Hidden Grove (Private, Solo)

"Ho ho ho!" came the familiar voice of the Hollykage from Asahi's dreams. Or what he thought was a dream. "It is I, the Hollykage. I require your assistance in another task."

The ninja pinched himself. Then tried willing himself to wake up. It was no use. I'm not dreaming, and the other night wasn't a dream either, then. What is with this guy? he thought to himself. Is this stuff really so important? It seemed so silly to him, yet his wallet was much fuller and he felt stronger after finishing the last task for the Hollykage. Perhaps this isn't so bad. But there must be more to this man than he is letting on.

"What is it you need?" Asahi said aloud in his apartment. It was so quiet after that you could hear a pin drop.

"In the Land of Iron there lies a mysterious grove. Yet its location is hidden even to me. I require that you find this place for me. I am currently tied up with other Christmas activities or I would have done it myself. You did a great job last time so I know you are the right person for this job. It'll be just ever so slightly more difficult than the last one."

"Are you kidding me?" Asahi laughed and took a seat on his bed. "This is a whole other thing compared to handing out cookies, which by the way what was in those things?" The feelings of Christmas and revelry jumped back into his memory. It gave him the creeps. He still had no clue what the "Holiday Season" meant.

"Oh ho ho ho," the jolly Kage chuckled. "It's not nearly as much trouble as you think it is. Not with me on your side. What do you say?"

"Oh yeah, no trouble at all," he shook his head. "It's just so simple for me to leave Sunagakure and travel to the Land of Iron. And then when I get there I still have to find your hidden grove." Asahi gave a long, tired sigh. This Hollykage was getting on his nerves. "It may be easy for your voice to just appear inside my head and give orders but it's not as simple as you make them out to be."

"But if it were as simple as I thought it was, you would do it. Right?" the Hollykage's voice had gotten more serious then, gone was his usual laughter and jolly manner.

"Well sure," Asahi stood up and paced around his room. "If I could just blink and be there then sure. Why not give me a guide to the hidden grove while you are at it?" He laughed and stopped to look out his window. Beyond the dome he could see the harsh desert of the Wind Country. "Not so talkative now, huh? Find some other fool to string along. I'll take no part in-"

Everything was bright all at once. His eyes hurt and he shut them quickly in response. The world around him seemed to shift and warp. It seemed like he was being displaced and taken from Sunagakure. The wood floor beneath his feet felt softer. The very air around him was cold and he brought his arms up around his chest in response. Asahi slowly opened his eyes to see what had occurred. The view of his room that had him looking out of the deserts of Suna was replaced with a harsh and bleak environment. The shades of brown were now just white. It was snowing gently. The rapid shift in temperatures made him feel sick.

"That bastard..." he uttered softly while looking around. He appeared to be in some sort of forest but it was covered in white. His feet were a few inches deep into the snow. The wind howled through the trees sounding like some sort of banshee. He shivered in reaction to the temperature. He continued to look around but could distinguish no features. It's all snow, he thought. How am I to find this damned place?

"Hey don't just leave me here! How am I going to locate the grove like this?" Asahi looked up to the sky peeking through the trees, half expecting to see an imagine of the Hollykage materialize before him. He waited with bated breath. Five seconds, ten seconds. Twenty seconds. No response ever came. He sighed and started rubbing his arms to get the blood flowing. "Just great." This task felt hopeless. The cookies he could do, and he did successfully, but this was an entirely different matter. He couldn't recognize any details or features around him. "I'll be lucky to get out of here alive, let alone find the grove."

"Hey! Listen!" a voice came, child like and high pitched.

Asahi spun on his heels in reaction to the voice calling to him. The snow crunched and crumbled under his feet. A glowing, translucent orb around the size of a fist bobbed up and down mere feet from his face. The sphere had a slight orange tint to it. Inside of it the ninja though he could see a symbol representing fire. The orb began to glow brighter and brighter the moment he recognized it. The familiar flash of light that the Hollykage was famous for happened again. This time it was quicker and the ninja did not need to shield his eyes from the brightness.

"What was that-" before Asahi could finish his sentence he knew the answer. A soothing heat coursed through his body. All the way from his toes to his head was a glowing warmth that seemed supernatural. The orb then returned to its normal appearance. Whatever had been done to him he was thankful for. Now that the cold was no longer an issue he could think easier and death didn't seem like so near a possibility as it did a minute ago. Good orb, he thought to himself.

The sphere bobbed up and down again and began to float off before his eyes. "Over here!' the child like voice came again.

"So I guess you're my guide, huh?" Asahi thought. He did say something to the Hollykage about having a guide. Maybe he's not as bad as I thought. "Well, lead the way then, little guy. I'll follow."

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1036 WC

And so Asahi began to wander through the snowy forest as he followed a magical floating ball. With it's magic energy warming him the journey wasn't near as bad as he thought it would be. The forest was rather beautiful just as it was without having to experience the cold. And we haven't even got to the grove yet, he thought. He wondered what the location would look like and why it was so important to the Hollykage. The orb was careful not to get too far ahead of him, always pausing to wait for the ninja to catch up before moving further and further into the snowy forest.

Eventually their travels brought the pair to the side of a great snowy cliff jutting out through the trees above. Asahi took a long stare at it from base to peak. He estimated that it was nearly fifty feet in height. But that wasn't the difficult part. It cut out in different directions and whatever handholds one would be able to find on it would be treacherous. The snow that covered it made it even more dangerous. One wrong move or just a bit of bad luck and that would be it for whoever was brave enough, or foolish enough to attempt to climb it.

"Well, looks like this is the end of our journey, little guy," he said to the orb. "There's no way I can get up that."

The floating sphere bobbed up and down as if to say "but this is the only way."

"Can't we go around it? Or maybe you can just get the Hollykage to transport me home. We tried, but there is just no way."

"Up! Up! Up!" the orb took off towards the peak of the cliff. It soon disappeared from view as it's voice trailed off into the distance.

"Damn..." Asahi gave another sigh and resigned himself to his fate.

He put one hand and one foot after another and began to scale the mountain. The grips he found against the stone threatened to give way at any moment. I'll need to do this as fast as possible, he thought. This doesn't feel safe. I'm like to fall and bring the entire mountain down upon me. The Genin began concentrating chakra into his feet to help him cling to the cliff. The Surface Climbing Technique did much to alleviate the strain on his hands and allowed him to put more weight on his feet despite how uneven the surface was. With that jutsu he made quicker work of the mountain side than expected. Before long he had reached the top. The ninja bent over to catch his breath. When he looked up the orb bounced up and down and excitement and continued on the path to lead him to their destination without a moment's rest.

Their journey continued now at the top of the cliff. There were no trees up here, but that was about the only thing Asahi was able to note about the new path. It was still covered in snow and were it not for the glowing orb guiding the way he would have been lost as soon as he blinked. They walked straight into the white for what seemed, to the ninja anyways, to have been hours. He lost all sense of time and purpose and just trudged forward, losing faith in his mission with each step. They would never reach the grove, he thought. The Hollykage had sent him on a fool's errand with this magical ball to lead him astray.

His head was down in dark thought when the orb began to speak again. "Look! Look!" it had called out to him. He lifted his head from the ground to see what they had found. Before the pair was a long frozen wall of ice. Asahi figured it must have been a waterfall at one point but was now frozen over. It appeared as if there was something beyond the frozen water but it was too thick to see what, if anything, was there. I can't get passed this, he thought. As if reacting to his inner thought's the orb screeched and passed through the frozen waterfall as if it were not even there. "Inside! Inside!" the voice trailed off again sounding like the orb had fallen into a deep tunnel.

Asahi gave the ice a few half hearted punches. It was no use. The ice was too thick and he wasn't strong enough to break through it. I cannot follow anymore, he thought uselessly. This is where my journey ends. He was about to give up when a thought jumped into his head. No, it's not over. I have a new trick, one that I haven't had the opportunity to use until now. Asahi grinned and with that he jumped backwards so he was a few meters away from the ice structure. I just hope this works, he thought. I hope I still have enough energy to get through this barrier.

His hands made the necessary hand seals required to cast the jutsu. Snake, then Ram and ending off with the Tiger seal. He brought his hand up to his face and linked his index finger and thumb over his mouth. There was a hole through his hand there were he would blow through to release the flames. Asahi willed all the chakra in his body to form at his mouth. He could feel the fire elemental energy coursing through him as it coalesced into a single point. He took a deep breath in when that was finished, then all at once released it at his target. The energy exploded out of him.

"Great Fireball Jutsu!" he screamed. Flames burned passed his fingers and towards the waterfall. He held onto the jutsu and kept concentrating as much energy as he could. The flames poured out in a cone shape and started to melt the ice before him. Asahi could feel his body weakening from the effort but he kept it up. More and more he drained his energy reserves yet still he ordered every last inch of chakra within him to fight. He pictured himself standing inside an erupting volcano as lava rained down on some poor village that was built too close. Water sprayed at him and snow melted in an arc on either side of his body.

He fell to a knee as the last of his energy left him. All that remained was enough to stay awake and hopefully finish his mission. He looked up to see the efforts of his jutsu. A meter long hole was blasted through the ice, just large enough for him to fit his body through. He did so with what little will he had left. On the other side the orb was waiting and picked up moving down the tunnel as he limped after it. They walked in almost total darkness, illuminated by the soft red flame of the magic ball. There was snow beneath his feet at first but the further in he walked the more it faded until he was just walking on stone. The air around him seemed to warm with every step. Soon grass began to appear on the walkway, giving a much pleasant sound than the crunching of sound he had to endure for the past few hours. Finally they came out to light on the other side.

Devoid of snow and frost was the Hidden Grove. All shades of green and all manner of plants littered the enclosure before them. There was a small stream flowing through the center of the grove and animals feed from it, oblivious to his intrusion. Asahi had never seen a sight like this in his life. He had never seen such beautiful creatures. He couldn't name half the animals before him, and of those he could he had never seen them in those colors. The sky was a beautiful blue instead of the bleak greys and whites in the forest. He was glad to have finally made it. It was worth the effort and the Hollykage would be pleased that he had found the place for him. I can see why he wanted this grove found, he thought with a smile. Exhaustion overtook him and he fell to soft grass below with his mission complete. He fell asleep and when he awoke again he was back in his apartment in Sunagakure, evidently having been teleported home by the Hollykage.

"Well," he said with a tired yawn. "That wasn't so bad."

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1411 WC
2447 Thread WC

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C-Ranked Mission Complete, 2447 WC + 3000 Ryo and 30 AP

Spending 1426 WC to complete Eight Inner Gates (Jutsu, Gate of Opening) at 2500/2500 WC. Prior progress of that Jutsu was at 1074/2500 WC and can be found here.

Spending 1000 WC to complete Leaf Rising Wind at 1000/1000 WC. Discarding last 21 WC.

+3 to Vigor, +1 to Chakra, +10 to Speed, +10 to Strength

Approved