Team Assignments

"Don't push me too far! Replace Nawaki, and leave the others!"

"Impossible. The team assignments have already been made. Zhou Duan, as a Konoha Ninja, you will follow orders!"

"You must be dreaming. I don't mind having one deadweight on the team, but that guy's the kind of deadweight who charges ahead without thinking whenever trouble hits. He's an idiot who'd take on the Five Kage themselves. You want my whole team wiped out? Replace him with Namikaze Minato, and I guarantee we'll kill more enemies than any other genin squad!"

"Zhou Duan, don't overthink this. The genin squads' mission is to keep themselves safe and gain as much experience as possible. They don't need to kill enemies. And as for changing the team members, you can forget about it!"

"Heh!"

Zhou Duan gave him a look that said, Are you fucking kidding me? Even though he was speaking to the Hokage, he still wore an expression of contempt.

"Lord Hokage, save those speeches for impressionable kids. They won't work on me. And if that's how you see it, I'll knock Nawaki out during the mission and keep him unconscious the whole time. Even if the whole village looks down on him, curses him, and insults him afterward, I won't let him wake up!"

Bam!

The desk, which had taken countless heavy blows, suffered another devastating hit. The Third Hokage's anger flared again.

"Zhou Duan, don't push your luck!"

"Who's the one pushing their luck here? You saw that I've got some strength and brains, so you dumped the biggest headache on me. If I hadn't pulled that dog-hair-pulling stunt, you'd have pinned some crime on me and forced me to take Nawaki anyway, wouldn't you?"

"You're right!"

"Damn! You're the leader of the village, and you admit it just like that? Fine, I'll take him. But replace that Tonaiba person with Namikaze Minato, and give our squad three times the supplies of the others!"

"Ugh..."

Hiruzen sat in his chair, facing Zhou Duan, who wouldn't budge an inch. His teeth ached from clenching them. Hiruzen knew all too well that with Nawaki's disastrous personality, Zhou Duan was probably the only genin in all of Konoha who could keep him in line!

Since the Second Shinobi World War began, Konoha had first fought the Rain Ninja. What they had expected to be an easy victory had instead cost them a large number of shinobi, thanks to Hanzo of the Salamander. By the time they went to war with the Sand Ninja of the Land of Wind, who were even stronger than the Rain Ninja, they were desperately short on manpower. Otherwise, they wouldn't have sent freshly graduated genin straight to the battlefield before they'd had a chance to gain experience.

Put nicely, the genin were being sent to the battlefield to gain experience. Put bluntly, they were a bunch of cannon fodder meant to ease the pressure on the front lines for a while. Fewer than one in ten would survive and distinguish themselves!

Senju Nawaki was the grandson of the First Hokage. For both the village's sake and his own, Hiruzen had to protect him. But as a descendant of the First Hokage, Nawaki also had to go to the battlefield. That alone made it even more important than usual. If word got around that the First Hokage's grandson was too afraid to go to the battlefield, the whispers behind his back would be enough to destroy him!

Hiruzen had split the newly graduated genin into two groups: those going straight to the battlefield, and those assigned to supply delivery. Anyone with eyes could tell that the promising young shinobi were all being sent on supply missions. The idea was to give them a little battlefield experience before they went to war. Compared with genin sent straight to the front, even that small amount of experience could save their lives at a critical moment!

Every member of Konoha's leadership had agreed on this point!

It was an advantage, but also a disadvantage. Since supply missions were much less dangerous, the teams couldn't be given too many powerful shinobi. Each route had only one jonin leader, and that was already the limit. But jonin had too many other responsibilities to look after Nawaki properly!

As for a chunin squad leader, there were enough to spare, and assigning one to Nawaki would be easy. The problem was, could a chunin really keep this problem child under control, let alone rein him in?

Hiruzen hadn't paid much attention to Nawaki's fighting ability, but as the grandson of Senju Hashirama, the God of Shinobi, he'd assumed that even if Nawaki was weak, he couldn't be that bad.

Besides, anyone would have thought that a genin who could perform two A-rank ninjutsu was a genius. But after seeing Nawaki fight the day before, the Third Hokage had lost all hope in his battlefield instincts. With brains like his, he'd be the first to die out there!

Hiruzen hadn't slept a wink over this. After turning it over in his mind again and again, he'd settled on the only solution: Zhou Duan, who was even more troublesome than Nawaki. A headache, certainly, but at least Zhou Duan always came out of every encounter having taken advantage of someone else. That was what had truly tempted Hiruzen!

He'd been wondering how to lure this guy, who refused to take a loss, into his trap when the unruly brat had pulled that dog-hair-pulling stunt. Well, he could pull out dog hair if he wanted. Zhou Duan had a point: compared with a dog, Nawaki was the more pressing problem. But after finally forcing Nawaki onto Zhou Duan's team, the brat now wanted Namikaze Minato too.

Minato had shown exceptional talent in his understanding of combat, control of the battlefield, and judgment of friend and foe alike. Hiruzen had planned to train him carefully and appoint him leader of another squad!

Thinking about how an honest young man like Namikaze Minato, who devoted himself to the village, might be corrupted by joining Zhou Duan's squad was too much to bear. Hiruzen glanced at Hatake Sakumo, who was staring blankly at the ceiling like a goose, and his eyes nearly strained from glaring. But Hatake Sakumo, who usually loved fighting on the front lines for the village, seemed not to have noticed at all. His meaning was clear enough: If you, the village's leader, can't control this kid, I have no chance!

On one side was a rising star of the village. On the other was the grandson of the First Hokage. Hiruzen didn't need to think about which mattered more. For the sake of the village's future, he gritted his teeth.

"Zhou Duan, you can have Namikaze Minato. But your squad's supplies will be limited to the average allotment. Since you're a Medical Ninja, though, you can have three times the medical supplies of the other squads!"

Hiruzen squeezed out those few words through gritted teeth. He'd hoped that seeing the brat look satisfied would calm him down. Instead, Zhou Duan rolled his eyes, showing no gratitude at all.

"Tch. So stingy!"

The air suddenly grew oppressive. As uncontrollable surges of Chakra erupted throughout the Hokage's office, the desk in front of Hiruzen could no longer endure the relentless abuse. Like a sheet of paper burned to ash and caught by a gale, it crumbled into dust!

Hiruzen's unremarkable frame suddenly grew half a foot taller, and the muscles in his right arm bulged until his sleeve tore. As he barked, "Get out!" all that remained in the office was a child-shaped hole, with a tiny black dot seen through it, growing smaller as it flew away!