𝙇𝘼𝙑𝙀𝙉𝘿𝙀𝙍. | 𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗨𝗧𝗢

VI

"OH! My cute Tora, I was worried to death!"

Team Seven stood in the Hokage tower, infront of both Iruka Umino and the Hokage as their sensei filled in the Hokage of their most recent misson. Riki stood beside Sakura, to the side of the group.

"No wonder she ran away," Sakura said. Riki nodded and held her hand out in a gesture of understanding.

"I know, right." Riki pointed to a lady who was squeezing a brown cat in her tight embrace. "Is that thing even a she? It doesn't look cat-like to me at all."

The short, chubby lady was the wife to the Land of Fire's Feudal Lord, and she hugged her pet Tora. The cat squealed and squeaked in protest, but it's cries were in vain as the lady didn't listen to them.

Team Seven's latest D-rank mission involved returning the Feudal Lord's wife's missing pet back to her. They had managed to catch the cat using their teamwork, and safely gave it over to it's owner. The mission was a boring one, and Riki couldn't help but think of all the more boring missions that were held in store for her for the rest of the morning.

Even if they hadn't gone off and done anything interesting and worthwhile, Riki was greatful that all she had to do was babysit a few children and capture missing cats and dogs. She truly liked doing lower ranked missions like those than going off and risking her life fighting against rouge ninjas.

"Now then," The Hokage held up a white pice of paper and began to read off it. Kakashi returned back to his place beside his team and stood next to Naruto. "The next mission for Kakashi's squad is either to babysit the cheif Councillor's boy, an errand to a neighbouring town, or . . . digging potatoes for local farmers—"

"—Noooo!"

All people who were in the room looked at Naruto. "No, no thank you!" Naruto out his arms up to a cross to signify his disgust for the missions. "I wanna do a more exciting mission! Give us something else!"

"You fool!" Iruka stood up and shouted at Naruto. "You're still a bottom line rookie. You need experience from these missions!"

"B-But! It's neen nothing but blah blah blah missions so far. I want something exciting-!" Kakshi smacked the top of Naruto and he went down onto the ground from the impact.

"Cut it out," Kakshi said.

"Naruto!" The Hokage called. Naruto sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, massaging his head. He perked up when he heard the Hokage call at him.

"It's necessary for me to explain what a mission is . . . Listen here, Naruto." The Hokage took a long drag of his smoke pipe. A puff of smoke slowly expanded and thinned out into the air.

"Requests pour in every day. They range from babysitting to assasinations . . ." The Hokage took his smoking pipe away from his mouth, ". . . and a wide spectrum of requests are recorded in the reuqests lists. They are split up into the letters A, B, C and D in terms of difficulty."

Riki began to space out. She wasn't the least interested in what the Hokage had to say, she knew that what he would explain was the usual things she had learnt at the academy. His need to explain something that they had already learnt confused her, but it wasn't her place to speak.

(She never had a place to speak. Not in her own clan, her life, her destiny—)

Riki stared over at a window that was a little behind Iruka and looked out to the the birds and crows that flew around trees. A pink Sakura tree caught her attention quickly, and she couldn't help but admire it's beauty. She forgot about the Hokage's lecture and busied herself with staring at random things outside.