Before that can happen, however, you can hear the sound of loud footsteps echoing down the hall into the room you're currently in. Your ears slightly twitch moments before hers do, and almost in unison, you turn to stare at the doorway connecting the hall and room. You watch in slight trepidation as a large shadow slowly encroaches on the door, as a loud, deep voice resonates through the room, "Who dares intrude" But your shoulders relax as the shadow slinks down to below your knees as the shadow's owner appears in the doorway as the rest of the sentence is squeaked out, "upon I the king of demons." For a moment, all you can do is stare at the 'intruder', soft-looking black fur, a skull that wouldn't look too far off from a Cubone or Marowak, and a chipped horn.
If it weren't for the bone head you would assume that the creature, demon?, before you was some sort of cat, but that is neither here nor there. Around its (his?) waist is a rubber ducky towel, with said rubber ducky in his hand, which he squeaks at the end of his sentence. You think that this little creature is the cutest thing you've seen since getting here, but you also know that sometimes looks can be very deceiving.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the owl lady fold her arms over one over the other as she watches the two of you interact. Based on his slightly higher voice, you assume that you're interacting with a child of a young age, maybe not quite in the double digits.
Based on what the 'demon' stated before, you decide to play along. You carefully kneel on one knee, set one arm across said knee, the other arm is placed knuckled down, and bow your head. "So sorry my liege, had I known I was in the presence of someone of your stature I would have announced myself sooner. Please forgive this lowly peasant, Your Majesty." You have a hard time containing a smile as you hear the little one start to rant and rave about how it was about time someone acknowledged his greatness.
Eventually, the witch picks up the little demon and places a hand on his head as his words come to a stop. You don't move from your position and watch as she treats him almost as either a son or a nephew, and you feel a slight pang in your heart. Just based on looks alone the little one was adopted into the witch's family in some form or another, and you can't help but feel slightly jealous that you were never given the same opportunity, but you don't resent the found family.
Finally, the woman turns her attention back towards you, and raises an eyebrow, as if to say 'Well?' You slowly get back to your feet, as you feel Senna pop their head back out of your shirt to take in the surroundings, catching the attention of the demon child. You watch as his fluffy tail starts to wag in apparent interest at the fox. You slightly bow your head toward them as you have long since learned to do with your former village civilians, wanting to err on the side of caution here. "Earlier you stated that any witchling would know about The Boiling Isles. Unfortunately, while that may be true I must confess that a witchling I am not." At this, you finally pull down the hood of your hanten allowing your bundled-up hair to poof up and reveal your round ears, which catches the two off guard for just a moment.
"Add on to that I did not come here to galavanting around, or else I probably would have made sure not to trip over the simplest of questions or what have you, the first rule of spying and sneaking around is to act as if you belong there in the first place. But I'm trying to put that life behind me, so forgive me if I act as if my life depends on it at the moment. The only reason why I am here is due to the small owl on that staff. It? They? He? stole a journal accounting my family's history before its fall. This book is the only thing I have of my family's past, and well, I refuse to give up anything without a fight. Also if you keep having the owl steal things it might be better for him if he didn't steal items mere centimeters from the original owner, might stop potential fights from breaking out, or from other people following him like myself."
The Owl Lady seems taken aback at your slightly formal tone, before wincing slightly as she realizes this journal is the only thing connecting you and your birth family, while the little demon barely flinches or the like as beary eyes stay locked on Senna and their eyes on him. You slowly lift a hand to their head and slowly brush a lone finger down their forehead to the back of their neck. You hear the Lady sigh softly before speaking, "Well kid, I won't resent you for wanting back your property, especially when it has meaning to you, but that doesn't explain what you did to the chump in the market."
You smirk slightly, you never get tired of showing off your clan's specialty. You softly clap your hands together, activate the paralysis seal on them, and slowly pull them apart. You make the seal visible to the naked eye and watch as the two before you both cock their heads in apparent confusion looking upon the seal. "Fuinjutsu, the art of sealing, has been considered the specialty of my clan for generations. It's the reason why the clan was hunted to near extinction. With seals alone, I can make explosions, alter gravity, make paper into a hammer storage space, and even seal away the most dangerous beasts. To me, seals are just as easy as breathing, but to the rest of the world, seals are considered only available to the most intelligent of individuals. It also doesn't help matters that my birth father used seals to turn the tide of the war to his favor, in fact, my father's bounty was the highest I had seen until setting eyes on your wanted poster, Owl Lady." Here, she seems slightly taken aback before smirking at you, with pride apparent on her face.
"I assume that since you called me a witchling earlier your species as a whole are called Witches," When you receive a nod, you continue, "This probably also means that your species can at the very least use either energy or materials to cast something you call spells," another nod, "Humans after several generations of living on soil enriched with the very essence of the Sage of Six Paths found themselves able to use powers that at one point only the Sage had access to. This was almost a millennium ago, and nowadays most humans have at least a sliver of the energy bouncing around in their bodies. Sealing takes that energy and meshes it with ink, and sometimes blood, to manipulate the world around them."
The Lady nods her head as you explain Chakra in the barest bones that you possibly can before she barks out a laughing snort, "And to think most witches believe Humans to be sniveling powerless weaklings, and yet here you are." You quickly interject, "About 60-80% of humans are considered civilians, meaning not trained in the arts of using the energy I explained, the other twenty % is then broken down into 15, 4, and 1 %. 15% are decent enough at it, 4% are almost the top tier available, and the final 1% are the ones who are usually made into leaders of the villages that dot our lands. The average Witch could probably take on a civilian and walk away without even a scratch on them."
She waves off your concern, and you hope that she'll be a bit more hesitant around other humans from now on, but she strikes you as someone so hard-headed and stubborn it would take a tsunami to move her an inch. You sigh before asking, "Any chance I could get a name, it's getting a bit… much to keep referring to you as The Owl Lady, the witch, and or the gray-haired lady." The Owl Lady perks up slightly, and you get the feeling that she doesn't often get the chance to introduce herself. The demon also seems to get a bit giddy before clambering to her shoulders as she summons her magic staff. With a sense of show(wo)manship that would certainly give your godfather a run for his money, The Owl Lady began to twirl the staff into a swirl of never-ending colors, pink, red, orange, brown, cyan, blue, purple, green, and yellow form a kaleidoscope. With a resounding thump as the butt of the staff met the wooden floor, the colors disperse in a fireworks-like display.
As the fireworks slowly disappear, one last explosion explodes into being. There, in the middle of the last explosion, hangs the name EDA CLAWTHORNE. And just slightly below that in much tinier letters is (and King.) which draws a fleeting chuckle out of you. You slightly bow your head and say, "Well met Clawthorne-san, King-sama, I am Samantha of the Uzumaki clan."
Eda allows the owl on her staff to reanimate, and you watch with interest as the owl softly coos at you before hopping onto her shoulder and then into her hair. You blink at the apparent hammer subspace that is casually hidden within her hair but figure that it might just be something witches do. Senna chooses that moment to scrabble out from their hiding spot in your shirt and drops to the floor. As they drop, Senna's form grows slightly larger, going from a six-week kitten to a fully grown mortal fox in less than ten seconds.
To your utter joy, you watch as King and Senna face off for just a moment before they start squabbling together like two kittens. You're thankful that Senna is more... open to the 'younger' generation than some of the others within the Fox contract. You take a few steps to the side, sliding up beside Eda as the two of you watch the furry 'demons' tussle. You both stand there watching for a minute, you can see her briefly hide a chuckle before she motions for you to follow her to an adjoining room.
You follow her into what appears to be a kitchen based on the fridge-like appliance alongside an old-timey-looking wood-burning oven. There is a shelf circling the room where various dry food items are stored. Hanging from some of the shelf segments are bundles of garlic, herbs, and peppers. She leads you to the long table that has a bench seat on one side with what appears to be a highchair on one head of the table. Based on King's height, you assume that the highchair is his.
She places a roll of paper on the table but doesn't yet unroll it. She stares at you for a moment before saying, "Since you're here, I need a human for a job, if you're interested?" You think about it for a moment before stating, "On one condition, you help familiarize me with this realm, because there is no way I'm going back to living in that sexist, homophobic world if I can help it, Eda."
Her brows furrowed for a moment before stating, "What the hell is homophobia?" Your eyes widen as you realize that this woman before you has no idea what homophobia is, making your heart beat slightly faster as you realize that you might finally be able to live the life you actually wanted to instead of having to wear a mask.
You lick your suddenly dry lips before softly speaking to her, "In the Human Realm, homophobia usually refers to the hatred of homosexuals, or same-sex relations. Usually, in that Realm, those who are anything other than hetero or cis-gendered are seen as either a blight on humanity, a mistake, or a corpse waiting to happen. I have spent most of my life hiding the fact that I enjoy the company of other women as opposed to men. Had that been found out before I had left my birth village I would have been killed or forced into an arranged marriage faster than you could say fox."
As more words spew out of your mouth, you watch as her eyes narrow tighter and tighter as implications finally pierce her brain. For a moment, you think you see a few dots of black appear in her eyes before she blinks, and her eyes just appear a single shade darker than before. "Well kid," here you give her a small lazy glare that could hardly even be considered a glare, "here on the Isles you won't have to deal with this hopoo crap so you don't have to worry about that at least, but with those distinct ears of your we might have a future problem."
You're slightly thankful you won't have to deal with another homophobe community this time around, and you already have an idea about your ears. You bring your hands up to your chest and lock your fingers together, allowing your pointer and middle to face upward as you cycle your chakra through your coils. Your red-tinted blue chakra briefly flares as you activate your jutsu. A cloud of smoke briefly appears that you're quick to swat away, revealing what you assume you would look like as a witch.
Your form hardly changes, except that you make your ears pointed, and you also replace the blue in your eyes with gold. Once she sees what you have done, you detangle your fingers and shrug your shoulders before stating, "Will this do?" Eda leans closer to you and gives one of your ears a poke, which flicks slightly, and you're slightly thankful that your excess chakra makes the normal illusion into a physical object before she pulls back and casts a spell with her pointer finger by making a small circle with it.
You can feel something flare briefly around you, so brief that you initially think that you're just imagining what just happened before Eda nods her head in apparent approval. "Well it should trick most Illusionists, and the Emperor's Coven couldn't tell their butts from their face so we're good."
"So, Eda tell me the basics'' she thankfully doesn't try to scam you right out of the gate, likely seeing that you would either see right through it before telling you that the Warden Wrath of the Conformatorium has stolen something of King's a few days ago and had locked behind a barrier that supposedly only humans were able to pass through. You raise an eyebrow at this, thinking why the Demon Realm, a place lacking in well... humans would have a barrier that only humans could cross before putting the thought out of your mind.
Once the cards have been placed on the table, you only ask a few questions. First, are you doing a sneaky sneaky or a spell circle blazing heist, to which she tells you you'll be sneaking around as she causes trouble on another floor. The second question you ask is how deadly force should you apply while dealing with others around here, Eda tells you that she would prefer that you didn't take any lives today, with a look in her eyes, but then states that she would rather deal with a few dead scouts than a dead kid on her hands. The final question you ask is if you should stick with hand-to-hand combat today while you get used to the norms of this realm, here she tells you most witches, and she then clarifies that her species as a whole use the term witch female, male, queer, non-binary it does not matter to those that live here, don't bother to learn much hand-to-hand nowadays, now most learn how to fight with a staff if they learn at all.
Just as you finish going over this, you both hear squeaking coming from the other room. You and Eda turn to look at the doorway just in time to see King chase Senna through it. Senna makes a beeline right for you, and once within pouncing distance, they leap into the air and swiftly scramble into your hanten. King sees this and lets out a loud "WEH!" before trying to do the same to Eda, who does not seem amused at all. You raise an eyebrow at the fox in your jacket before raising the same eyebrow at Eda.
She sighs slightly before picking up the furred demon and motions for you to follow her, which you do after a moment. King chooses this moment to ask what is going on, to which Eda responds that you're going to be helping the two of them with their situation. He seems to blank at what situation she could be talking about before he gasps in what you think is delight, as he says "My crown!" Eda just nods her head as the three of you head out the door, which thankfully acts like an actual door this time instead of Hooty opening his mouth.
Once outside, the little owl transforms back into his staff form, and you make a mental note to ask his name later. You and Eda hop onto the staff, and before you know it you're flying off to wherever the Conformatorium is located. First day here on the Isles, and you're already on a heist mission. You're just hoping that this doesn't end like most B-plot heist movies or like a DnD heist after too many nat 1s.