Rabbit Princess [Gaara] [1]

☾ Stone of Gelel - 1 ☽

In front of her, Naruto reached to grab the ferret and managed to wrap his arms around him just as he fell forward and his foot got snatched up in a trap and Tsukiko sighed as he hung upside down, with the ferret now hanging off of him, his teeth sunk into Naruto's cheek.

"You idiot!" Sakura shouted and started to yell at her teammate while Shikamaru crouched down, shaking his head out of exasperation.

"How do you deal with this?" Shikamaru asked Tsukiko weakly, and the white-haired girl shrugged in response as she reached for the ferret.

"Trust me, I lost ten years of my life every time I went out on missions with them," Tsukiko replied, giving him a small smile. Her mind was off on Sasuke, and she frowned.

Finally, Tsukiko managed to get the ferret down and into the cage. The four of them gathered everything and started their way back to the village of Konohagakure. They had travelled quite a way away from their home and into a rather mountainous region where they travelled through crevices. Tsukiko was genuinely in awe of the mountains as she hadn't seen such rocky, slated ones before.

"Geez," Naruto complained as they walked through the mountain. "To go through all that trouble to find a cat for such a small amount is kind of a let-down,"

"Well, don't say that," Shikamaru replied, shaking his head. "It's our mission to find him and then take him back to his master, after all,"

"And he's not a cat, they say it was a ferret!" Sakura added as he moved forward to peek into the bag that Naruto was carrying on his back. "If you look carefully at it, it sorta has a cute face,"

"In any case, let's return him quickly, then go back home to the village!" Naruto responded, wrapping his arms behind his head.

"Usa, I want to have something sweet to eat, too," Tsukiko agreed as she wrapped her arms over her chest. "Oh, there's the bridge," She pointed at the bridge coming up in their way.

"When we cross that bridge..." Shikamaru said as he pulled out the map to have a look and Naruto went rushing ahead of them to cross the rope bridge first. "Wait, Naruto...!"

"Let's cross this and finished the mission as soon as –"

Tsukiko's eyes widened when Naruto suddenly vanished underneath the suspended bridge as some broken wood flew into the air. She then saw that Naruto had managed to grab onto the bridge before he fell all the way down between the valley. She was relieved, but Sakura not so much.

"What are you doing, idiot?!" Sakura yelled as she rushed over the bridge to shout at Naruto. "It says 'this bridge is dangerous' right there, doesn't it?! Whatever happens to you doesn't matter, but what will you do if something happens to the ferret?!"

"Sakura-Chan..." Naruto responded. "That's too much..."

"Honestly, Usa, Naruto's going to give me a heart attack one of these days," Tsukiko muttered as she came to a stop next to Shikamaru on the bridge. "Come to think of it, we should be able to see the village from here, right?"

Tsukiko looked at the map and then in front of them as they looked at the other side of the mountain where there was some farming land in the form of terracing. The crops were swaying with the wind but there was absolutely no one there to care for the fields even though it was well into the day by now. She shared a dark look with Shikamaru – something that Naruto and Sakura caught.

"Shikamaru, Tsukiko," Sakura said, looking toward the two Chunins. "Is there something wrong?"

"Yeah," Shikamaru replied. "The client's village is on the other side of that field. But doesn't it look like there's something wrong?"