Mission: The Culling [D-Rank]

Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:04 pm

The Culling

Mission:

Katsu headed toward the mission building to see what today had in store for them. His brother was currently asleep inside him, and he saw no need to wake him for the mundane task of getting a mission. The two had been doing a lot lately trying to prepare themselves for the chuunin exams, and this was just another step toward that. He entered the building and walked up to the desk, finding a familiar chuunin sitting their doeling out missions. The chuunin, having spotted his approach, grabbed a scroll and proffered it to the boy. Katsu promptly took it then stepped outside.

He opened the scroll and mentally nudged his brother, as he got to reading. Masaru’s head slowly formed, followed by his neck, a yawn on his lips. “Huh?” he asked groggily. Katsu had just finished reading and gestured toward the scroll. “New mission. We have to go help out at a slaughterhouse.”

Two arms grew out of Katsu’s chest and came up to wipe at Masaru’s face as he yawned again. “We have to what? Slaughterhouse? That doesn’t sound very fun. I like eating meat, I don’t wanna see the animals we are eating, much less help kill them.” Katsu shrugged, and started making his way toward the slaughterhouse. “A mission is a mission, they never said all the missions would be fun.”

It took awhile for the boys to reach the slaughterhouse, Masaru being well awake after the five mile journey. The two had talked about it, and decided that as much as Masaru didn’t really want to be involved, it would go a lot faster if they each handled half of the work. So much to his discomfort, he had split from his brother and the two boys walked into the slaughterhouse together to inform the foreman they had come and gather any tools they would need. It turned out they had been expected, so the introductions and instructions were quick and to the point. They received directions, a large cart, and a number of cages and soon the two were off to gather chickens.

The chicken coops weren’t too far from the main slaughterhouse, so it didn’t take the boys long to follow the path there. The building they came up to was much larger than they had expected, but then if they really thought about it, this slaughterhouse likely provided the village with most of, if not all of its meat. They stepped inside to loud and constant clucking. There were chickens everywhere, but they knew that they were supposed to take a specific group of chickens that were about six months old and were housed in their own location away from the rest of the chickens, which was good because neither boy would have been able to choose a good chicken for slaughter.

They walked over to the correct area and grabbed a bag of feed. They sprinkled some on the ground and waited for the chickens to come, which didn’t take long. Each boy then grabbed a chicken, and put it in the cage. They repeated this process until they had twenty chickens. Lucky for them, the chickens were accustomed to people and being handled, so they didn’t make much of a fuss as they were picked up and then stuck into cages. With that done, the boys headed back.

Back in the slaughterhouse one of the workers there gave them some basic instructions on how to butcher the chickens. Afterward each boy took a chicken and placed it upside down in a cone, their heads hanging out of the bottom, and their feet hanging out of the top. Then they each grabbed a knife, and looked at each other. “I think we just have to do it.” Masaru shook his head at Katsu, “I really don’t want to.” Katsu nodded his agreement, but walked up to the chicken “We don’t have a choice. This is our job.” He placed the knife at the chicken’s neck, holding its head in one hand, and drew the knife across its throat. Then took a step back. The chicken, kicking and flailing for a moment as spasms coarsed through its body.

The two boys watched the chicken, their eyes transfixed on it, as it kicked out the last of its life. Neither could speak. Until this moment neither of them had killed anything before, well except for bugs now and then, but this was just different. Finally, Masaru stepped forward and mimicked what Katus had done, cutting the chickens throat.

Once both chickens had finally stopped moving, they grabbed the chickens by the feet and took them to a boiling pot of water. They each dunked the chicken in, and held it under for about half a minute or so, before pulling it out so that they could pull the feathers off. They came away a lot easier then either boy had expected, and they were done plucking the chickens in no time. Once they pulled all the feathers off, they had to use a small torch to burn off any tiny hairs on the chicken to complete the cleaning process. They repeated this over and over again until they had killed and cleaned all twenty chickens.

Once all the chickens were cleaned the boys had to remove the heads by cutting them off at the neck. Next they removed the feet by cutting at a joint in the leg and then snapping the leg at the joint, breaking them off. While this wasn’t particularly fun, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the next step, where they had to cut into the back of the chicken so they could get their hand inside of it and pull out its guts. This step nearly made Masaru throw up, but he managed to keep from doing so. Once again, they had to do this ten times each, to finally have twenty chickens, ready to go. From inside the chickens, the only piece they had to save was the heart, so once complete they had twenty chickens and their hearts sitting together and ready to be cooked.

They cleaned themselves off, and then headed to gather ten pigs. The boys put a rope around one pig and used that sort of as the lead pig. Then created clones to herd the pigs behind the first pig, Katsu leading it back, while Masaru covered the rear, keeping the pigs moving while a clone on either side kept them somewhat together as they moved back to the slaughterhouse. This ended up being a lot more work then it should have been and all and all was just a huge pain in the ass, but eventually they were able to get 9 pigs into a pen right outside the slaughterhouse, and the first pig that they had the rope around into the slaughterhouse.

Once again the boys were faced with having to kill an animal for the first time, though this one was much larger and felt more alive to them then the chicken. Maybe it was because it was a mammal, like themselves, or maybe it was just the size, but they both felt very uncomfortable with the idea. Katsu took the lead again, taking a large cylindrical tool that was used for puncturing and stabbed it through the top of the pigs skull. Blood gushed out and got on his hands and he had to quickly step back to avoid being completely covered in it as he pulled the blade free.

With the pig dead, the boys worked together to lift the large animal up and hang it on upside down on a meat hook that was suspended from an apparatus up near the ceiling. Once hooked, they waited for all of the blood to drain, then moved the hook and like the chickens, dunked the pig into a huge vat of boiling water that would loosen the skin on the pig's body. After submerging it for a short while, they pulled it back up and then set to work skinning the pig. They started with the skin around it’s hind legs and cut the skin away. Katsu then made an incision along the length of the pigs belly, and after far too long, they managed to peel the skin free from the creature.

With its skin gone, they had to now remove the creatures organs. Starting at the anus they made an incision and cut down the length of the pig slowly. As Katsu cut, Masaru had to pull out the organs and set them aside. It took awhile to complete this process, but eventually they had managed to remove all of the disgusting bits and had a relatively clean pig carcass hanging from the hook.

They pulled it down and together took it to a large chopping block, removing its feet and head. At which point they had removed all of the parts that wouldn’t be sold as food, so it was time to butcher the large animal. This was an extremely time consuming process, as neither had ever done something like this before, and one of the workers had to supervise them, telling them where to cut, and why. Eventually they were done with the first pig, and had to repeat the process nine more times.

At this point, both boys were well and done with killing these creatures and weren’t sure if they were going to be able to look at meat the same way ever again. Unfortunately, they were not yet done, and had the biggest task left to complete. So off they went to get ten cows.

It hadn’t been too bad getting the cows up to the slaughterhouse and once again they placed 9 in a nearby pen and led one inside. How to kill the large animal was a daunting task, and the explanation did not make either of them feel better about it. Like with the pig, Katsu had to plunge a large cylindrical object into its skull. Immediately afterward, Masaru had to pull its head back, and cut the creatures throat, forcing the blade in deep to find the carotid artery. Huge amounts of blood poured out of the creature, and the two were lucky that neither of them managed to get hurt as the beast moved with its dying struggles.

It took the boys a bit after that first kill to continue on. They had gotten blood on themselves, and something about killing the cow was even worse than when they killed the pig, but they knew they couldn’t stop. Not when they had come this far. Like with the pig they had to get a large meat hook into the beast and hoist it up into the air. This time the hook did most of the work though, which was good as the boys had no chance of lifting the beast into the air. After this, the work was very similar to skinning the pig, though on a larger scale. It took the boys nearly half a day to finish butchering all ten of them, night settling in as they finished with the last one.

Neither boy spoke as they each took a hose and covered the floor in water, pushing the blood and stray bits of meat out and away from the slaughterhouse. It was surprising how easily the blood washed away. It was surprisingly easy, to end a creature's life. This is what the two thought on as they finished up for the day, cleaning the floors and doing their best to wash themselves clean of blood. They had killed forty animals this day, but tomorrow it could be a person. All it took was one quick strike to a vital location, and a person would die, just like these animals had. Neither knew if they would be able to make that strike when it really came down to it, but they had a feeling it would be easier now, then it would have been when they first woke up that morning.

[WC 2008]

Claiming 7 stats
Katsu 4 Chakra 2 Strength 1 Speed
Masaru 1 Strength 2 Speed 4 Health

Separation Eruption 2008 words, B rank complete 508 toward A rank

3 AP 1100 Ryo

Fri Feb 21, 2020 9:11 pm

Approved

Mission: The Culling [D-Rank]

Mission: The Culling [D-Rank]

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