Mission Info:

Cries for help resounded from a nearby village well, loud and piercing the rather peaceful day Ringo was having.  Expecting trouble, Ringo placed his hand on his line launcher triggers as he raced towards the source of the cries.  He ran into a large crowd that was huddled around the well.  Ringo made his way through the packed crowd and got to the center of the group which were all looking down a well.  The rope for the well’s bucket had snapped, and one of the villagers filled in Ringo and what all had happened.

“See, me and my boy here were coming to get some water like usual” he explained.  “Now my boy is in a curious phase, always questions everything. I keep telling him it’s good to ask questions, you see.  So, anyways, we came up to this here well and my boy started getting all curious and started climbing up on top of the well.  I told him to get down from there, told him he’d get in trouble if his mother saw him, and just as I said that there she calls me.  So I turn to answer her when she suddenly screams for me to catch the boy.  I turn back around to see the boy gone, him screaming up at me from down in the well.  He must’ve hit the bucket on his way down, because the rope snapped when I heard him splash down there.”

Ringo nodded as the man told the story, the other villagers huddled around had grown silent to hear what he was saying.  Ichirou looked at the well, and then at the people around him.  The well was very small, only about a half a foot wide, meaning the kid must’ve been something small to fall in.  There didn’t seem to be a way for anyone to climb down such a tight hole to get the boy.  The rope for the bucket would’ve been perfect for hauling the kid out of there, but with it snapped so short, it wouldn’t reach the boy way down there.  He scratched his head as he thought of what he could do to solve the problem.

Post WC: 371/600

It wasn’t long before the idea struck him. Instantly upon the thought, Ringo looked up to the crowd. “Does anyone have rope we can use?” People caught on to his idea quick, and started asking people around them. A man in the back of the crowd hollered at Ichirou, “Yes, I have some back at my shop!” Ringo nodded and told the man to go fetch it for him. The man quickly turned and ran off down a road, disappearing around a corner. He hoped the man would return quickly as he didn’t know how well the boy could stay above the water in the well. While Ringo waited for the man to arrive with the rope, he asked for five strong persons to help him haul up the boy, asking everyone else to leave and give them space to work. He got five burly and rather chubby men alike to volunteer to save the boy, but the crowd only moved away from one side of the well. He was trying to get people to move farther away when the man came running back with a coil of rope hanging around his shoulder.

Getting the rope down to the boy was easy, and from there Ichirou and the five volunteers took positions along the rope. Coordinating their efforts, Ringo yelled out every three seconds for them to pull. Within a minute they had pulled the boy out of the well. The crowd cheered from the other side of the well, surrounding the boy as he got out of the well. Ringo was tapped on the shoulder afterwards by a messenger-nin, giving him a note saying “Mission well done.” Pleased with himself at accomplishing a makeshift mission, Ringo headed off down the road with a smile on his face.

Post WC: 301
Mission WC:371+301=672/600