"There is no honor in killing the weak and there is no honor in slaughtering the innocent." His hands were trembling.
***
The war had been dragging on for two years now.
Konoha's supply lines were stretched thin, and the enemy villages were using the same strategy... raiding the farming communities that grew food for their rivals.
It was not glorious work and there were no epic duels, nor heroic last stands.
Just hungry civilians and burning fields.
He was a legend among the ranks.
They called him the Sword Demon. His blade work was so insanely fast and precise that it seemed otherworldly.
Even the Hokage had to put a little bit of effort so he could fight him off if they ever went for each other's throat.
He had been given command of a ten‑man squad for this mission.
The mission came directly from Tobirama.
"Cut off their grain and supply chains, and they will starve within a month. Leave nothing standing, burn the fields, and salt the earth if you have to. Do you understand?" Tobirama ordered as he looked at him.
He nodded.
He read the orders once, folded the paper, and put it in his pocket.
'The village came first, everything is for Konoha. Just do it and come back fast.' that's what he thought.
.
He led ninjas through the forest, moving at night to avoid detection.
The men had served under him before. They knew his reputation, and they trusted him.
He walked at the front, his tanto and the katana on his hip sheathed, and his eyes fixed on the path ahead.
By dawn, they had reached the first village. It was a small settlement, maybe fifty houses clustered around a central granary.
Smoke rose from chimneys and children played in the dirt streets. Women carried water from the well and men were already in the fields, unaware that death was watching.
He raised his hand and the squad halted.
"Surround the perimeter. Loot anything useful and burn everything else." He gave the command.
Then the attack began.
He stood at the edge of the village, his arms crossed, watched as his subordinates did the job.
His men moved through the fields first and the farmers never saw them coming.
One man had his throat cut from behind, blood spraying across the rice stalks.
Another took a kunai to the spine and fell face‑first into the mud, his legs still kicking.
A third tried to run as he realised what happened, but the ninja caught him by the ankle and dragged him back, then drove a blade into his lower back, twisted it, and pulled it out.
The screams of the fallen had reached the village.
Women ran out of their houses with some holding babies, and some had pots and pans as weapons.
A young woman took a sword to the shoulder, the blade cleaving down through her ribs and she dropped without a sound.
"Wahhh wahh wahh wahhh!!" Her infant rolled out of her arms and lay in the dirt crying hysterically from the sudden unbearable pain.
A ninja picked up the baby and threw the baby against a stone wall with force.
*Splash!*
The crying stopped as the baby turned to a paste.
The granary was already burning, orange flames licking at the thatched roof.
The smoke smelled like roasted grain and burned meat.
After finishing the loot and burning down everything he ordered to the men, "Move to the next village."
The village was larger, the men kicked doors open and dragged people out, and killed them in the open where everyone could see.
An old man was pulled from his house by his hair "Ninja-Sama!! NINJA-SAMA PLEASE!! PLEASE DON'T KILL–AGHHHH!!"
A blade opened his belly and he fell forward while clutching his intestines spilling out as he tried hard to put them back inside his belly, and then lay in the dirt still twitching.
A young woman tried to hide in a grain barrel but a ninja found her, and grabbed her by the hair, then dragged her out.
"P... please! Please!" The woman cried but to no vail as she clawed at his arm.
*Bam! Bam! Bam!*
The ninja slammed her head against the barrel until she stopped moving, then dropped her body and casually moved on.
"Please, I have grandchildren. They are just children and innocent! They haven't done anything wrong! Please spare them Ninja-sama!" A grandma begged for the life of the little ones who were looking at their grandma with horror as a ninja's blade came down.
The old woman's head left her shoulders and her body crumpled.
The children screamed as they watched their grandma get beheaded, which made the ninja to indifferently raise his head from the laying body and look at the screaming children.
"They haven't done anything wrong... yet." Then he approached them much to the children's horror and a moment later, they met the same fate as theri grandma.
Ans this bloodbath continued for many days and in many places, sometimes clashing with enemy ninjas only for Him to participate and slaughter the ninjas without much effort.
***
Honor is not only about how you win... it is also about what you are willing to do, and what you refuse to do.
A warrior may be skilled and strong, and he may earn every victory fairly, but if he uses that strength to harm those who cannot defend themselves, then he is NOT honorable, he is merely a bully with a blade.
There is no honor in killing the weak.
There is no honor in slaughtering the innocent.
There is no honor in burning villages, destroying crops, or leaving children without parents because these acts do not require courage, they require only the willingness to cause suffering, and any fool with a sword can cause suffering.
A true warrior measures his strength not by how many he has killed, but by how many he has protected.
The greatest warriors are not those who left mountains of corpses behind them... they are those who won their battles with as little bloodshed as possible.
The greatest warriors are those who offered mercy to the defeated and shelter to the helpless.
Consider this, an enemy soldier raises his sword against you and you defeat him... he is now at your mercy, you could kill him and no one would blame you.
He was your enemy, but if you spare him, if you bind his wounds and let him return to his family, you have done something that no victory can give you because you have shown that you are not ruled by hatred.
You have shown that you value life more than revenge.
And that soldier will remember your mercy. And true that he may become your enemy again, but even if he remains your enemy, he will never forget that you chose to be good when you could have been cruel.
There is a story about a famous warrior who was attacked by a band of thieves in a mountain pass...
He defeated them all, but instead of killing them, he offered them a choice. They could swear an oath to never steal again, and he would let them go, or they could fight him again and die.
Most of the thieves swore the oath and years later, when that warrior was ambushed by a much larger force, those former thieves came to his aid.
They had become farmers, traders, soldiers, and they now had wives and children. And they had not forgotten that he had given them a second chance.
That is the power of Mercy.
A warrior who slaughters innocents may be feared, but he will never be loved and he will never be trusted.
His own soldiers may follow him out of fear, but they will abandon him at the first opportunity, and his enemies will fight to the death because they know he offers no mercy.
And when he falls, no one will mourn him.
But a warrior who protects the innocent, who shows mercy to the defeated, who refuses to kill when killing is not necessary, that warrior earns something more valuable than gold.
He earns loyalty, he earns respect, and he earns the quiet gratitude of those he has saved.
And when his time comes to face a great challenge, he will not face it alone.
People will stand with him, not because they fear him, but because they believe in him.
Being and choosing to be good is not a weakness, it is a strength of a different kind.
It is the strength to hold back your blade when your blood is hot, it is the strength to see an enemy and still offer him a chance, and it is the strength to build, rather than to destroy.
A warrior who only knows how to destroy will eventually run out of things to destroy, and then he will have nothing.
But a warrior who knows how to protect and build will always have a purpose, he will always have people who need him, and he will always have a reason to keep fighting.
So remember this... honor is not just about winning fairly, it is also about what you do with your victory.
Honor is about whether you use your strength to help or to harm, it is about whether you leave the world better than you found it, or worse.
Choose to be good.
Protect the innocent.
Show mercy when you can.
And know that in doing so, you are not being weak...
You are being truly strong.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The book lay open on his lap.
The lamp beside him had burned low, casting long shadows across the room.
Outside, the night was quiet.
No wind, no voices, just the heavy silence of a house where everyone else was already asleep.
Gintoki stared at the last paragraph.
Choose to be good, protect the innocent, and show mercy when you can.
His thumb traced the edge of the page, back and forth, back and forth.
He had read those words a dozen times since Garou left the book on the table.
His son had not said anything when he dropped it off. Just a casual "Here," As if it was nothing, as if the words inside this book would not dig into old wounds and pull out things he had tried to bury.
Gintoki closed his eyes, and the images came back to him.
A village.
Small, Poor, and surrounded by rice paddies that had been burned to ash.
He could still hear the screaming, and still smell the burning flesh in the air.
He had watched, he had stood there with his tanto in his hand, and blood already drying on the blade.
That was years ago but he still saw their faces every time he closed his eyes.
'There is no honor in killing the weak and there is no honor in slaughtering the innocent.' He thought with vacant eyes.
He looked down at his hands, and they looked older than he remembered. It was covered in scars that had faded to thin white lines, but when he flexed his fingers, he still saw the blood.
Blood of people who would be smiling right now if not for him.
.
Half of me is still trying to keep the 'funny person' alive, even on days where I barely have the energy to exist.
I make jokes, roast my son, and I laugh at things that aren't funny.
I pretend that the weight on my chest is just indigestion or a bad night's sleep. That is who I have been for so long that I am not sure there is anything underneath.
But the other half? The other half is slowly losing interest in everything.
In people, in conversations, in explaining myself, in things, in food, in... everything. The things I used to love feel distant now, like I am forcing myself to care because I remember that I once did.
It is strange, pretending to be full of energy when deep down you are mentally checking out of your own life.
The worst part is not even wanting to disappear sometimes, it is the guilt that follows right after.
Because he knows, if he complained and laid out what he thought daily, everyone will say things like "life is precious" and "you should be grateful" and "things will get better." And you are struggling just to make it through another normal day without mentally collapsing.
And you feel horrible for thinking that way, because there are people who have it worse, because you know you should be grateful, and because there are people who love you.
So instead of admitting how bad it is getting, you just become quieter and better at hiding it.
[Being and choosing to be good is not a weakness, it is a strength of a different kind.]
Gintoki let out a long breath.
He had never thought of himself as good. He had done terrible things.
Things that could never be undone.
He had told himself that he was a soldier, that soldiers followed orders, that the blood on his hands was not his fault.
But Garou's book did not allow for those excuses. It did not care about orders or the Will of Fire or the necessity of war.
It cared about one thing, and one thing only: what did you do when you had a choice?
And he had made choices.
Every time, he had chosen to follow orders that he knew were wrong.
He had chosen to look away when he should have spoken up and he had chosen survival over honor, again and again, until he forgot that there was ever another option.
When I... when I look at myself, I do not see anything worth loving anymore. Not even worth staying for.
I catch myself in mirrors by accident and look away like I have seen something I was not supposed to see. I do not let it last more than a few seconds, because if I do, I start asking questions I cannot answer. Like why do I feel like a stranger in my own body?
He used to depend on time for his healing. Weeks, months, and years. He told himself that 'It has been long enough now,' like that was supposed to mean something.
But he did not think time healed anything. If it did, he would be different by now.
No, time just made it harder to admit that you were still hurt, because after a while, you ran out of ways to explain why it still affected you.
[A warrior who slaughters innocents may be feared, but he will never be loved, and he will never be trusted.]
Garou, the boy who could not use chakra, and he never seen what the outside world looked likd.
He was confused by him.
How could someone so young understand things that had taken Gintoki a lifetime to learn? How could he write about honor and mercy with such certainty, when he had never been to war? When he had never stood over a dying enemy and felt the weight of a life ending at his feet?
But...
Maybe that was the point.
Maybe Garou saw clearly because he had not been blinded by years of compromise and regret.
Maybe he was writing the rules in it's truest and pure naive form... rules that Gintoki should have lived by, if he had been brave enough.
But I am not brave anymore, not that I was and am. And I do not hope.
Whatever courage once lived in me has rotted into silence, and I am broken.
The world have broken me, not with one clean hit, but with a thousand tiny fractures, until the shape of who I was gave way to nothing.
The farmers, the children, the women who had looked at him with eyes that knew they were about to die. He had not killed them, and they are not dead.
The dead is him, he had killed himself with each strike.
I do not long for love, nor victory, nor even peace. I have grown indifferent to what tomorrow brings, because tomorrow feels like another cruel invention of the clock.
Another reminder that life does not pause for the ones who have lost their reason to move.
He was already gone.
Even as he sat here breathing, what remained was a husk that pretended at living. But inside, there was nothing.
.
Gintoki closed the book and set it on the table. He stared at the cover for a long time, at his son's name printed in bold letters.
Then he stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the dark garden.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. It was Rover.
The 'Chakra beast' that Garou had brought back which for some reason felt like looking at Garou but on four. If not for feeling a strange energy inside that dog he would have thought that it really was Garou.
Even that creature had more purpose than he did. His life was just a comedic relief at this point.
"Heh, choose to be good and protect the innocent?" He laughed softly but it was a hollow and empty of humor.
"What do you do when it is already too late though?" he asked himself as he scratched his ass.
"Fuck you Garou."
The End.
[Here is the 3rd chapter for today, I have no complete drafts left. Swear ffom this moment on we will go on the Hiatus cuz I need to finish writing the remaining rework and it takes time.]
[Discord link: yhMax62j ]