The battle was over.
But so were the lives of the targets assigned to Shiba Kiyokawa and Konan on this mission.
"Kiyokawa, you killed them again without hesitation…"
After retracting her paper wings, Konan floated gently to the ground, her voice dazed and absentminded.
But unlike in the past, her words now felt more like a simple observation—not a rebuke.
She couldn't bring herself to scold him anymore.
The gift Kiyokawa had prepared for her this time… had worked wonders.
Compared to hollow debates and abstract ideals, nothing snapped a person out of their delusions better than a real, bloody example.
All their years of clinging to the ideal of mutual understanding between people—what had that ever truly accomplished?
Nothing drove that point home more convincingly than the corpse of Ando lying on the ground.
"Why? Was Sensei's dream really wrong…?"
Konan stood there, still marked by the faint, fine cuts left from her Paper Style.
Her entire figure gave off the air of a fragile, cracked beauty—like a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering.
But Kiyokawa felt no pity.
After days of restraint, he finally bared his fangs—unleashing the most powerful forbidden jutsu in the Naruto world: Talk no Jutsu.
"Maybe your ideals are beautiful… but they're hopelessly naive."
"Mutual understanding between people can only exist among those who share similar positions, experiences, and values."
"The only reason the Akatsuki has flourished these past few years is because most of the people you've encountered have been fellow victims of war. With shared suffering and common goals, it's easy to huddle together for warmth."
"But the world isn't made of just one kind of person."
"While you struggle and carry the weight of your pain, there will always be others… enjoying peace at your expense."
Kiyokawa's calm, piercing voice stirred something deep in Konan's heart.
"Enjoying peace… You mean the Five Great Hidden Villages?"
Kiyokawa chuckled.
"Konan-ne, you're still thinking too small. You shouldn't limit your view to just the shinobi world."
He raised three fingers.
"In my eyes, the world is divided into three types of people: the nobility and wealthy merchants—like the feudal lords—then the shinobi, and finally, the common people at the very bottom."
"The nobles and tycoons exploit the common folk to amass wealth. Then they take a tiny fraction of that fortune and offer it to ninja villages—buying loyalty and protection. And throughout that process, they never stop disciplining the ninja."
"You studied ninja codes too, didn't you, Konan-ne?"
"The so-called iron rules of the shinobi world: The mission takes priority above all else. Those who can't complete missions are trash. As long as the client hasn't provided false intel, shinobi are forbidden to harm them in any way, under any circumstance."
"See? That's the most brilliant result of decades of indoctrination by the nobility."
"This dog-training system ensures that shinobi can never raise their blades against the rich and powerful. As long as these people have money, they can summon ninja to serve them anytime, anywhere."
Kiyokawa stepped forward and nudged Ando's corpse with the tip of his foot.
"Even in a war-torn country like the Land of Rain, someone like him—just because he had money—could easily hire ninja to do his bidding. Even if we'd absorbed most of the local rogue shinobi into Akatsuki, he still managed to connect with Iwagakure."
"If we hadn't killed him today, tomorrow he could've reached out to Sunagakure, or even Konoha, maybe even Kumogakure."
"Because the rules of this world demand that shinobi serve clients like him."
"Shinobi are expected to sacrifice their lives, their comrades, and their principles to complete missions, while their wealthy employers—those issuing the commissions—get to calculate their profits in peace."
Even if Konan couldn't yet grasp the full implications, the biting sarcasm in Kiyokawa's voice was impossible to miss.
And she… had no words to refute him.
Everything he said completely shattered the foundation of what she believed.
Compared to the empty idealism passed down from Jiraiya through Yahiko and Nagato, Kiyokawa's worldview felt like a crushing, high-dimensional blow.
And he wasn't done yet.
"As long as the current rules remain unchanged, people like Ando will never understand you."
"Those who benefit from the system have no reason to empathize with its victims."
"And shinobi will continue being trapped in a vicious cycle of war, because they've been trained so thoroughly, they've lost even the ability to question those rules."
"When a village faces a financial crisis, what do they do? They start a war—to snatch mission quotas from other villages."
"No one ever stops to think about whether all those past missions were even fairly compensated to begin with!"
"Take these Iwagakure shinobi, for example. They traveled across borders into the Land of Rain, took immense risks, and came all this way to serve a man like Ando. But the pay they'd receive? Probably not even one percent of his total wealth."
At last, Kiyokawa turned to face Konan—and delivered the final blow.
"So, Konan-ne, do you understand now?"
"This is the truth of the world."
"Peace across the shinobi world will never come from some childish dream of mutual understanding."
"If you want real peace… you must break the rules, and overthrow the entire old world."
In that moment, Kiyokawa's smile looked—in Konan's eyes—like that of a devil tempting her into darkness.
She wanted to turn away, to escape, but… she couldn't.
Truthfully, Kiyokawa didn't yet have ambitions to bring down the whole shinobi world.
But that didn't stop him from painting a picture as grand as possible.
If he had said outright "your ideals are naive," Konan would have instinctively rejected him.
But now, after pitching the overthrow of the entire world, Konan might soon come to her own conclusion:
"Maybe… mutual understanding really is too childish…"
Maybe… it was time to bring a little shock and upheaval to this decaying shinobi world.
And after all, most of what Kiyokawa said wasn't baseless rhetoric.
They were conclusions drawn from months of firsthand experience after arriving in this world—observations rooted in reality.
Especially the part about shinobi being thoroughly trained into submission—that hit home.
And at that very moment, what Kiyokawa didn't yet know was…
Not far from their location, along the border of the Land of Rain, a white-haired boy—himself a victim of the ninja code's cruel indoctrination—was quietly carrying out a secret infiltration mission.
Behind him, his teammate grumbled in frustration:
"That Kakashi… he's seriously getting on my nerves!"
"What the hell does 'The mission is more important than your teammates' even mean?! Just because he made Chūnin early, he thinks he can say crap like that?!"
"Ugh! One of these days, I swear I'm gonna knock him flat!"