AtlannianSpy
Alarmed and Strangerous
Nagisa Kanazawa, Yuuki Uchiha & Tsuchinoko
Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
"Brat, are you still hopeless with hand seals?" Tsuchinoko asked breezily, between mouthfuls of rice and miso. They were all sitting around the table in Kunoshita's house eating breakfast. Nagisa wasn't really used to people cooking for her this early in the morning, but doing stuff like that was extremely inconvenient with her leg broken and Kunoshita wouldn't have had it, in his own, gentle way the man could be surprisingly overbearing.
Nagisa scowled darkly. "I don't really use them much if that's what you mean, it's not worth the effort I could spend learning something else that works better for me,"
"You mean, you don't wanna do anything you're bad at in front of your boyfriend," Tsuchinoko shot back slyly, inspiring Nagisa to launch her chopsticks directly at his eyes, which the old man caught with his own pair, cackling the whole time. Yuuki was left choking on a bite of rice.
"What I mean," Tsuchinoko said, after tossing back the sticks so Nagisa could continue eating. "Is that you still don’t have much in the way of traditional ninjutsu in your arsenal right? Well there’s a way to kinda get around that. Have you heard of a summoning contract?”
Nagisa looked suspicious. “What that thing where you bite your thumb and get like, toads to do shit for you?”
“Yeah, well not toads specifically,” Tsuchinoko looked scratched his nose.
“Tsubaki has a contract with snakes,” Yuuki added, “And Hideki can summon… I don’t really wanna call them rabbits after the other day…”
“Toads are kind of weird and uppity, always on their sagely high horses. But there’s plenty of animals for shinobi to form contracts with. It’s all about who you know and I happen to have an in with a clan of eagles if you’re interested. They’re good at scouting and the like, but they can also use some wind release techniques,” Tsuchinoko explained between mouthfuls of rice.
“ I can see how that would be useful,” Nagisa said thoughtfully, “What’s the catch though,”
“Well you have to form a contract like I said,” said Tsuchinoko. “The main thing is that you have to use your chakra to call them to your side and maintain the summon. Nin animals can also be a bit… finicky. They have their own personalities, depending on which one you summon they won’t want to do certain things or work with certain people, some of them can be right nuisances sometimes, but their abilities usually make up for that,”
“That sounds okay… I guess,” Nagisa said, trying to sound nonchalant, it wasn’t hard to tell from the sparkle in her eyes that she was secretly pretty excited. The idea of an animal partner sounded useful and eagles in particular seemed kind of awesome. Had the old man finally come up with something cool without a weird catch?”
“Why don’t you come along as well Uchiha boy?” rumbled Tsuchinoko, “It’ll be an educational experience I’m sure,”
“Hm? Uhh, sure,” Yuuki shrugged and stood, not really having a reason to say no. Without giving the gesture much thought, he held out a hand to help Nagisa to her feet.
“I-I’m fine!” Nagisa said shortly, reaching for the crutch Kunoshita had found for her…
Which had somehow ended up on the other side of the room. Had it been moved during breakfast?
“Don’t dawdle brats!” Tsuchinoko chuckled, leaping from his own seat with uncanny agility “We haven’t got all day!
“Wait! Urgh!” Nagisa looked around helplessly for a moment and then sighed in defeat and took Yuuki’s hand, turning away as he helped her up. “Gonna kill that old man one day,” she mumbled under her breath, as they passed by the door so she could pick up her crutch.
The Uchiha snorted, “Yeah, I have a feeling he’s the one that moved it. Unless he’s roped in Kunoshita…?”
“I don’t trust either of ‘em,” Nagisa muttered darkly, as Kunoshita hummed softly to himself as he cleaned the kitchen
Tsuchinoko lead the two chunin out onto a grassy hill just outside the village, the sun was shining and a soft breeze was blowing, making the atmosphere rather pleasant.
“Eagles don’t much care for small spaces,” Tsuchinoko explained as they caught up with him. “It probably won’t matter too much in the future but it would make a bad first impression to summon one for the first ti,e indoors,”
“Right,” Nagisa had gradually been leaning more and more on Yuuki as the terrain had gotten steeper but when Tsuchinoko spoke she seemed to become aware of how close they were and moved away as if zapped. “Let’s do this then,” she said, trying to fold her arms over her chest, but the gesture didn’t really work with one arm. Yuuki shifted, averting his gaze as she jerked away.
Tsuchinoko snorted at their antics but for once seemed to have other things on his mind, from a satchel he had taken with him he produced a large scroll that he unfurled along the ground.
Nagisa leaned forwards slightly, unable to contain her curiosity, as Tsuchinoko wove a few handseals and then bit his thumb, smearing a drop of blood onto the scroll. There was a large puff of smoke than a huge eagle, a few times larger than Tsuchinoko himself, with a wickedly curved beak marked with blue symbols.
“Aw fuck it’s you,” the eagle said disdainfully, jabbing at Tsuchinoko with his enormous talons. “You know I was watching my daughter’s first hunt right?” He jabbed again, forcing Tsuchinoko to hop back with surprising agility for a man with his injuries. “This is why I asked you not to summon me on Wednesday’s, so I can be a part of these important, family moments you dig?”
“Nono I get that,” Tsuchinoko said hastily, holding up his hands placatingly. “Tenwashi, budddy! I wouldn’t bring you all the way out here on your day off for my own sake!”
“You would,” said the giant eagle, without missing a beat. “You absolutely would. But let’s say for the sake of argument that you haven’t this time. What’s going on?”
“Remember how you told me you were having trouble contracting off that one nephew of yours? Well it just so happens my charming young student is in the market for a summon! Win, win right?”
“Hmmm,” rumbled Tenwashi, turning to Yuuki and Nagisa for the first time. “Human hatchlings huh?” he leaned in towards them, until his sharp, golden eyes were only inches from their faces.
Nagisa leaned back slightly. Up close it was apparent just how sharp and nasty looking that beak was. “Wait what did what does he mean ‘had trouble contracting off? Is he defective or something?" she asked, shooting tsuchinoko a suspicious glance. "I don’t wanna be summoning someone incompetent,”
There was a tense silence and then Tenwashi snorted. “Heh, I like this one,” With a beat of his wings that launched a gust of wind outwards Tenwashi lifted himself high enough to pat Nagisa on the head with his talons, making her flinch. “Don’t worry, Bakuwashi’s a talented up and comer he’s just… a little strange. It’s a phase, he’ll grow out of it… I hope,” Tenwashi contorted one of his talons, forming handseals and a scroll appeared in his other talon that he handed to Nagisa.
“Lemme see..” Nagisa mumbled to herself, frowning with concentration as she scanned through the fine print of the contract. “I the undersigned… hereby undertake to… signified by this exchange of blood..”
“Oh I should mention Hatchling,” Tenwashi rumbled. “On account of us eagles being the rulers of the sky, our contracts are traditionally forged in midair,”
“Under the condition tha- wait what?” Nagisa looked up just in time to see Tenwashi weaving more seals. Then he lowered himself and slammed a talon to the ground.
Wind Release: Uplifting Gale
Without warning a powerful stream of wind erupted underneath Nagisa, slingshotting her up into the sky.
SSHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIT-”
“Huh. You know I had forgotten about part,” Tsuchinoko said mildly, his gaze tilting upwards to follow Nagisa’s journey. “Maybe I should have waited until after her leg healed.”
“No shit!” Yuuki snapped, watching Nagisa’s ascent.
Meanwhile Nagisa was experiencing what felt a lok like falling upwards, the air rushing around her as the ground shrank and started to blur out beneath her.
Up,
Up,
Up,
Then there was a brief moment of floating weightlessness that was almost, tranquil. The sun flared in the corner of her vision and the sky was blue, brilliant and cloudless.
Then she began to fall.
“SHITSHITSHITSHITGONNAKILLTHATOLDMANSHIT-CONTRACT! GOTTA SIGN THE-”
Struggling against the air pressure as she began to accelerate downwards, Nagisa unfurled the scroll, its length was instantly caught by the wind and ripped out of her hand but she managed to to maintain her grip. Now Nagisa had another problem, namely that she didn’t have a free hand to get her blood on the scroll, she was forced to waste a few precious split seconds wedging the scroll between her knees, then biting down on her now free thumb and jabbing it at the fluttering pape to roughly sign her name. Would it work? Did the blood need to be somewhere specific? Was the frantic scrawl even clear enough to be read? It was hard to tell if she’d done it right when the scroll was moving around so much-
A puff of smoke answered some of her questions, but brought more.
“Bwaa, Bwaa, ~bwa chkchssh ~bwa chkchssh”
“YO YO YO Beaky G In Da house, lemme break you off a fresh verse!”
Despite the incredible peril she was in, for a few, brief moments all Nagisa could do was stare. She’d managed to summon not one, but two birds. One was an eagle, like Tenwashi but much closer to a regular eagle in size rather than giant. More notably the eagle was wearing a bright orange beanie and a gaudy, gold chain with a ryo sign on it. Perched on the eagle’s shoulder was a much smaller, fluffier eagle, clearly still in its infancy, wearing a bucket hat and covering its tiny beak with one wing, it seemed to be the one producing the strange noises while the larger bird launched into some kind of odd poetry.
“-Uhh! Beaky G on the mic and you know I’m Fly!”
“~Bwa chkchssh ~bwa ~Bwachkchssh”
“-Started on the Streets now we soarin’ through skies!-”
“~Bwa chkchssh ~bwa ~Bwachkchssh”
Nagisa stared openmouthed for just an instant longer than the spell was broken and she seized one of the eagle’s legs in a white-knuckled deathgrip.
“SHUT THE HELL UP AND FLY YOU UNBELIEVABLE MORON!”
Nagisa screamed, her voice was mostly carried away by the wind but the sentiment must have gotten across or maybe the eagle was motivated by instinct but it began to flap its broad wings with sufficient urgency to mollify the now rather frazzled kunoichi.
“Yoo I got’chu guuurl, Beaky G knows how to treat da ladieeeez,” The eagle said soothingly. On his shoulder the smaller bird continued to beatbox, so that the conversation was punctuated with a persistent “Bch chkchshhhh,” repeating in the background.
Nagisa tried to ignore the bird’s inane prattling and looked down to gauge her velocity. WIth the eagle flapping upwards Nagisa was definitely falling slower, she was pretty confident at this rate she’d survive the fall but the landing was going to hurt like hell. Was she about to break her other leg?
She’s still falling too fast, Yuuki looked from Nagisa to the pair next to him and back. Tenwashi and Tsuchinoko hadn’t so much as moved to help. “This is ridiculous,” the Uchiha said finally, his body becoming innumerable sheets of paper that shot skyward.
Reaching Nagisa, he had to think fast. It wasn’t like he could use Dance of the Shikigami on her. So he did the very first thing that came to mind. Reforming just enough to catch her, Yuuki directed all of the remaining paper towards his back, forming massive wings. With any luck, it’d slow her down enough for a safe landing. If not… well, this form could take the brunt of the blow without much injury.
Between Bakuwashi lifting from above and Yuuki from below the ungainly trio managed to slow down quite a bit and they landed with a loud, but relatively safe thump.
“Th-thanks,” Nagisa said shakily, relinquishing her grip on Bakuwashi to cling tightly to Yuuki’s shoulder.
“Yo Yooo thanks for the help an all,” said Bakuwashi, eyeing Yuuki suspiciously and, perhaps unconsciously, puffing his chest feathers out. “But I saw her first you di-”
With lightning speed Nagisa let go of Yuuki to snatch the bird up by his beak, holding it shut with an iron grip. “If this whole contract thing is gonna work out then you need to learn how to shut up,” Nagisa whispered dangerously. “Now go get my crutch, there’s an old man I need to violently murder.
But Tsuchinoko, sensing danger with the honed instincts of a grizzled survivor, had already fled, leaping onto Tenwashi’s back the pair of old timers took off into the sky.
“Recovering here is gonna be the death of me,” Nagisa sighed wearily.
KageYuuki
Last edited: