The road to self-improvement [Mission]

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

So far, Hiruzen's trip to the Fire Country had not been all that interesting. All he had done was fight a clone, take a Nukenin into custody and turn him in at the Hidden Leaf village to collect the bounty. Though he had only really seen one person that he had met on his first trip to the Hidden Leaf, it was good to see that Mana was doing fine. Having no intention of staying in the Hidden Leaf, it was good to know that he was at least welcome. Since it had already been a day since he had turned in his prize at the village to collect his money. Later on that day, he had been working on how to pull off his sensory abilities before heading to bed early. Waking up in the early morning as a result of this, the young Uchiha was wandering the streets while heading towards the village gate. With his face mask covering everything from his chin to his nose, longer hair and increased physical mass as a result of his training and traveling, he looked very different from the last time he had been to the village. It was no secret that he had been very busy when he was there a year ago. Luckily, no one really seemed to remember him, and even if they did, most of these people would not recognize him due to his new looks. On his way out, his attention was called on by a man that came up to him from a small store. Thinking that it might be someone who had come from the Lightning country in an attempt to forcefully retrieve him, he was slightly jumpy and ready to engage in combat.

"Hey, you look like the kind of shinobi that can get a job done. Can I interest you in taking on a task for my family?".

Looking him over from head to toe, Hiruzen knew for sure that he had never met this man before in his life. Figuring that it was simply his appearance that had drawn the man's attention to him, he let his guard down long enough to hear him out. While he was not afraid to engage into combat with someone and actually welcomed the thought of getting to sharpen his skill with a nice little spar, he was glad that he had not brought any problems with him to a fairly peaceful village, even though it had recently gone through quite an ordeal. As it turned out, someone had broken out of a prison and made a run for it, giving a lot of people quite the scare. While it made him feel bad for the people of the village, he knew for a fact that people like Mana, Meiko, Kiyomi and whoever was in charge of the village these days would get on top of it and fix it. Turning his attention back to the man after missing part of what he was saying, it turned out that he had quite the story to tell. Learning that the man was a descendant of a family with below average wealth, the only thing they had was an heirloom that was worth a small fortune. Being an heirloom, it had passed down from father to son for generations. Since his father had died, it was his turn to take the heirloom into his possession. However, this was where things had taken a wrong turn for the family. When the family had called for a Courier to take the blade to them, the man had been attacked by bandits and was forced to hide the blade somewhere in the forest to avoid capture.

Though the shinobi of the Fire country had taken care of the problem, the courier had been unable to return to the place where he had almost been taken prisoner, or worse. Incapable of doing his work, the best he could do was draw out a map with the location of the heirloom so someone else could retrieve it for them. Even though Hiruzen owed the people of the Hidden Leaf nothing after he turned in a Nukenin to pay off the hospitality and help it had shown, the Uchiha could not help but think of the villagers back in the Hidden Cloud village. They had always been struggling and could have used someone like him to do something like this to help them. If they had been less stubborn and spiteful towards those that descended from the founding clans, he would have done so without thinking twice, though this was unfortunately not the case. Though it would only serve as a way of feeling less bad for abandoning the village that had done so little for him while taking so much already, he decided that he was going to take on this one request. Stating that he had no need for the money and would do it free of charge, it seemed like the man was that much more happy about asking the Uchiha. Handing the map that had obviously been drawn by someone who knew their surroundings very well, Hiruzen again set course for the gate leading out of the village. Once he finished this request, he would no longer owe anyone anything and would finally be able to become a free man.

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Shortly after passing through the gate that lead up to Roiyaru road, Hiruzen quickly exchanged the urban terrain for the dense woodlands of the fire country. Having spent quite a bit of time in the forest when traveling up and down from the lightning and the fire country, he had spent the night in them as well. More so, it was in these very same forests that he had captured his first Nukenin instead of going too far and killing them on the spot. That said, the bodies he had found while following the guy around had given him the feeling that enough blood had been shed for one day. When he thought about it, it was no wonder that the courier nin had refused to go back for his package after encountering dangerous folk in the large woods that covered the vast majority of the fire country. Hiruzen knew full well that while the world was truly a beautiful place, it was also dark and dangerous to those that did not have the skills needed to survive the less friendly encounters that could take place. In the past six years, Hiruzen had seen enough battle to last for a lifetime. While he was barely eighteen years old, he had already been in enough battles to fight like a veteran that had seen the ins and outs of a war or two. Arguably, it was the fact that Hiruzen managed to stand his ground and hold on to his old personality after going through so much that he was valuable to the village he had left behind. Even though he knew full well that he was meant to stay around to be used as a weapon as the council saw fit, he'd like to believe that there were still a few people that did not see him as just that.

The more he started to think about it, the less he really cared about it. He had lost a father, a Sensei and his three best friends during skirmishes for the sake of his village, he had still been denied the help he wanted from the village when he felt like the time had come for him to increase his knowledge in a new field of expertise. Getting told that he had to alter his personality and do even more for the village until his needs and those of the village were one and the same if he was to learn something new, the Uchiha came to figure out that he had wasted the life his loved ones had paid for with their own. Besides, it was not like the villagers had a whole lot of love for him even after taking down the remainder of the assassins that had been plaguing him for years. In the end, even the people closest to him, those of his own clan, turned against him once it had become known how many people he had killed. He did not deny that he had indeed killed all of those people with his own two hands, he had repeatedly stated in the reports of his mission that every single one of the men he had killed was in the bingo book and had committed murders he had seen with his own two eyes. However, the bodies being charred beyond recognition along with the earth and rocks that had been burnt black had made it hard for others to be sure if he had been telling the truth, leading many to grow uneasy around him. It was due to that whole ordeal that Hiruzen had been given the moniker "Mashin Shōdo", meaning Scorched Earth Demon. At the end of his career as a Kumogakure shinobi, most people were either afraid of him or simply wanted him gone.

When the man in the Hidden Leaf had come up to him and asked him if he could help him out with this task, part of the Uchiha felt like he was finally at a point in his life where people no longer shunned him, mostly because they did not know who he was. Capable of letting go of the anger he felt towards the Hidden Cloud, he could now continue growing as a shinobi that was no longer bound to a village. He could do everything he wanted for everyone he wanted, proving as much by doing a favor for someone he did not even know without anyone frowning upon his decision. With all of those thoughts rushing through his mind, the Uchiha passed through the treeline that was now leading him far from Roiyaru road and the civilized world. Following the map as well as he possibly could, he followed a crudely drawn picture that matched the stream that ran through that particular part of the woods while heading further north. Being a skilled navigator that was used to traveling the world without the need for a compass, following a map towards a specific location was like taking candy from a baby. Because of the open air and lack of clouds, navigating solely by using the sun was all he needed to get from the village to his destination. Taking him about an hour to get there while walking in a regular pace to make sure that he would not miss any of the marked spots on the hand made map, he finally reached a large oak tree. Seeing that this was the final landmark that had been drawn upon the map, it was now up to Hiruzen to find exactly where it had been hidden.

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Believing his own intelligence to be quite high, especially when being compared to the average bandit, he did not expect things to take very long. Looking at the tree from a small distance, he made sure to mark all of the possible hiding spots in his mind before channeling chakra to the soles of his feet. First, he made sure to check the spots near the roots and the lower part of the trunk before moving his way up the tree. Due to the size of the tree, many woodpeckers had made their homes behind the layer of thick bark. Though most of these holes were abandoned by the original creator, some of them seemed to now be inhabited by squirrels. Peeping through some of the holes that seemed big enough to be used as a hiding spot for an old sword, he finally got to one of the larger holes that was up so high in the tree that the very existence of said hole had been covered by the dense foliage. As he looked down, his eyes fell upon a black leather handle with several silver inlaid symbols, a golden butt, a golden guard with a foreign clan symbol and a black scabbard that seemed to have been made out of a solid piece of onyx. Though it was called an heirloom, the blade seemed to be in a pristine condition even after spending several days in a tree while being at the mercy of the elements. Reaching down into the hole, he grabbed onto the handle with a tight grip and carefully removed it from the tree. With the heirloom now in his possession, he released the technique that kept him in place, dropping him from the tree and back to the earth.

Curious as he was, he could not help himself from unsheathing the sword to see what the blade itself was like. Much to his shock, it seemed that the cutting edge has several chipped pieces, no doubt as a result of the battles it's former owners had been a part of. Reaching down and grabbing a few tall pieces of grass, he tossed them into the air before holding the handle of the heirloom even more tightly. Cutting at the airborne grass, the blade effortlessly passed through it like a hot knife went through butter. Watching the sliced pieces of grass fall to the ground, Hiruzen looked at the silver blade one last time before putting it back into it's scabbard. While the blade had been chipped, it seemed that this did not take away any of it's lethal cutting power that seemed beyond that of the average Katana. Knowing this much because he had been training with various forms of bladed weaponry already, the young Uchiha started believing that this weapon might in fact be one of the special weapons Meiko told him about a year ago. Once the realization came to him about the nature of the blade, a part bigger than he wanted to admit felt like he should keep the sword for himself. After all, he had been the one that had gone through the trouble to head out into the woods and retrieve the blade when no one else would. Before these thoughts were given the chance to get too far, Hiruzen put the sword into a dufflebag and tossed it over his shoulder. He had agreed to find the sword and return it to a struggling family, and that was what he would do.

On the way back to the village, Hiruzen suppressed the thought to take the weapon for himself. It was true that a big part of him wanted to keep it, but doing so would make him no better than the Nukenin he had turned in at the Hidden Leaf earlier. Moving a lot faster than he had done when he was on his way to the heirloom, he no longer had to look around to spot landmarks. Making his way back to the village in very little time, he went back to the same place where he had last seen the man. Waiting in front of the store he had passed when he first saw the man, several minutes went by before he finally showed himself. With a pleased look on his face, the man took the extraordinary blade from the dufflebag.

"You found it! After all that had happened, I figured you might not even be able to find it. Several days had passed, and if one of those bandits had found it before you had, it might have been halfway to the other side of the world by now. I will make sure to put in a good word for you with the people of this village and everyone else who wants to hear about the Strider. Again, thank you, and may your road lead you to nothing but happiness.".

With that, Hiruzen nodded at the man as he took his leave, undoubtedly planning on showing the heirloom to the rest of his family. Even though Hiruzen felt a little bit bad for letting a chance at getting such a unique blade go, he took solace in the fact that he had done a good thing for a family of seemingly good people that did not deserve the misfortune that had befallen them when the blade first went missing. Deep down, Hiruzen knew that his road would eventually lead him to a weapon just as powerful or maybe even more powerful and unique than this one. Being in a far better mood than he was before, the Uchiha decided to stick around in the land of fire just a little bit longer. There was still a fair amount of things he could do here just as well as any other place, so he was not exactly in a hurry. With that, he returned to the Inn to rent off the room he had before for a couple more days.

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

[End of Mission]