Naruto: The Blind Swordsman

Chapter 102: Meeting, Message and Departure

chapter 102: meeting, message and departure

________ pov narration________

danzo growled as he punched the desk in front of him with unrestrained fury.

"that god-damned assassin!"

he was currently underneath konoha, resting inside the root's operational base built underneath the kage building.

in front of him were two masked anbu, kneeling on the ground after having reported the situation with the 'jinchuriki saviour plan'.

it was a rather simple scheme, to allow the sand village to attempt a kidnapping, and send one male root agent to save her.

the strategy was to slowly sway her in order to have feelings towards said male member, and also make her join the root.

that way, konoha had assurance that their foreigner jinchuriki would be completely tied to their village, and danzo himself would also have complete control over the nine tails.

it was a flawless plan. he had even placed dozens of root members to stand by and surround the place in case one root member failed.

the kidnappers had no real chance of escaping. their entire operation was only possible because danzo took a risk and asked one of his disposable agents to take down the barrier for a minute.

said agent was already dead. he had committed suicide on danzo's orders.

he was already titled a traitor to the village anyway. there was no point in him living as he had outlived his usefulness.

the problem was that his death was now in vain.

not only had his plan failed, it had failed miserably. to add another problem to the mix, kushina was saved by another genin that used to be her classmate.

said genin also just happened to be jirayia's student, who was both a sanin and hiruzen's student, so danzo couldn't act against him.

'at the very least there's a chance she'll be tied to konoha with this...'

the bigger worry was the jinchuriki starting to look up to ken, who had killed all of his men in cold blood.

the root would need a few good years to make up for the losses it had occurred in just one minute.

the root members had likely thought ken was one of the kidnappers, or maybe they wanted to get rid of an unknown third party.

it was hard to tell for danzo, the leader of that squad had made the decision to engage ken on his own. he couldn't really be blamed either, as ken was wearing a civilian disguise at the time.

that didn't mean danzo didn't resent them for wasting their lives so easily.

'what a waste of resources, those lives could've been better spent doing something more productive for the village.'

danzo was somewhat ignorant of the fact that it was his plan all along that had gotten the agents killed.

they had only acted on orders and worked to 'save' the jinchuriki after things took a weird turn.

but danzo didn't actually care for their lives. to him, they were nothing more than mere resources, so he didn't even feel the need to take the blame for their deaths.

'i need to get rid of that annoying assassin as soon as possible, but there's nothing i can do for now. i'll have to bide my time.'

before, he could've just ignored the asassins' machinations and tried to steer clear of him, keeping to himself and tending to the village. but now?

danzo couldn't possibly forgive the assassin for killing that many root members. and even more importantly, he couldn't allow there to be even a slight chance that their jinchuriki fell for him.

it was a possibility, after all, the mind of a young girl worked in mysterious ways.

minato may have saved her initially from the reports they gave, but it was ken to clean everything up and actually save them both in the end.

so now danzo needed to take care of ken, or at least build some scenario to make the little girl hate ken.

'... this just gave me a lot more work than i thought it would...'

as danzo sat there, lamenting on his ever-increasing workload, ken and fugaku were already reporting the situation to the hokage.

well, ken was doing the reporting, and fugaku was just listening with a serious look plastered on his face. though the blind assassin assumed that was his default expression.

"so you're telling me those shinobi might've been unrelated?..." the hokage stood in front of ken as he took in the report, he no longer felt the need to sit down.

he cupped his beard in one hand, his face showcased a grave expression. at least it felt grave to ken, who nodded to answer his question.

"they most likely are unrelated... they didn't wear clothes that were all that dissimilar, but that seal on their tongue gives away the fact that they weren't the same group..."

his words caused the hokage to nod once more.

"now, let us not jump to conclusions too quickly... there is currently no physical evidence of this seal ever existing. the corpses are still being examined, but you did say they disappeared."

fugaku decided to interject at that point. his input was also not exactly helping ken all that much.

"i guess you'll just have to trust me on this one. i am only here to warn you in the first place, i have no relation with this whole situation." ken shrugged, not willing to argue much with the uchiha leader.

but fugaku seemed to have taken some issue with his words.

"now, i wouldn't claim that you are that trustworthy... you did leave your home unannounced at an undisclosed time, you are very much suspicious." fugaku scowled slightly at the assassin.

ken was honestly surprised to hear such a forward accusation.

he had already looked up who jiraiya was as a person and knew more about him than he knew even about the hokage.

so he assumed jiraiya wouldn't be able to recognize him on sight alone, as he wasn't the smartest person in his group of three.

surprisingly, jiraiya seemed to instantly know who ken was.

"oh, the bounty hunter?! you are the one asking for my help, that's unusual..." jiraiya scratched the back of his head with a confused face.

'i guess i shouldn't trust rumours so much...' ken sighed as he crossed his arms and turned back towards the hokage.

"i believe it is for the better that we do the mission briefing here, lord hokage, you may need to convince him after all..." ken said as he walked over to the hokage's desk and leaned on it.

jiraiya looked a bit confused, but he didn't protest, he just also crossed his arms and walked over to the hokage's desk, prepared, and somewhat excited, to hear out what someone like ken could ever need from him.

"long story short, i need to meet the toad sage of mount myboku. and you are the only person that i know of able to make such a thing happen."

the assassin got into business right away, not wanting to waste the time of any party involved in the mission briefing.

jiraiya was visibly surprised he blinked a few times before opening his mouth and asking the obvious question.

"and why do you need to meet him? you seem to have mastered sage mode already..."

jiraiya was certainly intrigued, he could feel nature's energy around ken. he could feel it revolving around the assassin constantly, which was strange, to say the least.

jiraiya himself had yet to master sage mode properly, he was already at the point of sensing nature energy.

"i need to learn more about myself, and this sage mode you speak of." ken's answer managed to almost make jiraiya fall backwards.

'are you fucking kidding me?! the most perfected sage i've ever seen, so perfect that i'm sure he'll blow the pants off of ma and pa, needs to learn more about sage mode?!'

needless to say, jiraiya was more than intrigued at this point. to the point where the hokage's word of approval wasn't even needed.

although, just by him being there, he provided jiraiya with the assurance that ken didn't have any nefarious plans. which was the whole point of requesting the mission through him.

the assassin had banked on the fact that jiraiya trusted his master/teacher. and that seemed to have paid off, as the toad sannin smiled and accepted the request.

"ok! i can get you there, to mount myboku, i mean. i'll speak to the toads to let you meet the great sage too." jiraiya immediately patted the assassin on the back, hooking his arm around him and pulling him out of the office while waving back at his teacher.

"teacher! i'll be off for a few days i think! take care of your health!" jiraiya shouted while still pulling the assassin out of the room.

ken hadn't expected such a casual interaction, but he didn't resist, as he did want to go to mount myboku, and that was exactly where jiraiya was dragging him.

so the assassin also just decided to wave back to hiruzen, also pointing up for the hokage to see before jiraiya slammed the door to his teacher's office.

and just like that, hiruzen was left alone in his office.

well, as alone as he could've been with a squad of anbu hiding on the wooden posts above his head.

hiruzen just sighed as he turned his head to his paperwork. his mind was not focused on it however, he was now back to thinking about the message ken had sent him.

' 'anbu possibly with seal above us', huh?'

hiruzen didn't need more context to understand what ken meant. they had just been talking about the kidnapping incident after all...

he also didn't think ken had any reason to lie to him. he wasn't quite as sceptical of ken, especially not after the assassin had proven to not have any bad intentions by saving kushina.

now, the hokage had a few things he could suspect were happening.

one: foreign shinobi had infiltrated the ranks of their anbu and were still there despite the failed kidnapping. it was a rather stressful thought...

two: it was also possible that ken had felt it wrong, he didn't write in a confident language, which was most likely deliberate.

the red dot didn't strike hiruzen as a person that did things without them being deliberate. so that meant ken was only informing him of suspicion.

but ken was also renowned as a really good sensor, so it was a credible source in a sense.

and there was also the third and last possibility, which made the hokage feel much more tired...

'danzo is up to no good, huh?...'

the hokage couldn't help but sigh, pretending to be slumped in more and more paperwork that was already piling up on his desk.

'the next few weeks will be very busy, won't they?'

__________________________________________

heyaa, veganmaster here again with a chapter. kinda late, but that's becoming the usual innit?

things have been a bit tiring as of late, but i should be fine. work's been a bit more stressful and i have less and less free time too, so that's nice.

anyway, imma keep writing cuz i still love doing it :)) my schedule will eventually fix itself too

story shoutout!(send me a dm if you've got any interesting story for a shout out, have little time for reading as of late) : the last observer

discord, again: https://discord.gg/xqtk8cafeq

if u want to support me look up veganmaster on patre_on, you'd also get 12 chapters in advance (or 6/3 depending on tier)