Picture of a Hundred Words

The Mission Details:

Himari's Stats:

It was just barely after sunrise with partially cloudy skies, a young, spry ravenette kunoichi Kong vaults through the open window of her bedroom, latching onto a nearby branch from a tree some couple of feet from her house before sticking her landing with a perfect summersault—or at least, that’s how she anticipated the whole stunt would go. Although the whole series of maneuvers transitions seamlessly, she ends up misdirecting her footing during her landing at the ground level, with her foot turning oddly and ends up stumbling forward momentarily before regaining her balance through a cartwheel, outstretching her arms and clasping her legs together. “Safe!” She cries triumphantly with a smile.

A knob twists and turns, the hinges creaking as the wooden door reveals a woman around her 30s dressed in a navy blue and white accented kimono, leaning against the frame. She carries two distinguishable satchels in one hand, jostling them. “Oh! Uh, thanks, Mom.” She says sheepishly, acquiring her belongings and fastening them to her person. “Almost forgot, eheh.”

Her mother sighs, a faint smile curled on her lips. “Sometimes, I wonder where you find all this boundless energy from.” She pats her head. “Be safe out there Himari, okay?”

Himari nods fervently, embracing her mother. “I will!”

“Ah, and before I forget.” The woman searches through the breast sleeve of her haneri, handing Himari a small note. “When you have the time, be sure to gather everything I wrote down here. I’ll be cooking something special tonight after your mission.”

Himari’s eyes twinkle, a jubilant expression on her countenance. “Don’t have to tell me twice, I’ll be back in a jiffy!”

Parting ways, Himari traverses through the forestry of Konoha’s outskirts before arriving several minutes later in the main village towards the facility responsible for mission assignments. Upon entering, she’s relieved to find a relatively short line-up of a genin and chuunin mix of shinobi waiting, some conversing among themselves in groups and others passing time in their own ways. Yet, she cannot recognize any familiar faces from a year prior among those who stand present from what would have been her graduating class. Likely already making large strides in their careers, a surge of resolve whets her fervor for her awaiting mission to catch up.

Finally reaching the front desk, after a brief exchange of words, she receives two commissions to complete before exiting. The first is described as follows; “To recover a lost pet cat, Sen, back to Lady Nakajima Mikoto,” she whispers to herself, pondering and skimming through the details. “Black stripes with gradient orange fur… average size… likes to eat and play a lot. I wonder what Sen likes to eat… and she mentions he was last spotted around her estate eastward in the village.” Without a moment’s delay, she races to her destination and starts her careful search for the little critter.

What was meant to be a short venture became a gruesome ordeal of patience. Although she found tracks believed to belong to her quarry, there is an abundance scattered across the impressionable earth. They eventually narrow his field of movement to the back of a partially degraded shop garnered with small cracks, holes, and splintering wood. Maneuvering about and peeking through one of the gaps she could find, “Sen~?” She calls out—nothing. She peeks through another: also nothing. A third time: still nothing. When she stumbles across, presumably her last spot to check, lowers her gaze to find a pair of dim beads shifting about in the dark. “Sen? Is that you buddy?” The beads glance in her general direction, and for a brief moment there’s a pause, and then—pitter patter, pitter patter—the beads grow in size. Himari instinctively reels back as the creature escapes from its confines; black stripes and gradient orange fur, average size, and fast. Yep, that’s her quarry!

“H-Hey!” She bellows, reaching a hand out before rising to her feet and giving chase. To her astonishment, the feline's quite dextrous and fleet-footed, finding herself dancing between modes of investigation and pursuit throughout the property before the cat escapes into the wider range of Konoha's landscape, covering a decent length of the ground around the village as though she were playing a game of hide and seek with the young animal. For what time felt like forever she had been chasing him, she momentarily resigns to rest and sits herself down on a green pasture nearby a playground. “Geez, just where does he get all that energy to keep running like that from?” Rummaging through her belongings, she helps herself to a generous sum of gyoza dumplings.

As she indulges herself, hidden somewhere else, Sen's nostrils flare and a most tempestuous scent perforates which attracts his attention. He reveals himself from a hiding spot between the gap of two closely positioned buildings and slowly approaches, purring all the while before stopping just shy of a foot from where she sat. “Hm?” She hums, noticing he’s no longer attempting to conceal himself, and eyes intently the foodstuffs in her hands. “Oh, you’re hungry too, huh? With all the running around you did, I’d imagine takes a lot out of ya. Here,” With another gyoza in hand, she carves out a bite-sized piece into her palm and presents the meal to him. Sen takes a step back and remains motionless before slowly advancing. “It’s OK, it’s yours, you’ve earned it.” Once close, he sniffs out the contents of the minute portion before readily eating it from her palm. Some time passes as they commune together over the meal.

Thereafter all the gyozas have been consumed, Himari cleans up her little eatery before glancing at Sen, curled up with closed eyes. She grins, dusting herself off before carefully raising him into her arms and trotting back to Nakajima’s home, who appears delighted to find the young genin in secure possession of her pet after having exchanged a couple of words.

“Oh, thank you so very much for bringing my baby boy back home safe and sound! Heaven knows what I would do if anything were to happen to him.” She remarks gleefully as Himari relinquishes Sen back to her owner. “I hope he hasn’t caused you any trouble when you had gone looking for him.”

Himari shakes her head. “None at all, miss. He’s just been a bundle of joy to play with.” They share a mutual chortle, Nakajima smiling.

“He’s always been quite skittish when he gets his annual check-ups, but since he's fast asleep, I should get ready to head to the vet before he gets riled up again. Anyway, I won’t take up too much of your time, you must be a busy girl and there’s no rest for the weary these days, well, for shinobi at least.”

And with that, they went their separate ways, Himari heads back out toward the residential area of the village to complete the final half of her assignments. This one would prove to be quite an electrifying experience.


WC: 1,169
TWC: 1,169


Passive accumulating 2 Heavenly Body Stacks (2/10)

Sometime later in the morning…

This last mission was the result of an unfortunate accident by Mother Nature. There was a recent thunderstorm that occurred yesterday and, from the strong winds that blew during, one of the nearby trees in the residential area reached its maximum and subsequently collapsed on one of the connecting power lines, which now blocks the road to and fro. Himari's task is to safely remove the tree that obstructs the pathway, which in and of itself wasn't a hard feat to accomplish given her strength for her size. But, the true challenge comes from doing so without getting shocked by the now split-in-two power lines that crackle and buzz on both ends.

It takes her some five or so minutes to arrive at the scene as she veers around the block to enter alone the residential area of the village. Further down about 10 meters from where she stands, a large and burly elm tree stresses horizontally across, spanning the entire width of the road and then some. She strides closer and upon inspection, she notices the color and texture of the tree was blackened with hints of gray plastered along its bark and with no leaves presently attached to any of its branches. It must've been quite an old tree that had died for some time now, which would explain how it would've acquiesced to the storm's mighty winds.

Yet it was also to her benefit that she wouldn't have to play a game of where the severed electrical lines are, as the black cords that once connected each other lie a foot away from either end of the tree. Careful to maintain twice the distance than they were, she bends down to her knees as her ears perk up. She would hear the soft thrums of the electrical current flowing between one of the lines, and she would also check the other end, to which she reaches the same conclusion. She taps her chin and takes several steps back to consider her options as she views either side of the fallen tree.

Considering how there was very little wiggle room for her to either push or pull the whole tree toward one side, she may be able to start by hoisting one end and slowly pivot it at a 45-degree angle, then switch positions to the trunk, and roll it along to toward one side of the road to let passersby's through. At first, the idea, ceterus paribus, seemed sound enough to try. And before she could swallow herself up in any more hypothetically infinite possibilities, she makes her first attempt with the idea.

Rolling up her sleeves and running up to the bottom of the tree, she attempts to find any roots to get a good, firm grip on before bending her knees, clenching her fists, and with a considerable deal of effort, pivoting the tree until it lies perpendicular to one of the residential homes. She steadily puts the tree down and takes a moment to look at her progress. So far, so good, although she was dangerously close to one of the loose wires, it was nothing to worry about quite yet.

Continuing into the second stage of her plan, Himari shuffles toward the midsection places both hands on it, and once again, with a considerable amount of effort, rolls the tree toward the other end of the road. There are periods where she stops, as parts of the dead plant would slightly splinter off if she applied too much force, requiring that she slow her speed to maintain the integrity of the tree's structure.

All was going according to plan until one of the branches—or rather a handful of them—break away from underneath the weight of the tree and roll back away from the direction that pushes the tree from the walkway. By the time Himari successfully pushes the majority of the tree to one side, most of it was still intact, perhaps short of many of its would-be branches connecting to splintered off in the process of her rolling it along.

Speaking of which, a thought crosses her mind: with how big the tree is and how narrow the distance between one building to the next is, she's technically created another inconvenience for them blocking the front entrance for a couple of denizens who may or may not be at home, which she hopes the latter of the two to be a possibility.

Nevertheless, if she's going to get this worked out, she'll have to start with collecting the branches off the road before she can figure out another way to have the whole tree block fewer home doorways. She starts from the centermost point of origin since she's moved the tree and spreads outward, careful to pull at the ends of any branches that lay closer to the wires than the rest and line them up between the alleys behind the tree to stow away. The activity only takes a few minutes to complete until there were only small chips and fragments of wood lying about the road.

"Whew," She sighs as several pops echo from stretching her ligaments and flexing her extremities. She was strong, sure, but, the strain from just uplifting just a part of the tree gave her arms and legs a run for their money. Now, there's the matter of safely moving the live, electrical wires away from the sidewalks. She hardly had to think this one through, it's as simple as grabbing onto its length and dragging it away into an alley of their own with hopefully nothing conductive that would otherwise impede her path.

Striding over to one of the lines, she stands five meters away from the exposed end, grabs one end behind with her left hand, and the other in front, and shuffles her feet at an unhurried pace. Whenever the wire would deviate and point towards the road or get caught by an obstruction on the street, she would move up two meters and flick her wrist to adjust the wire in a straight-line position to the best of her ability before returning to her prior position.

After dragging the line close enough to the connecting power pole, she checks to her left side for anything conductible. Besides a couple of pipelines a meter away and a large, green trash bin, she deduces it's safe enough to stow the dangerous cord about 5 feet away from the sidewalk. Now, she's to pull the other end of the severed cord to an alley of its own. Once again grabbing one end behind her with her right hand this time and the front with her left, she shuffles her feet at a slow-moving speed. For any deviations along the way, she quickly corrects them with the ole wrist-flick until she comes close to the connecting electrical pole.

Facing toward her right side, a large metal green bin occupies half of the space leading toward the alleyway. Just her luck, huh? Although the next one prior to this one is about 15 meters away, there still be a decent amount of slack for any unsuspecting civilian, or hurrying shinobi for that matter, who wasn't paying attention to where they were going could get clothes-lined. But what about further past the pole itself? She looks behind and spots an entryway 10 meters from where she stood that looks promising enough to substitute.

Upon gently releasing the black wire, she walks to the prospecting alleyway and examines the contents of the space between the parallel buildings. The sight alone was one to behold, but even greater than that was the rancid scent of compost. Trash bags upon trash bags were stacked high enough to be at least her height and a half with the typical pipelines running through that they lean against. Thankfully, there's no cause for concern for would put the ordinary person at risk when they come face-to-face with the line.

But if she's in want to move the wire here, she'll have to do something about the mountain-high garbage that bars her entry. And to think the last mission she completed where collecting garbage was the primary objective of the assignment was hopefully the very last time she'd ever have to do it and finds herself in the uncomfortable predicament of being the pseudo-garbage-woman again.

Crouching down to her knees, she hops over the 8-foot-tall stack of debris, covers her hands with sleeves, and with those same sleeves, steadily pulls the bag from the highest she can reach with her tippy-toes before she drags the rest with her 5 meters inward. With each attempt, she tucks the bottom half of her face beneath her qipao and takes a deep breath before she continues with each pull. And whenever she couldn't hold her breath any longer, she would quickly exhale and each one had the residual effect of Himari trying very hard not to invoke her gag reflex from the faintest smell.

As soon as she repositions the last trash bag, she hops over them and back into the road, gasping and hacking.

"Ugh," She groans. She clears her throat and looks at her sleeves. Nice, no stains. But she wasn't about to find out if the stench, no matter how slight, had clung onto where her hands used them as makeshift gloves. Paying it no mind, she returns to the wire and drags it along into the alleyway a meter in. Everything looks good at the moment, she now has to simply readjust the tree again downward from whence she came where there's an intersection beside a block that faces toward it. Running toward the top end of the tree, she bends her knees, lifts it up, and excruciatingly hauls it along.

The bulk of the tree kept its form between break periods and pulls, and the entire process took 20 minutes before she could comfortably rest the large hunk of dead wood partway past the block with the upper half jotting out into the intersection. Then, she would hoist the branches she left behind together beside the same tree. Shortly after squaring it away, a retinue of older-looking Leaf Village shinobi arrives at the roadway.

"I see you got to work already on moving tree?" One of them remarks as he eyes the dead wood. "You did a good job pulling it away this far all by yourself. Incredible, even."

"I try," She pants with her hands over her knees.

"Indeed. Anyway, we'll take it from here. We'll let your employer know you've done your end of the bargain as soon as we've finished ours. Thanks again, kid. Ah, and if they ask who, just let them know it's Ken, which would be me."

After a brief amount of time passes during an exchange of words and information, Himari leaves the team to finalize and recycle what's left of it into mulch that can be used to foster the village's greenery. Himari rendezvouses to the mission facility to report on the completion of her first mission and informs that the tech team is currently underway in disposing of the fallen tree. It certainly proved an enjoyable experience, well if you expunge the memory of the garbage rearrangement activity, it helped act as a benchmark for how she's progressed since her days at the academy.

Before wrapping up the day with what's on her to-do list, she makes a quick detour home for a fresh set of clothes (and a quick bath) before she returns to the main village and commits the rest of the afternoon until evening doing training exercises before making one final pit stop at the marketplace to gather the groceries listed before returning home. Afterward, her mother prepares her favorite dish, a scrumptious bowl of Geki Kara Tsukumen, together spend the last hours of the day one last time celebrating another job well done.

"So," Her mother starts. "How did everything go?"

“Great!” Himari exclaims. “And I’ve been thinking a bit earlier today that we could use a little extra company at home, but hear me out…”


WC: 2,021
TWC: 3,190


Passively accumulating 2 Heavenly Body Stacks (4/10)


[EXIT THREAD]


Requesting approval for the following claims:

Rewards acquired upon completion of all missions listed at the beginning of the thread:

Total Ryo Earned: +5,000 Ryo
Total Bonus AP Earned: +25 Bonus AP

Investing the 3,190 TWC in the following Jutsus:

→ Investing in Soft Wind Blowing @ C-Rank [378/1,000] → (1,000/1,000)
→ Investing in Gentle Step: Front Kick @ D-Rank [90/500] → (500/500)
→ Investing in Palm Bottom @ C-Rank (750/750)*
→ Investing in Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Burst @ B-Rank (1,312/1,312)*
→ Investing in Eight Trigrams: Heavenly Palm Rotation @ A-Rank (96/2,137)*

*25% Discount applied via max stats below

Spending the 3,190 TWC on the following Stat Points:

→ Adding +25 SP to Speed (2,500 WC)
→ Adding +3 SP to Vigor (300 WC) Reached the maximum number of stats to allocate.

→ Expunging the remaining 390 WC left over.

Messaged on discord in regards to edits needed for this

Hiroki Shimada wrote:Messaged on discord in regards to edits needed for this

Applied the necessary edits needed for this thread, as discussed via Discord.