The Undesired Second Chance

Chapter 15: Hello, Goodbye

This would be a sentence Axel had never thought he would ever say. It wasn't really a sentence he had ever thought of before, even as a joke, and he needed to take a moment to frame the words before speaking them aloud.

"There is a dog stuck in the roof," he said.

Minato blinked at that, thrown almost as much by his friend's re-entry into the conversation as he was by the abrupt topic change. He asked, "'In the roof'?"

Nodding, Axel tried to clarify. "Stuck in the rain... tube."

"Gutter?"

"Yes, that. Probably."

After taking a sip of tea, a small smile pulling at his lips, Morimoto shooed the ninja toward the door. "Go make yourself useful, Namikaze-san."

Given that being stuck in a narrow metal half-pipe was probably uncomfortable—even, or perhaps especially, for a dog whose dimensions seemed to be perfectly suited for such shapes—Axel immediately led the way to the door. Minato followed, but only after giving the older blacksmith a wry look.

Once they were both out front, he pointed up toward his bedroom window. It had gotten quite a bit brighter outside since he had first discovered the dog's predicament, which made it easier to spot the thin black tail wagging uncertainly, just barely visible from the ground. The nose popped up, then back again.

"There he is," Axel said, still sounding somewhat bewildered that the dog was up there at all.

Catching onto that confusion, Minato shrugged and answered the unasked question to the best of his understanding. "I bet he was worried about you."

The dog yelped in disagreement, though it sounded somehow more like he was trying to give an excuse and as such wasn't a very convincing denial.

Shaking his head in a tolerant manner—which probably meant he was well-used to dealing with that type of personality—the ninja jumped easily to the roof. It was impressive, at least to Axel, and he couldn't help but feel a little jealous. He couldn't easily tell what what going on, other than that his friend seemed to be talking to the dog as he worked to free him.

It took longer than one might expect for the highly skilled ninja to finally release the dachshund from his accidentally-self-inflicted prison, but he got there eventually. Abashed dog in hand, Minato dropped back down.

The dachshund seemed pretty embarrassed by this whole situation, and wasn't able to look in the blacksmith's direction for longer than a few seconds at a time.

"You know," Axel said, thinking back over the past few weeks, "I have seen this dog a lot."

Minato, who had noticed the dachshund hanging around significantly more often than his civilian friend could have, nodded in complete agreement. "I'm pretty sure he spends most of his days in your backyard or on the roof."

The dog, naturally, looked even more humiliated by this.

"...The roof?"

It did make a sideways sort of sense, given that was where the dog had gotten himself stuck. Though Axel had to wonder how and why the roof would be such a favored spot for a dachshund: it must be tricky for someone so short to get up there in the first place. And besides, it wasn't like there was much to actually do on the roof. Maybe the dog just liked feeling tall.

Axel held out a hand for the dachshund to sniff—which the small dog did, if cautiously—but he got the feeling that pats wouldn't be received too well at this point.

"How about 'Dach'?" he asked, out of the blue.

"What?"

The dog looked almost as confused as the ninja holding him, so Axel clarified, "As a name. I see the dog a lot, and I don't have anything to call him."