach them that though. They would have to figure it out on their own.

He followed up.

"What did you do to dispose of the bodies?"

"Buried with earth jutsu."

It was good enough.

The Kumo jonin reviewed his own actions today. It was a devil's choice. He lost no matter what.

He had disappeared with the two children that were fleeing Yugakure. What had he done with them? What would he tell his team?

If he had saved them, he couldn't tell his team, or it would make his refusal of orders for naught.

They might report it, and then it would only be him enduring penalty and punishment for nothing once the black ops teams corrected his mistake.

If he hadn't saved them, well his team would probably look at him differently forever. It was one thing to kill a non-combatant. A child was another.

He could lie to them and say he sent the kids to a nearby village? That wouldn't do though because then that would might be reported and would end up wasting valuable manpower on false intelligence.

He then laughed to himself. It didn't actually matter did it?

He had to make his team think he killed the kids either way. They would never look at him in the same way after he shattered their innocence like he did today. No matter what choice he made, he also wanted to avoid another team being sent out to kill the children he may or may not have let slip through.

So the four Kumo shinobi, one jonin and three newly minted chuunin, started setting up camp in a natural and practiced way that divided up the tasks equally.

They sat around the campfire wordlessly until one of the chuunin brought up the courage to finally speak.

"Sensei, those kids... did you..."

The jonin sensei sighed internally. It seems he had another lesson to teach his students, even if they were already chuunin.

He leveled a harsh gaze at the chuunin who had spoken, and with all the ice he could pack into his voice, he interrupted.

"Shut up.

And eat your fucking rations."

Some questions were not meant to be asked.