A New Story

Pulling Rank:

Hakari and I had only been out of the ninja academy for ten minutes but already it was beginning to feel like an hour of searching. We first went by the Achieves where they told us the thief had attacked a few ninja, there we were given a direction to where he headed off and a sketchy description. There after we were told by civilians and off duty ninja a whole collection of stories and directions that made little or no sense. To sum it all up, our progress had started from searching and dropped us off at lost. Still the wind blew by, stretching time and filling our ears with gossip and false leads, as we leaped over roof tops and chimneys.

"Sooooo...." Hakari casually called while we hung in flight. "How do you plan on catching this guy, if he hasn't already left the Village?" She kindly added her second verse under her breath.

"*Sigh" I felt the weight of our mission only add to me on that exhale. It was so important that we caught this guy, if only to rub it into the faces of those academy teachers. "Everyone has such a lack of faith in us inter-village nin." I whispered absentminded of the fact my words weren't alone to me.

"What was that?!" Hakari shouted over the clamour of crowds below us as we leapt over another break in roof tops.

I pretended my mind wasn't off the mission and responded to her earlier question. "I was hoping the Leaf village was capable enough to picking up on suspicious characters, and competent enough to do proper background checks." I slowed my pace and Hakari came to stop with me.

"Ya and these are the ninja who got promoted to Chunin..." I looked to Hakari as she spoke, her face was very unyielding in her argument yet the sunlight hit her cheeks to shine a flustered red that made me blush. "They get pushed into high-end positions because of their rank and yet they can't handle them, while we inter-village ninja can't even be signed into the Chunin games without a sensei or team." I had the feeling this meant she heard what I whispered but I chose to say nothing, I was too distracted by her elegant beauty. Although she was quite short for her age, and as a ninja being short meant you lacked many advantages and gained few, her voice spoke with the sweetest maturity.

Bringing my senses back into line, I looked over the village from our height on the dull blue tiled roof top we took our stop on. I gazed into the distance and the task spat in my face at how impossible it was. "I'm not a sensory type ninja, I haven't the ability to detect a henge, but surly if this thief is still in the village he must be in disguise." I raised my foot to rest it on the steeple of the roof, and leaned my arm to it to survey the distance. "He likely entered the Village in disguise, which makes me question the ability of our gate guards, or he entered the village with a fake ID card, or he..."

Hakari interrupted "Or if you give the village guard the benefit over all you doubts... He was a ninja without any previous offences, giving them no reason to suspect him." She had a point.

"It may be" I agreed with the input of my team mate, after all I shouldn't be the only one to come up with a plan. "Since we do not have an actual identity to go by, the thief could be anyone from the village or from elsewhere." I hummed in ponder over our next decision. "If I were hiding something from the Leaf Village, and I suspected they did not know who I was, would I stay in the Village?"

Hakari frowned but followed through with my new vantage point. "If he suspects that we know what he took, it wouldn't matter to him who we thought he was." I buzzed with questions to Hakari's insight to which she responded by furthering her explanation. "If the thief thinks we knew what he took, he probably has already considered the possibility of being tracked by whatever he stole. We have our tracker dogs and bugs which can sniff out and find the faintest of smells, the Byakugan users who can probably see what was taken, and the Sharingan which can see through henge's if he is in a chakra construct disguise."