After saying goodbye to his classmates, Ruri followed the ninja wearing a cat mask toward the Hokage Office Building.
"Hey! I have to ask, is it really comfortable wearing that cat mask every day?" Ruri asked as he walked, looking at the masked ninja beside him.
The ninja wearing the cat mask ignored Ruri, merely turning to glance at him before continuing forward.
Tch, that attitude really is annoying! Ruri thought when he saw that the ninja wearing the cat mask had ignored him.
While Ruri and the ninja wearing the cat mask were heading toward the Hokage Office Building, a heated argument was taking place inside it, and the two people arguing were old men.
"Hey! Do you even know what you're saying? Or has your brain stopped working?" The Third Hokage put his pipe in his mouth, took a puff, and addressed the man before him.
After lowering his pipe, the Third Hokage looked at the man before him and continued, "Don't get carried away. You actually came here asking me to hand both Ruri Hyuga and Uchiha Itachi over to you? You're dreaming!"
"Sarutobi, you can't put it that way! Entrusting those two promising talents to me is the right choice, and Root is perfectly capable of training them to perfection!" the man before the Third Hokage said.
The man standing before the Third Hokage wore a white kimono, with bandages wrapped around his right eye. One hand rested on a cane while the other was tucked inside his kimono, making him look extremely strange.
This man was Shimura Danzō, one of Konoha's senior officials, the Third Hokage's bitter rival behind the scenes, and the founder of Root.
"Of course I believe you're capable of training them to perfection, but I'm sorry. I've already decided to have