Impossible to Forgive

Chapter 15: Points of Infiltration

Hinata and Kiba stood back a bit as Shino walked forward and placed the mission report on Kakashi's desk. I stood a bit behind the Sixth Hokage, leaning up against a windowsill.

"We have located the hideout like you requested, Kakashi-sensei." Shino said as he moved back to where the rest of his team was standing.

"Hmph, yeah, and I didn't fight any of them like you told to me to," Kiba pouted.

Shino turned to the Inuzuka, "That is not an entirely accurate statement seeing as both Hinata and Akamaru had to block you from engaging the enemy."

"Why do you have to take everything so literally?"

"I'm not taking it literally; I'm simply reporting the truth."

Kakashi cleared his throat, and the two turned to face him, "Well then, the mission's completed. You all will have a couple of days off to train and relax, and you'll be notified when you have another mission to complete."

Kiba put his hands on his hips, "We don't need any time off. We could go on another mission right now!"

"Don't be ridiculous," Shino chastised his immature friend. "We need to recover our strength before we can go on another mission."

"Bye, Kakashi-sensei." Hinata waved to him as she walked out of the room behind her two male teammates who were still arguing about needing a break or not. Well, if you could call it arguing. It was more like Kiba making stupid comments and getting angry and then Shino calmly refuting him.

Kakashi sighed, "Alrighty then, I think that we should look over everything that we have on this Kisei Genjutsu and the Taihi Ittai." He pulled out three other scrolls and I recognized them as the two ANBU security reports and the one mission report from before. Kakashi picked up the fourth scroll, "First we should take a look at this report that Team 8 just dropped by before we do anything else."

He looked through the scroll quickly and then pulled out a map, unfurling it to cover most of his desk and carefully marking a location. I moved closer and looked at the dot on the page.

"Hm, it's pretty close to the village. Only about thirty miles away, and look at the topography of the area." I dragged my finger around the paper tracing the thin, donut-like markings, "You can only enter the area from the west. One point of entry, surrounded by steep cliffs, and home to an unknown number of rogue ninja. It's going to require quite the squad to take down this hideout."

"Maybe not," Kakashi grabbed my hand and gently moved it so that I was now pointing a small river that fed into the cul-de-sac-shaped valley. "A small team could infiltrate here from the southeast." He removed his hand from on top of mine, and the skin on the back of left hand tingled from the contact. I brought up my right hand to rub the pins and needles out of the skin of my dominant hand. And as a result, my hand twitched a little on the surface of the page. (I am one of the very few left-handed ninja in the village, something that I always took pride in.)

I pulled out a scroll from inside my vest and started taking notes, "That's a good plan. We could send a four man squad in through that point while a large force attacks the opening in the valley as a distraction, allowing the smaller squad to slip in with less interference."

Kakashi nodded, "Exactly. Why are you writing all of that down?"

I shrugged, "I like to take good notes on what's going on. It helps me keep on top of things."

"Makes sense. Now, let's get started on formulating our strategy, it is what your unit does, after all."