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The story goes that the Sandaime, in a fit of unprecedented pique caused by his near-death experience at the hands of his former student, had descended upon the ANBU headquarters, terrified accountant trailing in his wake and rumbled, “Looks like it’s time to whip you lot into shape.”
The much more likely story—and the one that Kakashi’s more inclined to believe—is that the Hokage had nearly died, surviving by the skin of his teeth and the grace of the Gods. And during the long weeks of his convalescence, when he’d had nothing to do but think, he’d maybe thought, why’re we paying those guys when I’m the one who did all the work?
But, he supposes, the truth of one doesn’t preclude the other.
So three days after the audit, when the accountant emerges - still pale, still terrified - from the Hokage’s Office to announce that the ANBU corps is being downsized, Kakashi is the only one with the presence-of-mind to find him a chair because he’s the only one who’d seen the writing on the wall.
He is surprised when, after taking a seat, the accountant pulls an updated list of active members from his briefcase and Kakashi's name isn’t on it.
So he reads it again. And then one more time to be sure.
Rooster, Cat, Horse - all there on the list.
But no Hound.
There’s an ache that’s starting to build in Kakashi’s temples, or maybe his stomach, or maybe both— for the first time in a long time, Kakashi’s not sure what’s wrong with him.
He looks to the accountant for an explanation. The accountant doesn’t seem to have the energy to provide one, so Kakashi ignores the mumbled protests of his colleagues – former colleagues? fuck – and pushes through the heavy doors that lead to the Hokage’s office.
The solid oak chair and wide desk that lie at the far end of the room are painfully familiar—after all, Kakashi’s spent hundreds of carefully documented hours here in silence, because for ten years it had been his duty to ensure that the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf was safe. He’s missed dates to be here. He'd pulled a record 22 hour shift here, half-delirious with hunger and fatigue, but determined because it had been his job and his job has been his life. Thinking about it has the ache deepening to a soreness, until he just feels sick and hurt. And angry.
So when he storms up to the desk, he’s not thinking clearly anymore. It’s all emotion, straight from the heart.
“Excuse me, Hokage-sama” he says, “But what the fuck?”
~
Kakashi can’t take his eyes off the field.
It’s his favourite training field. He can admit that he’s been pretty spare with his emotional attachments over the last few years, but this is from before. This is the field that Minato-sensei had brought them to on their first day as genin.
Now it’s the field that Kakashi’s brought his own team to.
Not that he’d gotten a choice in the matter. In the quiet moments after his outburst in the Hokage’s Office, Kakashi had looked into the Hokage’s unimpressed face and fallen silent.
“Are you finished, son?” The Sandaime had asked, and waited patiently as Kakashi collapsed into the chair across the desk, and laid his head down with a subdued nod. It was the first time he’d ever sat in the chair and off the top of his head, Kakashi could name three T&I simulations that had more comfortable accommodations, because despite what he looked like, the Hokage was a twisted old man with a talent for mind-games.
“Kakashi,” The Hokage had said then.There was a rustle of paper above him, during which time Kakashi had considered that he’d never seen the desk cleaned in all his time keeping guard, and when he’d looked up, the Sandaime had smiled kindly down at him and said, “Do you really think I don’t have a plan?”
“I hope this can be a lesson for you in why your team always comes first,” Kakashi says now, almost awed by how full of shit the Hokage is, and painfully aware that he’s currently riding a wave of exhaustion that might genuinely kill him, maybe.
The kids don’t seem to have noticed how close they are to losing their Sensei. Sensei’s son – and hadn’t that been a fucking surprise, fucking Sarutobi, fucking fuck – has stopped arguing with the Uchiha kid long enough to start arguing with the pink-haired one instead, and in his absence, the Uchiha kid has just been… staring. At Kakashi.
Why’d I get the rejects, Kakashi thinks with the hysteria that comes from not having slept in three days because he’d been too busy making lesson plans. He’s co-opted a couple of ideas from his ANBU training days, but the rest are all Kakashi originals, because if he’s going to be a Team Leader to a bunch of genins, he’s at least going to fucking do it right.
Still, it might not matter what Kakashi does, because the kids are turning out to be disasters. Even Sakura, who he’d liked the best simply by virtue of not knowing anything about her, has a habit of insulting Naruto constantly. Granted, the kid’s annoying — Kakashi-sensei, why aren’t you showing us any cool jutsu? Kakashi-sensei, what do you mean I shouldn’t be using forbidden jutsu? Kakashi-sensei, Kakashi-sensei, Kakashi-sensei — but she’s just been shaming the kid non-stop, and even Sasuke's started to wince
Kakashi knows all this, but when he takes his eyes off his students for a split second to ask the Gods for some patience, his favourite student for all of three hours punches Naruto in the stomach and Kakashi decides it’s time to step in.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you guys haven’t heard a thing I’ve said about teamwork,” he says, neatly catching the next fist Sakura — who is no longer his favourite student— sends flying.
Sasuke — who Kakashi would have known was Itachi’s brother even if it hadn’t been the first thing he’d said, because they look exactly the fucking same, fucking Sarutobi — stretches from his spot on the ground beside and says, “I work better alone.”
It’s about what Kakashi had been expecting from the orphan and only survivor of the Uchiha clan, but he’s a snot-nosed little punk, and maybe it’s Kakashi’s fault for comparing them, but Itachi had always been the epitome of good manners and Itachi would have never behaved like this.
So when he snatches the kid up and hooks his shirt on a tree branch — child and all — he feels only a little guilt at the way the kid gapes down at him.
“Kakashi-sensei?” Sasuke says in bewilderment, while Naruto cheers loudly behind him.
“I think this will be a good opportunity for you to appreciate what we discussed today,” Kakashi tells him cheerfully. He’s not entirely sure but he thinks he’s hit his second wind. Or maybe he’s microsleeping again, and gaining tiny bits of energy. That would be a shame because he’s decided that the kid’s face is actually pretty funny and Kakashi doesn’t want to miss a moment of it.
“Way to go, Sensei,” Naruto yells across the field.
“Shut up, Naruto,” Kakashi calls back. Then he turns to Sasuke and, in the voice he’d been taught when he was twelve and still thought he had a future in T&I, says, “I want you to listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. ” He pulls back enough to see Sasuke’s eyes, wide and unblinking, and a little bit scared. Good. “I have one rule while you’re on my team, and that is that you take care of your teammates. Is that understood?”
All he gets is a small nod, and Kakashi’s wondering if he’s managed to break his student’s spirit on the first day or if that had happened long ago anyway, when, sounding more like a kid than he has all day, Sasuke whines, “They’re both idiots, though.”
As if to prove his point, Naruto yells, ““Kakashi-sensei, I’m hungry. Can you untie me now?”
Kakashi does not roll his eyes in front of Sasuke, but it’s a close fucking thing. “Not yet, Naruto.”
“But I’m hungry,” Naruto whines. If he listens closely, Kakashi can hear Sakura telling her teammate to just shut the fuck up, and eat some fucking dandelions or something, Naruto.
There’s a pause, and then — “But my hands are tied up.”
Kakashi turns back to Sasuke. “Their intelligence will not determine whether you help them survive,” Kakashi tells him.
Sasuke studies his face, the little of it that he can see. “I just wanted to be sure that we’re on the same page,” he says finally.
Clearly the kid thinks that he’s the strongest on his team, and it’s become pretty clear he’s not wrong. Still, it won’t do to for his ego to get too big on his first day, so Kakashi leaves him to figure out that there are two people who’d be happy to help him get out of a tree and heads out for lunch alone.
~
It turns out that Sasuke isn’t the strongest.
Their mission at the bridge — Kakashi won’t call it the Great Naruto Bridge, he won’t – goes badly enough that he feels obligated to send a missive to the Hokage so he can prepare for whatever bullshit diplomatic inquiry the Mist will inevitably send. If it happens to mean that he doesn’t also have to write a mission report about the literal clusterfuck that their last two weeks have been, well, isn’t that just nice for him.
In return, Kakashi receives a brand new mission assignment that has their team detouring from their return route by about three days.
It’s a fairly standard mission, thank the Gods—just guarding some cargo—with a reward gratifying enough to even appease Kakashi, who just wants to go home, breathe without getting damp cloth in his mouth, and walk his dogs, maybe.
Actually, the sheer amount of money they’re expecting to earn from this mission is unquestionably suspicious, but if the Hokage has ordered Kakashi to walk into a trap, at least he’s gets to do it with what’s turning out to be a not-as-terrible-as-previously-thought team.
They’re definitely not good yet. They’re definitely not. But they’re not bad either.
And they’re certainly eager, that’s for sure.
“--And the next time Kakashi-sensei gets caught, I’’ll go Nine Tails on their ass and save him,” Naruto’s saying to Sasuke and Sakura, oblivious to the fact that he’s hurting Kakashi’s feelings, a little bit.
Sasuke slows enough that he’s running abreast of Naruto, branches bending slightly under their combined weight, and Kakashi thinks that maybe he’ll defend him, maybe today’s the day that Kakashi finds a new favourite. Instead, he just says, “And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Take a nap?”
Naruto smiles. “That’s the best part,” he says, and leans in. “You guys can take a look under Kakashi-sensei’s mask while he can’t move.”
Kakashi has to choke down a laugh; technically the kids are aware that he’s in their close vicinity, but today’s challenge is for them to pinpoint his location just by sensing his chakra. And despite himself, Kakashi’s a little impressed; not by their chakra-sensing — he’s basically breathing down their necks and they haven’t noticed. Or, he thinks with concern, they know and they don’t care — but because he’d been under the impression that his youngest student was, frankly, too dumb to be this sneaky.
It’s something that he’s observed a few times over the last fortnight — despite himself, he’s impressed, or despite himself, he’s pleased by their courage, their determination. Their care for each other.
On the one hand, if he really thinks about it, it’s not entirely surprising. Within the first five minutes of meeting Naruto in that little classroom, Kakashi had watched him get teased and taunted by his teammates and enjoy it, and he’d known that Naruto had been waiting his whole life for someone to even look at him.
In fact, ever since fighting Zabuza, the kid’s been a little dazed. Nothing worth worrying over, nothing that would have Kakashi too concerned to leave on watch alone at nights, but just enough to be noticeable if someone were really taking the time to look.
And in between staring at his teammates in wonder and fucking glowing with happiness when passing travellers ask after their team’s progress, Naruto’s been happy.
It had surprised Kakashi how much that made him happy too.
Or maybe this newfound happiness has more to do with Sakura, who’d watched the boys face Haku without her and seems to have decided that that’s not going to fly in the future.
In fact, she’d been the one who’d requested that they start training again.
“Excuse me, Kakashi-sensei,” she’d said to him. It had been the night after they left Tazuna’s home and Sakura had been unlucky enough to draw the short straw for first watch. “Could I ask you something?”
Kakashi had been focused on dragging her bedroll closer to the fire because he’s found that she’d always wake up with dark circles under her eyes after colder nights. “No, you cannot take the last watch, Sakura,” Kakashi had said. “The straws said no.”
Sakura had rolled her eyes. “I was actually wondering if we could do some training tomorrow? Maybe we could spar a little bit?”
Kakashi had been intrigued but suspicious. “The last time I suggested we spar, you called Naruto a tool when he hit you.”
“He punched me when I wasn’t ready,” Sakura had said.
Naruto had bolted up in his bedroll on the other side of the fire. “We were sparring! You’d just kicked me in the stomach!”
Shooting him an icy look, despite the fact that Kakashi knew that she couldn’t see him through the fire, Sakura had snapped, “And I hadn’t gotten back into position yet.”
Kakashi had sighed. “So why the sudden interest in fighting with your teammates? If this is just an excuse to beat up Naruto, I have to say no—”
He’d looked up from the bedroll just in time to see how her face had fallen, all of the life just sucked right out of it and Kakashi had suddenly realised that Naruto could never compare to what an enormous tool he was. “I mean— “
“I don’t just want to stand around next time,” Sakura had whispered, and Kakashi’s chest had done something strange. Like a squeezing thing or a twisting thing, maybe. It wasn’t the anger from before— he couldn't say exactly when it happened, but at some point during the months they’d been together, that rage had faded, quietly and without notice.
But before he could open his mouth to say some of that maybe, to let her know that she’d been a part of that, probably, Naruto had crawled around the fire to perch on the edge of Sakura’s bedroll, face wrinkled up in concern. “It’s alright, Sakura,” he’d said sweetly, and Kakashi had felt his heart untwist a little at the way he’d gentled his voice, which previous experiences had not indicated was something he knew how to do. And then he’d said, “Every team has someone who stands around and does nothing. Just think about Kiba on Team 8, or—”
“What he means is that the old man would’ve died if you hadn’t been there, and we wouldn’t have finished the mission anyway,” Sasuke had said then, appearing from the dark to clamp a hand over Naruto’s enormous fucking mouth.
Kakashi had rooted around in his pockets and found a crumpled handkerchief to hand to the sniffling girl. “It takes guts to stick to the mission when everything’s getting fuc— when everything looks like it’s going wrong. And it takes even more guts to trust your team in spite of that,” he’d said quietly, and when she’d given him a small smile, he’d waved Sasuke away from Naruto’s mouth and shooed them both back to their own beds. “And training tomorrow’s a wonderful idea. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.”
“Maybe we can even try some team exercises,” Sakura had said to him with another watery smile, and Kakashi had given up on figuring out what his heart was trying to do at that point.
Later, tucked into his sleeping bag and surrounded by his gently snoring students, Kakashi had thought back to Sasuke and how quickly he always appeared when his teammates needed him.
And in the last moments before he’d fallen asleep, he’d wondered if maybe there had been something to leaving the kid in the tree, after all.
They could be worse, Kakashi thinks now, as he runs beside them. They haven’t remarked on his presence yet, but Sasuke’s wondering aloud in increasingly mean tones whether Kakashi's hiding a snout under his mask, and Kakashi’s beginning to suspect that they’re onto him.
Despite what I thought, they really could be worse, he thinks again, and there’s something about the way he phrases it, even in his own mind, that makes a weight settle in his stomach.
He works away at it as they run, and he continues working at it when the kids decide they’ve had enough of his game and tackle him to the ground, and he’s still working on it while they’re planning out how they want to walk into the trap.
“ — go Nine Tails on their asses—” Naruto’s saying when Kakashi tunes in, and he promptly tunes back out.
Or he tries to, but then Sakura, with clearly fraying patience that she’s just as clearly trying to work through, says, “Can you stop making that your default plan, please.” And for Naruto’s sake, Kakashi decides to keep listening.
The mission, such had been explained to them in the three short lines of writing that had fit in the tiny scroll that they’d found attached to the messenger bird’s correspondingly tiny leg, was to deliver a wagon of peaches from the East village’s magistrate to the magistrate of the West village.
From what Kakashi’s been able to gather from the few locals they’d stumbled upon on their trip, it’s festival season, and if they don’t make this delivery, the local economy will be entirely ruined or the God of Peaches will make his displeasure known, or something— if it doesn’t actually affect his team’s safety, Kakashi doesn’t can’t really bring himself to care about it.
He’s more interested in the money they’ll earn, and maybe the chance to eat some delicious fucking peaches.
“Sakura and I aren’t just going to hold people down so you can ‘go Nine Tails on their asses’, Naruto,” Sasuke’s saying. “That’s boring.”
“And insane,” Sakura adds.
And dangerous, Kakashi thinks, relieved that two of his students know better than to draw out the Nine Tails on a whim.
“Well, I don’t see either of you coming up with better ideas,” Naruto says, arms crossed, pout potent.
The truth is, Kakashi already has four different ideas that would be suitable — five, depending on how much of their new formation Naruto’s managed to remember. But Kakashi’s curious to see what the kids can come up with so he stays quiet.
In the end, they don’t use the new formation — “Is it my left or yours?” Naruto had asked when they’d shown him the sketch Sakura had drawn into the dirt, despite the fact that they’d be facing in the same direction. It had seemed best at that point to scrap the idea and settle on a simpler formation with Kakashi driving the wagon, Naruto and Sakura sitting with the peaches, and Sasuke watching over them from the trees.
“It might be good for Naruto to eat some fruits,” Sasuke had whispered to Kakashi when he’d inquired about the seating arrangements, confused by the choice.
“Naruto doesn’t eat things that aren’t noodle-shaped,” he’d told Sasuke.
“Naruto also doesn’t listen when I tell him not to do something,” Sasuke had said.
Kakaahi had been impressed. “Reverse psychology at your young age?”
“I guess you’re not just a pretty face, Sensei,” Sasuke had said with a smug little smile, waving his hand over his face in the universal gesture of a snout. And Kakashi had lifted his hitai-ate enough that Sasuke could see that he was frowning even as his heart did that twisting thing again.
~
It’s during the mission that Kakashi finally figures out what’s been eating at him.
It happens sometime after the bandits make them stop the wagon but before Sasuke breathes a katon at them.
“Hands up,” a bandit with a scarf over his lower face is saying to Kakashi while a second bandit with exceptionally hairy arms waves a kunai in the air and says, “Drop your weapons.”
Kakashi looks between the two bandits, hands still tight on the reins, and says, “Do you guys need a minute to figure out how you want this to go, or…?”
Hairy Bandit waves his kunai more aggressively. “Just shut up and give us your goddamned peaches,” he snaps.
From the back of the wagon, Kakashi hears Sakura’s voice lowered to a whisper, “It’s ok, Sensei. Send him back.” And then Naruto’s voice, slightly louder saying, “Don’t worry, Sensei. We’ve got this handled.”
It hits Kakashi then, what’s been upsetting him. But Scarf Bandit’s already moved around to the back, and Kakashi’s thinking about heading back their himself— Hairy Bandit be damned — when there’s the simultaneous flash of a katon exploding from the shrubbery that runs along the edge of the road and a the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Hairy Bandit gives him a worried look that Kakashi ignores in favour of pinning him to the ground with a well-aimed kunai and turns around to see the damage for himself.
Scarf Bandit’s scarf has gone up in flames, and his nose is bleeding all over the peaches, and Kakashi’s proud of his kids but he also feels a little faint.
It’s not the woozy lightheadedness he’d felt on the bridge that came from too much pain and emotion. This is more like the opposite of that twisting feeling he was starting to get used to combined with a little bit of the ache in his temples that Kakashi had forgotten the feeling of. But this time the anger and rage are directed inwards, far away from the Hokage or his kids.
“We got him, Sensei,” Naruto’s cheering as Sasuke straightens from the short hedge he’d ducked behind.
“What the hell is wrong with you all?” Scarf Bandit — or just Bandit now, Kakashi thinks faintly — is complaining, struggling to clamp a hand over the bridge of his nose to stop the bleeding even as Sakura’s manhandling his hands together to tie him up. “The fire was enough— breaking my nose was unnecessary.”
“Who sent you?” Naruto demands, while Sakura secures the knot around his wrist.
Through a gush of blood Bandit manages to laugh. “You’ll never guess.”
“It was the magistrate wasn’t it?” Sasuke says, squatting beside him.
Bandit looks at him, aghast. “How’d you know that?” He winces when Sasuke reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out a contract entitled ‘Peach Stealing Contract’, with the sloppy signature of the East Village’s Magistrate at the bottom.
It's agreed between the kids that Sasuke gets to keep 50 percent of the reward money, because technically he did the most work, and also because they felt bad that he had to run alongside the wagon. The extra 25 percent is Kakashi’s, but he’s too busy reeling to fight for it.
~
The fight with Zabuza had made it clear that Kakashi’s team is a timebomb. Or, if handled correctly, potentially the strongest genin team in Konoha.
It had just taken Kakashi a while to realise that he can’t handle them correctly.
“I just don’t think I’m the right person for the job,” he tells the Hokage when they return. He’s standing at attention in front of the Hokage’s desk, barely surviving on weeks’ worth of poor sleep on the road topped off by a night of terrible sleep in his own bed.
“You can have a seat, Kakashi,” the Hokage tells him with a pitying look.
Not on your life, you twisted old man, Kakashi thinks with a baleful look at the furniture that the Hokage had weaponised. But their meeting so far has gone much better than their last and Kakashi’s here for a favour, so instead he takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t mind standing, thank you, Hokage-sama.”
The Hokage smiles and shrugs in a whatever-suits-you sort of way that Kakashi doesn’t care for, before he says, “Then let’s get down to business. What was it that you wanted to talk about?”
Kakashi grits his teeth and decides it’s best to just get it over with. “I am not qualified to lead Team Seven.”
“Nonsense,” the old man says. “You’re a very accomplished shinobi. And I've been infomred that you've already made personal connections with all of your students.”
Have you finally lost it? Is what Kakshi wants to say to that. Has the stress gotten to you? What he actually says is, “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Naruto listens to you,” the Hokage informs him.
Despite — or in one case, because of — Kakashi and Sasuke’s careful warnings not to, Naruto had eaten his weight in peaches by the time they’d dropped off the wagon, so Kakashi thinks the fuck not.
“Sasuke respects you.”
Kakashi had found a dog collar in his size on his doorstep that morning, so that seems unlikely at best.
“And Sakura yells at Naruto less when you’re around.” The Hokage says. He thinks for a moment and adds, “You need to spend more time with her.”
“I am trying to give her to an entirely different teacher, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi tells him through clenched teeth, but he’s thinking about her smile when she’d asked if they could practice as a team.
The Hokage smiles again, but this time, it makes the hair on the back of Kakashi’s neck stand upright. “And this is me saying no.”
He must see some small hint of the distress Kakashi’s feeling on his face, because he softens. “When I spoke to your students, it sounded like they’ve already learned a lot from you.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi says.
The Hokage steeples his fingers together. “They worked as a team to defeat Zabuza, didn’t they? I’m failing to see why you don’t consider yourself to be an appropriate teacher for these students.”
Because that had nothing to do with me, Kakashi wants to tell him. They did that on their own. I didn’t even believe in them until it was almost too late. Honestly, I didn’t believe in them until they’d already proven themselves. Don’t they deserve better than that?
The Hokage looks at him like he knows what he’s thinking, and suddenly Kakashi remembers that the old man taught Jiraiya and Tsunade too. He’d dropped the ball with Orochimaru, but he’d taught legends.
So when the Sandaime looks at him with knowing eyes and says, “It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to try again. They’ll understand,” Kakashi sort of wants to believe him.
~
“I guess you weren’t able to get rid of us, then?” Sasuke asks him when the team meets at the training field two days later. Kakakashi had felt that would be a sufficient amount of time to allow the kids to rest up, but judging by the looks on their faces, he’d been wrong.
Kakashi freezes. “What makes you say that?”
“We know things, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto tells him with a hang-dog expression on his face that makes Kakashi’s heart do that reverse-twist thing again.
“Look— you’ve made Peach Boy sad,” Sasuke snaps, but Kakashi can see how his own lip is trembling.
“M’not a Peach Boy,” Naruto mumbles.
“Leave Peach Boy out of this, Sasuke,” Sakura sighs. “We’re upset with Dog-sensei, remember?”
“You said we’re not supposed to leave a teammate behind,” Sasuke says, and his eyes are starting to go cold again, almost as cold as they'd been when Kakashi had first walked into that classroom months ago.
And because he doesn’t know what to do next but he does know that he can’t let that happen, he clears his throat and says, “What did I say was the punishment for that?”
Sasuke shrugs. “You didn’t specify but the implication was death.”
Naruto nods despite the way his whole body is slumped in dejection. “That was definitely what you implied.”
“Can we negotiate?” Kakashi asks. He doesn’t know where this is going exactly, but Sasuke’s looking less glacial, so he’s going to work with it.
“You don’t have any money,” Sakura tells him immediately, which is not true, he has savings.
“And we’ve already met your dogs, so you don’t have anything else we want,” Naruto says, and wow, they’re all still really mad.
“There is one thing,” Sakura says, glancing at both the boys. “There is one thing that you could offer us.”
“An apology?”
Sakura ignores him. “What’s under the mask, Dog-sensei?” She demands, and Naruto downright inflates back to his proper stature with excitement.
“An apology from my very own mouth,” Kakashi tells her, fingers twitching with the urge to hide his mask from them. “And a promise that I won’t do it again.
The kids share a look and then Sasuke’s gone, heading towards the trees, and Naruto’s made fifty clones, and he can feel their collective fifty-three chakra signatures congregating around him. “Not good enough,” Sakura says.
“I’m an ANBU-level jounin shinobi,” Kakashi tells them, pushing up his hitai-ate. “You’re not taking this mask off.”
The kids start to smile, and it doesn’t feel like it’s just because they know he’s going to let them take his mask off. He’s starting to get that twisty feeling in his chest again, and it’s the good one this time.
“We don’t give a crap about all of that,” one of the Narutos says, stepping forward. “Right now, you're nothing but our boring old Kakashi-sensei.”