Call of the Hunt
I don't own Naruto, Werewolf: The Forsaken or anything connected with World of Darkness.
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"English"
'Thoughts'
(Spirit's Talking)
"Japanese"
o!o Scene change
/?/ Different point of view
/VV Flash back
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Chapter 10
He knows who's to blame as he ducks down and bites down onto Jeremy's right side. Jeremy bellows and punches him in the head. He grab's a hold of Jeremy's leg and as he pulls away, he offsets Jeremy's balance and with a blow to the stomach and then to the lower jaw, Jeremy falls to the ground. He grabs Jeremy's throat and keeps holding on until Jeremy transforms back into his Hishu from. He spats out the blood, glad he hadn't swallowed it, he had focused on breathing through his nose the whole time, keeping himself from swallowing had been a battle in and of itself.
He transforms into his Dalu form, glaring at Kurt and Juliana, now with Jeremy down, he's to fight one of those two. His injuries were healing at an even more rapid rate then what they should now that he's not fighting. Within seconds, he feels much like he had before he battled Jeremy. He stands straighter, he rotates his shoulders and his neck slightly with soft pops and cracks follow this for a few seconds before he relaxed. (Who's next?) He asks in the First Tongue.
Kurt glances at Juliana, she steps forward and, she's choices the body in which they'll fight as, Jeremy had opted for Gauru. Juliana opts for Urshul form, though before transforming she takes off her cloths so she doesn't ruin them. He mimics Juliana's choice, they circle each other for a few minutes, with his tail was straight out, horizontal to the ground. He jumps out of the way as Juliana charges him, he lands and charges her in turn, they met mid way.
Juliana's jaws bite into his shoulder; he twists and manages to get his lower legs under her. He shoves off with his back, his back claws dig into Juliana's chest and with a kick; he launches himself through the dirt. He can tell that Juliana was taken back by that move, giving him time to right himself as she recovers and begins to attack once more. He dodges most of Juliana's attacks; his training was paying off since Juliana was becoming frustrated. (Hold still, damn you!) Juliana growls out in the First Tongue.
He cocks his head to the side, a slightly wolfish grin on his face as his blue eyes sparkle slightly in amusement. (What's wrong? Can't keep up with this 'whelp'?) He asks with amusement. Juliana snarls as she charges him, rage most likely beginning to cloud her judgement. He begins to use Juliana's rage against her; he strikes quickly and frequently as he moves in and out of her sloppy defences.
Juliana bellows in a mindless rage and charges him, he decides to chance it, seeing how Juliana wasn't thinking clearly and wouldn't be able to think of reacting quick enough to counter it. He does a slight flip as he's in the air and he comes right down on Juliana, slamming into her with his back facing her. He hits her in the mid of her back, she cries out in pain. He flips to his left and grabs a hold of Juliana's left shoulder. A few movements and he's pretty much riding on her back in a piggy back style, he's not griping the back of her neck as he locks his limbs as best as he can around her sides.
Juliana tries to buck him off, roll on him in hopes of dislodging him; she'd leap into the air and try to snap at one of his forepaws. In time, Juliana wore herself out just trying to dislodge him from her back. As Juliana lies down, panting, he gets off and backs up a few paces. Juliana just glares at him, but in the end, doesn't move from her position. After a few minutes, Grey Back declares him the winner seeing how Juliana wasn't trying to attack him.
He glances over at Kurt, after a bit of a staring contest; Kurt looks away and turns to the side. This signals that Kurt's forfeiting his challenge. He glances around at those Uratha that had formed a bit of a circle around Juliana and him. Jeremy looks less then pleased to know that he's still in charge of the pack. He heads to where his cloths were piled, he's flushed from his victories, though he does muster enough anger to glare over at Wild Eye, not liking the fact that the elder Uratha had pushed this challenged on the excuse of making sure he doesn't cheat by some means.
It's not his fault that he trains until he drops in his other bodies styles, though his time in Gauru was short and often more about working out frustration and anger on offending ruined car in a scrap yard then about getting use to the body. He hated the fact that it's extremely difficult to remain calm and level headed while in that body, he could think of a vast array of training regiments for that body and he can't seem to be patient enough to go through those exercises without turning it into beating on something just because he can't stay in control with all of that fury and rage wanting to be expressed. This means he focuses on pushing the limits of his other forms.
He transforms into his Hishu form and puts on the cloths he took off. He's already back at full health, something that he knows more then a few of those Uratha realise, he glances around once he's done putting on his jeans, glancing at Juliana, Kurt, Jeremy, Jenny, Rachel, Grey Back, Wild Eye, and then everybody that showed up which doesn't include any of the other Hunters in Darkness other then Juliana. He finishes putting on his shirt and jacket and then does his socks and runners.
Soon enough the more experienced Uratha headed off, leaving him alone with the six inexperienced Uratha. He glances off towards the town before he glances back to them. "So, are any other objections to me being in charge?" He asks those gathered. Nobody voices a complaint so he continues, "Where we're going things are going to be working a little differently since you'll find a lot of fox spirits hanging out, I'll tell you now, don't harm them or you'll find yourself squaring off against our fox totem. All of those foxes have sworn vows of loyalty to him and as such, they're better sources of information when it comes to things beyond the territory then within it. While they're supposed to alert us to dangerous spirits, they'll more likely dismiss them since to the foxes, they're not a danger."
He continues, "I might as well tell you here and now, any spirits that enter into the territory and are willing to barter are those looking to spend a few days or hours possessing people, as much as you might want to, trying and stay friendly with them, they're most likely regular bargainers who are more then willing to trade different kinds of favours in return for some time fulfilling their hungers. Mostly, just make them vow not to do any real harm during the time they're Ridding somebody, favours build up and it's easy to call said favours in to learn Gifts or something else you want to know. If a spirit violates a contract, remember their names and tell Kyuubi or Kyuubi's son, Nido, they'll deal with it since we'll most likely be too busy dealing with other things and can't track those oath breakers down in Hisil."
He notices the others blink in surprise; apparently, they're most likely surprised about how things are handled in this territory. "But isn't the point to stop them from doing those type of things?" Jenny asks. "True but we're governing which spirits spend time in a human body, which is kind of what Uratha usually do only we're gathering favours through this practice and we also can set up quotas about how many Ridden are in our territory. In the end, we're mostly going after those that don't cooperate since we do need to hunt and they're our official prey in spirit turns." He answers, he can tell Kurt's thinking this over; clearly this was appealing to Kurt's nature.
"What kind of locus do we have?" Juliana asks. "We got a Nature locus, a Elemental locus, and a locus emitting fear and paranoia, the last we're goes to be using in order to distract the Pure, there are plans of putting it at a three way boundary where three Pure packs claim. The foxes are making modifications to it so it's harder for those spirits the Pure will most likely call on to locate it and to identify it as well. This will most likely cause some up roar and give us more time to secure our boundaries as well as strength our defences." He explains a few nods answer this solution, more then a few relax as if some kind of tension was lifted, which probably was the case.
"What kind of totem is this fox of ours?" Kurt asks. "He's a red fox with red eyes. He also sports nine long red tails, the very name Kyuubi means nine-tails in Japanese. He's kind of menacing and has already killed twenty Uratha and a horde of rogue spirits just because they were threatening me. So in effect, try not to annoy him too much, he's really good at making you piss yourself if he feels so incline without doing anything to invoke that reaction." He answers. A few snort in disbelief, but he did warn them so they can't blame him about not warning them.
"So, do we have to live together?" Rachel asks after a few minutes. "Not really, if you can afford to live in an apartment, go for it. I'm living in a ruin building that was a place where spirits of fear use to hang out at. Lance lives there too; we haven't gotten around to repairing it since we lack the tools and material to do so. We're going to give it a shot come this spring though. Is there anything more questions right now?" He asks.
Most shake their head, more then likely they want to digest what they've just learnt before asking more questions. He dismisses them and head off to his room in the town. He's mentally tired from the fights he's been in and wants to spend time just lazing around the room, hoping that Lance will show up before tomorrow morning.
/?/Kyuubi
He studies the latest members of Naruto's pack. They were all pretty much just staring at him; clearly they didn't know what to make of him, much to his masked amusement. He watches as the Uratha from Bone Shadow, he believes the pup's name is Kurt, eyes become gazed over, it's clear that Kurt's day dreaming about what kind of secrets he has. The Storm Lord named Jeremy was wary of him, the twins of the Blood Talon tribe were in awe of him, and the elder Uratha, most likely a year older then Lance, seems to be eyeing Nido and a few of his children like she doesn't know what to make of the fox spirits that were hanging off of him.
(I believe Naruto informed you of the kinds of bargains you can make with the local types, right?) He asks them, they look startled but they do nod. (And that any of those that violate the terms of the agreement are to be reported to me?) He adds, once more they all nod. (Then we won't have any conflicts.) He says dismissively.
They blink in such a way that reminds him of deer coming out of their stances and fleeing now that he lost interest with them. The twins pick up their bags and head off upstairs to set up their living quarters in the upper parts of the building. The others head off to find their own places to live, those that were leaving were followed with one of his children so they know where each of them will be living, he could only imagine Kim's reaction to the fact that there's two girls living in the same house as Lance and Naruto.
Once they're gone, he stretches his body. He becomes more transparent then before and shrinks as he begins to float towards Naruto's navel to get some rest in a place few will ever think to look for him or bother him within. He circles the floor of his ex-jail cell before settling down within it and curling his tails around his body as he begins to take his first restful nap he had since Naruto left the city. 'It's good to have him back.' Was his last thought before he dreamed dreams of massacring vast populations of humans in the world of Naruto's birth with ninja's unable to do anything to stop him.
/?/Naruto
He studies the corpses at the boarder of the city limits, Jeremy and Juliana were with him since they're the ones who found the pile. (What did this?) Jeremy wonders out loud as he flips a human corpse over with his snout, they were all in Urshul from, hoping to get a reliable scent to help them id the killer or killers.
He studies the way their throats were slashed, he notes the head protectors on their heads with slashed marks through their village symbols. He tears off one of the missing nin's vests and shirts to see if something had been placed on the nin's chest. He finds a Kanji of void on the red head's chest. He moves to each corpse in turn, removing the upper cloths and continues to find Kanji on their chests.
He shifts his form into that of a Dalu, he does uses Partial Change to alter his hand more into a smaller version of a Gauru hand like paw. He slices through the chest cavity and after putting his other hand into the chest, he finds he can't find a heart, liver, kidneys, the intestinal track, let alone the stomach, all he found was the lungs and lots of blood. He cocks his head to the side, wondering why three of the corpses had the Kanji of void on them while the other three had the characters for heaven, hell, and man.
"It must have been some kind of jutsu, but what kind and what happened to their organs… There are no other cuts except for the cut across the throat… What were they trying to accomplish?" He wonders to himself in Japanese, he hadn't realised he had switched languages until Jeremy and Juliana give him slightly annoyed looks. "Sorry, English and First Tongue are both my second languages." He tells them if they didn't know already.
Juliana snorts while Jeremy remains impassive. "I know what those characters are, the first one I saw means void, two others have that character too with the last three having different characters. Baldy has the Kanji for heaven, with scar face there has hell, and finally, wrinkly there has the character for man." He tells them, he then continues, "All I can find in the bodies are the lungs but I don't see how the organs were removed since it's clear from the outset, the only cuts the bodies have are the killing ones on their throats. I think we should take off the clothing, bury the bodies somewhere, and then burn the cloths."
(But why not let the humans deal with this?) Jeremy asks, Juliana replies before he could. (If that corpse doesn't have any organs, then they all don't. Can you imagine the kind of investigation that this kind of thing could launch? Though I think its Mages did this.) "It wasn't Mages, well, not in the traditional sense…" He corrects, knowing full well that this was down by a jutsu which meant it was done by ninjas using Chakra, an energy made by mixing energy of the spirit and physical energy. 'I guess ninja would be a subclass of mages seeing how they're using energy made out of Essence.' He mused to himself, soon he's taking off the cloths while Jeremy and Juliana find a safe place to bury the missing nins.
It's officially been a year, since this was the same day and month he arrived here in this realm and shed his humanity, becoming a being that's capable of shape shifting into five forms with using the Luna Gift called Partial Change to alter at least four of those forms to some extent, like what he did here tonight when he altered one of his hands into a hand like paw normal to find on his war form, the Gauru form. He studies the head protectors, knowing that none of them were of Hidden Leaf since there wasn't the typical leaf on any of the six head bands.
He wonders if this had anything to do with him, since this seems to be connected to his birth world… or was that, perhaps it's his birth realm? He ties to think of reasons why people would want to find him, most of those type of thoughts were about making sure he's dead, there are a few thoughts that wonder if it might be more to do with the Kyuubi then about him, seeing how he had been the container of the nine-tails fox spirit that's the Lord of all spirit Foxes like Urfarah was said to be Lord of all spirit Wolves and of the Uratha. He knows that the Third wasn't that heartless to sacrifice people for an untested jutsu, well, that's what he keeps telling himself at any rate.
Soon Jeremy arrives back and they each take a body, he follows Jeremy to the site where they're going to bury the bodies. It's not long before all six bodies were buried about six feet in the ground before they head off to burn the clothing he took off the corpses. He knows Kyuubi will want to talk about this in private, which most likely when the fox lord is within his navel. Only within his head could they chat privately about what's highly confidential matter.
As they travel through the city in their Hishu forms while carrying the cloths in some discarded plastic bags, he wonders just what's happening back in that realm that birthed him, that had been his home until a year ago this day. He wondered if any of his old classmates made Genin yet…
/?/Nobody's
The nine watch as the bodies vanish and after about ten minutes, they all realize that the summoning jutsu had failed to summon the Kyuubi's container. "We'll have to try again next month…" The leader decides and it's not long before the cavern is deserted, by the time they arrive to retry the jutsu, the lines in the dirt will most likely need to be drawn again.