Conflict

Kakashi as bait?

Kisuke frowned. As reckless as it sounded, it was a solid plan.

Kakashi's name alone carried weight, and his strength was nothing to scoff at. With his chakra control, making shadow clones to lure Iwagakure troops wouldn't be hard. Once the enemy noticed him, reinforcements would follow. 

Aya could then locate the shift in defenses, and Kisuke's team could cut through the line and get to Kannabi Bridge—ideally before Kakashi got captured. Or killed.

High risk. But also the highest probability of success.

Kisuke studied Kakashi silently. He had to admit—he couldn't compare to this guy. Kakashi had something he lacked, something people in this world liked to call "capacity." A word that showed up early in this world and then conveniently disappeared as the story went on. But Kisuke was starting to get it now.

It wasn't about talent. It was spirit. It was knowing the odds and walking into hell anyway.

Minato had this "capacity" too. Sealing the Nine-Tails into his newborn son wasn't exactly what you'd call fatherly compassion. The man had to know what kind of life Naruto would face. Maybe he had no choice. Maybe it was just strategy—set your son up as a jinchūriki, train him through pain, and build the ultimate weapon of hope. Brutal, but efficient. Jiraiya called Minato the most "magnanimous" Hokage. Kisuke just called it cold-blooded genius.

And then there was Uchiha Itachi. The gold medalist of "capacity."

The guy joined hands with Danzo and Akatsuki, killed his entire clan, and tormented his little brother into becoming a revenge-obsessed powerhouse—all for the greater good. All to steer Sasuke into murdering him and awakening the Mangekyō. The guy practically arranged his own tragic legacy with gift wrapping and a bow. Left behind failsafes in Naruto, contingency plans buried in other contingency plans. Amaterasu here. Kotoamatsukami there. If Obito hadn't blown everything up, Itachi's chessboard would've played out cleanly.

Kisuke, as an Uchiha, thought Itachi was insane. A walking trauma machine in love with martyrdom. But damn if he wasn't impressive.

Kisuke didn't want to be that guy. He still wanted to live like a human being. But Kakashi? Right now, Kakashi was giving off serious Itachi energy. And that was disturbing.

The silence stretched. Kakashi quietly handed him one of Minato's Flying Thunder God kunai.

"Sensei said to use it in a critical moment," Kakashi said simply. " Rin's your responsibility now, Kisuke."

"Kakashi! No!" Rin finally snapped out of her shock and screamed, panic in her voice.

"I'm sorry, Rin. I have to complete the mission," Kakashi said. "I might not be able to protect you anymore. But you need to live. That's my last hope."

"I got it," Kisuke said, sliding the kunai into his pouch. "I'll protect her. And when the moment comes, I'll call Minato to extract her."

Kakashi's lips curved into a crescent—maybe a smile, maybe resignation. Then he turned and left the cave without another word.

He knew which path was the thinnest. Aya had shared her findings. And even if it was a trap, Kakashi would still walk right into it. Alone.

Kisuke watched him vanish into the trees. Then he looked down at the kunai in his hand. It felt heavier than it should.

Kakashi was going to die. If it worked, great. If not… well, better him than the rest of them.

Kisuke liked Kakashi. Honestly. But not enough to die for him…but just because of his appearance in this mission, the plot changed so much that it was almost unrecognizable.

Will his constant presence change the plot arcs? Wouldn't that make his future knowledge a joke and the plan he design for his path will go for naught.

Honestly, Kisuke was conflicted. In one way, using his future knowledge, he could pick up crombs and benefits, but it's also a double edge sword just like now. Just because of some decisions he made, Kakashi was walking to his death. If he kept this up, wouldn't he make more important characters die or change their destiny. What if he messed up and there were not many people to stop Madara madness, or the alien invasion.

Kisuke shook his head. He needed to take a break before his thoughts consumed him and made him a paranoid maniac.

Still, something felt off. Too off.

Could the Iwagakure troops really be this dumb? Did they seriously not see what his team saw? Or was this all intentional? A baited funnel waiting for idiots to charge in?

Kisuke unfolded the map again, hoping to get a better sense of terrain. But it was all Useless. Half the routes weren't even marked. Random forks, no scale. It looked like something a bored genin sketched with a crayon.

But the more he looked, his face darkened. He made a call.

"Pack up. We're following Kakashi."

"What?" Aya blinked. "Are you insane? He volunteered to be bait. You're going to walk into the same trap?"

"Do I look like an idiot?" Kisuke shot back. "We figured this out. You think Iwagakure didn't? You think they're letting us waltz through because they forgot how war works?"

Aya hesitated.

"They're anticipating revenge strikes from Kumo and counterattacks from us. This isn't a mistake—it's a setup. They want us to think we found a weak spot. So yes, we're following him. I have a plan."

"A plan to get us all killed?"

Kisuke narrowed his eyes. "Do you want to die now? Or follow orders and maybe live a little longer? Your choice, Aya. Obey me—or go report to your dead clan members."

Kisuke's tone was cold and sharp, without a shred of humor. His eyes had turned red before he even noticed the tomoe spinning.

Rin froze on the spot. She didn't expect that someone on the same team would speak like this—would even threaten a teammate. What shook her even more was that Aya, who always seemed so polite, actually opened her Byakugan.

The atmosphere in the cave suddenly turned heavy. Kenta still wore that innocent expression of his, but his gaze lingered a beat too long on Rin.

The internal dynamics of this team were their business, and outsiders didn't need to know about it. Kenta wasn't acting for the mission or for teamwork. He just didn't like liabilities, especially ones that talked too much.

Still, unless Aya had completely lost it, Kenta didn't think things would escalate into an actual fight. Aya was proud, not stupid.

Predictably, Aya backed down. She could overlook Kisuke back when he didn't have the Sharingan. As far as she was concerned then, he was all mouth and no bloodline—loud, fast, but ultimately disposable. Now? Not so simple.

Especially after that moment when Kisuke dodged Minato kunai slash. Aya had seen that. She didn't think she could've dodged that.

"...Tell me your plan," Aya said stiffly, finally closing her Byakugan. "You better have a real one and not some suicide run."

Kisuke deactivated his Sharingan with a quiet sigh, almost reluctant. "I've said it already: the 'weakest' point on the map is the place with the most options for reinforcement. It's an encirclement. Kakashi's headed into a hornet's nest, and if we're not idiots, so are we."

"So your plan is to die faster than him?" Aya stared at the map like she was trying to burn through it.

"You think the alternatives are better? We try another point, they collapse in on us from every direction. We have too few people and too many variables." Kisuke said. "And frankly, the map's garbage. Forks missing, terrain barely sketched. Whatever this is, it's intentional."

He wasn't wrong. Even without any hidden markings, just the map and Aya's earlier intel said enough: the Rock ninja weren't dumb. If they made a gap that obvious, they wanted Konoha to take the bait.

That meant one of two things—either it was a trap set for a raid team, or they were pulling the old "empty fort strategy" and hoping to bluff out an overcautious commander.

But Kisuke didn't believe in Rock's capacity for bluffs. Not at this stage. They didn't have the morale, or the manpower, to risk it.

Which meant what lay ahead was real. A unit stationed to crush any foolhardy Konoha squad stupid enough to take the "easy" path. Under normal conditions, the answer would be obvious: don't go.

Kisuke chose the opposite.

Because unlike normal conditions, they had chips on the table.

Namely, Minato special kunai—handed to him personally by Kakashi, just before the kid ran off to be bait.

"...You're worried this is deliberate," Aya said slowly, reading the shift in Kisuke's expression.

"Worried? No," Kisuke said. "I'm assuming it is. Which is why we're not walking—we're playing dirty."

"Dirty gets you killed too," Kenta muttered, scratching his head. Then his eyes lit up as Kisuke created several shadow clones. "...Oh. You're throwing in decoys?"

"Exactly." Aya's tone had lost its edge now, replaced with that calculating coldness that meant she was in mission mode. "Low-chakra use on the clones, make it look like the main team's splintering to different breakout points... force their hand. They'll shift support and try to intercept. Then we move while they're scattered."

"And Kakashi causes the initial distraction." Kisuke smirked faintly. "It's crude. But it'll buy us minutes. Which is all we need."

He didn't explain it for Rin's sake. She still looked like she hadn't caught up to half the conversation. And frankly, she probably hadn't. She had heart, maybe even "capacity" by this world's standards, but brains? No offense, she wasn't on the list.

Kisuke and the others got to work. Shadow clones were sent sprinting in every direction, chakra levels carefully balanced to be just convincing enough. Then the real team moved close behind Kakashi's trail.

The consumption of chakra from making that many clones at once wasn't minor. Even Kisuke, who'd kept his reserves in check, felt the sting. But he wasn't alone.

The second the clones were out, he saw both Aya and Kenta pull out pills and ate them without hesitation. They even adjusted their breathing mid-movement to conserve more energy.

Kisuke did the same. He wasn't about to drop dead from chakra exhaustion just because he liked playing clever.

Rock ninjas might've accounted for a lot of things—but they hadn't accounted for people this desperate, this willing to gamble.

Kisuke moved first, breathing carefully, feet striking branch after branch in rhythm. Behind him, the others followed in grim silence.

"I hope this doesn't get me killed," Aya muttered. She didn't bother lowering her voice. "Seven years on the frontlines and I don't want my end to be some idiot's overconfidence."

"Six years for me," Kisuke replied dryly. "Eight for Kenta. If we weren't all the same kind of people, we wouldn't even be here. Or still breathing. I hate both of you, but I trust you to be professionals."

For once, Kenta didn't fake a smile and just nodded.

Aya gave a short grunt of acknowledgment. 

Only Rin lagged behind, her chakra thin and her mind clearly still trying to puzzle out the mission—and the people she was suddenly stuck with.

Five shadows moved through the forest, silent and grim, vanishing deeper into enemy territory.