That's not a hat! [Private]

It was not every day you wore something on your head that was not supposed to be a hat. A furry one no less who had decided that it felt cozy atop 75-25 on your shoulder and head. Not that it was the fur Shouhei was worried about but the fact that he had a creature with sharp atop of him that made him absolutely terrified, but it also triggered his will and determination to live. As for how he got into this little pickle of a scary story – well, let me tell you.

It was early morning about seven o clock, which was about an hour earlier later than he usually woke up. He was eating breakfast and for once, the dining room was not busy with how his parents and grandparents so he could enjoy the silence, and the nicely polished wood that had been imported by their grandparents when they constructed the city manor. That along with the red curtains and the colorful carpets he also found enjoyable to space out his vision onto.

As for his parents and grandparents and why they were not here, that was because they had already gone down to work in the workshop making the princess tapestry. The princess in question was probably a nice Lady, but Shouhei had only meet her sister and they were not clones so that was not a good tally. Those were the thoughts he had as he ate his lamb with rice and sauce cooked by their dutifully chef Takumi.

Being done with breakfast, he took his dish out into the kitchen. A nice place decorated with mostly chiseled stone rather than wood like the rest of the house. The stone in question would pick up the heat from the handful of ovens they had to heat up water pipes going underneath the floors. Shouhei’s grandfather were proud on how it worked so well during the cold months, however they had to be emptied during the summer or they would die from heatstroke. Okay they would not literally die from a heatstroke, but he had heard stories from his grandmother how unbearable it was that time first and only time it happened. His grandfather also heard about it from time to time. He had not heard his mother do something like that, but he did sometimes wonder if his wife would do that if he ever were married to someone. Which probably would be harder now he had become a shinobi and with how Hoshi felt about people of that profession in spite of it having gotten better over the one year the academy had been open.

“Thanks for the meal, Takumi.” He said as he put his kitchen utensils into the sink. Takumi who was baking bread for a party later today turned around and nodded. He followed that up with scratching an itch under his left cheekbone just under his eye patch. An eye patch he had not because he was a former soldier, but because he once had a student who had a knife accident. What kind of person he was a silent one, but who occasionally had something deep to share. He was also the person who told him about romantic love which went into human nature rather than a stories about the flowers and the bees. His parents told him that story though.

Shouhei was about to take an apple from the fruit bowl when his father called him. “Shouhei, what did I say about not messing with our swans.” He sounded angry, but all Shouhei could respond with was a question. “I slept in today, so I don’t think there is anything to say. How would I know what have happened?”

Around the corner, Shouhei saw his father peeking into the kitchen. “Is that true, Takumi?” He frowned to which the chef responded. “That is it sir. Shouhei was impossible to get up. It was a bit odd, so I asked a teacher from the academy who said it was a minor case of chakra drain fatigue.”

His father sighed. “Well I have no reason to interrogate you further then, Shou. In any event, someone have made a mess in the garden. It couldn't have been a raccoon nor a fox however, with how deep we live inside the town.” He smiled then faced Shouhei. “Could you stop being a big sleepy head and look into it, Shou?” To which Shouhei said yes and quickly went to his room to get dressed for the everyday.

Notes wrote:Word Count: 757
Goals: Summoning contract (2000 wc), and E-rank summon (500 wc)

Walking down the hall from his room, he looked out the window out to one of their gardens. Their manor was large enough to have two gardens. The design of the layout of the compound that made up their manor, allowed the gardens to be split nicely into those two parts. Said the design was in the form of the number eight, so each garden was in their separate hole.

Actually, there was a fun story behind the design. When Shouhei’s great-great grandparents ordered the house constructed, it was supposed to be in the shape of an infinite sign. However, the construction company got the coordinates wrong, so it pointed towards north instead of east or west. When they discovered this error, it was too late to correct. At least they did not make their family name something related to the number eight afterwards. That would have been embarrassing cheesy.

In any event, the garden he was looking at were the garden that hadn’t been raided where they kept their bees in their cozy little apiaries. For that reason, most of the green in the garden were mostly made up of flowers, and a few nice bushes that were cut into the shapes of animals. One of the bushes Shouhei were particularly fond of were a one he had gotten as a graduation gift which took the shape of a bear standing on its hind legs.

His sight having lingered too long in the garden (the hallway was long enough for that with how slowly he walked), were caught by one of the gardeners who waved at him. Shouhei obviously waved back, and his mind having been knocked out of this distracted, he hurried to the other garden before anyone could ruin his investigation.

The second garden mostly made up of trees, a small lake, and the occasional gravel patch they had instead of grass. Okay there was still grass there, but only on a small center island in the lake meant for the swans. Their uncut tame swans that would always come back for food. They were kind of like carrier pidgins but not completely of course. All of it were visible as Shouhei stood in one of the doorways to the garden.

Speak of the devil, and he shall almost hit you with a garden hoe. Walking through the door, he was almost hit by one of the gardeners having to tilt his back to get his head out of the way. “Sorry about that, young sir.” The man apologies with sincerity. It wasn’t their regular, he was in the other garden after all, so Shouhei wasn’t so sure how sincere he was, but he couldn’t really protest it. "You're forgiven."

Shouhei looked around to see that the garden did indeed look like a wild animal had been here. However, there were a few weird things in what he saw. There was no apparent entrance nor exist where the animal could have come from, and he knew as much that no one had caught whichever animal had killed their swan. “Sir?” The gardener looked like he was busy. “I was told by my father to investigate where the animal came from.” Shouhei said in a matter of fact way. Although, the gardener looked skeptical he agreed and let Shouhei had the garden for himself.

With the expression he had on his face, Shouhei were surprised he did not tell him that he was paid by the hour so he could take all the time he needed. Then it came to him that few on the family compound actually knew yet that he was a ninja (not to mention he wasn’t wearing his headband), so he probably came off as a kid wanting to play or mess around rather than someone with some kind of expertise of tracking and detective skills. Not that he had a great deal, but it was a worth a try, and Shouhei didn’t feel the need to tell his father that he could not do the job. In any event, he was probably just reading too much into the gardener’s expression. That was one of the curse of Shouhei’s socially aware mind. It could get excessively over imaginative from time to time.

Investigating the place, his first action was to go to where the blood was found on the ground to see what he could find there and about. There wasn’t much there but blood and a sack worth of feathers obviously. However, the way it were all spread up made him opine that the bird had been snuck up on. The reason being that the pool of blood was concentrated on a single spot instead of running across the ground, and most of the other feathers around the garden that were located a stone throw out of the way from the pool of blood; was from the other swans. They had left their fair share of chasing though, but had easily gotten away. None of those clues however, told him where the predator had come from so he had to keep on looking around the garden.

Under the trees, under every piece of gravel, and even in the pond, he would look for clues to what had done it. In the case of the pond, Shouhei was glad that the water wasn’t more cold than it was or else he would have been really annoyed with not finding anything down there as opposed to just suck it up and keep looking. “This is weird,” Shouhei noted to himself as he looked through the small patch of land that made up the small, center island in the center of the pond, but he didn’t find anything weird there either other than a few ryo coin lying between the small stones on the shore bed. “Hmm… this is not related to the ‘case’ but it’s too much coin to belong to the gardeners,” he thought aloud and he put the coins into the front pocket of his shirt for safe keeping. Heck, if he was in a good mood he might give it to one of the gardeners.

Nevertheless, he got off the island and back to solid ground. When he did, two things came to mind. Firstly, he was wet and that was annoying. Not only had he dipped into the water to find clues, but the mud content was also oddly high. Secondly, that he needed a break and sitting down would be nice as he mused about his findings and lack of findings so far, so he approached a one-foot tall rock standing near one of the many trees.

“What the?” Shouhei blinked as he noticed something about the gravel near the rock. Coming up close, he saw that some outside source had definitely moved it as the gravel wasn’t as neatly organized as the rest of the gravel patch. He knew it couldn’t have been any of the gardeners as he had caught them before they started cleaning up this mess. Nor could it have been a fox as it wouldn’t be strong enough to do that, even if it had hands and opposable thumbs. Investigating this little mystery further, Shouhei pushed the rock aside and found what looked like a deep hole going all the way down to the foundation of the compound. If he had to shoot a guess, it would lead to a barrow or the walls of the compound. Alternatively, something else entirely. Weirder things had happened after all.

Judging from the size of the wole, he couldn’t just slide down there, but it didn’t take him long to get an idea of what he could do to get around that problem, and to carry out that plan he first ran back inside for a few things. Coming back, he had a dry set of clothes (because he did not want to make it all muddy down there or get stuck for what he had planned), and a flashlight. Putting the flashlight in his mouth, he did a few hand seals. Dog → Boar → Ram and suddenly in a puff of smoke, a badger appeared where Shouhei stood before. Unfortunately, this basic transformation technique did not give him any extra senses, nor transformed any of the ones he had already, so that is why he brought with him the much needed flashlight to allow him to see anything at all down there.

"Tally ho!" He jumped down the hole to start this new adventure of his.

Notes wrote:Word Count: 1,420.

’This was the worst idea ever.’  Was the most coherent thought he had as he crawled through the hole. The less coherent ones were about small bits of discomforts such as: “This place is too cold,”  “it is a bit small,”  which was funny since it was made for a larger animal; and when he came under the house, “is that heat from the pipes underneath the house? My undergarments are going to be so sticky now…” His jaw also hurt from holding the flashlight in his mouth, but that was a minor thing compared to the lesser claustrophobic feelings he had. Yet the worse thing was when he stepped on a worm or some other critter. The feeling of their fleshy or cretin shells breakings underneath his feet and hands almost made him want to give up on being a ninja and become a priest to get rid of the dirtiness it made him feel. But he couldn’t be that weak and getting back up were too troublesome so he bit those feelings into the flashlight.

Now as for something more positive to lighten the load of his mind of those gross feelings! Shouhei could admit that the tunnels were built quite well, and as he came further along its path, he noticed that there was these small side paths used to store things, or to what Shouhei guessed were to eat and sleep. This told him that whomever made this were definitely more than a regular animal. As for intelligent it were, that would be waited to be seen.

Up ahead, he noticed that the borrow split up into different paths. But what more, one of the paths bended the light of his flashlight in a weird way. While he was curious where the other paths lead, he knew as much that he was still under his parent’s mansion as he could feel the heat from the pipes above him, so he was sure in himself he had to explore this anomaly first. As he came closer, he detected what was up with that, and saw that it went up there. It was simple enough to explain. It was just a hole that went up into the floor. Shouhei just hadn’t guessed it because this is the first time he had traversed such tunnels made by an animal.

‘Well might as well go up there. My mouth is dry as hell.’ He thought to himself as he attempted to climb up which took him about ten minutes as he for some reason didn’t think to use his chakra to cling to the wall. Instead, he used his nails and fingers that in this moment were in the form of claws and paws until he had failed for about three tires. Save to say, his thoughts were something like ‘Bugger I should have done this earlier’ when he climbed up and pushed a brick aside entering a large underground room.

Shouhei couldn’t quite remember where this was, but when he transformed back into normal size, he recognized it as their wine cellar. Taking the flashlight out of his mouth he also realized how dirty he had become, which meant he had to ask nicely for someone to bring him some clean clothes so he wouldn’t make a mess upstairs. All he had to do was knock on the door and he was sure one of their maids would notice. There were no sign of the predator as far as he could tell however and by that time Shouhei hadn’t learned to detect chakra so that wasn’t on his list of ideas to do.

Now the only thing bad about his current situation was that his only source of light was his flashlight. However, he was too thirsty to worry about that so a kunai and his flashlight in hand he went looking for some refreshment. Not wine, or one of the other alcoholic beverages they in barrels and bottle stands all around, but that thin berry wine you would serve to children at parties.

However, when he opened a bottle and took a sip of its content. That was when the creature took its chance and leapt onto Shouhei’s back. It quickly repositioned itself to support most of its weight on his shoulder, and Shouhei could feel it had the weight of a large dog as its claws neared his face. “How troublesome indeed; that the oldest youngling of the house had to grew up and become a shinobi - just as when Hoshi was supposed to be free of people of that kind. And just as when I needed to feed my starving children too. Troublesome, troublesome.” It said in a voice that sounded like it was coming from a man, but also excessively too loud for his taste. He could also detect a hint of sarcasm but he wasn't sure. However, as no one came to explore that loud noise in the wine cellar, Shouhei guessed wasn’t as loud as it sounded, but just hoarse and high pitched.

Suddenly, Shouhei just grabbed the creature by its front legs. Taking it by surprise, he threw it to the ground and jumped back shining his flashlight right into its eyes as he kept his kunai up and ready. What he saw was what he would describe as grown but young honey badger of regular size. He of course couldn’t say whether it was male or not for while honey badgers were mammals they weren’t really that exposed like dogs. That it had talked before weren't really something that crossed his mind all that much now that his mind was all clouded by cortisol, and his body filled with adrenaline.

Notes wrote:Word Count: 950.

”But of course, young shinobi can also be quite useful.” That grinding voice really annoyed Shouhei. Not in a way that would want to kill the honey badger more, but he did wonder why it was about to open up to negotiations now. Was it trying to pull a faint? Was it thinking it had the advantage or try to get the best deal instead of lose? Heck, maybe it was just lazy and wanted an equal trade, but Shouhei wasn’t sure about that.

“Say you forget about all this and I won’t leave you damage in a way you are going to feel or not feel for the rest of your life?” It said revealing it teeth in a vicious smile that maybe wasn’t the scariest in the world, but definitely would cause a lot of harm to being so fleshy as humans. Shouhei also noticed how it widened it shoulders and its full length spreading out.

“No deal.” Shouhei said firmly, his face looking a bit crazy as it was trying to settle into a firm expression but failed due to his heightened alerted state.

“Are you feeling brave today, kid?” The honey badger shoot back sounding more patronizing than before. Who could really blame it thought? Shouhei was playing chicken with a vicious animal after all.

For a second Shouhei wasn’t sure how to respond. Should he attack or taunt it back. Then something came to his mind that was strong enough to cut through the fog of his previously mentioned state. An idea so crazy it might work if the badger had a sense of humor. “You are making a mistake here, mister honey cake.” Shouhei paused for a second before he followed up with the following. “I’m not stuck in this basement with you. It is you who are stuck in this basement with me!” As he raised his voice, and pulled a face that made him look like a cartoon.

There was silence in the room for a moment – one long enough that Shouhei had time to wonder why no one upstairs had heard him – and the honey badger held its jaw in a weird way. One, two, three, four, and it started laugh in a way that reminded Shouhei of a hyena. It did not start to roll on its back and around the floor, but it was definitely a full and pure belly laugh.

Shouhei still kept his stance – even if his face had relax – as the honey badger stopped laughing and looked back up at him. “Fine fine. Let us do the human version of trade. Hmm...” It tabbed its nails against the floor as its mind went into thought. “I can’t give you back your swan for obvious reasons but you might be able to make me stop these small trips.”

However, Shouhei cut him off. “I know you’re sentient but it is easier to do pest control or chase you out of this town? I got no relations or need for you to be here.” His tone making it clear he was pulling a hardline.

“I wasn’t done yet.” It snarled. “So listen here kid to your betters.” It coughed to leave room for its next words. “I have the same opportunity to rip you apart like a twig, so don’t play hard with me. Now if you – once let us say every two weeks – give me tribute in the form of prime meat. That’s one of the only good thing you humans are good at.” Then it realized something else. “And some honey. From what I can see that shouldn’t be a problem for you. Good thing you caught me or you might need new bees as well.” It laughed which annoyed Shouhei a little. “Give me those two things, and I will stop going commando in this town.” The piling up of suggestions did not help with the annoyance but it did not seem like it was done explaining its case so now was not the time to interject. Although, Shouhei had to opine that ‘going commando in this town’ was an odd choice of words.

“Since you wanted social points with me to have some meaning to this deal.”

‘Really? Social point?’ His mind quickly shot in before it caught up to the rest of what it said.

“I was thinking you could come on a trail period for the summoning pact of my people. We live around the borderland of what you would call Hoshi and Suna. A cozy place with lots of sun, water, and food, but you being one of those orange haired humans, your skin probably won’t like it. Not to mention cooking is not really a high priority of ours.”

The honey badger had stopped talking as if it was waiting for input, but Shouhei were busy in his thoughts. He wasn’t annoyed anymore, but he had to admit to himself that the honey badger’s attitude and attempts to make things sting, was up there on annoying things as well. However, he wouldn’t be weak, and act like a school yard kid by making it bite. However, a summoning contract did sound nice, but before that, he wanted to ask some questions.

“Question!” Shouhei raised his hand as if he was in school and it nodded in response. “What is your sex? What is the name I can address you as? In addition, what are the conditions for this pact?”

“My name is Zviad. I am a man. Moreover, as I said before, it is only a trail period, so don’t worry about details yet since we will most likely throw you out, but please summon us when you fight something we can eat. Makes us life easier.” It noticed that Shouhei looked at it weirdly. “We don’t eat humans, but other summoned animals on the other hand…It is always fun biting a piece of them. Seeeeespecially snakes.”

Once he had recovered from his 'heh. it did a pun," reaction, his weird expression expired seconds after, and was ready to answer. “I’ll sign this trial period then.”

Zviad summoned a piece of paper for Shouhei to sign. Not a large scroll like one would expect, but a single piece of parchment with a few words on them that Shouhei could comprehend. “It’s a bit short, don’t you think?”

Zviad looked up from the scroll. “I did say it was a trial. Did you think we were going to let you sign the scroll proper for that? Heh, your nativity youth is showing, Shouhei.”

His eyes raised for a moment in surprise, but then he remembered that this badger could have stalked the compound for a while. “No but that does not mean I need to walk into this with ignorance now does it?” He shot back, and then he signed it in blood as tradition had it.

“Oh yeah. By the end of the trial you have to wrestle Nio our little friend to prove yourself.” Zviad laughed as he saw Shouhei’s expression. “Don’t worry. This contract is very loose and you can only summon me, and the others won't be able to summon you out of your bed at night." Shouhei wasn't sure if he liked Zviad's sense of humour. "Will be fun seeing you travel across the dessert to visit our little home, and you challenging Nio however. Don’t worry about going thirsty as we will show hospitality when you arrive.”

However, that story was for another time, and while Shouhei could contest this contract quite easily, he did not chose to over his better judgment and optimism that there would be a future potential gain in this pact.

Although, he still had a job to do. He had to tell his father that the menace had been taken care of, and then prepare a meal for it. He would probably just buy its meal at a restaurant or something seeing as Shouhei wasn’t a good cook. Moreover, if he got the maids involved his parents would know, and seeing this was a deal between himself and Zviad, getting his parents involved would just cause further trouble.

A door swing away, and he was onto a new ‘adventure’.

[EXIT]

Notes wrote:Word Count: 1375
Total Word Count: 4502
Claiming Scroll:
Honey Badger (2000/2000)
Claiming summoning:
Zviad (500/500)
Claiming Jutsus:
Rope Escape Technique (500/500)
Genjutsu Release (500/500)
Flicker Movement (1000/1000)
Claiming stats: 22 (4400 / 2)