How time makes fools of us all

Dracoso sat cross-legged on the floor of the lovely elderly couple's dining room. He was tapping one finger softly on his knee as he looked at them. The two had been very gracious, receiving him with a meal and letting him know all about the tools he could use the handle their garden. "-and the rake should be in the shed towards the back of the yard. Is there anything else you need for this mission?" the man asked of him.

Dracoso gave a slow sigh before replying with a soft expression on his face, "I don't think I need any other tools to handle this. The only thing I need is the answer to one question. Just how did it get this way?" 

After returning from his early patrol duty, Dracoso had picked up this mission in the hopes to learn a bit more about nature. He thought the couple might have some experience handling fruits or herbs and could offer him advice. With his lessons on Iryojutsu, he was hoping to make medicines in the future. The mission scroll detailed that the plants had become quite a problem for their neighbors and was beginning to spread out into other yards. What he didn't expect, was that the plants had free run of the majority of the property.

When he first arrived, Dracoso couldn't quite locate the home of the couple he was meant to meet. Vines had crawled up over the wood fence surrounding the yard and could be seen as a thick sheet at the very top of the greenery. Wild tomatoes and strawberries seemed to be hanging off the vines and even growing out the ground at random. From there, the yard itself seemed almost a solid wall of bushes that had lost their shape long ago. These sat alongside strips of what might be wheat at first glance which turned out to be dying corn. 

The only thing that told him that he was at a home was the tunnel that seemed to be carved through the wall of nature leading up to a door. He cautiously entered the tunnel and knocked on the door before being rapidly greeted in by the couple. They seemed very eager for him to start his work. While the wife provided them with a table full of food, the husband began describing all the tools and items available. This also included suggestions on the fastest way to handle each of the plants. By the time he was done, the food had been eaten. They glanced at one another, trying to find the words to answer his question.

The wife started, "we left for a few weeks to help our son in another town. Our gardener, who usually stops by every few days, moved suddenly without us knowing. Sadly, our son needed more help than we thought and a few weeks became a few months." Her husband took up the story, "When we came back, it was pretty much overrun and we wanted to put aside some time to clean it up. Sadly, we were so busy handling our other responsibilities that we never got a chance to handle it. By the time we wanted to deal with it, we were afraid we might hurt ourselves trying."

Dracoso listened and nodded along softly, keeping an eye on the couple. He asked, "so have you asked anyone else for help?" The wife nodded and said, "Well, yes we have. The thing is that people seem to struggle with keeping it from growing back." Dracoso raised an eyebrow as he asked, "are you saying it just regrows back this way over time?" 

"Not so much over time. More like... if you cut it down, it grows right back as it was. Right before your eyes," the elderly man responded. Dracoso looked at him incredulously. He gave a soft chuckle, "are you saying that your garden is growing itself right back up?" The man looked frustrated as Dracoso chuckled, "if you don't believe us, go try it yourself." Dracoso gave them a shrug and stood up. He thanked them again for the meal before heading to the door to step outside.

As he stepped into the tunnel, he pulled out a kunai and reached up, cutting away at the vines growing at the top of the doorframe. As he pulled the piece of vine down, a soft creaking noise resounded in the tunnel. Dracoso watched as the cut section of vine slowly extended itself out, growing across the empty gap, before layering over the other end of the cut vine. It took a moment before Dracoso realized that it had healed the wound, but not completely. It looked almost as if it had tried to copy the earlier vine, but this one was thinner.

The light fell down on him as he stepped out of the tunnel and looked over the yard from the outside. He shook his head, wondering just how long this might take. A few of the neighbors nearby saw him staring and waved. He returned the gesture and spoke with a few of them about the plants. Once finished, he walked up to the wall and decided to climb to the top with a bit of chakra walking. The trip up was easy enough and it let him see several of the longer vines which had begun to reach over the top of the house. Dracoso figured that he might as well start from the top and do as much as he could with each motion. 

With his Kunai, Dracoso began to cut along the base of the vines beginning at the top of the box of green out front. As he pulled away each vine, they regrew only a few inches up and stopped. he continued around the house, finding that the farther from the front of the house he went, the less regrew from each vine. he decided to test just how much healing could occur. Drawing on the water from his hip flask, a sword formed in his hands with a sharp blade. He drove the tip straight down into the top of the greenery. He slowly carved away at the top, leaving a long line which began to slowly recover behind him. He looked back and quickly turned the blade to cut out a circle of the greenery. 

It was tough work, but his chakra made the blade strong and sharp enough to slice through the thick layer of vines. As he cut away pieces of it, he tossed large chunks of the material off into the road, trying to pile it up out of the way of the path. After a few minutes, the regrowth seemed to be slowing down. He realized that whatever was causing it to recover only seemed to have so much strength. He continued, removing from the top layer down until the green box was only up to his ankles. it had taken him a few hours, but what was laid out before him was quite different from what he expected.

There were large planter boxes built in rows along either side of the pathway leading up to the front door. Small flowers seemed to be blooming weakly, fighting for what sun they could get. A few patches of green ruffage was growing off in the corners. One section in particular had a few odd stalks and stems growing in different directions which caught his eye. He carefully began to remove weeds and bits of vines which had attached to the boxes. He made sure to check around the outside of the fence to clear out anything that was spreading out into the other yards. 

Once the area was cleaned, Dracoso mulched the green material out front. He tossed as much as would fit into the compost bins the couple had beside their house and then figured he could possibly find someplace he could toss the rest. Maybe he could start his own little garden of herbs. 

As he swept up the leaves in the yard, somehow miraculously missed by rest of the overgrowth, he noticed one plant mixed in with a group of tomato plants. It seemed like a very large flower bud buried halfway up its body in dirt. As he was taking a closer look, the door to the home opened and the couple stepped out. They enjoyed the sun for a moment before the woman said, "Ah, it is lovely to be outside in my own yard again. Thank you, sir, so much for all your hard work here." The man nodded in confirmation, "yes, I don't think we could have gotten out here without your help. Thank you so much." 

Dracoso turned to them slowly and nodded. "I am happy to help. I noticed you have quite a few planters here. There seems like quite a bit of work was put into this garden," he said, slowly pacing the boxes, looking from one to the next as he spoke. He acted almost as if he was examining the grounds. "It is quite impressive, especially since I can only imagine just how much effort must have been put into this garden." 

The couple seemed taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered. "Well yes, our gardener was quite an effective individual. He would come by and handle everything for us," the wife said quickly. Dracoso nodded softly to himself and responded, "If I recall, you said that he came by every few days to tend to the garden and that he left suddenly while you were away. Yet with the size of these planters and the sheer amount of weeding that would need to be done, I can't imagine this garden being left alone for more than a day."

The husband wiped the sweat from his brow and quickly stated, "well yes, we would look at it from time to time and tell him if something looked wrong with the plants." Dracoso shook his head softly, "if something looked wrong? I am not an expert with gardening, but some of these plants look very sophisticated. I can't imagine a gardener tending to something in another person's yard that they themselves knew little about. The very fact that you showed no surprise at this large specimen here-" he pointed to the large flower bud, "-tells me that you may know exactly what was going on here."

The couple looked to one another, not sure how to respond. They looked back to him and the wife piped up, "I have never seen that plant before. Maybe it grew in while we were away?" The man nodded in confirmation, "Nature can have a funny way of growing out of hand." The couple chuckled nervously at the joke while keeping their eyes on Dracoso.

"Nature can be very strange like that. Almost as strange as people. Take your neighbors for example. You mentioned that they had tried to cut down the greenery, yet all of them have told me the opposite. They said that you were quite against it, saying that you felt that it was more nature than you could ever ask for," he said to them. He kept eye contact as they slowly seemed to wilt under his gaze.

"Well... you see...," the wife started. Her husband began, "well, some of our neighbors don't really know how to handle nature like this and so-" before his wife cut him off with a hand on his shoulder. She looked him in the eye and shook her head before they looked back to Dracoso. "The truth is, we wanted to grow more plants on our property since we loved nature. We live so far from the edge of the village and our neighbors get upset with some of the things we grow. We just wanted to let nature take hold. We planted what was consider a 'Mother Bloom' which would allow other plants to grow further"

The husband nodded sadly beside her, "our gardener told us that it was unsafe at the rate it was growing, and he quit on us when we refused to let him trim it back. A while later, the neighbors were starting to get active about wanting us to cut it back, so we left town under the idea that we were off to see family. By the time we returned, it was already halfway up our house."

"We just used a trick we had, a touch of some plant killing materials along the walkway, the door, and a little bit on the plant ends in the tunnel. It made it so that we could still get in and out, without hurting the greenery too much." His wife said. "We didn't notice it continuing to grow upwards until it was beginning to push at the house. Our neighbors wanted to cut it all down, but the ones who tried made little progress and we discouraged the rest." 

"Someone put in a request to the shinobi and that is where you came into this story. We didn't mean any harm by it. We just let our love of nature grow a bit too far," the husband concluded.

Dracoso scratched the back of his head and shook it softly before saying, "well... no one was really hurt and most of the greenery has been removed. I don't think your neighbors will let you get much further than a normal garden going forward, but it seems like you have had enough expansion. Would you agree?" The couple nodded quickly and stated that they would stick with the planter boxes. Dracoso worked with them to dig up the Mother Bloom and placed it in the compost bin after he had sliced it up into mulch. 

The couple thanked him again, along with the neighbors nearby who had stepped out to listen. Dracoso remembered his original goal and shared with them his interests in herbs and applying them for pharmaceutical purposes. The couple smiled and shared a few pieces of information on which herbs were good for treating wounds and filtered water for contaminants. They shared a handful of seeds with Dracoso which they had collected and taught him about basic plant care. He slipped the pouch of seeds away before thanking the couple. He borrowed a burlap sack and stowed some of the green material he had sliced up earlier.

He really had hoped to find a peaceful mission today but found himself in the middle of a mystery. He realized that he had forgotten to ask the couple where the Mother Bloom had come from. He decided that it probably couldn't cause too much hard without some level of negligence and decide to leave it be. With a new packet of seeds and some compost to tend to them, he felt ready to start on another goal. Now he just needed to find a good place to start up an herb garden and possibly purchase some gardening supplies. 

{Exit}

E-Rank Mission: Simple Gardening

Reward: 1000 Ryo + 5 AP

WC Total - 2500
Stats Claimed - 25 (5 Vigor, 20 Chakra)

Jutsus Claimed:
B > A Rank - Damage Reduction Shield - 1000
D > C Rank - Basic Medical Ninjutsu - 500
D > C Rank - Healing Hands - 500
C Rank - Summoning Technique - 1000/1000 - (putting remaining 350 needed from the 650/1000 from the previous post: Flexible like the willow, strong like the oak)
B rank - Bloodletting Technique - 150/1500

APPROVED