And so the Uchiha twin stars, Yorin and Shisui, happily accepted the escort mission—guarding a large shipment of goods bound for the Land of Rain.
Before departure, Shisui asked around about conditions in Rain and grew more certain this job would be rough.
After the Third Great Ninja War, the Land of Fire was already crawling with bandits. The Land of Rain—far poorer—was worse.
Once upon a time Amegakure brimmed with ambition. With the meager resources of a small nation, Hanzo the Salamander kept picking fights with the great powers, aiming to build a Rain-ninja hegemony.
Now it's all gone.
For Konoha, losing a war isn't the end—you grit your teeth, lick your wounds, and with the Land of Fire's recovery and "blood-making" capacity, you eventually rise again.
For the Land of Rain, it's different. Even if a poor country wins every battle, it collapses anyway—too little loot, too much strain. And they didn't win.
Once "first beneath the Five Great Villages," once home to a "demi-god," all that glory is dust. The Land of Rain is a ruin with a "nation" label slapped on it.
Roads shattered, towns barren, people displaced; the ninja village that once protected the country has become a robber's den, living off the last scraps from its own people and passing caravans.
Their commander—once ambitious and tolerant of the young—has gone limp and shortsighted.
Under a dull gray sky, the rain turns everything to sludge. Corpses—and the near-corpses of the starving—stare at the caravan the Uchiha are guarding. They don't even have the strength or will left to beg.
"This is why small countries should stick to the small-country survival playbook. War's an expensive toy—they can't afford it," Yorin sighed, taking in the road ahead.
Shisui stayed silent.
It wasn't his country or his village, but seeing fellow humans in this much pain still hurt.
So instead of answering, he said, "We're escorting this cargo… because you're worried the Rain ninja will try to rob it?"
"More or less," Yorin said. "When the common folk are dirt poor, there's no grease left to skim. If they don't rob us, they can only go after the daimyo and nobles."
"Uh… that…"
"Tell me, Shisui—doesn't it seem like robbing nobles would be easier than robbing us?"
"Is it? It is—no, wait—um, right, right."
Yorin's question scrambled Shisui's brain.
Attacking and looting a daimyo or a noble—that idea didn't even exist in his head.
How could you attack a daimyo? That's just… wrong—hold on, so robbing peasants and merchants is right?
Obviously not.
So why do the Rain ninja plunder civilians and merchants while giving nobles a pass?
Status, rank, tradition, and a pile of other nonsense.
Is any of that right? When commoners are living in misery, the nobles and the daimyo keep up their luxuries—with special caravans supplying every indulgence. And in the chaos, while the poor go bankrupt, land gets swallowed up, people sell themselves into slavery, scavengers profit off the fire—smooth as breathing.
The Rain Country's economy collapsed, but its daimyo and a sliver of nobles grew richer. And the Rain ninja—bluster outside, hollow inside—don't dare touch them.
Is that really right?
Shisui's head felt like static—like he needed to "level up." He let out a pained sigh.
"Think it through yourself," Yorin said, patting his shoulder. He said nothing more.
The rain kept falling. The convoy creaked forward, wheels chewing through mud. Drivers and merchants kept their heads down and their mouths shut.
The Hokage world's tech tree is bizarre—like a knucklehead made it up on a whim.
Some Hokage-era offices use laptops; some merchants haul goods with oxen and horses. Everyone's got a "bright future."
"So many gaps to exploit," Yorin muttered. "Scientific ninja tools, sure—but instead of miracle sky-fortresses, how about a few pickups to fix transport? No pickups? Three-wheelers then? Seriously…"
By Boruto's time, tech explodes.
"Thunder Cars," chakra-powered rail transit, replace old animal carts. Chakra-powered machinery—"scientific ninja tools"—go mainstream, and the ninja world sprints into industrial capitalism.
Rich merchants—new capitalists—steal the spotlight from fading daimyo and nobles; they become the main act.
And the ninja?
In this new age, how do ninja define their place?
Drift along—or get ahead of the curve, grasp the pulse of the era, and become the true masters of it?
Yorin isn't especially "smart." His advantage is knowing where the future's headed.
If you already know the right answer, all that's left is filling in the bubbles on the test sheet. Right, Obito?
A figure in a swirled, single-eye mask watched the convoy from afar in silence.
Beside him, a weird half-black, half-white creature probed, "Do we attack? If we grab that cargo, that kid will be happy, right, Obito—I mean, Madara-sama?"
The masked man didn't respond, sinking into memory.
Yorin once pinned hopes on Obito.
Unfortunately, back then Obito didn't seem too bright.
"Guys—ninja—don't actually need to kill each other."
"The world has enough resources: wealth, land, grain. The only problem is some people hoard too much."
"Both nobles and daimyo are trash that belongs in the garbage heap."
"Obito, one day I'll change this world. When that day comes, will you join me—or stand in my way?"
"Hey, hey, Madara-sama—are we doing this? They'll be gone in a second. Madara-sama? Madara-sama?"
The artificial being's chatter snapped Obito out of it.
"No."
He answered without hesitation. "No need to attack."
"Because you saw an old acquaintance—an ex-teammate? I thought you'd severed ties with the village."
"Shut up! I just don't want to spook the snake."
After obtaining that eye, Uchiha Yorin no longer factored into his calculations. Shisui, though—that was a different tier of opponent.
He wasn't about to challenge the Uchiha clan's idiots over something that didn't matter. "I see."
The two fell silent and withdrew together.
Space split open; in an instant the masked man and the yin–yang face were gone. Obito let the past go—he already had his answer:
"I'll save this world a better way, Yorin-nii."
He answered the question in his heart, no longer the stunned boy he'd been:
"And it won't be me stopping you. If you stand in my way, I won't hold back."
~~~
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