The Hokage groaned when he caught sight of who had entered his office. Some days, they were friends, and others...
"I see that you haven't removed the Uzumaki child from the Academy." Danzo said, apparently deciding to get to the point today rather than dance around it with near indecipherable rhetoric and innuendo.
"In order to keep civilian families from pulling their children over frivolous issues, Tobirama-sensei made it damn near impossible to pull a child from the Academy without filling out boatloads of paperwork in triplicate, and damn near impossible to return them to the Academy once they've been pulled." he replied, damning his sensei for unwittingly doing that to him.
"You are the Hokage are you not?" Danzo asked, looking almost disgusted that he hadn't used his power to pull Naruto from the Academy the instant he'd discovered he'd been enrolled.
"Yes, and people will start to think the laws don't mean crap if I start breaking them left, right and center for my own convenience." he replied, once again going over why he didn't just take control and tell everyone to go to hell regardless of what the law said on the matter when things didn't go his way. "Naruto will have his three chances at Graduation, like everybody else who attends the Academy, and his first chance to take the Academy Graduation exam won't be happening until he's six and a half. A full year and a half older than Hatake Kakashi was when he graduated the Academy the first time."
Danzo just gave him that look in response. That look that said "You're being stupid, and we both know it".
He ignored it this time. He wasn't in the mood to argue with his on-again off-again friend over why he didn't hold the law in contempt, even if he had the authority to ignore it entirely. With a society such as theirs, where nearly half of the population had powers that most people in the country did not, the trappings of civilization such as rules and laws had to hold, at least on the surface, to keep it all from disintegrating. Otherwise, there would be complete anarchy with the strong taking from the weak with impunity. In order to maintain at least a thin veneer of civilization, he had to lead by example and show that even the strongest and smartest of them had to follow the law.
Unfortunately, in this case, the carefree years a child was granted before school and the innocence of childhood that Naruto would've had had he not been enrolled in the Academy at such an insanely early age would have to be sacrificed in order to hold the village and their way of life together.
It wasn't the first time the poor boy had been sacrificed for the sake of the village though...
The class glared at the Instructor as Ko picked Naruto up and carried him out of the room, taking the diaper bag full of Naruto's school supplies and other things which had been left with the boy when he'd been dropped off for the day along with him. He didn't know how, but somehow, he'd taken on the role of being Naruto's caretaker while he was at the Academy. Fortunately, none of his classmates had attempted to hinder his endeavors, despite the fact that they all knew who the toddler he was tending to was and what it contained. Getting punished by their Instructor every time he "left the room without permission" in order to change Naruto's diaper so he wasn't forced to sit in his own pee for hours was par for the course however, and it was getting to the point where he and Naruto practically lived in the hallway while they were at the Academy. Fortunately, several of his classmates were willing to share their notes and the day's homework with him, so he didn't fall too far behind.
A teacher picking on a six, seven, or eight year-old child who couldn't keep up with the rest of the class is one thing, but the same man picking on a baby for being unable to do the same was another matter entirely. Even in the eyes of a bunch of children who knew exactly what that baby was supposed to be. It had been because of what that baby was that the instructor had gotten away with it in the first place. It was because of what Naruto was that the teacher had been allowed to get away with it for as long as he had. But, things had begun to change as the students who'd only had a nebulous idea of what the Kyuubi's vessel was when they'd first encountered him began to see Uzumaki Naruto for what he actually was.
What Naruto was was a baby who had been pitched into a situation he wasn't ready for, and who didn't know what the hell was going on or how to even begin dealing with it.
Uzumaki Naruto was an eighteen month old toddler who was only just barely able to run around a bit that had been trained to recognize his own name and write a bunch of scribbles that resembled it down on a piece of paper, and the students of the class he'd been placed in recognized that fact. They also recognized the fact that the Uzumaki child had had little to no idea what was going on when he'd been brought to the Academy and placed in the classroom before the start of lessons, as the child frequently disrupted the class when he'd gotten bored and frequently fallen out of his chair until the teacher had gotten the bright idea of tying him to said chair. By the time the first test of the first year had rolled around, every last one of the children had wanted to say something when they had saw how the boy was struggling to understand what was happening and why he was being yelled at to be quiet, but they had all been too afraid to speak up in case the Instructor turned his attention on them and did something horrible to them.
Everyone had been afraid to speak up until Ko had snapped that was...
The day Ko had snapped, it was as if a dam had burst, and all of the indignant cries that had been bitten back for fear of what the Instructor could or would do to them were bitten back no longer. It didn't matter if they got demerits or detention or lines. That was a baby, and they had been taught by their families that you never ever picked on a baby because, picking on babies was just plain wrong. After another week during which the teacher hadn't changed his cruel ways when it came to the Uzumaki baby, it had finally come close to reaching the point where the Instructor was unable to maintain control over his class.
One day, someone would have to give, and odds were that it wouldn't be the students...
Edited 7-18-15 Edited 9-5-16.