Kakashi put his book away.

The room was watching him again, though with markedly less hostility since Ryouma had decided to play a one-man bookend. Kakashi glanced sideways, meeting friendly dark eyes under a neat thatch of ink-black hair.

Ryouma gave him a thumbs up with his unbandaged hand. “Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

Sometimes, Kakashi did not understand his life.

Scratch that. Quite often Kakashi did not understand his life.

“Try not to injure yourself in my absence,” he said, and peeled himself away from the door, following the vice-commander into the Hokage’s office.

The bodies of rejected candidates failed to greet him, which was mildly encouraging.

In fact, the office looked exactly as it always did, if slightly more crowded. Minato sat in pride of place behind his broad, beautifully carved desk, which had been cleared of teetering paperwork stacks for the special occasion. Despite the late hour, he looked daisy-fresh and alert, one hand wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. He was wearing his flame-coat of office, but the official hat was tossed over the back of his chair. In four years, Kakashi had never seen him wear it.

On Minato’s right, the ANBU commander, Sagara-sama, sat in full magpie-colored armor. Lamplight gilded the steel-grey hair at her temples and made the fierce black lines of her hawk mask seem, if anything, even more forbidding. The vice-commander moved to stand at her back.

To Minato’s left, Kakashi recognized the head of Intel. Oita Gennosuke was a short, round, dark-haired man with an unfortunate bald spot and shrewd eyes. He had one of the most contained chakra patterns Kakashi had ever come across; even this close, Kakashi could barely feel a shimmer.

The last man had to be the head of T&I. Kakashi had seen worse acid scars, but they’d belonged to corpses.

He dropped to one knee, pressing his fist against the floor, and ducked his head, waiting for instructions.

“At ease, shinobi,” Minato said.

There was no trace of humor lurking in bright blue eyes. Kakashi straightened up, and quite carefully didn’t think irritated thoughts about why 3:00 am and ’Sagara and her captains are the ones who make the real decisions, anyway; I just sign off on 'em’. Minato might be a lying, bastard-shaped idiot who couldn’t take the favor of a six-hour nap when it was dropped in his lap without whining, but he was still the Hokage, and Kakashi would never disrespect him.

At least, in public.

“Hokage-sama,” he murmured. “Commanders.”

“Justify your use of lethal force in subduing Akiyama,” Sagara-sama said, without preamble.