They left the Hokage's office, and a heavy, uncomfortable silence settled between them. Kakashi and Kurenai walked ahead, their faces impassive masks of shinobi discipline. Behind them, the genin followed in a disorganized silence, each caught in their own internal storm.
No, the thought echoed in Sakura's mind, over and over, a dull, persistent beat. Just no. It can't end like this. What are we supposed to do? Sit in the hospital waiting room and count the cracks in the ceiling, waiting for Sasuke to…? No. I refuse. There has to be another way. There has to be. We haven't come this far just to be stopped by a damn piece of paper.
She glanced sideways at Naruto. He was walking with his head down, his shoulders tense and his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. She could feel the fury radiating from him, a contained energy about to burst.
The village comes first. The village comes first. I get it. I really do! I want to protect the village more than anyone! Naruto thought as he kicked a small loose stone in the hallway. But Sasuke… Sasuke is part of the village! He's a Konoha shinobi! How can you protect the village if you let its people die? It makes no sense! It's like saying you'll protect a bowl of ramen by letting the noodles get cold. It just doesn't work that way!
The silence finally became unbearable for Kiba, who quickened his pace to walk beside Naruto.
"This is bullshit," he muttered, low enough for only the genin to hear. Akamaru whimpered in his jacket, sensing his owner's agitation.
"It's not bullshit, it's an order," Shino replied, his tone as monotonous as ever, though he had moved closer to join the conversation. "A logically flawed order, but an order nonetheless."
"So what? We just accept it?" Kiba snapped, turning to him. "We let Sasuke rot in that bed?"
"I have not suggested a solution. I have merely classified the situation," Shino answered, adjusting his glasses.
"Both of you, shut up," Sakura whispered, her voice tense. "Not now."
They didn't speak again until they reached an empty training ground, bathed in the golden light of sunset. The wooden training posts were marked with thousands of kunai cuts and fist dents, silent witnesses to countless past battles. Kakashi stopped in the center of the field and turned to face them. His posture was relaxed, but his single visible eye was distant and cold. Kurenai stood beside him, arms crossed, watching her own team with an unreadable expression.
There was a moment of expectant silence. The genin stared at him, waiting for something. An explanation. A word of encouragement. A secret plan. Anything.
"Well, Sensei?" Naruto finally asked, his voice trembling slightly with restrained anger. "What do we do now?"
Kakashi stared at him, his gaze passing over each of their tense faces.
"Go home. Get some rest," he said, his voice flat. "The Hokage's decision is final."
"REST?!"
Naruto's explosion was so sudden and so full of raw fury that everyone, even Kurenai, flinched. Akamaru barked, startled by the outburst.
"HOW CAN WE REST?!" he shouted, taking an aggressive step forward, his face contorted with disbelief and a deep sense of betrayal. "Sasuke is in a hospital bed, slowly dying, and you just told us to go home and sleep! What kind of sensei are you?!"
"Naruto, calm down," Kurenai tried, but her voice was drowned out by the boy's rage.
"No, I won't calm down!" Naruto continued, pointing an accusing finger at Kakashi. "You're supposed to teach us to never abandon a comrade! It was the first thing you taught us! 'Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.' Were those just pretty words? A speech to get us to pass a test?"
Kiba, who had been seething in silence, erupted beside him, standing next to Naruto like a supporting soldier.
"He's right! That's completely insane!" he barked. "We can't just stand by and wait for him to die! We fought together in the Land of Waves! We bled together! We're not going to leave him behind now!"
Hinata, normally quiet and withdrawn, took a step forward. Her movement was small, almost hesitant, but all eyes fell on her.
"Kakashi-sensei… please," she said, clasping her hands in front of her. "Sasuke-kun is our comrade. We can't abandon him. It wouldn't be right."
Even Shino, the pillar of logic and calm, moved. He adjusted his sunglasses, the dark lenses reflecting the orange sunset sky.
"I also agree. Abandoning an elite comrade for a bureaucratic protocol sets a dangerous precedent for the future loyalty of shinobi."
Sakura remained silent. But her silence was louder than Naruto's shouts. Her fists were clenched at her sides, her knuckles white from the pressure. Her green eyes were fixed on Kakashi. She was waiting. Waiting for him to say something, anything, that made sense. To prove that the man who taught them the value of camaraderie was still there, under that mask.
Kakashi didn't react to their anger. He didn't defend himself against their accusations. He simply looked at them, his single visible eye as cold and expressionless as that of an ANBU mask.
"Your feelings are irrelevant."
The sentence silenced them. Their rage was extinguished in an instant, replaced by a frozen disbelief. Naruto stood with his mouth open, speechless.
"The chain of command is absolute," Kakashi continued, his voice monotonous, devoid of all emotion. Each word was a nail in the coffin of their hopes. "You are genin. I am a jōnin. He is the Hokage. This discussion is over."
He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping over them one last time.
"Go home."
Without another word, without a final look of understanding or sympathy, his body dissolved into a swirl of leaves, disappearing in a shunshin. He left them alone in the training field, alone with their anger, their frustration, and the bitter feeling of being completely abandoned by the man they trusted most.
The silence he left behind was deafening. For a long moment, no one moved.
"Damn it," Kiba hissed through his teeth, punching a training post. "Damn it!"
Naruto looked at the empty space where his sensei had been, then down at his own hands.
"He left us," he said, his voice barely a broken whisper. "He just… left us."
"No," Sakura's voice cut through the air, cold and sharp as the edge of a scalpel. Everyone turned to look at her. She had stopped clenching her fists and was now looking at them all, her green eyes burning with an icy determination. "He hasn't left us. He's testing us."
"A test?" Kiba scoffed. "What kind of cruel test is this? Sasuke is dying!"
"Exactly," Sakura said. "He wants to see what we do. If we follow orders like good little soldiers or if we do what he taught us and fight for our comrade." She looked at Naruto, then at Kiba, Hinata, and Shino. "I don't care what the Hokage says, and I certainly don't care about an empty order from Kakashi-sensei. I'm not going to let Sasuke die."
Naruto lifted his head, the despair in his eyes replaced by a spark of Sakura's determination.
"Me neither," he said, his voice regaining its strength. "If they won't give us a mission, then we'll go without one."
"That would be desertion," Shino pointed out. "The consequences would be severe."
"So what? Does letting Sasuke die have no consequences?" Kiba retorted, crossing his arms. "I'm with Naruto and Sakura. To hell with the orders."
Everyone looked at Hinata. She nodded slowly, her usual shyness overshadowed by a quiet resolve.
"I'll go with you," she said softly. "For Sasuke-kun."
They looked at each other, a makeshift team forged in disobedience and loyalty. They were no longer Team 7 and Team 8. They were just a group of young ninja who refused to abandon one of their own.
*****
The sun had set completely, leaving the village bathed in the warm light of lanterns and the silvery glow of the moon. On the edge of a rooftop overlooking Konoha's bustling nightlife, Kakashi sat, his silhouette outlined against the starry sky. He watched the lights below, but his mind was elsewhere.
Soft footsteps approached from behind. He didn't turn. He knew who it was without looking.
Kurenai sat beside him, her legs dangling into the void. For a long minute, they said nothing. The only sound was the distant murmur of the village's nightlife and the wind blowing softly around them.
"You were hard on them," Kurenai finally said, breaking the silence. It wasn't an accusation, but a simple observation.
"Someone had to be," Kakashi replied, not taking his eyes off the village lights. "They're kids. Emotional. Impulsive. They don't understand how the world works."
"And how does the world work, Kakashi?" she asked, turning her head to look at him. "By letting a twelve year old boy die because the paperwork doesn't line up?"
"It's not just paperwork, Kurenai, and you know it," he retorted, his tone a little more defensive. "The village is vulnerable. The Chunin Exams bring in hundreds of foreign ninja. There's tension with Suna. The Hokage's priority is to maintain stability. Sending two jōnin and their teams on an unauthorized S-rank mission to find a rogue ninja is a risk he can't afford."
Kurenai let out a small laugh, a sound devoid of humor.
"Maybe the kids understand it better than we do. They saw a friend fall, and their first and only instinct is to move heaven and earth to save him. When did we lose that, Kakashi? On what S-rank mission was it torn out of us?"
He remained silent. She was right, and they both knew it. Somewhere along the way, between the missions, the wars, and the reports, simple loyalty had become complicated, tangled in bureaucracy and politics.
"The Hokage's decision is logical," he said, more to convince himself than her. "Protecting the village is the number one priority."
"And what village will we be protecting if we let its best and brightest youth die in a hospital bed?" she replied, her voice gaining intensity. She turned completely to face him, her red eyes glowing with a fierce light in the darkness. "We can't let Sasuke die, Kakashi. Not after everything they went through in the Land of Waves. Those kids forged something there. To break it now… would be an irreparable mistake."
She paused, letting her words sink in.
"And it's not just about Sasuke. We can't let Sakura's potential go to waste. She just manifested a Sannin-level healing ability out of pure instinct to save Sasuke. Did you read that part of the report? Pure instinct! Are we going to let that ability wither because of bureaucracy, or are we going to give her a chance for the world's best medical kunoichi to teach her how to use it?"
"And Naruto," she continued, not giving him time to respond. "He awakened the Kyuubi's chakra to protect me. These are not ordinary genin, Kakashi. They haven't been since the day they left the Academy, and we can't keep treating them as if they are. Demanding that they sit back and watch their friend die is asking the impossible of them."
Kakashi sighed, a long, tired sound that seemed to carry away some of his tension. He ran a hand through his silver hair, finally looking away from the village to meet Kurenai's eyes.
"So what do you suggest, Kurenai? That we defy a direct order from the Hokage? That we become rogue ninja for an unauthorized mission? They'd demote us, or worse, throw us in a cell and toss the key."
"No," she said, and a small, cunning smile appeared on her face, illuminating her features in the gloom. "I suggest we think like shinobi. We use the rules to break the rules."
Kakashi looked at her, curiosity finally overcoming his resignation. An eyebrow arched over his visible eye.
"The Hokage has forbidden us from authorizing an S-rank mission to find Tsunade," Kurenai said, laying out her idea slowly, savoring each word. "And we won't. That would be direct insubordination."
"Exactly," Kakashi said, not seeing where she was going.
"But…" she continued, leaning a little closer to him, "two commanding jōnin can authorize an 'extended survival training regimen outside the village' for their genin teams. Especially after a traumatic event like the Forest of Death invasion, to improve their skills and cohesion."
Kakashi's eyes widened as he understood the loophole. It was brilliant in its simplicity. A direct mockery of the bureaucracy that was tying their hands.
"It's not a mission," she continued, her smile widening. "There's no client. No payment. No official record in the mission file. It's simply… training. A very, very long training, which might just happen to take us along the routes of towns and villages where Tsunade was last seen. We'll look for information. We'll follow leads."
"And if anyone asks, we're teaching our genin advanced tracking and information gathering techniques in a real world environment," Kakashi added, picking up the thread, excitement returning to his voice for the first time that night.
"Exactly," Kurenai confirmed. "But if we get into trouble, we're on our own. The Hokage will deny any knowledge of it. If we're captured or killed, Konoha will say we were two jōnin who took irresponsible liberties with their teams. We'll be demoted, or worse. It's a huge risk."
Kakashi fell silent, weighing her words. It was insane. It was insubordination disguised as paperwork. It was an all or nothing gamble with Sasuke's life, his students' futures, and their own careers.
And it was the only option they had.
A slow smile, the first genuine one he had shown in days, formed under his mask.
"It sounds risky, illegal, and completely irresponsible," he said, the tone of his voice now much lighter.
Kurenai smiled back, a smile full of complicity and defiance.
"So?"
"I'm in," he replied without hesitation. "You prepare the forms. I'll prepare the gear." He stood up, stretching his muscles. "But we won't do it behind his back. Not completely."
Kurenai looked at him, confused. "What do you mean?"
"We're not traitors," Kakashi said, looking toward the Hokage Tower. "We're Konoha shinobi. We'll present him with this… proposal. We'll leave the training forms on his desk tonight. We'll give him a way to say yes without having to say it officially. We'll give him the chance to look the other way."
"Plausible deniability," Kurenai murmured, understanding the strategy. "We give him the chance to deny all knowledge if things go wrong."
"Exactly," Kakashi said. "It's the least we can do for the old man." He turned to Kurenai. "Gather your team at the north gate at dawn. I'll do the same with mine. We leave as soon as the sun rises."
"And what do we tell them?" she asked.
Kakashi looked toward the training ground where he had left them. He could imagine their frustration, their anger. But also their determination.
"We tell them we're going training. And that they'd better keep up."