“Ha, take that, you loser!” a boy kicked a small, beat up and bruised figure on the ground. “That's what you get for not joining us!”

“B-but... I just... I don't have the... I wanted to...” the boy sobbed, injured on the ground.

“Shut up! What we say goes! That should've been clear a long time ago!” another spoke up.

“Beat him up some more!” the last of the three boys surrounding the fallen figure said, and the proceeded to continue kicking the victim's prone form.

Just then, a shadow befell them, and they turned around in annoyance at the person who would dare interrupt them. Greeting their sight was a man with pink hair dressed in a white shirt under a red jacket, with dark pants and shinobi sandals. He wore a pair of goggles on his head, keeping most of his spiky pink hair out of his face, which was plastered with a look of boredom.

“Oi, what do you kids think you're doing?”

“This is none of your business, so scram, old man!” the boy asked. “Or we'll be forced to deal with you later!”

“Oh?” Hiroto said. “You do know I'm at least seven years older than all of you, right?”

“So what?” one boy, Loud, Hiroto had dubbed him, asked. “Our sensei said that in the shinobi world, age has little to do with skill and power! We can beat you if we want to!”

Hiroto snickered. “Did your sensei also tell you that age has almost everything to do with experience? At your age, while you've been beating up other students, I've been beating up my clan members. While you're off running to your daddy, I've lost mine. Trust me, I'm pretty sure I can take on three brats without trouble.”

The other two, Stupid and Dumb, he decided, ran at him full force. They pounced on him, only for him to twist to the side such that he was facing sideways, and they both missed him by inches. He placed a finger and dug his ear, before withdrawing it and checking for earwax. Loud decided it was too much of an insult to them, and also jumped for Hiroto, only for Hiroto to stick the finger that had been exploring the caverns of his ear straight in the boy's face, right into his mouth.

The boy gagged a moment before he spat out whatever he had tasted, and he stumbled to regroup with his friends.

“I'm only going to tell you this once. Gang up on others again and it won't be my finger in your moth but my fist in your face, got it?” Hiroto asked.

The three boys shivered before running off. Hiroto turned to the boy on the ground.

“Hey, you're not too injured, are ya'? Go to the hospital. It's just close by.”

“What are you gonna' do?” he asked with fear in his voice.

“Do you really think they're gonna just let this slide? No, I think they're gonna be getting the whole gang here, and I feel the desire to prove myself,” Hiroto grinned. Sadly, the mission had requested that he not use force. Well, he supposed that if he made an example out of one of them, the other eighteen students from their gang wouldn't be making advances on him. “You'd better go. If they come back and get you, I'm not gonna' let you be used as a hostage. Even if you get caught.”

The boy scrambled to his feet and rushed in the direction Hiroto pointed, before the pink-haired man began walking down the streets, waiting for the ambush that would no likely come in three, two, one...

A boy jumped out to him from his left. Hiroto stepped back and the boy fell face first onto the floor. Another group of boys emerged from various places – corners, bushes, hotdog stands – and surrounded him, confident their numbers could take him. The boy in front of him got up on all fours and shot him a snide look, only for Hiroto to kick him in the stomach, sending him out of the circle he found himself in.

The mission only said to hold back if possible. That didn't mean Hiroto had to. Oh man, he just loved the Tsuchikage.

The next boy who came at him found a fist buried in his gut, and the next two had their heads cracked together like coconuts. Four then ran at him, and he tripped them over one another, causing them to land in a heap before he gave them a rough shove, pushing the four of them out of the circle that had been formed.

“You know, you all suck at fighting. Why don't you all come right at me and I'll show you just how outmatched you are?” Hiroto asked with a grin.

The circle of Academy students looked at one another for confirmation before they all jumped at Hiroto at once. Hiroto merely applied chakra to his feet and leapt high above the group of students below, causing them all to run into one another and collapse in a heap in the middle. Hiroto landed just a little way away from the heap and walked towards them slowly, like a predator eyeing its fallen prey before the meal.

“Mister, please don't hurt us!” one of the boys said – Loud, if he was not mistaken.

“Oh? That didn't seem like what you were thinking when you all rushed at me,” Hiroto replied.

“Please, we won't do it again! Please!”

“Just make sure you keep to your word, then,” Hiroto replied, and walked away. “And then I won't beat you up.”

He heard footsteps coming from behind him, and decided that the boys couldn't have untangled themselves from the heap so quickly, so he quickly made up his mind that the boy currently rushing for him and soon to be a heap on the ground himself was the leader of the so-called gang. He turned around and moved his finger to poke a boy in the forehead, stopping him in his tracks in his fear.

“I was serious about disbanding the gang, by the way,” Hiroto informed, before flicking the boy's forehead hard, causing him to tumble back into the heap his friends were in. “Like I said, just keep the promise.”

Hiroto's grin then widened maniacally.

“Or I'll break mine.”

Word Count: 1100