Of Pheasants & Mule-headed genin

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

It was one of those storms that people talked about for years afterwards. From as far north as Earth Country and south past the coast into the sea, the entire eastern half Fire Country was covered with a massive thunder storm. Those surrounded by familiar faces and secure from the storms fury in a building would comment on how the lightning flashes were regular and bright enough to read by and the awe-inspiring power of the storm. For one Hinamori Toshiro, there was nothing awe-inspiring about the storm. It. Was. Hell. Holed up on a tiny ledge on the windward side of the mountain above the forest, he had a front seat for the performance of wind, water, and lightning. A performance that with each ear-splitting boom of thunder and every sheet of cold drenching rain made him damn his own temper for getting himself into yet another mess.

It had started because he had gotten into a shouting match with his grandfather and father about signing the family's branch of the clan's summoning contract. He had refused to budge from his position that the requirement that all signers be at least a chuunin or that all the older siblings have signed the contract first was stupid. When both his grandfather and father had refused to budge, Toshiro has sworn to find his own contract with the pheasant and prove them dead wrong. After turning the clan library inside out for leads and managing to wheedle a leave of absence for several days at a hefty price in favors used and owed to various people, he had spent his first day in traveling to this spot. The final description of the cache's location had been a riddle. "Balanced on the knife's edge I cling above the roots and below the peaks. Harder than bone but cold comfort I offer that you will take. Search the dead man's hand twice to find where the ties lie", and Toshiro had doggedly chewed on it to end up where he was. "Balanced on a knife's edge" and "above the roots and below the peaks" described the nearly vertical sides of the knife-sharp up thrust rocks of the ridge perfectly. "Harder than bone but cold comfort" fit with the ledge he was currently huddled on. It was hard, cold, and offered no respite from wind or rain so it was a miserable place but better than climbing the cliff face. So why was he huddling there instead of climbing down to his camp with his prize in hand?

The answer was the final part of the riddle. "Search the dead man's hand twice over." It had seemed rather obvious - either there would be a corpse or something representing a corpse on the ledge so by finding that location of the scrolls would be obvious. However any hope of that simple solution had been dashed when Toshiro got his first good luck at the ledge; with the exception of two skeletal bushes, there was literally nothing else up there. Using his fingers and the illumination of a flashlight along with the sporadic (but much brighter) light from lightning flashes, he had gone over every portion of the ledge. What he had found was... nothing. No corpse (real or fake) obviously but also no markings on the rock of cliff or ledge that would stand in for "the dead man's hand". Deflated by failure, Toshiro had given up after an hour, hunkering down between the scant comfort of the two thorn-covered bushes to wait out the storm before going home in defeat and humiliation. A position that wasn't very comfortable when an especially loud crash of thunder made him flinch... right into a particularly long and sharp cluster of thorns that jabbed through his cloak and into his backside with predictable results.

"OUCH!"

Almost jumping away out of reflex (remembering at the last second that he had maybe three feet between himself and a long drop), Toshiro instead put his energy into a hate-filled glare he shot at the bush that had stuck him and still had his cloak trapped. "Ugh steel thorn. It just had to be steel thorn bushes. Now I see why this stuff is used to make barriers... grips like the hands of the dead indeed." Tearing his cloak out of the bushes’ grip, he had just begun to settle in again when the full impact of what he had said dawned on him. 'Grips like the dead. Like the hands of the dead... Dead Man's hand!! And there are TWO "hands" here!' His earlier morose thoughts forgotten, Toshiro promptly flopped onto his belly and, heedless of thorns and sharp rocks, started to probe the area immediately around the bushes with fingers shaking from excitement as much as chill. After what seemed like an eternity, his persistence was rewarded as he found two items that had been buried in hollows chipped into the rock below the bushes: a key made of bronze and a bonze box with the wax that had sealed its seams still intact. Fingers trembling at what they might hold, Toshiro had to take a minute to just calm his nerves and avoid irreparably damaging the lock trying to open it. Once the shaking had subsided to tolerable levels, he put the key in the lock and with excruciating care turned the key to avoid breaking it or the lock when he was so close to his goal. Amazingly, despite the still-booming thunder, Toshiro could hear the tiny "click" that announced that the box was open with great clarity. Then he lifted the lid and gazed on his prize - a summoning scroll. Barely twelve inches long but at least five inches in diameter, Toshiro almost instinctively bent over the box so that his body and cloak shielded it from the rain as he lifted it gentle from its resting place. Holding the flashlight between shoulder and head, he carefully unrolled the scroll and couldn't help the grin of triumph on his face - there in front of him, in plain writing, was everything he needed to prove his point to his father and grand father and so much more. The first few lines proved that contract in his hands was not a summoning contract with the Pheasants, it was the Pheasant summoning contract. The very first one which formed the basis for every other contract between a particular branch of the two clans.

Skimming over the surprisingly simple directions for summoning a member of the clan, requiring only five seals ending with the bird seal and some blood, Toshiro began to read the names at the top of the contract, written in blood so old it was black. "Hinamori, Yorochi. Hinamori, Retsu. Hinamori, Takeshi, Hinamori, Oda, Hinamori, Sho." The names of the very first members of the clan, names that were barely more than legends even among their ranks - the clan founder, their first and greatest genjutsu mistress, their most skilled master smith, their greatest strategist, and the clan's most deadly assassin. This wasn't just a summoning contract anymore. This was a link to the clan's past - something that had been missing for generations before the move to Konoha and deemed lost forever. Proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all those "stories and myths" had more than a little basis in truth. Reveling in the treasure in his hand for several minutes, Toshiro shook himself back to reality and hurriedly read the directions for signing the contract. Pricking a finger on one of the thorn bushes, he scrawled his name onto the first open spot using his right hand and added a bit of chakra to complete with. That done he gingerly rolled the scroll back up before stowing it in his pouch. Then he began to go through the seals and using the blood still on his hand, put both to the ground with a shout of "Kuchiose Jutsu!"

Of course Toshiro had never summoned anything before so there were.... minor problems. The biggest being that while the wind and rain quickly blew away the smoke, Toshiro had been down-wind when it happened and had gotten a face of the choking and eye-watering mix. Besides making it nearly impossible to see, the fit of coughing that resulted sending him to his knees. It was from that position that he came face to beak with a most... unusual creature by an especially bright flash of lightning. A dirty-yellow beak holding a sebon and gold eyes that met his own teals were the first thing he noticed. Then a field of brown with black marks that resolved into a feather-covered head and body. Finally a grey haori and a rather large scroll (considering that the figure looked a foot shorter than Toshiro standing up) on the back said louder than words that this was certainly no "normal" pheasant. Something that was confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt when the creature opened it's mouth. "Hi, I'm Tonbi. Are you the moron who summoned me to this miserable place? And if so just how do you intend to get us down from here?"

------------------[several hours later]-----------------------------------------

Back at Toshiro's camp on the shrub-covered slope leading up the ridge that had held the cache, two figures were huddles very close to a blazing campfire with a kettle setting on a spit over the flames. A closer look would show a white-haired genin with his bare feet scant inches from the flames who had trade in his sodden cloak (that was hanging over a second fire to dry out) for a heavy blanket with his hands occupied by a mug filled with a drink that would send a normal person into instant diabetic shock. Next to him, feet also extended and wrapped in a blanket, was a very large pheasant whose wings cradled a smaller mug filled with the same tooth-rotting concoction. Having been forced to huddle together and wait until the storm passed by, once it had Toshiro and Tonbi had made their way back down the cliff using a combination of tree-walking and wire then had hiked the two miles back to camp. Then they had promptly shed sodden clothes (or shaken sopping wet feathers), grabbed the warmest blankets they had, and crowded around a fire whose warmth felt like a taste of heaven after hours of being cold and wet.

"Let me get this straight. Because your grandfather wouldn't let you sign your families branch of the contract thanks to some cracked-shell conditions put in place by his grandpa, you swore to find your own contract to prove him wrong. To do so you tracked down a cache that had been all but forgotten to this Kami-forsaken area, then climbed to that ledge in the middle of a storm when anyone with a lick of sense would have hunkered down in their tent and tried later. Plus you ended having to sit in that miserable weather before you figured out some sadistic bastards riddle that had to have been written five generations ago, get the contract, and signed it. All that just to prove a point which could just has easily been proven by having your grandfather or father ask one of their summons what terms were set?" At the end of his lecture, Tonbi brought his mug up and drained off the contents while one yellow watched Toshiro. Said genin had been staring into the fire pretending to not pay attention, though a perceptive individual would have noted that one eyebrow was twitching furiously - a sure sign he was not happy. Then again most people wouldn't enjoy having a literal bird-brain bluntly pointing out they had been a mule-headed fool either. So it wouldn't come as a surprise that Toshiro's response was quite surly and almost outright confrontational. "It worked didn't it? Besides, is it any different from a pheasant who refused to learn more than the most basic ninjutsu because he wanted to prove that you didn't need to be flashy to be powerful."

At that reminder of Tonbi's own situation, the pheasant shot a death-glare at Toshiro. It was a sore spot with him that in a clan of summons know for bright (some would say eye-blinding) coloration and a love of flashy ninjutsu, his plain coloration and love (some would say obsession) with weapons made him a bit of an oddball. That it had lead to his never having been summoned twice by the same person and made him the subject of a number of jokes among his own kin, just rubbed it raw. Had it been anyone else they would likely have been dodging something pointy and very sharp. Between the spreading torpor from finally being dry and warm and the start of something resembling respect for Toshiro though, Tonbi apparently chose something other than his usual reply. "Touché. I can respect someone who doesn't take bull from others. Given that and that I am sick of Kanko rubbing my beak in the fact that she has multiple ninja summoning practically every week while I haven't been summoned twice by the same individual ever, I think I'll stick with you. There are a few conditions though."

That said, Tonbi and Toshiro both set down their mugs before turning to face the other with expressions of seriousness. What, if any, agreement they reached here would determine the nature of - or if they even had - the relationship between summoner and summon. "First, you don't just pass me by for stronger summons later on. I am tired of left behind because everyone is ninjutsu-crazy and I would rather stick with good old fashioned steel in large volumes. I want to see some action and prove that just because I'm not a walking fashion statement I am still a first-rate member of the clan. Second, you help me get even with Kanko by summoning me the next time you see her. I want to see that strutting hen's beak fall off her face when she sees that I got the heir to the clan as my summoner."

Tonbi having stated his conditions such as they were, the pheasant kept one eye on his potential summoner and the other on the fire. For his part, Toshiro was staring off into the fire while mulling over exactly what those conditions would mean. The second would be easy enough to fulfill and Toshiro was one who was more than willing to help take a strutting peahen down a few pegs. The first condition didn’t sound very difficult either provided Tonbi proved as good as he said he was. In the end, Toshiro couldn't see a need to bargain over what looked to be a fair agreement. "Easy enough. You have a deal Tonbi - you keep your end of the bargain and I'll keep mine." Deal struck, Toshiro used one blanket-wrapped hand to pull the kettle from it's hook and pour the contents into his own mug. Then he raised it in Tonbi's direction in a silent "more?" gesture, at which the homely pheasant bobbed his head. "Please do. Obviously fate was behind this meeting since we both appreciate the ultimate pleasure in life."