"Where the hell is Kakashi?!" Naruto demands. "He's late AGAIN."

"Shut up, Dobe," Sasuke says automatically.

"He's always late," Sakura grumbles. "Why don't we train while we wait for him? Can I spar with you, Sasuke-kun?" she clasps her hands together desperately.

"No."

"AWW!" Sakura mopes.

"I want to practice tracking," Sasuke explains. "We didn't notice Zabuza was following us because our tracking is bad."

"I noticed him!" Naruto shouts. "You guys just didn't believe me!"

"You were just throwing things randomly!" accuses Sakura.

"Shut up you two." Sasuke snaps. "I haven't explained my plan."

Now he has their attention, Sasuke adopts his incredibly rare conspiratorial face. "We are going to split up and find Kakashi, and force him to train us. Put your ear-pieces on - we're going to do this as a mission!"

"Aright! I'm gonna find Kakashi-sensei first!"

"Sasuke-kun, you have such good ideas!"

"All ready? Move out, team! Mission Hunt The Copy Ninja begins now!" Sasuke orders, and disappears into the trees.

Sakura smirks at Naruto, "I'll make sure you get some credit for trying." Then she runs off on her own to search for the wayward sensei.

Naruto glares after his teammates. Where to start looking? First he needs to get a good view of the village and there is only one place to do that.

A few minutes later, Naruto stands atop the First Hokage's head getting a clear bird's eye view of the village. Now, where to start looking? He does not know where Kakashi-sensei lives (or where any of his teammates live for that matter). He does not know where the Road of Life is either. "It must be a pretty long road, if Sensei's always getting lost there," Naruto muses.

A prickly feeling at the back of Naruto's neck alerts him to the presence of another person. Wondering if the person is Kakashi-sensei, Naruto sneaks off to locate them. The person turns out to be an ANBU Black op, sneaking around like he doesn't want anyone to follow him. So of course Naruto uses his Ninja sneaking skills - the ones he uses for pranking - to follow the ANBU.

Naruto follows the ANBU away from the kage faces, through some trees and eventually spies 2 more ANBU agents moving about seemingly randomly. They stop when they see the ANBU Naruto is tailing, and salute to him. He bows and they let him pass. The ANBU puts his hand on a tree, and a seal appears on the bark. Then a door appears and the ANBU disappears inside.

Impressed, Naruto grins. "Screw finding Kakashi-Sensei! I wanna know what's behind that door!" he says, deciding to investigate.

Sasuke will never admit it, because it is beneath his dignity, but he only really suggested splitting up to look for Kakashi so he could ditch his annoying teammates. Sasuke has plans of his own that don't involve training. Just his best friend in the whole world. The thing he would probably forgive It- That Man for. (If It- That Man gave him a lifetime's supply, that is.)

Tomatoes. Those lovely red fruit - nay, those round baubles of heaven - that are so juicy and soft, like a pillow; like his mother's hair. Suddenly Sasuke wants his mother. Or one of her delectable bowls of tomato soup.

Hey, wait. Wasn't there a restaurant that sold tomato soup based off his mother's recipe? "Yes i'm sure there is, it has to be around here somewhere, doesn't it… I think," Sasuke muses. And off he goes to find himself the closest thing he could get to his mother's tomato soup.

A few minutes later, Sasuke Uchiha sits at a table in a soup kitchen called 'Konoha's Best Soups. EVER', eating the menu item listed as 'Mikoto's Tomato Soup'. It is surprisingly close to the genuine item. Sasuke quickly slips into a state of utter bliss.

Sakura considers all the possibilities.

Kakashi sensei could be sitting somewhere reading the book of his that he loves so much. Potentially he could be going into a hot spring to relax, he might still be doing the paperwork from the Wave mission as it was a higher rank than they expected, so it might take longer to process. On the other hand, Sakura thinks, he could actually be helping old ladies with their shopping, or getting cats down from trees. Yeah, and maybe Naruto's father is the fourth hokage. Who is she kidding? Obviously neither of those things is true. [Somewhere close by, the cat Kakashi helped down from a tree half an hour ago sneezes. Meanwhile, inside the belly of a Shinigami, the Fourth Hokage sneezes violently. Somewhere else, an old lady sneezes as she unpacks the groceries that a nice young ninja helped her carry home.] No, Sakura thinks, where would Kakashi sensei actually be? Maybe he is visiting his friends at the memorial stone.

That is a definite possibility. Sakura heads over to the memorial stone.

And there he is: standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the memorial stone.

"Kakashi sensei!" she calls.

He turns and gives her that annying eye-smile of his.

"We got sick of waiting for you to turn up," she grouses. "So we split up to look for you." then she turns on her ear-piece. "Sasuke, Naruto: this is Sakura. I've found sensei." Silence from the head set. "Guys? Don't reply at the same time, will you?" She scowls. "Pink to Blue and Orange! Do you copy? I've located Scar."

"Blue to Pink," carries across the head set. "Good work."

"Kyaa! Sasuke-kun complimented my work!"

Kakashi face-palms.

"Have you heard from the dobe?"

"No… he probably got into trouble or something."