"Dobe, we need to trip up that one with the tattooed face."

"Right – throw this three feet to the left of him. Sakura, this two feet behind, hit the deck hard – simultaneous throws on my mark, one two three mark!"

Two kunai flew with remarkable accuracy towards the pirate and hit their targets near perfectly – thankfully, Naruto's traps never really needed to be perfectly accurate for them to work. Impact explosive tags he'd recently learned to make distracted him enough that the shadow clones leaping out from the follow-up kunais Naruto had thrown were able to knock him out and hog-tie him.

Kakashi-ichi, one of two shadow clones the jounin had made for this encounter, kept an eye on the brats. They were staying out of this one for the most part – they had come across a pirate crew led by a nukenin of Mist, in the midst of a raid on one of Hi no Kuni's merchant fleets. The escort shinobi had managed to do some damage but the nukenin that commanded the crew had recruited a few others of like minds and skills to join up and the chunnin weren't really a match for five chunnin or higher opponents.

He hadn't heard anything about this level of piracy on the coast. Either the ships had just moved into Hi no Kuni waters or heads were going to roll in the intelligence department.

Their water-walking had gotten plenty of practice on their four days of peaceful shore patrol, the waves and swells of the ocean taking a bit of work. He also had the memory of the first time they saw the ocean saved with his Sharingan – if only he could figure out a way to take a photo of a memory, he was certain the Yamanakas could help him come up with something if he actually trusted people inside his brain – because the slack jaws and utter awe were adorable.

He had also managed to catch Naruto's first encounter with a sea urchin and Sakura's face when she was double-dog dared into sticking her tongue in a small anemone. He was sure Obito would approve this sort of use for his eye – indelibly etching things besides kills and slaughters into his mind made for a nice change.

As they were patrolling one of Naruto's radius clones had dispelled and alerted them to this little fight going on, and Sasuke had pulled out his plan for multi-nukenin pirates and Kakashi had approved its implementation. The kids hadn't lost their brutal honesty for self-evaluation, making the plan feasible.

Some flaws, but nothing that would necessarily get them killed if they were exploited, so he felt no compunctions about having a shadow clone watch over them while he-himself went after the nukenin in charge. If any of those flaws were exploited, it would be a valuable teaching experience.

So here they were, hiding in a poorly secured lifeboat (flaw one) under a mild nothing-to-see-here genjutsu Sakura had learned the second day of their mission (sort of flaw) and sabotaging the people they could to give the Konoha-nin an edge that they sorely needed.

Kakashi-himself and Kakashi-ni were taking care of the commanding nukenin and his second in command, respectively. Kakashi-ni was actually aiding the chunnin commander from the B-rank escort mission, who was dealing with the second in command. A high chunnin verging on jounin rank, if Kakashi were to guess. A little easy to goad, and not enough skill to back it up. Right now it was just a waiting game for an opening that was actually exploitable without self-sacrifice.

Now the nukenin that Kakashi-himself was dealing with actually seemed a competent jounin and very well versed in water-techniques and shipboard fighting, giving him the homeground advantage. He also didn't seem to particularly care about collateral damage, oddly enough.

There might be valuable information on this ship that he wouldn't want to have fall into their hands, not something that could be moved or was worth money, otherwise he wouldn't want it destroyed, but something that was dangerous to leave around where they could access it.

"Maa, Naruto," he said, the genin looking over at him briefly, "Hai sensei?"

"Make a couple clones and have them sneak aboard and get below decks. I want to know what sort of information they have – read what documents you can and dispel, if you can't get them out. If you can secure them and we manage to secure the ship, all the better, but just in case, read some first."

"What are we looking for?" Naruto asked, brow furrowed, Sakura glancing over at him and biting her lower lip.

Bad habit that, "Stop that Sakura, if you get startled you'll bite through your own lip and that is just as painful as it sounds, trust me."

She quickly released her lip and said, "Hai sensei!" before turning back to the watching the fight with Sasuke.

Kakashi then answered Naruto, "You want to keep an eye out for things regarding where they were last, if they're receiving orders from anyone, if they're in correspondence with people – how did they know this convoy was here, is this his only ship – things like that."

"Right – I'll do my best," Naruto said, clearly somewhat dubious, but he made a total of five clones that darted through the fights in henges of various forms – the crab was ingenious – and quickly made it below decks (one jumped off the side and squeezed through a porthole, nice flexibility demonstration). Kakashi-ichi just nodded and sat back against the stern again, returning the majority of his focus to his students' participation in the fight, while a side-focus was in reading his marvelous text.

He'd caught up on Icha Icha, and with eidetic memory, even without the Sharingan, it wasn't worth rereading it as much as he always seemed to. Instead, he kept the jackets and put them on similarly sized books – this one was a recent find from the Hokage's personal library before he'd been assigned Team 7; a bribe, he was sure.

Well, he wasn't going to say no to incentives like this. The affinity enhancement and growth techniques and theories described here were fascinating and utterly new to him.

Oh, there went the second in command. Lovely.

And there went the chunnin commander to chakra exhaustion. Sigh.

"Naruto, ally evac, over there," Sakura pointed, Naruto nodding and adding another two clones to the count and they didn't bother with subtlety (well, they did – one henged into Sasuke), simply blitzing over to the downed chunnin and grabbing him before jumping off the side of the ship to land on the waves, running towards one of the merchant ships the pirates had never had a chance to reach, the Sasuke-clone deflecting kunai and shuriken as if he really were an Uchiha.

Hmm. Something to investigate.

He turned the page, watching with quite a bit of self-satisfied contentment as his students took down another pirate via distraction while a chunnin dealt the final blow. They were doing quite nicely, and had yet to make a direct kill between the three of them (though he didn't know what Naruto's shadow clones were doing – note, deal with that later) so he didn't have to be stuck with that counseling job just yet.

Seemed the pirates were panicking – oh, another nukenin down. Not a surprise really, the man relied entirely on earth techniques and they were on the ocean, gave him little to work with. Probably was in charge of hiding their goodies, especially if they went the stereotypical bury a stash on an island route.

Ah. Kakashi-himself and Kakashi-ni had gotten the head down, at last. Dead it seemed, rather than captured for interrogation. Unfortunate, but with the ship still intact and Naruto-clones swarming for data, they would hopefully get some answers.

There went the rest of the crew, and some even surrendered peacefully. More chances for answers.

For the usual first-time C-rank complication, this wasn't so bad. Seeing as he was no longer needed, he could dispel at will. Three Kakashi's was a little much after all.

Kakashi-himself blinked, memories from his first shadow clone merging and meshing with his own quickly and efficiently – he had a lot of practice at it, after all. Another blink, and his second clone's memories were assimilated as well. There was that done.

"Hatake-senpai!" the ranking chunnin nodded shortly, "Prisoners secured."

"Excellent. Genin!" he called, giving them the 'approach, caution' sign he'd pounded into their heads even more over the past few days (one day of communicating in nothing but hand-signs had made them very… creatively metaphorical).

Sakura released her genjutsu before the genin jumped onto the deck and Kakashi was smugly dissatisfied with the wide-eyed look on the three remaining chunnin's faces. Really, they were in the middle of a melee battle with nukenin, and they couldn't detect a genjutsu concealing something on a lifeboat? That was going to get them killed one day.

"May I introduce my genin team," Kakashi said formally as they walked over, "Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto – Team Seven, assigned shore patrol on the Wave stretch when we spotted the fight out here and came to reinforce Konoha."

"Our thanks," the senior bowed slightly, splitting his attention between Kakashi and his children, "I'm Watanabe Keigo, these two are Byaku Ichigo and Uryuu Renji. Our commander is Natsu Yamato – I believe he was evacuated?"

"He's on the main merchant ship receiving medical treatment from their shipboard doctor – just chakra exhaustion and some minor stuff," Naruto supplied, Kakashi nodding and asking, "Lower decks clear?"

There was a flickering across his eyes – damn. He had killed down there then. "Not sure, sensei. Only have a couple clones left in there, searching the office. There were – " he hesitated, casting an uneasy glance at his teammates (Sakura in particular – and unfortunately, he had a feeling he knew exactly what sort of cargo was giving him trouble).

"Odd cargos?" Kakashi supplied, Naruto's quick grateful look noted by his teammates but not commented on – they'd corner him later, he was sure. "Hai sensei, odd cargos."

"Hmm. You three will guard the prisoners – Watanabe-san, do any of you know how to operate this rig?"

"Hai, especially with jutsus. Two of us can manage it for short distances."

"We're not going anywhere – we're dropping anchor. The merchant rigs aren't damaged and at risk of sinking. I want two of you to go over there and relay a message that the fight is over and we would appreciate assistance bringing these criminals in to port so they can face lawful repercussions for their actions and appropriate reparations can be made," Kakashi ordered, making his orders a little more in-depth than he normally would so his genin would understand what was going on – and so the men (and one woman, interesting) would sweat.

"Hai Hatake-san, at once! Byaku-san, with me!" the two chunnin quickly dropped the anchor and vanished over the side.

"Anything I can help with, Hatake-san?" Uryuu Renji asked, raising his hand slightly with a wry smile, "Afraid I'm the newbie on this run – at least so far as ships go. Cut my teeth near Kaze no Kuni, bit of a different environment."

Kakashi snorted, that was something of an understatement, even if Rivers was along that stretch. But it meant he might have picked up some wind-jutsus, and while he knew quite a few thanks to his eye and his sensei, there might be some new ones, and more importantly some basic ones, that he could steal for Naruto. Something to think about later.

Biting on his thumb and flashing through seals, Pakkun and Bull appeared in a billow of smoke, the two ninken shaking themselves and looking around curiously, "What's up, boss?" Pakkun asked, looking at the bound pirates in disdain, "Need help taking out the trash?"

"Not this time Pakkun, at least not yet," Kakashi chuckled, "Need you to keep an eye on them and my brats with Bull while Uryuu-san and I clear the holds of the ship."

"You spawned? Kami save us all," Pakkun said dryly, Naruto indignantly crying, "Hey!" even while Sakura smacked him and Sasuke gave a sigh that spoke volumes.

The boy was talented.

"Maa, maa, no. These are my little genin minions! Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura – you three, these are two of my ninken, we'll have to introduce you to the others at some point. Pakkun's the pug with good smelling fur and soft paws, Bull's the big guy that's great at intimidation."

"Yo," both dogs said in unison, waving their paws in imitations of hellos. Sakura looked about ready to explode at cuteness, so Kakashi quickly collected Uryuu and left. Those two didn't look like much – even Bull, to a shinobi's eyes – but they were entirely capable of taking down jounin level opponents and had in fact run up to A-rank missions on their own when he was particularly slammed in ANBU solos.

He may suck at teaching humans, but give him puppies and he'd make a viciously loyal and intelligent team that could by kami get the job done. Took a bit longer, since he had to raise them from puppyhood, but hey – they were much easier to understand than people.

"So, not that I don't trust your ninken, but is leaving them up there with no higher ranked shinobi a good idea?" Uryuu asked bluntly, following him down into the hold with a pair of kunai in hand. Kakashi was listening carefully for anyone – it was hard to detect by smell in this reeking mess of humanity, sea salt and tar – but still answered, "My team can handle them – " maybe, thank kami for dogs " – and Naruto reported slaves."

"Ah," Uryuu nodded, apparently figuring that Kakashi was one of those jounin sensei who tried to shelter his team as much as possible.

Not really, but yes really. He just couldn't afford to shelter them as much as that type of sensei stereotypically did. They couldn't afford it if they wanted to live, and they did, and he wanted them to as well, so there you had it. He couldn't shelter them that much.

But he'd take what he could get.

One inexpertly killed pirate sprawled across the gangway – check. Another shoved into a broken beam and impaled – still twitching, a slash across the neck took care of that one. Various signs of chaos and destruction made it easy enough to find the office Naruto had been talking about. It was a fairly spacious room for a ship – three small portholes along the side, looked like the merchant ships were drawing closer – and had papers all over the place, two clones sorting through it all.

It was also where the would-be pirate-lord spent the majority of his time, evidenced by the bed that took up half of the room and the rather attractive concubine that took up half the bed. She was a classical beauty, out of Tea if he had to guess, and had an admirable sense of poise. Despite two identical genin sorting through her former employer's things, she was draped over cushions with a very deliberately placed robe covering the most essential of her assets and drinking tea.

"Ah, shinobi-san," she gave a demure smile, Kakashi acknowledging another professional with a nod, "I suppose Nakikaze-san is dead then? A shame. He had yet to pay me in full."

"Maa, if you can produce your contract and we can find his stash, we can probably come to some sort of severance agreement," Kakashi shrugged. It was a standard practice for Konoha, kept people from feeling cheated out of their paychecks and souring relations. Besides, these sorts usually kept extra money around so they seldom came up short.

But he had more important things to worry about right now, the woman could clearly take care of herself.

"Naruto," he nodded to his student, approaching the one that actually looked up at him, sitting cross-legged on top of the late Nakikaze's desk, "What have you found?"

"It's weird sensei," Naruto-ichi said, rubbing the back of his head, "Most of the maps are for Wave itself – but we're a little south for that, I think. And there's some coded correspondence, but I suck at codes, so I just put that aside for you or Sakura-chan, and then there's his book-keeping and he had like three books all that had different numbers and that's what he's working on and then it looks like he has agreements with someone based on the repetition in the books and there's some sort of pattern in these log entries as to targets but I just can't figure it. Oh, and this is Momoko-san, she's pretty cool."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the clearly adopted name, while Uryuu actually choked. Naruto either didn't get the pun or didn't think it was that funny – oddly, he couldn't decide which side was more likely.

"Well done, Naruto. Now, the unusual cargos? I assume they are not so willingly or well treated as Momoko-san."

"No," Naruto-ichi winced. "I've got three trying to make them more comfortable – we found keys and stuff. Most of them apparently haven't been stuck down there for long, it's a recent raid or whatever you call it. So… there's that. I guess."

"Fortunately, Nakikaze wasn't much, but he was a businessman," Momoko said coolly, sitting up and casually dropping her robe to don mildly more appropriate garb. Naruto flushed and looked away – Kakashi just gave a critical once over and ignored her and if he wasn't mistaken, Uryuu was ogling. Idiot would be eaten alive if this was his self-control.

"Meaning he treated his cargo relatively well," Kakashi explained to Naruto, who looked slightly nauseous at the idea of treating humans as cargo, but he was holding up rather well all things considered. "Unlikely we'll be dealing with the usual liberties taken by crews then?"

"It happened once," Momoko gave an icy smile, "I was permitted to castrate them."

"Do you have ambitions for violence?" Kakashi asked mildly, (Uryuu shuddered – it was a near automatic reaction for most males at the mention of castration, oddly enough), and she returned it with a cool disdain, replying, "Please. I desire comfort with occasional dashes of excitement. Repeated violence is far too much work."

Good, he hadn't read her wrong. He'd met women (and one man) like her before and while he didn't understand their lifestyle, it was what they chose and they were damn good at it. He could respect someone with that sort of dedication to their life's work, especially since they, too, were viewed as less-than-human by most everyday people.

"Then we may be able to come to an agreement," he replied, and Momoko snapped her fan open in front of her face, saying coyly, "I look forward to it."

"Kindly stay here for the time being," Kakashi said shortly, "One of you, with me. Uryuu – " one look at the man told Kakashi he wasn't going to be much good on this one. Been at sea a little too long, or just very susceptible to women. That was going to go into his report, most definitely.

"Oh could he stay here?" Momoko asked, a breathless tremor in her voice, expertly faked. He would have rolled his eye, but it was too much effort, "I'd feel so much better of a brave strong shinobi were here to keep me safe."

It was a good thing Uryuu's back was to him, because he was unable to prevent casting her a disbelieving look – that was laying it on a little thick – oh for kami's sake!

"I'll gladly stay behind, Hatake-senpai, if that is what you order, of course," Uryuu was thinking with his little head. Would serve him right if she were some maneating monster that clipped it for him, unprofessional idiot. Even Naruto was giving him an 'are you kidding' look – Naruto! The boy who still wore neon orange pants!

"Fine," Kakashi said shortly, "Narutos, all of you with me."

The door shut behind them, two Narutos carrying the encoded letters and the accounting books – good forethought – and Naruto-ichi saying, "She's gonna eat him alive."

"Hopefully not literally," Kakashi replied dryly, "Two with the books, go up to the main deck, greet the other chunnin, because they should be here right now, and send some of the merchant's crew down to help bring the people up to the main deck. Get some shelter set up or something."

"And Uryuu-san and Momoko-san?" Naruto-ichi asked, the other two darting off.

"Oh I'm sure they'll be just fine."

***===***pagebreak***===***

That evening found Team 7 on the liberated pirate ship with some of the merchant crew sailing the vessel with the rest of the little convoy. The slaves had been freed and scattered to the other ships, a chunnin on each taking care of information gathering on that front. They'd found the money stash and records quickly enough once the boat was cleared and the actual prisoners secured – seals, had to love them – and with any luck the bounties on the pirates would be enough to cover a bit for each of the freed slaves and get them somewhat on their feet.

Meh. Not his problem anymore. He had enough to deal with between his students and ensuring Momoko-san was dealt with properly before they left to finish their patrol. She had requested to stay on board this vessel so she could pack and, as she'd technically not done anything illegal, and technically was an indentured-servant-and-slave-in-all-but-name-and-reality, she wasn't going to be prosecuted for anything.

The contract she'd pulled up and they'd found a copy of was a masterpiece, truly. He was keeping the copy for posterity.

Concubine aside, he had to debrief his baby genin.

They were up on the highest deck, sleeping bags set up and the three in a circle with their heads together, so they could pretend to secretly whisper to each other in the middle of the night (seriously, it was kind of annoying) but right now the three were just sitting there on top of their bedrolls and playing some form of card game.

"All right, you three up for a debrief?" Kakashi asked rhetorically, sitting down and resting his back against the hull of the ship, the three turning to face him and giving some sign of assent.

"Sakura, report."

She stammered a bit, had some awkward pauses, but over-all, a solid first combat report. She seemed a little shaky, probably finally coming off the adrenaline high, but still rather solid. Good, one down.

Sasuke came next, and he was very composed, almost entirely professional. A few slips here and there gave away his jitters though, first combat was always a bit of a dicey one, but overall, good. Helped that he and Sakura didn't directly fight, not really, they plotted and ambushed. Made things a little easier – good. He was easing them into this shinobi business, even if they were sent out weeks too early on this mission.

Now Naruto's – that was the one he really needed to hear.

Followed the others rather well, though a bit disjointed thanks to his ridiculous use of Kage bunshin. He might need to come up with an entirely separate reporting style to make sense of all that simultaneous input… at the very least he'd need to work on coherently reporting it, Kakashi understood it because he understood the problem, but if this were written out as spoken other readers would be confused beyond belief.

Turns out he'd killed five – counting the one that he'd left twitching that Kakashi had finished off, but Naruto had thought he'd been dead so the response was the same as if he had finished the job. No need to tell him he'd left a pirate to suffer.

Sakura and Sasuke were both uneasy at that report in their own ways. Sakura was pale faced and staring at her hands, Sasuke was grimly blank and staring into the distance, eyes dark. While they hadn't killed personally, they'd watched people die as a result of their interference and were now hearing about the results of individual combat from their teammate, a peer in age and relative maturity.

"You two, go spar on the water for a bit, Pakkun will go with you," Kakashi said, the pug grumbling but getting up off his pillow and following the two genin briskly enough. Kakashi could give a whistle and Pakkun would hustle them back, and could relay any potential breakdowns Kakashi would have to deal with aside from the 'yay first blood!' speech.

"So. Naruto. How are you feeling?" Kakashi winced, that was the worst opener ever. He knew that from all his experience as a shinobi, but how else did you open that line of conversation? Well, besides a rough 'congratulations you're officially an adult now' which he didn't think would go over well.

It hadn't exactly gone over well when he gave that speech to Rin – though not as badly as his attempt at reassurance when she'd stared at him in horror.

In hindsight, "Don't worry, you'll get down the technique to kill them fast so they don't spasm so much soon enough," hadn't exactly been reassuring. But at least it'd been honest.

"…Kind of gross," Naruto mumbled, "I mean – yeah. It's our job, and they were clearly jerks, but… we're trying the rest of these guys, right? I just – maybe it would have been better, that way?"

Kakashi hummed to stall for time, saying carefully, "Well, given the laws of Fire Country regarding slavery and piracy, quite a few of these pirates are going to be sentenced to death."

"So because they would have died anyway, it's okay?" Naruto asked, voice surprisingly sardonic.

"Maa, just something to consider a comfort in this case," Kakashi shrugged, continuing bluntly, "You won't have that all the time, Naruto."

The blonde flinched, looking away before he nodded slightly, "Yeah – yeah. I get that. But – it's not, I mean – they were fast, I didn't have time to really, think about it but that last guy with the people there was – umm. I could have stopped them. But – I didn't."

"Did you enjoy it? Watching?" Kakashi asked bluntly, because that death hadn't exactly been an easy one. Not the hardest he'd seen, not even close, but harder than the gut-skewer he'd finished.

"No!" Naruto cried, aghast, "It just – it just didn't seem my place, to tell them to stop, you know? I mean, I'd killed those other guys, and they'd been the ones hurt by them, so… why shouldn't they get to finish that guy? It was gross, sensei. It was – it was nasty."

Don't tell him he'll see worse soon enough, genin. Remember. Baby genin, Kakashi reminded himself, saying finally, "Okay. Naruto – listen. This is important."

The genin looked up at him, blue eyes suspiciously shiny (no tears no tears please sweet merciful kami no tears!) and Kakashi was careful to meet his eyes as best he could while he said, "You'll remember these men. You'll remember them for the rest of your life. Others might blur together, might grow indistinct, but from everyone I've spoken to – you remember your first. What you need to remind yourself of is this – first. You were in combat. They were going to try to kill you – they struck some killing blows on your clones, didn't they? And they thought your clones were really you."

Naruto nodded, good, he was thinking still.

"Second, everyone dies. There's no avoiding that. What we do is no crime against nature. The act of dying is natural. Got that?"

Another nod – right, that was the thank god it was a combat kill bit, then the natural laws revulsion bit, now what was he missing? Better luck on quick kills next time? At least you didn't have to kill any kids, just wait till you get to my age? No, bad sensei!

"What is also natural is to feel some satisfaction in it, it's simple instinct. You are alive, your opponent is dead, of course you're going to be satisfied, be pleased. Satisfaction in surviving, in a job well done, does not make you a monster," Naruto perked up at that, a little twitch of interest – aha! He'd found the problem! "It makes you human," he said, leaning in slightly and resting a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "It makes you human, Naruto-kun. The problem comes when your first instinct is to kill, when you seek to kill outside the mission, off the field, because you enjoy it. And even then – it is manageable, with help."

Best stop there, he didn't need to talk about the sociopath management program all shinobi villages had. Enough that Naruto knew he wasn't a monster (of course that's what he had been worried about, with the kyuubi revealed so recently) and knew that there was help there, should he ever go down that path (oh please no, not Naruto, not sensei's son).

Naruto leaned into the contact, Kakashi hesitating briefly before shifting his arm entirely around the boy's shoulders, tugging him into his side. Naruto tensed for a moment but quickly sagged against him, not trembling thank kami, just taking the comfort offered.

All things considered, that had gone rather well.

Now for the other two.

Why had he ever agreed to this? Damn you Sandaime-sama!

***===***pagebreak***===***

"Sucks that we couldn't just catch a lift with the ships," Naruto grumbled, glowering at the ever-smaller ships in question the next morning.

"Maa, we need to finish our mission, Naruto," Kakashi replied, reading through the coded messages he had taken from the stash. They were tucked into the pages of his book of course, he had a reputation to maintain. It was tantalizingly familiar, and he had gotten a tip from Momoko-san before they departed this morning. Apparently, Uryuu's unprofessionalism had not won the team any points with the concubine.

An impressive woman, truly.

"Only three more days!" Sakura chirped, nudging Naruto with her elbow. She'd been much more comfortable with initiating contact with him since Kakashi had sat all three of them down for a little chat about kills (one down, two to go). She was taking to the supportive teammate role with gusto – bravo, Sakura-chan. Keep it coming. "And besides, didn't you want to see some more tide-pools? Maybe there'll be a sea cucumber in the next ones!"

Kakashi chuckled at the suddenly renewed enthusiasm on Naruto's part, the boy pelting after Sasuke with a challenging whoop and the Uchiha answering with a glower before picking up the pace, Sakura racing after them with an indignant shout to wait up. For a morning-after, this wasn't bad. This wasn't bad at all.

His good mood had soured by the time they'd finished for the day – an early finish, barely midafternoon, because they'd found a beach with truly magnificent tide-pools and he was feeling generous. The reason for his bad mood?

Oh nothing much, he'd simply broken the code on those letters and found that a merchant powerhouse was working to take over Wave and use it as a power base for all sorts of less-than-legal and, even worse, unauthorized operations all along the Hi no Kuni shoreline and even further inland. Gatou Corporation – even he, shinobi-focused as he was, had heard of that civilian powerhouse and now it seemed that the little rat was going to be trying his hand at the management of a nation.

And piss-poor management at that. What sort of labor pool did he expect if he was selling off all the people as slave labor and making them miserable? Easier to be feared than loved, but in the long term, far less profitable. If he were on his own, right now would be the perfect time to execute one of his independently organized solo missions and kill the man, clear out his accounts and leave the entire country of Wave gratefully indebted to Konoha while bringing in a killer profit margin.

But he had three baby genin with him, so his right to spontaneously accept or craft profitable missions for Konoha thanks to the Sandaime's trust was rightly waived.

But the potential…

"Sensei!" Sakura called, waving him over to a tide-pool, a brilliant smile on her face. "Sensei look! A trapped fish!"

He obediently came over and peered into the pool and she was right, there was indeed a trapped fish. Given her obsessive reading material this past week, he knew just what she was going to ask and he pre-empted her, nodding and saying, "Go for it, Sakura-chan. Good initiative."

She beamed, crouching down and clearly anchoring herself with chakra to the rocks, reaching in to catch the fish in a flash – good reflexes too. Such improvement!

He kept her struggles with the fish in his peripheral vision while he scanned for Naruto and Sasuke – it seemed they were hunting for dinner. Momoko-san had mentioned that sea urchins were marvelous delicacies and they'd decided they wanted to try it, after Kakashi had confirmed that yes, sea urchins were, in fact, edible with the right preparation.

Not that he really knew the proper preparation beyond the basics of not poisoning yourself, but hey. It'd be an adventure. Had to be better than those blasted mountain-scrabblers from Nami no Kuni.

They had two days until they reached town and concluded their shore-patrol mission. Tomorrow they'd be checking on an outpost, which would have messenger hawks – given distance, if he sent an urgent intelligence update to the Hokage, they'd hopefully have a reply waiting for them in Keiharu Port so he would be able to get instruction as to how to deal with Gatou and the slavery ring they'd disrupted.

There were quite a few things that the hidden villages tolerated that were abhorrent and disgusting to civilians, both in and out of government. Slavery was not one of them.

Brainwashing and child-killers on the other hand, well, for the greater good, neh?

Mentally dismissing that particular line of thought, he turned in time to catch Sakura's whoop of success with her resurrected fish full on, headband sliding aside as his Sharingan gleamed. Precious memories, he had learned, lessened the burden of memory the Sharingan enforced. Had he been allowed to submit his theories to the Uchiha, he would have suggested activating the Sharingan in pleasurable and amusing situations with an at least one to three ratio for mission activations, particularly those involving kills or other traumatic situations.

Needless to say, he had not ever been able to present this recommendation.

Though now that the Uchiha were gone, there was no telling what he could suggest to his little student. Hmm… something to consider, once his Sharingan was activated.

If Sasuke didn't manage it on this mission, he might have to request some ANBU assistance in the matter – because if he didn't arrange it directly, he wasn't breaking his word to the brats to not set a foreign nin on them, nor was he violating the implicit promise that he wouldn't set domestic nin on them either, unless they committed a crime.

Also, they were surprisingly good at reading body language and responding to it – if he wasn't genuinely surprised by the incident in question, he couldn't guarantee that their subconscious wouldn't register that as off, which could cause problems down the road. Problems he most certainly didn't need.

"Neh, sensei!" Naruto bellowed, sprinting across the sand – and not sinking in at all. Excellent, they'd adapted their chakra control exercises to the environment. "We have six sea urchins each, that should be enough to sample, right?"

"Maa, sounds like plenty, Naruto," Kakashi agreed, "Now congratulate your teammate, she's done her first successful iryo-jutsu!"

"Wahoo! Go Sakura-chan!" Naruto whooped, beaming at her and bounding up to stare at the flopping fish, "That's so awesome! Hey! Sasuke-teme! Check out what Sakura-chan did!"

Even the Uchiha agreed it was impressive and congratulated her, if with less bouncing around and gleeful whoops of how 'utterly badass' she now was. Judging by the brilliant smile and pleased flush on Sakura's face, both her teammates' responses were more than appreciated. Which meant she'd work that much harder at iryo-jutsu, and if she combined that with the genjutsus she was getting a taste for –

She would make a lovely infiltrator-assassin when she was older, in multiple senses of the word.

"That's enough kids, let's calm down now, or do you not want to learn anything new today?" Kakashi suppressed a snicker as they all immediately quieted down and assembled in front of him, balanced on water-slick rocks as the waves crashed around them. Between Sakura's struggling fish and the boys' arms of sea-urchins, they looked like baby uminin!

Sharingan photo-op!

And Sasuke twitched, going wide-eyed at the sight of his family's dojutsu.

Score.

"Sensei – is that – a sharingan?" he asked, clearly only just managing to not stumble over his words entirely.

"Hai," Kakashi replied, looking over at him with bemused confusion (this was a little surprising after all), "Did you not know I had one?"

"No sensei, I didn't," Sasuke replied stiffly, and Kakashi sighed, rolling his uncovered eye to the heavens in a mock prayer for patience (supplemented with a real one, because one could always use a little more patience).

"Ano – the sharingan is the Uchiha bloodline dojutsu, correct?" Sakura asked, fish now deposited back in its tide-pool. "And – isn't Sasuke the last one?"

"Last one worth mentioning, at least," Naruto corrected nudging Sasuke with his foot, Sakura nodding agreement.

"He is," Kakashi agreed, they had a lovely way of putting it after all, "I – received this one from a teammate who was dying to replace the one I lost helping him."

Obito. I won't fail your cousin, not again, not this time, he vowed, watching the three exchange glances and the other two flank their shaken teammate protectively. Barely over a month, and they were already doing so fucking well it was incredible. He was either a really good teacher, or they were just a really brilliant bunch.

He knew which one he was laying his money on.

"Maa, well. This is awkward," Kakashi rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Right. Let's get settled at the campsite and I'll explain, neh?"

They quietly followed him up to where he'd deposited their stuff with a Naruto-clone as a sentry, the clone dispelling the moment they came into sight and Naruto relaying, "Nothing happened, sensei."

"Thank you Naruto," he acknowledged, taking a seat by his pack and lounging against it, the genin dumping their sea urchins in a pile in front of him and clustering around it.

"For prepping those, you split them open, scoop out the soft insides, and cook that," he informed them, pointing at the pile. Sakura nodded and pulled out his flat pan – she'd quite happily taken over cooking and he was quite happy to let her. She was much better at it than he was – apparently cooking at home was her prime bonding time with her mother.

Naruto and Sasuke agreeably started splitting open sea urchins with their kunai, surprisingly not turning it into a race. They wanted to hear this explanation then – good. They could put aside their rivalry for a common, relatively minor goal.

"Uchiha Obito was my teammate, along with a Nohara Rin," Kakashi explained, deciding to give them a very, very abbreviated version of what had happened. If they were really interested, he might tell them more later.

Much later.

"On a mission where I had command during the Third War, Rin was captured. During the course of rescuing her, Obito activated his sharingan for the first time, I lost my left eye and one of the enemy nin triggered a cave-in and Obito shoved me out of the way of collapsing rock and was crushed," Kakashi inhaled deeply and continued as casually as he could, "He wasn't killed immediately and requested that Rin, a medic herself, transplant his left sharingan eye into my eye-socket – eye for an eye, and then he'd get to see the world even after he passed. There was some conflict with the Uchiha clan over whether I would keep his eye, but it was decided that Obito's dying wish would be respected, though there was always some tension regarding it. That is why I am surprised it was never mentioned to you, Sasuke – your father was… rather vocal, in accusing me of line-theft."

Sasuke flinched slightly at the mention of his father, but nodded slowly, "I see his point. But other Uchiha have left their eyes to relatives before – if the transplant held, it showed you were worthy of the honor. And now – that's why you were picked as our sensei."

"One of multiple reasons," Kakashi agreed, "The main one, and the main reason that the council gave me that blasted order."

"Fucking asshats," Naruto grumbled, before perking up, "Hey sensei – I had an idea for team training!"

Raising an eyebrow at the shift in tone, Kakashi asked, "Oh?"

"Yeah!" Naruto gave a grin that was unnerving in its potential for sheer chaos, "Prank the council! It'd give us a good background for future sabotage and espionage missions, and depending on the prank an argument could be made that they give us experience in things like assassination, trap building and escape and evasion, all at the same time!"

He flung his shelled sea urchin in the air, a beaming grin on his face, "Come on sensei, it's genius!"

"It is a good point," Sakura agreed virtuously, the innocent air she projected utterly ruined by the gleam in her eyes, "It would be a good exercise, I think, sensei. Sasuke?"

"Hn," was enough of a response, the interested smirk on his face confirmed his interest.

Kakashi wanted to laugh, because how utterly Uzumaki of the boy. He didn't see why not, but he saw no reason they wouldn't have to work for it.

"We'll need to run it by the Hokage, but in the meantime, scheme away," Kakashi shrugged, "Just know if you are caught, I disown all responsibility and you will pay your time however the authorities deem fit."

"So, like an off the book mission?" Sasuke asked slyly, Naruto whooping and Sakura stifling a giggle. Kakashi let a chuckle escape at that, leaning back against his pack contentedly. Any thoughts of learning something new from him vanished as they started debating just what they should do and which members they should target – or if they should go for broke and prank the whole place.

Politics, infiltration, sabotage, traps and sheer, unadulterated audacity.

Team-building indeed.

A/N: So, some light-hearted stuff, some serious stuff, and some adorable stuff. Where did Momoko-san come from? I have no freaking clue. But it worked, I think. And sea urchins? Uhh... sounds legit, right? Some of them ARE edible... got the next 2 chapters basically done, so they'll probably go up in a day or two. Yeah Wave :)! Thanks for reading please review!