“Hello, Taro! How’s the family business coming along?” Greeted Jack, having just stepped into the Tanaka Family Restaurant. Taro looked over to his friend, having just placed a bowl of ramen in front of a customer. He turned his body towards Jack and bowed. “Welcome, customer!” He straightened up and gave Jack a small smile. “The business is doing well, Jack. We still have enough flour and rice for our menus, for now.”
Taro stepped over to where Jack usually sat at the bar, with Jack himself already heading over there. “Now, do you want your spicy usual? We still have a lot of that spice you like.” Jack, still smiling, felt it strain at the mention of his ‘usual’. He sat down at the stool, and said, “No, I’ll just take your regular beef ramen. I need some variety in my life.” He chuckled.
Taro nodded his head. “Alright, one medium beef ramen, coming right up.” He moved to the back and came out a minute later with a medium bowl of beef ramen. “Here you go. Oh!” Taro said before his face showed that he realized something. “Sorry to say, but we’re all out of green onions. Our last shipment was suppose to come in the last train, but…” He scratched the back of his head. Jack just waved his hand in front of his face. “No need to elaborate, I understand.”
Jack picked up his chopsticks, but before he ate a bite he decided to start a conversation with Taro. “So, do you like the hunting we’ve been doing lately? Especially our last hunt yesterday. Man, I can’t believe we managed to snag a pterodactyl. Well, I say ‘we’, but Tea has been the one who’s been bagging them.” Then he ate his chopstick full of ramen.
Taro put his hand on the bar and leaned on it. He also rubbed the top of his head, under that little japanese chef’s hat he wore. “Oh, yeah. That giant bird is going to feed the town with its jerky for a couple of days.” He didn’t stop his rubbing as he started to ask Jack something. “Hey, uh, Jack?” Jack perked up, still chewing his latest bite of noodles.
Taro had a bit of a grimace on his face, and he was looking off, away from Jack. “I, uh, haven’t seen you come in since that day where we caught those two ostriches. You know, a week ago?” Taro glanced back at Jack, “Have we, eh, done something bad with your last meal?” Jack immediately swallowed his chewed meal. “Grunts No, not at all. I just wanted to help out the Munchkinz a little. Larry needed someone who can remember some geometry for Irah’s homework, and Tate needed me to help him with a science project he had at school.”
That was somewhat true. He did both of those things, but he spent most of his downtime doing one of two things. The first thing he spent time on was his training in his various techniques. The one he’s deepened his understanding the most since his talk with Larry is the Nurturing River Technique.
That technique is one of Jack’s greatest accomplishments, in his opinion. It doesn’t just provide his body with ‘nutrients’ made from his Chakra, it provides everything a body needs that can be obtained in the natural world, such as vitamins, proteins, and natural steroids like creatine.
Creatine is considered by many people who work out the best steroid there is because it is naturally found in animals and their meat. Plus, it comes with no long term side effects unlike manmade steroids. No shrunken balls for Jack! Thank you very much. The only downside to creatine is that it lasts for, at most, 30 minutes in the muscles. Yet, many people say that it’s a good trade off because it provides a solid 20% boost to muscle strength!
Jack’s technique provides this out of thin air…
However, this miraculous technique does have a downside to it. Every time Jack uses it to its full duration of 30 minutes, his recovery for his Chakra is doubled. It usually takes him anywhere from 20-30 minutes, depending on how much he’s ‘strained’ his Chakra, and how well he’s resting afterwards. After the first full use of the technique for 30 minutes, his Chakra takes around 1 hour to recover, even when he is relaxing to the fullest!
The second time Jack uses this technique? It went from 1 hour to 2 hours! Every use doubled his recovery time, and it almost made him panic from realizing that it might be permanent.
Thankfully, Jack soon realized that the Chakra recovery would return back to normal after eating a full meal. Well, a couple hours after eating a full meal. Gotta let digestion happen first!
Jack had a theory about why it reset after a meal. He remembers a meme from back in his world about a guy named Bear Grills who was famous for drinking his own urine. His technique was kind of like that, but for Chakra’s ‘super urine’. Since Chakra is used to feed his body, and his body is producing the ‘spiritualness’ that creates part of Chakra, it creates a sort of loop.
Chakra creates ‘chakra nutrients’ that feed the body, the body creates the ‘body/living spiritual energy’ that goes into producing the Chakra, and then the Chakra once more creates the ‘chakra nutrients’ to feed the body. Do you get it? Nutrients created from Chakra are ‘fast food’, but for Chakra itself. It’s incredible for the body, but not at all for Chakra.
Which is strange. It’s not like he’s destroying atoms every time he’s recovering his Chakra.
At least, he doesn’t think he is… Might be something for him and Pol En to figure out later. Just need to bring her in on his hypotheses of Chakra.
Anyways, back to the other techniques. His Tree Walking Technique is coming along nicely. He managed to get up to an average of 8 steps up the tree, and learned how to flip himself in mid air! He’s also understood something else about the technique, too.
Remember when he said that he imagined the technique as writing on a piece of paper with a pen, and the desk beneath it was filled with notches and holes? Those notches mess with the ‘writing’ that you use the pen for, and the holes can make you accidentally ‘tear’ the paper. Remember that image of his?
Well, he decided to try and use it on a different surface yesterday. He ran up the side of a house much easier than the tree. So much easier, that he tried again with a giant boulder, a brick house, and metal walls. Wouldn’t you know it, each one had a different ‘desk’ beneath the ‘paper’ with much less ‘notches’ and ‘holes’ in them!
The surface you’re walking on determines how hard it is to use the technique, with trees being the hardest, so far as he knows anyways.
Why was he walking up the side of a house you may ask? That will be explained later.
‘So why not just train using those surfaces?’ You might be asking Jack, ‘Wouldn’t learning how to use it properly on simpler surfaces be better than learning on the tree?’ Jack thought the same way, before realizing that you start and master trees because of how hard it is.
Jack didn’t even think when he ran up the house’s side and found himself at the roof in no time. It’s basically the equivalent of Standard Mode for video games. Trees are the Hardest Mode for the technique. If you can master Hardest Mode, everything else is just too easy.
There’s another effect made by the Tree Walking Technique, too. Using it on any surface makes the body sort of ignore gravity. Jack noticed this when he was running up a tree and glanced down for a moment to look at where his feet were. They were behind his torso as he ran up the tree. For context, when you run on flat ground you run with your torso in front of your legs. This is because your balance allows you to constantly lean forward all the time with gravity and your using your legs to catch up your lower body with your upper body.
Yet, Jack was running up a tree. Why was he leaning forwards, away from the ground, when that takes more effort? Heck, his upper body should be catching up with his lower body, since the upper body isn’t holding onto anything and should be leaning towards the ground below. It doesn’t though.
Which means it’s another thing for Dr. Pol En to study with him later on.
Onto the next technique, Jack has a new use for the Leaf Sticking Technique other than just being a stepping stone for the Tree Walking Technique. Remember how it was used to stick leaves on the body, and nothing else? Well, Jack found out that you can use the technique on a lot more than leaves, like a camera (that’ll be explained later). Really, anything that was light enough to hold in one hand, Jack could stick onto his body anywhere.
It allowed him to pull a Zabuza and stick a large branch onto his back. He felt ten years old again when he did that. He could also have a constant notice of any items sticking to him, meaning he’ll always know if someone took something from him or not.
The final technique he’s made progress in is his new technique. He created a technique made specifically for knives. He calls it the Piercing Fang Technique. Yet, it didn’t do what he thought it would.
The image he made for this technique was both simple, and yet not. He wanted to create a technique that could pierce through substances that were harder than a regular blade like he has. Something that could cut through a prepared opponent, or just a tougher opponent, like that pink ostrich he fought.
So, his image was that of a needle, doesn’t matter what material it was made out of, that slipped between the cracks of whatever he was stabbing and hitting what lay underneath. Like he said, simple, yet complex.
The technique that he created didn’t come out as he thought it would. Rather than ‘sharpening’ his knife to the point that it could cut through anything, it created an ‘aura’ around the knife that ‘softened’ whatever he was stabbing. In fact, you don’t even need to stab. Cutting works just fine. Yet, the knife underneath went unchanged.
The technique wasn’t all that great when he first made it. A dull knife could barely cut cloth without the technique, but, with it, the cloth became weak enough that his dull knife could cut it pretty well. A couple days of practice with it allowed him to now cut through cloth with a dull knife like scissors made especially for that.
He tried it on a tree when this happened, but all he did was get a little notch into the tree. The good thing was that the knife could actually hurt the tree at all! Without the technique, Jack couldn’t even make a notch, much less as smoothly as he did with the technique.
So, all Jack had to do was train his technique until it was strong enough to weaken wood into butter, right? Wrong! There was a huge downside to this technique. Firstly, Jack has been spoiled since his Body Enhancement Technique with easy-to-activate techniques he’s been learning/creating.
He remembers what the first days of learning how to activate his Body Enhancement was like. He needed seconds to activate it and had to stand in one spot as he focused entirely on just lifting a big rock. It took months before its activation was second nature to him. Once he did so, techniques like the Leaf Sticking Technique and the Nurturing River technique were easy to activate in comparison. He guessed his ‘Focus’ stat was high enough to do so with little effort.
Then again, it’s not like he was in a video game. It would be easier, though, to see his stat sheet.
…
Status!
…
Yup, no stat sheet.
Anyways, the Piercing Fang Technique requires a huge amount of concentration and focus, enough that he needs to stop and focus for half a second in order to activate it, and stay focused to keep it activated.
It was also a huge strain on his Chakra as well. He could only hold onto the technique for, at most, 30 seconds. 20 if he lost focus.
All that to say that he needed to train his focus all over again to make this technique second nature to him.
Alright! That should be all of them. He didn’t really train his Body Enhancement a lot for the past few days. So no progress there.
Let’s get back to what Jack’s second activity was that he was hiding from Taro, and pretty much anyone else, too.
He was stalking Merci Munchkinz both in and out of school with a camera.
Now, hold on. HOLD ON! Listen, he isn’t into little girls. Especially evil girls. Especially evil AND little girls. He was doing this to get evidence on what she was doing to people around her, and it seems like he picked the perfect opportunity to do so.
Thanks to the crisis, the Munchkinz parents have to be more strict on what their children are doing. Especially since they can’t get any more Zeni from the company due to the fact that they are cut-off from advanced society. Larry basically lost his job, and now he can’t give any gifts to Merci for that.
Jack thinks this might be a first for Merci, she’s been a lot more irritated since her spending habits were restricted. Irritation led to anger, and anger led to mistakes. Which is exactly why he’s been stalking her and taking pictures of anything suitably ‘evil’ enough that it can’t be explained away by her parents or any other adults.
He’ll go into more detail later, but right now, let’s focus on Jack’s interactions with his chef friend.
Let’s see, Taro asked if Jack didn’t come by because they made a bad meal, and Jack waved him off and made an excuse. Okay, that should catch us up.
Taro’s pinched face relaxed when he heard the reassurance. He smiled again. “Good, good. Irah’s learning geometry now? Isn’t he 12? Why’s he learning something from high school in middle school?” Jack almost snorted some ramen into his nose. After swallowing down his bite, he coughed a little and corrected Taro. “He’s 14, Taro. A freshman. Man, I can’t wait to tell Irah that my good friend here thinks he should be in middle school.”
Taro, sensing the good naturedness of the joke, chuckled too. “Yeah, he can get huffy and puffy if he wants, but all I have to do is hold his head in place to be safe.” They both chuckled.
Taro let Jack take another bite and chew for a bit before asking his next question. “What about Tate? You said you’re helping him with a science project? What is it? What is it about?”
Jack replied, “Oh, it’s something about how height can change the way plants grow. He needed me to help create something to hold plants high up, and take the pictures for him day-by-day.” Taro nodded and ahhh’d. Then he asked, “So that’s why you're carrying around that camera?” He pointed to the small disposable camera hanging off his neck.
Jak took a glance at it. It was the camera he was using to take pictures of Merci doing horrible stuff. “Yeah, this is the camera. Sorry, but the film won’t be ready until a few weeks from now, when his project is over. Thank God we have someone who knows how to develop film in this town.” Taro nodded. “Yeah, Stova is quite the handy girl with film. And cars. And her gas station… And taxes, surprisingly.”
Jack perked up. “Oh? Really?” “Yeah, she does taxes for quite a few businesses in town, for a flat sum of 1500 Zeni a week.” Jack converted that estimate. If Zeni was Yen, then it’s 100 Zeni to 1 dollar. So, 15 dollars a week? “Wow, that cheap, huh?” Taro shrugged his shoulders. “Apparently, we don’t get taxed a lot out here in the middle of nowhere. Lets us have a lot less paperwork to do than city folk. She breezes through our taxes like homework for Tate.”
Jack chuckled a little. “Tell me, how old is Stova?” Taro replied, “About 34, why?” Jack gave a little cheeky smirk. “Hmm, I’m just seeing why you gave Stova so much praise. Any other girls your age, and you have nothing to say about them.” Taro sputtered a little and blushed.
Jack pointed at him. “Ah! See! I knew something was happening there. Come on, tell me about her. Have you two kissed? Went on any secret dates? Ya’ll bang, yet?” Jack’s teasing made Taro blush even harder and go speechless. Yet, Taro had enough will to let out one sentence. “Jack, she’s married.”
Jack stopped right where he was. Thought about Stova, and realized that Taro was right. Stova was married to a man named Ofwen, and they had 4 children together. He tsk’d. “Right. Sorry, Taro. I’ll stop with that.” He wasn’t about to condone cheating, even in a joke.
Taro, however, wasn’t finished with this. He was teased more than enough, and he wanted payback for all the times Jack’s been doing so. “Well, what Dr. En? Hmm? You seem pretty close with her. You two go on any dates, yet?”
That stopped Jack cold from eating his next bite. Then, he snorted. Then he chuckled. Then full-on blown laughter. “Ha! Hahaha! You-You think we’re into each other? Pfft! Shishshi. Hahaha!” Taro blushed once more. Once Jack’s laughter started to calm down, Taro defended himself. “Don’t you like her? I mean, you two complain about each other a lot, and you both want to get out of town with each other for that ‘secret research project’ of hers. You can’t tell me you don’t feel anything for her.”
Jack, finally calmed down enough, decided to explain his and Pol En’s dynamic to his friend here. “Look, I know it may seem like the ‘secret project’ is code for secret dates, but we’re just professionals. Whenever I think of her, all I think is, ‘She’s hot, but her personality is terrible.’ I mean, she calls me a ‘specimen’ to my face. You know that right?”
Taro calmed down his embarrassment, and realized that Jack was being serious. “Uh, Jack? You do realize that she comes here as well, don’t ya? Whenever she’s here, she talks a lot about you. Admittedly, none of it is a compliment, but they aren’t insults either.” Jack just stared at Taro in incomprehension for a few moments.
“Pol?” Taro nodded to Jack’s unspoken question. “Here?” Once more, Taro nodded. “She said, what?” Here, Taro realized that Jack wanted to know what she said. “Well, she said how you had a nice body to study. How you‘re tall enough to help her with most of the things she needs done in her office. How you’re an idiot that shouldn’t be doing any hunting in the first place. I think she really cares about you.”
Jack pondered on this and his stare was looking at nothing. Then, he asked one of the only questions he needed to know. “She said all of this, about me?” Taro nodded. Jack hmm’d to himself. Finally, he said, “Alright, I’ll ask her out on a date, tomorrow. I can’t do it today, I have plans and all.” Taro smiled and said, “Well, be sure to do so quickly, I might just ask her out first.” Jack looked him up and down, before rolling his eyes.
Taro was offended now. “What? You don’t think she’ll date me? That she doesn’t find me attractive?” Jack waved both of his hands in front of his face. “No! No, I just think she’ll reject you so harshly that you’ll cry.” Taro scoffed. “Come on, Jack, I’ve been rejected by women before. I’ll have you know, not one of them made me cry a single tear.” Jack shrugged. “Okay, your funeral, pal.”
Jack and Taro were quiet for the next few minutes. Jack slurping up some noodles and eating some beef. Taro standing in silence, seemingly thinking about something.
Jack swallowed his latest bite. “Hey, Taro?” Taro snapped out of it and looked back at his friend. “You’re almost 30, right?” Taro felt his entire being get punted from that fact. “How come you haven’t married anyone?” Here, Taro went silent. He pondered on his next words. Jack, meanwhile, was almost done eating his bowl. By the time he ate everything solid in it and sipped all of the broth, Taro had an answer.
“I’ve almost married two women. The first one was my high school sweet heart. She had to go to college in the big city, while I stayed behind and learned more about managing the family business. We split up then, because our paths were different.” Taro said all of this with a straight face, not a smile to be seen. However, his next words were said with something approaching fondness in his eyes.
“The second woman, I only dated her for a few weeks. She was a drifter, and she loved traveling the world. I remember her blonde hair. Her crystal blue eyes. She showed me how love can change a man, because I almost left my entire life behind for her. Everything about me changed. No discipline, no order. Just being by her side every night.” That fondness in his eyes turned to something close to regret.
“In the end, I rejected her offer of marriage. I rejected leaving my life behind, because, at the very last minute, my dad told me he was proud of me, even if he didn’t like the girl I was dating. That was what convinced me of staying here. She understood, and left me with a kiss.” Taro hung his head.
“It’s strange, I always thought that Dad wasn’t proud of me. Yet, that night, when he told me he was, I thought our dynamic as father and son would change for the better. Then my little brother got married and had kids. Dad made him the heir, and not me, because I couldn’t make a family in time.” Taro’s voice wasn’t getting choked up, but it was getting a little husky.
“I… I think I should’ve taken her offer. Dad might be proud of me, but I don’t think he’s as proud of me as he is of my brother… Maybe I should’ve gone with her. We planned our life together in those few weeks. We even made up names about our future children.” Taro sniffed and straightened back up. He wiped his nose a little and changed the subject.
“Anyways, I won’t hold you up anymore than that-” Jack interrupted here, having already eaten his entire meal and just focusing on Taro. “No, please, keep going. At least, tell me the names. Don’t leave me guessing.” Taro paused, and continued with the last bit of his story.
“Ruby and I agreed on two names. If it was a boy, it’s Lapis. If it was a girl, Lazuli.”
Jack knew not to press anymore, and decided to make his exit here. “Alright, Lapis and Lazuli. Those are nice names.” He stood up from the stool, and slowly started walking to the exit. “Welp, I’ll leave here. Remember, tomorrow is the day Tea teaches us how to fire a gun. I can’t wait to do it myself, but you’re the one who won the rock-paper-scissors competition. Better bag us a kill, got it? Okay, bye!” taro couldn’t even get a word in.
Taro just sighed and let out a fond smile, both on his relationships in the past and in the present.
Still, it didn't mean he wasn’t going to shoot his shot with Pol.
Line Break Here
Later That Day
“Ew, why would I want to date someone with constant salmonella on their hands and lips? Go find a fish to kiss instead.”
As Jack predicted, Taro cried from Pol’s rejection.
AN: Okay, finished this, but I'll update Joe twice tomorrow and twice Saturday. I didn't think I could take this much time on a single chapter in one day. I should've been writing it in segments throughout the week like before, but I spent all that writing time on Joe. Hmmm, this'll be a problem. Oh well, I'll still try and make this work.