Starring:
Date: February 26, 2011
Summary:
Misayo sleeps in on a schoolday and Minako is sent to obtain her! But things rarely go as planned in the life of Academy students…
"Wake-Up Call"
Sunagakure, Misayo's House
The Shinobi Academy of Sunagakure was not your typical school for children. For starters, the lessons and attendance were NOT OPTIONAL. Apparently Harada Misayo had missed this memo, as she had not been in attendance today. Well, it had fallen to one of her classmates to go to the home of the surly, reclusive young kunoichi-in-training to drag her to class by the hair if necessary! It was all part of Minako's 'ninja training', you see. Yes, yes, that was it, a simple 'retrieval mission' to see if she could follow basic orders and bring a captive back. Of course! It wasn't an excuse not to have to waste a grown-up's valuable time or anything of the sort. It was an assignment, not a chore!
The directions to the Harada abode were simple enough. The young girl lived with her paraplegic uncle near the edge of the city. The home had been rebuilt in the wake of the not-so-distant attack Sunagakure had suffered which had led to the increase in Academy recruits in the first place. Trekking through the mid-morning heat all the way across town would be the most challenging part of finding the home.
It was not grand or spacious by any stretch of the word. It was the modest dwelling of a retired shinobi in good standing, a squat, two-story earth-work home of modest proportions, much like almost every other home in this neighborhood. Thick curtains, but no glass, covered the windows, and the door was of simple wooden design, meant to slide open into a recess in the wall with a rather simplistic locking mechanism. The outside was largely undecorated, except for a mat in front of the wooden portal itself which read 'Welcome'. In black permanent marker on the mat, just in front of the word, had been scrawled a couple of misaligned , sloppy letters 'UN'. Someone's idea of a joke, or perhaps the sentiments of the people who dwelled within.
And somewhere upstairs, most likely, Harada Misayo was lying face down in whatever mess of a room she stayed in, snoring up enough noise to wake the dead and put lumbermills to shame. …Most likely. One could only speculate at this point, as there was no way of knowing just what the girl was up to from the outside.
Minako is on a mission. To that end, she is not going to just walk up and knock on the door. That's now how ninja do things! So she uses her recently acquired skill of 'run really fast' to run right up the wall of the building! She makes it about eight feet up and then loses momentum and falls back to the ground.
She lands hard on her burned and blistered feet. It hurts. A lot. Minako screams, but manages to hold off on the cursing this time around. 'Running barefoot down Sentou Valley at high-noon as a means of speed training' is now firmly entrenched in the red-head's list of things to never ever ever try again.
Sighing, Minako looks up at the window, trying to figure out how to reach it. She has seen ninja that can walk up walls — even sticking to them! How do they do that? Chakra? Minako looks at her ouchie-covered feet, concealed in her black shoes, and contemplates them dubiously.
"Okay, from the top…" She puts her hands together in a focusing seal and concentrates her Chakra. She tries to push it into her feet, because… Seriously, where else would it go? She then stops concentrating and tries to run up the wall really fast before it wears off! She makes it up 6 feet, and then falls flat on her back after flailing through the air. Coughing and choking thanks to the wind being knocked out of her, Minako gets up off the ground, holding her ribs. Eventually she can breathe again. "Wh-wha… That was… Two feet >lower< than the first time!" she says loudly to no one in particular.
Frowning deeply, the 10-year old tries to just focus Chakra throughout her entire body. Maybe she needs to make herself 'lighter' somehow? She is getting pretty tired from all this Chakra-focusing, but she won't give up! Mostly because she is insanely stubborn. She then just crouches down, while maintaining her focus… And >leaps<! She goes up about 10 feet straight up. "Ha-HA!" she lets out triumphantly as she reaches the level of the window — and goes past it! Then she quickly loses momentum. She flails at the window that is about a foot out of reach of her stubby little-girl arms. "No! NononononooooOOOOOO!" then she hits the ground after falling straight down. She at least manages to land in a crouch this time. On burnt feet.
This time she swears loudly and energetically at the pain. "FFFF—" she starts and continues on for half a minute until the pain fades. She wipes tears from her eyes. Standing up, she sighs and says, "I'll have to stand >closer< this time!" She could already be up there by now if she knocked on the door.
Instead she sets about focusing Chakra again.
Thup-thup-thup… *Whump*. Thup-thup-thup-thup… *Whump*. Ha-HA! No! NonnononooooOOOOOO!
With all this noise going on outside, it's small wonder that it would stir the occupants of the house. Harada Sato was a patient man, but even he could only take so much of some vandalous kid making a ruckus right outside of his front door. By the time the ten-year-old Minako is prepping her vocal chords to shout a certain four-letter expletive and is busy gathering her chakra for trip number two of her would-be airborne assault… the front door slides open.
There sits a man in a wheelchair, looking rather old and frail, appearing somewhere in his sixties, perhaps even seventies. He was just beginning to bald despite the deep wrinkles carving his face, and a stiff breeze just might snap his arm in half should he try to lift it against it. A pair of framless spectacles clung to his nose, and though he wore a frown with lowered brow and all, his rich brown eyes managed to radiate warmth. Or maybe something else. Whatever else might be said about the man's physical state of being, his eyes hadn't yet lost their spark or ability to see.
"Hunh?" His voice was small and seemingly as frail as the man himself. "What's this about now, young lady? You trying to egg my house? I'll not have none of that tomfoolery! You just get on before I call the watch on you and your parents hear of this, you hear?"
Minako pauses when she hears a voice speaking to her. She stops building Chakra and looks in the direction it came from, "Eh?" Some old man in a wheelchair? "Don't interrupt, old-man! I'm on a mission from the >Ninja Academy<! There is someone skipping out on classes and I have to drag her back!" She resumes building Chakra. Then she stops and looks towards the old guy, furrowing her brow.
After a couple seconds she attempts to dash right by him and in through the door, yelling, "An opening!" If she gets in successfully, she calls out confidently, "You're one-thousand years too late to catch >me<!" And then she's do her best to figure out where the fuzz Misayo is. Probably upstairs.
"I beg your pardon? Young lady, I- Are you a classmate of- H-Hey!"
But the aspiring kunoichi is already zipping past the old man in the wheelchair and into the house! The man is every bit as slow and frail as he looks, and is thus powerless to stop her, other than to begin turning the wheels of his mobile chair around and call out after her in his most menacing grown-up voice, which wasn't very loud at all, and was likely all but drowned out by the over-enthusiastic preteen's footsteps.
Luckily for Minako's powers of stealth and not being quite as rushed as she would be, the stairs prove a formidable challenge for someone in a wheelchair. The girl can hear the main faintly banging around down there, likely looking for crutches or whatever apparatus he uses for ascending the stairway.
The door closest to the stairs reveals itself to be… a closet! Stuffed full of cleaning supplies and boxes of knick-knacks that families tend to be unwilling to throw away, but don't really feel like putting out on display. A broom likely falls out of the over-stuffed closet to smack the truly unwary in the face.
The second room is… a bedroom! But it looks like it hasn't been used in ages. The fact that it is all but barren of any personal effects seems to indicate that it is used as a spare room, since it's obviously not Misayo's room and it's unlikely the owner of this house, if that's who the old man was, would wish to climb the formidable stairs every night to go to bed. At least, it can be assumed that it is not Minako's classmate's room given that she is not in it.
The third and second-to-last door upstairs immediately assaults the one who opens it with an unholy amount of PINK. It's everywhere. In the carpet, the wallpaper, painted on the wallpaper, and even on the curtains. Stuffed animals are all lined up neatly in rows according to size and breed, like some sort of invading army, along one wall. Books are located neatly arranged on a small shelf, and another sliding door in one wall likely leads to the closet. The carpet is plush and warm underfoot, but what's likely to catch the most attention is the prize that Minako has been searching for!
Harada Misayo was still in her bed, laying face down. Her butt was up in the air with her knees up under her chest, her head turned to one side, and her arms were pointed straight downwards. Her fingertips twitch every now and then, as does her brow, and her eyelids, indicating a restless dream of some sort. And every now and then can be heard tiny snorts that could almost be words.
Of course, the bed was fluffy and the same sickening shade of pink as the rest of the room. In fact, other than the stuffed animals and books, the only thing that DIDN'T seem to be some shade of magenta was Misayo's nightshirt, which was a cool summer-yellow.
"Nngurphle… puppies… nrmrp… go die…"
Minako shields her eyes against the pink. Eventually, peeking out from under one forearm, she spots her prey! "Harada!" she yells. Then she runs into the room, coat-tails flapping behind her, and tries to grab the blonde by her nightshirt and start dragging her away! "Wake up, baka! You're late for school!" She doesn't even bother to ensure the other girl is awake before initiating her Bedroom Removal Technique. "Why do you live on the second floor, anyway!? Don't you know how hard it is to get up here!?!" She scowls at her likely-unwary quarry as she continues tugging and heaving. "…Don't >make< me put you in the bathtub to wake you up! I'm not, uhh, I'm not going to undress you!" She blushes at the thought. She's waaay too young to be taking care of a girl her own age as though she were some kind of… Adult!? "Baka! Wake up!"
*KA-THUMP*
When tugged, Harada Misayo falls limply to the ground, not even bothering to wake up until she actually hits with a slithering bump. There's a few overly-articulate 'Bwahuh?' sounds as she's drug along on her butt. Her nightshirt is a bit stretchy, riding up her back and bending her forward a bit, almost folding her in half as she's drug across the carpet on her rear, almost as if she were sitting on a conveyor belt. Sleepily, the blonde-haired kunoichi-in-training rubs her eyes and blinks around, as if trying to discern just why she's moving. It's unclear if she understands that it's not under her own power yet.
"…Mina…?"
The yellow-haired girl's head turns slowly around to sleepy-squint up at the red-head doing her level best to forcefully remove the older girl from the room. After a moment, the squint sharpens and becomes a glare, about the moment that Minako is trying to pull Misayo through the door. She grabs the doorframe, either side in each hand, preventing herself from being drug any more.
"NANI-NANI-NANI!?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE IN THE PLACE I AM TO BE SLEEPING!?" The blonde-haired girl's volume was inversely proportional to her mood level, it seemed. "I am not wearing any pants! I am not to be going outside with no pants on! I am not having a shower! I am not having breakfast! I am not ready to be facing my day! How did you get into my house!"
Dramatic Pause.
"YOU HAVE GONE INTO MY ROOM! NO ONE SHOULD GO INTO MY ROOM!"
Finally, the aspiring med-nin scrambles to her feet, getting yanked along if Minako is still pulling, while doing her best to straighten out her nightshirt and underoos. "What time is it, eh! Are you having a malfunction of the mind!? I have heard of these. They are making pills for them! Why are you accosting me while I am undressed and asleep!?"
Minako stops when Misayo gets to her feet. She stands back, arms crossed and waits. Occasionally she glances over her shoulder, to make sure Old Man Hatchet-Murderer (as she has decided to call him) is not coming up behind her. "The time is: School-time. And you are: Late! I'm on a mission to retrieve you! You have 2 minutes! If you're not ready by then, you're leaving without pants!" She then pulls up the sleeve of her coat and starts examining her wrist meaningfully. "One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…" She may not have a wrist watch but she is making it very clear she is counting off the seconds until they have to leave! She tries to put out of her mind the complaints about 'accosting' Misayo while she is undressed. That just sounds… Weird! And dirty! But mostly weird! Also her feet hurt badly, and all this standing around is making her mood worse and worse.
"I am late for the school?" As though disbelieving the younger of the two girls, the elder looks out of the upstairs hallway window with a scowl, as if trying to divine the time by looking at how blue the sky was. By the time she's done, the counting has progressed almost to 'thirty-one-thousand'! The blonde squints at the red-haired young girl for a moment, as if trying to guage her seriousness. But a call from downstairs distracts her.
"Misa-chan? Misa-chan, are you all right? I heard shouting. There is a strange girl that-"
"Hai, hai, I am fine, Uncle. You are worrying for no reason. It is a friend from school, I am being late."
"I told you that you shouldn't stay up-"
"HAI, HAI!" Another glance at Minako. 'Forty-five-one-thousand'. "I AM GOING, YOU WILL STOP THE COUNTING!"
Misayo's nightshirt seems to spring to life off of her skinny frame as she dives into the upstairs bathroom, the light coming on. The sound of much banging ensues, as well as water turning on and a shower-curtain being maligned. A moment later a pair of adolescent panties come flying out of the door.
'Sixty-three-one-thousand.'
The blonde-haired aspiring kunoichi appears again from the bathroom almost simultaneously as the sound of water shutting off, her hair wet and bedraggled, a towel wrapped around her form. She trips and falls flat on her stomach as the tries to make the sharp turn from the bathroom to her room, the moisture on her feet robbing her of traction. Having lost precious seconds, there's a curse as she gets up and throws herself into her room.
'Ninety-nine-one-thousand.'
The sound of a closet door being violently forced off of it's hinges and cloth being ruffled rebounds as Misayo sheds her towel like it's hot and begins yanking on a darkly-colored shirtdress over her head and pulling her arms and head through the appropriate holes. After obtaining a pair of underwear, books are hastily thrown into her Hello Kitty backpack.
'One-hundred-nineteen-one-thousand.'
Misayo, her backpack on her shoulders, hops on one foot out of her bedroom door back out into the hallway, stuffing her other foot through her panty-leg-hole, then the other. Finally, she yanks her underwear up under her dress with gusto, looking very determinedly satisfied, pointing a finger up in the air.
"HOH! I am now ready to depart. You should be learning patience. A girl is needing time to prepare herself properly."
Minako nods firmly and seriously when Misayo declares herself ready. Then she attempts to grab hold of the blonde and once more begin dragging her away as though her legs didn't work! This time, however, she is headed for the window. "You never answered me! Why do you live on the second floor!? Do you think I can just magically walk on walls or something!?! I'm a ninja, not a wizard!" Then, with or without Misayo in tow, she climbs out the window, dangles for a bit and then drops back to the ground. Her feet hurt.
Muttering to herself, Minako gets up off the ground and prepares to go running back to the Academy! …As soon as Misayo joins her! "Why don't you get an alarm clock or something? You're inconveniencing everyone else with your sleeping habits! It looks like we're going to have to do some 'endurance training' between the two of us to make sure you can stay up for days at a time! Out in The Field," she emphasizes the words 'the field' with capitalized first letters that are somehow audible as capitalized. "You may have to fight constantly to complete a mission! There might not be time to sleep like some kind of… Of… Loligagger!
"I live on the second floor because my Uncle lives on the first! He can not climb stairs. There is only one bedroom down there. Am I to be making him climb stairs. You are needing to get your eyes checked! The man is being in a wheelchair, eh!"
The blonde stumbles a bit as she's yanked towards the hallway window, then lets go of her arm, climbs out, and… jumps! JUMPS! Misayo spends a few moments staring blandly at the now-empty window, then yells out over her shoulder. "UNCLE! I am to be leaving through the window!"
"…Again?"
"HMPH!"
"Don't break anything this time."
"…HMPH!" And with that… Misayo jumps! She lands heavily on her arm, slamming it beneath her with bone-crunching force, her head slamming into the ground and bouncing twice. She lies still for a moment, and then simply picks herself up, wiping a bit of blood from her lower lip, seemingly perfectly fine! Not even a sprained wrist. "I am forgetting sometimes, eh! Am I not allowed to make the mistakes? You make plenty of them! In fact, you-…"
The blonde trails off, scowling as the red-haired young girl goes on and on about strangely-capitalized words and a field. She points towards Minako's toes. "Oh. What is wrong with your feet?"
Minako frowns. "Don't change the subject! My feet are not covered in burns! Training!? Don't be ridiculous! What kind of training would burn my feet!? Baka!" This series of strange, completely-out-of-left-field protests and derisive responses are offered and then Minako turns and strides off quickly. "'Make plenty of mistakes'… Pfft…" Then turns around quickly, and points at Misayo. "At least I can land on my feet! Now we have to stop by the hospital on the way!" She scowls at the blonde accusingly. "You're already late, but you just >had< to go and cut your lip!" After some consideration, Minako looks uncomfortable and says, "Nevermind. No time for a hospital visit. Maybe they have first-aid kits at the Academy or something!"
"I am changing nothing! You are the one who is talking nonsensical nonsense!" Squinty glare. "You have burned your feet while doing some kind of suspicious training, eh!"
The blonde-haired Misayo's amazing powers of deductive reasoning aside, she points right back at the red-haired girl, matching her scowl for scowl. Were this some sort of animated show, surely sparks of fury and anger would ignite between their rival glares. "You are knowing nothing! I am being perfectly fine! Late is late, they will not care about more late or less late anyway! You are needing to realize these things."
Unlike the younger girl, the older one was wearing her sandals, stalking towards the red-haired Uzumaki girl with her arms outstretched as if planning to attack her. "Now I am going to have to be carrying you upon my back because you are hurting yourself. You are such a pain, Uzumaki! What are you? Afraid of doctors!? I am training to be Medic! M-E-D-I-C. You will come with me and I will fix your feet."
A pause. "…I will call the real doctors if I mess up."
