Mission Info:

While finishing up a morning run, one day in Sunagakure no Sato, I was stopped by one of the elders of the village as I headed back to my office.  The old man came up to me, dressed in faded green robes that sunk down to his feet, only letting his sandals show as he tried to keep up with me.  I slowed down to a light walking pace to let the old man be more comfortable as he was having a hard time trying to speak.  He didn’t have much hair on his head, and what hair remained was wiry and sparse.  His face was sagging down like he had cotton balls in his mouth and his breath came out in a weeze already from the brief amount of exercise he had put in to catch me.

“Lady Kaze-” he said, panting hard.  “-kage, there is some urgent matter that you need to attain to.”

“I already attended to all of the council’s paperwork, Misasu.” I said, my tone showing my annoyance.  Misasu was probably the most annoying of the entire elders council.  How the other Kazekages before me managed to put up with him and the council was beyond me.

“Yes, I know you have.  But this is about unattended missions.”  Misasu explained. “Several higher ranked missions haven’t been seen to and the Wind Country needs our protection!  You must send someone to take care of these missions.”

I sighed in reluctance.  Misasu was right, missions were being left undone but it wasn’t because no one was taking them.  Our numbers had gotten smaller and with the trouble in Kirigakure no Sato, a lot of our ninja still stationed in the village weren’t strong enough to take care of the serious missions posted on the mission board.

With a nod, I agreed to what Misasu had said.  I promised him that I would see to it personally that the problems would be fixed.  He bowed and quickly turned around, going off to annoy some other helpless victim with his boring dribble.  Returning to my office, I stopped by the mission board and looked it over.  Several B rank missions were still left unassigned.  I took one of the mission notes from the board and sat down at my desk.  The note said to visit a village of the Wind Country and aid them from a wolf that had started attacking villagers.  Seeing it was rather light, I called up my secretary and had her free my schedule up for the next two days.  If no one was taking these missions, then I would take them myself.

So my plans for the next two days were changed and after a quick change of clothes and packing, I was off to do a mission myself.  It would be my first mission as a Kazekage, and many people told me to stay, but only two days would be necessary at the most.  I honestly didn’t think it would take me too long.  Not to toot my own horn, but I felt that a B rank would be rather simple for me.


526/1500

As I walked along the road leading to the village in question, named Hinamizawa, I got to enjoy the beauty of the sunset across the desert. As I looked at the horizon, watching the sun change the color of the sky as it fell down, I couldn't help but think it was so beautiful. The colors were so amazing, I couldn't tell where sky ended and the earth began. I sat down just a little ways off the main road and set up camp.

Sleeping out under the desert sky was so peaceful that I could finally relax. All the stress just melted from my body as I lay there on the ground. Stress from my position as Kazekage and all of my personal worries and doubts ebbed away the more I gazed at the stars. The great expanse of stars opened up before me and played a sparkling light show to me as I slowly drifted to sleep, as if it could feel it’s effect on me, and soon I was sleeping like a baby.

When I woke up, the sun had peeked back over the far eastern horizon, it’s rays tickling my skin until I had awakened from my slumber. I got up and packed my things back up, tying my travel bag up and strapping it over my back. There wasn’t that much road left to cover to get to the village of Hinamizawa and not too long after my start of the day had I reached it. The village leaders came to greet me and began showing me the entire village. There wasn’t that much to see; the village was made up of a small residence quarter of a handful of homes, two small farms, and a tiny village center consisting of an inn, meeting hall, and a family ramen shop.

After seeing all of the village, they took me to the meeting hall and we all sat down to discuss the reason I had come. “We are honored to have you here, Lady Kazekage,” one of the elders began. “Surely with you here this matter will be over soon. As our request for aid had said, we are suffering from wolf attacks. We’ve gathered from the villagers that it has been only one wolf that’s attacking us.”

”Yes, you’re message to the Sand had said as much,” I replied. “What I was wondering, though, was when have these attacks occurred?”

Another village elder turned to answer me. “The first attack happened in the middle of the night. We immediately told everyone in the village to be in their homes by sundown, but just a few days ago the wolf attacked again. This time the attack was in the late afternoon, just before our curfew.”

“Since then,” the first elder spoke up again. “We have ordered people stay in groups of three until curfew to hopefully discourage the wolf from attacking. So far things have been alright, but as you can see, we are just a small farming village and we need to be back on our normal work schedule that this wolf has forced us out of.”


1050/1500

”I will get on the matter immediately.”  I nodded to them all as I got up to leave.  From my tour around the village, everyone that worked were in a close knit group of three or more.  Their eyes seemed to be afraid of me when they first would glance up at me.  However, it seemed they were only worried it was the wolf, and their eyes relaxed at the sight of another person.  Looking around the village a second time, I asked one of the village elders to show me where the wolf had attacked.  Both times the wolf had attacked were in the south side of the village near the last farm on the outskirt of the village.  Taking this into account, I took up position on top of the second farmhouse which was more towards the center of the village.  It granted the best viewpoint over the entire little town for me to watch over the small community as they went about their work.

Around the middle of the day, while the village got together to eat lunch, I thought I had spotted some movement in the woods that skirted the village.  Keeping a close eye on where I had seen some of the foliage bristle and budge, I waited for another sign that might prove it was the wolf.  I didn’t dare rush out in case my assumption proved to be wrong.  My first priority was the village’s safety.  They had already lost two to this wolf but that was without me to guard them.  If I let another villager die under my watch, what was I doing as Kazekage?  My continued watch of the foliage proved to be a false alarm as no further movements could be seen.  I broadened my vision again, sighing from the suspense of waiting for the wolf to appear.

As I sat on the farmhouse’s roof, two children of the village ran up to my side of the building, calling up to me.  I glanced down and smiled at the kids.  They were two boys and they started to have a mock fight as if pretending to be ninja and trying to impress me.  I couldn’t help but laugh as one boy was knocked down by the other, making a splash in the muddy ground, sending mud all over the other boy who had knocked him down.  Hearing me laugh, both boys seemed to stop and look up at me, their mouths wide in the largest grins I had ever seen.  Smiling back, a calm grew between us and I felt content just watching them play.

A loud snarl snapped me back into reality and erased the broad smiles off the two boys’ faces.  My eyes darted up to spot the suspected wolf slowly approaching the two boys, only a few meters away from his next meal.  Like I had only half-suspected, the wolf had come out even earlier than his last attack meaning he was getting hungrier.  Not wasting a second, I leaped off the roof and landed in between the two boys and the wolf.  My quick move made the wolf flinch a step back, its snarling mouth opening wider and pouring more saliva from the corners of its mouth.

Not wasting any time, I pounced on the wolf with my tonfas.  Pulling them out in a fluid motion, I charged them with Katon chakra energy, lighting the tonfas aflame as I landed the first blow across the left side of the wolf’s face.  The wolf’s blood-stained coat sizzled from the tonfa’s fire as I side stepped around the left side of the wolf, my right arm swinging the tonfa to where it lurched out from my hand, allowing me to bring the tonfa around and sweep the wolf’s legs out from under it.  The smell of burning flesh met my nostrils, the snarling sound lost to the screams of the two boys watching me and the grunting of the beast.  Finishing my first movement, I switched to Raiton and coated my tonfa in an electrical charge, driving both tips of my tonfas into the back of the wolf’s skull.  The electrical charge was enough to short out it’s small brain, sending it to an unconscious state.  After the wolf fell to the ground in a hard thump, I quickly wrapped my two tonfas around it’s head, one under it’s jaw and the other on top of it’s skull.  With a smooth and instant thrust clockwise, the neck bones cracked under the pressure and the head fell limp to the earth.

The wolf was slain, and I sheathed my tonfas on my pants’ belt loops, the two boys cheering from behind the corner of the farmhouse.  I alerted the village leaders and they brought the whole village to meet and watch as I set fire to the wolf’s body.  A new sense of peace was restored to the village as the villagers watched the thing they had feared for weeks be extinguished before their eyes.  Not long after, I was brought to a barn where the two that were killed by the wolf were kept, bed sheets covering their mauled bodies.  I helped the village put them to rest not far from the barn and afterwards they all wished me a fond farewell.  Quickly I returned to my own village to see what awaited me next.

1965/1500  MISSION COMPLETE