There’s something off about these kids.
Kakashi hadn’t picked up on it yesterday, or maybe he had, but had been too distracted by a face that looked too much like his sensei’s and another too much like his kohai’s. Pinkie’s face, at least, is all her own.
But in the instant between him explaining the bell test and the kids all making their clumsy attempts at combat, he’d almost thought they’d looked at each other.
Which sounds like an insane thing to be suspicious about, even in his own head. He’s not even sure he saw anything at all, or what it would mean if he had.
They pass in the end, if only barely.
Still.
Barely passing is more than any other team he’d tested has managed to do.
~
Kakashi doesn’t alert his new students to his presence when he arrives at the training ground, instead making himself comfortable on a branch and waiting.
He’s not sure what he’s waiting for, and whatever it is doesn’t materialize.
Naruto and Sakura scream at each other. Sakura pushes Naruto in the river and he lets her, even though the girl’s abysmal strength means he’s not moving anywhere he doesn’t want to. Sasuke ignores them both and glares moodily at the ground.
Nothing strange about it. Nothing to set off any alarms.
He drops down from the trees and tries to decide if Naruto and Sakura yelling at him together counts as team bonding.
~
Kakashi hasn’t managed to stay alive this long without trusting his instincts.
“Do your kids lie to you?” he asks Gai.
Something about his tone must set off his friend, because Gai’s voice is almost at normal volume when he replies, “It is a common fallacy of youth to believe in your own superiority above all else.”
He glares, bur Gai’s smile doesn’t budge. He decides to ignore the jibe and crosses his arms, looking out at the slowly setting sun.
“Have you caught your cute students in a most unyouthful deception?” he asks, massive eyebrows pushed together in about the closest Gai gets to a frown.
He shrugs. “No.”
He doesn’t even know what he thinks they’re lying about. Something about them just seems – off.
Maybe he’s just not used to kids.
~
Kakashi takes a C rank mission out of the village not because he thinks the kids are ready, but because he wants to see what they’ll do.
He thinks he might have to talk to like, Ibiki or something about this. It can’t be normal to be this distrustful of his own genin, especially when they haven’t done anything to earn it. Residual trauma, maybe? That’s most of his personality these days anyway.
They’re improving, if slowly, and badly. Their teamwork is only marginally less terrible than it was during the bell test. But what else can be expected out of them, a civilian girl and two orphans who all hate at least on third of the team?
Maybe he really should talk to someone about this. It’s a bad sign that he’s wary of his own village’s shinobi, made all the worse by them being a bunch of green genin.
His green genin.
~
All of them notice the puddle.
It’s not at all what he expected, but he’s watching them even when he should be watching their surroundings. All of them look at it for a second too long, glance up at the sky, and then say nothing about it.
They don’t look at each other, or at him, and no one speaks up to point out the oddity. Not even Naruto, who’s usually so quick to make himself the center of attention and search out praise.
When he supposedly dies, they don’t scream or cry or leap into battle.
Sasuke and Sakura turn to Naruto, paler than he’s ever seen either of them. Naruto shakes his head and color returns to their cheeks.
It’s quick, the whole exchange not even taking a second before Naruto and Sasuke are jumping forward to fight with clumsy taijutsu and Sakura stands in front of Tazuna, a kunai held in her fist.
What does it mean? What was that glance for, why would they look to Naruto when they’re normally so derisive of him, and what did the headshake mean?
Naruto gets stabbed and then he shakes off his thoughts and saves his genin. They ultimately decide to push onward, and there’s nothing suspicious about Sakura’s nervousness or Sasuke’s desire or Naruto’s determination.
It’s all so unsuspicious that it makes him suspicious.
He might have a problem.
Then Zabuza of the Seven Swordsman shows up and Kakashi doesn’t have the time to think about his suspiciously unsuspicious kids. It’ll be a lot harder to figure out if they’re lying to him if they’re all dead.
He can’t focus on anything but Zabuza, but he does hear Sakura go, “Naruto, don’t you dare.”
“He’s in trouble,” Naruto hisses back. “We have to help!”
“He’ll be fine,” Sasuke says and Naruto wilts.
Even as he and Zabuza clash he can’t help but focus on that exchange. Sakura’s voice hadn’t trembled, Naruto had listened, and Sasuke had almost sounded reassuring.
It doesn’t fit what he knows of his kids at all.
His triumph at finally catching them in something more suspicious than a glance is short lived as a hunter-nin steals his kill out from under his nose before they’d even gotten to the good part of the battle, which he’d be more irritated about without this new anomaly of his genin to ponder over.
That night, he claims chakra exhaustion and pretends to go to sleep early after assigning watch to the others. Dampening his chakra to match his claim seems like overkill for a couple of genin, any maybe it is, but when they start talking he feels awfully smug.
“This mission is dangerous,” Naruto says, voice low and serious. “We can’t just keep – what if someone gets hurt?”
“Kakashi-sensei is basically kage level,” Sasuke scoffs. Kakashi raises an eyebrow. He hadn’t known the kids knew that. “Especially with the Sharingan. He doesn’t need our help.”
He’d expected resentment or anger or even just curiosity from Sasuke regarding his eye. His voice is devoid of all of that.
“That water battle was close,” Naruto insists. “What if something happens and it’s all because we were too selfish to help? How will we be able to return to the village?”
“It’s not like anyone would blame us,” Sasuke says, but there’s a waver to his voice. “We’re just genin.”
Sakura speaks for the first time. “Do you think passing was a mistake? Our original plan was to fail.”
Their original plan was to what?
“It’s too late to worry about it now,” Naruto says practically. “Besides, I like what Kakashi said about teammates. We assumed we’d get a sensei who wouldn’t understand, but he does. He could.”
“Dobe,” Sasuke groans, almost sounding like his normal self. “The plan is to play dumb until we’re chunin, at least. Telling Kakashi won’t help us.”
Playing dumb? Telling Kakashi what?
It’s surprisingly difficult to keep himself from going out there and shaking them until answers fall out.
“That was fine when it was just D ranks and C ranks, but now that Zabuza is here it’s an A rank. At least.”
“Zabuza is dead,” Sasuke says, echoing Kakashi’s own thoughts.
There’s a beat of silence then Sakura says, “Did we see the hunter-nin kill him?”
“Well, no-”
“Then he’s not dead,” she continues. “But Kakashi handled him. It’s fine.”
“Kakashi barely handled him,” Naruto corrects and Kakashi scowls but he’s not wrong. That battle was too close for comfort and fake hunter-nin or no, he’s grateful that the hunter nin stepped in when he did. If his next blow hadn’t killed Zabuza, then it’s likely that Zabuza’s next blow would have seriously injured him or worse. “How are you going to feel if something happens to our sensei because we were too worried about ourselves? How did you feel when you thought for a moment that the Demon Brothers had killed him?”
The silence is longer then. Kakashi wishes he could see their faces.
“If it looks like Kakashi is going to get hurt, then we’ll get involved,” Sakura says finally.
Sasuke lets out an irritated sigh. “Sakura.”
“He’s our sensei, which means he’s on our team now too,” she insists. “It’s not just us anymore. We have to protect him. Remember, being on a team-”
“Means never having to fight alone,” Sasuke finishes, like it’s phrase he’s heard and repeated a thousand times even though it’s not one that Kakashi has ever heard before. “Yeah, yeah. Fine.”
They don’t say anything else of interest as they finish getting ready for bed and Naruto takes first watch. While it confirms that his instincts about something being off about these kids was right, it brings up far more questions than it answers.
The idea of three genin being anything more than a liability on the battlefield should be laughable. He’s trained these kids and he knows what they’re capable of, which isn’t much.
Except they’ve clearly been lying to him. They talk as if the three of them have been a team for far longer than they’ve been on his team, as if they orchestrated barely passing his test rather than lucking into it, as if they’d always planned to end up together.
It’s almost impossible to know which kids will be put on what team. Clan children will often go with allies, and of course Ino-Shika-Cho is a given in any iteration, and civilian will usually go together because no one expects them to make decent shinobi unless their scores are far more than the minimum.
But there is a standard, dependable formula that gets implemented each year, assuming clan politics don’t get in the way.
Rookie of the Year, Top Kunoichi, and Dead Last.
The idea that three of them worked together, and have been working together for years, to ensure they would all end up on the same team goes against everything he knows about them.
But it explains the conversation he’d just overheard and all the almost glances he was never sure he’d really seen.
Kakashi grumbles and rolls over to get some sleep.
The mystery of his genin will keep until morning.
~
They don’t act any differently during the tree climbing lesson.
That is, any differently that he’s expect them to based on the abilities he’s seen from them. Sakura picks it up quicker than the boys while they struggle to modulate their chakra appropriately. He watches them closely for a while after he pretends to leave them alone, looking for any odd behavior, any hint that they’re more capable than he thinks they are, that they’re as close as they’d sounded last night.
Nothing.
Maybe he really was chakra depleted yesterday and the conversation he thought he overheard was some sort of exhaustion induced hallucination.
He hopes not, if for no other reason than that it would suck to have to explain that to Ibiki.
~
Sakura and Naruto had been right.
The hunter-nin hadn’t killed Zabuza, hadn’t even been a real hunter-nin, and now they’re stuck having to deal with them all over again.
Sasuke is trapped by Haku’s ice mirrors and Kakashi can’t even help him because he’s too busy trying not to be sliced in half by Zabuza’s sword.
“Really?” Naruto howls, holding back one of Zabuza’s clones with moves that range between clumsy and lightning sharp. Considering he’d expected the clone to overwhelm Naruto immediately, it confirms that the genin do have skills they haven’t told him about. “Are you an Uchiha or not?”
Kakashi’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but Sasuke snarls, “The damn ice won’t melt, idiot!”
Ah, right, the famous Uchiha fire affinity. He’s surprised Naruto knows about it, even with the giant fireballs Sasuke is prone to throwing around.
Senbon jam into Sasuke’s knee, causing his leg to buckle for a moment before he shakes it off, the needles working their way out of his skin. That’s an advanced technique.
Naruto growls and dispels Zabuza’s clone with a move that he shouldn’t know.
“Use your damn eyes Sasuke!” Sakura shouts, fighting against her own clone. His weak little student hits the clone hard enough that it dispels itself under a single punch. “We don’t have time for this!”
“But,” Sasuke starts, then has to dodge another barrage of senbon, and says, “Fine.”
Most of Kakashi’s focus is on Zabuza but he doesn’t miss the moment that Sasuke’s eyes blaze red, spinning in his face as he moves impossibly faster.
Sasuke has the Sharingan.
All the reports said he hadn’t been able to activate his bloodline limit yet.
That moment of shock costs him. He doesn’t dodge quickly enough, the edge of Zabuza’s sword biting into his side.
It doesn’t slice him in half, but he’s pretty sure it’s hit his ribs and possibly shatters them.
Zabuza wrenches his sword out of Kakashi’s body, cackling at the wave of blood that pours out of him. It doesn’t hurt, even as he falls to his knees and keels over on his side, which is a very bad sign.
The lack of pain probably means he’s going to die.
Zabuza raises his sword to finish the job but then he’s getting kicked in the face by Naruto, his genin’s lips pulled back in a snarl. Sakura is suddenly next to him even though Kakashi hadn’t seen her move, rolling him onto his back and pressing her hands into his side.
Ah. There’s the pain.
He opens his mouth to tell her to run, but he chokes on his blood instead.
“Naruto, finish him!” Sakura shouts, and he doesn’t know what she’s doing to him but it fucking hurts. If he’s going to die, she could at least let him die peacefully.
“Is Kakashi-sensei going-” Naruto starts, then has to cut himself off to leap onto the Zabuza’s sword, balancing on the edge like he hadn’t just mastered tree walking yesterday.
He probably hadn’t, actually. All his kids are liars.
“Hurry,” Sakura says grimly, obviously not wanting to tell Naruto that he’s as good as dead.
As will be his genin if they don’t get out of here. He swallows past the blood trying to drown him and croaks, “Go.”
“Those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash,” she parrots, jabbing him in the side with what feels like kunai, except he assumes she’s not being merciful and putting him out of his misery. “Stop talking.”
Now she listens to him.
“No survivors!” Sasuke shouts, which sounds like nonsense to Kakashi, but at least lets him know that the fake hunter-nin hasn’t managed to kill his student.
Naruto looks over at them, his face paling, and then rapidly turning red.
Wait.
It’s not just his face, but all of him, his entire body covered in a haze of red chakra, killing intent nearly rolling off of him.
Kakashi hasn’t felt this chakra in twelve years but he recognizes it instantly.
“Demon of the Mist, huh?” Naruto asks. Zabuza has frozen, hesitating for the first time. “That’s a cute nickname. But I think it’s time we stopped playing around, don’t you?”
The haze of red chakra solidifies around Naruto, growing denser and more terrifying.
Naruto takes a step forward and Zabuza steps backwards, holding his sword between them almost defensively. “I like to keep the fight fair if I can, but you’ve hurt my precious people. How about a tail for every one of my people you’ve hurt?”
“Tail?” Zabuza echoes.
The red chakra shifts around Naruto, forming claws around his hands and a bushy fox tail behind him.
“One,” he says, leaping forward to grip the edges of Zabuza’s sword. Instead of cutting his hands, that corrosive red chakra effulges it and the blade shatters between them.
Zabuza curses, leaping away from the remnants of his precious blade. His hands form the opening to the water clone jutsu, but not quickly enough.
“Two,” he continues, and the tail splits itself. Naruto performs a wind jutsu that sends Zabuza towards him despite his best efforts and grabs him by the wrists, breaking them both in one motion. Zabuza is strong enough to reinforce his bones with chakra, so the strength it would take to snap his bones barehanded is unthinkable. Kakashi’s ribs took a direct blow from Zabuza’s sword and they only fractured rather than turning to dust.
The pressure of Naruto’s chakra increases to the point that Kakashi struggles to catch his breath, and it’s not even directed at him. Although, that could also be because he’s dying, it’s a little hard to differentiate at this point.
“Three,” Naruto grins, another tail joining him. Zabuza tries to form a hand sign even through his shattered wrist, but Naruto must have done something more than just break his bones because his fingers won’t form the correct shape. He curses and turns, attempting to run, but all it means is he doesn’t see Naruto coming when he leaps on him from behind.
Naruto shoves a clawed hand through Zabuza’s back and rips out his spine.
“NO!” the hunter-nin shouts but the rest is just a choked, gurgling sound that Kakashi takes to mean Sasuke has managed to kill him, but he can’t see without rolling over and Sakura is pinning him in place.
Naruto doesn’t spare the man he’s killed a second glance, instead rushing back over to them, Zabuza’s blood soaking his arm nearly to his shoulder.
“Is he going to be okay?” he asks anxiously, big blue eyes wide.
That terrifying weight of his demonic chakra is still there, but any fear Kakashi had felt drains away. That’s Naruto, his sensei’s son, and not the demon sealed within him.
“He’s not dead, is he?” Sasuke asks, leaping over to stand next to Naruto. The demonic chakra doesn’t phase him and he even goes so far as to lean against Naruto’s side, pressing right up against it. Kakashi vaguely catalogues what looks like a broken left leg while wondering where the shock and screaming is.
Sakura snorts. “He’ll live.”
He will?
“I will?” he asks, blinking when he finds that there’s no more blood in his throat. His side hurts so badly that he sort of just wants to pass out or maybe burst into tears. That means he might actually survive this.
What had Sakura done?
“Sorry sensei,” Naruto mumbles, hanging his head. “We should have helped sooner.”
“It’s okay,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. The black spots in his vision probably mean he’s going to pass out soon whether he likes it or not. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Naruto says as Sasuke shrugs.
“That’s good,” he mutters, blinking slowly. It’s a struggle to keep his eyes open.
Sakura groans, rubbing a bloody hand over her face. “We need to deal with Gatou and all of his thugs otherwise they’ll just send more people after us.”
“Can we just kill all of them?” Naruto says. “I can handle them all in like. An hour.”
“How long can you maintain three tails?” Sasuke asks, which sounds an awful lot like not only has Naruto known about the demon for longer than graduation, but so have the other two. “You always pass out after.”
It’s hard to tell underneath the chakra, but he thinks Naruto blushes. “I’ll be out for a couple days either way at this point. Might as well make sure there’s no one coming after us. You go back with Kakashi and Sakura-”
“No,” both Sakura and Sasuke say at the same time. Kakashi can’t quite his mouth to work right now, but if he could then he’d agree with them. Sasuke continues, “If you’re doing this, I’m going with you.”
“On that leg?” Naruto asks skeptically. “You’re nearly out of chakra too.”
Sasuke shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, you’re not going alone. I can watch your back if nothing else.”
“Then who’s going to be watching Sakura’s?” Naruto points out and Sasuke frowns.
Sakura sighs. “Give me an eye and leave some clones behind. They can dispel themselves if I need you and I should be able to keep anyone at bay for at least that long with an eye.”
Some combination of pain and blood loss must be messing with him, because what Sakura is saying doesn’t make any sense.
Except Sasuke nods and presses a hand wreathed in chakra to Sakura’s right eye. When he pulls away, the Sharingan is spinning lazily in its place.
He looks to Sasuke and his right eye is now a soft green.
He hopes he’s hallucinating.
“Can you maintain it over that long of a distance? We haven’t tried that before,” Naruto asks, concerned.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Sasuke says. “Or she could use Kakashi’s.”
He has no idea what jutsu that is and he would rather he didn’t find out by getting it performed on him.
Luckily Sakura shakes her head. “He’s had his eye for longer than we’ve been alive. I can handle your Sharingan, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to hand his.”
Kakashi opens his mouth to say – something, about all of this, but darkness pulls him under before he can decide on what.
~
He wakes up feeling surprisingly good for nearly dying. Naruto is sitting next to him reading a scroll, which is a disorienting enough sight that for a moment he doubts whether he’s awake at all.
He must have made some sort of sound or moved because Naruto glances towards him then grins. “Oh, good, boss was getting worried.”
There’s a puff of smoke as what is apparently a clone dismisses itself. Kakashi pushes himself upright, which leaves his arms shaking but doesn’t cause any sort of excruciating pain from where he knows he got sliced, which is better than he was expecting.
There’s gust of wind and leaves and then his genin are standing in front of him. He hasn’t taught them how to body flicker yet.
“Sensei!” Naruto cries, rushing forward only to get shoved backwards by both of his teammates.
“Lay down,” Sakura snaps. “Are you trying to undo all our hard work?”
Both Sakura and Sasuke reach for him with glowing green hands and he’s not sure which sight is the more surprising one – a civilian born genin healing, or an Uchiha.
“No,” he says, blinking as Naruto cheerfully shoves a ration bar in his mouth. He chews because he probably needs it. There’s the odd sensation of something shifting and snapping into place in his body without the accompanying pain. “Couldn’t you have done this while I was unconscious?”
“We need you to be awake so we know if we’re doing it wrong,” Sasuke answers, running his hands opposite to Sakura’s but their chakra melding together seamlessly.
He wonders if he should put up a protest against his uncertified genin messing around with healing chakra but if feels a bit pointless. They haven’t killed him yet. “How will you know if you’re doing it wrong?”
“You’ll start screaming,” Sakura answers.
Great.
Once his kids have stopped fussing over him and are shuffling guiltily and trying to avoid his stare, he asks, “Is there something you want to tell me?”
He’d prefer to have this conversation standing, but sitting up is as good as it’s going to get without them forcing him to lie down again.
“Not really,” Sakura says and Sasuke snorts.
Naruto scowls at them. “Guys.”
They share a guilty look, then Sakura says, “We just wanted to make sure we were on the same team.”
“You could have done that without lying,” he points out.
He gets three judgmental stares. “Yeah,” Naruto says dryly, “because the last Uchiha being friends with the demon container wouldn’t have set off alarm bells for anyone.”
Which leads him to another very important question. “I was told that you only became aware of your status after the altercation with Mizuki.”
Naruto is also more than capable of passing the genin test, and if it had been their plan to be on a team together, it makes no sense that he’d fail on purpose. They must have all struggled to not graduate early.
“Mizuki was hiding something,” Sakura says, not the person he expected to answer him. “We didn’t know what and we couldn’t catch him doing anything and it’s not like anyone would believe us if we did, so we decided Naruto would fail again and cry to Mizuki about it and see if he did anything with it. Either way, Naruto was going to ask the hokage to pass him by showing him that he could perform the shadow clone, and if that didn’t work then Sasuke and I were going to quit and return to the academy for another year.”
“We didn’t plan on Iruka-sensei,” Naruto says, looking shyly pleased as he reaches up to touch the headband that used to belong to the chunin.
It probably would have worked too. The hokage has a soft spot for Naruto. He also can’t help but be impressed that not only did the kids figure out something was off about Mizuki, but devised a successful plan to lure him into exposing himself. That alone should have earned them a headband.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he says. “How long have you known about the nine tails?”
Sakura looks up at the ceiling while Naruto and Sasuke share a glance. For once it all happens slowly enough that he doesn’t have to second guess himself. Sasuke raises an eyebrow and Naruto makes a face but shrugs. They really are friends.
Sasuke crosses his arms, then uncrosses them. Sakura places a hand on his shoulder and he leans into it rather than pushing her away. “My mom told us.”
Kakashi’s stomach drops. “What?”
“Well, Mikoto-san told me,” Naruto says. Kakashi hadn’t known that Naruto and Mikoto had even met. “Then I told Sasuke.” He pauses. “We didn’t meet Sakura until – um,” he cringes, looking to his teammates.
Sasuke presses his lips together. “Kakashi-sensei, we’re a team aren’t we? You’re not going to betray us, right?”
What a huge question to ask him when he has no idea what they’re talking about. But they did save his life, and found a traitor, and he’s fond of them besides that. “If it’s not putting the village in danger, then it can stay between us.”
Their shoulders relax, which is at least a little comforting. “I lied about what happened the night of the massacre.”
For a moment all Kakashi can hear is the sound of the blood in his ears and his throat is dry when he asks as calmy as he can, “What did you lie about?”
“I was there,” Naruto says, his normally sunny expression darkening. “Mikoto-san was always really nice to me. She had to hide it from the rest of the clan and everyone, but she always fed me and helped me fix my clothes and introduced me and Sasuke. I was with Sasuke when he went home and found – well, you know,” he grimaces. “Itachi and I fought. I couldn’t really – that was the first time I used the Kyubbi’s power and I only used one tail but I was little and I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just mad.”
Naruto fought Itachi. Naruto fought Itachi and he’s still alive.
Something of his skepticism must show on his face because Sasuke snorts. “I thought Itachi had killed him. That’s when I activated my Sharingan. Itachi didn’t stick around after that. It’s not like we were much of a threat, but we’d attracted attention.”
He remembers that. The strange spike of chakra near the Uchiha compound that was large enough to be noticeable but far enough away to be unidentifiable all the way in the Uchiha compound. When they’d gotten there, it had been gone, and so had the Uchiha clan.
They’d attributed it to Itachi. It had been Naruto.
“I had to run too,” Naruto says, grimacing. “That wasn’t someplace I should be found, but I was still channeling some of the demon chakra and I was wounded and trying not to get caught so when I saw a bunch of Anbu heading towards me I um, panicked. And hid.”
Some of the darkness lifts from Sasuke’s face, his lips twitching up in the corners.
Naruto is blushing and Sakura grins as she explains, “He jumped in to my bedroom through my window and then passed out on my carpet. I pushed him under my bed so my parents wouldn’t find him.”
“We couldn’t get rid of her after that,” Sasuke complains but lets out something that almost sounds like a laugh when Sakura punches him in the arm.
She huffs but settles when she looks at him, twirling her hair around her fingers. “We decided to fail your test when you were assigned as our sensei. You’re too smart, and we weren’t planning on coming clean until we were chunin at least, until they couldn’t separate us. But you talk about teammates like we do. We thought that was worth the risk that you’d figure us out.”
That glance that he’d been sure they shared before the bell test – it was them agreeing to change their plans with nothing more than a half second of eye contact.
The shock is starting to fade, leaving behind something warmer. “Was it necessary to be quite that bad?”
“Hey!” Naruto huffs. “We were getting better! It’s not like we could pretend to be best friends right out of the academy!”
“Or geniuses,” Sasuke adds dryly. “It’s not like we were going to lie about our abilities forever. Sakura made a timeline and everything.”
They are geniuses, Kakashi realizes. He’s got a team of little geniuses with incredible teamwork who know all each other’s secrets and have been trusting and depending on each other for years.
And now they’re trusting and depending on him.
“Once the bridge is finished,” he starts but the all the kids grimace at once. “What?”
“It’s finished,” Naruto says. “You’ve been out for a week. We weren’t sure if Gatou had any friends that were going to be pissed off about us wiping out his operations, so we, er, hurried up the process with a bunch of shadow clones.”
The conversation his genin had been having before he passed out slams to the forefront of his mind. “Did you kill Gatou and all of his men?”
“Maybe,” Sakura says. “Are you going to yell at us?”
“It could have been anyone,” Sasuke offers, scratching his nose. “Criminal empires are so unstable these days.”
Kakashi takes in a deep breath and all the kids tense. Then he’s laughing, putting his head in his hands to try and muffle the sound of his giggles.
It’s going to be an interesting next few months until the chunin exams.