The nominal Hokage

The Hokage looked thoughtfully at Naruto when the boy declared that he was going to become Hokage. He had only just gotten over his latest batch of paperwork and here this boy at the age of six and only about to enter the academy was declaring that he wanted to take over his duties. A sudden thought brought him out of the blissful dreams of making somebody else do the blasted paperwork: Did the boy even know how to read, or write for that matter? Oh well at least he could give it a try… wait give the boy a chance! Yea that was what he wanted to do!

The Professor wore a poker face as he finally responded to the boy's claim.

"Naruto-kun how about coming by my office after school today and I'll introduce you to the job you want so much."

Naruto nodded seriously before slipping off to class since the lessons of his first day were about to begin, Hiruzen meanwhile went off to file Naruto's clearance level to just above what he had given Jiraya.

Naruto struggled a lot to understand the text the teachers had handed out for them to read but since the Hokage wanted to see him after class Naruto kept at it. Naruto had never had anyone truly teaching him how to read or write but he had been allowed to sit in while the other kids were taught the arts. With the extra motivation Naruto struggled his way through the text and finished along with the other students. Though Naruto didn't understand all the words he had gotten the gist of it. The text detailed the code of Shinobi with more than thirty rules that the teacher told them to learn by heart before the final graduation exam.

Naruto was resigning himself to a career that consisted of much more reading than he had thought when he signed up for ninja life when the Hokage gave him a set of papers as he got to the man's office and asked the boy to make whatever decisions he thought best as the man took the well-earned break to read the latest book his perverted (straight) student had sent him.

The first paper Naruto went through dealt with the idea of passing out field rations to Shinobi to save them the time it took to find food in the wild. Thinking about how one would surely miss the delicious food of the divine that Ramen made out to be he signed it off as a good idea. There were five different proposals for whom to get to make these field rations. Of the advertisements only the one from the Akamichi clan mentioned noodles and meat in the same sentence which was the closest he got to the real thing of those that were there. Naruto could only guess that old man Icharaku was too busy to make field rations to the Ninja of Konoha since his store wasn't on the list.

After putting the stamp Hiruzen had given him with held the man's signature on the proposal Naruto moved on to the next matter.

Naruto was rather horrified to find that several businesses were requesting monetary compensation after his latest masterpiece of a prank. Seeing the ridiculous sums the deserving victims were asking for Naruto went to file them as rejected. As he came to the pile though he saw several categories ranging from "send the responsible to speak with Ibiki" to "ask for a cheaper prize and file again." The one for Ibiki seemed to be rather empty so Naruto conveniently put the papers in the nearly empty box.

Hiruzen looked up an hour later and found his desk miraculously empty for the first time since he got back the office.

As Naruto kept coming back for an hour or so each day the town got increasingly less troublesome to deal with for both Hiruzen and Naruto since the civilian council seemed to spend an afternoon in Ibiki's presence whenever Naruto deemed that their requests for council meetings had silly reasons attached to them.

Hiruzen was rather satisfied so the only papers he bothered to deal with were foreign affairs since starting a war because Naruto misunderstood something would cause far too much trouble.

Danzo was becoming a little scared of his old teammate. The agents he set up to their usual antics within the civilian council kept being sent off to Ibiki along with the rest of the council. With the man growing a backbone out of nowhere Danzo resigned himself to restrain himself to deal with troublesome affairs outside of Konoha.

As Naruto read yet another request for a council, meeting this time packed into much more convolution and respectful terms that went over the boys head that the first ten that he had filed away, he pondered if it was actually important this time. From what the teachers at the academy was telling them about the role of the Hokage he decided that what little he could glean about them wanting to discuss the human rights of civilians really didn't warrant the attention of a military dictator. Besides after the latest request he had received from the name on the request file asking to bar Mitarashi Anko from joining the Jounin exams Naruto was a little suspicious about anything coming from that guy. As he added the file to the growing pile in the Ibiki box Naruto finished the work of the day with a smile and went to read on the technique scroll he had found in the back of the office. In any case the ANBU didn't stop Naruto from reading anything in the office since he had the clearance level, actually he had the clearance level to order them around if he wanted to and Hiruzen was too far off in his own world to do stop Naruto from reading a few techniques.

Naruto got smile on his face as he found a "Kage" version of the technique he was having so much trouble with at the academy. As he managed to make three clones later that evening Naruto had a satisfied expression on his face. Obviously he would need Kage version techniques as a future Hokage of Konoha.

As Naruto got to his patch of work the next day he found it very suspicious that several of the usual civilian troublemakers were requesting that Konoha buy their properties and give them protection details as they intended to leave Konoha. Since the box to Ibiki wasn't full yet Naruto stopped the largest migration since the founding of the village from happening with a set of solidly filed papers. Needless to say any delusions about power that the civilian council had held since the Kyuubi attack went down the drain rather quickly when even their requests to leave Konoha were met with sections in the torture chambers with a strangely happy Ibiki.

As Hiruzen started wondering what other duties he could pile off on Naruto the first thing that came to mind was the mission assignment. Well at least he could let the boy handle it for a few weeks and take it back if the number of casualties started to go up.

Naruto wasn't quite sure what to make of it when Hiruzen led him to another room with a stack of papers that looked a little different from the one that was in the office every day.

As the man lit his pipe and told Naruto to assign the missions to Konoha's ninja, with files being available in a nearby cabinet, Naruto wasn't quite sure what to make of it but a as the future Hokage he would figure it out believe it!

Naruto found it a little strange that people would request ninja to deal with tasks like painting fences or catching a cat but then he had seen stranger requests in the office and at least these people were willing to pay for the service. And if Naruto had learned anything from managing his own finances it was that an additional source of income was a welcome thing.

As he read through the files of the ninja though he found it a little demeaning to have them picking weeds in gardens though. With a sudden thought Naruto decided to send off the simplest ones to the academy as he wrote a quick note about which students were to do what missions. Naruto wasn't being vindictive at all when he decided that the so called rookies of the year that he disliked so much needed to be knocked down a peck or two by cleaning out the Inuzuka compound, at least that's what he told himself.

Picking out the current Genin teams for the toughest D-ranks that even Naruto wouldn't give to academy kids after having done such tasks in his own home there were still three teams to give simple C-ranks. Feeling quite pleased with that Naruto was a little worried when he recognized the wording of people writing suspicious requests and so wrote out a few missions for some of the Jounins to run some fact checking as he put off assigning those missions. Naruto figured that the C-ranks could be done by a couple of Chuunin while he assigned four or five of them to the simple B-ranks. There were still plenty of Jounin available for the complicated B-ranks and the few A-ranks that were in the files so Naruto assigned two of them for each of the A-ranks.

Naruto was pleased to find that the task had only taken him an additional hour letting him off with enough time to practice the kunai throwing that the teacher had introduced them to in class.