The Third Mizukage sat in his office, drinking his afternoon coffee and reading his last report for the day when suddenly, various clan heads and division leaders, basically the whole freaking Council, barged into his office looking constipated.

"What are you all doing here?" The Mizukage tilted his head in confusion only for the councilmen to angrily narrow their eyes at him. ​​

"You sent the Seven Swordsmen to the Land of Fire!" Tsurumi Suiran, the head of the Suiran clan, barked out in an accusatory tone.

'Oh! So that's why the old geezers are gathered here looking at me as if I stole their spare teeth!' The Mizukage finally understood before he returned back to his paperwork while starting to talk.

"Ah, no worries. The treaty had a few loopholes and this is one of them." He dismissively waved his hand around while feeling smug about this scheme of his. "Due to the nature of ninja work, there was no way the treaty could contain a clause of complete forbiddance to enter a territory belonging to one of the five big nations. The treaty only said a big force is forbidden to be dispatched onto the territory. I sent only seven of them. No matter how you look at it, nobody can say anything." The Third Mizukage smiled smugly, thinking how he used the system to screw Konoha and the Land of Fire over.

"Mizu-" One of the councilmen patiently started but was quickly interrupted by the Mizukage.

"Mah~, mah~, don't worry. Everything is just fine. I know that ordering them to destroy a few important towns might be too much but I have full trust in our Seven Swordsmen. They know when to run. Plus," He took out a few files, "I have already made sure to create fail-proof documents saying the mission was a valid one given by a noble from the Land of Earth who hates Konoha and lost a lot of money due to the newly established tax law of the Land of Fire. All ways how anyone could screw us over diplomatically are covered. Now we only have to wait for the Seven to return."

"Lord Mizukage, the swordsmen r-" The head of the Hozuki clan tried but...

"You are still not convinced?" The Mizukage frowned, not raising his head from the document he was the whole time reading. "You really think the ability of our strongest ninja group is so weak?" He sighed in exasperation and continued in a bored drawl, "Fine... I can assure you nothing can happen to them. Konoha is still consolidating their power and most of their jonins are focused on border outposts. Most of their ANBU are on illegal and secret missions out of the Land of Fire. The only Konoha ninjas doing missions located inside the Land of Fire are chunins at best and our Seven Swordsmen can eat those guys for breakfast. This entire thing was meticulously planned. I even used a lot of our ANBU to draw Konoha's attention elsewhere so our boys can rampage all they want in the Land of Fire while I am focusing on tightening the defense of our territory in case Konoha wanted to retaliate. Not even a mouse will move in the Land of Water without us knowing about it. See? I got it all thought out. No need to worr-"

"SHUT UP!" The head of the Yuki clan, Himeno's father, burst out as he glared at the Mizukage who finally raised his head and looked at the elder in bewilderment and confusion. "I've got enough of your bullshit! We came to tell you the Seven Swordsmen have returned! Four are dead, and the remaining three will need a few months of recuperation at best, and at worst their injuries will never heal, permanently lowering their fighting potential! The mission ended up in a failure! The second they were heading towards the first targeted town, they encountered a freaking Ringo Ameyuri who merrily slaughtered her way through them without even getting a single scratch! Moreover, she destroyed Kabutowari and stole Samehada!" He finished while breathing hard, greedily gulping air and gripping his chest. Just remembering it almost gave him a heart attack!

The more he talked, the more the Mizukage's expression darkened. How could they be back so soon? Then his question changed. How could they have failed? The second the Yuki clan elder mentioned Ringo, however... there was only one response the Mizukage was able to give as his expression turned ugly with a grain of powerless hopelessness in it.

"Fuck it all! Again them!?"

...

Minato Namikaze sighed for the n-th time as he filled his hundredth paper in the office of the Hokage.

'If I knew I would become a paper-slayer upon achieving my dream, I would never volunteer for this shit. Fighting hundreds of Iwa ninjas was much more enjoyable than bickering with old geezers, doing paperwork... and why the heck do I feel as if my work became ridiculous? Leading this village is worse than explaining to a five-year-old boy that girls do not have cooties or giving the talk to my students!' Minato mentally raged, 'Is it only me or the councilmen in this village are all mentally disadvantaged? Why the heck do I have to sign paperwork about taxes? Isn't that the whole reason why the civilian council was formed? To ease the Hokage's workload in times of war? For someone who vehemently refused to be dismissed after the war ended, they clearly are happy with not fulfilling the reason why they even exist!'

"Fucking lazy sly old snakes who can't do anything but complain and whine! See how I dismiss you..." Minato mumbled under his nose as anger started rising in him the more paperwork that didn't belong to him but the members of the civilian council he saw on his table.

Alas, not even his four shadow clones were capable of being satisfactory help to Minato in his new duties.

As he was thinking of a way to flay the civilian council alive, the door suddenly creaked open, causing Minato to smile widely as his pregnant tomato of a wife, not that he had the guts to call her that to her face, walked inside his office with her confident grin.

"Yo, Minato! What's up? Enjoying the paperwork?" Kushina cheerfully asked, innocently smiling but Minato wisely kept quiet as he spotted her threatening gaze. 'Hehe, serves you right, taking my hat and putting the kicking devil inside of me, bastard! You can forget about having sex for the next half-decade at least!'

"Ye-yes, dear?" Minato unsurely answered with a twisted expression while in the back of his mind having a very, very bad premonition of his very own personal armageddon happening without him having any ability to stop it.

"Good. I am sure this won't destroy your good mood then." Kusha nodded in satisfaction and sat in the guest chair in front of his desk with a delighted groan before she put on his table a small book and slid it towards him.

"What is it?" Minato took the book into his hands and froze for a bit. "Another new Bingo Book? Now? The last one came two weeks ago..." He narrowed his eyebrows in worry.

It was a huge secret but the Bingo Book only updated once per two months. If the update came sooner, that meant someone extremely extraordinary was put into it and they could not wait.

Minato browsed through the pages until he came upon a new entry...

"This is gotta be some cruel joke, right?" He looked with a hopeful expression at his exasperated wife who just shrugged, "Fourth SS-rank coming from Kirigakure? Seriously? Plus this one is yet another rogue ninja? That makes four rogue SS-rankers all from Kiri and all of them are most likely in one group. Let's see... she was given the title by Kirigakure? That's rare, they didn't give such a high ranking to anyone yet." Minato nodded, realizing how serious this was. For a ninja village to give their own rogue ninja SS-rank? It meant something serious must have happened that completely frightened the village higher-ups.

"Huh? She was given the title for... oh fuck it all to hell!" Minato stood up and banged his palm onto his table while gritting his teeth after reading how exactly she earned that title. "Say what now? She killed four members of the Seven Swordsmen of the Kiri and injured three of them to the degree they would need months of recuperation? Stole one of the Seven Swords and destroyed another? And this all happened on the territory of the Land of Fire and I am only getting to know about it from the Bingo Book!?" Minato's chakra flared from anger, forcing Kushina to offset the pressure with her chakra.

"Lord Hokage!" The secretary quickly ran inside as she felt the chakra flare, only to stop in her tracks as she spotted the furious glare of Minato and the four ANBU guards frozen stiff on the ceiling.

"Go and call the Council Meeting." Minato's voice was quiet but very menacing, "I want to see what that snake Danzo has to say about this. There is no way he did not know about it."

Needless to say, the Konohagakure's Council Room was not peaceful that night.