Sarutobi stood near the gate with all his students arriving. The night before, they all should have gotten a message from his summoned monkey telling them that tomorrow would be a C-Rank mission. The problem was that Jiraiya was nowhere to be seen. He should be here by now but he wasn"t so Sarutobi turned to Jiro to ask where Jiraiya was located. He had learned that Jiro somehow always seemed to be aware of where his senpais were located as well as their condition.Jiro looked up from his book on beginning seals that he bought off a merchant from Uzushiogakure to answer Sarutobi"s question.
"Jiraiya is currently sick with a cold from staying out too long to research the women"s bath. That being said, he wasn"t wearing much even though it is winter right now."
Sarutobi sighed, mind burdened by the news of his lecherous student"s sickness. Jiro glanced over at Sarutobi and continued to speak.
"Senpai should be able to recover by the time we are back from our mission which is supposed to take about three days."
Speaking of the mission, when Jiro mentioned that he would be going on his first C-Rank mission, everyone in the family celebrated. Akane brought some cake from the Akimichi"s to celebrate and they had a nice family dinner together. The mission was about going to a bandit hideout and wiping them out because they had finally attacked the nearby villages while racking up a considerable amount of casualties. There were going to be about a hundred bandits in the caves that they were going to.
After travelling far from the village on foot, Sarutobi and his students made camp. It would take about five more days of travel to reach the village as well as the bandit hideout. After Orochimaru caught a couple of rabbits, Sarutobi a.s.signed Jiro and Orochimaru to first watch while he and Tsunade would be the second watch.
Despite all the tall trees being in the way, the stars and moon still shined their light through into the campsite. The fire which was made to cook the rabbit meat was still going as Jiro continued to supply sticks to it. Jiro finally got a relatively big pile of sticks near the fire and continued to put sticks into the fire.
"Hey senpai, you wouldn"t mind if I try something with my chakra would you?"
Orochimaru looked over to Jiro curious as to what he might do so he naturally said that he wouldn"t mind. Jiro slowly started to leak his chakra into the smoke and before long, the smoke was being influenced by him. Jiro continued to build up the smoke and he tried to shape it into a ball. The fire kept going and continued with the crackling noises while Orochimaru continued to fuel the fire.
Sarutobi and Tsunade woke up to Orochimaru alerting them with his chakra. Jiro was still standing over the fire and acc.u.mulating the smoke into a somewhat ball-like form. Tsunade and Sarutobi watched as Jiro continued doing his work even though he missed out on sleep. The next morning, Orochimaru was awake and saw the monstrous sight of Jiro"s smoke ball. The smoke had finally gotten so compressed that the smoke ball looked almost solid now. Jiro put the ball away into a storage scroll and everyone finished packing up.
As they deaprted once more, Tsunade and Orochimaru asked Jiro what the ball was for. Jiro answered that the ball could be thrown and ignited with some fire which would send all the smoke flying everywhere effectively making an area of effect smoke bomb. Tsunade and Orochimaru noted that the ball might be useful for the mission that they were going on. While continuing to jump through the trees, they stopped when the clearing of trees began to clear up revealing that they were now going to be travelling on a path without any trees.
Jiro and team Sarutobi, absent of Jiraiya, stopped after traveling for some time on the dirt path. Using the body flicker technique was certainly fine when there were trees to jump off of, but using it to travel on a dirt path was rather wasteful of chakra. After taking a short break to drink some water and eat some nutrient bars which tasted terribly bland, they resumed travelling.
After another night of sleep and some more travelling, Sarutobi opened up the map to reveal that they were about two days away from the village. Besides just looking at the plain dirt, there was not much else to do while traveling along the path.
On the last night before arriving to the village, Sarutobi gathered his students around him to give them a small lecture on how to act when arriving at the village. Orochimaru and Tsunade had heard the message many times now, but Jiro had never heard it so Sarutobi repeated his ever consistent message.
"When dealing with the villages of a village that is not a hidden village or home to some ninja or defense, don"t treat them terribly, but do not become friends with them. This is because we have to act the part as being professional ninja when on a mission. Even Jiraiya doesn"t act perverted when we are on missions so makes sure to keep things professional inside, alright Jiro?"
"Got it."
Sarutobi and his students arrived at the village after another night of staying near the dirt path. Everyone in the group smelled of the dirt on the ground as well as body odor from the two teens. Jiro as well as Sarutobi were staying a decent distance from the two teens who normally would have looked faintly insulted at being told they smelled terrible, but everyone was in professional mode so nothing was revealed on their faces.
Unfortunately, it only got worse when the village chief came over, looked at them with a cramped smile and promptly asked them to use the bathing facilities to clean off. Jiro and Sarutobi decided to join Orochimaru in the males bath. After Orochimaru and Tsunade came out smelling cleaner and looking better, the village chief finally walked closer to them in order to give more details about the bandits.
The bandits live in a cavern with tunnels that have several exits making it impossible to catch them. All the bandits were also criminals of crimes such as ****, murder, and robbery making it clear to everyone present that mercy should not be offered to them. The bandits were supposedly trained by other ninja from a different village and sent here to hara.s.s the villages near Konoha, thus raising the rank of the mission from C to B-Rank for now.
Sarutobi leaned his elbows on the table when they were alone in the room and asked if any of his students had any ideas on how to deal with the bandits. After rebounding questions and answers off of each other, the students of Sarutobi came to several conclusions. First, the bandits had to be wiped out because they would just form into a new group if members were left behind. Second, the terrain is unfamiliar so it would be best to get a guide from the village. Lastly, it would be a good idea to get some captives to see if they had really been trained to some extent by ninja.
The next day in the morning, before the sun even began to rise, the team of ninja set off with a guide from the village. It took only about an hour before they arrived at a dusty area where many rocks could be seen as well as tall cliffs. It would have taken longer had it not been for Sarutobi carrying the guide. Jiro looked at the area before he took out his deformed smoke ball. Instead of just tossing the ball in, he quickly scouted the next two miles away from the cliffs using his sharingan. After looking over a couple of times, he used his smoke to form a wall on all the openings. Anyone that tried to escape would run through the smoke and deform it alerting Jiro of their presence.
Jiro nodded to Tsunade and Orochimaru who rushed into the cave with the biggest entrance. Jiro and Sarutobi stood waiting outside along with the villager. If any bandits tried to escape, Jiro would be responsible for cutting them down. After about fifteen minutes of silence, a well-dressed man tried to escape from a particularly hidden cave exit. Jiro noticed the disturbance in his smoke and waved good bye to Sarutobi as he started to dash using the body flicker jutsu to get where the man was located. After a couple minutes Jiro arrived to where the smoke fluctuation happened. As Jiro started to leap over in order to capture him, the man was cut down by a ninja. Jiro wasn"t sure if that particular ninja was from Iwa, but he had the head band indicating an Iwa shin.o.bi.
The ninja had noticed Jiro. The ninja tried to escape after killing off the guy who was probably the negotiator between both parties. Jiro threw several kunai around the Rock ninja, he wanted to capture the ninja in order to get information. The thrown kunai were already marked with Jiro"s chakra so he utilized the whizzing sound made from the kunai to throw the ninja under a sound Genjutsu effectively capturing him. After, Jiro knocked the ninja out by smacking him on the head with his kunai. Jiro noted that the ninja had a mask on and was dressed in clothing consisting of dark brown and red.
As Jiro began to retreat back with the body, a team of Iwa nin arrived to where he was. Jiro quickly threw his smoke at them, not wasting time to generate a Genjutsu as he had a potential valuable source of information. They tried to trap him with a couple mud walls as well as throwing projectiles, but Jiro was already gone and all they had viewed of him was a Genjutsu. Jiro heard loud clashing noises as he arrived to where the villager was, hiding near some bushes. Sensei was fighting against an enemy Iwa nin. The fight did not last long with the enemy having their head smashed in by Sarutobi"s pole.