All three of us stood before the Hokage, Rika standing just behind us as she read over the sheet we had just been given. Rika's eyes darted over the written phonetics smoothly as the Hokage scrutinized each of us with keen, aged eyes. His head was resting on his creviced hands, the white fabric that billowed around his face and the front angle of his hat covering whatever expression he had. It was difficult to imagine that this elderly man in front of me was truly the most advanced ninja of Konohagakure.
Not much time passed before we were ushered out by Rika, who was leading us to our mission's location along Konoha's twisting and winding interconnecting array of roads and alleys. The streets were relatively calm at this early time, only a few shopkeepers opening their shops and only a small amount of buyers wondering from stand to stand, searching for whatever necessities they happened to need. It was even quiet enough to hear the flapping of flags and banners as the wind whipped by them.
I took a sideways glance at my teammates; Hiro had his hands fused to his pockets and his hair was still a mess of askew deep coffee locks, random inklings of phrases as he walked; Mai was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Rika…Rika was skipping.
"What is our mission, Rika?" Mai glanced over her shoulder at our giddy sensei, who only handed up the paper. Mai's eyes lazily scanned the sheet. "We're painting?" My already closed eyes squeezed shut even tighter. Hiro was completely silent.
"Don't worry, there are much worse missions you can be given. You should have heard the mission Onii's team got." Rika seemed amused by her own thoughts while the three of us continued to grumble as we came closer to the apartment of our client. Our footsteps tapped on the packed dirt path, the sound reverberating through the empty streets.
Upon reaching the door, Rika gingerly put forth a slightly scarred fist and rapped on the wooden door. There was no reply. Rika repeated this to only get the same response: none what so ever. Clenching my fingers to my palm, I smacked my own fist against the rough wood of the door, chafing my knuckles as I did. Again, there was no reply. Rika glanced at the mission sheet again, as if to check if we had the right address. At full force, Mai's foot collided with the door and she stormed into the house.
"We're coming in!" Mai's shout could probably be heard not just in this apartment but also in the apartments adjacent. Rika blinked a few times before she followed the rest of us into the apartment. A shinobi was leaning against the wall a few feet from the door, his hand circling over his eyes to try and keep himself awake.
The shinobi's messy brown hair was half hidden under his hitai-ate which was tied on backwards. "Oh…morning Genma-sensei. This must be your new apartment." Mai greeted our client casually as she ventured deeper into the apartment. Genma lifted his head to connect the face with the voice of his student.
"Ah, I should have known it was you, Mai." He glanced at his door, which was now holding onto the door frame by only one of its three hinges. "I haven't been in my new apartment one week and you already have destroyed some part of it. I guess fixing my front door will be your training tonight." The shinobi withdrew a senbon from who knows where and placed one end delicately between his teeth. I could tell where Mai got the habit from now.
Genma's vision drifted over each of us lethargically; I raised an eyebrow at him as his gaze rested on me.
"And this must be the Kyoko I've heard about." He made a conscious pause. "Mai," Genma turned to where Mai had disappeared inside her sensei's house, "Nothing gives you the right to rifle through my fridge." Mai reappeared next to her sensei with her fingers clasping a bright green apple.
"And I know that I've known you since before I had cognitive memory but you always say that and I always get food in the end." Mai took a bite of the apple. Genma sighed as if he already knew this fact and had been reminded of it many times before.
"So Rika, you're the unlucky sensei of this one and her…friends?" He stated this as more of a question, raising an eyebrow at Hiro and I. My hair gently grazed my cheeks as I shook my head.
"So Genma, what did you bring us out here to paint?" Genma twisted the senbon with his teeth a few times, processing my question.
"Oh yeah, the back wall; it needs to be repainted." Genma mentioned to the back door, which he lead us through to reach the back lawn. Rubbing his hand over his eyes once more, he informed us of where the supplies were. "So just a solid coat of the blue. Ladders are on the side of the house but they'll only reach about half way up. The roof is open for you all to sit on to get the top. But I would be quiet; Kotetsu and Izumo live in the upstairs apartments and they probably wouldn't like to be woken up by pesky genin."
Rika followed Genma back into the apartment as they began to chat, leaving us to begin our work. Lifting the first sloshing bucket of paint, I tapped up the ladder and sprung off the last rung, landing delicately on the weathered roof tiles, slightly smoothed from years of aging. Many random items were strewn across the roof and it smelled lightly of mold.
"Hey, guess what," I lifted one of the objects: a neon yellow Frisbee, which I tossed down towards the ground, "found a Frisbee." The plastic disk collided with Hiro's head with a dull thud and a groan escaped from his lips. I didn't mean to do that; wish I had meant to.
"Great, thanks for the memo. Anything else up there you want to throw at me." Hiro's voice was pained and through his clenched teeth.
"Yeah, there's this cinderblock but I can't lift it very high." A sarcastic huff reached my ears as I picked up another object and dropped it casually over the edge of the roof. "This baseball on the other hand is quite light." I grinned when another groan of pain came up from the ground. Mai giggled from the top of the ladder where she was swiftly swiping the wet paintbrush across the surface of the back wall in between two windows. Using a bit of rope from the roof, I constructed a slipshod swing and dropped it from the side of the roof before scurrying down with the paint bucket in hand. Tying the handle of the bucket to the rope, I began making uneven stabs at the wall, the periwinkle paint coating what used to be the white wall easily.
Almost a whole hour or two had passed without many problems. Everything seemed to be going well until I there was a scuffing of the ladder scraping against the wall as it was moved.
"What the hell do you think you're doing Kimura!" Mai was clutching to the top of the ladder with white knuckled hands as Hiro was nudging the metal structure out of his way to the wall.
"What does it look like? I need to get to the wall and your ladder is in the way." He grumbled, still forcing the ladder to move with Mai and her bucket of paint still on the top.
"Let me at least come down first! This bucket of paint is going to spill if you keep moving this ladder. That, or I'll fall." Mai was hissing furiously at the shinobi on the ground as she hugged the rung even tighter to her torso.
"I'm willing to take that chance." With one last shove, Hiro returned to his work. A man who I assumed owned the apartment next to Genma's glanced out his back door at our ruckus. His dark brown hair spilled in front of his sullen face and there were deep purple pools of sickness hanging under his eyes. Coughing into his hand a few times, he watched as the painting ensued.
Mai slowly but surely detangled her arms from the ladder rung, only to lose her footing and drop down a rung or two. My attention darted between my work and my best friend, making sure she got back up without slipping again. As Mai skillfully slid back onto the seat, her paint brush flipped out of the bucket of paint and plummeted to the ground. Unfortunately, it missed.
Hiro, his face covered with flecks of blue, glowered up at our giggling figures as the brush had bounced off of the ladder, splattering the blue liquid in all directions.
"Did you drop that!"
"No, the sky just gave birth to a paintbrush. Calm the fuck down, it was an accident. Now can you pass the brush back up here, I want to finish this part of the wall soon." Mai glanced out at the sun, which was steadily climbing higher in the sky. Hiro's hushed mumbles were quieted even more as he bent down and grabbed Mai's paintbrush from his bucket. Mai sent a quick amused glance my way which I returned.
Then it hit her. Mai now had a wet paintbrush in her lap and a blue was smudged across her cheek and the bridge of her nose. Hiro smirked triumphantly up at her before returning to his work, the smirk still leaving remnants on his face. Mai narrowed her eyes dangerously, sending Hiro death glares as she pulled back her hand with her paintbrush soaked with blue paint in hand as a projectile.
The man who was now leaning against the back wall outside his door had a small smile graced across his lips as if we were an amusing show.
"Hey, Kimura!" Mai called down to the shinobi who looked up to meet a speeding paintbrush.
"What?"
"Why are you an asshole?"
"Why are you a bitch?" Wiping the paint from his face with a sleeved fist, Hiro sent a swift kick into the side of the ladder, sending it shaking and rattling like a falling tower. Mai held onto the ladder fearfully as I dipped my hand into my paint bucket for a glob of the slippery paint. It dripped off my fingers and plummeted down unto the shinobi. I held my sides as if they were going to fall apart as the paint plastered Hiro's hair to his head. He sent his own glob up which hit me square in the face. Leaping from my perch to the top of the ladder, I splashed the whole paint bucket over his head.
"Your color definitely isn't blue," I hissed, the words drenched in irritation. Sparks crackled between our glares before another bubble of blue dripped down his front. Mai's hand dripped with the azure liquid as he turned his gaze to her, tossing his own splotches of the paint. Mai was dodging his projectiles of paint when he tackled her to the ground. That's when I first noticed that all three paint buckets had been overturned; a small pond of the paint was now soaking the grass.
The two of them rolled around in the paint for a second before I intervened and helped Mai up. As I tried wiping some of the paint off my face, Hiro sent a jab into my side and my feet lost traction in the paint and I slid in the puddle of paint. The liquid color soaked my clothes and hair, I could feel it rubbing against my skin and making my clothes heavy as they retained the paint. Mai and Hiro weren't long to follow me to the ground in the puddle of blue. All three of us were rolling around, fighting, kicking, and punching as much as we were able. Out of nowhere, three other people were kicking and screaming with us, a blur of movement and fighting.
"What's going on here?" a new voice entered the area. All of us were tangled on the ground, Mai pinning Hiro finally. We froze at the voice and slowly turned to notice our surroundings. The two tenants of the upper apartments as well as the brunette man and Rika and Genma were watching us with interest, waiting to see how long it would be until we stopped. Although all of them were on the verge of laughter, Rika was the only one giggling aloud. In contrast to them was Team 7, who was mixed in with us and the paint.
"Onii! Don't ruin the fun!" Rika scolded the new voice. A man, silver hair messily ruffled, was watching us with his eye, the other one being covered by his hitai-ate as he scanned over the scene displayed before him with his dark eye.
"Oi Kakashi! You ruined it! Now we'll never know who won! And I was betting the brunette girl would kick that boy's ass within five minutes!" I turned my head over to glare at the navy haired shinobi leaning out the left window who had addressed the new arrival. All of us genin had begun to realign ourselves and wipe off excess paint.
"You were betting on us?" I spat up at the shinobi, my new anger directed towards him. The one with longer chestnut hair that covered one of his eyes allowed a smirk to spread across his face.
"This is more entertaining than television! Rika, you need to bring your team here more often!" My eyes travelled over the each of the other genin, taking in their azure appearances. Even Sakura's hair looked more blue than pink.
"I can't believe they were placing bets on us…" Mai wiped off as much of the excess paint as she could but her clothes were still now all different shades of indigo. "At least the wall is painted. They can't say we didn't finish the mission." Mai grinned as she stood up straight. That's when we noticed our audience was still watching.
"Pinky, Dumbass, Dipshit; what the hell are you looking at?" My eyes narrowed at my fellow genin.
"Two idiots who made me fall in a pool of paint." Sasuke couldn't help but let that smirk come across his face.
"You both look so funny! You're all blue!" Naruto was pointing at us, his head thrown back with laughter.
"You're just as blue." Mai's tone was low because it was obvious; well obvious to everyone except Naruto. I sighed heavily as I wiped more paint out of my hair.
"We didn't make you fall in. Why did you come back here anyways?"
"We heard screaming and cheering," Sakura gestured to the chuunin around her, "and wanted to see what was going on. Then we slipped in the pool here." Sakura twisted the edged of her dress to wring out as much paint as possible.
"Meaning, it's completely your own faults for falling in the paint." Mai wasn't paying much attention to them anymore; her attention was at the moment drawn towards nursing a cut on her arm, most likely from the fight only minutes ago. Naruto crossed his arms and sneered at me.
"Well maybe if you had been acting like real shinobi, maybe you would have been finishing your mission instead of fighting with the paint." Mai and I turned to glower at Naruto, our attention brought up by the condescending tone of his voice.
"What did you say Naruto?" Mai's voice had defined threat lining it, and my glare only made the threat more serious.
"Um…" A sweat drop appeared on Naruto's forehead and he was fumbling his words before darting off and away from the yard. I shook my head at Naruto.
I continued wringing out paint that was obviously not coming off any more than it already had. The cracking paint on my skin just wouldn't let me be. Even though it shouldn't have bothered me too much, it did because it was there yet I could affect it in any way until I took a shower to get it off.
"So how about Ichiraku's?" Mai's cerulean eyes were reflecting the fatigue from the mission. Mai was cut off by Genma, who had placed an authoritative yet light hand on her shoulder.
"Not so fast. I still have a door that's hanging off its hinges." Mai laughed nervously as she grinned at her sensei. "Come on Mai. You can meet Kyoko at Ichiraku's later." With a grimace, Mai was trudged off towards the back door. Rika swept in behind their absence with Hiro next to her.
"Come on! We've got training!" Rika beamed at each of us brightly which only earned her two questioning and weary scowls. Directing her words towards me, "Iruka needs to speak with you about training tonight, Kyoko." I nodded once. Kakashi was attempting to reassemble his students to leave for another mission.
"Where'd Naruto go?" Kakashi swept his glance around the yard many times, hoping to see his orange-clad student.
Rika then added incentive to finish with training early, "After training, we can meet up with Mai and Genma for ramen at Ichiraku's." Suddenly, Naruto's blonde head popped around the corner.
"RAMEN!"
Naruto Characters © Masashi Kishimoto
To Ease the Pain, Kyoko Tanaka, Mai Saito, Hiro Kimura, Rika Hatake, and this storyline © Me/Kikyo-chan/Midnight Writer 13