Starring:
Date: June 2, 2015
Summary:
Kaido, Bandit, Bolt, and Dorobou go on their quest to get back the precious shiny for the Tanuki, as well as their leaders.
"Turtles and Tanuki - The Quirky Quartet"
Land of Summons
And so, they're off! Kaido, Bandit, Bolt, and Dorobou at the head. The four would get to travel quite a distance, though the trip only takes an hour at the speed they're going. When they stop, they're at the very edge of a different forest. A forest of foxes, which is actually quite evident by the scent of fox everywhere on all the trees. "This's where their territory starts. We gotta be careful. If they spot us, we're goners. There's too many of 'em."
Kaido nods and motions for the group to take cover behind some bushes. He motions Doborou close and says, "Ok, so where is this 'best shiny' in this forest? I'm going to need some details if I'm going to be able to formulate a plan for getting it out safely." He looks over to Bolt and Bandit, "Bolt, Bandit, we're going to go provisionally with Sierra Delta Lima Hotel Five… and take it slow guys."
Bandit nods, "On it, we'll see what we can see and try and find a route in." Bolt also nods and says, "Bolt find where Doborou parent parents are for rescue." Kaido nods and says, "Again, you heard Doborou, DON'T BE SEEN!" The two nin-ken nod and take off zipping along the ground using their tree walking ability to avoid leaving scent trails on the ground to be tracked.
Kaido then turns to Doborou and waits for the tanuki to give him some more details that he needs to know.
Bolt and Bandit would get to scout out the area, which reveals the foxes love to live in burrows near the trees. While there's no tunnel system since there is life above ground, they obviously like to take shelter below it. Once in a while, a fox would poke its head out of its burrow, wondering who was running around.
Dorobou gives Kaido an approximate size by holding out his hands to indicate how large the shiny is. "It's about this big, real valuable, apparently, with the humans. It's all yellow and pretty…" His hands surround what could be considered a space the size of a basketball, and the fact that it was valuable and yellow and came from a mine…
Kaido blinks, "Gold? You mine gold? Oooooh boy… good thing you guys are off the beaten path and are hard to find or you'd have armies of human looking to take it." He whistles lightly and then says, "Alright… I'll bring the boys back and we'll see if we can get that gold err… nugget." Yeah, a nugget the size of a basketball, and since Kaido is a strategist, his best guess is that it's being displayed… foxes being what they are, probably in the center of the village.
He pitches his voice in the range that only his nin-ken can hear and whistles and calls Bandit and Bolt back, who make their way back in a roundabout route and Kaido waits for them to tell him what they've found out.
"What? No, we don't mine. We found the shiny in an unused one, though~," Dorobou replies with a small nod. "So, ready to go? How're the foxes looking? Thieving bandits as ever, yeah? Any sign of Gram or Gramps?" So many questions…
Bandit and Bolt arrive a few minutes later and when Dorobou hits them with questions, they simply wait until he's done before Bandit speaks, "Well, the route in is going to be tricky, there are foxes and their burrows everywhere and they like to pop their heads out to look around a lot." Bolt picks up the tale then, "Bolt saw OLD raccoons in cave near center of forest. Big bright shiny yellow thing there to in smaller cave next to Old raccoons! Many foxes guarding…"
When Bandit and Bolt report Kaido nods and thinks, "Ok… so we're going to need a distraction and someone to lead the foxes away." He looks at Bolt, "That's going to be your job, you're fast and nimble and should be able to keep them chasing you while Doborou, you and Bandit are going to rescue your grandparents while I grab the shiny that the foxes stole." He's got his doubts that the foxes actually stole it from the tanuki, but it's a test anyways and what's the worst that can happen anyways?
Dorobou frowns. "Sounds fun… Aight, then, Bolt! Get 'em good!" The Tanuki glances to Kaido, then Bandit, making sure they're all on the same page (because he feels a bit lost with the random codes that the Inuzuka have developed. He would get them someday, but not today). "I'm ready when you all are. Just give the word and we'll blast 'em!" … "In an inconspicuous way?" … "No bombs?"
Kaido raises an eyebrow at Dorobou and says, "Why would we bomb them? Let's just get what we came for and get out with as minimal fuss as we can. Getting in and out without them realizing that we have will be humiliating enough, don't you think?" With that, he motions for Bandit and Bolt to lead Doborou and him into the Fox Forest and the route they've found.
They make their way across trees, stopping every so often when a fox pops out of a burrow to see what's going on. Finally after a long circuitous route that takes them criss-crossing the village through the trees and streams and even along the ground where two burrows are far enough apart that they wouldn't be seen, they arrive at their objective. The big cave where the Tanuki Elders are being kept, and the smaller cave where their stolen artifact is.
Kaido then whispers to Bolt, "Ok Bolt, you know what to do… go ahead and stir up the hornets nest and then lead them around by the nose for a bit and give us time to escape." Bolt gives a doggie grin and nods and drops down to the ground in front of a couple fox guards and yips at them, ~Yo momma has fleas and yo daddy is so fat that when he sits down, he shakes the earth!" He sticks out his tongue and turns around and lifts up his tail and farts right in their faces. Yipping laughter he takes off, barking as loud as he can, trying to gather as many foxes to chase him as possible.
After a few minutes when Bolt and his entourage are out of sight, Kaido nods, "Ok, Doborou, Bandit, that's your cue, you guys get the Elders and head straight for the place where we stopped earlier. I'll meet you there once I get the gold nugget. Hopefully by then Bolt will have managed to get away from his persuers and will meet us there as well. Once we regroup we'll head back to the Tanuki land." With that, he motions for Doborou and Bandit to go and drops down himself to sneak into the smaller cave as Doborou and Bandit head for the bigger cave.
Kaido's plan probably works a little too well. While foxes pop out of their burrows, most of them just woke up and truly aren't incline to explore anything. Then Bolt comes into the middle of their woods yapping insults… Heads poke out, and foxes growl angrily, immediately setting about to chasing the impudent little brat of a pup. Run, Bolt, Run! That's drawn a majority of the foxes away, so now it's time for Team B and C.
Dorobou was a bit unhappy, but then happy to hear that this would probably be just as cruel. He sneaks over to the larger cavern, sniffing to make sure the Foxes hadn't left any guards. Said guards were currently chasing down Bolt, so there was nothing to worry about. "Gram! Gramps! You here?" he whisper-yells, looking around through the dark cavern. As it turns out, they were indeed! Both were tied up to rocks and … admittedly were only the size of Bolt. Short Tanuki compared to their kids… "Yes, yes. Untie us quickly!"
Kaido would find his golden nugget with ease. It's a giant basketball sized orb of gold, after all. It gleams faintly with the natural light from the moon, and it is as heavy as a solid gold basketball would be. Which is pretty heavy.
Bolt looks back running and yips back, "Foxes are slow!" Bolt even stops for just a moment to let the foxes nearly catch up to him and then dodges through the trees. It's a huge game to the pup and he's enjoying his role tremendously. The chase takes the foxes and Bolt deeper into the forest, away from the other two teams completing their objectives.
Bandit would follow Dorobou inside and when he sees Gran and Gramps Tanuki, he just shakes his head and says, "Yeah… should've known… Here, I'll take care of untying them, you just watch my back and make sure we aren't ambushed on the way out." Bandit gives Dorobou the gimlet eye as he uses chakra to make his nails harder and more claw-like and starts sawing through the ropes as fast as possible.
Kaido for his part sighs and says, "Great… a huge gold nugget that weighs nearly a half-ton…" He takes off his backpack and stuffs it in there and then uses chakra to enhance his strength and muscles to be able to carry it as if it was just a heavy pack and not an encumberance and starts to run back to where they were to regroup.
While Bolt is successful with leading the foxes away, Bandit might find it a bit more difficult to slash through the ropes. They're made out of this special chakra thread, likely from spiders, that just so happens to be very hard to slice. It takes so long that a fox ends up wandering into the cavern. "Oi! Yer not supposed to be here!" Dorobou says, surprise clear in his voice. The Tanuki doesn't quite hesitate in trying to chase the fox, either, scrambling to pounce him to the ground and prevent the alarm from sounding.
Kaido meets with moderate success. Since the two caves are right next to each other, it's likely he would hear the racket coming from it. Unfortunately, so do the others… And if Kaido doesn't hurry his butt, he might get to face off against the foxes that didn't chase Bolt. Meaning grumpy mothers and kids.
Kaido can hear the disturbance next door and sighs and mutters, "Great… complication…" He hefts the pack and goes to try and help Doborou and Bandit and seeing Doborou fighting with the fox and the fact that Bandit can't exactly saw through the ropes, says, "Bandit, here!" He sets down the heavy pack, "Use chakra and take this with you, we're going to get swamped. I'll take care of it. Doborou, get your grandparents and go, we'll meet you back at your parents."
Kaido pulls out a blowpipe and fits knockout darts into it, blowing one into the neck of the fox that Doborou pounced on. Kaido then says, "Get going you two, I'll cover you." Bandit uses chakra and grumbles as he struggles to get the pack on his back and carry it and says, "I'm not going to be able to go very fast." He warns, Kaido says, "Just go! I'll hold them off, I have enough non-lethal ways to deal with the stragglers, once that's done I'll go get Bolt and we'll meet up back at the Tanuki Forest."
The fox goes down with the tranquilizer, becoming dead weight for Dorobou. The Tanuki mutters a bit. "Watch where you fire that thing!" he grumbles, kicking away the unconscious fox before looking to Bandit and hmm-ing… No point. "Gram! Gramps! Let's go!" he urges, taking their paws and dragging them. The male one happens to have a beard of sorts, chin fur a bit longer than the other's. He grumbles at Bandit. "Gimme that! Young ones these days. No strength…" he grumbles, easily taking the sack and running with it. … Well, there's a reason why the orb of gold belongs to the Tanuki.
Kaido makes sure that Doborou, Bandit and the Tanuki Elders get away and quickly starts to pull out trip wire, knock out darts and a couple of pit traps. He makes sure he has a few knock out gas grenades prepared in case he gets swamped and waits for the foxes who heard the disturbance. He hides in the shadows of the cave intending to run once his traps take out most of the foxes.
Kaido's traps would take out about half of the foxes that were running after the intruders, but that was enough to make the second half stumble and fall, failing to catch the Inuzuka and tanuki. Success! Now all they had to do was get back to the Tanuki's forest! "Haha! See ya later, suckers!" calls Dorobou towards the foxes. This gets him a smack from Granny Tanuki. "Be respectful towards your opponents," she scolds, running along as easily as her mate. "Mm… Inuzuka? Interesting. Well, he seems suitable. A good brain on him, at least. Needs some refining, but he does look a bit young…" she would comment as they make their way back to base.
Kaido jumps from his place of concealment to drop the knock out gas grenades and makes his own escape, trusting the knock out gas to make them all too hungover when they wake up to wonder what happened. He takes care to obfuscate his route back to the forest so that it'll take the foxes time to figure out who attacked them and to find where they are.
Sniff sniff *ZONK* Foxes may not smell as well as dogs or anything, but that has is good stuff to knock them out with. They're all down, and Kaido and his group are able to make a clean getaway! All them them meet up at the tree, Bolt likely out of breath for running around for so long, and Dorobou happy to see the Elders, even as they size him and his friends up.
Kaido and his friends pant a bit, they used more than a bit of chakra to be able to escape, not to mention the lack of real rest from the long journey here and then to the Fox territory. Kaido catching his breath a bit says, "You guys ok?" as he looks to his partners (as he includes Doborou as one now). When Bolt just collapses on the ground and manages to say, "Bolt… TIRED!" and looks like he wants to just fall asleep where he's at. Bandit's not much better and says, "Yeah, nothing some food and rest won't cure." Kaido nods and then turns to the Elders and says, "Are you guys ok, did those foxes hurt you or do anything to you while you were captured?"
"We're fine. Just a bit sore from all that waitin around. Young 'uns… So slow…" Grandpa Tanuki huffs. Granny is a bit nicer, saying, "Thank you for your hard work! I know it must have been tough. Stars know I had trouble with those foxes." Dorobou smacks his forehead. "Alright, enough with the sappy. Let's just recover, and then go home ASAP." He glances around, making sure everyone is okay with that, then Kaido and his partners along with the elder Tanuki make their way back to the Tanuki's trees.
Kaido nods and herds his nin-ken along and says, "Come on guys, we can rest when we get back to the guest tree we were staying in." Bolt and Bandit drag themselves up and head in the direction the Elders head.
After the Inuzuka trio had managed to get back to their, it was all they could do to manage to climb into and literally pass out on a branch. It's a good thing that the branches are thick or they might have ended up rolling off and falling to the ground. That being said, the exhaustion from the massive usage of chakra both in getting here, going to complete the test and then getting back without a real fight ensured that the trio slept a long time before finally late in the afternoon, they began to stir.
Kaido and his ninken would not be disturbed at all while they slept, most of the Tanuki rejoicing that their Shiny had been brought back and their Elders were safe. Party all night long~. Well… Actually, that would happen later. The Elders had to go speak with Mama and Papa Tanuki, as well as Dorobou. The sun would be the only thing nudging Kaido, Bandit, and Bolt out of their slumber. Once they woke up, though, one of the neighboring Tanuki would wave them over and tell them that they needed to go to the Grand Cave.
Rested and refreshed, the trio head to the Grand Cave, looking at the celebrating tanuki with a smile. As the walk Bolt says, "Mission last night was fun! Want to do it again!" Kaido laughs and pats Bolt on the head, "Well I doubt we'll have to sneak into another land of anthropomorphic animals, steal a huge and heavy shiny object and rescue other important anthropomorphic creatures as a test to determine our worthiness, and remember… be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!" Bandit snorts and says, "Really Bolt? You enjoyed that? Being a cat's paw in the middle of a struggle between two Animal Clans?" Bolt blinks, "What cat? No seen cat? Saw lots of foxes though!"
Kaido just laughs and says to Bolt, "He means that we were used to do something that the Tanuki Clan was unable or unwilling to do themselves, it's just an expression Bolt." Bolt shakes himself and says, "Words hard for me, much simpler in Inuzuka language." Kaido smiles and says, "You're getting there, not too long and you'll be talking in human like Bandit." Bandit smirks, "It'll take you a lifetime to be as smooth as me pup." Bolt just sticks out his tongue at Bandit.
The Trio enter the cave and look for Doborou, his parents and the Elders.
When the trio enter the cave, both Elders are there, but not Dorobou's parents. Dorobou is, though, and he's got a grin on his face. "Nice job last night, you guys! I think you did great! And- mmf" A Tanuki tail covers his mouth, and Granny Tanuki says, "Hush, you. Let the ritual be as it always is." Then Gramps Tanuki sighs and makes a handseal. *POOF* A massive scroll appears, the size being about two Dorobou-s stacked on top of one another. They don't speak, either, allowing Kaido and his partners to take in what exactly is happening.
Kaido and his two nin-ken blink and Kaido says, "You're… offering a summoning contract to us?" He's literally shocked and even Bandit and Bolt are pretty surprised as well. Kaido takes a breath, "I don't know what to say, I'm honored more than you'll ever know." He closes his eyes and then opens them and says gravely, "I accept the responsibilty and all it entails." He looks at the Elders, "What do you need from me?"
The Grandpa Tanuki (who has yet to actually be named…) nods sagely, and Dorobou's mouth gets uncovered so he can give his pals a grin. "Yup! All ye- mmf" shut up again… Granny Tanuki butts in with, "Yes, we are. And you have done, and even exceeded, expectations that were set down by those who led our tribe in our absence. That is why we are giving you the opportunity." The scroll moves, slamming into the ground and unfurling to reveal two names, written in blood. They were old names, though, and it's clear the Tanuki don't often offer contracts to just anyone. Especially when they give tests like the ones last night.
"Sign your name on the scroll… All three of you. Then put your hand print at the bottom. You'll all be able to summon one of us, though it'll likely be the younger ones that answer your call. Dorobou can come back and visit when he likes, if we do this, too." The Grandpa Tanuki offers Kaido a silver dagger, the hilt having a single emerald gem in it. Clearly it's meant more for ceremony, but the edge is sharp and will cut with ease.
Kaido takes the dagger and then nods and looks at Bolt and Bandit. Bandit understands and nods gravely and offers his paw for the dagger so that he can sign his name in his own blood as the contract dictates. Kaido though kneels down to Bolt and says, "I'm going to explain what's happening here Bolt, because you need to understand exactly what this is and how much honor they're doing for us."
Bolt looks at Kaido quizzically, but listens intently, "The Tanuki Clan is offering to allow us to summon them when we need them to help us. This is a HUGE honor because it's very rare that the great Clans allow someone to make a summoning contract with them." Bolt tilts his head and says, "I understand… we have new friends/family and we do paw print to adopt them." Kaido tries not to laugh and has to hide a grin and looks askance at Gran and Gramps Tanuki and says, "I think they're adopting us actually, but I guess in Inuzuka nin-ken terms, yeah, that's right." He then says, "I'm going to cut your paw, use the blood to sign your name (I've shown you how before) and then make a paw print on the bottom, ok?"
With that, Kaido takes a deep breath, cuts his and his nin-ken paw just enough to make blood flow and cleans it, handing it back to the Tanuki as the trip rite their names out and then gravely, press their bloody hand/paws underneath their signatures.
Once the scroll is signed, it's left so the blood can dry. Not too long, since they don't want the signatures to fade. "Welcome, Inuzuka Kaido. Inuzuka Bandit. Inuzuka Bolt. To the Tanuki Clan," Gramps Tanuki says solemnly. Then Dorobou is /finally/ allowed to speak. "Sweet! Let's get outta here and get us some exciting times, then! I'll see you later, Gramps! Granny! And I'll say 'bye' to Ma and Pa, too!" With that, the younger summon-creature skitters out to tell his parents good bye (again) before grabbing his stuff. As he leaves, he calls to his new friends, "Meet you at the entrance in thirty!"
Kaido chuckles at Doborou and says, "I don't think I'll ever get bored with him around… he just like Bolt." Bolt nods vigorously and says, "Doborou GOOD friend." Bandit chuckles himself strangely and says, "Yeah, I've gotten used to the little furball, he's ok." Which in Bandit-speak means he actually likes him.
Kaido turns and bows deeply along with Bolt and Bandit to the Elders, "Thank you again, we'll be sure to take care of Doborou and make sure he stays MOSTLY out of trouble." With that, the trio picks up their gear and heads to the entrance to the forest to meet up with their new friend.
