Sarutobi Hiruzen smiled in a grandfatherly manner as he knocked on the door. It was his weekly visit with Naruto, and in all honesty, he was looking forward to it. While most of the ninja who worked closely with him knew of his weekly visits with the village jinchuuriki, they assumed it was for the sake of ensuring his loyalty to a village that otherwise treated him rather poorly. In actuality, they were only half right.
While Sarutobi had started these visits for the sake of showing the Naruto that not everyone in the village saw the boy as a nuisance, at some point he had realized that he rather enjoyed the boy's company. The boy was a bundle of energy and innocent joy in a village where far too many people had cold, distant eyes. Lately, however, even Naruto's eyes had taken on a false quality.
Naruto was beginning to take on a certain coldness himself. And considering that the source of the coldness in most of the village was due to taking lives or watching comrades die, this was fairly disturbing. So this week, Sarutobi had planned something special. A fishing trip outside of the village, just him and Naruto. It would just be for the weekend, just long enough to give Naruto a break from the angry looks and harsh words of the villagers (and to give him a brief reprieve from his paperwork). So of course, something had to go and screw it up.
Several seconds passed with no response. Perhaps Naruto hadn't heard him? Sarutobi knocked again. After over a minute passed with no response, Sarutobi tried the door. Locked. Sarutobi made a discreet handseal, expecting to dispel the genjutsu concealing a note left by the Anbu assigned to watch Naruto explaining where Naruto was going when he left. Instead, he got the whole deal, as the Anbu agent burst into existence. Sarutobi's eyes briefly widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger as he took in the orange book and the Anbu agent's perverted giggling.
"Dog, " said Sarutobi. "Where is Naruto?"
"No idea, " replied the Anbu member, not bothering to lower the book. "When I showed up here, he was gone. I figured I would just wait for him to come back."
"I see, " said a thoroughly unimpressed Sarutobi. "And when was that?"
"Thirty-seven minutes ago, " Dog replied evenly.
"Forgive me if I'm wrong, Kakashi, " said Sarutobi in a calm voice revealing none of his rapidly growing anger, "But didn't your shift start over two hours ago?"
"Two and a half actually, " corrected Dog, still not lowering his book. "And you aren't supposed to refer to members of Anbu by our actual names."
"Then I suppose it's a good thing I'm not talking with a member of Anbu then, now isn't it?" Sarutobi snarled. That got Dog to lower his book. "Kakashi, you are hereby demoted to your former rank of Jounin. You will be required to take on a genin team and are henceforth forbidden from going on any missions B-Rank or higher until you have done so. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a jinchuuriki to find."
Meanwhile, Naruto was several miles outside the village on a super secret fishing trip with his new buddy Orochimaru!