Jaguar

Excuses Solve...

Team Canon: Jaguar (Telosphilos)

Story Notes:

Prompt: Excuses

Rating: General Audiences

Pairing(s): Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi pre-relationship

Summary: His father’s wisdom was that excuses solved nothing, getting to the root of the problem and fixing that did.

Contains [warnings]: None

Word Count: 8000 exactly

Author's Notes: Do recall there are no computers in the Naruto Universe. I’m basing some of the work off of watching my mother working on her Masters’ in Engineering and toward her PhD which we got transfered before she could complete way back before Windows 3.11 was even invented. In fact, it was so far back, to connect to DarpaNet, she took the telephone off the hook and rested the handset on the modem and then put the commands in on DOS. There are good reasons why spreadsheets were actually among the first programs ever created for computers. Doing it by hand on a ledger sheet is a pain in the posterior, the neck and spine too if your posture is bad. I’ve done it (legacy system at a job) so I speak from experience.

* * *

The prospect of another late night in the mission room had Iruka almost groaning in dismay. He had plenty to do and not enough time to do it in. Thankfully, it was a fairly slow night so he could work on his other tasks while manning one of the desks. The mission desks were never staffed by just one shinobi, not that they were always both in the room at the same time, but it was a simple safety measure. If at all possible there were at least three people on duty even in the dead of night. The extra people there conviently meant that Iruka could do some work for his other jobs at the same time.

Normally, having gotten the grading done for the day or pushed off onto Shikamaru, things would have been looking great. Instead, Iruka had deadlines looming. There was a quarterly progress report on his research due at the university for his thesis at the end of the month which was still in the initial data mining stages and he had to get it done at least a week ahead of time in order to make the deadline with the added travel time to the capital and the regular meeting with his advisor on turning it in. Things would get a little hairy if the paper was in before he actually spoke with the man. Once he got there as well, he'd have to check into the testing center and do an exam marathon; again.

Iruka's students thought they had it bad. They really had no idea.

Tonight's homework for the teacher was collating records for statistical analysis later. Izumo and Kotetsu were at the other two desks and would take whatever came in tonight, while making fun of him. At least he had his raw data. Iruka was making good progress at transcribing what he needed from the personnel files he had checked out. Iruka flipped to a couple different pages on several ledger sheets in three different ledger books. He could only hope that one day someone would invent a way to make hand copying unnecessary.

“Iruka-sensei, what are you doing with all of those files?” A voice called out, trying to get his attention. It sounded oddly flat, so whoever it was was probably fussed about the files.

“Raw data, don’t worry, I’ll have it all checked back in by end of shift if things don’t get too busy. I really don’t want to come back to it later since I’m not leaving the building with them.” Iruka replied without looking up as he reached for another file, he really didn’t want to break his concentration and lose track of where he was. If he was lucky the voice would get the picture and leave him alone. He didn’t really want to identify who was talking to him. Sheer bloody minded focus was what would get him through this.

“Raw data for what?” asked a second voice sounding perturbed.

“Lots of statistical analysis.” Iruka replied and finally glanced over at them. “I just have to get this done as quick as I can so can crunch the numbers and see what sort of patterns fall out.” With that non-answer, the teacher kept his steady flow of work going smoothly as if they hadn’t interrupted. He couldn’t break the flow or it would take forever to get back into it. He knew Kotetsu and Izumo would take care of it and let him know if he needed to stop ignoring them.

“You’ll have to forgive him, he’s lost in his own world right now,” Kotetsu told them with fond exasperation. Perhaps he would have to trouble himself to get rid of the distraction. “He’s working on something relating to the survival rates of his students. He’d snap right out of it if we needed him to.”

“Just for my peace of mind,” a third familiar voice had to ask, there went the smooth flow of his work, “are you copying down any real identifying information? I still don’t know what you are using it for really.”

Iruka blinked up at him as he came out of the hyperfocus he’d been in. It took him extra time to process the question Kakashi had asked, “Not really, I have the ID numbers, but no names and not really easily identifiable physical descriptions. Some basic stats like height, weight, build, but not the sort of thing people could easily make out. I went over what I’m doing with Intel to make sure of it.”

“I see. I guess we should leave you to it,” Genma seemingly relaxed minutely. Raidou twitched a smile. Whatever answer they were looking for, it seemed they had found it. Iruka just shook his head, lamenting the distraction would be a waste of time; instead, he got back to work.

___________________________

Iruka couldn’t help but remember one of his mother’s sayings, ‘shit flows downhill.’ Unfortunately for him and all the other workers at the Mission room, someone over in the analyst department used his work as inspiration and did a quick study, on the effect poorly written reports were having. Crappy penmanship, incomplete information, and sometimes just plain trashed scrolls were crimping the flow of information to an unacceptable degree. There was a huge lag between receiving the reports and getting the useful bits into the mission briefs that shouldn’t exsist, and when they were fully staffed wasn’t typically, there.

The mission office staff had been put on notice that they weren’t to accept any poorly done report. If the analysts couldn’t read a report quickly and easily, they were going to kick it back and make the person who accepted it rewrite it themselves to keep them from accepting badly done reports. Izumo was a bright spark at that meeting and demanded they have a couple pages of minimum standard penmanship to compare against the reports which was grudgingly provided. It would have been way too easy for the analysts to try to force them to recopy everything otherwise.

And that is when Iruka’s day went to hell in a handbasket. To put it bluntly, the field shinobi didn’t know what hit them and reacted exactly as Iruka and the others had expected. It was only reasonable that the older shinobi would take offense at the insult to their skills and abilities. The younger ones thought it was a joke. Everyone wanted a ‘one time’ exception, and no one wanted to recopy the reports for them.

He’d heard every excuse before and now had to shoot them down. A young Inuzuka even tried to pull a ‘my dog ate it’ on him. A marginally two sided conversation with the canine in question revealed it to be an unfortunate accident. He gave them both a few tips on how to avoid it in the future and made them present a new copy. They had the gall to whine at him about it.

Konohamaru tried to claim that monkeys ruined his. Iruka whapped the boy upside the head and told him to leave his summons out of it and use better handwriting this time. Aoba spilt coffee on his and tried to throw it at him. Iruka threw it back after lighting it on fire. Iwashi had a brown stain obliterating the middle of his paperwork from where he had mistook it for a sealed scroll and ran a line of blood on it. He at least had the grace to apologize, Iruka let him get away with it after putting back in the words that had been rendered impossible to read.

It was an extremely aggravating situation. He couldn’t fix it, not with the tools they currently had. They were catching the blame for it and It wasn’t even their fault. The entire staff was in a pretty sour mood by the time Kakashi had slouched his way in.

The man looked tired and sloppy. The mission report in his hand would never pass the current standards that had been forced on them. The lone eye wandered over them as if they weren’t even there. He seemed to look through Iruka instead of at him when Iruka took his report. “Sorry, I got lost on the path of enlightenment.”

That was it, a switch flipped in Iruka’s head. “I really don’t give a shit that you just ran in from the Fire Temple after indulging in one too many games of go with old friends. I cannot accept this report. There is no excuse for this report. I have seven year old pre-genin with better handwriting than is on this report.…” His mind went dead and his mouth kept going, and going. A dam had just broken, the cutting commentary just wouldn’t stop.

Aside from looking rather startled, Kakashi-sensei took the verbal abuse with astonishingly little complaint. Iruka continued on his vitriolic tirade for nearly ten minutes straight until finally Kakashi held up a hand in a nonverbal signal for silence and asked if he was done. Kakashi nodded, turned on his heels and left to a quietly stunned audience.

A minute later, Iruka followed suit fleeing a still silent room full of shinobi. Iruka wondered when his unconscious mind had decided Kakashi-sensei of all people was a safe target. While they were on rather friendly terms having gone on the occasional mission together and later shared students in common, it wasn’t like he knew the man that well. Instead of leaving, he went and hid in the file room where he viciously organized the files that had been accepted and recopied a half dozen reports that had been mistakenly accepted while trying to craft a decent apology in his head.

_______________________________________

Bouncing from one roof to another flipping off walls, and climbing up in places with good hand holds so as to avoid using charkra, Iruka was hoping a hard free run would let him have a decent rest. He also needed to publicly apologize to Kakashi-sensei or his conscience would nag at him and keep him from unwinding enough for some decent sleep. Frankly, he needed the sleep. He had less than two weeks before his exams at the capital and wouldn’t you know it, his recent briefing with the Hokage on his research had stirred up yet more trouble for him.

He’d filled entire composition books full of calculations so that he could easily go back and double check that all the numbers on his ledgers were correct for his research. As best he could tell so far they were! The ledger book itself was already half full and he really wasn’t anywhere close to being done with his thesis. He was still plotting data points on the graphs, but he needed log paper since at least one of the datasets was not on a nice one to one scale.

Still, his initial findings were showing that the kids who had more time at the academy lived longer in the field. It seemed counter intuitive to the Elders, many of their best had graduated early. Yet, even for the prodigies who graduated early there was a significant correlation between time in school and survival in the field. In fact, the correlation was even higher than he’d suspected which was why he needed the less common graph paper. He still needed to do the work to figure out exactly why that was the case, even if it was just confirming what he thought was patently obvious.

This would all be great news, if not for the fact he still had a lot of work to do to write his thesis, get it past the censors, and to the university for him to defend as an academic. On top of that long term goal, yet more work at his real job was piling up. The very thing he was hoping to improve, the manpower shortage, was coming round to bite him and everyone else in the ass.

All in all, it was proving to be an extremely stressful month. The hokage had reviewed what he had with the censors to see what he could allow his professors to see since they would never be fully trusted to see all of the data raw or otherwise. While impressed, they had to make the call to supress about half of the work making it that much harder to defend later. Yet, they still wanted him to continue all the lines of study for review by the Intelligence department for internal use.

Something had to give. It seemed his temper was what just gave. Kami-sama, he should not have done that. Iruka kept mindlessly moving, running, flipping, and jumping as he ruminated on it. He kept tracking back, trying to figure out what it was about Kakashi that finally flipped the switch on the gate to his temper. He’d held it through far worse provocation from more shinobi than he could count this week.

Iruka just kept coming back to the same conclusion he’d reached earlier. On some strange level, he trusted Kakashi. Kakashi was a ‘safe’ target. Whether the man was or not in reality instead of the lala land that the threat assessment part of his mind seemed to be, he didn’t think the man would strike a comrade who couldn’t keep up with him.

He’d been running hard for half an hour when he finally found Kakashi exiting a bar with Kurenai and Asuma. Bouncing around like a ping pong ball, Iruka made his way down from the rooftops to roll to a stop a few steps ahead of them. Popping up from his neatly tucked somersault, he bowed politely to the party. “May I have a word Kakashi-san?” he asked as calmly as he could, “I believe I owe you an apology.”

Kurenai gave a quiet sniff, “From the sounds of it, you certainly do.” She crossed her arms and frowned at him. Iruka nodded in agreement with a sigh. He waited for Kakashi to either tell him to get on with it or else to go away and leave him alone. When Kakashi just waved for him to go on he did. He wasn’t sure if he could manage it, but he was going to try for sincere and abject.

“I’m sorry,” he began, “You’d obviously only recently gotten in from a mission and just wanted to go home and get cleaned up. You didn’t deserve to be the focus of my ire at all. While I could give you an explanation, it doesn’t really matter. It was wrong and I should not have done it. If you want to write me up for it, I’ll countersign it.” He shrugged as he offered that. He knew full well he deserved to be written up for that outburst. If Kakashi took him up on it, he’d make damn sure it wound up on the desk of the bloody moron who was filling in the time sheets. Maybe that would get through to the upper level management that he honestly couldn’t keep up the kind of schedule they keep trying to force on him.

Kakashi just stared at him with that one half-lidded eye. Iruka couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but then, the guy is a damn fine ninja so Iruka didn’t really expect to be able to. Asuma and Kurenai seemed to be looking at each other out of the sides of their eyes and they all waited for Kakashi’s response.

After a moment, Kakashi broke the tableau with a nod. “I see,” he said, “I would like that explanation. I do not like being blindsided like that.”

Iruka nodded. He could agree to that. Blindsiding people was generally only a good idea of those people were enemies and Iruka had very few of those. He had plenty of thorns in his side, but those irritants had never risen to the level of enemies in his mind.

“Short answer is I’m overworked, exhausted, and highly frustrated,” Iruka answered with tired good humor, “It was the proverbial straw, not your report at all. I’m afraid the long answer sounds a hell of a lot like a pity party to me.”

“Is that so?” Kurenai asked, eyebrow cocked up in a curious expression, she was familiar with Iruka’s opinion of pity parties from her time as a teacher at the academy. “How bad of a pity party?”

“Bad enough,” Iruka replied. “Crap is flowing down hill on the support staff side and it is about to really hit the fan if we can’t fix a few problems.”

“I’ve been telling them some of it,” Asuma finally joined in, “Let’s get out of the road and you can fill us on on the rest.”

Iruka followed them down the road to one of the smaller training grounds nearby. It was frequently used by the academy to teach how to cover teammates in an urban setting. The lines of sight were tricky and Iruka frequently discovered who was really paying attention when they used it. It was a comfortable place for them to lounge without disturbing anyone while they talked. It had the added advantage of making both Kurenai and himself more comfortable in the very familiar setting.

He got out his canteen and take several long pulls on it. Iruka was coated in sweat from his run and also had dirt from several areas of the village all over. The marks on his shoulders and pants gave a visible map of where he had brushed up or impacted against things. His eyes were bright at clear, but some dark deep bruising was starting to really show on the skin below.

Asuma lit a fresh cigarette from where he sat at the edge of the little building. “I told them about the handwriting study.” Asuma prodded to start the teacher off.

Iruka grimaced, “That thing could not have come at a worse time. The worst part about it is that it’s right. One of the many things to make my life difficult was being pulled in for a ‘peer review’ to make sure they had done the study right. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’d suggested they check about a year or so ago and they had to put my name down for the suggestion in the acknowledgements section.”

“Really?” Asuma inquired with a tinge of disbelief.

“Really,” Iruka agreed. “It’s something we picked up on at the mission desk years ago, but have never figured out how to fix. I made a joke about it when submitting the paperwork for my PhD classes about possible topics to write my thesis on. Unfortunately, being able to prove we were right about it does nothing to fix the underlying problem. Their refusal to accept messy reports now doesn’t address it, it just pushes it off onto us and the people writing the original reports. And people wonder why I don’t get along with Hiroshi-san.”

“I take it Hiroshi-san is behind the policy change?” Kurenai asked.

“Yeah, he’s basically competent as an analyst, but he doesn’t see the big picture yet. He doesn’t quite get how things interact on a bureaucratic level or rather he thinks he has all the variables pinned down and almost always misses a few of the more interdependent factors.” Iruka elaborated on the flaws of Hiroshi-san, “He’s overreaching again and no one is currently in a position to smack him down and show him where he’s missing things. Yes, the penmanship on the reports is a problem and does lead to some lag in the system, but ….”

“I don’t understand,” Asuma sounded flummoxed, “PhD? and how does the penmanship make for problems?”

“PhD is a doctorate in a subject. It’s mostly self-directed research that advances the knowledge base in a particular subject in some way. I only just finished a Masters’ degree

so I’m just getting started on really getting into my research.” Iruka explained off-handedly, “Think of it as the civilian version of an elite jounin.”

“Really?” asked Kurenai as they all were rather surprised by the idea that any shinobi would seek out that kind of education in the civilian world.

“Aa, it’s a political maneuver to have a few shinobi educated with high civilian degrees. It shuts down certain arguments before they get started, Yondaime-sama set it up,” Kakashi explained, mildly surprising the others, “There were a few attempts to undermine him by portraying all shinobi as uneducated thugs. Most of the people who went for the program went in under math or engineering. I think I remember a couple in military history, but I didn’t know anyone went for education.”

“Actually, I’m a certified teacher, not someone with a degree in education.” Iruka corrected their assumption. It was a fairly common one.

“What’s the difference?” Asuma asked to clarify since it really wasn’t something he knew anything about.

“My bachelors is in logistics with a minor in accounting and another in statistics. I got to be a teacher because we needed people to teach and Sandaime talked me into it. You take an extra exam for a teaching certification. I was there anyway and it makes us look better to have a certain number of officially certified teachers on staff.” The chuunin explained. “Since I did well in my psychology courses as well, he wanted me to do some studies on what methods worked best for teaching the students. My masters is technically in educational psychology which isn’t quite the same thing as straight education.”

Asuma nodded, “I guess that makes sense.” Kurenai rolled her eyes and Kakashi nodded.

“Back to the penmanship problem,” Iruka began dismissing his education level as irrelevant, “The problem is legibility. If it can’t be easily read it can’t be easily processed. The fact is that the staff can’t read stuff that is not boldly clear and clean, so part of this is their fault for not bothering to get better at that. The other part is on the side of the people turning mission reports in. The style sheets do need updating, but a lot of people aren’t even trying most of the time.”

“And that’s what lead to your little meltdown today.” Kakashi stated.

“Part of it, yes.” Iruka agreed with a blush. “The rest is that I have exams to take at the university in the capital in two weeks that I have to study for, plus I need to get enough written up on the research, and get it past Intel to go out to the university without being stolen.” The chuunin couldn’t quite help his black look at the thought of them stealing his work.

“Would they really steal your work?” Kurenai asked.

“Yeah,” Asuma answered, “they would if it was good enough and they thought they could get away with it. There are some empire builders and glory hounds over there.” Now that made Kakashi give his nicotine addicted friend a hard look. Iruka wondered when he’d run into it before, he’d have to get the story there later.

“Pretty much,” Iruka agreed sourly and continued, “The kids have their exams coming up in a month too. And, I keep being scheduled for way too many hours at the mission desk, so I half wonder if it isn’t an attempt at sabotaging me or something. I’m not getting any real down time and it’s to the point where it is cutting into my sleep and mandatory training hours.” He knew he looked worn out and worn down. It wasn’t like he was trying to hide it. Hell, he’d been trying to fix it for so long he was wondering how no one seemed to notice.

Kakashi seemed to be considering something, “Just how many hours are you working?”

“Teaching is supposed to be a 40 hour a week job. It never actually works out to be that way because of all the hours planning and grading, but that’s what it is officially supposed to be. My school work is also officially supposed to be 40 hours a week, although in practice it is more typical for these things to be worked at at a slower pace because of the required class load, but I’m still making up for having to cut back so much during the invasion reconstruction. The mission desk is only supposed to be for 10 to 15 hours a week during the after school rushes or on the weekends, but it’s been pushing past 30 hours lately despite my complaints.”

“So you basically have three full time jobs?” Kakashi sounded mildly incredulous. Kurenai and Asuma looked equally stunned and questioning.

“I’ve got some overlap at the mission desks as you saw a couple weeks ago.” Iruka affirmed. “I’ll have a week in the capital to deal with everything and then things should get easier. Speaking of making things easier,” he changed the subject, “Izumo started laying out a form to cut down on the actual amount of writing needed and asked everyone at the mission desk to fool around with it until we could get something workable. The objective is to get the most information with the least amount of writing.”

He was glad they let him change the subject because there wasn’t anything they could really do about his workload since they weren’t in the same chain of command. “Is there a pattern to where the most problems show up?” Kurenai inquired suspiciously, “You are putting too much thought into the handwritten portions for there not to be a good reason for it.”

Iruka got up and started to pace, he’d had trouble being still for a while now, it wasn’t just agitation, just mostly. Thinking it over for a moment, he decided a real answer could be shared. He did trust them and it wouldn’t be something they could misuse, it might even clear up a few things they hadn’t realized they had noticed.

“This is part of my research so please don’t spread it around. It’s pretty consistent that the older shinobi who graduated during wars have considerably more trouble with handwriting than the ones who didn’t. What it looks like to me, as a teacher, is that basic things like stroke order and the radicals weren’t really drilled the way they need to be back when you were at the academy, Kakashi-san. Genma and Raidou graduated at the same time and they have similar errors cropping up, just less frequently.”

“And yet I can do sealing.” Kakashi ground out, sounding a little defensive.

“Of course you can,” agreed Iruka looking surprised, “You are tapping a different region of the brain for that. It has more to do with art and creativity than language skills. It’s pretty typical for people to be able to do calligraphy, but have terrible handwriting otherwise.” Iruka guessed that the penmanship issue was a bit of a sore spot with his comrade, so he figured he’d have to explain it a bit more clearly and maybe even offer a little private help.

“What I’m saying is the fault isn’t likely to be yours, not really. The fault goes to the system that was in place at the time. When we have a war, we focus on getting bodies out on the field. Things like throwing kunai get a lot more emphasis than how to write an after action report.”

“Then why do Gai and I write so much better than he does?” prodded Asuma curiously. Asuma had graduated four years after Kakashi, but they were roughly the same age. Asuma wasn’t quite a year older than him which made their time as child soldiers comparable. In fact, all of the sensei for the so called rookie nine were born within a year of each other. Even if Iruka hadn’t known that already, it was made very clear in his data mining.

“Several reasons, one is you both spent significantly longer at the academy. Four years is a long time,” the teacher pointed out. “A second reason is that you both had a lot of lower level missions where you wrote the reports to practice as well as extra written work while injured which happened because your jounin-sensei emphasized it. Having met Kakashi’s team, I really wouldn’t be shocked if Kakashi had also wormed his way out of writing the team’s reports so he didn’t get that extra practice.” He hadn’t interacted with them much, but he did vividly remember them from the impression they left.

“Another reason is that Kakashi was in the field at a much younger developmental age than is possible to really master kanji, then add in the time he spent in ANBU where the reports are typically oral, which I can’t believe is a known, but still..... Kanji has to be practiced for skills to be maintained. Anything that has to be maintained can be lost.” Iruka elucidated. “It’s really a natural consequence of how things have gone for him since early childhood.”

The conversation continued from there for a good while. He explained the long term goal of his work was for greater numbers of those that formed the ranks to survive long enough to have children of their own, naturally depleting the attrition that occurs in their line of work and preserving more family lines.

Between the four of them they had bounced around the notions of how to put together a finishing school or a continuing education program for people to catch up on skills they had missed or brush up on things that they simply hadn’t needed to use in a long time and weren’t so sure about any more. It was a nice idea, but it would be very difficult to set up. Iruka found himself making plans for how to trick Ebisu into doing most of the work. He didn’t have the time to do it and it was a good idea.

____________________________________

A long difficult school week of studying, calling in sick and cashing in on stored personal time, had allowed Iruka to study enough to feel confident of passing his exam marathon. He fully expected an official reprimand over it, but he wasn’t going to waste the village’s hard earned funds to pay for coursework he was unable to pass. Really, it came down to a choice between a short term loss and a long term gain for him. He was focused on the long term.

As he waited to be admitted to the Hokage’s office he meditated to relax. While he knew she liked him well enough, he often felt like a mouse under the unrelenting eyes of a cat in her presence, but at the very least he amused her. He didn’t mind that his endeavors entertained her, she needed the laughs.

The secretary let him in and he stood at attention before the hokage’s desk in a silent statement of formality. Tsunade arched an eyebrow and shooed Shizune out. The guards stayed, but otherwise the office was empty. Iruka gave no hint of objection waiting for the order to start.

Tsunade watched him and then nodded, “Begin.”

“Hokage-sama, I’m about to leave on my regularly scheduled mission to the capital; however, before I do, I must file a formal complaint. As my attempts to do so within my chain of command have proved futile, I am left with little choice, but to report to you directly.”

There was a beat and she waved for him to continue.

“There are two problems. One is that I am being overscheduled for mission desk duty. Every attempt to rectify that within my chain of command has fallen on deaf ears. For the last month and a half, I have put in no fewer than thirty hours a week at the desks, mostly graveyard shift. While I have made good use of the time to do my research and my own classwork whenever possible, it is highly inappropriate for someone with a full time job teaching to be on such a disrupted sleep schedule. It is impacting me in an extremely negative fashion. Six weeks of sleep deprivation has me on edge and should ban me from any and all field work. I cannot in good conscience take any missions until after I’ve been permitted several days of real rest.”

“So you are putting yourself on report.” It wasn’t a question. While shinobi were supposed to do that if they knew they were not capable of taking missions, their pride almost never let them. Iruka knew he’d be taking a nasty black mark on his record, but at least he was doing it instead of someone else doing it for him.

“I have to,” the teacher agreed, “I’m making mistakes. Simple ones.”

The silence stretched. “I want blood samples,” she ordered, “we’ll check the levels of your stress hormones and when they are back down, we’ll recertify you for active field work.” Recertification would suck, but if that was the worst of it, then Iruka would count himself very lucky. He didn’t want to be blackballed from field work, but he didn’t want to be killed or get someone else killed on a mission either.

Tsunade asked impatiently, “What’s the second problem?”

“The new standards for acceptance of mission reports,” Iruka began. “It’s untenable.”

“I’ve noticed some disruption in the mission room,” she commented mildly.

“Exactly,” he agreed, refusing to blush, “the higher standards got pushed through without anything being explained to the shinobi in the field many of whom will never be able to meet them. I hate to complain about the standards because they aren’t bad in and of themselves, but I have to because too many of our people honestly can’t meet them. I’d like your blessing on the desk workers’ efforts to replace our current reporting format with actual forms so that there will be less of a problem.”

He waited while his hokage sat back in her chair thinking over his words. “I will condone their efforts. Anything else?”

“No, Hokage-sama,” he said with something like relief.

“Dismissed.” He bowed his way out of her office and went to go get the blood draws she requested at the hospital.

_________________________________________

Iruka returned from his so-called mission feeling both very tired and utterly relieved as he ran through the forests that bordered the village. He’d felt rather violently ill the entire time, but the exams had gone well. At least, as far as he knew all the ones they could score that quickly had gone very well. He’d have to wait and see what his marks were for all the papers, but the preliminary comments were rather positive. He’d have his grades for the term in a couple weeks. It amused him that he would be getting his own grades right when he’d be giving his little students theirs. There was certainly some humor to that bit of timing.

He’d been running a nasty fever and more than a little nauseated the entire time. He’d also been strangely ravenous and having very disturbing dreams. Iruka almost wished he was back to working all the time, his sleep was so disturbed. The chuunin knew he’d been working hard enough to make himself sick even with a shinobi’s constitution. At least that persistent runny nose had dried up. Iruka hoped a quick check up at the hospital would put him to rights again.

The trees grew bigger and thicker as he reached closer and closer to home. He mused about how his faculty adviser had heartily approved of the research he’d be permitted to bring with him this time for review. Despite the fact much of what he’d found had to be suppressed and couldn’t go with him to the university for his advisor to look at, the professor had given Iruka some very good advice on how to manage it and how to look for some very subtle errors that were likely to crop up. Iruka felt quite good about what he was able to return home with.

The professor had also been able to direct him to go attend some interesting lectures both related to his research and to general education. The parts about dysgraphia certainly held some potential for helping with the handwriting problems he was seeing at the mission desk. Certain coping methods would certainly help with their little paperwork crisis.

As he checked in at the gate where he was chided to go get himself to the hospital for his appearance, Iruka mentally went over his plans on how to actually help with the problems. He double checked with Iwashi and found that Kotetsu and Izumo had successfully created the forms they had proposed to replace the old mission reports. He had a few more minor things to gather and they would have a perfect means of undercutting the worst of the excuses.

He quickly made his way to the mission room where his report was accepted and everyone told him to go to the hospital, again. Iruka figured he must really look bad for everyone to tell him that. It was a good thing he already had planned to go there. For all that he figured he looked awful, he really hadn’t expected the high grade attention he got when he walked through the door. Little did he know he’d be trapped in a hospital bed for the next couple days.

______________________________

Reorganizing the mission room with the new forms gave Iruka an excuse to get out of his flat. It was light duty and no one would fuss at him over it. Really, creating the forms and whatnot had been far more actual work than putting scrolls on the walls and creating a sitting area. Iruka thought Tsunade was supervising mostly to get away from her paperwork and partly to keep an eye on him.

He still wasn’t sure of all the details for why everyone was making such a fuss over him, but he was frankly sick of it. If he’d known how much trouble attention was as a child he’d never have wanted it. Whatever had been added to his own mix of poisons in his coffee mug may have had a bad interaction, but it hadn’t killed him. He got the sense they were making up the protocols for how to deal with it on the fly and that really wasn’t reassuring.

He’d only barely been paying attention when Kakashi gave a lazy shrug as he slouched toward the desks across the room. “A persnickety porpoise prepared with a pernicious sense of penmanship prolonged the preparation of the report,” he alliterated when Kotetsu asked for an excuse for this week’s contest.

Iruka chuckled and dryly claimed, “I’m not that bad. It’s not my fault my pre-genin have better penmanship than you do, but if you wait a few once they take your report I have a couple things you can try.”

“Sure,” he agreed surprisingly him with the easy acceptance.

“As far as I can tell your report is good, it’s just not up to the penmanship standard.” Izumo called over Kakashi’s shoulder, “Hokage-sama, could you do an override for this? I don’t want to rewrite it.”

The Hokage checked it over, “Looks like all of you were right. Kakashi-kun, your report is perfectly written, right format, right information, good use of appropriate details, just almost illegible handwriting.”

Kakashi nodded coolly and commented “They can read it, you can, for all the complaints I get about it, most people can parse out what I wrote.”

“He has a point, you know,” Iwashi put his support in. Iruka and the rest of the desk nin had to agree. Kakashi was right about that.

“He does,” Iruka sensei agreed, “but not all of them can and there are certain details that can’t be puzzled out from context clues. Tsuchi and shi look alike, and are almost impossible to tell apart when he writes them, but there is a huge difference between talking about earth and scholars or warriors. Context works in that case.” The teacher handed Iwashi some stacks of papers to go in the large letter boxes. “The same goes for tsuna and ami, a rope is not a net nor the other way around, except context is harder. The less he has to physically write out, the less likely someone will get confused.”

“Take a look at the new forms and tell me what you think Kakashi-kun.” Tsunade had Iwashi hand over a small stack of each of the different forms. Iruka had spent the last several days in the hospital working on them when he wasn’t sleeping, polishing up Izumo’s work. No one would let him work on anything other than that and grading. He broke things up a lot to make things more flexible and easier to just send directly to particular person who dealt with whichever bit of information was detailed. They all visited him so that he could interview them for what data they used. His data mining had given him an appreciation for how hard it was to find what he needed on the old style sheets. Different forms were created to accommodate that. It streamlined things a lot once it got past the mission desk.

“This looks very good,” Kakashi said looking up at Tsunade. “I think this will address the problem even if it won’t fully fix it. Quite a few details will still have to be written, and probably some of the contextual clues will wind up stripped out, but the basics are all here.” Iruka had to agree, Kakashi was absolutely right, but the trade off should be worth it when the rest of their changes got accounted for.

Tsunade nodded, “Iruka-sensei has some ideas about how to deal with that.”

“The sitting area over here is for rewrites.” The teacher said, indicating the new tables full of forms, writing implements, and coasters? He was amused that the coasters seemed to boggle the copy nin. “There’s some vending machines down the hall, plus tea and coffee are available too. There is no reason not to have something while working on the forms.”

“So why do it here? Why not send people off?” Kakashi asked consideringly.

“We’re eliminating the most common, sincere, excuses. This way we can actually help,” Iruka smiled at him, the copy nin gave him a look. “Oh don’t give me that look, if we let them run off we waste everyone’s time and energy. Better we help everyone through it than repetitively refuse reports. Besides, look closer at what we’re putting together.”

Kakashi blinked at him and investigated the other forms and the reference sheets he’d been setting out with Iwashi’s help. He’d written up just about everything he could think of that was a commonly needed whether for genin or more experienced shinobi. He even included an E-rank copying nin-jutsu that they commonly used around the office when they needed to have multiple copies of something that acted like a stamp and could be tailored for size.

When Kakashi held up the page with the simple copying method for him asking,“I take it this is the solution you were referring to Iruka-sensei?” The teacher looked at it, and shook his head, “No, that would be far too tedious. With enough practice I’m sure you could be able to do the forms in your sleep using the copying jutsu, but I think your chakra control is good enough to use this instead.”

He pulled out a small scroll from his vest and handed it to Kakashi in trade for the pages he’d been looking at. Between the lectures at the university and being stuck in a hospital bed, he’d given it a lot of thought. It wasn’t much of a water technique as much as a chakra control exercise he’d learned and found uses for as an academy student. He’d simply refined it to make it more useful. “It’s a highly modified water nin-jutsu that works with ink. If you can form a chakra scalpel you can do this one for writing. It’s what I used for that big map on the wall since while I write well, I don’t draw well.” Those scrolls had been his proof of concept and test cases.

“If you have a few minutes and you aren’t too tired, I can show you how it works and you can copy it with your eye.” Iruka offered as the older nin studied the scroll. He could practically see the wheels turning in Kakashi’s head even if he couldn’t guess just what the man was thinking. While ultimately, Kakashi would have to simply work at bettering his penmanship, they couldn’t wait for as long as it would take to see real improvement. The older nin’s missions were simply too important. Of course, charkra was nice and all, but it could never be the only answer, “And if that won’t do, I think you’ll appreciate my last surprise that I brought back from the capital.”

“Another surprise?” Tsunade arched an eyebrow in exasperation, “What other surprise?”

“I found a new tool at the university. I took in a lecture on dysgraphia at my advisor’s suggestion and for the hopeless cases, and there are a few among the undergrads, they are requiring the use of this.” Pulling out a storage scroll, he unsealed it revealing three machines that would write in hiragana and some boxes. “They are calling these typewriters. Purchasing them wiped me out, so please keep them from being stolen.”

Tsunade hefted one of the heavy machines as Iruka and Kakashi put the other two on the tables. Iruka watched as Kakashi, Tsunade, and the rest of the mission room workers inspected it finding all 46 characters clearly printed on the keys. It was imperfect for writing everything that could possibly be said, but it would go a long way.

“Submit a reimbursement request,” Tsunade told Iruka, looking very pleased at this surprise. “Also, put us in contact with the manufacturer or dealer. We could use a lot more of these.”

It was such a simple solution. He watched Kakashi take a sheet of paper and attempt to load it in the feeder to try it out. After three failed attempts to get it just right, Iruka stepped forward and showed him how it worked and typed out a simple sentence and the name and address of the dealer.

“Depending on how much use these get we may need regular missions to go pick up new ink tapes. Those boxes are as much as I could afford. It wiped out my per diem and I had to hunt for my dinner instead, but I’m estimating we have enough for a month.” That hadn’t been pleasant considering how his appetite had swung from ravenous to gone fairly quickly, but stealing them would have been a poor strategy in the long term even if it would have made things vastly simpler in the short.

“Excellent,” Tsunade agreed. The rest of the staff came up to inspect the machines and try them out themselves. Kotetsu took Kakashi’s mission report and tried to copy it using one of the typewriters to see how it would work. Slowly, but very surely, a clean crisp copy of what Kakashi had written, with the occasional clarification from the man himself, appeared on the paper. If they hadn’t been sold on the idea before, seeing the difference and the ease with which it was created would have done it.

“Ah yes, while you are here, Iruka-kun,” their hokage drawled out, Iruka turned to her expecting trouble. “You are hereby officially ordered to leave the mission room once you have reached 20 hours in a week. If anyone tries to make you stay, you are to report it to me directly.” Tsunade headed for the door, “Oh and, incidentally, you don’t have to worry about Hiroshi-san anymore.”

* fin *

*A skiff is essentially a big safe, one big enough that you can walk into it. It can literally be bombed and most likely will come through completely unharmed. Governments use them for storing the really classified stuff. I remember seeing one get hit by a truck and it wasn’t even damaged despite the building’s facade being ruined. You can see it on I Dream of Genie in the opening credits. It’s the building with the missiles out front.

(Remember to go BACK and VOTE!)