Chapter 21 – Meeting
The 3rd Hokage was currently having a staring contest with Danzo, they both were resilient, not willing to show weakness in front of the other.
The Hokage called him to his office because he was informed of Danzo’s investigation on Sango, something he couldn’t allow, Sango must not fall under Danzo’s hands.
The starring continued for a while, yet someone had to cede.
In the end, Danzo began speaking first, “Sarutobi, why are you hiding that child from me?” He spoke while starring in the Hokage’s eyes, with his only good eye as his right eye was bandaged.
“Please understand, there was no need to inform you.” The Hokage spoke with sincerity, “The kid is a genius only at combat theory, nothing useful to you.” He lied.
“Who is the kid?” Danzo ignored Sarutobi’s words as he continued to question him.
Sarutobi wasn’t showing any change in expression as he answered with complete honesty, “He was found in a critical state during a mission, since his parents didn’t survive the ordeal, I decided to give him a new home.” He paused before resuming, “Anyway, he is of no use for you, leave him to me.” His voice became firmer there, making it clear to Danzo that there was no need to discuss more on the subject.
Danzo was far from satisfied, he smelled deceit, but he also couldn’t say anything to the Hokage, while he had much power in Konoha, the Hokage had more.
Before the conversation could continue, *Boooom!” They jumped on their feet as an explosion shock the entire building.
“What?!” The Hokage and Danzo both exclaimed in surprise as they ran to the window facing the village, from there they could see smoke rising from the outskirts of the city.
Without losing time, they opened the window and jumped out, running towards the source of the smoke.
At their level it took but a short time to reach the place, they found a small crater, maybe five meters in diameter.
Something attracted Danzo’s attention at his feet. He bended down and took it in his hand, after a closer look it looked like a piece of paper.
“Paper bombs?” The Hokage, seeing the paper in Danzo’s hand, asked.
“Yes, and by the damage done to the area, there were many.” Danzo looked all around, pondering, nothing else could be deducted since the explosion messed up the surrounding, making it extremely hard to find any clues.
“There are no body parts to be seen… I will send some Anbu to give it a closer look.” Said Danzo before turning around and leaving.
The Hokage himself decided to leave, this was a job for his subordinates, the Hokage rarely took action himself and since Danzo would look into this matter himself, he could rest easy.
The culprit, Sango, was uncaringly having fun reading, he knew the Hokage would investigate the matter, so he made sure not to leave any clues.
The next day, a Sunday. Sango was out shopping, thanks to the even increasing income from the sale of the books, he had a small treasure at his disposal.
He had already asked Kurenai to order many more of the M48 knife as well as more super resistant string, his experiments were sure to destroy many of them.
What he didn’t expect was to run into Sakura, Ino and Hinata together, he had no recollection of them being friends at the current timeline. He could only attribute the change to his own existence that made the whole story take another road.
“Sango!” As soon as they saw him, Sakura and Ino called to him while waving their hand in the air. Sango smiled as he approached them.
“What are you girls doing here?” He asked just to make conversation, it was obvious what they were doing just by looking at their bags.
“We decided to meet up for a little shopping.” Ino replied to his question, smiling.
Sango looked around for a second before speaking “Since is about time for breakfast, how about we go eat together, my treat.”
“Really?!” Sakura asked in a happy tone.
“Let’s go, I know a good place.” Sango began walking ahead and the girls followed him closely. His destination was the restaurant he often visited together with Kurenai; it was one of her favourite places.
“Oh, Sango-kun! I see you are always surrounded by girls hahaha!” Just when they entered the restaurant, a middle-aged man called out to Sango. He and his wife were the owners of the place, they were familiar with Sango as he, together with Kurenai, were loyal customers.
The girls didn’t have any reaction at his words, they didn’t really understand his meaning.
Sango chose a table, one far from any window, and sat. By coincidence, or maybe not, he sat together with Hinata opposite Sakura and Ino. As the owner brought them each a menu, the girls were chatting between themselves, even Hinata was participating, even if less than Sakura or Ino, but it was a rather interesting development seeing her opening up to them.
Despite it being breakfast time, they ordered sweets, cakes to be more precise.
“Are you having cake for breakfast?” Asked Sango. Sakura and Ino looked at him proudly, “Of course!” They said happily.
Sango shrugged and decided to go with the flow, ordering cake himself.
They made light conversation until Ino asked a question, “Sango, how did you become so strong?” The question attracted the attention of Hinata and Sakura whom stopped eating to listen to his answer, they also wanted to know that.
“Nothing special, I just trained.” His answer didn’t satisfy the girls and Sakura began to speak next, “But we are also training very hard, yet we are very far from your level.” She had a downcast expression as she spoke, they all wanted to become strong, it was in their nature.
Sango pondered for a moment, even if they trained hard, if the training method wasn’t good for them, it would still produce little results.
“Do you want to become strong?” His tone became more serious as he asked.
The girls were taken aback for a moment, then they answered resolutely in unison, “Yes!” Even Hinata answered, she was more determined in her pursuit of strength than many others.
“Good, then from tomorrow onwards, we will meet at the training field after school.” Sango said, “I will be training you.”
The girls were ecstatic, but they didn’t know what they were in for.