Chapter Text
Someone with a terrible sense of humor had scrawled Love Chapel over the door. Many other someones, presumably with equal if not worse senses of humor, had never seen fit to remove the title from the Headquarters of Konoha Administration Department’s (also known as the Order of Desk-Shinobi) Shinobi Branch for Civil Partnerships.
Over time, perhaps over nearly one hundred years, the scrawl had even come to be decorated by carved hearts and some more… violent kunai wounds. On the inside, correspondingly, next to several desks, someone had set up a handsome carpet leading to a lovely archway made of several entwined, always flowering trees.
Some said that this added decoration had been set up by Senju Hashirama, the Shodaime himself, and that the tradition of sticking a kunai, shuriken, or senbon into the Love Tree when you got married there had been started by Senju Tobirama, the Nidaime himself (who was also responsible for the founding of the Civil Partnerships Department, along with most departments in general).
Not because Senju Tobirama had been getting married, though. God, no. But more because his brother had grown a goddamned plant inside one of his administration buildings. According to the very romantic legend, Tobirama had proceeded to make a very valiant attempt on his brother’s life and several kunai had been embedded in the Love Tree as Hashirama ran for his life. The kunai had never been removed, the first couple to get married in front of it had made an assumption, and the tradition had gone along from there.
Tobirama had not actually managed to get his brother, though, the legend continued. He failed quite terribly, because Uzumaki Mito, ever the romantic soul, needed her husband to attend an Akimichi dinner party to discuss business and put her dainty slipper down. Under Uzumaki Mito’s ultimate authority, Tobirama added a lovely spring of sparkling water next to the Love Tree in apology and then, in an admirable display of his intelligence and diplomatic abilities, delegated and started pretending that the entire Civil Partnerships Department did not exist.
Shinobi had been getting married in front of the Love Tree ever since.
Oh, not the Clan marriages or any sort of grand affair – not anything that was big and planned and approved – but small ones. People who had to get married in secret or in a hurry, like a Hyuuga woman and an Uchiha woman who were secret lovers, or two shinobi leaving for dangerous missions countries away from each other. Clan prejudices and war made people desperate and afraid like that, making the join together quickly and quietly. Sometimes with a handful of beloved friends and family, and sometimes entirely alone save the specialized desk-shinobi who manned the office – sometimes for love, sometimes not.
Less tragically, it was also a place for people who did not give a shit about weddings to get hitched. Fuck it all to hell, let’s just get this shit over with. Put some fucking pants on, we’re getting married.
The Love Chapel and its Love Tree had seen many marriages over the years. Some were desperate and sad and doomed to misery, others were gleeful and joyful and the beginning of something wonderful, and others were overdue and comfortable and kind. Some were uncertain but hopeful, others were anxious and remorseful, and some were angry or grieving or outright disbelieving. It was a place as varied as the people who entered it, and it held many stories of all sorts of endings.
But in times of peace, Konoha’s Civil Partnerships Department, Shinobi Branch, saw one kind of marriage far above any other kind of marriage.
It was a truth universally acknowledged, after all, that any shinobi in possession of good skill must be correspondingly kind of weird. The life of a shinobi is hard and cruel and weird as fuck, thus one must be of good humor and better coping methods to live it – more often than not, this coping involve some sort of vice, like drinking, and a good amount of silliness with good friends.
And this was the most common kind of marriage that the Love Chapel saw: exceeding ridiculous marriages that were at least twice as drunk as that.
Ueda Kazuko had seen many a drunken chuunin and jounin (and some older genin) swagger like that into the Love Chape- er, Civil Partnerships Department: slurring words and swaying, but still perfectly able to kill a man and determined to get themselves hitched. It didn’t faze her in the slightest nowadays. She’d only be yelling and jumping to her feet in outrage if one of the bastards puked on the floor again, because that shit stank.
It had long since gotten to the point where getting married at the (fuck it) Love Chapel was almost considered just another fun thing to do on a night-off. In some friend circles, if you and a buddy hadn’t gotten drunkenly hitched at least once, even if you were both in separate monogamous relationships, you were doing something wrong.
This never happened at the Civilian Branch of the Civil Partnerships Department. Lucky bastards.
Kazuko had pretty much just gotten used to it, as well as the massive backlog of marriages that had ended up on her manager’s desk and in the administrative system. Anyone who seemed to be drunk or drugged or simply off during a marriage had their papers stamped with a warning, because they were a shinobi village and suspicious like that, and it took a very long time for follow-up investigations to be made before marriages went entirely through. Hence: backlog.
Their department had only three members, with Manager and Kazuko being the first two, along with their investigator, Oshiro Goro, who was over eighty years old and more prone to naps on the staff room couch than chasing down shinobi these days. Shinobi were notoriously difficult to track down for anything, especially paperwork, and especially-especially for paperwork on drunken marriages that may or may not be legitimate and that the shinobi in question may or may not have any actual memory of.
With that last case, Yamanakas sometimes had to be brought in, which was a whole new world of paperwork hell and embarrassment for literally everybody involved in the process of figuring this shit out. If Kazuko had to face one more case of mutual unrequited love (how the fuck does that even work anyway), she was going to flip her shit.
These days, it was generally assumed that if anyone really wanted their marriage to be legitimate, they would make an appointment and turn up perfectly sober (or the allowed maximum of mildly tipsy, which required specific advance warning), or they would follow-up afterwards, demanding to know what the fuck had happened to their mail or why they hadn’t gotten a card of congratulations from the Hokage.* If their marriage wasn’t the take-it-to-the-grave secretive sort, that was, but sometimes even then because married discounts were married discounts and shinobi could be stingy bastards.
*[[The Shodaime had begun a tradition of writing cards of congratulations for marriages, either because he was just that friendly and romantic, had been prompted by his wife or brother to do so, or had just gotten that bored one day. No one was sure which it was, but by the time Tobirama’s reign came around, the tradition had dug into Konoha with metaphorical claws and metaphorically hissed at the idea of letting go. So all future Hokages had diligently followed the tradition, with various amounts of duress, and the results were hilarious.
On slow days, Kazuko liked to pull out their department’s collection of donated or scavenged cards and read them for her own amusement. Comedy (or it might’ve been tragedy, but she was a shinobi so she could barely tell the difference half the time) had never been greater.
Hashirama’s were incredibly flowery, both in language and perfume, and many of devolved into long, very inspirational speeches about peace and community and the power of love.
His brother’s, Tobirama's, on the other hand, were without technical fault and seemed ultimately sincere in wishing happiness, but they were amazingly stilted and so brief that it seemed bullet points ought to be involved somewhere. The urge to check if they’d somehow fallen out was incredible.
Meanwhile the Sandaime’s cards tended to show off his age by including embarrassing childhood stories and recollections about that really dumbass thing you did as a teenager full of chakra and hormones (a dangerous combination). Saturobi Hiruzen never forgot a thing. You thought no one knew about that time you did the thing-that-must-not-be-named? Had hoped everyone had forgotten? Hah, think again, young ones, and despair.
The Yondaime’s cards were much like the Shodaime’s, in that Namikaze Minato was incredibly effusive and sincere and congratulatory. But they were also like the Nidaime’s as well, in that they were much more controlled and diplomatic and secretly purposeful than the average person might expect. They would have been perfect if not for how they tended to be covered in random little doodles and seals.
It was like Minato had gotten either incredible bored or artistically inspired, while in the middle of running a village and writing a card that should have taken five minutes tops. And like all of the Yondaime Hokage’s secretaries had just given up entirely on having him stop, deciding to deliver the congratulatory cards as they were. Covered in adorable rabbits hopping about, or an incredibly detailed portrait of the Toad Sage, or an extremely romantic depiction of one of the Daimyo’s wife’s demon cats being set on fire.
Strangely enough, Minato’s doodling habit had always gone over incredibly, almost unbelievably well. Take three couples as examples.
The first couple, eager to have children together, had taken the rabbits covering their congratulatory card as a sign of wishing them a happy, prosperous, and fertile marriage together. They were delighted by the personalization, as the wife was a rabbit summoner and they both adored the creatures.
The second couple, two retired men from T&I, received the card with the incredibly detailed portrait of the Toad Sage and were ecstatic. They were enormous fans of Jiraiya’s works, from the man’s first mission reports to his new Icha Icha series, and they quickly had the card autographed by the extremely bemused Sannin.
The third couple was a pair of kunoichi jounin who’d both been training genin team after genin team for years. When they received a congratulatory card with a sketch of a cat on fire, the women had immediately had the gruesome picture of one of the much-hated demon cats of Fire on fire, something they had wanted to do for years, framed and put in a place of honor on their apartment wall.
The legends were uncertain whether or not the Yondaime had been doing any of this on purpose. Because he had been a genius and it had worked out positively for him every single time, most people leaned towards yes, but every time anyone had gone to Jiraiya of the Sannin about it, the Yondaime’s mentor had just cackled with laughter. So it was unknown.]]
Ueda Kazuko was alone at the front desk, the Manager was on brunch break (which was immediately followed by lunch break, then afternoon tea break), and Goro was snoozing on the couch when everything changed and the New Order of Desk-Shinobi attacked.
Well, not so much “attacked” as stormed into the room, started putting everything in boxes, and demanded a full accounting of everything along with a bullet-point list of “exactly what the fuck was wrong with this fucking department” – the words of the new Head Desk-Shinobi, apparently. The only real casualties had been Kazuko’s morning Sudoku puzzle and Goro’s mid-morning nap after he fell off the couch when the desk-shinobi actually picked it up and took it away too.
It was the most orderly display of complete chaos that Kazuko had ever seen. Wow, she had never known that Manager’s desk had had a surface like that. Who knew? In the end, the only thing that was left in the entire tiny building was the Love Arch and a small sign on the door that read Closed for Administrative Reconstruction.
Kazuko had no real memory of the next two hours or so. She felt as though she had been blown about by an extremely efficient whirlwind. Her entire department had been analyzed, sorted, analyzed again, and was in the process of being organized in a different way while being analyzed for a third time. Konoha’s T&I Department could not have wretched information out of her with such speed and entirely, and battlefield commanders would have wept with envy over such a well-coordinated army working to conquer the Civil Partnerships Department and rebuild it anew as quickly as possible.
Kazuko may or may not have even had a breakdown and related the entire wretched story of her jerk ex-boyfriend to the new Head Desk-Shinobi slash Academy Headmaster at some point. She wasn’t actually sure. If it did happen, he was very nice if extremely awkward about it and fled from her in a very polite manner. Hm, he was a lot younger than she’d expected, and kind of cute in a possibly undead-from-stress sort of way.
Similarly, she wasn’t sure how she’d suddenly become best friends with a green-haired desk-shinobi named Midori, who could flawlessly wield three stamps at once – one in each hand and one between her teeth. Midori zoomed through file after file while filling Kazuko in as to what the fuck was happening.
Apparently, the New Order of Desk-Shinobi was analyzing and reorganizing her department in an effort to catalogue and rework Konoha’s entire administrative system. It seemed a bit overboard to do a complete accounting overhaul to Kazuko, but apparently it was either this or the new Head Desk-Shinobi would run away to fucking Suna because leaving the Konoha budget and finances as they were would be the death of him.
Apparently, the reconstruction of the Civil Partnerships Department was actually the New Order of Desk-Shinobi’s version of a break of some kind. You could tell, Midori assured Kazuko, because the new Head Desk-Shinobi was only yelling every ten minutes or so and his voice hadn’t reached its shrill pitch yet and nothing was on fire. This was nothing compared to trying to fight Konoha’s various budgets into comprehensible and cost-effective shape.
Apparently, that was why the Head Desk-Shinobi looked like he’d recently lost a fight. His lost fight had been with said budgets. The medic-nin had only just left with a warning to take it easy before the new Head Desk-Shinobi had suddenly decided that he might as well reorganize an entire department in the meanwhile.
The most terrifying part of the entire experience, though, was definitely Umino Iruka himself. He was a man on a mission, armed with a vocal volume that could shake buildings and absolutely no patience for bullshit to speak of, in command of dozens of desk-shinobi who would leap on boxes on paperwork at a snap of his fingers or a particular scowl. He had many different scowls.
He seemed to be sustained purely by yelling and a coffee machine that looked like it would either fall to pieces at a touch or murder the first person who touched it. It groaned ominously if anyone besides Umino went near it, and produced a substance that could only be called liquid death in a cup by flooding the entire department with a noxious smell that would have cleared a room of lesser shinobi.
If Kazuko had to put words to it, she would have called it the most deathly poison in the world, enhanced by the bitterness of a thousand haunted souls and the hatred of their corpses. Or something.
After the black tar had been produced, Kazuko and several other desk-shinobi watched in horror, report summaries forgotten in their grips, as Umino poured the poisoned liquid into a mug that read World’s Number #1 Teacher and crushed a soldier pill into the mix of death. After mixing it, Umino raised it up for inspection, looking like he’d lost both a fight and several nights of sleep, and said with no emotion whatsoever, “I’m going to die.” And drank it.
Then Umino made a pleasant humming sound and went to go yell at a crowd of desk-shinobi arguing over a stack of divorce papers.
Kazuko scrambled back over to Midori and demanded, “What is that.”
Midori looked up from stamping various marriage papers and removed a stamp from her mouth. “What?” she said, before glancing over at Umino. “Oh, the undead curse goop.” She leaned forward in a conspiring manner, beckoning Kazuko closer. “Rumor has it that it’s an Academy teacher brew. They all drink it. Umino-sama brought that cursed machine from the Academy itself, as a present from the previous Headmistress.”
Kazuko had always known that there was something terrible and unnatural about Academy teachers, but she was horrified. “They all drink it?” She glanced again at the inexplicable mess of jars and spices and containers that surrounded the demonic machine, then observed helplessly, “But… it’s… alcoholic.”
“I think the Kumo spirits and Taki moonshine are supposed to cancel each other out,” Midori said, entirely unconcerned as she returned the majority of her attention to a marriage certificate that appeared to have been signed in crayon.
“…That’s not how anything works.”
“Well, my only other theory is that all Academy teachers are actually undead monsters,” Midori said frankly, “and the goop is what keeps them alive and gives them power while they wrangle hordes of those small, feral, bitey things. So I’m out of ideas.”
“…I think you mean children.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
A shriek suddenly cut through the busy department. “IRUUUUUKAAA-SENNNSEI!”
Kazuko turned to look at the doorway, where stood a genin team and their jounin-sensei. The jounin she immediately recognized as the infamous Hatake Kakashi, the incredibly skilled and unfairly hot Bane of Desk-Shinobi Everywhere. The genin consisted of a furious-looking girl with bright pink hair, a blond boy in a very recognizable and hideous orange jumpsuit, and a dark-haired boy whom she was pretty sure had a six foot poster on the Psych Department wall.
Kazuko’s department wasn’t really one often in the middle of the action, but she’d kept up with the Konoha gossip like any other average desk-shinobi. This team could only be one team, one team that all desk-shinobi feared (even those who worked in the Civil Partnerships Department because shit had gotten weird that one time with the Mori family and one disastrous Perilous Journey by that poor Uchiha boy): the infamous, fourth Team Seven.
Like every other desk-shinobi in the room, she automatically hit the floor and took cover behind the nearest available piece of furniture. For her, this happened to be Midori’s desk, where she immediately discovered Midori had three katana for dealing with situations exactly like this.
There were a few seconds of silence, without even the chirping of an Aburame insect, before there was a very heavy sigh.
“It’s been a week, people,” Umino said flatly, voice carrying through the department along with the smell of pure bitterness that he was drinking. “Everybody had better be back at their desks and working before I finished the end of this sentence, or I’m sending anyone who isn’t out to go tell the Council members that they can have their funds when they submit the proper proposals for budget allotments.”
Everybody was back at their desks and working before he finished the end of his sentence. Midori had already explained to Kazuko that the Head Desk-Shinobi was making a lot of important people very unhappy by revising the administration system. No one wanted to be in that line of fire.
Umino took a smug sip of his “coffee”, then turned to the team in the doorway with a smile that only looked slightly strained. It was still the happiest expression Kazuko had seen on his face so far.
“You’re early today,” he commented. “Hello, Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke.”
The demon fox-boy beamed brightly and waved. “Hey, ‘Ruka-sensei! We’re going for ramen today, right? You promised!”
The dark-haired boy didn’t say anything, neither did the pink-haired girl as she crossed her arms.
“What? No hello for me?” Hatake asked with what Kazuko was mostly sure was mock hurt.
“Hand in your paperwork and I’ll acknowledge your existence,” Umino replied flatly. “If it’s not filed in triplicate, it doesn’t exist.” A common desk-shinobi saying. “And yes, Naruto, we’re going for ramen today. I did promise.”
“IRUKA-SENSEI!” the pink-haired girl snapped before the fox-boy or Copy-nin could answer, and Kazuko realized it had been her who’d yelled. “You can't keep drinking that stuff! It's terrible for you! How many cups have you had today?”
The Head Desk-Shinobi looked like he was about to break into a sweat, but still calmly answered, “Sakura, don’t worry. This is my second.”
Supervisor Naoko, his second-in-command, passed behind him with a stack of reports and said, “It’s Umino-sama’s fourth cup since five this morning. We have a medic-nin on standby if he tries for a fifth before noon.”
Kazuko stared in amazement as the entire genin team looked disapproving, even the dark-haired boy, and even the Copy-nin from what could be seen of his face. The fox-boy looked positively heartbroken and was making big, blue puppy-eyes towards the Head Desk-Shinobi that clearly made the man uncomfortable even as Umino tried to hide his expression behind his mug.
“Iruka-sensei!” the fox-boy said reproachfully.
Umino waved a hand. “It’s fine, Naruto.”
“Iruka-sensei,” the Copy-nin said flatly, “ANBU, T&I, and R&D won’t drink that stuff. ANBU. … ANBU.”
Kazuko turned to Midori, who’d gone back to working with only a few repeated glances at Team Seven, and demanded in a hiss, “What’s going on here? Why is the Cursed Team here? Wasn’t the curse broken by Umino-sama?”
“Yeah, it was. But the Hokage assigned them to Umino-sama for a couple hours every day as a D-rank until the Chuunin Exams,” Midori explains quietly, watching the legendary nin and three twelve-year-olds warily. “Because their C-rank turned into an A-rank or whatever.”
“Everybody’s first C-rank goes to shit somehow.”
“Yeah,” Midori says darkly. “But now they’ve been assigned here. Tempting the return of the curse with their presence. My mother says Umino-sama is the only thing keeping the darkness at bay.”
“Why,” Kazuko demands, aghast.
“To protect Umino-sama from himself, I think. Run errands. Whatever.”
Kazuko didn’t ask any more questions, she just watched fearfully as the pink-haired girl took away the Head Desk-Shinobi’s mug of undead curse goop and poured it and the entire pot out the window. Then watched with continued fearfulness as the genin were put to work running various errands for extremely nervous desk-shinobi, such as dropping off packages to the shinobi postal-service (in the end, no one wanted to be the one to break anything to Council members and agreed that mail was not the coward’s way out), sweeping the floor, fetching people and things, and destroying unnecessary documents (the dark-haired boy seemed to get a huge kick out of burning everything, the pink-haired girl seemed to have a lot of repressed anger that came out in kunai stabbing, and the Copy-nin had actually had to take away explosive tags from the fox-boy).
The Copy-nin pretty much kicked his legs up on a desk and flipped out a bright orange book, and no one besides the Head Desk-Shinobi asked him to do anything. Umino mostly just complained in Hatake’s direction and Hatake was very clueless back in Umino’s direction, but the rest of the desk-shinobi either had an undying hatred or ancient fear for the third-generation-cursed, ex-Team-Seven, elite jounin, so talking to the man would have been a kill or be killed situation, probably.
Around lunchtime, Team Seven dragged Umino out to eat something, then returned him awhile later looking a lot less dead than before. Then everyone got back to work (except the Copy-nin, or maybe including the Copy-nin, because no one really knew what he was doing), and things were proceeding well except for the fact that they seemed to be missing one extremely crucial factor into making sense of the mess that had become the Civil Partnerships Department.
There were hundreds of drunken marriages to filter through, many of which overlapped actual marriages or other drunken marriages, and no one could figure out how the whole thing worked. It was hard to explain, really, but to put it in simple terms, it seemed as though… well… that every single one of partially legal. Pretty legal? Kazuko was pretty sure “pretty legal” wasn’t a thing, but… she didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Anything seemed possible here, on the hunt for whatever it was they needed to fix what had become of her department.
“I FOUND IT!” a desk-shinobi called a few hours past lunch, standing on a desk holding up a law book that was thicker than his head. Kenta, the grand-nephew of the past Head Desk-Shinobi, looks like he’s just saved the world as he beams proudly, looking a bit like death warmed over.
Kazuko, whose sight has started to blur after hours of staring at fine print, feels like he actually has.
Umino, who’d been sulking at his desk after the pink-haired girl glared him down when he tried to make his Academy teacher “coffee” again, immediately rushes over, along with Supervisor Naoko and many other desk-shinobi. The genin look up from where they were having fun tearing disposable papers to pieces with minor jutsus, and even the Copy-nin looks boredly up from his book.
Kenta dumps the heavy book into Umino’s arms and points. As Umino quickly reads the page over, his eyes become increasingly and increasingly wide with horror and disbelief. Several of the desk-shinobi reading over his shoulder look about the same. When Umino reaches the end, he stares for a long moment, then drops the massive book onto his own toes and doesn’t even flinch.
“Oh heavens help us,” Supervisor Naoko says, eyes shut like she’s just accepted the end of the world.
Umino doesn’t say a word, he just stumbles over to the demonic coffee machine and grabs one of the bottles of alcohol surrounding it. Well, he tries and gets hot sauce first, then manages to get the Taki moonshine. Once he has it, he pulls the cork and takes a swig before putting it down and pressing his face into the nearest wall.
The fox-boy cautiously gets to his feet and walks over to the Head Desk-Shinobi, then tugs on Umino’s arm. “Iruka-sensei? Iruka-sensei, what’s wrong?”
Umino mumbles something unintelligible even to shinobi hearing.
The Copy-nin stands as well, visible eye hard. “Umino?”
Umino takes a deep breath, then turns around to face those not still in a similar state of shock or crowding around the fallen book to see what the problem is. He looks like he’s just been told the shinobi postal-service threw all his shit into the Forest of Death or the budget’s back for round two.
“It appears,” Umino says slowly, “that it is not actually illegal to have more than one marriage in Konoha.” The room takes in a sharp breath and even the Copy-nin’s eyes widen. “It seems… that… everybody just assumed that was already a thing and… it wasn’t. It isn't.”
Oh shit, Kazuko thinks, reliving every drunken marriage she ever had to process. Oh shit.
“Wait, what does that mean?” Uzumaki Naruto says, brow scrunched up.
The Sandaime Hokage does not actually say oh shit, but the words are plainly there in his expression as Iruka carefully places the book of law onto his desk and delicately explains the situation. Hatake Kakashi and Team Seven stand at his back, with Kakashi looking absolutely stunned, Naruto still looking confused, Sakura seeming a bit disbelieving of this entire situation, and Sasuke looking like he’d rather go back to burning and shredding paperwork.
Iruka has thrown himself into his duties as Head Desk-Shinobi, while delegating a good portion of his duties as Academy Headmaster to a colleague who’s probably been drinking as much Academy swill as he has. He can worry about the Academy when it’s closer to the actual school year, a more urgent concern is making sure the Konoha budget doesn’t develop a consciousness and start eating people.
Iruka would like to think that he’s doing a pretty good job of everything so far. Mostly it’s just getting an accounting of everything and following common fucking sense. What’s this? What does it do? Is it effective? Should we change it? How do we change it? Fund it or stop funding it? Answer me or find someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about.
At least, no one’s told him that he’s ruining all of Konoha yet, despite being holding two positions he shouldn’t, being far too young for either of them, and being hideously underqualified for both. He definitely shouldn’t have the security clearance he has at the moment, and isn’t actually sure what security clearance level he has or what kind at the moment.
“There are kinds?” Kakashi had said blankly when Iruka asked him. Which was followed by, “There’s fifteen levels? Maa, I thought there were seven.” Iruka couldn’t tell whether Kakashi was kidding or not and just stopped asking him about things, which may or may not have been Kakashi’s goal.
Iruka has an ANBU team watching him now. Which is just… wrong.
“Hokage-sama,” Iruka says helplessly, “what… what do we do… with… this information?”
Iruka is fairly certain that this mess could plunge all of Konoha into chaos. And wouldn’t that be the saddest way and reason for a hidden village to fall? One administrative department slowly falling apart because of one massive loophole and dragging the entire village into hell. Oh why, oh why did Senju Tobirama have to delegate this one?
The Hokage leans back in his seat. “Handle it,” he says. “Quickly and discretely.”
“Hokage-sama,” Iruka pleads.
“The Civil Partnerships Department is your responsibility now, Iruka,” the Hokage says. “Kakashi, you and your team will continue to assist Iruka in this matter.”
Kakashi pales under his mask. “Hokage-sama.”
The Sandaime Hokage lights his pipe and sticks it in his mouth. “I’m not touching this one with a ten foot pole,” he says flatly. “The last time marriage met the administration, a decades-long feud broke out.” He pauses for a moment. “Don’t let another feud break out.”
Yeah, that desk-shinobi and Academy teachers thing that Iruka had thought was a joke.
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Iruka says miserably. He’d honestly thought this couldn’t get worse. He’s such a fool. He still doesn’t even know why he took both jobs.
“Hokage-sama-” Kakashi tries again.
“Hat,” the Hokage threatens and Kakashi immediately shuts up.
Iruka furrows his brow to figure out what that means, and Kakashi’s genin look equally confused. It clicks on Naruto’s face first, as his blue eyes widen and he points aghast at the Sandaime Hokage.
“Old man! This bastard? You wouldn’t!”
“Oh, but I would,” the Hokage says darkly, glaring at Kakashi, who pales further. Then the Hokage looks at Naruto and adds kindly, “You’re a bit young still, Naruto.”
Iruka’s eyes widen next. How does this keep getting worse? He took these jobs on the assumption it would be in service to the Sandaime, someone he trusts to guide him and actually watch children for more than five minutes at a time. "Hokage-sama, you can’t-”
“Not if this is handled quickly and discretely,” the Hokage says benignly. “Good luck.”