"Lady Hokage, I'm innocent! Hiks! Hell, if I was ever gonna make a move, it'd be on Akamaru, not on so dude!"
Inside the Hokage's office, Inuzuka Kiba—the alleged underwear thief who had been dragged in—was sprawled on the floor, crying and protesting his innocence.
Everyone else, including the other alleged thief, Abura Shino, stood silently to one side.
"Have Shikaku and the others still not arrived yet?"
Tsunade rubbed her forehead with a massive headache coming on.
This matter was neither especially big nor especially small.
At the end of the day, it was just that two guys had lost their underwear, not their bodies.
And the missing underwear had already been found anyway.
If one really stretched the issue, all they had discovered were two potential creeps.
Whether in the ninja world as a whole or in Konoha alone, the number of weirdos was hardly small. It wasn't that serious.
But if one looked at it from a larger angle, then this ant that Konoha might have produced two more "gay-type" ninjas.
After all, the whole idea behind the "new ninja world" that Uchiha Hikari and Makoto were building was to reduce the dominance of the kind of intense relationships represented by Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, so that they would no longer be the mainstream.
If Kiba and Shino were now popping up like this, weren't they going directly against the current?
The new ninja world allowed gays to exist, but they absolutely could not be flaunted openly.
Konoha was definitely a disaster zone for that sort of relationship, which was precisely why they had to be cautious.
More importantly, Kiba kept insisting he was innocent.
And what if he really was?
Tsunade felt as though whole chunks of her brain cells were dying off.
"Lady Tsunade, we're here."
After who knew how long, Nara Shikaku and Nara Shikamaru finally appeared in the Hokage's office at a leisurely pace.
Tsunade was annoyed.
This father and son pair were never muddle-headed when it ca to serious matters.
But this ti, they had clearly realized that the issue they were being summoned for was not actually serious, just awkward, so they had deliberately dragged their feet.
Wonderful.
Kakashi dragged things out, and now these two did too.
And honestly, it felt like every mber of the Nara clan was born a professional slacker. That absolutely did not fit the hard-working virtues of the new ninja world.
Tsunade pulled out a scroll from under the desk and glanced at it.
Makoto had given her this idea.
Everyone knew the Nara clan was generally highly intelligent.
So whenever Tsunade wanted to offload so work, her first instinct was to bring in the Nara clan.
And what happened?
Every last one of them shirked, dragged their feet, and played dumb on purpose.
So Tsunade had gone to Makoto for help.
Makoto had handed her this scroll. She had gotten it a long ti ago, but had never used it.
Mainly because the idea was a little too…
Too what?
Too vicious?
But if she really thought about it, it wasn't as though it actually hard the Nara clan. And it wasn't even a trick. It was an open sche.
Still, no matter what, Tsunade had decided.
Today, this thing had to be used.
Otherwise, if the Nara clan kept slacking around in the new era, it would be far too much of a damn waste.
"Shikaku, there's a troubleso matter here that I need you to handle. But before that, I've decided to help your Nara clan solve a problem that's existed since the Warring States Period."
Tsunade tapped the desk with her fingers and spoke word by word.
"Please instruct us, Lady Tsunade."
Nara Shikaku froze for a mont.
No matter how smart he was, he still could not imdiately figure out what problem Tsunade was supposedly going to solve for the Nara clan.
As for the matter Tsunade wanted them to handle, Shikaku had already roughly deduced it before arriving.
By sounding out the ANBU beforehand and seeing Kiba sprawled on the floor, he had pieced together the general situation.
"Shikaku, the truth is, you don't really want to be clan head, and you don't really want to be Konoha's strategist either. You've only kept doing it this whole ti out of duty and responsibility. Isn't that right?"
Tsunade opened with a question.
The instant she asked it, Shikaku's eyes lit up.
"Lady Hokage, could it be…?"
"Oh? You already guessed?" Tsunade looked a little surprised.
As expected of Konoha's chief strategist.
He really was no less sharp than Makoto, who served as Akatsuki's strategist and adviser.
"Does this an that as long as I finish this mission, I can finally retire?"
Nara Shikaku looked utterly hopeful.
As for Tsunade's talk about "responsibility"?
Konoha had already changed, and the five great nations had already ford an alliance.
Whether he personally stayed or left would not make much difference anymore.
"…No."
Tsunade's smile froze, and she flatly crushed Shikaku's hope.
This ti it was Shikamaru who quietly let out a sigh of relief.
'What a joke,' he thought. 'If the old man retires, then the clan head position is gonna land right on top of , isn't it?'
He had prepared himself for the future—becoming clan head eventually, and supporting Naruto eventually—but that did not an he wanted to take over right now.
He still wanted a few more years of slacking off.
"What I'm giving is you, Shikamaru, and every mber of the Nara clan… an opportunity."
"From this day on, your Nara clan's rules will be revised. When selecting a clan head, the entire clan must participate in a contest of strategy and intelligence, and the final victor will be determined that way."
Tsunade spoke the first half of the idea Makoto had given her.
"…"
Father and son both looked pained the mont they heard it.
In their view, this thod was crap.
Nobody would go all out anyway!
Everyone would just keep playing dumb and pretending to be bad at it. It would just add one more annoying internal clan competition.
"The winner, from then on, will no longer have to handle any Nara clan matters or any village affairs at all. They will still receive a monthly stipend from the Nara clan. They may freely choose whatever life they want—retire into the mountains, go relax by the sea in the Land of Water, anything. And second place…"
"Will beco head of the Nara clan, responsible for overseeing all clan personnel matters, while also serving as Konoha's strategist."
"As for the rest, duties will be assigned in order of ranking."
By the end, Tsunade simply had Shizune hand the scroll Makoto had given her directly to the Nara father and son so they could read it themselves.
After all, this was not a hidden trap.
It was an open one.
The mont they finished reading it, both father and son were shaken.
They exchanged a glance.
"Lady Tsunade, do you an…"
"That's right. Whoever in the Nara clan handles this damn incident perfectly will beco the one and only Nara clan mber who is allowed to slack off from then on."
Tsunade stopped pretending altogether and said it outright.
The Nara father and son exchanged another look.
At this very mont, father and son beca rivals!
Setting aside the fact that first place would gain the perfectly legal right to slack off—even second place would still beco a greatly empowered version of the clan head.
Of course, what either of them valued was not raw power itself, but the fact that with that power, they could still slack off on a small scale by pushing troubleso work onto other people.
"Leave it to , Lady Hokage. Kiba and Shino are my classmates—my dear friends, my brothers in all but blood! I'll absolutely uncover the truth and clear their nas!"
Shikamaru thumped his chest and made his promise, then hurriedly shot everyone else a look, signaling them to co with him.
When Nara Shikaku saw that, his face turned black.
"You little bastard! Compete fairly with your old man!"
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