Fitness Before the Request

Mission update is live.

Get comfortable. The village is watching.

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The rain had stopped before dawn. Kakashi found three genin at the training ground anyway, standing under a cedar with dry packs and the expressions of people who had agreed not to start without him.

Sakura had a notebook under her arm. Sasuke was looking at the trunk as if it had said something insulting. Naruto had his bandaged palm tucked into his sleeve.

"We said we'd practice before the office opened," Naruto said.

"You said that," Sakura corrected. "I said we'd meet here."

Kakashi held up the folder in his hand. The week's D-rank completion slips were inside, along with his training log. "The office opens in two hours. The clinic opens now."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "We're not sick."

"Good. That should make this faster."

"We could run the retreat signals first," Sakura said. She looked down at the folder before adding, "Unless there's something in there I haven't seen."

She was asking the right question, which made it harder to use the easy answer. Kakashi opened the folder on a dry section of bench.

The eight mission slips showed work accepted, pay recorded, and no unfinished civilian task. They did not say what had happened to Naruto's calf during tree practice, what Sasuke's hand looked like after scraping bark, or how long Sakura had favored her wrist after the wall. Kakashi had written those in three separate columns. None was a diagnosis. All three belonged in the calculation before anyone asked to be sent beyond the gate.

"We finished the work," Naruto said.

"You did."

"And the signals."

"Mostly."

"That is your favorite word."

"It's a useful one." Kakashi closed the folder. "I won't carry a recommendation for a C-rank request without a current medical review."

Sasuke looked from the folder to the tree. "That costs us the morning."

"Yes."

"The Hokage can still refuse," Sakura said.

"Yes. So can the mission desk before it puts anything in your hands. I'm agreeing to bring your request, not approve a mission."

Naruto drew breath for the argument he had been saving. He let it out instead. "If one of us gets told no?"

"Then you hear why together."

Sakura tucked her notebook away. Sasuke turned from the tree. Neither looked pleased. Kakashi was relieved by that. A check that felt like a reward would teach the wrong lesson.

The clinic's waiting room smelled of soap and wet sandals. A mother held a sleeping child against one shoulder. Two shinobi with mud on their flak jackets sat apart from each other, each pretending not to watch the other's bandage. Team Seven took the last three seats. Naruto tried the chair nearest the door, found the light directly in his eyes, and moved without comment.

At the desk, Kakashi asked for an assessment of injuries and current function, not a fitness certificate. The clerk lifted the folder, then stopped when she saw three names.

"One team?"

"Three bodies," Kakashi said.

She made three intake sheets. Sakura reached for hers. Naruto read his upside down. Sasuke took his without thanks.

The medic who had written Naruto's Sunday limit recognized him. She did not recognize the folder as permission to hurry.

"I told you to report if the tremor persisted," she said.

"It didn't on Monday. Thursday I used one clone for weeds. Then it came back with a headache. I stopped."

"That is not the same event as Sunday."

"I know. Kakashi-sensei stopped more clones for that job."

"Good. Tell me about today, not what you hope to do next week."

Naruto shifted on the examination stool. "Calf's tight when I go up on my toes. Palm stings if I grip too hard. No headache this morning."

The medic had him walk, balance, and rise once. She watched his hands as carefully as his feet. Naruto did not fall. His calf tightened visibly near the end and he sat when she told him to sit. Kakashi stood by the screen and let the clinician ask the questions. His account of Thursday was evidence about training; it was not a substitute for what she could see now.

She checked the palm without pulling at skin that had already closed. "No fresh bleeding. That isn't a promise about what happens if you catch your weight on it."

"I know how to fall."

"Then you know a road doesn't ask which hand you prefer."

Naruto looked at Kakashi. Kakashi offered no rescue from the sentence.

Sasuke went next. The scrape across his palm had looked trivial when he made it on the cedar. It looked less trivial under clean light, a rough line where the top layer of skin had come away. He could close his hand, but his fingers hesitated on the last bit of pressure.

"It doesn't affect my weapons," he said.

The medic handed him a plain wooden dowel. "Hold this while I pull."

He held it. She pulled. His grip did not fail, but his jaw set before she had used much force.

"It affects something," she said.

"It hurts. That's different."

"Yes. Pain is different from loss of function. It's still information." She wrote the result, not his opinion of it. "Any numbness?"

"No."

"Say so if that changes."

Sasuke took his hand back. Kakashi could almost hear the argument he chose not to make. The choice did not make the scrape vanish. It did make the room less crowded with pride.

Sakura offered her wrist before she was asked. The skin at its edge was raw from Friday's brush work; she had wrapped it neatly enough to hide how tight the movement had become. The medic checked rotation and asked her to lift a small weight from the table.

Sakura managed it. On the way down, she altered her grip.

"When did you start doing that?" the medic asked.

"After the wall. It was better this morning."

"Better than what?"

Sakura hesitated. "Better than last night."

"That's a comparison I can record. Not a baseline." The medic set the weight down. "Does writing hurt?"

"After a while."

"How long?"

"I didn't time it."

That bothered Sakura more than the question about pain. Her notebook had precise counts of blocked drains and disputed coins. She could not give a clean number for her own wrist.

"I should have written it down," she said.

"You can start now," the medic said. "Not to make the pain disappear. So the next person knows whether it changed."

Kakashi watched Sakura accept the pencil. She wrote the time of the examination and a short description on her own page. The medic kept the clinical sheet. Those two records had different jobs, and Sakura knew it without being told.

When the three examinations were done, the medic spread the intake sheets across her desk. Outside the screen, the waiting room had filled. Someone coughed. A child complained that the bandage was the wrong color. Nothing in the building paused for Team Seven's ambition.

"I can document what I found today," she told Kakashi. "Naruto has a tight calf and a healing palm, with a reported headache after a clone on Thursday. Sasuke has a painful but functioning grip. Sakura has a wrist strain that changes how she lowers a load. I haven't observed them on a road or under attack."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Kakashi said.

"You asked for current function. You have it. None of these sheets says 'cleared for C-rank.' Don't let a clerk read them that way."

Sasuke folded his arms. Naruto looked at the floor. Sakura asked, "Would you write a reason to stop us from making the request?"

The medic considered her. "I'm not assigning your rank. If your teacher wants to send a request, he can attach these findings. The mission office decides what risk it will accept. I would want symptoms reported again before departure if there is a delay or anything gets worse."

"What if the office says yes today?" Naruto asked.

"Then 'yes' is not a cure." She looked at Kakashi. "And I will not write a sentence that lets anyone pretend it is."

He had no intention of asking. It still stung to hear the boundary stated where all three of them could hear it. That was probably why it needed stating.

The medic signed each sheet beneath her own findings and handed the routing copies to the clerk. No private detail went into the general waiting-room ledger. Kakashi checked the names and dates before he signed for receipt. He did not sign as if he had performed the examinations.

They stepped outside into a thin patch of sunlight. The cedar at the far end of the street was visible above the roofs. Naruto looked toward it once.

"We could still fit in ten minutes," he said.

"No," Sakura said. "We spent the ten minutes finding out you can't bargain with your calf."

"I was going to suggest signals."

"You were looking at a tree."

"A very informative tree."

Sasuke walked ahead without joining in. He had rewrapped his palm with the clean strip the medic gave him. Kakashi saw how he kept his fingers loose instead of clenching them to prove something. It was a small correction, not a victory.

At the mission office annex, a junior clerk gave Kakashi a recommendation form. It had one box for completed D-ranks and a larger one for the leader's judgment. Nothing on the paper asked whether the team had spent its morning in a clinic. He added that himself.

"Eight completed," Kakashi said, writing the count. "Training gaps identified by all three. Present injuries reviewed this morning."

"Are we writing the reasons?" Sakura asked.

"You will present your reasons in the office. This is my recommendation, not your speech."

Naruto opened his mouth, closed it, and looked mildly offended by his own restraint. Sasuke's gaze stayed on the unsigned bottom line.

Kakashi wrote the condition slowly enough that they could see it: Recommend hearing Team Seven's joint request for a supervised C-rank assignment, subject to the attached current medical findings and the mission office's independent decision. Reassess symptoms before departure if assignment is delayed or condition changes.

"That says 'hearing,'" Sasuke said.

"Yes."

"Not 'granting.'"

"Also yes."

"You're making us ask twice."

"I'm making sure my signature does only my job. The desk has a different one."

Sakura read the condition again. "If they refuse, the injury isn't the only possible reason."

"Correct."

"And if they agree, we don't become uninjured."

"You heard the medic."

Naruto rubbed the edge of his palm wrap with one thumb. "So today we lost training and gained paperwork that might tell us no."

"You've learned to summarize, too."

"Don't sound so proud. I'll get used to it."

Kakashi signed. The clerk stamped receipt of the recommendation and the three medical routing copies, then placed them behind the mission-office counter. A stamped receipt was not an assignment scroll. It was proof that the office had the question in front of it and could answer without pretending the week had left no marks.

The three genin stood together while Kakashi folded his copy. Sakura had her notebook ready. Sasuke still looked like he wanted to argue with the word subject. Naruto looked at the closed door to the main office, where arguing would be easier and less useful.

"When it opens," Kakashi said, "you ask together. If they say no, you hear the reason before you decide what to do next."

Sakura nodded. Sasuke gave the smallest possible acknowledgment. Naruto took his wrapped hand away from the doorframe and left it at his side.

The clerk called the next team to the counter. Team Seven waited its turn.

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