"Genin Uchiha Itachi, do you know why you're here?" asked Hiruzen.
"No Hokage-sama," said a seven year old Itachi as he stood at attention.
Hiruzen puffed his pipe as he examined Itachi's face for any sign of deception, "I see. I wish to speak to you about the D-rank babysitting mission you took earlier today. In your own words, could you describe to me what happened?"
Itachi gave a serious nod and began his report, "At 0800, I received the D-rank to babysit Fukui Aoi from 0900 till 1700. My genin team and I arrived promptly at the appointed time. Around 1200, I was sent out to retrieve rations for our squad. As I was acquiring rations, I began to go over the mission details once more to make sure I wasn't missing anything important. This is when I realized that the mission was flawed and came up with plan Fisherman."
"What is plan Fisherman?" prompted Hiruzen.
"Well, the point of the babysitting mission is to guarantee the safety of Fukui-san, correct?" asked Itachi.
"That is correct," replied Hiruzen.
Itachi nodded before he continued his explanation, "I realized that once the mission was over, the threats to Fukui-san's life would rise greatly since he no longer has shinobi bodyguards. With this realization came the knowledge that I had to take steps to make sure he was safe after I departed. I decided to center my plan around the old adage: 'Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for the rest of his life.' If Fukui-san could protect himself, then he wouldn't need me to protect him. So, he clearly needed to be trained in the shinobi arts."
"Of course," said Hiruzen dryly.
"I of course lacked the time to properly train him within the time allotted by the mission, so I decided to encourage him to sign up at the academy so that he could acquire the skills that he needed. However, Fukui-san is only four years old, and lacks the emotional maturity to take his training seriously. Knowing this, I decided to take a page out of my father's book and show him a bunch of dead bodies."
"What," said Hiruzen, his voice colored with disbelief.
"When I was four myself, Father took me to a battlefield and showed me a bunch of dead bodies in the hopes that the trauma would make me more mature and ready for shinobi life. I have been told I am very mature for my age, so clearly his plan worked. Also, sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still see their bodies dripping."
"I..." started Hiruzen before trailing off, not sure where to begin.
"I, of course, could not acquire a large amount of dead human bodies since we do not have a surplus of them lying around. While the morgue has quite a few, I lack the authorization to take those, so I discarded that plan quickly. Since grave robbing is also a crime, it was not an avenue that I could pursue either. I decided then that since I could not get enough human bodies before the mission was complete, I would have to improvise and use animal corpses. While it is of course illegal to kill an owner's pet, there are no laws prohibiting me from digging up the bodies from the local pet cemetery."
Hiruzen buried his face in his hands and said, "While that may not be illegal, per se, Itachi, it is still considered to be in bad taste to dig up people's dead pets."
Itachi blinked and said apologetically, "I am sorry Hokage-sama. I did not know that. I will keep that in mind in my future missions."
"Please do so," sighed Hiruzen.
"Moving on, as I was headed for Fukui-san's room, I realized a flaw in my plan: the trauma might not be great enough. You see, unlike with my experience, the bodies were neither human nor fresh. So clearly I needed to take extra steps to make sure the trauma level was high enough. So I proceeded to enter Fukui-san's room and pelted him with the deceased pets."
"Itachi."
"Yes Hokage-sama?"
"You are hereby banned from babysitting missions. Also, send your father to speak with me. I wish to speak with him about his child rearing strategies."