The Arborist's Apprentice

Mission Docket:

In the years since its founding, Konohagakure faced many hardships: war, subjugation, and near destruction. And, though those same years also saw the highs of peace, victory, and unparalleled prosperity, few—if any—shinobi or kunoichi could claim to have seen and lived through all it all. Heroes and villains alike all fell into the obscurity of time, leaving behind distant memories that soon winked out of existence in a matter of generations.

Indeed, through the rise and fall of countless Hokage, all that remained to watch over the village were the silent sentinels lending Konohagakure its namesake, the trees. Their unshakable roots supported the village’s very foundations, their countless leaved limbs hid the village from the world, and the corpses of their fallen comrades were used to construct the buildings the citizens of Konoha called home. Where shinobi and kunoichi failed and faltered, the trees of Konohagakure remained stalwart and strong.

Despite their importance to the village, however, the last thing Natsumi Nara wanted to think about was trees, especially so early in the morning. The pair of missions came down from Konoha’s higher-ups earlier in the week, and the genin had spent much of the week dreading the work yet to come. And now, laying in her bed with the alarm blaring across the room, it took all her willpower to pull herself from the comfort of her sheets.

She silenced the alarm on her way from her bedroom in what had become a monotonous routine the day of early morning missions. Shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast. Today’s outfit consisted of a tank top and shorts, while breakfast was always the same: eggs, toast, and a bowl of fruit. Her body moved through the motions on autopilot as her mind drifted back to the siren call of her bedroom.

The two missions for the day ahead were nothing too difficult. The first involved pruning a few of Konohagakure’s larger trees before their branches became hazardous to passersby. The second mission, on the other hand, required her to deliver fertilizer to a few locations throughout the village, presumably to promote the growth of Konoha’s next generation of silent sentinels. Nonetheless, the teen wasn’t too excited about spending her day running around the village and caring for overgrown foliage.

Unfortunately, the genin was in no position to pick and choose her missions at this point in her career. Others, more experienced and privileged than her, were afforded such a luxury. However, given her low status in the village, she could only accept what tasks were assigned to her without complaint. In the end, the faceless administrative apparatus of the village cared only that its shinobi and kunoichi alike met the high bar for excellence it set.

With such thoughts in mind, Natsumi secured the emblem of Konohagakure around her neck and slipped out into the morning. The streets, as they always were at such an early hour, were empty. Perhaps an hour later, the first merchants might set up shop for the day. However, at this particular hour, the only company the Nara had was the shadow by her side and the distant glow of the still-rising sun in the distance. It was at times like this that the typically bustling village experienced a fleeting calm that the teen had come to appreciate.

As she navigated through the familiar streets, her mind wandered back to her set of missions from the previous week. Unlike today’s missions, she was grouped up with three other Konoha genin to help subdue the wild experiments of the village’s scientists. The combat made her heart race, her adrenaline spike, and her disdain for her role as a kunoichi grow. Perhaps risking life and limb for the village was what some found enjoyable, but Natsumi liked the idea of knowing she would return home in one piece each evening. So, in that regard, today’s more laid-back pair of missions was not all that bad.

Was it wrong to want a peaceful life?

Such thoughts slipped from the fore as the genin approached one of Konoha’s large groves of trees. The past several years saw modernization and change sweep through the village to such an extent that parks and groves were the best places to find the village’s older trees. The trees of the village would always remain, but their domain would continue to be curtailed into carefully defined spaces in some vague attempt to maintain the majesty of nature for future generations.

The grove before her was, nonetheless, a sight to behold. Trees stretched to the sky, creating a canopy of leaves that cast a latticework of shadows on the ground below. In a way, it reminded Natsumi of the Forest of the Nara, only slightly wilder and lacking the same number of deer. In her earlier years, she spent nights away from home in her family’s forest trekking through the wilderness until heavy lids and the ire of her parents drew her back home—forests, regardless of their origin, carried a hint of nostalgia for the easier, more simple times of childhood.

“Ah, you’re here; you must be the Nara girl, wonderful,” the voice of an old man pulled Natsumi from her introspection. “That means we can get started. My name’s Takeo Hyuuga, you’ll be helping me today.”

He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the grove of trees.

“My body isn’t what it once was, so I need someone a bit younger to help prune the dead and dying branches from these trees.”

He offered the teen a saw, which she promptly took.

“I’ll point them out to you, and all you’ll have to do is climb up there and remove the branch in question before it has the chance to hurt someone or the younger trees below. Just be sure not to hurt yourself up there, I don’t want to explain to the village how a genin cracked her skull open on my watch.”

The man cast his gaze back towards the grove.

“Well then, enough yammering on, let’s get started!”

The rest of the morning progressed at a slower pace than Nastumi had hoped. Climbing the trees as a kunoichi was easy enough with the help of ninjutsu. However, sawing off the tree limbs Takeo identified was harder work than it seemed at first blush. By the third or fourth branch, the teen had sweat on her brow and an ache in her shoulder from the sawing motion. For all her training, Natsumi wasn’t quite prepared for the physicality required to rend a branch from the yet-living tree.

Further complicating the operation was Takeo himself. In his old age, the man must have also lost some of his hearing, because his instructions evolved into yelling matches the further Nastumi got from the ground.  More than a few times the teen almost took off the wrong branch only to be loudly corrected by the man below. The man also had a proclivity for cursing, and the Nara girl found herself learning a few words herself as the elderly man alternated between scolding her and the trees themselves.

Takeo Hyuuga was a strange man to be sure.

In time, however, the duo came to find a certain rhythm as Natsumi required less guidance and Takeo’s voice started to fail him. Soon instead of yelling the grove filled with the sound of uninterrupted sawing and the occasional crash of tree limbs falling to the ground. Even the initial ache in her shoulder left Natsumi in time. That said, she did question whether such a phenomenon could be considered good, and she suspected that after today she would need to spend some time in the bath soaking away the residual pain that was sure to await her the next day.

“That should just about do it!” The Hyuuga yelled up into the canopy.

“Mkay, Gramps,” the Nara teen called back, using the moniker she’d given him after one of their yelling matches. “On my way down.”

Focusing her chakra into her feet, Natsumi walked down the final tree. Typically, such a simple use of chakra was trivial, even for the genin. However, after using the technique for much of the morning, she took particular care not to lose control of her nearly exhausted chakra supplies. A fall from even the shorter trees would result in a few broken bones, and a fall from the final tree, which seemed to be the tallest of the bunch, would likely result in something much worse.

“You ever consider a career change?” Takeo asked once Natsumi was safely back on solid ground. “Being an arborist isn’t a bad job.”

“Eh,” Natsumi glanced up at the tree she had just come down from. “I don’t think it's for me.”

The Hyuuga handed her a bottle of water.

“Fair enough,” Takeo shrugged. “If you ever change your mind let me know. You didn’t do a bad job today, and I could always use an extra pair of hands on these bigger jobs.”

“Thanks,” Natsumi said, taking a swig of water. “It was actually not as bad as I thought it would be, even though I had an old guy yelling at me the whole time.”

She flashed an impish grin at the old arborist. The pair went back and forth for another hour or so as they shared lunch under the freshly pruned trees. For the first time in quite a while, Natsumi came away from the mission with a positive mindset and a certain swell of pride in her chest. Yes, Takeo was a strange man, but he was also a good man, and the teen was glad she was able to help him care for the grove of trees. Perhaps not all missions were that bad?

Unfortunately, the next mission for the day did its best to disabuse the genin of such a thought. She parted ways with Takeo and made her way to a compost facility. The compost was, in theory, sourced from the fertile earth surrounding the village. Her job was, quite simply, to deliver wheelbarrows upon wheelbarrows of dirt to a few select farms. The only catch was that for this mission she was on her own, leaving the genin to toil away and sweat in relative silence. And, to make matters worse, the wheelbarrow was on the older side, making the precarious balancing act a bit more difficult as the wheel tended to get stuck every once in a while.

The afternoon that followed lacked the charm of her morning. There was no skill involved in moving wheelbarrows of earth from one place to another. Instead, the work was hard and the farmers ungrateful. Two of the farms specialized in vegetables, while the third focused on stone fruit trees. The stone fruit tree farm, in particular, was run by a grouchy lady who had little interest in making Natsumi’s life easier. Each time the teen arrived with a full wheelbarrow, the lady would have her put it somewhere else on the property while closely scrutinizing the genin’s work.

Despite the monotony, the teen pushed through the mission until the sun dipped below the horizon. Her shoulders ached, her feet hurt, and she was exhausted, but the work was finally done. Once more she wound her way through the village streets; this time, however, she walked alongside countless other shinobi, kunoichi, and citizens alike finishing their similarly busy days. It was here, among the crowds, that Natsumi felt a certain kinship with those around her; they had all had a long day that they were glad to have behind them.

An overly hot shower and a warm meal served as a capstone to the Nara girl’s day. It hadn’t been a horrible day all around, but she was happy to be home at last. Most of all, however, she was happy to be reunited with her bed. There was, perhaps, only a minute or two between when her head found the pillow and when she returned to the land of dreams, where she would remain until her alarm clock woke her the next morning.
- - -
Exit/Thread Closed.

TWC: 2016

Thread Claims
+ 20 Vigor
2000/2000 to fully learn the sensory specialty (Hiden/Clanless allowing for 2nd Speciality at D power rank)
+ 16 words toward learning  Chakra Sensory
+ 4000 ryo & 20 ap for completing the two D-rank missions indicated at the top of the thread, each with a 1k wc req

WC Math: 2000 for sensory specialty + 16 toward learning chakra sensory = 2016/2016