Getting Lost on the Roads of Life - a KakaSaku Story [CONCLUDED]

The Rokudaime Hokage

"That's what Keiki said?" Kakashi grinned. Was it immature of him to feel that smug about the Mizukage's enragement? Probably.

"Yes, Sensei, though I don't recollect the exact wording. That woman has a foul mouth and such an expansive vocabulary! I thought my ears would fall off."

"Thanks for your report, Naruto," Kakashi said, "excellent work. You are dismissed."

Done with the meetings for the day! Determined, Kakashi pulled one of the many piles on his desk towards himself... the complaints. His least favorite class of documents, all the more reason to do them first.

There were a lot. Was it strange planetary alignments or the excessively cold weather that made everybody more cranky these days? He grabbed the top most file and began to read. A petty neighborly dispute... a tree that was growing fast in one garden was blocking out the sun in another. Insults had been exchanged and garbage had been dumped on each other's doorsteps.

"They could also simply just cut it a little?" he murmured and wrote "medium urgency, invite for mediation talk" at the top, putting the document into the tray for follow-ups.

The second was a noise complaint. Someone living near the Uchiha compound took issue with the construction that, as the person wrote, "starts at an ungodly hour". In winter? Really?

"Medium urgency, check and potentially adjust building hours with chief constructor", he wrote and put it on top of the tree complaint.

The third was a long letter that he had to read twice to even understand what the issue was. A father was unhappy about his son's grades, but the actual complaint was about the dismal state of the courtyard at the academy. The son had tripped over some "debris", hit his knee and subsequently got a bad grade in a test because he had cried.

"Low urgency, go to academy and talk to Principal Anko about state of school yard," Kakashi wrote. Then he scribbled a Henohenomohej next to it to indicate to Shizune that he'd take care of it in person.

See Anko, he wrote down on his personal to do list.

He hadn't spoken to her in a long time, he thought as he chewed the end of the pencil, it would be good to catch up. And smoke a cigarette or two.

Some movement in front of him caught his eye and he looked up. It was Naruto.

"You're still here?" Kakashi frowned. "You can leave, I'll call for you if I have new orders."

Naruto nodded eagerly, bouncing up and down on his feet.

"Sensei, you should get a computer."

"A... what?" Kakashi asked puzzled.

"A computer. It's a machine. It would save you a lot of time! Gaara says it has solved all his problems!"

"Really?" Kakashi wondered. "In what way?"

"It makes everything faster."

"Faster?"

"It does your work for you!"

"Huh," Kakashi said, "I have a hard time believing such a thing exists."

"I've seen it in their Village," Naruto excitedly said, "it's... small. It makes some noise, but not too much. And you type words and... numbers..."

"Okay... I'll look into it."

Talk to Gaara about a thing called computer, Kakashi wrote on his to-do list. The phone line between the villages was still highly unstable, but he could try to reach the Kazekage in the coming days? Unless...