"The primary weakness Cloud has is a lack of bloodlines. This will be resolved via aggressive foreign policy and incentive-based recruitment."
– A, First Raikage of Kumogakure, later killed in a failed ambush on the bone-using Kaguya clan
-O-
Team Seven were sorting a stack of books in the Konoha General Library. Or rather, the three genin were. It wasn't a large room, but Kakashi was far away from any of the work. He sat in the corner next to an open window, carefully observing to make sure nothing went wrong. He turned the next page of his book, a recently acquired copy of Jiraiya's latest work.
"This is boring," Naruto complained for what must have been the twentieth time. Kakashi kept reading.
"Well, you'd best make jounin nice and quickly. That way you can just sit around and do nothing," Sasuke snarked. Kakashi finished the chapter and frowned when it ended on a cliffhanger. Who could have stolen Megumi-chan's swimwear? With a sigh, he packed the book away. The mystery would have to wait.
"I have a special announcement to make," Kakashi told his team. Naruto immediately looked up, of course, but Sakura and Sasuke had fallen for Kakashi's mock serious tone enough times that they kept working away. He poked them from behind and they both paused with a huff, looking at him properly now. "Hey, don't make faces like that. The announcement is that we're now done with D-rank missions... unless, of course, you want to do some more?"
Truth be told, he was sick of them himself. It was barely a month since he'd taken on the three genin, and in that time the Hokage hadn't let him go on any solo missions. Apparently, he was supposed to be concentrating on 'nurturing three fresh graduates as they started their journeys towards mastery'. Kakashi really wanted a chance to get out of Konoha for a bit.
He also wanted to avoid being in a small room when Naruto started cheering, he decided. That boy had an inhuman set of lungs on him. Sakura was pleased as well, and even Sasuke looked less moody.
Then, of course, the librarian came over and shushed them.
Kakashi sighed and watched his team – and it still surprised him how natural that phrase sounded – finish up, then hurried them off towards their first C-rank and hopefully some excitement.
The walk to the Hokage Tower from the library was short, but long enough for Kakashi to decide what kind of mission to request. It needed to be something that played to his team's strengths, while reinforcing the lessons he was teaching them.
Sasuke was still impatient, but less so now. Kakashi often set him solo exercises just to keep him busy while the jounin focused on his teammates. They needed more attention from him. Sasuke loved his swords, even though Kakashi could tell he wasn't particularly talented with them. Maybe that was why – Sasuke, who'd been good at everything in the past, finally had a challenge.
Sakura's self-consciousness was becoming a problem. She went out of her way to stay neat and clean, and didn't even like working up a sweat. That brief period where she'd feared for her life was the most work Kakashi had gotten out of her so far. It was obvious that Sasuke was the cause, but Kakashi wasn't about to get involved in her messy personal life. On the other hand, she'd spend hours every evening snaring her parents as well as the local wildlife in increasingly complex genjutsu. Hopefully she'd take her physical training seriously once she'd been on her first C-rank.
There wasn't an advice manual for new jounin teachers, but Kakashi had asked some old friends. The first decent payslip could be the perfect motivation for fresh genin, apparently. Sometimes a taste of adventure helped as well.
The most exuberant of Kakashi's students was rushing about again, trying to pet a stray cat that clearly didn't want the attention. Naruto was enthusiastic in everything he did. That summed up his strengths as well as his weaknesses.
Kakashi had watched him train on his own, and Naruto was incredibly motivated to do absolutely everything. He'd practice some kicks, then halfway through change his mind and do ninjutsu training, then drop that and throw kunai instead, but before he got very far with that he'd be back to physical conditioning. Kakashi had seen him start a dozen exercises and finish exactly one. Teaching him ninjutsu would be hell, he already knew.
On the plus side, the Shadow Clone technique was versatile enough that Naruto was already quite useful. He could throw a lot of kunai at once, fill an entire forest with traps, and keep a lookout while also getting some sleep. Kakashi would just have to work on his taijutsu for now and hope that he matured a bit. A little bit more discipline would turn the boy into a real terror.
Kakashi had benefited from some extra discipline as well. Physically, he was much the same – he wasn't planning on doing any more crazy stunts like climbing mountains one-handed. Emotionally, however, he felt much better. He was less melancholy when drunk, for a start, and much pickier about who he took home when the bars closed.
The Hokage Tower was fairly empty in the afternoon, so Kakashi didn't have to wait to see the mission assignment desk. It took around ten minutes of arguing with the chunin there to get the mission he wanted, but in the end, Team Seven were tasked with delivering supplies to an outpost off towards Tea country.
It was pretty much perfect for getting his students' feet wet, so to speak. They would pick up a bunch of sealing scrolls stuffed with food and tools, then go on a two-day return trip through the safest part of Konoha's forests. Naruto would get to see a little more of the world, Sasuke would feel less like he was being held back, and Sakura would calm down when she saw how safe most missions were. And he could either train them or read his book some more.
Nothing could go wrong.
Kakashi reminded Naruto twice to bring the correct gear, finally writing out a list to make sure he didn't mess it up. Sasuke and Sakura had both headed off as soon as he'd told them tomorrow's meeting time and place, so he figured they either knew what to take or were about to learn the hard way.
It had been a while since Kakashi had had to be up at dawn, and he decided to be on time for once. That meant no drinking, he told himself firmly.
That night, he lay awake for a long time, resisting the urge to grab a bottle. In the end, he used a hand mirror to cast a sleeping technique on himself. The genjutsu-influenced sleep was supposed to be calm, but he still had worse nightmares than in years.
He woke up two hours before dawn with trembling hands and a bloodshot eye, disgusted with himself.
-O-
Rather than racing home, Naruto decided to swing by the Academy to tell Iruka about his new mission. He was disappointed to find out that, in the receptionist's words, Iruka was 'recovering from teaching by returning to active duty' for three months. Undeterred, he asked for Iruka's home address.
Iruka lived in a small cottage tucked away near one of the gates. It wasn't popular with active-duty ninja, but Naruto thought it was a wonderfully peaceful area. Most houses had boxes full of flowers on the windowsills, and as he watched an elderly woman slowly watered her carnations with a lime green watering can. It had purple frogs on it, and Naruto smiled.
Nobody answered when he knocked, and the curtains were drawn. After a moment the old lady came over and waved at him.
"Hi," he called as she got closer. "Is Iruka in, do you know?"
She shook her head and pointed at her ear, so he repeated his question more loudly. "He's away on a mission, and won't be back for another few days," she croaked out.
Naruto spent two minutes writing a quick message for Iruka, and posted it through the letterbox, before heading towards his home. It was a ten-minute journey by rooftop, although he was interrupted when he was almost at his doorstep.
"Hello."
Naruto flinched a little. Shino was a nice guy, but he couldn't help but be a little creepy, with his bug obsession and everything. Why was he in this part of Konoha, anyway? The Aburame all lived in a completely different quarter of the village, and it was late enough that he probably wasn't stopping by for a social visit.
"Hi Shino! What are you doing here?" he asked, openly curious. Since he was a ninja now, picking up information on people's routines was considered a compliment rather than creepy.
"I saw you and wanted to talk for a bit." That didn't answer his real question, but Naruto figured there was no point trying to press Shino on it.
Besides, that was more words in a row than Naruto could remember ever hearing from him before. Maybe he'd loosened up a bit since graduating? Naruto decided to find out whether Shino was less uptight now, and have some fun either way.
"I always like to reminisce when I'm stood here. You see that house down there?" Naruto pointed to a particularly large two-story building, with white plastered walls and red shingles on the roof. "I put some frogspawn in the water tank a few years ago. And four doors down and across the street, I plugged up the drainpipe with her rubbish, back before she started recycling. Well, she changed her ways quite fast after that. And there was another house that's been torn down now, where I painted a giant turd on the roof and they never even knew. I took it off when the new people moved in. And one time I shaved that guy's dog and dyed his name on its side, because he let it crap all over the streets. Hey, that gives me an idea-"
"Informative as this is, that's not what I wanted to talk about. How are you adjusting to ninja life?" Shino asked. Naruto frowned. He'd expected to get a little bit more of a reaction out of Shino, but the boy was too stoic for his own good.
"It's not bad, but the training is quite boring. I know it's supposed to make me strong, but surely there's a better way? Like, more interesting. And I've not done any proper missions yet, but our first C-rank is tomorrow. But Kakashi said it would be quite boring and straightforward. The 'boring' part is starting to become a theme, you know?"
"I have some advice for you. Being a ninja is dangerous and you should equip yourself as well as you can." Shino showed Naruto a small pottery jar with a wide cork stopper on top. There was, Naruto saw with a sinking feeling in his chest, a bright red hazard sign on the side. "Be very careful, though. This, for example, is completely safe to handle – unless you have a small cut on your hand, in which case it's lethal. I don't carry an antidote. With this, a single caltrop can kill, and I can direct my insects to produce more of it as I require it. Poison can be very effective and I recommend you secure some for yourself. Your traps' effectiveness would increase rather a lot."
The poison vanished back into Shino's coat. Naruto was speechless. He knew he might have to kill at some point, but Shino seemed much too eager to get his hands bloody. And the tactics he was describing...
"What if someone you don't want to kill walks into a trap? Like, some farmer or merchant or something? You said you don't have an antidote. If you drop poisoned caltrops regularly, you're guaranteed to kill an innocent bystander at some point."
Shino was silent for a moment. "I am careful to only place traps where there is a low chance of collateral damage, and remove them afterwards."
"Low chance!? Do you care that little about anyone who's not a ninja?" Naruto was furious. He'd once been suspected of poisoning a merchant in the village, as the man's death had happened a few hours after Naruto had been seen sneaking chilli powder into his tea. The real culprit had been found eventually, but being under suspicion had left a lasting mark on Naruto.
Shino stood stock still, not a single muscle moving. "I hope you learn the error you are making before it costs you someone you hold dear." His voice was frosty and he turned to leave. "One last thing. Be very careful tomorrow. The first C-rank mission for new genin is the career step with the highest casualty rate. Don't be overconfident."
"You're going to have the deaths of innocents weighing on you the rest of your life if you go through with this!" Naruto shouted after him as Shino leapt off over the rooftops. He was shaking with anger.
Naruto dropped down from the building, taking to the streets for the last stretch on his way home. He'd had enough stress for one day. Shino could come apologise once the creepy bug guy had seen the error of his ways, Naruto decided.
-O-
Sakura rolled out of bed and straight into the shower. Her routine was simple and efficient. Twenty-five minutes after her alarm went off, she was sat at the breakfast table in a red training dress and with dry hair. She slowly combed it, for lack of something better to do, as her mother finished frying some eggs.
"Those smell good," she said, piling them onto her plate. "Good source of protein, too."
Her mother looked guilty for a split second. "Yes, it's important that your body gets what it needs to grow."
Sakura had a sneaking suspicion that she was about to be lectured. She started shovelling the food down her throat as quickly as she could. "Gotta hurry, I don't want to be late!" she forced out.
"Good morning, darling," her father said from behind her. "I'd hate to make you late, so I'll just quickly mention this now – we've arranged another offer and your mother and I really think you should consider accepting."
Sakura swallowed her mouthful of food with great reluctance and gritted her teeth. "For the last time, I don't want to do extra taijutsu training. I don't care who you get to teach me. I'm never going to be a taijutsu specialist and I just want to focus on other things right now." They'd been getting steadily worse over the last few weeks – at first, her mother had just brought it up in passing, and she'd laughed it off. Now it seemed they were really set on making her train under some martial artist, rather than continue her own studies.
"How about this?" her father asked. "You go along to one session – just one – to see if you like it, and we'll drop the subject for now. We just think that you'll be safer if you have some more hand-to-hand experience."
"We just worry about you, dear." That made turning them down so much worse, but Sakura still had no interest in becoming a muscled freak who hit things because she couldn't do anything better with her chakra. And she didn't miss that her parents thought she couldn't take care of herself.
"I've got to go now. My mission starts soon," she said, and got up, shrugging her backpack on. She grabbed another buttered slice of toast and headed for the door.
"Be careful," her father called after her.
"We love you," her mother added.
Sakura hurried off towards the meeting point, trying to put the negativity behind her out of her mind. A few quick handseals and she wove a simple illusion over herself, hiding a small pimple on her jaw. Who needed makeup when there was such a fast and easy replacement?
She almost missed Hinata, caught up in her elaborate plans to remove every blemish on her face.
"Hey, Hinata!" Sakura called out across the street, jogging to catch up. She was early enough that she could afford to stop for a chat, after leaving the house a little before she'd planned to. "How are you doing? I haven't seen you since graduation."
"I'm alright," Hinata said. Sakura could barely hear her over the sounds of the busy street. "I'm just going to meet my team for a mission later."
Sakura smiled, trying to get her to lighten up. "That sounds exciting. We're off on a mission too – you're with Shino, Kiba and... Kurenai, right?"
Hinata nodded. "You're on Naruto's team, aren't you. How is he doing?"
"He's a much better ninja than when he graduated, but Sasuke still beats him in every spar," Sakura giggled. "I don't think Naruto will ever win one of their fights, to be honest."
"He'll definitely surpass Sasuke one day," Hinata disagreed, her voice firmer than before. "Anyway, where are you meeting them?"
"Just around the corner here." Sakura pointed out the square just inside Konoha's eastern gates. Sasuke was already perched on one of the benches, double-checking his equipment. "Well, it was nice catching up with you, but I'd hate to make you late."
"I can spend another few minutes here," Hinata said. "I was early this morning. What training have you been doing?"
"I've mostly been doing chakra exercises, and practising illusions. It's quite fun but I'm really struggling with this one where you have to put sort of chakra strings out of your eyes. It's a step towards casting genjutsu by eye contact, but I'm a long way off that."
Sakura's heart skipped a beat as Sasuke came over and joined in the conversation. He rarely talked to her when Naruto wasn't also around, but despite that, she still had a childish half-wish that he'd sweep her off her feet and ravish her. "You should try building more physical strength, otherwise you'll lose any fight where your opponent manages to get close to you." His tone was subtly disapproving and it cut her like a knife. She hung her head and, after a short pause, Hinata stepped in to fill the awkward silence.
"Our team has been performing tracking exercises. Our specialities work well together, but we need practice to mesh better. Kurenai has considered some inter-team activities to help expose us to different group strategies." From there, the conversation turned to three-man formations, and Sakura could have kissed Hinata for the change of topic. She swallowed her shame, deliberately turning away from Sasuke.
He either didn't notice or didn't care.
Naruto came screeching into the square mere seconds before they were supposed to set off. "I'm on time, you guys!" he shouted. Hinata smiled softly and waved at him.
"Tch." Sakura's disapproval bounced straight off of Naruto's relentless good mood.
"Hi Hinata! Nice seeing you here! Are you coming with us? That'd be really cool, you know, since we don't get to talk much. What have you been up to?"
Hinata looked completely overwhelmed, Sakura thought. She somehow stuttered out a greeting and then stood there, silently blushing. That was when Kakashi swept in – 7 o'clock on the dot, Sakura noted with surprise – and herded them out of the gates. Sakura barely got a chance to say bye to Hinata before she was manoeuvred down the road and past the treeline.
They set a punishing pace, Kakashi somehow still reading his book as the squad raced along the wide and slowly winding path. They branched off onto a smaller track, and again onto a bare dirt road. It wasn't until they slowed their pace, fifteen minutes later, that Sakura got a chance to take in the scenery.
Tall trees towered above her, their sweeping branches casting deep shadows across the forest floor. Some of the trunks were easily as wide as her whole house, and she could have driven a cart along the sturdier limbs above her head. There was dense undergrowth stretching off into the distance, with occasional rustling noises from what were almost certainly birds or small animals.
Sakura felt very small and exposed.
-O-
It was noon and Sasuke watched his team rest by a stream. Each of them had irritated him in a different way, and would probably continue to do so for the rest of the journey. He wished the mission were over already.
Naruto never shut up. Maybe he was incapable of not talking, Sasuke thought. They were both bored, but at least Sasuke didn't inflict random babble on his teammates, because he was considerate. Naruto had told everyone more (probably incorrect) information about Konoha, ninja life, the Hokage, Naruto himself, and ramen in one morning than Sasuke had learned in a month in the Academy.
And that led nicely into his second problem – Kakashi. Or rather, the fact that Kakashi might as well have not come. Naruto might have shut up if Kakashi had asked him to, or given him some training to do, but no. There was no instruction, no guidance, and Kakashi wasn't even keeping an eye on his surroundings. Sasuke's nerves were raw after half a day of twitching at every sound, since he couldn't afford to relax for even half a second.
Even now, he was constantly scanning the thick undergrowth. It was impossible to see more than twenty metres, and the rest of his team simply didn't have their guard up, so Sasuke had to constantly turn in a slow circle to keep the whole area in his sight.
It wasn't paranoia if they really were out to get him, and he knew for a fact that Cloud had a standing seven-figure bounty on any unsealed (and alive) Hyuga or Uchiha.
And Sakura was making it unnecessarily difficult. She'd not only not taken his earlier advice about physical training, but was also trying to annoy and distract him as much as she could. Well, he wouldn't go out of his way to help her again, he decided. She was still practising her genjutsu, which he didn't mind in and of itself, but for some reason she was playing with her hair colour and nails. He kinda wanted to mutter a biting comment in passing. Something like 'why don't you work at being useful rather than trying to just look like it?'
He'd caught himself tracing the delicate curve of her neck twice in the first hour, the way her hair flowed like a waterfall, a wonderful glistening mass that cascaded down her back. Her perfect green eyes had offset her flawless skin perfectly. Then he'd realised that he didn't usually think in poetry, and noticed that she was fucking with him. His answering illusion had put phantom insects on her back, and he made them crawl around every time she cast a genjutsu or tried to talk. It was incredibly petty of him, but it really improved his mood for around two minutes. Then she broke the illusion.
The second time he'd tried it, it hadn't worked.
"Break's over! Let's get back on the road. We're only an hour or so away from the outpost now," said Kakashi. Sasuke leapt to his feet. The earlier the mission was over, the earlier he could relax.
"Kakashi, what does 'pleasures of the flesh' mean?" Naruto asked. He'd just gotten a glimpse of the back of Kakashi's book.
"It's how you prepare fruits that are very rich and juicy, like peaches. Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'peach flesh'?"
"Does that include plums?"
Kakashi nodded with a serious expression. "Most soft fruits, I suppose, as well as some vegetables. Tomatoes come to mind. Think of anything that splats nicely when you drop it."
Sasuke tried his best to ignore them. He didn't care whether Kakashi read cooking books in particular, just that the jounin couldn't be trusted to watch his surroundings.
The woods soon sped by, a blur of green and brown. This early in the year there were no fallen leaves covering the ground, and so Sasuke could run as fast as he wanted without risking slipping. The point of the outpost they were resupplying was to patrol this stretch of the border, after all, so there was – at last – no need to be cautious here. Team Seven arrived in a spray of dirt, having raced the last stretch. Kakashi loped in at the same pace he'd had the whole day, uncaring about being in last place, while Sakura and Naruto bickered about who'd come second and who'd come third. Sasuke ignored them, secure in his position as the fastest genin.
The three huts that made up the bulk of the outpost were rather unimpressive. They were mostly made out of compressed stone that would resist anything short of ninjutsu or explosives, and one building that was probably a jail had thick iron grates covering the windows. There were also piles of seasoned lumber lying around, and the clearing was large enough that another few houses could be set up in a short amount of time.
This was also a staging area for a potential invasion, Sasuke realised. Troops could be massed here for a surprise assault on the Land of Earth.
The outpost was at the top of a gentle slope that stretched away in all directions, but he hesitated to call it a hill. It was too flat for that. At least it meant that the watchtower set up in the middle of the clearing had a better view of the surrounding area. The tower's foundation was the smallest hut, whose purpose Sasuke could only guess at. Maybe supplies? It had no windows, and it supported a solid log structure with a platform on top, so it had to be sturdy.
Two Konoha ninja were watching them from the top of the tower, he noticed. They were almost directly between him and the sun, which made them hard to spot.
"Konoha ninja bearing supplies!" Kakashi called out. "I'm supposed to hand them over to Rabbit."
"That's me." A tall man wearing a rabbit mask came out of the prison. Sasuke was impressed. If there was an ANBU member here, that meant it was a very important defensive location.
Rabbit and Kakashi started talking about the outpost, and he listened in for a bit – if they'd wanted privacy then there was no way they'd allow him to hear anything, anyway. It was mostly logistics, though, and incredibly dull, so he wandered off and sat down near the forest's edge.
Sasuke was careful not to walk out of the clearing. A few of the more obvious traps were easy to spot, but he knew there would be buried explosive tags and more devious and well-hidden dangers as well.
"Alright, team," Kakashi said. "We're going to rest here overnight, and head back tomorrow. There are five prisoners we'll be taking with us to Konoha to stand trial."
Sasuke wasn't surprised at the extra delay, but that didn't make it less irritating.
-O-
The prisoner transport wasn't entirely unexpected, but Kakashi had hoped to avoid it. Like many things, it simply hadn't gone his way today.
His team went to sleep early, tired from their run. He made a mental note to run some more speed and endurance training when they got back to Konoha, but right now he didn't want to do anything other than lie there and stare at the dark ceiling. His pulse was slightly elevated, he noted clinically, and he was sweating slightly. Kakashi had been using a rather simple ninjutsu to eliminate his scent during the journey, but he shouldn't be showing any signs of strain now that he'd arrived and settled down.
After two hours of shivering, he pulled out a small mirror and cast a genjutsu again.
The next morning they set off particularly early. Kakashi was keen to be back in Konoha, celebrating the mission's success with a glass of something.
He took care to look grim and on guard. It was one thing to subtly mess with Sasuke, but quite another to let the prisoners he was supposed to be guarding think he was less than capable. All five were facing execution for robbery, extortion and murder, and they looked the part – lots of scars, long stringy hair, and missing teeth were the most immediately obvious features, but there was also an undercurrent of viciousness in every one of them.
Kakashi had pulled Team Seven aside before they set off and stressed that these were dangerous men and women, even without any training. They'd killed before and were in a desperate situation. Sakura, of all people, had asked why Kakashi didn't just execute them right away. Explaining why a lack of trials even for obviously guilty people was a bad thing took him a few minutes, but privately he'd also have much preferred to cut their throats and be done with it.
He hated the idea of threats like that near his team.
The trip home was fairly slow. He made sure to stay at the rear of the group so that he could keep an eye on everything, and rotated his genin around the flanks. The prisoners dragged their feet, slow and sullen. They knew what waited for them when they arrived. Kakashi estimated that it would take two days to get back to Konoha, even if he pushed them. The two women in particular were pretending to struggle under the weight of their manacles, but he knew it was an act. He let it go on; he'd rather they stayed with an ineffective stalling strategy than find something better.
The Academy had drilled his students on how to set up an overnight camp, but he found a few points where they were sloppy. The fire wasn't in a deep enough pit, and Sasuke hadn't gathered clods of earth to tamp it down overnight. Normally Kakashi would have taken the opportunity to teach his students something, but he was too on edge. He kept watch the entire night, taking a few stimulants to keep his focus sharp. It was nothing he hadn't done before.
The night went by without incident and he started to relax – breakfast was straightforward and by midmorning, Konoha was only an hour away. Sasuke had drifted off to the side to 'scout'; now that they were in patrolled territory, he probably felt safe enough to go and explore. Naruto had held out ten minutes before his boredom overwhelmed his desire to not copy Sasuke.
Sakura was at the head of the small convoy when she stopped to look at a flower at the wayside. Kakashi didn't recognise it, but it wasn't one of the many poisonous or nutritious plants found in Konoha's forests so he didn't really care. As she knelt down and smelled it, the prisoners slowed and Kakashi gave the one in front of him a little prod.
She stumbled, falling gracelessly over a small pebble and screaming in pain. Kakashi was distracted for a split second until he saw the man nearest Sakura – a whip-thin bandit with a ruined nose and burns on his hands – take two swift steps and strike at her. A sharp splinter of rock from underneath his coat lanced at her head, just as she turned to face Kakashi, mouth open to say something.
Kakashi raced to intercept but the other captives were already in motion, trying to grab at him or club him with their shackled wrists. He barely slowed, killing them with precise stabs and slashes of his kunai, but by the time he reached Sakura and butchered the last man, she'd already been cut.
His heart was racing but he was confused as well as shocked. There had been nothing for any of the prisoners to gain by that, and they should have known it. He crouched down as Sakura cradled the side of her head, trying to get a look at the wound.
It was nasty, a long jagged tear in her skin that bisected her ear and sent blood sheeting down the side of her face. "You're safe now," he said gently. Strands of her hair were gummed up and sticking to her head. It didn't look like she was in any immediate danger, but he still wanted to get her to a hospital as soon as possible. It was all too easy for infection to set in.
She was quietly sobbing and clutched a kunai desperately to her chest, angry and afraid at the same time.
"It's safe. Don't worry, they're all dead. We're almost in Konoha and we can get that ear repaired easily enough." As he tried to calm her down, he carefully bandaged up her wound. "There's no-one left to hurt you, and if you walk next to me you'll be in no danger at all." His voice was soft. He had a lot of practice when it came to battlefield first aid, and a calm voice helped a lot if the subject was in shock. Kakashi took a moment to appreciate the detachment he felt.
He made doubly sure that all five prisoners were dead, and had just started to bury them when Naruto and Sasuke both scrambled out of the undergrowth, out of breath. They stopped, shocked at the dead bodies and blood splatters.
Naruto, predictably, started talking first. "What happened? Sakura, are you OK? Are you- are you bleeding?" He walked over and tried to hug her. Kakashi was quick enough to catch her reflexive stab before she disembowelled her teammate, and when Naruto put his arms around her she clung to him like a child clings to their mother.
Meanwhile, Sasuke stood frozen at the edge of the trees. He stared at the corpses that were scattered on the forest floor amongst the dead leaves, not even blinking. His eyes were wide enough that Kakashi could see the whites all the way around, and he was hyperventilating. Sasuke reached for a kunai with fingers that were trembling too hard to grip it properly, then gave up and sat down with his back against a tree.
Of course, Kakashi thought to himself. He'd suspected Sasuke had some lingering trauma, but this was worse than he'd thought. At least the mission was all but over, now that their prisoners were dead.
It was a long and unpleasant afternoon for all four of them as they finished the journey back.
