Dozens of gazes settled on the two young men at the doorway, murmurs rippling through the room like wind through leaves.
Might Guy paid the whispers no mind. He planted himself beside Kakashi, flashing that same blazing grin he always wore.
To Might Guy, anything Kakashi did was beyond reproach.
He'd only taken down a handful of Cloud shinobi who'd dared lay hands on their own village comrades.
If Guy had been there, he'd have launched those two blind idiots into the next life with a single kick.
"Might Guy, ease up. Head back to your seat for now."
Kakashi gave his friend's shoulder a light pat, voice low.
"Got it, Kakashi! Let's sit together!"
Guy immediately tugged Kakashi along, steering him toward the rows of seats.
Among the current crop of young shinobi, precious few had risen to jōnin.
Just three, in fact.
Kakashi, Might Guy, and Asuma.
Asuma had only just cleared the jōnin evaluation not long ago.
So the three of them naturally gravitated to the same cluster of chairs.
Of course, there were prodigies who outshone even them.
Uchiha Shisui.
At fifteen, he'd ascended to jōnin with effortless grace. Yet here he sat beside his clan head, Uchiha Fugaku.
"Well played."
The moment Kakashi and Guy settled in, Asuma shot Kakashi a conspiratorial wink.
Seventeen now, Asuma was starting to fill out, his jaw shadowed with stubble.
He was already beginning to resemble the grizzled uncles of the village.
"Oh, and who might this be…"
"Our very own famous Kakashi of Konoha…"
No sooner had Kakashi taken his seat than Utatane Koharu—the sole woman among the four elders seated at the front—spoke in a deliberate drawl.
Her tone carried no warmth.
The moment she opened her mouth, the murmurs that had swelled with Kakashi's arrival died instantly, stifled by the old woman's words.
"Not famous. Merely… notorious."
Kakashi had long grown numb to the inevitable chorus of "Oh, it's the famous Kakashi."
And Koharu's overt hostility laid bare her fury at his unsanctioned slaughter of the Cloud delegation.
"Do you take that as praise?"
Beneath the sagging weight of her eyelids, her gaze—clouded yet razor-sharp—fixed on him. Utatane Koharu bristled at the audacity of a junior daring to answer back.
"This is the perfect moment to address the consequences your reckless murder of a peace envoy has wrought upon Konoha!"
She rapped the table sharply, her voice cutting like a kunai.
Meanwhile, Hiruzen Sarutobi puffed silently on his pipe, watching the proceedings unfold.
He wanted to see how Kakashi would weather the storm of this veteran Hokage advisor.
"What consequences?"
"I merely dismantled Kumogakure's predatory designs."
"Elder Koharu, do you truly believe I was in the wrong?"
Kakashi rose to his feet, locking eyes with the old woman before him.
Standing on the side of righteousness, Kakashi spoke with unshakable conviction, not a flicker of doubt in his stance.
"Wrong?"
"Without ascertaining truth from falsehood, without separating virtue from vice or loyalty from betrayal, you leapt to violence and arbitrarily executed another village's envoy. And you expect commendation?"
Utatane Koharu slammed the table with a force that belied her age.
The sharp crack reverberated through the conference chamber.
"This entire affair began with my Hyūga clan. The Byakugan, our legacy of a thousand years, cannot be allowed to fall into foreign hands."
"Kumogakure coveted our kekkei genkai. Their deaths were just."
At last, Hiashi Hyūga—who had remained silent until now—rose slowly, his pale eyes serene yet unyielding.
As a clan with a millennium of history, the Hyūga had always drawn clear lines between gratitude and grudge, especially where their bloodline limit was concerned. They had even devised the Caged Bird seal to ensure the Byakugan never leaked beyond their walls.
Hiashi embodied the archetype most associated with the Hyūga.
Unyielding. Steeped in tradition.
Yet the pride etched into his very bones would not permit the clan head to stand idle—especially when another had shielded that sacred legacy.
Now, he was not merely the revered leader of the Hyūga.
He was also a father.
From every perspective, he was compelled to step forward and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kakashi.
"Goodness, must we escalate this?"
"We're all comrades of the village here."
Hiashi's intervention narrowed Koharu's eyes a fraction. Just as she opened her mouth to retort, Homura Mitokado—seated beside her—shot her a warning glance and stepped in as peacemaker.
"What's done is done. Evasion won't undo it. Better to focus on how we proceed."
Great matters were meant for small councils; small matters for large ones.
That was the usual order. But this time was different.
Events had unfolded too swiftly, leaving Konoha's leadership no window for a private huddle.
At the same time, Homura cast a sidelong glance at Hiruzen Sarutobi, who continued puffing in silence.
He couldn't begin to guess what his old teammate was thinking.
Hiruzen had sent the ninja hawk. He had summoned this jōnin assembly.
Yet before the meeting, he hadn't breathed a word of it to either advisor.
Hiruzen's uncharacteristic secrecy set Homura's instincts alight with suspicion.
"Hold on."
A calm voice cut through the tension, freezing Homura's next conciliatory words in his throat.
The central figure of the incident turned his gaze toward the now-silent Utatane Koharu.
"Elder Koharu claims I acted rashly, without discerning right from wrong, loyalty from treachery."
"Does that mean, in Elder Koharu's eyes, the Cloud envoy was the loyal servant—and I, the direct disciple of the Fourth Hokage, am the treacherous villain?"
"Elder Koharu, don't I deserve an explanation?"
His tone was even, yet the words struck like shuriken, aimed squarely at the elder seated at the head of the room.
The chamber erupted into chaos.
Kakashi's iron resolve stunned everyone. Most had assumed Koharu's barb was mere rhetoric, but none had expected Kakashi to escalate it to this height—invoking the fallen Fourth Hokage himself.
Yet on reflection, if the righteous could be slandered so brazenly, what was to stop anyone from branding another at whim?
This was, after all, a formal jōnin assembly, with every elite of Konoha in attendance.
"You—!"
Koharu's eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at the unflinching young man before her, turmoil roiling beneath her composure.
[Utatane Koharu's emotional fluctuation +1] [Hiruzen Sarutobi's emotion...] [Danzo Shimura...] [Homura...] [Asuma Sarutobi...] [Uchiha Fugaku...] [Uchiha Shisui...] [...] [...]
A cascade of alerts blazed across Kakashi's mind. Every soul in the room reeled at his audacity—defying Utatane Koharu in the heart of the jōnin assembly.
She was, after all, a contemporary of Hiruzen Sarutobi, a teammate of the Hokage who had steered the village for decades. In Konoha, her authority was near-absolute.
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