Find the Shoe [D-Rank Mission]:

"You say you... lost your shoe?" Kaiji Kyudoka was nearly driven to the point of overwhelming embarrassment at the thought of such a low-grade mission. What bothered him the most, though, was not that he had been tasked with something so petty, but that his... employer, was making things more difficult than they had to be. The man who had requested this undertaking was an old eccentric, living in a rundown shack on the Hidden Leaf's outskirts. He had wild, crazy hair and even crazier eyes, a dim yellow that was unnervingly similar to Kaiji's own.

"Thaaaaaaat's right!" the codger crooned, voice harsh in Kaiji's ears. Each word was like a cheese grater on a chalk board. The archer winced, prepping for the old man's next verbal onslaught. "I reckon it was them damned Hidden Sound sonsabitches! Ever since uhhh, Rochimoro err, yeah that's the one," the decrepit centenarian took a pause to spit a foul liquid into a nearby vase, "Yup, them Hidden Cloud bastards are always stealing my things. Shoes, jewelry, my DNA, you name it!"

"Uh, s-sir, just one more time, d-do you think you could recount who you think it was that committed this um, crime, again? I-I'm having a bit of trouble following..." Kaiji trailed, thoroughly confused.

"Boy!" he shrieked like a hawk, "Weren't you listenin'!? Twas the Hidden Sand! No good, dry-skinned shits!" Kaiji was beginning to catch on.

"Oh uh, okay, gotcha sir. Leave it to me, I'll have your missing shoe--wait, what did the shoe look like? I don't recall you mentioning-"

"It was green, m'boy! Green like the leaves on the trees! Aaaand," spittle flying from his lips, "It was a sandal. A red sandal! Rubber soles! Finest sneaker you've ever seen!"

The Kyudoka youth was out the man's door before he could say another word. Kaiji wasn't one to be too rude, whenever he could help it at least, but hearing anymore from that loon would have been detrimental to the boy's health. "You know," Kaiji spoke to himself, unable to recognize that he too had a touch of the crazies, "I'm not one for cheating the system and all that, but I bet I could bring that elderly coot any old shoe and he'd be satisfied." It wasn't a bad plan per se, Kaiji thought. Locate a stray shoe, maybe rough it up a bit, and there you have it, mission completed. But where on earth, or rather the Village Hidden in the Leaves, was the dark-pink-haired Genin going to acquire a shoe. To begin with, Kaiji considered simply buying a shoe from a local shop, but that would most likely put him at a loss and he wanted none of that. After that, it struck him that perhaps there was an alleyway in which garbage would be abundant, and among the trash there would be a shoe that he could deliver to the old man. Surprisingly, this particular search did not take an extraordinary amount of time. Upon scouring the second alley he came upon, in a small heap of wrappers, thrown-out food, and various other items, a ninja sandal that was far from pristine appeared like something heaven-sent.

"I think that'll do," Kaiji voiced to the gods up above who had delivered him this gift, the object of his mission. He scooped the item up and made his way back in the direction of the old man's humble abode to return the missing shoe. "I think I'll give the old guy a good story to go along with his new footwear."

[EXIT]

TWC: 625 - 600[D-Rank Mission] = 25 remaining.