Where'd you go, Cotton Eyed Joe?

He felt dirty.

As he looked in his dying friend’s eyes, he hoped the pain and shame could be seen before his friend’s soul dripped along the blade, to be trapped in a drunken stupor within the gourd. Withdrawing the burning sake into the container and stoppering it with the cork, he watched the lifeless body of his friend fall, and making use of the still enabled gates, he quaked a few quick steps to catch him in his arms, then dispelling the enhancing power of the gates. He held Elias Uchiha in his arms, against him, allowing the lifeblood of his friend to spill and stain his arms and lap and he knelt. Staining his hands.

Hands born to destroy and kill.

Carefully, he laid out his friend on the ground in front of him, stretching his body as if letting him finally rest. His right hand moved to his face, leaving bloodstained streaks across the brow and eyes as he closed the eyelids, taking the Uchiha’s hands on his own and resting them over his stomach to hide the hole in his abdomen. He repressed the sadness, steeling his heart and reigning his emotions. He looked up to Hiroki, his own hand stained in blood from the kill he had secured. With a span of his fingers, Noboru produced two scrolls; one empty, the other containing one of the eyes of the bloodline of their mark. “Here”, he said, extending one of the scrolls to Hiroki. “It contains an eyeball, one with the prowess of the Uchiha, similar to Elias’. It’s unused, so you will need to train it and figure out its secrets on your own. Visit Ichigo, he will help you with the details.”

Once Hiroki took the scroll, he would wave his hand as if shooing him away. “You are dismissed, Hiroki. Don’t be seen leaving the area.”

He looked once again at his friend, the blood across his eyes and the one that spilled across his mouth. He didn’t have the cloak of the Raikage, so instead he ripped part of the sleeve of his armor, wiping away the blood around his mouth. It was pointless though. The fabric was too rough, and it only managed to take away most of it, leaving behind streaks, staining the wispy beard of his old friend. With Hiroki out of sight, tears would blur Noboru’s vision, and he grasped at his friend’s hands once more. Shutting his eyes, he would offer him a small prayer. “Raijin, let his battlecry be heard once more across the skies. Let his fury be reborn in the spirit of the new warriors. May his memory quake the earth. Fuijin, let his impetuous spirit rustle the mountains once more, let his tenacity spread the storm across the continent, let him course swiftly through the ages. I beseech thee. Let him not be just a memory.”

Opening his eyes, a single tear would fall from the one eye not covered with the patch. Taking the second scroll which he had kept on his person, he would open it, and unfurl it over the body of his friend, facing him. Placing his palm on it, the body disappeared in a poof of smoke, his trail forever disappearing from this world. The scroll was rolled back, closed neatly, and displaced once more onto the pocket dimension of Noboru. Looking to his side, the fire kept creeping, closer and closer into the forest. With a few handseals, Noboru would cast and spit a ball of fire, which whirled through the night until it reached the flames, and in a swift and wide explosion, the sudden burst of the technique burned up the oxygen in the area, causing the fire to subside. That would have to do it. Inspecting the zone for further pockets of fire, he decided to perform a few more handseals, and the earth quaked and swallowed the trees, causing the area to look broken and deformed, but with no chance of the fire rising once more.

Noboru left the area, a calm and quiet pace, using his Byakugan to keep tabs on the environment around him, to make sure no one was around to see him leave the area.