Imagine an incredibly obese man, layers of fat packing individually which stuck to his clothes. Breathing heavily every time he opened his mouth, as if he had run a marathon – whereas in reality he had barely walked.

 

Add a not-that-well groomed mustache and a pair of terribly-matching black glasses. His stature matching that of a dwarf which he tried to desperately cover using thick boots.

 

That’s Gato. A man who had no clue how the world of shinobi worked. A man who could never hope to comprehend the power a shinobi of Hatake Kakashi wielded.

 

He thought a hundred thugs, highwaymen, bandits and whatever lowlife he had collected would be plenty enough to defeat even the Demon of the Mist, especially in his current wounded state.

 

He was wrong.

 

Kakashi looked inscrutable. But that alone did not discourage Gato, he had dealt with plenty of businessmen who held such a face in front of bankruptcy.

 

Trying to hang to the thinnest of ropes to the ends of time.

 

Three genins, a jounin who was out of breath and two rogue shinobi. What could they possibly do to him?

 

He blinked.

 

“Huh, why am I up here?”

 

His glasses slipped off and the exclusive view of the cold surface of dirt became reality.

 

He felt a tug, and looking at his left foot, he noticed it was shackled, a chain emanating a tint of red had coiled around it tightly.

 

Nevertheless, Gato was not an unexperienced man. He had spent years dealing with the oddest and most dangerous of situations – so he did what he thought was the best in this scenario, scream.

 

Snot, tears and sweat; none were spared as he begged for mercy, his body coming closer and closer to a fall which would by no means see him alive.

 

But alas, it was not meant to be.

 

His body shivered uncontrollably, desperately trying to stop – slow – the incoming fall, yet he was powerless to stop his death.

 

His remnants splattered across the wide road of dirt. Nothing was left spared, limbs bent in ways that shouldn’t be humanly possible, his neck rolled and exploded in blood.

 

xXx

 

Kakashi snorted at the screaming and snot-filled figure of the unconscious Gato. A simple genjutsu had knocked the man out senseless. The rest had been even easier, defeating a couple of dozen of untrained thugs, he could do such a thing with closed eyes.

 

Sasuke’s nose wrinkled at the scene in front of him. Even a man as nonchalant as him found the scene filled with blood a bit overboard.

 

‘Yet it’s still not even close to how red that day was…’ He thought to himself, bitter memories entering and leaving as soon as they wished.

 

Naruto scratched the back of his head, taking a second to recognize and record what had just happened. It was not every day you saw someone steamroll through a hundred men like they were nothing.

As for the oldest of the group, and to no one’s surprise the weakest, he stared with wide eyes. He clearly was not used to such sight. And no one could really blame Tazuna for feeling like that.

 

Ren whistled out loudly, and gave a thumbs up to Kakashi.

 

It was clear the man was letting out his pent-up frustration from the mission on the poor barely-trained ‘civilians’.

 

The one reaction he wanted to see though, was Zabuza’s. The man was sadly not here and was in a corner having his wounds treated. Even if he had not exactly attacked with the intent to kill, his chains were nothing to joke about.

 

Haku – apparently that was the girl’s name, was the one treating his wounds. Ren was not exactly an expert when it came to medic ninjas, but she did seem to have some knowledge on medical jutsus, if her glowing green hands were anything to go by.

 

Ren felt something drip from his hand attracting his attention.

 

It seems that he too had been wounded during the fighting. He draped next to a tree and noticing that no one was paying attention to him, accelerated his regeneration using his chakra.

 

Normally that wouldn’t be anything worth hiding, but his healing was accelerated intensively due to Kurama’s chakra. It was not worth the risk of being discovered.

 

“Well then, I’m sure you have people of your own who can take care of this man.” Kakashi spoke out for the first time in a while.

 

He had finished up tying Gato with tight ropes.

 

“No worries, I’ll have my friends deal with him.”

 

Saturating something akin to an aplomb feeling, Tazuna had finally recovered from his stunned state. He settled his massive bag down and took out what appeared to be a horn covered in ornaments.

 

‘That’s a surprise, weren’t they complaining about how rare materials and resources were in Wave?’

 

Ren had comfortably found himself a spot on the ground and was observing the situation with a hint of interest.

 

“By the way, please come to my humble settlement. You need at least a few days worth of rest after all this fighting. God knows how scared I was it would all end today.” Tazuna sheepishly spoke out, before blowing the horn with all the force he could muster.

 

‘By the Shinigami, that’s insanely loud. I wouldn’t be surprised if that scared all the wild life around us – if our fight hadn’t already done that.’

 

Naruto writhed and covered his ears.

 

“Old man, you could’ve at least warned us!”

 

A growl threatened to split apart his mouth, something Tazuna just chose to ignore. A few hours ago, he’d have proceeded to throw some snarky comeback at the kid, but after seeing how much of a resilient fighter the blond could be, he had figured out it wasn’t worth the effort.

 

xXx

 

A week quickly passed and the group of four soon had to make their way back to the village.

 

Kakashi thought they had overstayed by quite a while, but Ren and co disagreed. Not only had they had social interactions with the locals – which opened their eyes to the real world a lot – but they also had the silver-haired jounin train them.

 

Something told Ren that Sasuke had mainly enjoyed the latter, if the glare he threw at him during their way back was anything to go by.

 

“You’re going to be the future head of the Uchiha Clan, you have to learn to socialize with people Sasuke. Seriously my guy, if you want any hope of continuing the Uchiha Line, then you have to man up.”

 

Oh yeah, something else also told Ren that Naruto enjoyed seeing Sasuke get teased by Ren each day, even if he didn’t participate in it himself.

 

“Also, dumb fishcake, don’t think I didn’t see you skip training yesterday by using a shadow clone instead. I think Kakashi-sensei already made it clear you can only use shadow clones for training if you’ve shown the required mental fortitude!”

 

And finally, to finish it all…

 

Something told Kakashi that Ren enjoyed both, but enjoyed messing with his two other little cute genins way more.

 

“Ren, you’re assigned to doing D-rank Missions for an entire day when we go back.”

 

“Eh?! Why?”

 

xXx

 

Turns out a week had indeed been overstaying their welcome.

 

A bad omen welcomed them back home instead as a reward.

 

The Third Hokage had faced a failed assassination attempt.