He's a Yamanaka.
…She's fucked.
Wolf-taicho is tanned, with ghostly pale blue eyes and curly straw-blond hair that reminds her of Shisui's in its wildness. He looks anywhere between mid-twenties to early thirties, because while he seems young, there's a distant look in his eyes, one that she'd seen on Tsunade's face the few times her shishou had dropped her masks around her.
He looks tired in the way that sleep can't fix, and something in Sakura aches in sympathy.
Yet her taicho's most noticeable feature is the scar that runs across his face, the tissue raised and pale pink, starting at the outer edge of his left eyebrow, cutting over his eye, across the bridge of his nose, and ending less than an inch away from the right corner of his lips.
It's a miracle it didn't gouge out his eye when the injury happened.
Sakura has stared the Head of T in the eyes and not blinked, but something about her taicho makes Ibiki look like a child, and she gets the feeling Wolf isn't actually trying to be unsettling.
She swallows.
To tell, or not to tell?
She studies her captain, takes in the way he's just sitting there, waiting for her, eyes scanning their surroundings almost idly, though she knows he's likely on hyper-alert, despite his posture.
"My name is Sakura." she begins belatedly, deciding to start from the most obvious, having to clear her throat of the lump that had formed there. "I have two brothers."
She strokes Sai's hair gently, certain that the teen won't so much as stir at the act with how exhausted he'd been. If it's also an excuse to not look at her captain while she says her next bit, well. Nobody needs to know.
She takes a deep breath and drops her bombshell.
"All three of us were once in ROOT."
Sakura feels more than sees her taicho tense at that, and closes her eyes.
She weighs up how much she knows about her captain (not much), how much she trusts the man (...probably more than she reasonably should) then how much he seems to trust her (enough to allow her 'request' and not immediately stab her just now, so. yay?).
Then, she considers how much Genma, Yugao and Kakashi had been hurt by her keeping everything a secret for eight months, and finds that her decision is already made.
Absolute worst case scenario, she can probably kill Wolf herself, if he reacts negatively.
"I was taken into ROOT at six years old." She tells him, keeping her eyes closed, and her captain is completely silent at her side.
"Sai and Shin, my other brother, were already there. We planned and prepared for almost four years, and then we, well." she smiles sardonically, though she doesn't open her eyes. "We brought ROOT down."
She's pretty sure Wolf has stopped breathing.
But now that she's talking, she doesn't feel like she can stop.
"Afterwards… Shin was ill. Lung disease. He's been in the hospital the last few years. Sai was a child at heart, despite everything, so he was placed in the Academy, to be socialised. And I...I fell into ANBU."
"Nobody falls into ANBU." her captain's voice breaks the heavy atmosphere and prompts her to open her eyes, because this is the first time she's heard his voice without the mask to filter it, and he sounds…rough.
His head is turned away from her, but there's a grimace twisting his lips and she thinks he might be angry. Not at her, though, if she's reading him correctly, a task made infinitely easier by the lack of a mask on his face.
Interesting.
Still, she merely shrugs, her smile sardonic. "They do when they're the bargaining chip."
Wolf-taicho whips his head around so fast she's sure his neck cracks, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes, though she feels almost fond.
"Taicho, I was willing to go through you to get to my brother, if you hadn't agreed to the detour." she tells the man wryly, watching as the alarmed look in his eyes turns contemplative. "You really think I would've blinked at a few years in ANBU when I was willing to take on Shimura and ROOT just so my family would have a future?"
"Right." The blond breathes after a moment, raising a hand to rub at his scar. Sakura lets him have a moment to absorb her words, aware that he probably didn't expect to be saddled with a revolutionary when she was assigned to his team.
"And the gaps in your file?" Her captain asks, recovering remarkably quickly. "Your ANBU record didn't say anything about the medical ninjutsu. Or the summons."
Sakura considers him for a second, realises that she doesn't feel a flicker of fear or distrust towards the man despite their admittedly short acquaintance, then smiles sharply.
"It probably didn't say anything about the Mokuton either, hm?"
He stills. Blinks. Drops his hand from his face and turns to her, that pupil-less gaze sizing her up, and Sakura carefully keeps her eyes on the scar on the bridge of his nose.
"…I'm not going to perform a Mind-Walk without your consent." He tells her, not commenting on her admission just yet, and he sounds almost amused, though wryly so.
Sakura winces despite herself.
"Sorry." She breathes, dropping her head and raising the hand not petting Sai's hair to rub at her eyes. "Bad experience with dojutsu."
"Understandable, and I'm used to it." He brushes her apology off without much fanfare.
His comment makes her eye the man sharply though, and now he's definitely amused at her reaction.
"There's a reason you don't find many Yamanaka in ANBU." He explains vaguely, mirth dancing in his eyes, though his smile is too sharp for it to be completely genuine. "Or hear of Yamanaka genjutsu masters."
Sakura considers his words, the odd tone they're said in, and the fact that for all that she's been on their team for nearly two months and had almost back-to-back missions the whole time, this is the first time she's seeing any of her new teammates without their mask.
The camaraderie she assumed was a given in the shadow ranks from her stint in Team Ro is sorely missing in her new team. At least when it comes to Crow and Bat's interactions with their captain.
"Stop trying to figure me out, kid." Wolf huffs, though he doesn't actually sound irritated, still weirdly amused for some reason, though she wouldn't have known that if she wasn't so used to reading the signs from Kakashi's eye, or Shin's non-expressions.
"Finish your sob story." He orders instead, steering her back to their original topic. "Why is so much missing from your file?"
Sakura narrows her eyes at the abrupt change of subject and makes a mental note to press the issue at a later date, then shrugs.
"Mokuton's too distinctive." She explains, using the same reason she'd given Kakashi what feels like years earlier, though it was only a little over three months ago. "Medical ninjutsu would land me in the hospital, or on rotation, and I liked Team Ro. And summons are not exactly common, particularly with civilian-born ninja."
Her taicho nods, though he still looks expectant, and Sakura realises that the goddamn Yamanaka knows there's something else and he's not going to let it go.
Sakura sighs, feeling oddly sheepish.
"It might also be because, uh, ROOT didn't exactly keep files on its operatives, so even the Hokage doesn't know everything about what I can do." She admits, shooting her captain a side-long look. "And I…didn't feel the need to inform him of it."
She's not sure what reaction she's expecting at her admission. Suspicion, maybe. Accusation of treason, if Wolf is feeling particularly mean.
But it's certainly not the thoughtful silence that greets her words, or the way Wolf's icy eyes narrow at whatever he's putting together.
"Does Hatake know?" he asks after a beat, and Sakura hums.
"About my abilities and my ROOT 'sob story'. And he's met Shin." She smiles sharply, earning a raised eyebrow from her captain, so she continues. "He doesn't know about Sai, though. Thinks he's just a normal Academy student."
She can feel Wolf's disbelief, and she relishes it.
"How." It's not a question, it's almost entirely flat, and Sakura laughs quietly, because this has been years in the making and she's giddy.
"We made sure Sai never crossed paths with my ANBU team." She divulges, easily. "It took some manoeuvring, but we managed."
"And your brother's skill?" her captain presses, far blunter than Sakura's used to, and she welcomes it. After living with Shin and navigating between the many layers of what Kakashi says versus what he actually means, someone who speaks clearly is a welcome change. "He acts like a war child."
When Sakura grins, it's with far more teeth than she usually allows herself.
"I suggested he do the Nidaime's Academy ANBU test." She admits, and her cheeks hurt from the size of her smile, especially when Wolf stills at her side. "And Kakashi, for all his all-seeing eye, is an expert in denial. If he doesn't want to see something, he won't."
There's a moment of silence, and then her captain hangs his head and laughs.
It's quiet and hoarse, like he's rusty, as if no longer used to laughter, and it only lasts a few seconds, but it's undoubtedly a laugh.
"What I wouldn't give to be there when he finally realises." Wolf-taicho breathes, more to himself than to her, but Sakura picks up on it.
"Genma and Yugao said the same thing." She tells him with a smile, this one warm, more genuine. "And I was thinking of inviting Kakashi to dinner if he still doesn't realise Sai is my brother after this mission. I'd invite my old ANBU team and Kakashi's genin team anyway; it wouldn't be too much of a problem to cook for one more."
She sends the man a look when he merely stares at her, and sighs, clarifying. "You'd be more than welcome, taicho."
Her captain blinks, then- "Inosuke."
"Hm?" Sakura hums, distracted by Sai twitching in her lap, his face screwing up and muscles tensing. She soothes him with a pulse of healing chakra, encouraging his brain to fall back into deep sleep, then looks back up at her captain questioningly, finding his gaze already on her.
"My name. It's Inosuke. You don't need to call me 'taicho' when I'm not wearing the mask." He informs her, and his voice is- weird, to Sakura. Wooden. Like he's waiting for her to- something.
"Alright." She agrees, curious. "Inosuke-senpai, then."
Her captain – Inosuke – makes a sound between a laugh and a wheeze at that, and Sakura is officially confused.
"You'd be the cause," he manages, once he gathers himself, "of so many heart attacks, if you ever called me that in public." He tells her, though there's something almost cruelly gleeful in his eyes at the idea.
"You don't really like people, do you, senpai?" Sakura muses thoughtfully, unapologetically blunt, drawing a snort from the man.
"I assure you," he says blandly, his earlier good humour wiped clean like it was never there, "that the sentiment is definitely mutual."
Sakura watches him for a few more seconds, for all the good it does her.
Even though his ANBU mask is firmly in his lap, Inosuke doesn't need one. His face becomes smooth and placid once he notices her looking, his mouth flat, neither conveying amusement nor displeasure, and his eyes could just as well have been lakes or mirrors, for all the expression they show.
"Ugh." Sakura groans, giving up and leaning back on her hands, turning her face up to the night sky.
"I'll be sure to pick a suitably dramatic moment to give people heart attacks." She promises dryly, and gets a quicksilver quirk of the lip for her efforts, though it's gone between one blink and the next.
"Get some sleep." Her captain orders, nudging her hip with the toe of his sandal. "We're high-tailing it back to the border, then to Konoha come morning, and I'm not going to save you if you miss a branch 'cause you're sleep deprived."
"Liar." Sakura mumbles, but obligingly unclips her pack and pushes it away until she can lie back and use it as a pillow for her head. Then, she yanks at her ANBU cloak until the clasps give, and wrestles the material until it settles over her torso and arms like a blanket, though she's careful to not accidentally smother Sai.
"Night, senpai." She murmurs, closing her eyes and seeking out Sai's hand with her own, while her senses focus on the calming flow of his chakra.
She drifts off to sleep secure in the knowledge that her brother and Kakashi are alive, and feeling oddly safe with Inosuke's presence at her side.
She sleeps peacefully.
Inosuke snaps awake from the shallow doze he'd fallen into when someone next to him stirs.
It's not Mongoose – Sakura – though, but her brother, who sits up and takes in the quiet, pre-dawn morning with far too alert eyes for someone who was recently deeply asleep.
The teen's gaze flits to him briefly, and Inosuke absently realises that he's still not wearing his ANBU mask, but he lets the boy study him anyway, feeling only mildly curious about what the kid might find.
The raven seems to find something, though, because he lets go of Sakura's hand and gets to his feet, stretching his arms over his head until his back pops audibly, then tamping down on his chakra until Inosuke would've mistaken him for a squirrel if the kid wasn't standing right next to him.
Then, the boy taps his belt and a moment later, unseals a mask, though it's not anything Inosuke's seen before. It's plain, for one, moulded into canine features instead of having them painted on, and a deep blue, instead of porcelain-white.
"If aneue wakes before I'm back, please tell her I've gone to check out the bridge." The teen murmurs, pinning Inosuke with a blank look, so different from the hesitant, vulnerable boy he saw the night before.
Inosuke raises an eyebrow, not missing the hidden meaning. "And where will you actually go?"
Sai smiles, and it's the same sharp, humourless thing his sister favoured the night before.
"To cut the head off the snake."
And then, he slips his mask on, obscuring his face, and disappears.
Cut the head off the snake and the body will die. Inosuke muses, still staring at where the boy had been mere seconds previous. Let's just hope that he won't get bitten.
Once he ditches aneue's new captain, it's disturbingly easy to locate Gato's hideout with Haku's instructions in mind.
He's working blind, he knows; he shouldn't be doing this, he should stop and think and come up with a plan because there's so much riding on this, but there's no time.
Sai throws up a basic camouflage genjutsu, keeps his chakra muted, and sneaks inside during the guards' shift change. They're shinobi, like Haku had said, missing-nin by the looks of it, but no higher than chunin-level.
He can take them.
When he actually gets inside, he thinks he might not need a plan after all - the ego of powerful men can apparently be trusted to always be greater than their common sense. Sai heads for the biggest, most embellished door at the end of the corridor and lets himself sink underground, resurfacing inside the room.
He finds Gato at his desk, smoking a cigar and counting money, and it's easy, too easy, to creep until he's behind the man, still hidden under the illusion, his chakra carefully masked.
And then, he strikes.
One hand covers Gato's mouth, knocking the cigar onto the desk, while the other brings his knife to the man's throat, cutting through the soft tissue and the trachea first, a quick kill.
He switches knives, the new one with a serrated edge, and his second cut is longer, deeper, and he forces the knife until it meets spine and then keeps going. Sai watches detachedly as more blood sprays from the wound and onto the piles of money on the desk, moves his hand from Gato's mouth to his hair, and with a final effort and the disgusting feeling of metal sawing through bone, the head is separate and the mob boss' body slumps.
Carefully, Sai seals the head into a storage scroll, grabs four of the enormous money bags after a brief approximation of how much they contain, and heads for the window. Just before he can make the jump though, he pauses and turns back.
Gato's headless body is still, the only movement in the room being the smoke curling up from his still smouldering cigar, and an idea strikes Sai.
He smiles.
He sets the bags of money down and seals them into another one of his empty storage scrolls, and when he's done, he pushes his mask up, takes a deep breath, concentrates, and breathes out a small stream of fire.
Small is all he can afford while aiming for subtlety, but that's all he needs. The fire catches on the paper bills in the unzipped bags, and Sai waits until it spreads to the wooden furniture and finally reaches the edges of Gato's suit.
He pulls his mask back over his face and heads for the window, before the fire reaches the curtains or the smoke starts seeping out from under the door and alerts Gato's lackeys to come running.
He just killed a man, took his head, and torched his money, yet he feels not a shred of guilt. Instead, he feels vindicated.
For you, Haku.
He gets back to Tazuna's house before Sakura wakes. He ignores her captain's gaze which he can feel on his person despite the mask the man now has on his face, choosing instead to sit next to his sister and pull out his sketchbook.
He gets halfway through his sketch of the sun rising over the ocean before Sakura suddenly tenses and sits up, green eyes flickering over her surroundings before a soft smile lights up her face at the sight of his drawing.
"Morning, aneue." Sai greets quietly, not looking up from his sketch, and Sakura reaches up to gently run her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck.
"Morning, Sai-chan. Taicho." She greets, voice sleep-rough, then stretches and pins her captain with an assessing look. "Did you sleep at all, taicho?"
Her captain doesn't reply and Sakura huffs, then takes out three ration bars from her back and gets to her feet. She drops one next to Sai, then holds the second out to her captain, who takes it with an almost inaudible sigh.
"Will you be alright now, Sai-chan?" she asks once she secures her pack and cloak back to her person. "Kakashi should be waking any time now."
"Yes." Sai agrees, looking up from his sketch and picking up the granola bar. "I just needed someone to guard while I slept, and Naruto and Sasuke aren't…" he pauses, not sure how to explain his reasoning. "They're genin."
Sakura seems to understand, because she merely reaches down to ruffle his hair, slotting her mask over her face with her other hand. Sai gets to his feet then, stepping closer to give Sakura a quick hug.
"Thank you for coming, aneue." He mumbles into her shoulder, quiet but genuine, and soaks in the gentle way she strokes his arm in response.
"Always." She murmurs, then pulls away from the hug, tilting her head at her captain, who's also gotten to his feet.
And then, without a word between them, and not so much as a breeze to betray them, they're gone, and Sai is left alone on the roof, the head of a mob boss and a small fortune hidden in his pouch.
It happens on the fourth day after Kakashi wakes up, exactly a week since their first confrontation with Zabuza.
He's on the bridge with Sasuke, guarding Tazuna and the handful of other workers who dare continue their task, three of Sai's cartoon leopards milling about the bridge, appearing to – bizarrely – reassure the workers, when the fog starts to thicken.
The moment it becomes clear it's not a natural fog, one of the leopards takes off running towards the forest, while another begins to corral the workers sans Tazuna off the bridge, into the relative safety of the forest and the town waiting beyond.
"Sasuke, guard Tazuna." Kakashi barks at the Uchiha, ignores the sharp look Sasuke slants his way, before he nods and moves to do as told.
"Will you hand over the bridge-builder, or will we have to kill your genin to get to him?" Zabuza's voice rings out from the fog and Kakashi tenses at the 'we'.
If it were just Zabuza, that would've been dangerous enough, but he would've felt reassured in his ability to keep the man distracted enough to give Sasuke a fighting chance. As it is, he assumes the mysterious hunter-nin from before is Zabuza's reinforcement, and judging by everything they don't know about the tag-along, it's not looking good.
"Sasuke." Kakashi calls, knows he has the boy's attention even without receiving any verbal confirmation. "I will not let you die." He reassures his student, a vicious, animalistic edge to his words.
Zabuza's laughter rings out through the mist around them.
"Haku," he commands, voice almost bored, "prove Hatake wrong, will you?"
Kakashi senses the movement, more than he hears or sees it, and a moment later, Sai's remaining leopard launches itself into the space between Sasuke and the rest of the bridge, catching three senbon in its side before it bursts into ink.
Kakashi tenses, then flicks through the signs for his strongest Wind jutsu, because this fog needs to be dealt with, stat.
Wind and water are his least favourite elements, but he pushes through, his chakra coils protesting at not only being put to use, but being put to use against their nature, but the jutsu he produces doesn't reflect his inner struggle, and the mist clears slightly.
Once it clears though, it reveals Zabuza far closer than Kakashi's comfortable with him being, and a smaller form slightly in front of him, closer to Sasuke than Kakashi is, the Kiri hunter-nin mask firmly in place.
They're barely taller than Sasuke, and Kakashi quietly mourns another child being robbed of their childhood in favour of being a tool for power-hungry men.
And then, he doesn't have the time nor the mental space to think of much more, because Zabuza moves, and it's meet him or die.
Still, no more than five minutes of fighting pass before there is an interruption.
"STOP!"
The desperate call, as well as the wave of chakra the person releases, actually manages to freeze Zabuza in his tracks, a moment Kakashi capitalises on to put distance between them and shoot a quick glance to check if Sasuke is still alive.
Then, he realises that the person who'd shouted was Sai.
"Sorry I'm late, sensei." Sai greets once he reaches Kakashi's side, seemingly casual and completely relaxed, though his eyes are trained on Zabuza, his tanto held confidently in his hand. "Two samurai attacked the house. I had to help Naruto deal with them."
Then, he raises his voice, digging into his pouch and pulling out two scrolls.
"Your benefactor is dead." Sai announces, staring directly at Zabuza, and ignoring the way Kakashi startles at his side.
Then, he crouches and puts both scrolls on the ground. He pushes them, so they slowly roll towards the missing-nin, one to Zabuza, one to his apprentice, though a senbon stops the one heading for Zabuza before it can get within two metres from the man.
Sai looks like he expected that, though, because he merely rises back to his feet.
"Within these scrolls, you'll find his head, and two bags of money." He informs them calmly, and Zabuza's eyes widen. "I believe just one of these bags contains significantly more than he was going to pay you for this mission."
"Haku." Zabuza barks, and his partner steps towards the scroll closest to him, bends down to unroll it, then sends a pulse of chakra into the bloodied paper.
Kakashi hears Sasuke gag when a severed head suddenly appears on the scroll, flaps of skin and muscle by the neck covered with dried blood, the flesh pale and splotchy, in the early stages of decomposition.
Yet it's undeniable, even to Kakashi, who's only going by the rough sketch Tazuna had showed them, that the head belongs to Gato.
Seemingly emboldened by the fact that at least part of what Sai had said was true, Zabuza opens the second scroll himself, revealing two black bags, which, once unzipped, reveal stacks upon stacks of bills.
Easily ten A-Ranks' worth of pay in just one bag.
Zabuza straightens, then turns his attention back to Sai and studies Kakashi's student with an alarming intensity.
Kakashi fears, stepping forward to put himself between his student and the missing-nin, but Sai, it seems, is either ignorant or suicidal, because he returns Zabuza's gaze with a far calmer expression than the situation warrants.
"Are you going to keep pursuing the bridge-builder, Zabuza-san?"
Kakashi isn't the only one who startles at the bizarrely polite honorific tagged onto the missing-nin's name, though he doesn't shift his attention from Zabuza's form.
"…I have no quarrel with the bridge-builder." Zabuza speaks at last, seeming as surprised at saying the words as Kakashi is at hearing them. Then, his eyes drop to the bags of money at his feet. "A job's just a job, and now, I've got my payment."
Sai nods, then narrows his eyes and presses. "So you will allow my team to leave, unbothered, once the bridge is constructed?"
The missing-nin, the notorious Demon of the Mist, the personification of everything fucked up about Kirigakure, just huffs a laugh at Kakashi's genin.
"As long as your sensei extends us the same courtesy." He replies, and his tone makes it clear he sincerely doubts that is going to happen.
Four pairs of expectant eyes now turn to Kakashi.
"You and I," he tells Sai flatly, momentarily ignoring the two missing-nin in favour of pinning the boy with a weighted look, "are going to have words."
Then, he turns to Zabuza, and adamantly does not think about how ridiculous the situation truly is.
"If you attack my genin, or the bridge-builders, I will kill you where you stand." He informs the missing-nin coldly, letting the slightest amount of Killing Intent leak out.
"But," he concedes, when Zabuza tenses, his own Intent starting to spread through the mist, making Sasuke freeze, "provided you do so peacefully, I will not stop you, or your partner, from leaving."
Slightly wide-eyed, as if unable to believe the resolution could truly be so simple, Zabuza nods his assent.
Then, as if that's the cue they needed, the fake hunter-nin starts walking towards Sai, their pace quick and determined, and it's only the fact that Sai smiles at the figure and steps slightly away from Kakashi that stops Kakashi from putting a Chidori through the masked-nin's chest.
Once Zabuza's partner is within arm's length of Sai, they reach out, one hand settling on Sai's cheek, the other impatiently shoving their own mask up and off, revealing a young, androgynous face, and then they close the distance that remains between them and Sai and-
-Kakashi isn't sure what noise he makes, but he feels an echo of his shock in Zabuza, who goes still as a statue where he stands.
The fake hunter-nin is kissing Sai, and Sai isn't making a single move to stop them.
More than that, when Sai does move, it's to lift a careful hand and lay it lightly on the missing-nin's elbow, the gesture unspeakably tender and out of place considering the situation.
He doesn't even attempt to remove the hunter-nin from his person.
Kakashi is too stupefied to do much more than stare.
When the missing-nin finally pulls away, after what Kakashi knows realistically was no longer than five seconds but felt like a small eternity, they let their forehead thunk gently against Sai's, closing their eyes.
(Kakashi hates himself for thinking that now would be the ideal time to kill them.)
He hears a quiet murmur, something that sounds suspiciously like 'thank you', but even his sharpened hearing can't make it out properly, and the missing-nin steps away, letting their hand fall from Sai's cheek.
Sai catches it, though, and presses what looks like a thin scroll, no longer than Kakashi's palm and barely thicker than his thumb, into the other teen's hand. There's a murmured explanation, he thinks, but Sai doesn't move his lips enough for Kakashi to be able to read them, and the roar of the ocean around them means that his voice doesn't carry.
Then, moving slowly but deliberately, Sai reaches up to pull the missing-nin's mask back over their face, shooting them another one of his mystifying smiles.
With another nod, the missing-nin tucks the scroll into their pack with visible care, and shunshins to Zabuza's side.
Holding true to his word, Kakashi doesn't stop them when the mist momentarily thickens again, and once it clears fully, Zabuza and Haku are nowhere to be seen.
Kakashi moves mechanically through the motions of being a sensei: he checks on Sasuke, congratulates him quietly on his conduct as he pulls out the few senbon the boy had been hit with – luckily none had hit anything serious – then sends the Uchiha to escort a rather stupefied-looking Tazuna off the bridge.
Then, and only then, does he turn to Sai, his earlier good humour melting away.
Kakashi knows his face is blank and cold, his gaze sharp; it's the expression of someone who has lost everyone important and killed far more people than anyone ever bothered to keep track of.
It's the expression that had made him terrifying to enemies and allies alike after Minato's death, that had made the ANBU mask almost redundant. Not ROOT blankness, like what Tenzo had had at the beginning, but something else.
Something worse.
He almost feels guilty about using that facet of himself on a genin, but when he focuses fully on Sai, the boy meets his gaze easily, fearless and quietly expectant.
"Explanation." Kakashi snaps, cold and unforgiving. "Now."