Fixing The Shop:

It’s been a few days since graduation from the Academy, and Poe has finally gotten approved to do a mission. Of course, his rank as a genin has kept him from getting any complicated missions. One day though, he’ll hopefully be allowed to take on more complicated missions as he ranks up. Although those days, are far considering how he’s barely been doing anything with his time except reading. He’s been planning on training and attempt to learn new jutsu after graduating, but for some reason he’s been in a major rut. Graduating from the Academy has opened up a lot of time for him to concentrate on growing as a shinobi, but he’s just now realized that the Academy took up a lot of time in his days with all the studying he did. Without the Academy, he just has time. Time for which he actually doesn’t know what to do with. How should he go about training? What do he even want to train: his taijutsu or his ninjutsu? Will he simply learn fire style jutsu that all other shinobi know, or will he develop his own kind of new jutsu? How will he even advance his taijutsu techniques? These are just a few questions that have been stagnating his progress and growth. A mission, no matter how small it is, is what he needs to take his mind away from these pessimistic thoughts and hopefully, help him organize his confused mind.

A little bit of information about his mission. He needs to help a baker who, recently, had almost lost his shop due to a fire. Supposedly, he is supposed to follow the owner’s demands and help clean up whatever the baker needs him to clean up. So basically, this is simple manual labor. Cheap manual labor it seems. The mission’s pay wasn’t all that high, but how much does a genin expect to be payed? A genin is only just beginning to become an asset to their village. Anyway, manual labor is the best distraction from one’s mental problems. It’s hard to think when one is focused on cleaning or moving a heavy object. That’s exactly what he needs right now: to not think. It may just refresh his mind and finally get him on track about how exactly he wants to nurture himself.

The location of the bakery, unfortunately, is on the other side of the village. What a walk. He had to leave quite early from his home just to make it to the shop in time. This also influenced the way he is dressed today. Wearing his normal gear for manual labor sounds like a waste. There’s no telling how dirty he may get from today. The bakery will most certainly have ash and dirt everywhere. That sounds too much of a pain to get out of clothing. Today, he decided to just wear a plain white T-shirt with some old blue pants. Since he’s going to be cleaning, he decided to wear shoes that didn’t have his toes exposed. It’d be a pain to clean out all the dirt that might get lost between his toes or under his toenails. He even left his head protector at home. Even though he should wear it everywhere, in all honesty, he simply just forgot to put it on since he’s been so inactive and lazed around his home.

His blue eyes finally see the bakery that he’s assigned to help. The owner is standing outside looking around for, what Poe guesses, the genin that is supposed to come help him. Knowing that the man wouldn’t probably expect him to be the one sent to help since he is dressed differently than normal, Poe walks up to the man and taps his shoulder to get his attention. The baker glances at him for a moment before giving him a warm smile. “You must be the one sent to help.” The baker says grabbing him by the shoulder and ushering him inside quickly before he can even reply. “Great! I have much work to do, so here.” The baker puts him in an empty room with an extremely dirty floor and three quite large machines positioned in different areas. “I’ll go through this quickly.” The baker moves beside him giving him a look over. “I need you to sweep the floor in this room and move those three machines outside. That one machine is an oven.” He points to the one in the corner. “That one’s another oven.” He points to another machine closer to the middle of the room. “And the last one helps me make dough.” He points to the last one that was positioned close to a wall. The man pats his shoulder and turns to leave. At the door, the man looks back at him. “Oh. The tools are right there in the corner and be careful. The floor is a little wet too.” The man turns to leave again, but stops one more time. “Oh yes! The machines need to be out by this Afternoon. People are coming to take them away so no playing around. You’ll get a special reward at the end for your help along with your pay.” Now the man finally leaves Poe alone to deal with the room.

Poe sighs and stretches out a few unused muscles. He doesn’t need to get injured doing something so simple. He turns to look at the tool in the corner. A broom and a mop inside of a trash can. There is probably a bucket and a dust pan in there as well. He walks over and takes the broom. He scans the room and prepares himself for all the cleaning he has to do.

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“Alright. Guess I’ll start with the floor.” He’ll sweep up all the dirt he can into a clump first. He walks over to one side of the room and starts sweeping all the dirt from the corners out. He then begins sweeping the dirt towards the center of the floor. After completing that side of the room, he moves to the other side. Just like the other side, he starts by sweeping the dirt from the corners. Although, the oven in the corner keeps him from getting that one spot. He’s already decided that he’ll have to sweep again after moving the machines, so it is no big problem. Now he finally has all the dirt in a large clump in the middle of the room. He moves back over to the trash can and takes out the dust pan. With the dust pan, he moves back to the clump of dirt and sweeps all he can into the dust pan. With the dirt, in the pan, he goes back to the trash can and dumps it. Now he must move the machines, so he can sweep again and mop.

He walks over to the oven in the middle of the room and attempts to push it from behind. It refuses to move at first, but with a little bit of extra force, the machine budges away from its spot. It must have been a little stuck to the floor from months of no movement. After the first initial movement, the oven was not all too difficult to move out onto the street. He’s not as scrawny as some people may think he is. After pushing it out, he looks over the machine. He guesses the oven only weighed around 50 lbs. The other machines should weigh about the same too. Pushing them out is going to be a breeze.

He returns to the room and begins to take out the dough maker next. It’s pretty much the same deal as the oven. He just had to push it unstuck from the floor, and pushing it outside was simple enough. Now he must deal with the oven in the corner. This may be a bit trickier. There’s no way to get behind the oven to push it, so he will have to pull it out. Pulling is much harder than pushing. The oven doesn’t have anything to really grab onto either to make pulling it easier. He sighs and grabs the sides of the machine and pulls with all his might. He can feel it budge slightly, but then he slips kicking the door to the oven as he fell. Something must have sparked on the inside because fire suddenly erupted from within the machine. He quickly scoots back so he doesn’t get set on fire by the machine and notices how the fire was a blue color instead of a more normal orangish red. The blue fire really caught his eye, but as soon as the fire erupted, it ended. Guess the poor oven had one last fire in it before becoming completely worthless. He sighs and stands back up while wiping some sweat from his forehead. He just now noticed how dirty his clothes were as he looks down and sees all the ash and dirt. He goes back to moving the oven, for he is now able to get behind it and push it out. The oven is safely pushed outside without any more mishaps and he returns to the room to complete the rest of his cleaning.

He grabs the broom and sweeps up all the remaining dirt and ash. The machines had a lot of ash on them, and the floor looks like he barely swept. What a hassle. He sighs as he finally gets up all the dirt and ash. The trash can is quite full of it. He didn’t realize the room was that dirty from his earlier sweeping. Now it is time to mop. He grabs the bucket and mop and begins cleaning up the water on the floor. That was quite easy without all the dirt everywhere. Soon the room is cleaned, and he goes to tell the baker about its completion.

The baker gives him one last task of watching the machines outside until the people come to take them in the afternoon. That was simple enough considering that it was already close to that time. As he waited, he looked back at his clothes. He’s just going to throw them out instead of trying to clean them. There is no hope in cleaning them. It was a smart idea to not wear any of his good clothes. After some time, the people finally came and took away the machines, and Poe was paid for helping. The baker waves him away as he begins his long walk back home. It’ll probably be dark before he gets home. Maybe he should stop to grab something to eat. He decides not to though, for his mom probably has something waiting for him back at home. He smiles to himself as he thinks about how his mother would have food waiting for his father after he returned from missions. Guess this would be just like those times. It seems he’s already a step closer to catching up with his dad, and he now also has an idea for a new jutsu thanks to that one oven.

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End of thread.
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