Find the Pet [Mission. C-Rank. WC: 760/250]

Mission:

Well, this shouldn't take too long; and he didn't really have a huge amount of time anyway. He was due to report to the wildlife center in a few hours; he'd agreed to cover for a teammate who's child was sick and needed to take off, so he was going in on one of his days off. This left him less time than normal for running missions, but he was in no danger from that. He had plenty of money in the bank, his rent was paid up for the next three months (a treat to himself for getting the job he wanted at the center), his kitchen had plenty of food in it, plus a new fridge and special storage for the extra fruits and such for Coen to eat. He didn't need to work on missions; but promotions where coming up soon, and since he basically had nothing to do with his old squad, nor the time for one now, he was going to have to earn a rank up on merit, and that meant getting his mission stats up a bit. He was already doing pretty well, and his volunteering at the center actually looked really good on his dossier, as it was basically taking the place of him being on a normal genin squad. He was getting the team work training, working on his skills, and learning new ones. Now if he just had a consistent trainer, he'd be set. But that was for another day.

Right now, he needed to focus. He had the picture of the missing pet; a miniature mule deer that they'd adopted as a baby. The village pet shops sold them all the time, they where super common pets for little kids because of how easy to care for they where. However, they where completely domesticated after generations of selective breeding; they have no 'wild' instincts left, and therefore have no way of surviving without human care.

Thankfully, the particular specimen he was looking for was wearing a particular collar and had a strange stripe of black fur down it's back, making it stick out pretty well from the dozens of other deer being walked or wandering around their front yards or loose in the park with their owners. Last time the owner say the deer in question, they where on a walk on one of the trails that ringed the edge of the village, where houses gave way to thin forests that climbed the walls of the caldera and melted into the thick forests down the outer slope. He headed to the area where the deer went missing and started scouting around, moving up into a high tree to get a better idea of how the areas off the trails looked. Nothing to hard, and not a lot of places to hide, or get lost. But, there where a few dry riverbeds and sinkholes left by collapsing magma tubes, so he'd check them first.

The first two spots he checked where riverbeds, thicker brush and stony ground making for bad footing, but he could easily tell nothing larger than a bird had been by recently. The first sinkhole was only a few hundred feet from the bed he was in, and it was thankfully empty. The next was a good trek up the trail, and significantly deeper. It was roped off, but that didn't stop animals and kids from falling in sometimes. He tied a rope to a nice, heavy boulder and then around his waist; using it to make sure he could climb out if the sides of the walls were bad for climbing. Down he went, a good 20 feet before his feet hit solid ground.

And then his but his solid ground when a heavy animal tackled him and started licking his face off. Pushing the beast back, he realized it was both a deer, and more specifically, the deer he wanted. Awesome. "Hey there fella. I'm here to take you home." The deer was still trying to climb onto his lap like a dog would, and it was a hell of a fight to get it to stop moving long enough to tie a rope around it so that he could haul him out.

Thankfully, the walls of the sinkhole were pretty easy to climb, specially with the rope to pull himself up with. The deer came up next, with out much trouble and only a little bit dirty. "Alrighty, let's get you home."

WC: 760