Outside the delivery room at Konoha Hospital, the atmosphere was tenser than at the Five Kage Summit.
Hashirama Senju, the legendary God of Shinobi, had assumed a pose of abject prostration,
clinging to the delivery room door with his ear pressed tightly against the crack, tears and snot smeared all over his face,
and muttering nonstop.
"Come on, little Tsunade! Push harder! Just like when you used to shake the dice at the casino!"
"Is the baby out yet? Did I hear crying?
Is it a loud, hearty cry like mine, or a brooding little cry like Tobirama's?"
Beside him, Tobirama Senju, a newly inducted student of the art of slacking, sat bolt upright on a row of cold metal benches.
His eyes were closed, his hands forming a textbook Meditation Mudra,
as he tried to detach himself from the anxious air, thick with hormones and disinfectant.
Calm as still water... calm as still water...
Treat the noise outside as the roar of a waterfall...
Treat my elder brother's idiotic racket as...
"Waaaaah-Tobirama! Listen!
Was that crying? Was that crying?"
Hashirama abruptly turned, grabbed his younger brother by the shoulders, and shook him like mad.
A vein on Tobirama Senju's forehead gave a vicious twitch.
...an undeletable system-level junk file.
His training in slacking had failed at the very first step.
Yet the true center of this storm, Uchiha Shinichi, was unusually quiet.
He neither sat nor clung to the door.
He simply stood ramrod straight in the middle of the corridor, like a utility pole.
His signature dead-fish eyes, utterly devoid of emotion, stared fixedly at the red "Operation in progress" sign above the delivery room door.
His mind was blank.
No, not entirely blank.
Against that empty backdrop, a gigantic, bloodred, endlessly flashing notification occupied every last bit