Takezo made his way down the long winding dirt path, his feet dragging every step of the way towards his destination. One was usually excited when they were assigned their first mission from the village, proud to showcase their abilities that they had honed in long years at the academy and finally utilize them for the good of the village or in some cases the continuation of their personal growth as a shinobi.

Takezo fit neither of these, had it been his choice, he still would have been back in the village pestering the populace. You see, Takezo had been the victim of a crime, treachery so vile and evil that it could hardly be forgiven.

He was the victim of identity theft, and the perpetrators were none other than his own flesh and blood. His parents in their so called ‘love’ for the boy had illegally signed his name to the contract and turned it in, leaving him little choice in the matter. If he didn’t go, that brought down more hell than it was worth, and the mere thought that his name could be mentioned with other notable deserters sent a shiver down his spine, that and his parents wouldn’t let him back into the house until the contract had been completed in full, no matter how much he complained about being hungry or cold.

“Heartless, how can they treat their own son like this~?” Takezo whined, his pack sitting heavy on his shoulders as he continued his trek. For the most part, he had been alone on his journey through the land of fire, those that he came in contact with usually headed in the opposite direction, and none wanting to have anything to do with the young boys antics. This left very little to occupy Takezo’s mind, and thus his mind wandered back to the task at hand.

His mission was simple, find and stop the person responsible for tampering with the silver refinery that served konoha. Not a particularly hard task by any stretch of the imagination, as for the most part it would rely heavily on reconnaissance and a possible confrontation after the saboteur was found. He didn’t think it would be too hard to fix this issue quickly, because anyone with any background as a shinobi would have found a way to not let himself be discovered by tampering with the refining process.

Either way, if the issue was left unresolved it would create a mounting problem not only for the factory and possibly konoha, but for the very people that worked at the refinery for a living.
If nothing was done, production would drop, which would result in less profits from the refined silver at an even lesser price because of its poor refinement, this in turn would lead to lower wages for the workers and possibly even the loss of their jobs.

This revelation of course, brought Takezo’s imagination into overdrive.

“Don’t worry my friends, though fate brought us together through unbridled treachery, I Takezo Sarutobi, promise to bring an end to your troubles.” The young boy said aloud, stopping in the middle of the path and taking a knee, like popular action heroes did when taking some sort of vow.

This monologue continued for a good time, his one-sided story of his past and future exploits being relayed to a cow that had wandered to far from its herd on the right side of the path, responding with the occasionally moo in agreement that spurred the boy on.

Of course, the farmer who owned the land took exception with the ‘harassment’ of one of his dairy cows. Yelling obscenities at the boy from afar while also bringing up the fact that if his herd was too riled up it would spoil their product quicker.
Either way, Takezo took a quick apologetic bow to the farmer, as well as the cow before scurrying off down the path toward the refinery.

With his new found zeal, the rest of the trip passed by quickly. Takezo reaching the refinery as the sun began to set in the west. Of course his contact had expected him a bit sooner in the day, but with Takezo the fact that he was even here was a plus at the moment.

Takashi, the owner of the refinery sat on the edge of his property with both arms crossed. Irritation clearly etched into the very body language of the partly because of the shinobis tardiness and partly because of the great deal of stress he was currently under trying to fix his current situation.

“Ah, finally he shows up! It only took you a few more hours than I was told…” Takashi began as Takezo drew closer, his frustration only being held back by the prospect of being rid of his problem.

“So wheres the rest of the group eh? Usually they send you guys with a group right? I need to speak to the one in charge.” Takashi said quickly, forcing a smile despite the situation.

“eh… all they sent was me.” Takezo said with a grin, scratching the back of his head quckly as he dropped his pack by the fence line, all he needed was a bit more information and he’d be on his way.

“wha…WHAT DO YOU MEAN ITS JUST YOU!? DON’T THEY KNOW JUST HOW SERIOUS OF A PROBLEM THIS IS? WHERES THE JOUNIN OR KAGE OR WHICHEVER ONE CAN FIX THIS PROBLEM?” Takashi began, legitimate anger overpowering whatever restraint he had previously.

Takezo let the brush over him, instead turning from his pack and walking over to the man, the twelve your old clasping the man’s shoulder with an outstretched hand.

“DO NOT WORRY CITIZEN, IM ALL THAT IS NEEDED FOR THIS RASCAL.” Takezo said with all the seriousness he could muster.

“NOW TELL ME, WHERE ARE THESE VILE ACTIONS TAKING PLACE?”

“My god… they sent me an idiot….” Takashi stated bluntly, seemingly deflating after this particular observation.

With a sigh, he sat down leaning up against a fencepost fatigue now washing over him.

“…fine… the issue so far is that someone is tampering with the melting down process of our silver by adding in other products, using metals that we store in separate parts of the refinery after we sort the silver from them and other earths. They take a handful of these other metals and dump it into each of our batches so to speak, severely affecting the quality of what we produce… if you want to start looking anywhere, the furnaces is where I would start.” Takashi finished, using his hand to massage his temples.

“CONSIDER IT DONE.” Takezo said simply, before flying off into the darkness and towards the refinery, still hard at work to make the days quota.

Sneaking in wasn’t particularly hard, everyone was already occupied with their specific job, that coupled with the fact that most of them simply wanted to finish quickly as possible they hardly made it even easier. Takezo made his perch in the rafters, simply watching the men and women below stoke the furnaces in which great vats of liquid silver now melts before they would be dumped into dumped into casts to form silver bars.

The furnaces could not be entered without either being seen, or being burnt to death by the intense heat within. Thus, the person responsible must have some sort of job overseeing the transport of these vats of liquid metal to the casting area.
Making his way through the rafters above, he spotted the overseer on the platform overlooking the vats as they made their exit from the back of the furnaces, and as the odds would have it, he was dropping something into each vat as they passed by, one would hardly notice if they even if they were paying attention, as it simply appeared to be part of the process, that and his position of authority didn’t exactly allow him to be questioned either.

Takezo watched for a moment or two longer, nobody else interacted with the liquid metal until casting, and that work was handled by dozens of people making sure each bar came out to the exact same content as another comparable bar, and even though they worked closely with the metal none of them went so far as to put anything cooling metal, let alone do it on a scale that would affect the production of the plant.

His mind was made up, the culprit was the overseer.

High above in the rafters of the building, Takezo struck, jumping from his observation post down to the metal platform that acted as a bridge for the vats to pass from area to area. Another jump and he was climbing the railing next to the overseer, a pudgy man that was obviously quite startled by the preteen falling from the heavens before him.

“STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM.” Takezo said, pointing directly at the man. Now sweating heavily from the discovery, fortunately enough, the man seemed to be rather nervous about his act as a whole which prompted the next exchange.

With a piggish squeal, the man reached into his pocket and produced a smoke bomb throwing it on the platform as he tried to cover his escape.

“Damn it!” Takezo coughed out, covering his mouth with his free hand ashe struggled to see through the dense smoke. He could stillhear the man wheezing but he doubted that he would stick around much longer for Takezo to catch him.

The smoke began to clear, and Takezo finally climbed over the railing onto the steel platform. Only to find that the fat man was doing his best to escape via a slowly moving lift down to the ground floor at an amazing speed of a mile an hour.

“…” Takezo was speechless for the most part, the man had seemed so intent on getting away, but now he was virtually caught by some of the very machines he had operated. Walking over, Takezo scratched his head as he looked down at the five or so feet the man had traveled back down to the floor.

“Eh… just give it up, this isn’t going to end well otherwise….” Takezo said, all the energy of the chase draining from him as he watched this incredibly poor escape attempt.

“NEVER!”

“fine….”

Taking a step off the platform, Takezo fell and landed with his feet right on the shoulders of the pudgy man, his body crumpling under the force of gravity and the weight of a rather disappointed genin.
As the lift met the ground, a small crowd gather to watch the debacle, as Takezo hogtied the man with a length of rope nearby.
“What’s going on? Get back to your station-…oh…” Takashi said, parting the crowd and stepping forward as Takezo finished his last knot.

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED SIR.” Takezo said, giving a thumbs up before he fished out one of the capsules the man was dumping into the vats and handed it to Takashi to see.

“im not exactly sure what those are, but it was the only thing going into those vats before the metal was turned into silver bars… my guess it was some sort of CORPORATE ESPIONAGE.” Takezo said, his excitement returning as he figured this mission was just about done with and all.

“Id call your local authority to deal with this now, my jobs done here.” Takezo said bowing to Takashi before making his way out of the factory, The old man obviously dumbstruck that the young boy found out who the perpetrator was in a few short hours where they had failed in the past few weeks.
With that, Takezo was off back to the warmth of his bed and the long trek home.

[1977/1000] oops...