TFW Your Stepmom Loses Her Cat (Missions/Solo)

Mission 1:

Mission 2:

Mission 3:

As it stands, sometimes you just... get a slow day, as a genin.

This was expected, of course. E-Rank missions existed for a reason — Baruga specifically remmebers her father explaining to her as a kid, that the E-Rank was actually a more modern concept in Lightning Country. Mostly, Kumogakure was very well-known as a village of psychotic, cold-blooded killers, which was great for intimidation and efficiency, but not so good in terms of importation and outsourcing. In short, Kumogakure (and many other villages) were a PR nightmare before E-Ranks.

With the advent of the E-Rank, people realized that a large bulk of the ninja population (or, at least, the lower ranks full of kids and schmucks) were humans just like then. It masked the actual horrors of infiltration, assassination, and outright warfare, and there really were some psychotic, cold-blooded killers among the chunin and jonin, but at least it was offset by the memory of some armed thirteen year old helping the local geriatric with her groceries, among other things.

That being said...

Baruga didn't exactly like E-Ranks. Sure, she appreciated not dying like the rest of them, and it was telling that she got the luxury of having peaceful missions and all, but it didn't change the fact that they were chores at best, disheartening busy work at worst. Now, she wasn't like her siblings who bellyached up and down about having to do some form of labor at all — she got that beat out of her within her first week at the Academy — but not even the most militaristic little genin soldier would enjoy this sort of thing, really.

Well, unless they were bootlickers, but were bootlickers really human? Wait, don't answer that, she knew she was in in Kumogakure and they had a different way of doing things.

In any case, Baruga had to pay rent, so she took whichever E-Ranks she could knock out in a day or so. First off was helping Thunderpeak Campus try to sort out their absolutely horrendous sorting system, yet again. As amazing and awe-inspiring as the library was, the absolute volume of the archives meant that it was a weekly task for whichever genins needed cash to help put books away, or, god forbid, help with the cleanup and insurance once some asshole got done having they tantrum in whichever book aisle they had a breakdown in.

Horrible. Honestly, Baruga wished that there was some sort of shinobi therapist available, but given that would likely require some sort of genjutsu and these ninja seemed to have a hair-trigger reaction to genjutsu of any type, that was out of the question. Besides, she knew how prideful these people were. But, she digressed.

Holding back a sigh, Baruga sorted out books and scrolls in the wing of the library she was assigned to, taking it slow and steady. She much preferred books as a medium, because with scrolls, you had to rotate them to find the title and author, or worse, you'd have to unfurl them a bit and then remember their title and author. Even with her memory, it was a hassle. That being said, at least she was in the saucy part of the library, so it wasn't too much of a bore to sort through the entire shelf and move onto the next.

There was one incident as she worked where two idiot genin started getting into a yelling match over... relationship issues? She overhead some claims to a girl they had a crush on, and from eavesdropping on them, she figured they thought they had a right to her, and were planning on fighting each other for the right to court her.

At this, Baruga got genuinely annoyed.

"Hey, you peasants! Perhaps you should consider that your mystery girl has her own opinions and desires and you should respect her as a person and not an object. Or better yet, you peons, go scream somewhere else — this is a library."

At that, they finally got off their high horses and left, and Baruga was able to finish up the last bit of her job without much issue. A part of her wished she could see some of the more obscure parts of Thunderpeak Campus, but alas, that wasn't her job for today. Maybe next time. She's not sure why, but she felt like she'd do pretty well at an institution of learning... well, perhaps in some other universe, where she wasn't dedicated to her occupation as a kunoichi.

---

Clocking out of that particular mission, Baruga got a quick lunch in before going to her next destination. For this mission, she had a pretty simple strategy that usually worked with these sorts of yakuza-type missions, which worked fairly well with her chakra control and easy ability to come across as a civilian compared to her peers.

That was to say: use the Transformation Technique to turn into a non-descript, run-of-the-mill customer, get a foot massage, and then investigate when nobody was looking.

Now, before anyone said anything, Baruga would argue that laziness was the committed companion of genius, in which case, she was easily clocking in over 300 IQ. ...So yes, she was being lazy, but hey, if it worked, right? All she had to do was pay them for a foot massage and then detect if anything was awry.

The thing about this place, though, was that it was Three Stooges levels of awry. As in, Baruga was just disappointed by how easy it was.

First off, when she walked in and took a seat, she could clearly smell the disinfectant coming from the bathroom area. Which wasn't usually the biggest red flag, sure, bathrooms had some strong disinfectant at times — but she'd smelled morgues and funerals before, from how many cousin-of-a-noble-name functions she had to attend, and there was a very specific tinge of preservative mixed in. So, she had her confirmation and her location.

Getting her foot massage (which, by the way, was incredibly subpar compared to the royal foot massages she'd get when she lived with her father), she asked about some fairly innocuous questions about how the massage affected her chakra (which, she checked, it didn't), and while they spouted about the ancient teachings and the ancient monk techniques of activating the tenketsu through the feet, Baruga eyed an incredibly buff man with an eyepatch accompanying a scrawnier man with a missing ring finger entering the 'EMPLOYEES ONLY' section near the women's bathroom. Both of whom had janitor clothing on, and absolutely no cloths, rags, or any cleaning supplies.

The real clencher was the fact that this place was about the size of a small apartment, so the idea that it needed two janitors was hilarious, really.

Just then, though, right as her foot massage was ending, she spotted a court messenger jogging through the streets, and given he was wearing her family's insignia and colors, she figured this was a message for her, and they were probably running themselves ragged looking for her. Having paid for her visit, Baruga politely asked three genial questions about her masseuse's day, then asked for his actual name, got it (without the fool realizing — she loved that particular party trick), and promptly left.

Catching up to the messenger and dropping her Transformation, Baruga tapped him on the shoulder to figure out what the commotion was about.

"Ah, Ryoin —"

"Baruga. Baruga-sama."

"S-Sorry! I apologize dearly!"

"Shut it and give me the news, newbie."

"Ah, you see, your stepmother's cat, again..."

Baruga growled in frustration as the messenger recounted the tale of the Daimyo's wife, again, coming to the village, again, and losing her cat, again. Ugh, c'mon! She swore that old hag was trying to catch her slipping up one of these days, really. And every time, she'd ask Baruga to take care of it if the genin team assigned didn't catch it within the first hour of the mission scroll touching the administration desk...

Rich people, Baruga knew, were just that way. After all, she should know, she was rich too.

Well, no use whining. Baruga dismissed the messenger and shrugged. Well, she had already taken this mission, early, she just thought she could put it off for now. Guess not.

Luckily, the cat liked Baruga more than it liked her stepmom — probably because her stepmom was doing something wrong at home, like constantly putting clothes on it. About fifteen minutes into looking for the cat, a familiar jingle and yowl alerted Baruga to its presence.

Surface Walking up the tree it was stuck in, Baruga eased the cat into her embrace, where the Daimyo's daughter promptly started pet-momming over it and checking it for anything wrong.

"Oh, poor baby! Did the old hag mistreat you again? Yeah, she did. I'm here now, though. There, there..."

The other genin team finally caught up with her — the ones she suspected was the auxilliary team that her stepmother had hired. With a shrug, Baruga dismissed them as she returned to administration to turn in her missions.

---

WC: 1507
Claims:
— 3000 Ryo from 3 E-Rank Missions + 200 Ryo from Genin Rank
— 15 AP
— +15 Stats (To Chakra)
— 1000+500 towards Summoning: Rising Summon Pillar (C-Rank + B-Rank) (1500 Total)

Approved!