By Monday, I meant 'Tomorrow'. Enjoy! ^^

"Hey, Kaka-nii?"

The silver haired jonin looked up from his porn to blink at Naruto. "Hm?"

"Can I kill him?"

--------------------

Kakashi blinked again. The others looked horrified.

"NANI?! NARUTO! NO!" Naruko screeched, moving towards him to smack him over the head. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the cold look on his face.

"I'm not kidding, Naruko," he hissed, shunshinning away five meters. Menma stared at him.

"Naruto?"

Naruto looked at Kakashi. Kakashi continued. "You can kill him if you wish. We have no use for him as he might turn his back on us if we decide to trust him," he said, nose buried in his book once more.

Naruto nodded, and after a few seconds of speeding through handsigns and gathering chakra, his hand started sparking with lightning. The assassin started screaming bloody murder, thrashing in his binds and scrabbling at the ground with his red hands.

Naruto flashed him a fake sympathetic look. Meizu screamed louder (if possible), hoping to knock himself unconscious.

In a flash of blue and black, red exploded onto Naruto and the others.

Kakashi seemed unfazed, while the others looked paper-white (Sai looked the exact same) and ready to puke, faint, both, or cry. Naruto had hit Meizu in the head, and the carnage was unbelievable.

Naruko held her mouth, choking back a strangled sob. Her eyes widened and tears streamed down her face. Menma and Sai had a blank look on their faces, but both of them looked ready to puke even if they were hiding it well. Satsuki had tried to run over to Naruto to stop him, but had crumpled to the ground just as the blood splashed onto her face.

Tazuna looked stoic, clearly having seen death before.

Kakashi sighed. There were droplets of blood on his favourite orange 'Icha Icha' book, but now he had to console his students and question Naruto even more as the brunette seemed unfazed (judging by the way he was casually wiping his hand off).

The sun was setting anyways. "Everyone," Kakashi barked, snapping the five genin out of their dazes. "The river starts up ahead. Let's set up camp."

The River - Three Hours later

Kakashi and his team were sitting around the campfire. Fish were poking out of the ground on sticks, having already been gutted and de-scaled.

The fire flickered and sputtered every once and a while, making Naruto poke around at it with a stick for a few seconds before going back to resting his cheek on his palm.

The others were looking warily at Naruto, having washed their clothes and themselves off at the river. Everyone was currently in their pyjamas, and their client was twitching.

"So, Tazuna," Kakashi started. making the older man flinch violently. "Why did you decide to lie?"

"I'm sorry!" Tazuna choked out, shivering. "T-The Daimyo was too poor to p-p-pay for anything higher than C-Rank. Gato is taking over the country and the only way to cut off his maniacal ways was to finish the bridge. But, with his henchmen running around and screwing everything up, there's no possible way to finish it without either having someone to protect us or dying. You m-must understand our situation!"

Kakashi and the others were silent, staring at Tazuna with calculating eyes. The older man flinched again, before whispering out.

"You may go back if you wish. If I die though, my daughter and my grandson will be very sad."

Then, Naruko spoke up. "I say we go back, sensei. Saving a country from possible A-Rank assassins is much too dangerous for newly-minted genin. It's the logical choice to head home," she said confidently, but fear was evident in her trembling voice. Sai nodded with her, as not to be suspicious.

"I agree with Naruko and Sai," Kakashi said, picking up a stick of fish and examining it. "The food's ready."

Menma grew angry. "Are you just going to throw away the chance to become famous and save innocent people?" Naruto mentally noted that he put 'being famous' before 'saving lives'. "I say we stay!"

Satsuki nodded in agreement. "It's not like some weird A-Ranked pale-ish man with shark teeth in a cow costume will come after us with a big sword or anything. I say we stay." (Oddly specific there, Satsu-chan.)

Kakashi hummed. "Hmm... We'll go, unless Naruto says we stay."

Menma's jaw dropped. "But sensei! Why?"

"Naruto and I are the strongest on this team," Kakashi explained. The others grew tick-marks as they noticed that his fish had miraculously disappeared, and there were now crumbs on his mask.

The brunette in question looked up, eyes that were previously glazed over in thought now clear. "Stay? Go? Huh?"

"Do you want to go home or finish the mission?" Sai asked.

"Stay here," Naruto said after a few seconds of silence, before grabbing a stick of fish and munching happily on the meat.

Half an Hour Later

Tazuna had gone to sleep, leaving the Team to sit by the campfire by themselves.

Kakashi was poking at the fire again. He had dismissed his cute but mentally scarred little genin, but he knew that none of them wanted to leave.

"You know," he quietly hummed after a while. "It's a nin's job to kill. To protect their village, friends, and families: we kill, steal, cheat, and lie to get our way."

The others were silent, knowing he was consoling them on Naruto's 'first' kill earlier.

"Once our first kill occurs, and or we witness death with our own eyes, our innocence is stripped from our grasp and given to the next generation; just for it to be taken away even earlier than before. Even genin who pass both tests at the beginning of their careers may not be ready for the ninja world. This is why D-Ranks and the rule of 'complete thirty D-Ranks and have consent from your sensei before you earn a C-Rank' were created. To build their teamwork and ready them for the war-ridden world we now live in today."

The others looked down at their feet, their minds going over each and every one of Kakashi's words and connecting them to their personal memories.

"What Naruto did earlier was an example of just that. Everyone's first kills happens at different times, some when they are thirty, some when they just become genin, and some not at all," Kakashi whispered. "You need to understand that these things I'm telling you are just the beginning of what the shinobi world really is. There is so much more to being a ninja than cool missions and flashy jutsu."

Naruto looked up for a second to glance at Kakashi's eyes. His own widened as he realised that Kakashi had slipped off his headband, revealing the large pink scar running over his closed left eye. He instantly knew that his older brother was thinking about Obito.

"It may seem wrong, but in the end, who are we to say that? Everybody is doing the same thing: fighting for their beliefs. If we think that others are in the wrong for following their visions, then we must be wrong ourselves. We have no idea what another person is going through, and who knows? Maybe if you were in their situation, you would do the same."

Kakashi let out a sigh. The others were tired, he noticed, but he still had to talk to Naruto.

"You may not understand this now, but I promise you will in the future," if you even have the chance to. He added mentally. "Go to sleep now. You can't be tired when morning comes. Naruto, I need to talk to you."

Soon, the others padded back to their tents, hearts heavy and minds in different worlds. And so, the wolf and the fox were alone, the only sound heard being the crackling of the fire.

Half an Hour Later (After the Others Were Asleep)

Naruto and Kakashi sat in front of each other, staring into each other's eyes (eye, in Naruto's case). Kakashi finally spoke.

"How depressed are you?"

Naruto froze, eyes trailing away and body language shifting into that of a kicked puppy. "Not as depressed as I was between seven and nine. Killing those Iwa nin really took a toll on my mental health. I really wanted to die back then, die for the lives that I took that day, but now I'm glad that I didn't give into that," he admitted, hands falling on where the seal and scars on his stomach were. "I got better after a while, and was happy for a few years until my biological family returned. Everything came back to me then, and I couldn't help but think that none of that shit would have happened if I had been taken with them."

Kakashi's eyes softened, before he sighed. "I understand. But, you know, you could have told me. You could have told anybody."

"You said that already," Naruto whispered, eyes now trained on the crackling fire. "But, you need to understand that I'm healing now. When they returned, I was at the highest high in my life and I knew that they had knocked me off of my pedestal and I was plummeting into the watery ocean depths below. Now that you, jiji, Satsuki, Itachi, Okaa-san and Otou-san are here with me, I'm slowly climbing back up. I'm almost there again. I pushed them out of my life when I took the rest of the tails. All I need to do now is find who I am again."

Suddenly, Kakashi snorted. Naruto grew a tick-mark.

"What?"

"You sound like a hormonal teenager," Kakashi said, shoulders shaking with his silent laugh.

"Oi! I am a hormonal teenager! W-Wait, no I'm not!"

"So you admit to it?"

"Like hell, baka!"

Kakashi went out in full blown laughter as Naruto spat out half-assed insults at him. The night ended as quickly as it came.

The Next Day, Boat

The mist was thick and suffocating. The man steering the boat had a pitiful lamp at the front, and whenever they got even a bit too loud he would shush them and tell them to "stay quiet."

The hard water held bugs, plants, and other things that clung onto the paddle for dear life. It was very gloomy, for short.

After maybe an hour of rowing, the man had finally said that they were nearing their arrival and five minutes later, they could feel the bottom of the boat scraping against the rocks. This indicated that they were in shallow water.

"We're here," the man whispered, putting his paddle down.

Suddenly, there was a rustle in the bushes. Naruto drew a kunai, and with a flick of his wrist it was embedded into the tree. The snow white bunny that had fainted from the shock was enough of a warning to make Kakashi scream out:

"Everybody, get down!"

In a gust of wind and thud of the giant Kubikiribocho as it embedded itself into the tree, the cold air that surrounded them was enough to dispel the mist and let them have a look at their new enemy.

Surprisingly enough, it was some weird A-Ranked pale-ish man with shark teeth in a cow costume that appeared.

Cue pokemon music.

Aaaaaaand done! Sorry for the scare yesterday, guys. And sorry this took so long to get out, I was having a bit of a dispute with my father-in-law.

I'm still waiting for some suggestions for a new cover, so don't be afraid to say anything! I personally hated how this chapter came out since it felt rushed while I was writing it, but I'm posting it anyways so that's something.

Anyways, if that's all, then peace!