Animals on Your Trail? Kigurumi is Your Game

What do you do when you need to sneak up on animals, but you don't want them to sense you?

Why wear an animal-themed Kigurumi of course! At least, that is what class representative and leader of Team 15 Sumire Kakei had in mind.

"Finally, a genin team that is enthusiastic enough to do these boring missions!"

It all started with another minor incident in the town of modern Konohagakure. This time, someone(?) had the great idea to let loose all the animals at the local zoo. With all other adult officials seemingly busy on other stuff, it is up to the town's genin to track all the escaped fauna and bring them back.

Usually, this means another dull mission for Team 7 to do. However this time, Team 15 is given the spotlight for the job. And so, it is Sumire, Namida, and Wasabi who headed towards the nearby forest to start the mission.

"So, this cute Kigurumi is supposed to make it harder for animals to sense us?"

Before they started recapturing the animals, Sumire gave the suggestion to use her special hand-made Kigurumi in order to hide their scent from their targets. This was rather strange since Wasabi quickly pointed out that a transformation jutsu would have been better.

But, upon realizing her effort in this idea, the two simply chuckled and rolled along.

penguin kigurumi

Namida and Wasabi don the penguin and brown cat kigurumi respectively...

rabbit kigurumi

... while Sumire personally wore her rabbit kigurumi.

cat kigurumi holding a ring tailed lemur
penguin kigurumi catching animals
rabbit kigurumi holding a fox

And set out to recapture animals they did. The very short montage of three still images capturing almost all of them made it clear that Sumire's Kigurumi idea did work out, even if it is not comparatively more efficient.

rabbit kigurumi holding a rabbit

"You should have warned me about that female rabbit behavior thingy earlier!"
"Well I did but you just flew off script!"

The real problem came when the two started to argue after Namida called out Wasabi for jumping in too quickly.

"Hey, it's the monkey that will let us finish this episode quickly!"

But before the bickering escalated further, the Miniature Monkey appeared, who promptly went in to steal Wasabi's lunch. Though Wasabi immediately used her ninja art to chase the Monkey, it was insufficient, and this new problem only made their arguing even worse.

"Gotcha! Now let's end this episode!"

In frustration, Namida runs away from the team. Though, thanks to this reckless action somehow, it was eventually she who actually finds and catches the monkey. Apparently Wasabi's lunch must have tasted really good.

"I guess we can't just yet..."

It was a short-lived victory. however, as another much bigger problem suddenly "pawed" its way into both of them: a Giant-Maned Wolf. When Sumire heard Namida's cries (pun not intended), she immediately tried to track her trail, much to the reluctance of the still-bummed Wasabi.

As expected, the immediate threat allowed the two to overlook their argument. Assisted by Sumire who was using one peculiar summoned beast, they combined their abilities together to incapacitate the Giant-Maned Wolf.

"Nice teamwork! Oh, but you didn't have to make that subtle reveal earlier Sumire."

After a short reconciliation between the two, Hanabi-sensei congratulated them on a menial job well done!

Hmm... there seems to be another detail that is left to mention... but oh well.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations as a series is usually panned by Naruto fans as a boring one, comprised of mostly filler episodes/chapters, with no exciting action comparable to its predecessor.

That is technically true. However, if you view it from the chronological perspective of the series' fictional history, it would have been quite ridiculous to make things immediately exciting following the previous series' conclusion. The main protagonists of the older series, after all, have worked really hard to allow this peaceful era in Konohagakure to occur.

With things largely settled down, even among the neighboring Shinobi Countries, the expectation that no larger threats will happen for quite some time should have been the default expectation.

Well... at the very least, when it comes to internal affairs, as team 15 is now perhaps more aware of this than any other genin team.