Meeting New Friends [P]

Keita was out and about, inspecting the surroundings of the village, looking for anything out of the ordinary that day. It was misty and drizzling, much like it usually was, so Keita had to make sure he would thoroughly check everything that he came across, as it was quite a bit easier to do shady business in the mists when not a whole lot of people could see you do it. He did not think that any nefarious happenings were going on today, but it had become a habit ever since he had become an Anbu member, whenever Kizmaru was not in need of his services, which was becoming more frequent. Keita was also becoming more independent, and this was something to be celebrated, as tensions between the Mist Village and the outside world were quite hot at the moment, so going off and doing his own thing to strengthen or keep an eye on the village while Kizmaru was busy was pretty beneficial. Still, it was fairly a no consequence day, nothing in particular was happening, and it was a bit boring, to be honest, so Keita was meandering listlessly, although he was still carefully paying attention to things. 

After a few hours of doing this, he decided to take a break by a small lake that fed into the ocean off by one of the lesser used dock areas. He liked this area because it was not very busy most hours of the day, and so it was pretty nice and relaxing, and had quite a good view when he was sitting next to the lake, eating a small lunch box that he had packed for himself. This time, the lunch box he had packed for himself was some rice with some pickled plum, which was very good, if you could handle sour things, plus it was really good for you and filling. Still, it was a dish most people would not think about, but he liked the pickled plums, and he needed a reason to eat them because he made a batch that was probably a bit too big. Still, as he sit on the small little bridge that led out to the lake for the people to fish on and ate his lunch, he saw something out of the corner of his eye, which was some sort of lizard or reptile. This lizard or reptile was quite a bit larger than normal, and its head popped back in the water as soon as Keita looked at it, but he was sure that the lizard he had just seen was a salamander the size of a small child. 

Keita loved animals, and his curiosity got the better of him, and so he decided that he wanted to head down into the lake to see where this salamander was. It was also good inspiration for a new calligraphy painting, so it gave him another excuse to go ahead and act on his impulse. He jumped into the lake, sinking fairly quickly, but he was coated in chakra so that the water would not penetrate his clothes and soak him. This then turned into a large bubble, which shielded him and also gave him an area of oxygen that he could see out of, so that the normal blurred vision one would have with water in their eyes would not occur. He steered the large bubble through the lake, heading forward towards where he saw the salamander’s head pop up from. He did not really have any other leads about where he should go, so he simply went in the direction that he last saw it. The lake was small, but it was still a lake, so it took him a while to actually go around, although he saw the normal retinue of fish and other wild life one would see in a lake in the Mist Village, there were no signs of any salamanders, let alone the large one he saw. 

Keita was about to give up and call it a day, simply pretending that what he saw was either fake, or perhaps he was just unlucky and would encounter the salamander again one day if fate would have it, but just as he was about to direct the bubble up to the surface of the lake, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He had been traveling at a fairly brisk pace underwater for a while, so when he saw a small underwater cave that seemed to have some air in it, he headed for it immediately. Soon he found himself inside of a cave, and it was flooded for the most part, and he saw what appeared to be a salamander. The lizard seemed to be looking towards his direction for a bit, before heading deeper into the cave, with Keita following close behind it. Keita did not want to frighten the animal, but the salamander was not moving in a way that a frightened animal would, it seemed he was luring Keita to a certain spot. Keita was partially ready for an ambush, although it was highly unlikely, he had no way of knowing if the salamander was a person using the transformation technique or not, so he got ready just in case. 

As he headed deeper into the save, he suddenly saw a spot that had oxygen, so he headed there. As he got out of the water, he undid the bubble, and found himself in a deep cave, strange glowing meal worms on the walls of the caves illuminated it with a soft light, and there were clearly six round pools in an almost uniform distance from each other, with Keita just coming from one of the pools. As he did so, he saw the salamander sitting there in the center of the cave system, with a couple more salamanders there, most of them small, but they seemed to look at Keita with a bit of caution. Keita simply softly gasped, thinking that the scene was quite beautiful, and he wanted to engrain this into his memory so that he could make some calligraphy painting of it when he got back. He simply sat there admiring them, but a few moments later, Keita was shocked for quite a while, as the salamander started to speak. “Are you just going to sit there gaping at us, or are you going to ask me why I brought you here?” the lead salamander said in a huff. 

Keita had heard of summoning contracts with intelligent animals before, so he was not greatly shocked, he was quite a bit startled that the animal suddenly started speaking, but he adjusted to it fairly quickly. “My apologies, I was unsure if you were actually leading me here, or if you were just an abnormally sized animal. I meant no offence.” Keita would politely say, and could see the salamander sigh. “It isn’t your fault I suppose, I guess I could have called out to you the first time at the lake, but I have to be cautious around the family pool.” The salamander would say with a contemplative look on his face, before continuing. “You’re Keita, are you not? We here have heard about you, and we wanted to set up a meeting of sorts. We always saw you looking out and admiring our lake, so we thought we might be able to send someone like me to go and make contact.” Keita was surprised, as he wondered why the intelligent species of animals wanted to see him. Yes he was always nice to animals and even protected them from time to time, but plenty of people did that, and he could not see why he was chosen, other than the fact that he had a rather high position in the village. “Me? Well, I do not mind speaking with you. What did you want to speak about?” 

Keita asked this with quite the confused face on at the moment, as he was really unsure what they wanted. He was definitely willing to help them if they wanted that, so maybe they needed some help and knew that he had some prowess, although he was unsure how they would know that considering most of his sparring and fighting were done either outside of the village or in the training room where these salamanders could not possibly have any way of seeing. The salamander then spoke up again. “Ahh, it’s our elder, follow me.” it said, before hopping into the pool at the back of the cave. Keita followed, and was soon face to face with a giant salamander, at least four meters tall and twelve meters long. The large salamander seemed old, and immediately put Keita into a genjutsu. Before Keita could freak out, the old salamander simply communicated with him that he wanted to sign a summoning contract with him, as he had help him when they were both babies. After seeing what was essentially a slide show of the salamander’s life as a baby, with a small Keita being there about twenty years ago, Keita got a bit emotional, but happy. Keita signed the contract, and hoped that he could use this to get better acquainted with the salamander tribe over time.
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WC: 1548
Signing Salamander contract 2k words with 25% discount