The morning light streamed through the towering windows of the mansion, illuminating dust motes dancing in the silent air. I had not taken the foolish attempt on my life by the snow ninjas personally. In the intricate and brutal world of the shinobi, most ninja lived by a simple, unyielding creed: strike first and question everything later. They were dogs of war, trained from their earliest years to bite hard without even a moment's consideration of barking a warning. But if I were truly going to negotiate a lasting and favorable treaty with their village, a deal that would prevent untold further bloodshed and end this senseless conflict, I knew I would eventually have to bridge the massive gap and truly come to understand the very people they were.

  I approached their designated guest rooms with my footsteps silent on the highly polished marble floor. I specifically sought out the one I was certain was their squad leader. His eyes, though bleary with the subtle effects of my intricate sealing tags. After a tense moment, and undoing the stasis seal on him, he awoke. A brief silence and exchange of what one might call a few colorful and spirited insults, I watched as his powerful muscles tensed beneath his uniform. With a lightning-quick motion, he tried to reach for his teammates, intending to end the lives of his own sleeping comrades right there and then to prevent them from revealing any precious secrets he thought I'd be interested in. The cloth wrappings around my arms snapped out like hungry serpents, a blur of motion binding his arms to his chest like a straitjacket.

  With the leader now fully and firmly subdued, I moved deliberately to the youngest member of the group. I undid the seal on his body and let my chakra press down just enough to gently wake him, but not enough to cause any lasting harm. With both of them now fully conscious and aware, I began to speak. They spouted more empty declarations of unwavering patriotism and foolish defiance, but I simply allowed them to continue. I spoke to them of their mission, of how it had undeniably failed, and of how their destiny now lay completely and without question in my hands. I promised to return them home to their village, a promise that was not a choice but a simple, undeniable fact of their new lives. The only question that remained was how that journey back would happen. I offered them a path of relative comfort and ease, to walk of their own free will and with their own two feet, or a path of utter disgrace and humiliation, dragged behind me in heavy iron chains like common criminals. Their fate and their honor were entirely up to them to decide with what to do with.

  I told them how it was unfair and utterly unreasonable for them to have been sent out to try and retrieve the princess from the Leaf village. This was a little lie I snuck in, seeing the girl was actually in the capital, but in case they escaped, I wanted them going in the completely wrong direction. I told them that their capture by me was not their fault and that I was more than willing to speak on their behalf to their superiors about the matter.

  I awakened the rest of the snow village team and placed all of them under another genjutsu, giving them the subtle impression that I had left the room and they could speak freely with one another. I did not inform them that their team captain had attempted to take their lives while they were unconscious, but I did subtly point out that most of them were completely without restraints. Using more intricate genjutsu, I steered their conversation to place more focus on their personal survival. I encouraged them to play along with acting as my escort to the Land of Snow, so that way, they had a chance to escape and complete the mission, they could take it. Otherwise, they would still be able to complete half of the mission and place all the blame on me for why they could not complete the full objective.

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  After the team leader realized that he could not convince his teammates to fight to the bitter end to complete the mission, let alone to end their own lives so that they could not be interrogated, he relented and decided to go with the new plan. I stayed hidden inside the room with them for a little bit longer just to make certain that this was not some clever ploy to convince me to let my guard down. Once I saw the obvious signs of them getting hungry, I signaled the mansion staff to prepare food for them. I focused on quantity over quality as I got a pearls before swine impression out of my new escorts.

  I took them to eat in the main dining room. The smell and visual display of the large amount of food prepared for them was quite impressive. One look at their hungry and shocked faces, and I knew that none of them would be eager to return to their original mission. Some kind words, a few glasses of below-average wine, and enough food to have them completely stuffed, and I knew they would begrudgingly act as my escort back to the land of snow.

  At the end of the day, all of them were deserters from other villages. Therefore, most of their loyalty was to themselves and to their own survival. The carrot and stick strategy is an effective strategy for a reason. The team leader, whom I found out was named Ishizuka, failed to encourage discipline under his command and had his people plain, and simply bribed out of his control.

  The fact that I came off reasonable when I gave them my offer, made it so that Ishizuka would look completely unreasonable and insane if he declined me. Giving them the false hope that later they could find an opportunity to get the upper hand and maybe find the princess, or at least more information on her whereabouts, while also not having to fight me, and returning to their village alive was just too tempting an offer to refuse.

  I, on the other hand, had six snow ninjas that I could gently pick the brains of for over a week. Offhand commonplace knowledge to them was worth its weight in solid gold to me. Information as simple as people's names and where they were from, how long they had been around for, and the simple, basic layout of the land with its cities and towns. Information that they can tell me, as well as the things they withhold or, even better, lie about, can tell me much about the overall situation I was about to enter.

  By the time I set foot in the Land of Snow, it would be as if I had been living there for a month. Smelling the crisp air, seeing the sights, and speaking with the people. The simple things that any tourist would know, plus a few juicy tidbits of information here and there. Ninja villages, in large part, are not that particularly different from one another. There are some gimmicks and quirks here and there, but some underlying truths are universal. Their village’s young age, manpower, and geography would dictate their actions enough that I can more or less get a very general idea of their overall situation and mindset.

  I allowed them to try to trick me a little bit. I let slip about half of the total security measures I had in the mansion. I needed them to feel like they were still ninjas and that they were secretly working me over for information, while I was only releasing information that would either demoralize them, or focus their attention on plans of escape that I knew would inevitably fail. Misinformation can be devastating in our line of work.

  One of the key pieces of information I let slip was my profound weakness to lightning chakra. If they had a lightning user on their team, they could get rid of the chokers around their necks. The problem being that one, they did not have one, and two, even if they did, it would be incredibly dangerous and difficult to remove the chokers, even if they had one. Plus, the genius of my seals on their bodies was that it was very little of my own chakra inside them, but their very own. Even if one of them was a jonin rank ninja with a natural lightning affinity, I would bet that they would only be able to free themselves and a maximum of two others before they ran out of gas. That’s including that they would somehow manage the feat without injuring themselves or their teammates in the attempt. Although technically possible, realistically, there were fewer than fifty ninjas on the entire continent that could accomplish the act, and half of them were Leaf ninjas.

  The kids gradually woke up, and I decided it would be a wonderful idea to reintroduce our ninja escort. There was obviously some tension between the two teams, but I managed to handle it well enough. We had just under a week before our departure on our voyage to the land of snow, and by then, with my help, I'm sure everybody would be fast friends.