Building bridges metaphorically but also literally

Repair the Bridge

Mission Details:

Yosei awoke in his bare apartment, feeling serene in it’s minimalism. Right now, it was hardly adorned with anything except for the music box on the nightstand which he’d received for his birthday a week ago, and the ornate golden clock he had surreptitiously liberated from the home of a wealthy couple as he retrieved their tax money during a mission. Ordinarily, Yosei held nothing but disdain for minimalist aesthetic, considering less to be a bore rather than more, but for the moment it was better to have nothing than the wrong things, and he hadn’t yet earned enough keep as a genin to afford turning his interior design goals into a reality. Now, if only he could make Chuunin sooner he might have a salary that could afford the antique partitions and baroque light fixtures he’d had his eye on…

After feeding the birds on his balcony and grabbing a few apricots for lunch, he closed the apartment door behind him and ran downstairs. He made his way to the Mizukage’s office so he could get an assignment from mission dispatch, waving hello to Ms Mimori as he passed her tea shop and old man Tendo as he crossed the street he lived on.

A small crowd awaited Yosei in front of the clerk’s desk at the Genin office. They all looked like recent academy graduates to Yosei, young and eager to get started in their first missions. It looked as though there was some kind of disruption as the younger genin seemed put out, some of them antsy and tapping their feet.

“I’m sorry, there’s not much I can do,” The desk clerk said. “NEXT?”

At the back of the crowd, Yosei raised his hand tentatively.

“I think that would be me, ma’am.”

“Oh, it’s you. Hisori, right? You’ve been doing a lot lately, I see. Well as it happens we ran out of D and E rank missions today. I was expecting to receive more from the courier this morning, but he never arrived.”

“That seems unusual,” Yosei remarked. “It’s not as if there wasn’t any mail today right?”

“If that’s the case, it’s the first time in my twelve years of working here.”

Just then, the doors burst open and a dishevelled looking woman in the courier’s uniform ran in. Her face was red, with hair stuck to the sweat of it, and she tried to get words out between heavy, panting breaths.

“Sorry I’m late! The southport bridge is down, finally got knocked out by last night’s storm.”

The clerk put her head in her hands for a moment.

“How many applications for maintenance did I see come through this office for that rickey old - do they have any idea the logistical problems this is going to - Ugh. Okay. Give me what you have, at least.”

“Southport bridge has been dilapidated for years,” Yosei said. “How long will it take to fix it?”

“Knowing village contractors, probably weeks. Getting around is going to be a pain for a while.”

Yosei looked around at all the grumpy genin. A few of them received E-rank assignments that the courier had brought with her, but the majority were still there, held up.

“We can handle a simple repair job,” Yosei said. “If you let me lead the mission -”

“How come he gets to lead the mission?” Cried out a squeaky voiced teen.

“Seniority gets priority, sorry kids,” The clerk said sharply. “Okay Hisori, you can take these five here with you. The rest of you can report back to your squads for missions or wait around here to see if any more come in.”

Yosei smiled and clapped his hands expectantly at the Genin before strutting out the door. He hadn’t been put in a position of authority over other Ninja before. He had a feeling he was going to enjoy this.

His entourage in tow, Yosei made his way out to the Southport bridge, where construction supplies had already been sent. As the six of them set about organizing the tools they would need, Yosei appraised the bunch he’d been given.

Seiki, a white haired girl with a bandage on her nose, supposedly a distant relation to the Yuki clan. If she kept at her training she might be able to develop ice release. Ryuho, a red-haired boy with all kinds of cuts and scrapes on his body who looked like he spent too much time training. Zaki, a short kid with a bowl cut and glasses who had squeakily argued against Yosei being given the leadership role. Renji, a girl with purple hair who’d kept her hood up and her earphones in the entire time without once looking at Yosei. Finally there was Chousei, a sweet-looking girl with pink hair who was always doodling in her notebook.

None of them seemed happy with the task they had been assigned, to say nothing of how they felt about the leader they’d been assigned.

“I don’t have to listen to you!” Zaki said when Yosei told him to unload the two by fours. “You’re just a genin like us. And you dress weird.”

Chousei struggled to lift a large plank of wood by herself. Turning to Ryuho, he instructed the boy to help her.

“I’m not helping her, I’ve got enough to deal with over here,” He whined as he struggled to tear open a plastic bag of screws.

The plank slipped out of Chousei’s grasp and bonked her on the head. She fell down and started to tear up. Renji stomped over to Ryuho.
“You should have helped her!”

“She’s a ninja too, she’s supposed to be able to handle a plank of wood! And you could have helped her if you didn’t have these stupid earphones in all the time!”

He grabbed the cord and snatched one out of Renji’s ear. Judging by her facial expression, Yosei could tell she was seeing red. In an instant, he was standing between them, catching Renji’s hand.

“We don’t fight each other. That’s not the way of the Shinobi.” He said calmly.

“Duh! It is in the Bloody Mist!” Ryuho spat, turning around to continue his job. Her cheeks red, Renji stuffed the earphone back into her ear and turned around as well.

Yosei sighed. This would take some doing. Eventually he corralled them all into doing their jobs and they set out onto the bridge to begin fixing it. There was some superficial damage to the railing, but more significant structural damage to the supports and a huge chunk was missing right in the middle. On either side of the gap, the ends of the bridge were dipping towards each other, threatening to collapse the entire structure. They began connecting the two sides with beams, but Zaki and Ryuho got into an argument while standing on them and drew their kunai on each other.

Yosei sighed again. He was doing that a lot today. He dashed along the beams and grabbed both kids by the scruff of their neck, dumping them safely on the other side. He realized that these young Genin had internalized too much of the Mist’s brutal culture and had begun to idolize things that didn’t even happen during their lifetime. All this infighting was making the work drag on, and at this point they’d take longer than the contractors would have.

He was going to have to teach them something here.

“Alright you two, you want to handle this mission like true Kiri shinobi?”

“Duh!” Ryuho yelled. “But you don’t even know what that means! A true mist ninja wouldn’t wait around for the weaker ones to catch up. You’re supposed to cut them loose and accomplish the mission!”

“Hmm,” Yosei said, putting a hand to his chin. “Perhaps you’re right. Do you mean like this?”

With a fluid motion, he extended his fan and performed a wind release jutsu that tossed Zaki off the side of the bridge.

Ryuho stood there shocked for a second, before diving after him.

“Or maybe more like this?”

Another blast of wind knocked Chousei off.

“What the hell?!” Renji yelled.

She and Seiki jumped into action. Renji took only a second to attach a Kunai to some wire and toss it after Ryuho. It seemed she could channel the wire with her chakra to make it wind around her fellow Genin, securely tightening around his waist.

On the other side of the bridge, Seiki grabbed some loose cabling from the destroyed section and kicked off against the side with chakra-infused soles of her feet, speeding after Chousei. She and Ryuho made it to their falling comrades at the same time, reaching out to grab them simultaneously. Both found only air. The images of Zaki and Chousei vanished. Yosei helped pull all the Genin back up to solid ground.

“Of course I never really knocked them off,” He winked. “I just wanted to see how you’d react to that brutality you talked so highly of in real life.”

Ryuho looked at Renji sheepishly. “You tried to save me? Don’t you hate me?”

Renji took her earphones out wound them around her fingers, looking off to the side.

“I dunno. Why did you save Zaki? No one likes him.”

“Hey!” Zaki squeaked. “That’s not true. But… thanks Ryuho. It was kind of funny watching you dive after me like that.”

Chousei ran over to Seiki and wrapped up in a tight hug that made both their eyes water.

“It’s true that fighting and killing your peers can make you stronger,” Yosei said. “But helping each other makes everyone stronger. Do you want there to be one strong ninja defending our country, or a whole village of them?”

The genin looked at each other.
“But wait,” Ryuho said. “What if Renji didn’t try to save me?”

A bead of sweat rolled down Yosei’s temple. In truth, he only meant to make them think their friends had fallen off, he didn’t really anticipate any of them endangering themselves to rescue the others.

“Ahh… I would have simply used my S-rank jutsu to carry you to safety. It’s a simple thing for a shinobi as experienced as me.”

The kids oohed and aahed, then Yosei got them back to work at last. With renewed camaraderie, they got the task finished by dusk and the bridge was safe to use again. At the end of the day, as the Sun was setting, Seiki came up to Yosei, having been quiet for most of the day.

“You don’t really have any S-rank jutsu, do you?”

Yosei smiled wisely and winked. Seiki raised an eyebrow and folded her arms. It was probably time to give up the act.

“Please don’t tell anyone about this.”

She mimed locking her mouth and throwing away the key before they all ran off to collect their rewards.

WC: 1808
TWC: 1808

[Exit.]
[Claims:
1808 x 2 = 3616 Words
1,000 x 2 = 2,000 Ryo
2 x 2 = 4 AP
Using 2034 words to finish learning Suffocation by Water
Using 1500 words for mastery of Hidden Mist Technique (halving hand signs)]

Approvamundo!