hey Ppls, it's Fang. yay, now we are onto the pointless and meaningless Zabuza Saga! Have fun!
Contrary to the stuff you read in books, first missions really suck. Especially when you're the one stuck babysitting a bunch of snot-nosed brats for eight hours straight because Naruto got tied to a tree, Naoki and Sasuke started arguing and never really stopped, and Kakashi-sensei had his head stuck inside one of his perverted Make-Out Paradise porno books. Next time I babysit, I knock the kids out for the duration of the mission.
It wasn't just babysitting. We were forced to clean trash from gutters, yard work, find red four-leafed clovers, and find garbage in the river, poke it with a stick, and toss it in a bag.
I swear, with the amount of trash in that #!*% river, I'm surprised we're not all dead from poisoning.
Well, anyway, I could definently see where Naruto was coming from on the whole sucky missions thing. It starts with the cat.
Our next worthless mission for the day was to find Tiger, a cat that was constantly running away from its fat tub of lard of an owner. Not that I blame him, of course. With me in his place, I would do the same thing.
"Positions locked on target?" came Kakashi's voice over the mike system.
"Yeppers."
"Believe it!"
"Yeah."
"Araya? You?"
"Uh….sure."
"Really?"
"Yah, totally! I can see the stupid thing!"
"Alright, just checking. On my mark…one…two…three!"
My three compatriots leapt into action, snagging poor, meowing Tiger. Ten seconds later, a squirming burlap bag was in Naruto's hands.
"Alright, good work everyone. Araya, where were YOU in all this?" Kakashi said through the mike.
"Eh." I replied.
"Come on, they're your missions too. You might want to help out."
"Well, maybe I would, if these missions didn't suck so badly!" I yelled the last part, to find my teammates scrabbling at their ears. A minute later, Naoki finally spoke up.
"Well, now that my eardrums have been blasted beyond repair, Note to Araya: Don't yell into the mikes!"
"Well, excuse me, but they do suck!" I retorted.
"Look, guys, the rule is take what you can get. Now stop complaining, alright? Let's head back and turn the cat in."
That's just what we did, and ten minute later, we five were standing in front of the old man Third Hokage's desk, watching that poor cat get squeezed to death by his loving master. The Hokage was starting to drone on and on about the new mission we were being assigned, and I took that as my cue to zone out. Unfortunately, Naruto took that as his cue to complain.
"Why can't we do cool missions, like C or B ranked? We've been doing tons of small ones! I want one that's better!"
"Naruto, do you really want a lecture on the ranks and lists of missions and ninja, or can I just say no?" the Hokage replied. Naoki stepped forward.
"Let me handle it, Naruto. Hokage-sama, I feel that our skills as blossoming ninja can be better tested with higher ranking missions. If we are able to successfully accomplish said mission, we will become better assets to Konoha in upcoming times ahead. We cannot increase our skills with these mediocre tasks we are assigned to do. Please consider my request."
The Hokage looked at her for a minute, as did we.
"You pretty must just said what Naruto did…except more eloquently." I drawled. Naoki scowled at me.
"Well, since it seems that you really want to march into certain death as genin, you can try your hand at a c mission." The Hokage complied.
"Wow, really?" Naruto brightened up.
"Yes. I need you to escort this important individual to his home, the Village Hidden in the Waves. It is of imperative importance that you do not fail this mission!"
"Naruto started jumping and running around the room in pure ecstasy. Even I was a little excited.
"Bring him in!" The Third said, gesturing towards the door on my right. We turned, expecting a famous prince or daimyo and we saw… a drunken old man with a bottle of liquor hanging from his hand. He looked at us blearily, and then pointed at all of us.
"These? These are the people you sent to escort me? They're nothing but idiotic baby-faced brats! And the black-haired shrimp looks like she shouldn't even be old enough to be a ninja!"
I looked around. "Black-haired shrimp?" I looked at Sasuke, who was the tallest of us…and I got it.
"Why you mother #!*% son of a #!*% , I'm not short!" I lunged at him, but Kakashi caught the back of my shirt and held on to me.
"You're not short, Araya!" Naoki smiled. "You're just fun-size!"
"Yeah, she's vertically challenged!" Added Sasuke.
"Guys, stop tormenting Araya, and go on and get ready for the upcoming mission. You begged for it enough, so I'm counting on you."
Oh yeah. He's counting on us, and he's the higher rank? Yeah, I think Kakashi's going to end up bearing the brunt of the work in this sucky C-Mission.
The drunken man, who we later found out was named Tazuna, apparently needed to build a bridge from his village island to some main land…I kinda stopped listening at this point because I…well, honestly, I didn't care. Other-Araya soaked up the mission details with relish, though, so I didn't miss out on anything important.
After the briefing, Team 7 headed out the door into the bright, cheery sunlight that seemed so Ironic now. Kakashi did his usual disappearance trick to get away from us, but he did mention something about being at the village gates in two hours. Sasuke, Naoki and I split off from Naruto and went right, while he went left. Naoki nudged my arm.
"You know, I could have gotten a B mission for all this trouble."
I sighed. "Naoki, I sincerely doubt it. But this mission is better than babysitting, so- "
"You know, it's not much different actually. You just babysit an old drunk man instead of whining two-year olds."
I smacked her upside the head. "Wow, you definently have awesome powers in persuading, you got us an even worse mission than a D!"
She and Sasuke eventually got to their houses, (They live right next to each other…how messed up is that?) leaving me to my shack further down the road.
Another day had barely started, and I hated it already.
Negotiations Closed.