Ballet of Bloodlust S Rank Mission:

It was an oddly calming feeling waking up so close to his home village once again, though at the same time he certainly wished that he was at his home and in his own bed. He could feel the sun coming in through the window in odd beams that were peeking through the trees, and this was a comforting feeling. The Sword Saint of Konoha slowly opened his eyes, going to move out of his bed and remembering a few of the unfortunate realities of his life now. He wasn't as young or spry as he once was and when he went to move his entire body began to creak and crack. He tried to sit up but it took him a few times, his back disagreeing with the entire situation. When he finally got up and put his legs over the bed, he could feel his knees lock, knowing what was coming next as he sighed and went to put pressure on his feet to stand. There was agonizing pain in his knees when he stood, one that he occasionally thought he could get used to but every single time he thought that it seemed to change.

The pains were part of him getting old, and although being thirty three years of age wasn't technically old, he had lived a long life for people of his occupation. Being a swordsman was taxing on the body, being a shinobi and pushing yourself past the limitations of the human body however took it to an extremely different level. He knew that there was a good chance the day would come where he would never be able to lift a sword again, let alone swing one. He was terrified that he would get to the point where he was a useless decrepit old man living in a cabin in the woods, quite like the one he was waking up in now. His life had revolved around protecting the people he loved, but what would happen when he could no longer do that? He hoped that he wouldn't live long enough to get to that point, but it was seeming like it was getting close to that happening anyway.

He stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom after showering, taking a long look at his body. He hadn't had a chance to do this in a long while, and it was a little bit shocking to see the true told his career had taken on him. His skin wasn't as tight as it had been, and though he was still extremely muscular, he definitely looked older. His hair was flecked with grey, the wrinkles on his aged skin were far more defined, and there were scars covering his entire body. He had spent five years away from the shinobi continent, though he had spent most of that time fighting the strongest people he could find, and in that time he had come across many new wounds, ones that hadn't been able to be treated by medical ninja due to them not being around. He gently ran his fingers through his beard, looking closely at how much grey had replaced the black that had once been there.

He looked closely at his eyes, heavy things that held the weight of many years of battles and holding the weight of the world on one's shoulders. One emerald green and the other a little bit paler, they were both surrounded with wrinkles from the stress of his life. Although the scar around his left eye wasn't nearly as privilous as it had once been, the sunken darkness around his eyes were showing the pain and heartache that he had suffered. He looked at the counter beside his sink and picked up the pants, sliding them on and feeling his knees locking once more as he did so, snapping back again when he straightened up and got them into a more normal position. He went to put on the under shirt that he wore, his elbows, shoulders and spine all making terrible cracks and pops when he went to slide it over his head. It was something that he had come to get used too, it happening again when he was putting his armour and the clothing he wore overtop of it, as well as fastening his Aoi Bara headband around his neck, but he was ready to take on the day.

He left the cabin that he and Tsuyo had been staying at while they were in the village, taking a look around and going for a walk down the path through the forest. He had walked these forests countless times throughout his life, and he was happy to be able to do it again, the familiar paths comforting him after having dealt with his morning pain and frustration. Walking these paths almost made him feel young again, though of course it wasn't quite correct. He still wasn't as young as he had once been, and he had accepted that unfortunate fact. Still his feet kept moving one step after another down the road that he had travelled so many times before, and he was fully prepared to meet whatever the day would throw at him, which as it turned out would be an interesting situation.

His walk took him along the walls of the village before he went a little bit further into the forest once again, walking slowly and quickly as he had thought he had heard something. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he could have sworn he had heard voices and footfalls. He would stop, standing perfectly still and quiet as he listened. There were two voices, getting slightly quieter in the distance, as though they were walking away from him. He couldn’t quite pick up on what they were saying, but he decided that he would follow them and try to figure out what they were doing in the forest here, this area where there were never any people. He began to move a little bit quicker, as quickly as he could while still not making any noise. He was able to gain ground on the two men, his reputation as a tracker not unwarranted.

“Don’t worry about it too much, the boss’s plan won’t take too much longer. We’ll get out of here and back home soon enough.”

“I hope so man, I have this shitty forest. I hate trees and shit, they’re stupid.”

“That won’t be a problem soon.” Mitsuo watched them walk, gritting his teeth as he got into a tree and moved up a little bit ahead of them, summoning the Chita no Kiba blade into his hand as he waited. When they got just below him he would drop out of the tree onto the closer man, blunging the Chita no Kiba into the other man’s throat, deep enough to ensure he couldn’t scream, before pulling it back out and covering the first man’s mouth with his hand, the blade directly under his chin. He would pull the two of them off the path, dragging the body and the captive man in with him as he moved to a place that would be inaccessible to most, and where the trees were thick enough to cover all of the sound around him.

“You, friend, are going to tell me what you are doing out here, and why. I don’t take kindly to people being in my forest.” The man looked up at Mitsuo with a defiant look in his eyes, trying to bite down on Mitsuo’s hand before Mitsuo would squeeze at his jaw, just enough so that it would hurt but not enough to injure him. He would smirk and point to the band around his neck, showing off the rose that adorned his “forehead protector” that was on the band. The man looked at that and then up to Mitsuo’s face again and then to the weapon in his hand and his armour, seemingly piecing two and two together in order to figure out the obvious hint. While it could sometimes be a hassle, occasionally being world famous had its advantages. “I assume you now see the weight of your situation. I am Mitsuo Sarutobi, the Sword Saint of the Aoi Bara. I have killed far more important people than you in my days, but that doesn’t mean I’m above taking out the trash when needed.” He could see the man’s eyes starting to water before he smirked once more, pulling his hand away from the man’s mouth but not the blade.

“Ha, the fire saint comes for us? You have more in common with us than most do. We’ve all left our villages just like you, we can’t stand them either. We’re burning them all to the ground! You should be helping us, you’ve left your village twice! You must really hate it there.” Mitsuo gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw as the man spoke. He couldn’t have been farther from the truth but of course he didn’t know that. Mitsuo had left the village because he felt that the way to help them was something he couldn’t do while being held back by the laws of the village, and the Aoi Bara was full of like minded people who shared the goal of ridding crime from the world. He still remembered his first mission with Tsuyo, the mountain warehouse the two of them had raided and the moment that Tsuyo had tortured a man for many hours, bringing him to death's door before healing him over and over again so that he could use his destroyed body to send a message to all criminals.

“Mmm maybe you’re right, maybe I should join you guys. Take me back to your camp, I want to talk to your boss.” The man in his arms laughed at this, which honestly Mitsuo had been expection. There was no way he was going to be gullible enough for Mitsuo to get away with that trick, but at least he tried. He shook his head and hit the man on the side of the head, causing him to go unconscious before he used the Time Reversal Technique, forming the proper seals and then touching his hands to the man’s head. He watched a small amount of time pass for the man, seeing the camp and the image of the leader of their group, as well as the path he had taken to get here. He focused on the image of the man, and something Mitsuo could see made him pause for a second. He knew who the man was, and he was quite shocked at the realization. The man was Momochi Hanzo, a man who was a member of the Konoha ANBU at one time, and was known for holding an impressive record of targets eliminated. Mitsuo stopped using the technique, pulling out the blade again and plunging it into the man’s skull from under his chin, giving him a quick and painless death before making his way through the forest.

If Hanzo was here, it was a problem that Mitsuo would have to deal with immediately. The man was a danger to the village, and possibly even to Mitsuo himself. He went directly down the path that he had seen from the man’s memories, not even considering for a second to stop and go back to get Tsuyo to help him. It was imperative that these men were taken out as quickly as possible, and Mitsuo wasn’t going to give him another potential amount of time to get away from him. He closed a lot of distance in a very quick time, having been imbued with a new vigor that he hadn’t felt in quite a while when realizing that the village that he loved was potentially in danger of being destroyed. He kept going until he could hear voices once more, his anger quickly taking over him as he summoned the twin blades, Justice and Retribution, into his hands and began a systematic slaughter. He jumped onto the nearest tree and began to circle, looking for the best target to take out at first. Ideally he would end Hanzo in one fell swoop, but he knew that would be an unlikely circumstance, as it almost never happened.

The Sword Saint dropped from the tree above a small group of them, his blades sweeping through the necks of two more while their friends turned to face him and were soon thereafter dispatched by his blades, quickly enough that they couldn’t call for help. This was something that Mitsuo Sarutobi excelled at, and he was perfectly happy to put those skills on display once more. He had already killed six men before activating his wings of the saint sensory, feeling that there were about fourteen left. That crooked half smile worked its way across his face once more as he moved towards the next group of four, wanting to quickly eliminate half of the men in the camp, for the more people he took out the better his chances of leaving alive became. They weren’t far away, sitting around a fire and talking about different things, which didn’t phase the Sword Saint in the slightest. They were all here to try to destroy his village, and so far they had all been fairly weak, not even able to post any kind of a challenge for Mitsuo’s blades. They quickly fell to the saint as he moved his way through them and onto his next target.

The next three he ran into instantly looked more competent, Mitsuo gritting his teeth and moving towards him as a Wind Bullets technique ripped itself past his shoulders and into his chest, the stronger shinobi allowing them to hit him, though it wasn’t a comfortable thing for him to do. The Wind Bullets technique had been a personal favorite of his when he was but a budding shinobi, and these kids, since thats what they may as well have been to him, didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. He could smell gunpowder streaming out of one of the kids mouths, which angered him. Some child was going to use a fire jutsu in his forest? He wouldn’t allow that, as he summoned forth his most powerful wind jutsu, tearing each of the three men apart on the spot as they were each turned to a red mist. There was a lot of anger in this man, which while he had experienced it a lot recently, it was truly boiling over right now. The next three of them backed off from him slightly, but he didn’t care, butchering each of them systematically until there was nothing left of any of them.

It was at that point that Mitsuo heard a clapping behind him. He would turn his head to look and see the man whom he had come to fight, flanked by two others. The power level of his target was clearly far higher than anyone else in the camp, but the two men at his flank were also no slouches and Mitsuo could tell that the three of them together would cause a decent challenge for him. Hanzo nodded and the two men flanking him began to move towards Mitsuo, his eyes quickly shifting from one to the other. He would form a hand sign and create a perfect shadow clone of himself, the shadow clone taking out the Sword of the Immortal Blaze as Mitsuo would send one of the swords back to being sealed and retrieve his Penance whip. The two of them would quickly go to work, the one Mitsuo was facing quickly creating a lance out of Raiton chakra, which Mitsuo gritted his teeth when he saw it. That was a dangerous thing and as the man would go to stab him, Mitsuo would leap into the air, breaking one of his own rules, and whip out with Penance, wrapping it around the man’s neck before pulling and lobbing his head free of his shoulders, the lance flickering before vanishing.

He would watch over to see how his clone was doing, noticing that the clone seemed to have things in hand as well. These men were more powerful than the others so far, but that didn’t mean that they were more of a challenge to the superior shinobi. Misuo watched as the enemy tried to put up a wall of earth, which the clone simply used to spring off of and cleave the sword through him, from his left shoulder to his right hip, an excruciating scream escaping his lips as this happened before he went silent and fell to the ground. Mitsuo and his clone stood in front of the only remaining enemy at this point, Hanzo, and he continued to clap for them. “You know, Sarutobi, it I never thought I’d have you coming after me. I’d consider it an honor, if I didn’t know that you were still but a mindless puppet. Sure, you wear that headband as though it means something, but everyone knows that you are nothing anymore.” Mitsuo gritted his teeth, the clone circling around off to the side where Hanzo couldn’t see him. Mitsuo imagined there was a good chance that he could hear him, or sense him somehow, but he didn’t know as much as Hanzo as he would have liked going into this.

He brought his sword to bare as Mitsuo charged at him, snapping forward with Penance as the man slashed his blade and knocked it away before bringing the blade around in a swift motion to stop the attack from Mitsuo’s clone at the same time. It was interesting to see someone like this, who was willing to go toe to toe with the Sword Saint. All that meant was he hadn’t truly heard of the full power of Mitsuo Sarutobi, which would be his downfall. The clone would wrap his arms around Hanzo as he moved forward to attack Mitsuo, pinning him in place as Mitsuo stepped backwards. “You know, you would have been just fine. Anywhere else you might have even succeeded, but instead you came to Konoha.” The clone activated the Cloak of the Will technique, which combined with Wings of the Saint caused Hanzos flesh and muscle begin to melt from his bones. It was a terrible thing to behold, but Mitsuo had seen it too many times to care at this point. He simply spat at the burning husk of a man and turned to leave, his clone eventually dissipating and filling his mind with the memories of the dead man’s dying screams. As he made his way back towards his cabin, he wondered if there was a reward for this...

3191 Mission Complete!