Chapter no.24 D rank Missions

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The first mission involving the Inuzuka kennels wound up being by and large the thing that set the standard for the day by way of amusement. Apparently Naruto wasn't particularly a dog person. Well that wasn't fair. It was more like dogs weren't exactly Naruto animals. You see, when Naruto took the leashes for the dogs he had been meant to walk they had a total shift in personality from reasonably tempered, obedient, human friendly animals, to belligerent pains in Naruto's ass.

For Ino she got the smallest dogs, the puppies, the smaller breeds, easy for her. Shikamaru got the next step up, but they were so obedient it was still easy enough for him. Naruto not only got the biggest, oldest dogs because he was the physically strongest and it wasn't like he was going to back down in the first place because they were in his own words, "Just a bunch of dogs." However Naruto's dogs as mentioned previously. Did. Not. Like him.

Once the leashes were handed over to him by Asuma they proceeded to wear out the soles of Naruto's sandals by dragging him about the pavement outside of the Inuzuka Clan compound. Naruto tried digging his heels to stop them, but they were seriously strong dogs, the strongest dogs he had ever met for sure, and they proceeded to drag him about until he tripped and fell and then they ended up wearing out the fabric of his coat as they then dragged him around on pavement for twenty minutes until Asuma got around to checking on him and got him out of his predicament. Were it not for the fact that Naruto's clothes were so thick he would have gotten some serious road rash.

Asuma quickly got Naruto untangled from the leashes and stopped the dogs to hand them back to Naruto, "Kid I left for five minutes to grab some cigarettes and I come back to this." We scratched his head, "Well technically the dogs got walked." He said, getting a glare out of Naruto, "Alright, we'll work on that. Let's take the dogs back and get paid." Naruto sighed and fell in line with his sensei as he glared at the now innocent seeming dogs.

"Well…" Naruto finally said, trying to find a silver-lining in his first mission, "At least I wasn't dragged through the grass. This could have been way worse."

"That's the spirit kid!" Asuma said, lighting one of his cigarettes up, "You didn't get a face full of dog shit and in this case you can take that as a victory. It's the little things Naruto, the little things that make being a ninja all worth it. Small victories, you'll learn to accept them sometimes."

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The next mission they ended up taking was a mission to chop wood at the outskirts of the village, and once again this wasn't a very difficult mission at all, just more… troublesome than it had to be.

"Shikamaru!" Naruto yelled as his ax split through another piece of lumber, "Stop moving so slow! We've been here for thirty minutes, you've only cut five pieces!"

Shikamaru leaned on his ax and yawned, "You've got it don't you? Once you're finished with your pile you can help with mine."

Ino set up another piece of wood for herself to chop before frowning over at Shikamaru, "Shikamaru this really isn't the time to be lazy. We're going to be stuck here until we're done and you're not pulling your weight."

Shikamaru sighed, "Why can't Naruto just do that jutsu of his, the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu) and get them to do this? We wouldn't even have to do anything if we could do that. We'd be done by now for sure."

Naruto gave him a deadpan look, "I tried that when we first started, remember? Asuma-sensei made me get rid of them, he said this was supposed to be a team-building exercise and using Kage Bunshin were outlawed or something." That was blatant lie that Asuma was grateful Naruto or none of the others had picked up on or bothered investigating further and simply accepted at face value. Using ninjutsu for D-ranked missions was frowned upon, but not necessarily outlawed.

However doing these missions was supposed to build a rapport between newly formed genin squads, give them a base to understand taking orders, get used to the way things were to go and keep them busy while they trained to improve their skills before getting real work. Besides, Asuma had to do D-ranked missions when he was a genin, and there was a damn war going on at the time! If he had to gut it out until he got promoted then they were damn sure going to as well… Kage Bunshin his ass.

Ino pointed at Shikamaru firmly, "Pick up that ax and do some actual work Shikamaru or I swear I'll get Naruto to do something completely humiliating to you. You remember what he's capable of right?"

Shikamaru somewhat paled at that. Doing this work was a pain in the ass, but having Naruto pull some horrible pranking crap on him would have been worse. He had never been a target of one of Naruto's efforts in the past, but he sure didn't want the manic blonde's focus to fall on him in that category. A few minutes of work to spare him six months of troublesome consequences was a sacrifice he had to make. He knew Ino was bossy enough to get him to do it too, even if he really didn't want to so there was no way he was calling her bluff on the matter.

Naruto gestured Ino over as Shikamaru began actually working and splitting his pile of wood, "Um Ino? I kind of made a promise to some people that I would stop with the pranks." He said to her quietly.

Ino rolled her eyes at Naruto and flicked him between the eyes, "Shikamaru doesn't know that baka. I didn't even know until just now. You and me are going to have to whip his lazy ass into shape to get him to do stuff or else we'll be doing the lion's share of this grunt work until we get something better."

Naruto rubbed the spot where Ino flicked him and looked at Shikamaru working with a shrug, if it worked then why not? The two blondes then proceeded to hurry up and finish their own work while Shikamaru was muttering to himself and chopping wood handily.