I don't own Naruto or Dungeon & Dragons.

- o 0 o -

Neji

"You must be a glutton for punishment." He casually says to Naruto and the feline looking man gives him a minor glare as the tip of his tail flickers as one of Naruto's black furry ears moves to face his direction. "Last time I checked, I wasn't complaining about anything." Naruto tells him in a flat tone.

"Doesn't change the fact that your mount seems more blood thirsty now then when you first got her." He says and Naruto snorts before turning to where Kiba is murmuring to himself while looking onto a satchel that holds the pet that he purchased from the caravan. "Look on the bright side, at least Ino's more out in the open about her attempts then whatever Kiba has in his bag." Naruto says in a cheerful tone.

"And yet your mount just needs to get one good kick in to crush in your skull." He reminds the black furred tigerman. As Naruto sits down, he scowls while Dart comes to land on Naruto's shoulders. "I think we should go hunt for something to feed Ino, I think that might be the reason why she's been getting cranky." The green peacock Fairy Dragon says.

"Well then, want to make it a race to see who can hunt the biggest game? I'm sure everyone would like to have something fresh for a change." Naruto says, grinning toothily at Dart. "You're on!" Dart says as fire seems to sprout about the little lizard like being's frame.

Within seconds, Naruto picks up a short bow and arrows that Rakashasa had bought during their brief meeting with that caravan, leaving his twin blades behind while Dart just does as his name suggests and darts off in a random direction, not even bothering to wait for Naruto to finish collecting his bow. "Where does he get the energy?" He wonders to himself as he watches as Naruto races off into the surrounding meadow, trees weren't common about this place.

"So troublesome." He hears Shikamaru comment while Choji and Hinata come back from their water finding expedition with filled water bags. Tomorrow it'll be Kiba and his turn to do that chore, they were very determined not to leave Kiba and Naruto alone to do chores since it's more then likely they'd turn it into a competition between themselves, although it had been Kiba and his turn to go gather or hunt for fresh items to be added to their meal.

"I hope they don't run into trouble, after all, we still haunted by the last thing they encountered when they ran off out of our sight." Kiba remarks, they all turn to look at the Nightmare who seems to pause from trying to bully one of their horses who were tied up so they can't run away. The flames about the mane grew fierce as the evil horse turns from their mounts, walking at a slow pace to stand by itself, clearly annoyed that they were all looking at her.

"He doesn't even bother tying it up! I mean, it could easily just run away but it doesn't, which is kind of freaky considering it really doesn't like him, at all." Kiba adds and he sighs while giving his head a minor shake. "Naruto's got a talent for attracting interesting characters." Hinata agrees while said flaming horse snorts smoke before turning it's back on them.

With a sigh, they all turn away from looking at the latest addition to their group, one that seems to be more or less willing to tolerate their company. Maybe Naruto's right to declare it a female, it definitely as the mood swings of a woman. He muses as he turns to regard Kiba's bag, wondering just what exactly Kiba bought three days ago since the warlock seems to be keeping it a secret.

)-o-(

Naruto

He creates a few simple traps to catch smaller creatures like rabbits and rats. Once that's done, he begins to glance about for tracks of wild goats, deer, or any kind of tracks really, especially since they had heard howling during their time of riding through this part of the world. He finds a canine track in dry ground and bends down to sniff it to ID what kind of beast could have made it.

There wasn't a fresh scent with it, likely made when it last rained in these parts if he's any judge of tracks. As he takes time to judge the stride of the beast, he guesses a large wolf and leaves it at that before dismissing the trail as unimportant. Moving on, he did find other old tracks before finding old scat that shows that something passed this way a few days ago.

As he searches, he finally spots cloven tracks, likely from a herd of sheep about the edge of the meadow, which causes him to frown as he wonders what drove them off since the meadow's greenery looks tasty enough. As he stands there, debating on whether to try and follow the dirt path or go check his traps, he begins to hear a huffing coming from his left.

Frowning, he turns see what's breathing heavily. "Oh, it's a brown bear." He says with a sigh of relief, he had for a moment thought it had been some kind of dangerous monster.

And then the bear rears up on its hind legs and roars. He blinks and as the bear tries to slash at him with its large paws. He manages to dodge the slow and clumsy attempt. As the bear lands on said forepaws, the bear comes huffing at him, trying to trip him.

In the end, he manage to put some distance between himself and said huffing bear. He takes an arrow from his quiver and within seconds, the arrow flies through the air, the point entering into the beast's neck. This doesn't do much to slow the bear down, in fact, it seems to have angered the shaggy brown beast as it continues to charge at him.

He manages to put some more distance between him so he can shoot another arrow at the enraged beast. Gee, not only is this bear larger, not polar bear large, it definitely has a mood disorder! Aren't they suppose to eat bamboo? He wonders as he manages to take a second shoot at the bear, the bear is now sporting three arrows lodge in its body, one in the neck and two in the chest.

He's growing tired of this bear attacking him, so he takes a moment to transform into that Minotaur form. Once the bear gets within range, he punches the beast with a meaty fist, something snaps as the brown bear falls to the ground, onto its back. He waits a few seconds before reverting to his normal body form.

Studying the beast, he sighs and then glances around for a few seconds before looking back down at the bear. With a shrug, he moves to the head and straining himself, he picks up the paws so that he can drag the bear closer to camp, slightly confident that he managed to win the challenge between himself and Dart.

He did have to pause a few times but finally, he drags the bear into camp. "What the heck did you do to that bear?!" Choji asks with wide eyes. "Hey! In my defense, it attacked me first! I just defended myself." He tells the group as they move to get a look at what he brought back.

"Why is it brown?" Kiba wonders and he shrugs while Neji bends down to examine the arrows. "I shoot it three times but it kept coming, so I transformed and with one blow, something snapped and it fell to the ground." He continues.

"It's still larger then a panda, huh?" He asks and Hinata nods in agreement. "Pretty strange, it's got more muscle then a panda has, might be more related to Polar Bears then pandas." Neji says once the rogue gets one of the arrows out of the body.

"Well, I'm going to go check my snares. Have fun examining it in more detail." He says to them and with that, heads back out of the camp.

-)T(-

In the end, Dart used an illusion to bring two live wild goats into camp while he returned with an assortment of rabbits and two strange lizards that were venomous. Kiba took off with said lizards as he began to skin the rabbits after gutting them. One of the goats head out of camp as Dart pouts while the other ended up getting killed by Ino, who seemed to be very happy to have something to kill and to devour at her leisure.

The others were still busy dealing with the bear, after all, there was a lot of meat to cut of it as well as the skin seems to be pretty thick too. Once he finished skinning them, he begins to butcher them before adding them to the drying rake, the one set up to dry the bear meat.

"Well, I believe our meal is done cooking." Hinata says and they stop what they're doing to go wash their hands before moving to take a plate filled with food. "Smells good, Hinata! Thanks!" He says and Dart echos his sentiments, causing Hinata to blush slightly as she smiles while saying, "You're welcome, Naruto. Dart."

Once they're done polishing off the meal, light chatter began to become common place as Shikamaru and himself move about to collect the dirty plates so they can go wash them in the small pond that Choji and Hinata found, leaving the others to continue working on finishing butchering up the bear and continue to expand the drying rack until they've finish striping the bones of meat.

-)Be Continued . . .(-