"Blue or pink?"
-Either one.-
"No. Choose one."
-I'm alright with either one.-
"I'm not. Now choose one. What do you like better?"
-You choose then.-
Irritated, that's good. Annoyance, frustration, those are emotions too.
Not quite what she wants though.
"I want you to choose."
Yoji breathe through his nose, trying to calm his temper as Itachi simply watch their hour long back and forth in amusement.
-Pink.-
"Great. Sir, we'll get both," since he'd patiently served them, "wrap them separately."
Yoji let out a sound that may have been a scream.
-Why did you make me choose then?!- he furiously signs.
She gives him a look as if to say 'are you stupid?'. They don't see it, but at least she knows they received the sentiment.
"You get the pink pencil case and I get the blue. Obviously. What about you. What color do you want?"
"... I'll buy green." Itachi says.
The salesman nods at them, giving her 'older brothers' sympathetic looks. It's another C-rank. They haven't actually gone on another D-rank after that first week.
They're in the northern part of the Fire country, Yuki-sensei gave them time to go around under the guise of civilian children to enjoy the town while he checks with the client for the mission.
-What will we need pencil cases for?-
Nagi honestly can't help the happy smile she's wearing.
Just a few weeks ago, Yoji just went along with everything she said, she was to the point where she's thinking of taking another approach, but Root patience isn't infinite.
"To organize pens on our table back at home. Or even not just pens, these ones are quite bulky so I'll even put some of my kanzashi in it, the ones I use the most. Itachi-san, there's a cafe there, let's go?"
Itachi's hobby, she's discovered, was cafe hopping. He knows all the menus of every cafe in Konoha and she even wonders when he had the time to visit every one.
They just fool around for an hour or two, doing things that had little to do with being ninja.
She never knew how much she's gotten used to Shisui's whirlpools and ladders until she's missing it.
Yuki-sensei arrives and brings them to a politician's hideout in the middle of the town.
Disappearing into the shadows, a technique Yuki-sensei often used on them and the three summarily copied (a great example of his teaching method), they trailed behind a cloaked woman as she slipped into the back of a grocery store and down a tunnel.
Fifty metres deep, seventy metres wide, two floors, fourteen sentry on the first, forty four on standby on the second, seventeen genin level no known affiliations, target located on the lowest floor, crates of drugs, no explosives or weapons found, Nagi signs.
It's C-rank. But it's high C-rank so while enemy ninja aren't expected, they were prepared.
Extract target. No combat.
Orders received, they follow the woman until she arrives to meet the target.
"Mom. The daimyo is onto us."
The elderly woman glance up from directing some men.
"Onto us? Impossible."
The woman frowns, glancing pensively at hired muscles around, "Mom. Listen. They're going to send ninja. Please, let's go now. Stop this, please."
She clicks her tongue in disdain at her daughter, "We also have ninja, girl. Shut up and go back home. If we were really found out, I won't be hearing it from you, of all people."
The daughter looks positively heart broken, "Mom... What you're doing is wrong, so please stop it. Even just for me. Please?"
Finally turning to properly look at her, the woman's plea is simply met with cold eyes.
"No."
Lowering her eyes and falling in a long silence, where even the thugs around them start shifting uncomfortably and sharing commiserating looks, the woman sighs and leaves.
Team Yuki wait out the time until the corrupt politician and horrible mother takes her break in a secure office.
Itachi knocks her out with a genjutsu and they bring her up on the surface where the daughter is waiting for them.
"Thank you for your services, shinobi-san." She solemnly tells Yuki-sensei, his three genin keeping out of sight. Seeing children do what they do, more often than not can cause civilians to waver, "I... I didn't want her hurt in the case of a fight, so I hired shinobi to retrieve her. She-she's not-"
"Dont worry ma'am. Merely knocked out by genjutsu that will naturally break by the time she's in authorities hands." Yuki-sensei reassures her.
"Yes... Thank you, sir."
XxXxXx
The thing is, no one really likes hidden villages (sometimes, not even the hidden villages themselves).
A military monster not under the daimyo's command, which the daimyo has no way to command. They're just a fixed element that is unpredictable, and that's not even taking into the account the monsters they raise and then go rouge.
Sure, one could say that they are necessary for the balance of the nations, but if you remove all the hidden villages, if you got rid of it, there'd still be balance. Just less scars on the land and less disturbances in the flow of chakra.
Look at it from a civilian's point of view that grew up nowhere near a ninja village.
Ninja villages have no rhyme or reason for their existence.
A bunch of clans that gathered to practice wielding the world's energy into more and more creative ways to kill each other.
And then there are the shinobi wars.
All of it are so unnecessary.
Ninja do not contribute anything to the world, to the society at large.
If there were no ninja, the world would still be horrible and tragedies will still happen but it wouldn't be for the ninja way.
Ninjas, ninjutsu, are a mistake.
A mistake that will eventually culminate to the humans victory over the Byakugan Princess, but a mistake all the same. Just another manifestation of the violent nature of humanity that Kaguya had wanted to erase.
One mistake after another.
Ninjutsu. Ninja clans. Ninja villages. A ninja continent.
But that's too big of an issue for Nagi to attempt to tackle.
World peace is all well and nice but people's motivations and their natural instinct to seek out what satisfies them will inevitably get in the way.
No one person can make it into reality.
(You can extend the choice, the chance, but no one can truly determine another's destiny.)
Just as how peace within the ninja villages required sacrifices of heroic souls and tragic stories and a whole bunch of people who died for the idea to build the stepping stones Naruto needed to reach it, and he carried the burden of knowing the names and stories of the heroes who died for the future generation, so the future generations would not have to know and be dragged by the pains of the past.
... Anyways, the point is, no one likes ninja villages but it has become such a part of this world no one really knows how to get rid of it anymore.
Except, you know, that thing with Madara.
Nagi blinks at the fish in a stick Itachi hands her.
She smiles and remembers something she read a lifetime ago, you cannot be kind to everyone because being kind inherently means being cruel to someone.
Or something.
(She doesn't have to kill on this mission again).