Monster Hunter (IO)

Kaito didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about what to do next; when he noticed Katsumi moving, he adjusted his position on the beast’s neck so he had footing, and within a second, he pushed himself away as fast as he could. He observed Katsumi as her body flickered into the open maw of the beast, and powerfully sliced it’s head clean off with the mighty claw he had handed over to her. The head separated from the body and fell onto the ground, along with Katsumi: Kaito was too far away to be able to help her when he finally landed, but the mighty beanstalk quickly moved over to the rescue, as if a galant samurai in white plating he was. Katsumi was uncharacteristically stoic; perhaps some nerve damage, or worse, spinal damage? Kaito took cautious, worried steps towards her, until he noticed her moving her hand towards her flak vest pocket, from where she produced a pack of cigarettes, taking a ciggy and a lighter from it, setting it alight, and taking a long drag. She was fine, then. Perhaps it were her feminine traits that made her uncomfortable, what with being covered in sticky strands of monster saliva. Kaito understood her; even he wouldn’t like to be in that position.

Kaito grabbed his Jagged Claw, and it was with some disgust and sadness he looked at his sword. He wouldn’t usually have used it so savagely, even though that was the purpose of the sword. Come to think of it, Katsumi had baptized it in blood, not him. He had kept it sheathed and attacked with other means almost every other opportunity he had, such had been his focus on his body over his weapons. Perhaps she deserved to keep it. He would give it some thought; until then, he snapped his fingers, and the weapon was transferred to his Storage Displacement, where he would later clean it.

Kaito’s clone got to his feet, massaging his back. He looked Kaito in the eye and stated very drily “you’re gonna feel this one later”. He now understood how annoying he must be to others, if he was this fucking annoying to himself. “Yeah, but only as a memory. You get to keep the injury. Wait here as long as you can…” he started, but the clone interrupted -- “...and bury it when I can use Tearing Palm again, so we can avoid a decomposing body and an infestation of predators or vultures.. I know. I’m you.” “Fair point”, he said to himself.

As he walked alongside Katsumi and Beanstalk, Kaito felt for his cigar, but it would be impolite to pull it out when he couldn’t share. He was gonna use after his lunch break, with some cognac, perhaps, or a harsh sake. “So, do you have plans for lunch? We should celebrate this victory.”

His clone, staying behind, observed the creature. He took in details of the creature, the looks, how it made him feel… well, less terrifying now that it’s head was no longer attached to his body, but the image of it running towards him was burned into his brain. His main “him” was gonna love that. Once enough time passed, after admiring the creature long and hard, he performed more seals, and allowed the earth to devour the beast. Now a good few meters below the ground, where it could rest in pieces, the clone dispelled itself.

In their trek, Kaito shivered lightly at the surge of information, and the admiration of the beast. He got in his mind the picture that his clone had been playing with… an imitation of the creature’s style, engraved forever as a suit of armor. It was time to bring out the hammer and anvil; he had work to do.

Not that Kaito had a horse to bet in on this race, but the flirting of the two was starting to get to him. Being the third wheel in an ox-pulled cart was about as entertaining as receiving an eye transplant without anesthesia. Still they made their merry way towards the village, and for once he was glad to see the barren walls and gates, proudly standing amidst the mountains. Hopefully now they could go and get something to eat, and Katsumi could wash the scent of blood from herself. Not that it didn’t fit her; for someone so deadly to smell of death.

Kaito taunted the lad that Katsumi condemned to a double shift with a thumbs up, and moved along with them inside, just before they came to a halt so Katsumi could play her feminine wiles on them again. Kaito dismissed the flirting with a hand up and blurted out “pass”, before resuming his stance, standing tall and with his arms crossed in front of his chest. For the second time today, Kaito felt fear, the first being when the beast charged at him way up in the mountains, the second being when Katsumi assumed he still remembered her taste in foods. “Sure do”, he said, and watched her waltz away from the two. Even if he didn’t like her, he couldn’t complain about the view.

Kaito waited for Anaphiel to espouse another long sentence regarding the situation. Why couldn’t he be briefer on this casual talk? “Yeah, I don’t know her tastes either, so we’re just gonna go get ramen. Follow me.” He led the tall chunnin to a hole in a wall, when the chunnin decided to inquire about his and Katsumi’s history. “We worked together for years in her father’s kitchens, then she became a child prodigy ninja and I became a cook. No matter the kind of sword or knife, she was born to wield one. If you’re wondering if we are more than working partners, no worries on my side, you can go for her.” Even saying that left a bad taste in his mouth. He needed some alcohol to wash it away.

As they walked into the ramen place, Kaito looked at the owner’s face as it distorted into rage, and he put his hands in front of him. “Now, before you start with your shit, I don’t owe you anything! Your business with Zento is with Zento alone. I just want some ramen and some sake.” The owner caught himself before his rage, and pointed Kaito into a corner table. As Kaito sat down, he brought warm sake and two glasses. “Oh, we’ll need another cup, and bring us menus. We’re waiting on a friend.”

He picked the bottle, and served one shot of sake to Anaphiel, before putting the bottle down so Anaphiel could serve him, as good manners dictate one don't serve their own cup. "So, beanstalk, what's your story?"

Anaphiel’s long winded replies pissed him off. Most likely due his own propensity to rant away, a need to make himself sound smarter than he really was, perhaps. His physical appearance didn’t keep him awake at night; he didn’t need to be as tall as Anaphiel to be firmly secure of his prowess. He wasn’t unsure of his looks; he knew he was quite more handsome than average, or at least he could be if the proper girls were liquored enough. He could kill men with his bare hands; he had done it already, and crippled others beyond repair. No, it wasn’t his physical attributes that brought about insecurity. It was that which he could not easily dominate. Anaphiel’s ways made him feel insecure. Or, rather: the things which he disliked about him were reflections of that which he despised within himself.

Once inside the ramen shop, Anaphiel served him a glass of sake, and he mimicked the cheering with Anaphiel before asking his question. It appeared Katsumi slipped in between his setting down the glass and asking the question, as she floated about in her luxurious blue kimono as though an elegant mountain lion stalking its prey in perfect harmony with its environment. The blue sash of purity almost felt like a cruel joke on her part, yet it fit her strikingly well.

She scooted over to his side of the table at what seemed like a last second decision, possibly weighed carefully between two options regarding which outcome would inflict the most psychological torture on Kaito. Before Kaito even had time to shift his weight on the position he took so carefully to make sure she felt inclined to join Anaphiel’s side of the table, she bumped him away with her hip, playfully, but at least this time he didn’t felt the usual jolt of energy he would feel coursing through his body. No. Instead, a slow warmth crept from their point of contact and up his left side, as though she was a striker and he was phosphorus, reacting slowly but surely. He fucking hated it. Or her. Or her, for it. But scoot he would.

With Anaphiel filling Katsumi’s glass and Katsumi refilling his glass, Kaito did the right thing and refilled Anaphiel’s glass. He would tell his story, about how he used to be a Konohagakure ninja, but him and his clan moved in and kept rank based on their previous historical rank by the grace of Lord Maximilian, and how he worked with the sensory team to prevent people from entering anywhere but from the gates. Kaito chuckled. “Yeah, I just prevent unauthorized people from entering through the gates. When they’re stupid enough to try.” Not much of a story; that much was true. But the implication of a former Konohanin among them was certainly something to spike Kaito’s interest in the man, closely so. He asked about their past, and Kaito exchanged a glance towards Katsumi, before looking back to Anaphiel. “I was a cook, then I was a ninja. No story here. Kages point me at enemies, I kill them.” He lifted his sake, mocked clinking his glass with theirs, then knocked back the sake. He looked over to Katsumi. “Your turn.”

The corner sit was a comfortable one, for there were two sides from which Kaito would not be surprised from. Unless, of course, someone breached a wall. However, given that his byakugan was deactivated, he would not have been able to see someone approaching from beyond the wall, but neither did he see Katsumi’s motions under the table. While he did see her nudge herself closer, even as Kaito was already close to the wall, he thought she was just adjusting her sitting to be more comfortable, however her leg would come to touch his, a surprise attack as it were. The contact brought up a sensation of warmth that travelled up his leg, and sure enough, he started feeling a similar warm sensation on his solar plexus. He fucking hated the way she made him feel. Their eyes met, and he could see her mischievous self playing from behind the crimson pools of her eyes.

She went on exposing his life to this new person who he barely knew and felt very little in the way of comfort about having his privacy exposed to in this way, and he wanted to jerk his leg away from her but some magnetic field locked the two in place for the time being. Yet, underneath the overselling of Kaito’s life experience -- in direct contrast to Kaito’s own underselling of it -- she couldn’t help but expose her own resentment towards him. How he garnered her father’s blessing to be the next owner, rather than absorbing all the knowledge the man offered as though he were a sponge and earning a job. How her father offered him to take the place due to the man being there to listen to Kaito’s trials and tribulations on what he perceived were a failure to becoming a fully realized ninja, and how the staff was behind it because they feared her more than they respected her.

She mentioned the burning restaurant, and the blazing midnight sun that had been burned into Kaito’s memories back then resurfaced; the intense smoke, the cracking of burned wood, the despair at yet another failed venture.

The hate.

Kaito’s eyes shifted to her for a moment when she began talking again, and he noticed he had been sitting a bit too stiff. Not that he would change that now, but he was now too conscious of their contact. She thanked him with a playful elbowing for allowing her with the opportunity to become the youngest jonin in the village, blind to the fact her father utilized Kaito as a way to facilitate his own indecision; to bind his only daughter, born of a noble clan, to the path he had chosen, or gift the ownership of the restaurant to Kaito and allow her to become the renown genius she was. No, it would’ve never crossed Katsumi’s mind that the gesture of gifting the ownership of the restaurant had not been a slight to her, but rather pity and charity bestowed upon Kaito. At the time, he had accepted it, blind as he was to his own gifts. But, Katsumi would never see that. He pulled his hips back onto the chair and retracted his leg slightly so it did not touch hers any longer, feigning the entirety of the motion was just a move to grab the bottle and refill empty glasses. This time, and for all the disrespect it would bring, he would fill his own too. However, the glimpse of the hatred he had felt that night flared ever so slightly within his heart, and a small disrespect would be the least of his worries before this story was over.

Anaphiel would ask what happened when he returned, but Kaito shrugged. “She wasn’t around then. She came back after I won the chunnin exam this past… April? Sometime then. She gave me the what for, that much is true.” He glanced at her, pensive. “She offered to teach me the tricks of the trade, as it were. It worked when she taught me in the kitchens, so I took her up on it. That’s why she left that poor sod up in the barracks to have a double shift.” Anaphiel went on to describe his chronicle project; a noble cause. A warrior should be as skilled with the sword as with the pen; for without the sword, a man is a coward, and without the pen, a man is a fool. Kaito had the sword. Anaphiel had a pen. Between the two of them, they could make one good man, he supposed. The idea of reading a chronicle wasn’t properly what Kaito would’ve had in mind either as a fun way to spend an afternoon; perhaps Anaphiel’s sister would’ve held more interest to Kaito. He was, after all, a visual creature more than anything, and if the sister was a painter, then perhaps she would have something more appealing for Kaito to look at. Kaito himself only had skill as a cook, maybe as an apprentice blacksmith for all the armor and weaponry he had started crafting after his attempt at forging his own kitchen equipment. “So long as you make it interesting, I’m not much of a reader.”


When he offered to show something he had been working on, Kaito was almost afraid. A tinge of paranoia crept up the edge of his mind, waiting to strike just as these two were likely planning to strike at him. Was he in on the ploy? Kaito needed a distraction. “Sounds good, let us know when it’s ready.” He turned his head to the server who had greeted them initially. “Oi, where are the menus? We’re starving here.”

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(exit)
WC: 947
TWC: 5015 + 2038 (event bonus) = 7053
Claiming 5000 Ryo from S-Rank + 250 from Chunnin Salary
Claiming 140AP +15AP from mission