Now, he found himself wishing that he'd never gotten close before. Weren't pigs supposed to be naturally clean creatures? Hadn't he heard that somewhere before?
Well, whoever next told him that was going to suffer.
Pigs turned out to be:
a) mean tempered
b) smelling of garbage
c) able to move and react surprisingly quickly when an opportunity for attack passed their way.
"AIEEEE!" screamed Sakura as a pig noticed she was precariously perched on a rail and then managed to ram a post connected to the rail.
"GAKKK!" yelled Sakura as she fell into the area she'd been trying to avoid and had stuff (that Sasuke truly didn't want to identify) splatter all over her.
Sasuke casually threw some kunai on wires across the path of the pig that had been about to take advantage of Sakura's currently being within snout-reach.
"Ewwwww," said Sakura after scrambling up to the top post again. "Where's Naruto anyway?"
"Still on border patrol," said Kakashi from where he was reading his book.
Sasuke blinked. "'Border Patrol'? Naruto's mission is..."
"Yes, he's patrolling the border with Kawa No Kuni," admitted Kakashi.
Sasuke frowned and considered putting several kunai in one of these precious "prize winning pigs" and making tonkatsu ramen out of it.
"It's a C-Rank but it's usually mind-numbing boredom," said Kakashi with a small shrug.
Naruto whirled his kanabo around, using it to block a sword-strike and then deliver a harsh jab into the armored chest of his attacker.
The swordsman went flying and managed to knock three of his fellows out in his short flight.
"Miya-Miya!" said Toraji. "Go back to back with Tama-chan."
Naruto grabbed the ring at the end of kanabo and began spinning it around as enemies tried to swarm him.
Enemies began flying in all directions.
"Watch out!" called out Toraji, pointing up the hill.
Naruto grimaced as he noticed some bandits had gotten up there and were rolling boulders down at them.
Sasuke grimaced as he finally finished fixing the fence. Long, tedious, and not enjoying this series of developments at all.
As Sasuke glared at the large pigs on the other side of the enclosure, he wondered if being bored with things meant that Naruto was better off.
Sakura walked up to him. "Remind me to be nicer to Naruto in the future."
Sasuke raised an eyebrow at that. Well, that and Sakura's appearance. "Why?"
"Because he's the one who usually falls in the pig pen, trips over buckets of paint, gets dragged into the minefield..." Sakura let her voice trail off.
"And now all of that's happening to you," concluded Sasuke.
"It's a lot funnier when it's happening to someone else," said Sakura, limping off. "Bath. Need bath."
"Not going to stick around to turn the mission in?" asked Kakashi as she passed him.
Sakura stopped and turned around, shuffling closer.
Kakashi sniffed. "Point taken. Go have a nice bath."
"Thank you," said Sakura as she resumed course homeward.
Naruto put the weapon to the side, letting the wood he'd laid it on groan from the sudden weight.
"So, you got to use it today against those bandits," said Toraji. "Getting used to it?"
"G-g-getting used to it?!" asked Miya-Miya. "Did you see what he did with THAT?"
"Uhm," hedged Naruto.
"That. Was. Totally. Cool!" exclaimed Miya-Miya. "They came at us with that orecart and you batted it out of the ballpark! When they rolled boulders down at us, you batted them back at 'em! I bet they're STILL running!"
Naruto relaxed a bit. "Yeah."
"Did you see their expressions when they saw you running towards them with that thing?" asked Miya-Miya, a dark aura seeming to form around her. "Damn. And they had you painting fences and walking dogs I bet."
"Well, and cleaning sewers, and dredging rivers, and..." Naruto twitched a bit at the memory.
"Hey, those are all standard D-Rank missions," complained Toraji. "Perfectly normal. I don't like them either, but that's what we've got to do. You're supposed to work on teamwork, endurance and chakra control, while the missions get you enough money to pay your own bills. Since D-Ranks are within the village, you don't face the amount of danger in C or above missions."
"I almost drowned in raw sewage," stated Naruto.
Toraji considered that for a few seconds. "Okay, we can all admit D-Rank missions suck."
"I'd almost prefer it," mumbled Naruto.
"First kill?" asked Toraji.
"Yeah," said Naruto.
"Did you see the kids in the cages?" asked Miya-Miya, interrupting whatever the special jonin had been about to say..
"Yeah," said Naruto.
"You don't get it, do you?" asked Miya-Miya. "Those were kidnapped kids, all of them girls. You want to guess what those guys were going to do with them?"
"Huh?" asked Naruto, lifting his head up to look at the swordswoman. "What do you... wait. But they're..."
Tamachan got up and walked over to Naruto, then looked up into his face. "You were a fist of justice today. There is nothing to be ashamed of."
Naruto blinked, looked over to where the kids that had been freed were gathered, back to Miya-Miya, down at Tama-chan, and then finally over at Toraji.
"Besides," said Toraji softly, "you didn't kill that many."
"What? How?" asked Naruto.
"That club," said Toraji. "Your kanabo. When it was glowing with chakra, the blows you struck with it still slammed people around - but they weren't as injured as they should have been."
"The guilty were the most smitten," said Tama-chan in her usual soft voice but somehow more intense than usual. Maybe it was her love of a 'super sentai' series that was showing. "Your weapon is one that punishes the guilty in accordance with their crimes. I therefore name it.Kougiken, Bane Of The Wicked."
Everyone blinked at the sudden gust of wind that whipped through the camp.
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(Posted Sun, 17 Jul 2011 16:32)
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