The wind country, the home of Sunagakure, and many other villages besides. It is in one of these small villages, a place called Kyōfūgakure, the village hidden in the gale, that this particular story unfolded. The main thing about Kyōfūgakure is that, in the hills around it, there are huge numbers of wolves. Like the Inuzuka, many people end up training wolves to be their pets, to be their assistants, and even to be their friends. However, there is also a wide variety of completely natural wolves, who have never met humanity on equal grounds. There are wolves, out there in the land around the village, that would rather just stay away from humanity. They might find them a tasty meal if they'd stop throwing weapons at them everytime they tried, so they generally avoid contact with them altogether. This, sadly, is not the case with this specific wolf. This specific wolf was one of the trained wolves, one called Watage. It was the partner of a training genin who wanted nothing more than to grow up to be able to protect his country, to protect his village, and to make his parents proud. This was never to be it seemed, as he cut himself on a piece of glass on one of the missions he was sent on. Watage affectionately licked his master's wounds.... getting a taste of human blood. Now, I don't know how much you know about wolves and dogs and other animals of the canine variety, but generally all it takes is to taste human blood and they will become monstrous, starting to attack and try to eat humans. Of course, this doesn't happen to all dogs, as most of them are much too well trained to do something like this, and after centuries of domestication they can generally ignore their wild instincts. However Watage had only been trained for around a month at the time, not long enough to subjugate his animal instincts, and thus he turned into one of the human hunting ones, known to those who understood the species as a dire wolf. It was horrible, he dived upon his master, ripping him to pieces. and eating him alive. It was truly gruesome, something most people would not want to see, but his sister found it. And, as you can guess, she got eaten too. It was a barbaric display, and it took a chunin to drive it away from the other families, and now it's staying around the village's borders, attacking anyone who gets too close. With it's strong sense of smell, and it's raw animalistic hunger there is little that will be able to stop it... here's hoping something will, as, consistent with his luck up to this point in his life, it was Tomoya who was sent to have to deal with this little monster. Orders from the higher ups in the village it appeared, and he wasn't going to disobey direct orders from those who controlled him. He was, after all, a soldier of Sunagakure.

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It had taken a long time, an unpleasantly long time, to get to the village, but finally, as the sun went down in the sky, he arrived. He was tired, and just wanted to sleep but he guessed it would be better for him to be awake just for a little bit. After all, sleeping on an issue always came up with a solution. Frankly, it wasn't so much a problem that he'd be fighting a wolf, as he had so many new strong moves he wanted to try out, but it was more a problem of trying to find it. There must be hundreds of wolves in the lands around the village, and only one who needed to die. It wasn't like he was wearing a collar that said "insane dire wolf, please kill." Tomoya sighed, there was so much work to do and so little time. Sometimes, just sometimes, he thought his masters were trying to wear him out. It was depressing but eh well, there was really nothing he could do about it. As he walked into the village, people smiled at him, some bowed, but nobody stopped and chatted. It was nice that even when something like this arose they still managed to spare a smile and a bow for a travelling warrior. It was, actually, a really beautiful village. There was something homely about it, that made him almost want to stay here for a while and write another book. With all the prosthetics he'd been designing recently, not to mention he was almost permanently training or going on missions recently, so there was a part of him that wanted to put off this mission for a while and just get back to some good old fashioned writing. There was so much he could write about now. Pirates, traitors, the death of loved ones, the moment you realize what your goal is in life. When he'd written his last book, he'd always thought that he needed more life experience to really get a best-selling book on the market, but as it stood right now... he was slowly getting there. He smiled slightly as he realized something; The stronger he got, the more experience he'd get, good and bad. It was only the truly strong who could say they'd lived as they wanted to. With this thought in mind, he should get stronger and then write his book. It was a decision that he was consciously making. He was going to be the strongest in Sunagakure, and earn the respect of all those who's respect he didn't currently have. Gin, Sake, everyone. They would see him as their equal, and they would love his work. The beauty of the world. He smiled... that was the title of his book, when he finally made it, he decided. "This ugly yet beautiful world."

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Continuing to walk through the town, Tomoya found the man who was clearly waiting for him. He was there, looking impatiently at him, with his hitai-ate wrapped around his arm. It had the sign of a tornado on it, and was surprisingly intricately designed. He didn't know what rank this guy was, but he looked important. Walking forwards, he put his hand up and called to him
"Hey... you my contact?" The man nodded and turned, which Tomoya assumed meant he wanted him to follow. Agreeing, he jogged until they caught up together and he was walking at the same pace.
"You're a Sunagakure nin, I can tell from the head-band. Now, point being, do you know what you have to do?"
"Kill wolf, avenge little kids, go home and sleep. How hard could it possibly be?" Tomoya said simply, which the man clearly did not appreciate. Maybe it was because he was joking about a dead kid, or maybe it was because the man didn't have a sense of humour. Either way, his disapproval was clear in the way he was talking
"Yes... we've tracked him down, but we don't have the men to spare going to deal with him. We could send Genin... but you've seen how that ends up. We need someone stronger than the kids, but we can't spend one of our Jounin on this mission, and all of our Chunin are currently out on business. It's a busy time for our village, so that's why we need YOU to come in and deal with it. However... I recommend you don't go tonight." Tomoya was about to question why, but he didn't get the time. "Firstly, because you're clearly tired and I think you'll need to be on your best for this. Secondly, because wolves are by nature nocturnal. That means you'll be able to catch him unaware if you attack during the day stealthily... just don't go yelling your attack's name like some kind of moron. Snap it's neck or something." Tomoya nodded, before a thought occured to him
"If I need to stay overnight tonight, where the hell am I going to sleep? A village like this won't have a hotel... will it?" The man shook his head, but pointed to a large building with a picture of a keg on it.
"There's an inn. Go sleep in it. It's free since you're on business. Have a good night, Chunin-kun."[/color] He walked off and Tomoya was left to enter the inn on his own.

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As he woke up in the morning, having had no problem in getting a room, he looked next to him to find a small map. It seemed simple enough, but it was still disconcerting that someone had been in here whilst he slept... especially since he slept naked. He was just glad that nobody had messed with him whilst he slept. Picking it up he looked at it. It seemed easy enough to follow, and he went off to slip his uniform back on. For once in his life, he wasn't wearing his goggles, preferring to wear his Headband as he was supposed to. This would be a proper fight after all, he needed all the protection he could get.... although he laughed as he thought of an idea. He wanted to try out that technique in battle didn't he? After slipping his clothes on, he walked out of the room, tossing a few Ryo to the landlady as thanks, before pulling his hood up and running off along the path inside the forest, looking for the den.

It took him half an hour to find it, and inside there he was. His coat slicked with blood, he was sleeping quietly in the den. Tomoya sighed quietly as his hands flew into a jutsu sequence, his cheeks expanding as he summoned it, stepping back far enough that he wouldn't get caught in the shrapnel field. Then, spitting it out, he fired his dragon at the beast as it lay there. The wolf only had the time to open an eye curiously before it was engulfed in the fire, turning to ash before it could react any further. The moment the fires died down, tomoya watched with interest as the wind caught the ashes of the beast, taking it out of the cave and across the forest, spreading the dead beast's ashes to the world. It was touching... maybe a kinder, gentler wolf would be ready for it's master in the afterlife.

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