Jiro glanced down at a message that appeared on his specially created scroll. It was meant to be a way of long way communication through the use of Chakra. It was from Fugaku and looked long. He lifted his foot off the head of a k.u.mo nin and smashed downward crushing the shin.o.bi. While reading the message, Jiro was frowning. The message was written so messily he could barely discern what was written on it.As he continued to read Fugaku"s raving and rambling, Jiro realized the death of his sensei hit Fugaku very hard. Furthermore, Duy his friend would most likely be getting no treatment for all the damage he had sustained as almost all of the medic nin were being designated to heal those who really needed help and the rest were sent to study the poison brought back by Fugaku and Duy.
As the division finished off the rest of the k.u.mo nin, Jiro waved his vice leader, the son of Kagami Uchiha, Shinji Uchiha over. He was about the same age as Jiro and quickly learning how to lead a division of shin.o.bi while Jiro was learning how to lead. During the time Shinji was appointed as his vice leader, Jiro had let him also lead in order to gain experience.
Their ways of leadership were completely different from the other. Shinji was more of a strategist and had the division split into teams that would hunt in groups. Jiro led by example and had the mostly Uchiha group hunt individually while taking the strongest shin.o.bi for himself.
Shinji looked at Jiro curiously while still keeping a straight back with attention fully focused on him. Jiro clapped the shoulder of his second in command before revealing that he was going to be gone.
"I"m going back for a week or so to attend a funeral. You"re going to be the leader while I"m gone. Make sure no shin.o.bi get past."
"Yes Jiro-sama."
Shinji bowed as did the other ninja while Jiro walked past them. Jiro walked into a small clearing and waited for a few minutes while occasionally writing into a scroll that pa.s.sed a message onto Fugaku. Suddenly, the clearing was broken by a sonic wave. The plants in the middle all were pushed to the side by the wind while several shin.o.bi stared admiringly at the feat of strength that Jiro had performed.
The sound barrier had been torn apart as Jiro jumped into the air. Several hundred feet in the air, Jiro spotted Kana who looked absolutely monstrous yet regal at the same time. The crest of feathers on her head formed a crown of feathers that only served to make her look all the more queenly and her feathers had darkened to a dark crimson that made her look like a fitting mount for when Jiro had his dragon mask on.
With a flap of her wings, the clouds parted and Kana disappeared with Jiro on her back in an instant. As Jiro and Kana both got more and more familiar with coating their body with Chakra during the past year, they had been able to get to a point where the wind Chakra being shown was so small that it wasn"t visible to anyone without a Sharingan or Byakugan. Sensors, especially sensitive ones might be able to tell that they were coating their bodies with Chakra, but seeing it would be a whole different story.
----------
Inside Konoha, Jiro looked at the familiar buildings, the new ones, and the ones being built. It seemed that the people of Konoha were not aware there was a war going on. He recalled Kushina mentioning in her writings to him that people in Uzushiogakure were able to tell that a war was going.
He spotted Fugaku sitting with Teuchi and Duy who was in a wheel chair. The trio were poring over something and he walked over intent on finding out what it was. As he popped his head in between Fugaku and Teuchi, the trio finally noticed him.
"Hey Jiro, how"s it guarding the border?"
"It"s boring. Is this the legacy left behind by the old man?"
"Yea. It"s a manual that described the Eight Gates and how the last gate would mean death as well as the characteristics of the other gates. We can"t figure out one thing though. Sensei taught us all this. This is stuff we all know, but that would mean there is no point to this. He clearly wanted us, all of us, to inherit this from him."
Jiro took it from their hands and looked at the details carefully, but there was nothing that seemed to be off about it. There weren"t even any stains on it. It clicked in Jiro"s mind.
"Are you sure this is the one?"
"I think it is."
"I think you"re wrong."
Teuchi reeled back indignantly at Jiro"s slap towards his knowledge before countering back.
"I think that you"re wrong, but I won"t say it out loud because I"m not a petty person."
Jiro and Teuchi laughed after their little exchange of words before Jiro resumed back on topic.
"The manual looks too clean. The old man was always looking messy so I feel like it would have been stained or something."
"Maybe we need to stain it?"
At Teuchi"s suggestion, the rest of the group began to pour out ideas of what to pour on it. Before long, a list was compiled and Jiro got to working on it as the trio had to arrange a couple more things for the funeral of their sensei. As Jiro watched them from a distance, he couldn"t tell if they were fine. They were laughing and messing with each other, but he could tell that there was grief in each of them.
-----
The day of the funeral was a cool overcast with many clouds covering the sun up. A couple of people from the old man"s generation showed up including the Hokage. Other than Jiro and the rest of the group of friends, the old man had not known much of the younger generation. A photo of a much younger version of himself was placed on a cushion while everyone was holding onto a white flower.
After the last of the flowers were placed, everyone left except for Jiro as well as the old man"s students. They began to clean up and put the flowers, photo, and other funeral rites away. The small cottage the old man used to live in was now cleaned out.
"Want me to help you guys bury him?"
"Yeah, I think he would have liked to see that you buried him. He probably would have bragged about having two Uchiha bury his dead body."
As Teuchi laughed, the laughs slowly turned into sniffles before turning into a grieving silence. The silence continued as the group walked to the placed where he was to be buried. Looking at all the gravestones that lined the Konoha cemetary, Fugaku sighed.
"I don"t think sensei would want to be buried in such a dreary place."
"We should make it less dreary then."
"We should, but what will we do?"
"I"ll set up a memory there."
The rest turned to Jiro confused on what he was talking about. Jiro pulled out a large scroll from his scroll of storage and placed it before Fugaku.
"Think of a happy memory you spent together."
An image began to slowly form over the scroll before forming an instance where everyone was trying to pull thorns out of an angry Teuchi. Jiro then instructed Duy to think of that memory and he walked over before touching the scroll as well. Several parts of the image became clearer and it showed the background of trees with Fugaku laughing really hard.
Teuchi finally walked over and the image was completed after he added his memory to it. It showed a chuckling old man pulling thorns from an angry Teuchi while a tearing up Fugaku was laughing really hard on the side. Duy was also shown on the other side with a big grin on his face.
Looking at the image, Jiro grinned feeling the joy radiating from it. Despite the tears in their eyes, Fugaku, Teuchi, and Duy were all grinning as well. The scroll was placed in front of the grave stone that the old man was buried under.
As the friends were walking back, Jiro broke the news to them.
"I tried to stain the manual with all the things, but it remained fine."
He handed them back a clean manual.
"None of the materials stained the paper. You probably need to find the origin of the paper used and then figure out what might work."
Fugaku suddenly grabbed the manual and threw it to the floor. He flashed through several hand signals before unleashing a burst of fire that burned up the manual. As the burned paper flew off, a single page with some writings on it was left behind.