Buried in documents, Shingetsu kept her head down and worked for her wonderful master without pay, noticing nothing. Izuna, however, caught the trace of wistfulness in his brother's eyes and gave his shoulder a light pat.
Only then did Madara seem to snap out of it. Finding himself utterly ridiculous, he lowered his head in shame and even wished he could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
When would I ever have been this sentimental before?
The more Madara thought about it, the more embarrassed he became, so he successfully redirected his anger toward those little-er, big brats about to graduate:
"Have them intern at the Hokage Building after graduation. Start them at the bottom and give them all the hardest, most exhausting work!"
The moment he said that, the whole room erupted.
Shingetsu laughed at their misfortune from the sidelines, while Itama's eyes widened in horror. Wasn't what these older students were going through now exactly what awaited him? His future suddenly looked pitch-black.
Tobirama thought that damned spiky-haired idiot had taken the wrong medicine again, while Hashirama loudly pleaded for mercy for his unfortunate students. But there was no arguing Madara out of it.
Amid all the chaos, Izuna smiled gently, finding this side of his brother adorable too.
Around noon, they had barely finished processing the mountain of documents in the office when a fresh batch of intelligence began pouring into the Hokage Building from all over the shinobi world. Just looking at it made Shingetsu's head hurt.
In a sense, being Hokage really was a life sentence!
Still, with everything hanging in the balance, how could the shinobi world possibly be quiet?
News arrived from the Four Great Nations in succession. The very night the Four Kage returned home, they had all begun