Jack had no idea what the hell he was looking at.
Yesterday, he had helped with the first hunting and managed to snag a young boar, learned that his body enhancement technique was flawed in some way, and, finally, learned that Merci was some kind of evil, masterminded, elementary-aged queen bee! He thinks he managed to bring her home without arousing any suspicion in her about him eavesdropping, but she was able to trick him that she was a little saint of a girl. He didn’t really know what to think about that…
Anyways, his new job as a hunter brought him back out into the forest with both his colleague, Taro, and his mentor, Tea. Today, they had decided to try a different spot in the forest so they don’t run into the mother of the boar they killed yesterday. The trees here were far more sparse and there were a lot more, and bigger, clearings. According to Tea, many herds of ostriches came here to feed on certain weeds and bushes that grew in such clearings. With such a big number migrating nearby, they can easily bring back enough food for the town.
Jack and Taro followed behind Tea as he explained this, and Taro asked why didn’t the farmers domesticate such creatures if they were so prolific. Tea told him that the ostriches were fast, nimble, and could jump three times their height despite being flightless birds. The two newbies understood the inherent difficulties such abilities could bring to domesticating them. Jack, especially, knew that these ostriches must’ve been using Chakra to do such outrageous feats.
When they came upon a wide clearing that had a river of water rushing through, Jack could finally see the ‘ostriches’ that Tea told him. He was thoroughly confused.
Sure, he could see these creatures being related to an ostrich, but he could never call these abominations that name. He may be an American, but he still had access to YouTube. He saw what ostriches looked like and how tall they were compared to humans. These creatures in front of him are just as big, but that is where the similarities ended.
First thing he noticed, they were more reminiscent to a giant flamingo that decided to take growth hormones, steroids, and take heightening surgery. Second, they had that little stupid thing hanging off their beaks. What was it called, again? Uvula? No, that was the thing that hung from the back of a person’s mouth… Wattle? Yes! That’s what they had. They had a giant wattle hanging off their beak.
The last thing he noticed was that they liked to stand in the water with one leg up, just like a flamingo. Truly, they were the abomination that came from someone deciding to play god and create the ultimate eyesore.
He turned to Tea to ask him a question about which bird they were gonna kill, but stopped upon seeing him taking aim at a lone bird closest to them. Tea seemed to realize that he was teaching two newbies still, so he put down his gun to his side and asked them a question. “Tell me, which one should we get?” He looked at both of his students, and saw them deadpanned at him. He scratched his throat in embarrassment.
“Sorry, I haven’t taught anyone before. Well, I tried with my children, but they, uh, didn’t seem to learn what I was trying to teach them.” Jack could understand that. Just yesterday, he and Taro had to pull a lot of meat on their own with only one break. He probably tried to “teach” his kids by having them pull half an ostrich on their first outing at 5 years old, with no breaks. He definitely got put on the couch for that when they got home crying to mama.
Taro sighed. “It’s alright, but,” he looked at the herd (or was it flock for birds?) with concern and turned back with a gesture at the birds. “Aren’t they going to try and fight us? I’ve heard that many wild animals tend to try and fight anything, even hunters.” Tea perked up with a smile. He pointed at Taro. “That’s a good question.” He said with pride. “While most animals do try and fight, it is a general rule of thumb that animals that group up like this-” He pointed at the birds. “-will flee when they hear something loud.”
He squirmed a little to get into a more comfortable position as he began to get into his lecture. “You see, these types of animals like to group up to deter bigger and stronger predators. However, most of them will flee because one member will flee in a direction. They don’t even need to see the danger, they just follow whatever the group does. This usually won’t work if you try to shoot one in the middle of the group, because then the animals will just scatter.”
He pulled up his gun, aiming for the lone bird separate from the group. “That’s why we need to aim for the ones separate from the pack. If a group comes running for you, they won’t care about you and squash you flat.”
Tea stopped talking, aimed, and fired. Jack and Taro watched as the lone ostrich jerked, took a few steps onto land, before falling to the ground. The other birds were spooked and ran away from the dead bird. Jack noticed that they ran the opposite direction of where the bird was, meaning away from the group of hunters. However, he saw that one bird had stopped, looked at the dead bird, and squawked as it ran to the dead bird’s side.
Jack felt a bit squeamish by watching the ostrich nudge its dead brethren. He tried hard yesterday to not think about how the boar was alive and had a mother. Yet, watching this interaction made him remember that these animals were still alive. Maybe not sapient like humans, but they had some intelligence. In the end, though, this was nature. Every animal will one day die, and it would be disrespectful to the animals they killed to just leave the body to rot instead of eating it as they came out to do.
“Ah, that’s a bit sad.” Taro said, already moving out to help in butchering the bird. The bird that was nudging Tea’s kill then began to peck and tear at the body to eat it. Taro stopped, “Oh, nevermind then.” Jack shook his head. It looked like birds were cannibals just like in his previous world.
Tea stood up and walked beside Taro, smacking his hand onto his shoulder. “Well, let’s go stop that bird from becoming a serial cannibalist.” He said this in a joking tone. Jack was already following them. He decided to tell the two a joke. “Let’s do it quickly, then. All that protein will go straight to his pecks.”
Tea chuckled and Taro shook his head with a bemused smile on his face. Tea told the two, “Look, we need to scare him away. Get ready to make yourself look big and scary. Be loud, as well. Follow me.” As they did, the bird spotted them and went on alert. Its head was no longer pecking and eating the dead bird, just staring at them with one side of its head.
Tea, Taro, and Jack, when they all got close enough, raised their arms and swung them back and forth while making monkey noises. The bird got spooked and backed up a little, before seeming to find its resolve and charging at the three, Tea specifically. Tea, surprised, dived to the side to dodge the charging bird. His gun fell out of his hands as he broke his fall.
Jack looked at this in surprise. He thought that the bird wouldn’t try anything like Tea said. However, he snapped himself out of this frozen state and pulled out his hunting knife. All three had one as part of their hunting equipment, but they weren’t intended to be used as weapons. Either way, Jack got ready for a fight while Taro scrambled to pick up the gun that fell out of Tea’s hands. The giant pink bird saw Taro running, and targeted him next.
Taro looked up just as he grasped the gun. The ostrich was already a few feet away from him and he tried his best to roll backwards. Unfortunately, he could already tell that he wasn’t going to make it without getting stepped on somewhere. Just as the bird’s next step was about to crush Taro, Jack shoulder-slammed into the body of the bird. This shifted the leg just enough that it missed Taro, but he had to let go of the gun to get out of the way just in time.
As Jack jumped away from the bird, he looked down its body, hoping to see a wound. When he slammed into the bird, he had his knife pointed at the bird’s wing hoping to get a deep stab in as well as using his maximum body enhancement technique. His hopes rose when he saw a stab wound, but they fell as he took a glance at his knife and saw that it only went in two inches. Not nearly enough to get the featherduster to bleed out or nick something vital.
The pink eyesore screeched out its anger at the sudden slam and stabbing pain in its wing. It turned towards Jack and charged him too. Jack’s eyes widened as the pink bird became far faster than before. He could also feel something emanating from it, but he wasn’t so focused on it. He pushed his body enhancement technique as hard as it’ll go and just barely sidestepped the charging bird. He also used this as an opportunity to slash at it with his knife.
He turned around to see the bird even more angry as its feathers showed only a lightly bleeding cut running along its side. Jack couldn’t believe that his knife only did that much! Even when the bird wasn’t enhancing its body with Chakra, it could take a stab just 2 inches deep. Now he could barely get past the skin! Jack felt his fear start to rise as he wondered if he could even beat this animal.
The bird charged once more, and Jack dodged once more. Unfortunately, the bird seemed to have learned what the humans were doing and used its bad wing to smack Jack in the face. Jack fell to the ground, face smarting, and looked up as the bird turned around and lifted its leg to crush him.
BANG!
The bird squealed as a spurt of blood sprayed out from both sides of its body. It stumbled to the side, managed to catch itself, and turned to where it got hurt.
BANG!
The bird shook as another bullet hit it from the front. Its squawk now sounding like gargling as blood filled its lungs. It tried to take a step forward, but fell down as its legs collapsed.
Jack, panting deeply from seeing his life flash before his eyes, turned to where the shots came from and saw a dirty Tea standing with the gun at his shoulder. Taro was standing slightly behind and to the side. He let it down, and looked at Jack. His face was serious and concerned as it looked at his face for any injuries. Jack felt something drip out of his nose and wiped it to see blood. Thankfully, his nose wasn’t broken.
Tea, seeing that Jack just made it out with a broken nose, let his serious face fall. He sighed out his relief, before starting to giggle. Then he laughed. Taro was right behind him. Jack, despite feeling the adrenaline in his veins still, couldn’t help but start laughing also. They stayed like that for a good minute, laughing their butts off.
Their laughs died down as they needed air to breathe. Panting, Tea said, “Jack!? That was one hell of a slam there! Did you play kingdom football when you were in high school?” Jack’s dead laughter came back as giggles when he heard that. He didn’t know why it was funny, but he assumed that kingdom football was similar to american football. “N, snrk, No, sir. I just worked out in the gym.”
Taro panted, hands on his knees and a wide smile on his face. He managed to get out, “Well, you should’ve done so! Then you wouldn’t be out here, fighting for your life.” Jack didn’t think Taro meant that in a mean way. He could see that Taro’s smile wasn’t sarcastic and his eyes showed nothing but the truth.
Jack chuckled a little, before snorting out the blood filling up his nose. “Maybe,” he admitted, “but then I wouldn’t get to say that I body-blocked a giant bird!” Taro just started giggling like he was 5-years-old again and heard someone say “stinky butt”.
The three of them rested and appreciated each other for a little while longer.
Line Break Here
“And that,” Tea grunted out, his arms shaking as he lifted the last of the bags of ostrich meat onto the sled, wagon, thing. “That, is the last of it.” He dusted his hands and placed them on his hips. Jack looked around at the area they were still in. There some flowers here and there, a bunch of tall grass in one pocket of the clearing, and the beautiful river that was nurturing the plant life that existed beside it.
Yet, Jack could now see that the area must’ve been the battlefield for various animals. He wouldn’t know how many animals, but it must’ve been countless over the millenia. The blood from skinning the two dead birds were already turning brown in the short grass. The grass that was disturbed from the recent fight for the three humans’ lives were already straightening themselves out. The river showed no signs of anything even so much as standing in it, as is its nature.
Jack couldn’t help but be thankful that he wasn’t one of the losers in this battleground. He turned back just as Tea shoved a harness into his arms. “Welp, no need to hang around here. Get that on and prepare for some pulling!” Jack just smiled, snapped a salute with an “Aye, aye, sir!”, and began to put it on with Taro.
This time, Taro didn’t ask for a break until halfway through the trek back. However, as they sat and rested, Jack couldn’t help but be frustrated. His low intensity body enhancement technique was unviable due to how many calories it burned, so he wasn’t using it for this trip, but he couldn’t figure out an image to improve on the technique!
He’s tried natural things like the circulatory system or the Chakra system from Naruto, but they make the effect continuous. It only made it pulse. Unnatural things like pipes with gasoline or oil in it connected to a pump didn’t work either. It just refused to connect with idea of enhancing the body. Pipes with water almost works, but all that did was just move Chakra throughout his… “form” you could call it. His entity? What do you call something that was both your body and soul and whatever was in between? Bah! It didn’t do anything other than move his Chakra, that’s all you need to know.
Taro spoke up, snapping Jack out of his spiraling thoughts. “Man, despite the close call we had back there, that was one hell of a view, right?” Jack thought about the clearing they came from. Despite his contemplating earlier about how much death happened there, Taro was right. “It was certainly beautiful,” Jack voiced his agreement. Taro looked at Jack, “Hey, didn’t you say you managed to get here from this very river?”
Jack replied, “I don’t know. How many rivers are nearby? Three, four, maybe? It might be this one, I don’t know.” He took a swig from his canteen of water. “Actually,” Tea piped up from where he was leaning against a tree, “there is only this river. At least, the only one in a hundred mile radius. It’s quite fascinating, though, on how you managed to flow downstream so far that you got here.”
Jack and Taro just looked at the casual Tea with questions on their faces. Tea chuckled. “You see, despite how clean and safe the water looks, that river is filled with alligators.” Jack’s surprise shined through his face. “You probably didn’t notice today, but they were all right there in the water. If you had decided to go and get a drink, one of them would’ve snapped up and bit your head off.”
“Eeeh?” Let out Taro, his awe obvious. He looked to Jack, “You really got lucky, then. You came out just a little further downstream, right? Man, I wouldn’t even know about you if that happened.” Jack, meanwhile, felt some of his blood leave his face as he realized that this was only his second brush with death in the new world. He chuckled out to try and suppress this new feeling. “Yeah, really lucky.”
Tea just looked at his wristwatch, stood up and clapped his hands. “Times up! Let’s get moving you two. We can have a contemplation of our lives in the truck.” Both of them groaned out. Still they got up and kept pulling.
Line Break Here
Jack panted in the backseat while Taro was doing the same in the front. They had just managed to come back with their new meat, and were desperate for a rest. Tea entered the driver’s seat, not fresh, but certainly with a pep in his step. “Alright, let’s get going. You two certainly earned a good rest. Have a nap, I’ll drive us all the way home.”
Taro nodded, laid his panting head on the headrest, and leaned his seat all the way back. Thankfully, Jack chose to sit on the driver’s side. He looked at a sweaty and exhausted Taro, and felt sympathy for him. He, too, was exhausted and sweaty. Also a little hungry. That last part wasn’t surprising. There were a few times that he needed to use his flawed body enhancement technique to get the sled out of a hump or small hole.
Yet, Jack wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep like Taro was. Instead, he took the time to just watch the world fly by as he thought lightly on what image or intent he needed to make for his new low intensity body enhancement technique.
‘Alright,’ he thought to himself, ‘if circulatory systems, oil industrial equipment, and water pumps don’t work, what does work?’ He thought about how Chakra resonated with the circulatory intent, but instantly rejected any intent that didn’t have a ‘pump’ like the heart. Oil industrial equipment like refiners and pumps through metal pipes just left a ‘dead’ feeling in it. It wasn’t rejection, it was just the opposite of resonant.
As he thought about before, water flowing through pipes from a pump did resonate, but its effects were to ‘move’ Chakra throughout the body before returning to wherever it came from. However, Chakra resonated quite strongly with the ‘water’ part, so the image/intent should include water as an allegory for Chakra. Blood did as well, but it was hard to think of anything that included it.
… Jack was still too tired to think about this, so he decided to enjoy the ride and watch the trees.
As he did so, he thought about an imaginary man doing parkour alongside the truck. He was jumping over big rocks, swinging from branches, and making great leaps across the river. Jack wasn’t gonna think about this too much, but then he remembered something that Tea said earlier. ‘There isn’t another river for a hundred miles radius.’
‘Geeze,’ Jack thought to himself, ‘I didn’t know the river twisted and spanned so much to reach here.’ He looked at the sides of the river, seeing the grass grow tall and bushes and trees extending roots into it. As they passed over it on the stone bridge, Jack had an idea.
He looked over at Taro’s sleeping face, and decided to look like he was sleeping as well to focus on his idea. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He focused on what he just saw, a river bringing life to the plants around it.
… It resonated! Not very much, though. At least, not with the intent he had going for it. He tsk’d quietly to himself and focused on changing the image ever so slightly. The river alone without plants resonated less than the previous, so he went for one river twisting and turning to give the entire region water. That resonated a lot more for him. Not to the level of the heart and circulatory system image, but a distant second.
Jack decided to split the river into two and spread that amongst the region. It resonated… somewhat the same? It seemed like different parts of the image resonated differently to his intent, and at different intensities. He didn’t know what the result would be, but it may be slightly different to the image with only one river.
Jack focused on expanding the idea of how big the river could influence. Not just the region, the continent! That, too, resonated. It was only slightly better than the one that had just one river supplying the region with water. Jack thought bigger. One river that supplied the entire world with water! No oceans, no lakes, just one continuous river snaking back and forth all over the spherical planet.
That one was actually resonating just as much as his circulatory system image! This time, there was no pump moving the water, meaning no more ‘pulses’ of power! Although, he really wanted an image that resonated as much as his ‘inhale’ image for the body enhancement and the ‘grasping’ idea for the leaf sticking exercise. Hmm… Maybe he should stop focusing on the size of the river and its influence and just focus on what the river was doing for the planet?
Okay, first the river has water flowing down its stream. The river supplies the nearby vegetation and animal life with water and its nutritious minerals. Wait, if it was only plants nearby, say from the shore to 10 yards away from the shore, then all of the rest of the forest shouldn’t be getting water! Where is it getting it?
… Maybe from the ground? Yes! That’s it, the river’s water is absorbed from the ground, which slowly spreads it all the way across the forest. Every blade of grass, huge tree, and bush is sipping on the water that comes up and absorbed through their roots. Then its spread throughout each individual plant evenly, making a planet lush with life.
Just as he thought of that in his image and intent, he could feel the Chakra resonating so hard that it slowly turned into a new ‘shape’. That shape was the idea that he just had, but it wasn’t like a third dimensional shape. It was just the idea of the shape of his idea.
He nudged his Chakra to follow this right away, and felt a bone deep massage happening throughout his body. He was feeling his aches wash away, his sore muscles feeling like they could go for a second fight against those birds. His tiredness was slowly being relieved as his eyes grew heavy. His mouth formed a smile as he relaxed even further.
As he fell asleep, he couldn’t help but notice one last effect this new technique was having on him. He could feel his hunger starting to fade…
AN: Sorry this took so long. Hopefully, we’re back on schedule. I’ll post the tenth chapter on Spacebattles in the morning.