At the table that shikamaru nodded to in greeting sat a couple adults...
The black hair, Vermillion eyed lady sighed...
"Truly unfortunate, they were too young..."
The masked man with silver hair just shrugged, not taking eyes of his peculiar book...
"They are shinobi and could of rejected the mission too, they weren't ordered to go... shikamaru was told to het a team and they accepted as adults."
The women responded, "do you even hear yourself Kakashi? Adults? That's the last thing that the bunch of them were!"
The smoking bearded man, blew out smoke from his mouth...
"Technically, Kakashi is right, kurenai... shinobi is seen as an adult capable of anything that anyone of age may do... even drinking liquor. Even if by moral consensus they are still kids..."
Kurenai just glared at the bearded man, the masked cyclops simply shrugged while a man with a green suit and bushy brows simply took a sip of his tea somberly...
"Not you too asuma. An adult is more than a status... by all rights they were mere kids with youth stolen from them by evil..."
Kurenai nodded, quite pleased at the bowl headed man's helping hand.
Kakashi just snorted, "evil is an exaggeration, guy. Even if they were killed, the world isn't that black and white and if you would take it as white and black than you are one of those evils too... orochimaru after all did not assign your cell to the deadly experience of the chunin exams where dozens die every year."
Guy glared at his rival, "Kakashi! There is an difference between an shinobi being killed in an youthful competition, which they fortunately were not, and one killed by the shinobi working under the traitor, orochimaru."
Kakashi shrugged nonchalantly, "dead is dead, they knew what they were signing up to and could've declined. They didn't and now are dead."
Asuma blew, smoke flowing out his mouth in a dark shaded cloud that slowly dissipated...
"As much as I don't want to agree, this is Kakashi speaking factually. They were technically not assigned to the mission and only asked by shikamaru to go along as the hokage told him to."
"Not you too!" The Vermillion eyed beauty huffed at the smoking bearded man.
The white haired man sitting reading a book, stood up and started to walk off to visit someone. He knew that there other jonins wouldn't see it his way so why argue?
"What else would one expect from the friend killer?"
Another jonin simply shrugged, his voice carried across the table.
Kakashi continued walking, not falling for the clear bait.
Going from one restaurant and arriving at the next...
Standing before that small building, he read the name on the cloth that separated the sitting place and the street.
'Ichiraku ramen'