Comforting Kushina

The next day, Uzumaki Kushina walked into the classroom with her head hanging low. As soon as she sat down, she glared fiercely at Uchiha Nagi.

"Why are you glaring at me? Did I hit the nail on the head?"

Uchiha Nagi could barely hold back a laugh. Kushina thought she could graduate early? Fat chance.

"Hmph!"

Kushina snorted without answering, but her attitude said it all.

Namikaze Minato chuckled, too. These two were pretty amusing.

"Minato, I've already talked to my family. Today, we can go ask our teacher together for permission to take the graduation exam," Uchiha Nagi said.

"Okay."

Namikaze Minato, who had been the first to suggest graduating early, naturally had no reason to refuse.

"Minato, do you know how many people in our class have decided to graduate early?" Uchiha Nagi asked, glancing at his classmates curiously.

With his lazy personality, he naturally knew very little about most of his classmates. At best, he knew their names. He couldn't be bothered to gather information on these random people.

"Not many, as far as I can tell. The only ones I know of are Uchiha Enichi and Akimichi Yoshimaru," Namikaze Minato replied.

"So it's those two." Uchiha Nagi looked as if he'd expected as much.

If he hadn't joined them, those two would probably have been Namikaze Minato's teammates.

Besides, judging by the original story, Minato's teammates were hardly ever mentioned later on. That meant there was a good chance the two of them had died.

So, following Minato around was pretty dangerous?

But Uchiha Nagi wasn't like them. At the moment, he was even stronger than Namikaze Minato.

Even if the two of them teamed up and let Minato handle the ordinary missions while he slacked off in the back, he could always join in if they ran into danger.

Uchiha Nagi thought that was a very safe plan.

And Uchiha Mikoto might join them later, too. He remembered that she became a jonin.

Based on when she got married and had children, she probably became a jonin before she turned twenty. Her talent was decent, at least, and she shouldn't hold them back.

Uzumaki Kushina was a little unhappy. She'd thought that if she just acted cute a little more, she'd be allowed to graduate early.

But things were much more complicated than she'd expected.

In peacetime, she could have graduated early without much fuss, as long as her missions afterward were assigned within the village.

But they were now in the middle of the Second Shinobi World War. The mission system was still operating, but its workload had been greatly reduced. The only people who could still assign missions were wealthy families with influence.

As far as missions went, there were hardly any simple jobs left for newly graduated Genin. The few that remained were things like clearing weeds.

In other words, shinobi who graduated now were basically all headed for the battlefield.

Kushina could have accepted that much, but...

She'd realized that even if she graduated normally later, she probably wouldn't be allowed to go on missions outside the village. She would have to stay in Konoha.

That meant she couldn't earn merit or fame through the war, or gain experience and a reputation through missions.

Her dream of becoming Konoha's first female Hokage had basically been shattered.

"All right, stop looking so down." Uchiha Nagi tapped Kushina on the head again.

"Hmph. You don't know anything." Kushina was a little annoyed. Besides, she couldn't tell him about being a Jinchūriki.

"Heh, isn't it just that you can't go on missions outside the village? Once the war is over, you can sneak out and join us when we go on missions."

Uchiha Nagi remembered that Kushina was practically a law unto herself in Konoha.

Even after becoming the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, people kept an eye on her, but she was still allowed to move around quite freely.

The Third Hokage had let Kushina, a walking powder keg who could explode at any moment, roam freely around Konoha. Did he really not fear her losing control?

Kushina wasn't Uzumaki Mito; she didn't have Mito's wealth of experience.

And she wasn't Uzumaki Naruto, either. The Sealing Jutsu keeping the Nine-Tails inside her was powerful, but it still couldn't seal the beast completely.

In the original story, Kushina had lost control and injured Namikaze Minato because of it.

So was the Third Hokage just reckless, or did he genuinely have the Jinchūriki's best interests at heart?

Uchiha Nagi couldn't figure it out. From what he could tell, there were only three possibilities with this Hokage:

He was either stupid, evil, or both...

"Can I?" Kushina's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Why not?" Uchiha Nagi replied casually.

Was the Third Hokage really going to punish a Jinchūriki? Besides, with Tsunade around, they couldn't even lock Kushina up...

In the end, they'd have no choice but to let it go.

Besides, Uchiha Nagi remembered that this war lasted an extremely long time. The Second Shinobi World War and the Third Shinobi World War practically ran into each other.

By the time the war really ended, the Third Hokage would have stepped down long ago.

And if Namikaze Minato didn't die in the Nine-Tails Incident, all Kushina would need to do to go on missions was let him know.

"That's great!" Kushina cheered.

Namikaze Minato watched them, a trace of confusion in his eyes.

Since he knew nothing about the Nine-Tails Jinchūriki, he couldn't understand why Kushina had to go to so much trouble just to leave the village on missions.

"Maybe there's something special about Kushina's situation, and Nagi seems to know about it," Namikaze Minato thought to himself. Then he decided not to dwell on it.

If they hadn't told him, there was probably a good reason he was better off not knowing.

Still, why did he have a bad feeling about this?

Soon, while Kushina watched enviously, Uchiha Nagi and Namikaze Minato went to the office and found Teacher Inoue.

"Hm? Minato and Nagi, what brings you to see me?" Teacher Inoue asked kindly.

"Teacher Inoue, we're here to apply to take the graduation exam early."

"Huh?" Teacher Inoue looked surprised. Most of the students who came to see him around this time were here for the same reason.

Even so, he hadn't expected these two to apply for early graduation.

They were just too low-key. In class, they only ever sparred with each other, sometimes with Uzumaki Kushina joining them.

As an observer, their teacher knew very well that the two of them held back during their sparring.

Their true abilities might not surpass Uchiha Enichi's, but they were definitely among the best in the class.

Because he knew how low-profile they were, Teacher Inoue had assumed they wouldn't do something as conspicuous as graduating early.

After hearing Namikaze Minato's words, Teacher Inoue's expression turned serious.