"Well, I can't say I'm not a little surprised..." Kakashi eyed the trio of genin in front of him.

Naruto looked like someone had kicked a puppy in front of him, or worse that he had kicked it himself. Sasuke was visibly trying to piece things together, likely rationalizing how the team had not made it past the first test. Sakura herself was maintaining constant eye contact with the floor.

"Still, I was given a document concerning the makeup of the test Ibiki gave you. I want all of you to know that withdrawing at this point -especially at this point- is the most honorable way to quit these exams. In my opinion at least." The jounin shrugged his shoulders. He might have been a little more upset about their showing if it hadn't been the head of Torture and Interrogation proctoring them.

That was a dick move by the Hokage. He idly wondered if Sarutobi had specifically picked Ibiki to weed out the rookies. After team 7 withdrew, so had 8 and 10. 'Wouldn't put it past him. He seemed very ambivalent about the kids being nominated.'

Sasuke spoke up "And how is failing, failing the very first part, honorable?" He was glaring at Kakashi in a mixture of disbelief and scorn. Sasuke didn't like being coddled or told niceties. What he saw as empty appeasement wasn't helping.

Kakashi sighed before answering. "This test was threefold. It tested cunning, intelligence, and risk management. Cunning and intelligence are self evident: if you couldn't answer the questions by yourself, you had to find a way to steal to those answers."

Naruto looked like he swallowed a lemon. "But... he said not to cheat."

Kakashi looked at him. It was sometimes easy to forget that Naruto did actually look up to and trust authority figures in the village, despite his apparent disrespect. Mizuki had capitalized on that trust. 'Gonna need to focus on his insight.'

"He said cheating would be penalized. You were allowed to cheat if you could get away with it." Kakashi made eye contact with each of his students. "You withdrew at the risk stage. You decided that the risk outweighed the rewards. That putting your careers and futures on the line was not worth a chance at advancing those careers. That was not a bad decision to make, Sakura."

The girl nodded her head, but still looked like she was beating herself up inside.

"Had you stayed, Ibiki would have likely gone on to talk about how risk is always there, and that not taking risk is shameful." Kakashi tilted his head back and forth. "He is both right and wrong. Risk is always there. We have to live everyday with it, and there are times where making the best of a bad situation is unavoidable."

He stilled and spoke seriously, they needed to understand this. "But there are also consequences to taking those risks. People will die because of those risks. Our mission in Wave demonstrated this clearly. We took a risk to continue, and we very nearly paid the ultimate price for that decision."

Sasuke and Naruto both looked away, trying to hide their discomfort. They had been the ones to push forward. 'Good. They both know about risks, but they don't think about consequences nearly enough.'

"That being said, the fate of a nation did not hinge on this decision. I am very pleased that you chose your teammates over the desire to advance. To have chosen otherwise would not have spoken well about any of you." As Kakashi said this, both Naruto and Sasuke grimaced. Kakashi's mask hid a smile.

"Take the rest of the day off and think things over. I'll be reviewing what we'll being doing in the coming weeks. We have work ahead if you want to win the next exams."