"Any idea?" asked Anko Mitarashi, directing her comment in general. Just standing here fidgeting wasn't doing any good.
"Yeah," said Ibiki Morino. He smiled. "You're gonna love it."
That caught her interest. Capture of a high-profile missing-nin? Capture of a Kumo-nin? Any high-level defector from one of the other villages?
"Settle down, you guys," said one of jonin commanders as he walked onto the stage. "Okay. Short form. Forest Of Death. Be aware that we have some new creatures in there."
"'Creatures'?" asked Yukino. As he was a poisons and antidotes specialist, it was natural for him to be curious.
The Commander gestured and a chunin behind him held up a dead but really large lizard. "This is a Compys. It's a scavenger about the size of a turkey, this one's a bit larger than average. Tastes about the same as turkey too. Just watch out for the poison and be aware they run in packs of six to twelve. The poison is a soporific in the saliva. They're fairly fragile so if you have an explosive tag you can wipe out a pack easy enough."
"Interesting," said Yukino, quite obviously curious.
"Those are scavengers," said the Commander. "About three times the size is this."
An ANBU brought in a wooden cage, the creature inside snarled and hissed.
"This is a prey animal. Herbivore. This particular specimen is an adult of average size," said the Commander.
"I take it that the spikes aren't decorative," said Yukino.
"No, but they're not sharp either," said the Commander. "An expert on these things calls them 'uintatherium' but we're calling them spikers because it's a lot easier to say and spell out."
"Good," muttered more than one jonin, who could just see having to fill out that mouthful on a report.
"You said that was 'prey'," noted Naoko. "So there's a predator?"
"S-Rank secret, probably downgraded later this year," said the Commander. "Just make sure your hitai-ate is visible if you have reason to be in the forest."
Anko had gotten curious. Especially as Ibiki had just smirked at her when she'd tried to get details.
So here she was, standing on the branch of one of the big trees that dominated the Forest Of Death, watching a group of spikers as they meandered through one of the marshy areas in the forest.
At least she was until something three times her size came down like a hawk on a prey, missing the large creature and flattening a bush.
Anko snerked at that.
To her surprise the winged reptile looked up at her with an obviously irritated expression.
"You missed," pointed out Anko as the herd continued to run off from the sound of it.
The head stabbed down into the remains of the bush and came out with one of those compys that had been in the briefing. The reptile flipped the carcass into the air and then crunched it between his jaws.
After a few chews and swallowing, that head craned around to look at her again. "Did I?"
Anko was a special jonin who worked for Torture and Interrogation. She didn't show any surprise unless she wanted to, so she merely cocked her head at the beast. "Didn't you?"
"Are you supposed to be here?" asked the reptile.
"I spend lots of time here," responded Anko. "You could say that Training Ground Forty-four is my playground."
The reptile seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding in imitation of the human gesture. "Why do you smell like snake and regret?"
THAT almost got a reaction from her, but she managed to cut that off. "Ninja."
"Fine," said the reptile, spreading wings again. "Just watch out for the big snakes."
"I can handle big snakes," said Anko to the reptile-thing as it left the forest with a speed that didn't seem to consider things its mass.
No, she was more interested in seeing if she couldn't get one of those winged lizard-things. Could come in handy on some missions.
"No, you can't have one," said the Hokage, wondering briefly at Anko Mitarashi having completely filled out the proper paperwork. It wasn't quite enough for him to declare it was a miracle, but it was still pretty rare.
"Awwwwww," pouted Anko.
"I will take your name down for a possible experiment dealing with partnering with one later though," said the Hokage. Not that he was entirely sure what would happen with her Curse Seal in such a thing.
"That'll work," said Anko, though she wondered why she was getting that little warning feeling.
"Hokage-sama, you have a meeting in five minutes with the ANBU Commander," called out the secretary from the next room.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 28 Jul 2015 19:08)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.