Mission name: Escaped goat!
Mission rank: D
Objective: Capture and bring back the mountain goat.
Location: Valley of the mountains
Reward: 100 ryo
Mission description: A farmer's mountain goat got away while he was bringing it back. It's meant for breeding so bring it back unharmed.
Mission details: Like all mountain goats the goat will try to get away via scaling a mountain side. Seemingly impossible perches found one after the other. You will have to use supernatural walking practice or a grappling hook just to get to it and bring it down. It has a leash attached to it still but careful not to just yank it down. The fall will kill it and you can not just hang it by its neck via leash.

The hot sun beat down on Shindou, who was as usual dressed in his enigmatic shinobi garbs of dark blue and black. It made for an odd look for anyone who was watching; a lone man dressed in colours reminiscent of the night plodding along slowly across the mountaineous regions that dominated the western parts of the Land of Eath.

Shindou was currently on a peculiar mission. Well, it wasn’t peculiar in the traditional sense, where the mission itself seemed odd. Hidden villages often got weird requests from your everyday citizens, which allowed their ninja to look deeper into the lifestyle of a civilian which, in some cases, may have been as looney as those of ninja. Hunting down a stray mountain goat was by far not the weirdest D-rank mission on the list, yet it did not change the fact that the very act of hunting down a stray mountain goat was an odd endeavour, even by Shindou’s standards, and the young man had seen many odd occurrences.

A good hour had been spent searching high and low for any sign of the white mountain goat. He had been directed here by the goat’s owner, a farmer who worked the lands just slightly east of here. His farm had recently been experiencing a decrease in demand for goods save for mountain goat’s milk, so the loss of the only goat that could reproduce and breed was a major dent in the sustainability of his business venture, which was why he had gone through the pains of hiring a ninja to hunt down and safely return his goat to where it belonged.

Shindou closed his eyes and rested for a mere moment, before a sudden bleat caught his attention. His eyes snapped open and his neck craned upward, and in the distance, on one of the mountains, was a small white figure on all fours bounding along the ledges precariously but uncaring about its own safety. He didn’t need to squint his eyes to suspect that was the mountain goat that had been keeping him busy for the better part of an hour, and dashed towards the mountain.

The mountain itself was simple enough to navigate, for a ninja anyway. The ledges weren’t overly steep that he had to use chakra to adhere to their rocky surfaces, and so the beginning of his trip up the mountain was a metaphorical walk in the park. However, after he got up to a quarter of the mountain’s height, the rocky outcroppings that he had been depending on as stable footholds began to grow scarce, disappearing into the smooth, near vertical exterior of the mountains themselves. It was at this point that Shindou had deigned to use the Supernatural Walking Practice, a technique all ninja picked up from their time in the Academy, when a foothold crumbled beneath him.

Testing that his feet were indeed firmly planted against the sides of the mountain, Shindou began racing up at peak speeds to get the goat, even as it hopped up and down the mountain ledges at its lesiure. Just as he was about estimately six metres from its location, the goat caught notice of him and bleated twice in alamr, before beginning to bound away quickly on the dangerous mountain slopes. Even so, the mountain goat expertly navigated its steps, always landing safely and never slipping, to Shindou’s relief. Being the only goat that fit for breeding in the short run, it was imperative that the mountain goat be brought back in one piece.

The chase lasted for ten minutes as Shindou tried to corner the goat, while also trying to make sure not to corner it at the edge of the mountain, hoping to avoid the goat from slipping off in a panic, before he managed to catch it. There was a leash tied to its neck, though Shindou ignored it for the most part, instead tucking it under one arm against its struggles and beginning the trek back to the farmer’s home.

680 words