Harry had left his Sister's home on Mount Lu and had decided pretty much on a whim to head towards Japan. His reasoning was simple: It meant he'd have to cross an ocean. A perfect opportunity for Delia to stretch her proverbial legs. He'd admit that he'd neglected her throughout his training with his Sister for a simple reason.
Dolphins, even ones of divine origin, were very hard pets to maintain, especially on a mountaintop.
So he'd riden his way to the coast on Atilla and then road Delia across the waves until he'd reached the land of the rising sun.
Nothing much had happened since coming here, he'd mostly been playing on the coast. Playing fetch with his dogs and wolves and teaching his dolphin how to jump through an old hoola-hoop he'd found in a local toy store. It had soon turned out that Delia was a natural at tricks, balancing a ball on its nose, giving flipper-high-fives and even learning to sing in tune to this "idol" style of music that seemed to be quite popular here.
All in all it'd been a great time, that is at least until one day when, while he was playing with Delia, he'd been attacked by a dragon, It wasn't as big as some of the ones his sister had told him about, but it was still bigger than Harry by quite a margin, but it did have the distinct advantage of flying way out of reach of Harry's animal friends. Well almost all of them, sure the birds could reach the dragon but they couldn't really do much damage to it. Leaving Harry stuck in a seaside cave with his familiars waiting for it to fly over.
He'd been waiting for an hour or so when he'd concluded the dragon just wasn't going to. Stuck between living in the cave forever or having to fight a dragon, he'd decided to pick the later option. turned into a living toxic cloud and left the cave.
Harry suspected that's where he'd made his mistake. In leaving the cave only after turning into a toxic mist. Normally his poisons didn't seem to affect his animal friends, though he didn't know why that was, something must've been different now.
Because Pepper was acting strange.
She'd become clingier than usual. Where once she used to run ahead leading the pack in their travels, now she'd stuck behind with Harry, clinging to him every step of the way.
Then she'd stopped eating, not entirely mind you but her appetite shrunk noticeably.
Then suddenly she'd ran ahead into an abandoned barn, set herself down in the hay and stopped moving entirely.
No matter what Harry'd said she'd refused to leave the haystack. It'd been a week or so now since she'd stopped moving and Harry was starting to get seriously worried, Was Pepper sick, could she be dying? Harry didn't know and it was honestly scaring him, and he didn't know what to do.
So he'd went to get help.
Amakasu Toma was a low-level member of the History Compilation Comitee, he'd been part of the organisation since he was young and had quite some experience with the supernatural. But not enough to prepare him for being awoken at night by a crying, bawling and panicked Godslayer surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves.
The organisation hadn't even been aware that the child-king had been in the country. And now he was standing in his bedroom, frantically babbling a mile a minute to the point that Touma couldn't really figure out what he was trying to say.
So he'd set the kid down for some relaxing tea and asked him what was wrong.
"Pepper's not feeling well…" had been his response, "Pepper" on further questioning had turned out to be a dog given to him by his defeat of Chiron. Alongside a bona-fide menagerie of other critters,
So he'd alerted the History Compilation Committee, the leadership panicking upon realising that a Godslayer had been in their country for over a week without their knowing. And he'd told them to get the kid a veterinarian.
Which is how he found himself sitting outside a barn, surrounded by a pack of ferocious wolves, majestic swans and giant boars, all of which might move on the mere whim of the distraught child next to him. He didn't know how the child would respond, What if "pepper" didn't make it, would the child lash out at the world? It seemed unlikely but it didn't seem impossible.
So he sat, for hours trying to calm down an increasingly panicked child while the veterinarian was working away.
Until eventually a man came walking through the barndoors, carrying a bundle of blankets in his arms. The child leapt up, bombarding the vet with questions. "Pepper's fine my King- she's just a little tired from the whole ordeal but she'll make it." The child calmed down almost immediately, "You can go see them if you want to, but please try not to excite them to much" the man continued.
As the child entered the barn, he'd stayed behind. A single word resounding through his mind,
"What do you mean, you can see them?", "You can see for yourself" the veterinarian gestured.
And as he walked into the barn realisation dawned on him, there in the hay laid single large dog, tired and weary from the experience, surrounded by a litter of around half a dozen pups. The little ones crawling over each other nestling close to their mother, the child looking on with eyes wide open sparkling with pure joy.
The youngest king had spent the entire night watching the little ones, and together they'd ended up naming them all.
Somehow Harry had eventually entrusted "Anise, Jasmine, Ginger and Lavender" to various members of History Compilation Committee. But the smallest of the litter, the black-and-white puppies Basil and Artemisia had found themselves attached to him.
This was originally meant to be two snippets, one of Harry playing with the dolphin and the other of him panicking about the possibility of having somehow gotten his dog sick.
*The reason Harry's poison doesn't normally affect his pets is because he doesn't want to harm them and makes subconsciously codes his toxins to not affect anything with a certain divine signature. Because of this Harry's standard poisons won't affect anyone with the divine powers that Harry's animals originate from. (Zeus, Pan, Apollo, and Artemis amongst others).
*reminder, People have yet to attain the status they have in Canon because this is the past. Not 2010. Amakasu will rise through the ranks and become a ninja, he just isn't YET.
On the advice of a reviewer I'll add a list of all pets named in the chapter at the end, while in future chapters it might apear at the front in this one, the little "suprise she's not sick, just pregnant"-joke/twist-thing requires it to be at the end. Sorry for the inconcistency with future chapters it's just that this seems to me like it would work the best.
-Delia: Dolphin (source Apollo)
-Pepper: One of the seven bitches given to Artemis (Pan/Sylvanus, through Artemis and Buer)
-Anise: Pepper's firstborn daughter. White furred
-Jasmine:Pepper's secondborn son. Has a slightly brown-ish fur.
-Ginger: Thirdborn son, biggest of the litter. has a redish-brown colour.
-Lavender: fourthborn daughter: The most playfull of the litter. White
-Basil: fifth, son. Black, the least playfull of the litter, prefers to just lay around watching the world around them.
-Artemisia: sixth, white to an almost unnatural degree. Constantly curious.
Thanks for the tip: TLJ
