A strange meeting... (p, nk)

Hado ran through the forest foraging in search of some grub. He was low on food again and it was time to get himself something to fill up his stomach. Just to be helpful, his stomach rumbled, to remind him of his mission. Hado agreed, he needed to get some thing if only to make his stomach shut up.

Bursting out of the forest into a clearing, he found a rather interesting scene. There was an octopus perched on a rock. There was a suspicious looking fellow who was holding something that crackled with electricity, easily sensed by Hado Kirino even though the other was not looking this way and was 5 meters away. There was a pool surrounding the rock on which the octopus was resting. Hado wondered what the bloody hell was happening. Maybe they were having a staring match? Hado could not help but be attracted to the pile fish lying on the ground next to the suspicious looking guy, and his stomach was tempted to rumble again just to remind him of his purpose here.

He did not realize the full nature of the situation until an animal crashed through the undergrowth on the other side of the clearing. The suspicious man looked away for a moment, and the octopus tried to slide into the water. The suspicious man looked back, the octopus gone, and held the crackling bit of the metal object to the water. The octopus quickly reappeared, scrambling out of the water, several tentacles looking like they were doing an octopus equivalent of limping.

Oh, so that is what it was. The suspicious man wanted the octopus for what ever reason, the octopus was trying to escape, and Hado Kirino was wanting that nice pile of fish that the suspicious looking guy was intending on possibly eating later. Out of all these considerations, the bit about the fish factored in Hado’s mind the most, and he began working on a way to get the suspicious looking man, and by extension, the fish, away from the octopus, though the octopus did not really factor in his considerations much.

He had to figure out a way to get the other fellow away from the fish. How could he do that?

The answer came to him. Looking around, he found a palm tree that miraculously was growing near the pond, but the other fellow was not watching. Hado stealthily pilfered a coconut, climbing above the other fellow, grabbing a coconut, and gently pulling one off. He could feel the burning gaze of the octopus upon him, some thing he did not know existed yet until just now. It distracted him, so much that the coconuts above rustled, and the coconut almost slipped entirely from his hands. He caught it in time though, and breathed a silent sigh of relief.

The suspicious man never looked up once, his uniform more obvious to Hado now that he had a closer look. It had a big red “R” emblazoned on the front, and he was wearing a black beret, an interesting style of cap to be sure. He looked around, as if he thought he had seen or heard something, and then went back to watching the octopus, sticking his electrical thing into the water for good measure, but the octopus had not moved, and was instead watching Hado in the coconut tree. Fortunately the guy in the “R” suit had not noticed.

Hado relaxed, glad that his coconut had not fallen. Then his stomach rumbled, audibly, loudly. Uh oh. The guy in the black suit with the “R” seemed to think he had definitely hear some thing. He began to look up, reaching for a red and white sphere on a belt around his waist, and Hado slipped in his panic. He fell through the air flailing wildly, likely to the amusement of any others watching, especially the octopus, even if it gave no signs of such outwardly, aside from its tentacles and arms beginning to twitch in an uncontrolled, erratic series of movements lacking pattern.

The coconut slipped from Hado’s grasp just as soon as he fell from the tree. The guy in the black beret and the black jump suit with the “R” emblazoned on the front and back apparently too, looked up, hearing Hado screaming as he fell through the air, his hand removing one of the spheres from his belt. The only thing he saw was the descending coconut, and then blackness surpassing the inky darkness of his jumpsuit, apparently a mandated outfit despite the rather hot weather at the time. Hado meanwhile, continued to windmill his arms, landing on the sand in an undignified heap. He landed face first, his body arched behind him into the air, the sand around the water fortunately cushioning his fall drastically, such that his skinny body gave him no more than a bloody, though not broken, nose. Meanwhile, the guy in the black jump suit worn despite the heat of the day emblazoned with the “R”, wearing a black beret, tottered back and forth unsteadily, his vision focusing on a certain young boy lying face down on the sand. This was the moment Hado happened to choose to move, his legs swinging down and his dirty shoe impacting a rather sensitive area of the suspicious man’s body.

The suspicious man groaned, and dropped the electrical object to grasp at the newly sensitized area of his body. This proved a mistake, the electrical bits touching the water. Oops. Hado fortunately had rolled away from the water before the electrical thingy shorted, zapping the guy in the “R” suit. The guy in the “R” suit twitched, before collapsing. Unconscious. Most likely he would not be able to get up for a good while at least. Hado turned to run, not wanting to get in trouble, when he felt a tentacle wrapping around his ankle. Looking backwards, he nearly had a heart attack, for the octopus was wrapping its tentacle around his leg. Yes, tentacle, not arm, in this very specific case.

Hado was interested in becoming an entirely overpowered ninja, so he fled the scene, crawling on his elbows as fast as he could, trying to escape the octopus, which slowly crawled up his body.Refusing to give in, Hado tried to crawl under things in an attempt to scrape the octopus off his back but the octopus did not ever let go, presumably changing its body shape or something. Hum.

Hado eventually collapsed, entirely exhausted. He was startled into motion when he was basically whipped by the octopus. What the…

Hado began scrambling, the octopus suddenly spoke out. “That guy in the “R” suit is giving chase. Hurry up or we will get caught.”

Hado took all of three seconds to realize the octopus was not going to kill him, before getting to his feet and sprinting away, blindly crashing through the undergrowth. The octopus suddenly began giving Hado directions, tapping on his shoulder to indicate left or right, after it stopped trying to speak for a while. Well, Hado had thought it was talking, but the octopus was actually using a form of telepathy. Not that Hado knew that cause that would be metagaming right?

Anyways, Hado was led on a wild goose chase, eventually bursting out into a village. He skidded to a halt, and stared in disbelief. The entire village was surrounding a little lake, and a ton of octopi, octopuses, whatever you called them, were happily frolicking. Or they had been. Until Hado burst into the scene, obviously disturbing their equilibrium. Then, the octopus on his back climbed up onto his head and waved. The octopus horde relaxed, visibly, spears and other assorted dangerous miscellanea disappearing wherever they had come from. Hado breathed a sigh of relief, tension leaving his body he had not even known he had had in him from the beginning.

In the center of the lake was a cluster of little buildings, and out of the biggest one crawled another man in a “R” suit. Both Hado Kirino and the octopus had a bad feeling about this, and Hado zipped towards the buildings at top speed, avoiding stepping on octopus bodies on the beach, walking on the water using the technique he had been practicing.

Sprinting towards the building so that he could be rid of this annoying octopus as soon as possible, Hado zipped along the water, watching the guy in the “R” suit muttering something evil to himself. It sounded from his muttering, and looked, from his evil grin, to be up to absolutely no good. Uhoh. Hoping to not get into any trouble, Hado entered the little crawl space that the head octopus called home. The octopus chied fif some weird thing with the little octopus on Hado’s back that looked to be similar to a secret hand shake. Then the octopus chief went back towards a little box he had walked, err, crawled away from. Hado could sense a lot of moving parts within this box. An ominous ticking sound resonated within the chamber….

Quickly, Hado moved almost without thinking. He grabbed the small box, scrambled on his hands and knees back out of the chamber, and then threw it as high and far away as he could, which was not far, as the bomb went off quite shortly after. About 5 meters into the air. Fortunately, none of the octopuses or octopi or whatever were hurt, just Hado, who was temporarily blinded, and hit with a painful amount of shrapnel, which all magically only hit him in non-lethal though sometimes vital areas. Everything turned to black….

When Hado recovered consciousness, he was lying on the beach, with all kinds of items scattered around him. A bunch of plants were wrapped around various injuries, it seemed these were the equivalent of bandages. His entire body ached. He tried to move but it seemed that it would be too painful. However, his condition was slowly improving. He could feel that much from his body.

So, obviously, the octopuses were not trying to kill him yet.

Turning his head, while lying on the sand, he saw the little octopus from earlier, and the chief octopus, distinguished by a headband, crawling along the beach towards him. Hado panicked at first, but the painkillers he was being juiced up with were working, he could not truly panick even if someone was about to shoot him with a gun from another universe. Slowly, the octopuses approached, and when they were close to Hado, the chief spoke, telepathically.

Apparently, Hado had unintentionally done them great services, firstly by rescuing the prince of the tribe of octopuses, albeit unintentionally, and secondly, by getting rid of a poisoned gift sent by Team “R”, which was supposed to be the end of a series of negotiations that had not ended well. Being that Hado had done all this and even got hurt in the process, the Octopi Chief offered his ninja octopuses’ services as a reward for Hado’s unintentional terrific life saving help for the octopus clan. Good deal huh?

It took a few moments for Hado to scrawl his name on the proffered scroll held by two of the octopi. Fortunately, this was not hard to manage in the least. Aside from that his hand was injured, his writing hand that is. Fortunately, being slightly passably ambidextrous, Hado scribbled using his other writing hand, and the contract as signed. The contract was soon safely stored in the water proof container it had been originally held in.

As he was eventually finishing his recovery, he had to pass the final test, well, a test of sorts. Hado had to hi five, err, tentacle, all of the Octopi so they could all show their appreciation. Eventually, Hado finished hi-fiving- tentacling each of the 8 arms of the octopi, and managed to head back on his way again, his journey to continue with some new friends now. Who knows what would happen next? He sure did not.


(exit)

(ttl wc: 2009)
claiming +10 stats, and a contract with the octopi/octopuses/whatever their plural is D<