better left unsaid

Chapter 5: The Routine of the Routine

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."

XxX

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.