NARUTO, HARD CORE
CHAPTER 1
5 people sat in the small conference room inside the Hokage's tower. They are about to have a very important discussion before meeting with the village council. The people in the room are the third Hokage, the elders Homura Mitokado, and Koharu Utatane, the leader of ROOT ANBU Danzou, and finally, the newly elected Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.
"Ok," started Minato, who started going through some papers in front of him, finding the one he wanted he cleared his throat. "I have been looking through all of your reports and I must say, Danzou, Sarutobi, I completely agree with the both of you. The civilian council has way to much power over ninja affairs, especially in the academy."
"Excuse me Hokage-sama, but I don't see where the problem is," said Homura, "everyone knows that leaf ninjas are the finest of all hidden villages." Koharu nodded in agreement.
"Danzou," started Minato, "please give your report."
Danzou went through some papers in front of him finding what he was looking for he started to speak. "When Minato was chosen to be the fourth, he asked me for a private meeting, together we have gone through all the mission reports. I have here the final statistics. We have a huge decline of successfully completed missions." He took another look and cleared his throat, "your speculations were correct Hokage-sama, and we have too many ninjas graduating the academy on book smarts alone. Because of this, there is a great lack of physical training. I looked into this and discovered that these problems were created by the civilians, believing that more intense training would be just too harsh, unfortunately, due to this problem, we have a huge rise in deaths during missions. I completely agree with the Hokage, the civilians must be taken out of ninja affairs."
Koharu looked at Danzou, then at Minato, and back to Danzou again, "May I have a copy of the report please?" she asked.
"I have plenty of copies for the rest of the council," said Danzou "this is for you, and one for Sarutobi and Homura," he passed the papers out and heard a gasp from Koharu.
"I didn't realize it was this bad." She exclaimed. Just then a knock was heard on the door.
"Enter," called out Minato.
His secretary opened the door and poked her head in, "Excuse me Hokage-sama, but the Fire Lord is here."
"Please invite him to join us," said Minato as every one stood up.
The Fire Lord was a tall man of middle years, he face was slightly wrinkled and clean shaven. He wore a long flowing red and yellow robe. Everyone bowed to him.
Bowing back he said, "Thank you all, please everyone sit, this is still a private meeting, no need for all these formalities."
The third walked over to him and they shook hands warmly, "How are you doing Sarutobi?" asked the Fire lord.
"Honestly Kasaiarashi, I'm getting to old for this, but please join us."
When everyone was seated, Minato cleared his throat and organized his papers.
"With your permission sir, I have some proposals to make." Said Minato.
The Fire Lord gestured for him to continue.
"First and foremost sir, we have discussed and agreed that we want to limit the civilian councils powers, basically, we don't want them meddling in ninja affairs anymore. All they do is making stupid suggestions, and because there are so many more of them, they are always able to out vote the ninja side."
"Very well," said the Fire Lord. "Please continue."
"Second, I would like Jiraiya and Tsunade added to the council." Said Minato.
"I will grant you what you asked for Minato, now lets go deal with the council shall we?" asked the Fire Lord.
10 minutes later, in the main council room.
"Please sit down" said Minato as he entered the council room. He took the customary seat for the Hokage at one end of the long conference table while the fire lord took his seat at the other end.
"As happens with new leaders, there are going to be changes, I ask you to have patience, I will be explaining all the changes that I will make." Said Minato, nodding to Danzou as he finishes. Danzou gets up from his seat and begins to walk around the table, handing out two sheets of paper to everyone seated.
"The papers being handed out by Danzou are the mission stats for the past 10 yrs, as you can see mission failures and deaths on missions are on the rise. If you take a look at the second sheet," Minato pauses as everyone flips to the second sheet. "You will notice part of the problem, way too many students are becoming ninja on book smarts alone." He nods to one of the civilian councilman who had raised his hand. "I am afraid I don't see the problem with that Hokage-sama." He said, many of the civilian councilman giving murmurs of agreement.
"Please don't be offended, but the reason you don't see it, is because you're not a ninja." Said Minato. "Having book smarts is all well and good, but if you don't have any real skills, and proper body conditioning, then you're as good as dead."
Another civilian councilman spoke up, "we are well aware of what most ninjas believe they must do for body conditioning as you put it, we believe it is to harsh, that's why we voted it out of the academy all those years ago, and we have no intention of changing that."
"Oh yes," said Danzou, "actually, you changed it ten years ago, coincidently enough around the beginning of our decline."
"it does not matter anyway," said Minato, "Because as the new Hokage, with the backing of the Fire Lord, I am limiting the civilian councils powers to the civilian economy only, no longer will you have any say in ninja affairs, along with this, every decision having to do with the ninjas of this village will be called back into question, and, we will have a meeting of the ninja council to put together a committee who's one purpose will be to completely revamp the ninja academy, and the very first person who begins to argue with me about this will leave this room via the window, the civilian council has brought this village to the brink of ruin, and I will not sit by and allow this to happen. I will bring this village back to its former and proper place among the five great hidden villages, and no ones going to stop me."
The civilian councilman were stunned, the ninja council began to give Minato a round of applause, shouts of finally and about damn time, were heard. Even Hiashi Hyuuga and Fugaku Uchiha were smiling slightly.
"The only other change is that Jiraiya, and Tsunade will be joining the ninja council, now if you will excuse me, I must check up on my wife, I want the ninja council hear tomorrow at the same time so that we can begin to discuss the academy, Tsume Inuzuka, Fugaku Uchiha, and Hiashi Hyuuga, please stay, i would like to over certain 'proposals' with you in my office." Smiling, the four of them walked to the hokages office.
A/N New chapter for starting will be out once I get it back from my beta. New chapter for the 4 will be coming soon, and I am completely revamping unsung, so don't worry when I delete it, just going to make it better. This is my new story, the fist chapter, I tried to do it a little longer but this is where it wanted to stop. Next chapter will be a time skip with a couple of short flash backs. Is it me, or do the chapters always look longer on word than they do on the site?