Inside Sea Ninja Village in Kibi.
Shanks, the 'Eight-Tails' Gyuki, A, and Killer B.
The four were having a dinner party and drinking at elite Jonin A's detached villa.
This A was naturally not the old 'Raikage' A, but the younger A.
The gathering was meant to celebrate Killer B.
He had finally turned eighteen, graduated from the Lightning Release Comprehensive Ninja High School in the Shinobi World, and successfully joined the Cloud Village Combat Force of Sea Ninja Village.
It also gave the 'Eight-Tails' Gyuki a chance to catch up with his former host.
And because Killer B had ranked first in overall grades throughout the school, he had directly received Chunin qualifications upon graduation.
However, during the meal, Killer B complained about the World Government's rule requiring people to be eighteen before they could graduate and join military departments.
Shanks was the first to refute him, saying that the rule was correct.
The World Government did not need underage children to fight.
Killer B might have been exceptionally gifted and long accustomed to the battlefield, but what about everyone else?
How many children had died in war throughout the Shinobi World over the years?
Shanks then consoled him, saying that geniuses like them really should be granted some special privileges.
They clearly possessed strength far surpassing that of many adult warriors at fifteen or sixteen, yet they still had to waste two or three years stuck in school.
So he would find an opportunity to suggest that, under the existing 'gifted student' system, they be allowed to graduate two years early.
Sixteen would be just right.
After all, most Sea Star People considered sixteen to be adulthood.
What Shanks did not know was that the talent-rich World Government had already done exactly that.
Why had Nagato Uzumaki been