Meet the Koopas

After Rohim had showed me that he taught himself to summon I knew that I would have to learn the technique as well since our entire lives we had been chasing after each other in an attempt to try and outmatch one another so this wold be no different. I had spent most of my free time this last week in the village library and after some help finding the right scrolls taught myself all I needed in order to start down the path of a master summoner. I now stood about a mile outside Elkwood in a clearing and started doing handseals, this wouldn't take to long...hopefully.

I finished my seals and bit my thumb just enough to release a small flow of blood. Pushing my un-bit hand on the one bleeding on top of the ground a cloud of smoke exploded out from around my hand. After the cloud cleared away a tiny little...thing...had appeared. After looking at it a moment I determined that it was a baby sea turtle, possibly one that had just recently hatched as its back was still soft like a half cooked egg white. The little guy looked around a moment and then saw me before starting to use his tiny little flippers to push himself towards me. I sat down cross legged and and watched. I thought about things as well about the situation, since the animal that had appeared was a turtle that means that the creature best suited to me was an animal, considering my love of battle which requires defense that made sense. However the turtle was a baby and thus proved the my ability as a summoner was still rather weak and I would need to keep trying over and over until I was able to produce something as powerful as Rohim's giant toad. I looked down again and the little turtle had reached me and looked up with a happy glance and squeaked at me, it was heart warming really. After that the turtle exploded into a smoke cloud just as it had arrived and was gone just as instantly as it had arrived. I nodded, now knowing I would need to just rinse and repeat at this point and got to work preparing another summoning.

[word count: 271]

A few minutes passed as I regained myself, this summoning process while not extremely taxing on my chakra stores was taking alot of my actual energy and I felt I would eventually have to rest. But in the end I continued with the preparations for the summoning with hand seals and reopening the wound on my thumb for some more blood flow. Just as before I placed my hands on the ground and waited to see what came this time.

The smoke cloud exploded once again as I placed my hands on the ground and surged the chakra for the technique into the ground. I stood back up and the creature that appeared within the cloud this time was the same as before but this time the sea turtle was larger and seemed to have a more developed shell that had the power to protect itself from most natural predators. Like before it used its flipped to drag itself towards me but it was either much more curious or much more bold at this stage of life since almost as soon as the creature was in range it started trying to bite on my toes. It was kind of funny though as its jaw wasnt developed enough yet to cause any pain. Its blue shell seemed to be a tad shiny though as the light filtering in through the tree branches was reflecting off it. I knelt down a bit and knocked lightly on its shell, the noise seemed to scare the animal a little as it quickly drew its head back into its shell but I, feeling bad, coaxed it back out which resulted in the little guy licking my hand before just as last time he exploded into a cloud of smoke and was once again gone. I would need to start prepping for the next attempt, one or two more might do the trick but I got the feeling I was a little off in that count.

[word count: 250]

I yawned a bit, this training process was starting to take a toll on me but it was expected. All the books and scrolls I read told me that summoning was a powerful ability and that the process of learning it often made most people have to stop mid-way through and take a break or even pass out. So I took a short nap to regain my strength and then upon waking up got back to the hand seal and blood sacrifice business to summon for the third time.

When I performed the jutsu this time it was a little more strange, like before the sea turtle appeared in the cloud and had gotten larger. This time its shell color even changing to a slightly deep shade of blue and getting a type of spiral pattern all over it, but unlike the last two time the animal just sort of sat there looking at me. If it were not moving its fins around a bit and following me with its head whenever I moved off to the side I almost would have thought it was sleeping or dead. I walked over and sat in front of it, looking back into its gaze for a bit and saw that there wasnt alot of age in this animal's eyes proving it was young though upon closer inspection I started to notice alot of similarities between this turtle and the last two I summoned. To test out my theory concerning if this was the same turtle every time I knocked lightly on its shell and it gave me a sort of 'seriously?' look and then in a cloud of smoke un-summoned. I found it rather odd, it seemed that this turtle was indeed the same one each time and that I was transcending time to summon it to my location in order to master the summoning technique which gave me a little more understanding as to how powerful summoning could be.

[word count: 239]

As I sat there thinking about how things have been going so far with the turtle being a flipper type and getting increasingly larger I determined it may be best to head to a pond or lake of some sort. So, before anything else I packed up my things and traveled to the lake that the river flowing through Elkwood fed into and after a bit of fishing for lunch I went for another summoning attempt.

I performed the seals and drew the needed blood once more, lacing my hands on the surface of the lake water and in a cloud of smoke appeared, as I had assumed, an even larger yet physically looking similar sea turtle. However unlike the last few times it wasnt friendly it seemed. It attempted to bite my hand after swimming over to me and I just barely was able to pull out of the way. The animal stopped chasing after me to bite at a fish swimming nearby and then went back to me. Though it was a rather odd trait this stage of the turtle's life seemed to be when his jaw finally developed in full with some power behind it and it wanted to test it out as much as possible. I then looked behind me to see my fish starting to finish roasting over the fire on their stakes. At this point they would be rather chewy and a good enough distraction for the summoned turtle. I walked over as the giant thing started lumbering after me. I snatched one of the sticks up and held it out to the animal which instantly chomped down and started biting on the fish. This went on for a few minutes until I was down to my last fish when in a cloud of smoke like before the animal un-summoned and I was left with most of my lunch eaten and sad.

[word count: 242]

I laid there on the sandy banks of the river for a good half hour trying to catch more fish but alas the turtle seemed to have scared them all off. I eventually gave up but saw that there was a large amount of large carp splashing out in the middle of the water taunting me. I then decided to try once more to finish the summoning training before I just walked on the water and simply grabbed those cocky fish by hand.

For what I was hoping was the last time I performed the hand seals and drew the blood for a summoning, once again placing my hand over the surface of the water to bring the turtle to me. This time the creature was a massive eight feet long and while I was cautious at first knew I could let my guard down after a moment. Like how the turtle had squeaked at me when he was a baby he was playfully clicking at me now as he swam in close and started nudging me. after a few seconds of thinking I wondered, 'does he want me on his shell or something?' and walked over to the side to put a foot on his back. When the clicking seemed to sound happy I shrugged but then thought of something. Signaling for a moment I went over to the shore and grabbed my rod before coming back and sitting cross legged on the turtle shell. He seemed happy and knew what was going on. Swimming around with his head under the water to look for a good spot he stopped and clicked at me. I cast my rod and we sat there just raking in the food. I gave every second fish to my mount and he seemed to enjoy that deal. After about an hour we swam back to shore and I started roasting my catch. In a cloud of smoke though the turtle was gone. I felt sad seeing him go but I felt confident in my summoning abilities now and while I ddnt know it yet there was another creature in the smoke cloud waiting for me.

[word count: 278]

I had my back turned and was roasting my fish as the smoke finally cleared away to reveal a strange shaped turtle with spikes on his shell and a blue mohawk sticking up on his head. The creature walked over behind me and saw that I was cooking fish and flipped out. Jumping over my shoulder and devouring all but one of the fish all at once. I stood there knocked over on the ground with my mouth open in shock, "Twice, a goddamn turtle ate my lunch today...twice." The...thing...turned and looked at me after wiping his mouth, "Yeah sorry about that, I just cant help it when I see good food I have to eat it up. In any case Im Kamehoshi and it would seem that apparently me and you are connected as summoning partners." I looked at him a little more seriously than I should have, I had trained all day and in the end was greeted my little more than a sad excuse for a clown. Then I sighed and thought about what he said, summoning partners, from my limited research that meant he was the closest representation to me there was in what I would assume was the turtle summoning family. As I sat there thinking and looking at him Hoshi seemed a tad put out and simply moved along with his duties. He held his hand up and summoned a large scroll. I shook my head a moment to clear my thoughts and then signaled for him to move on and that I was paying attention. "Well, this here is the contract with my family. If you are wanting to you can sign it and be free to join our ranks, one thing that most of my friends have been forgetting to say though is that once in the family you are kinda stuck there." I thought about it for half a second, just long enough to think fine, and then pricked my finger once more and started unraveling it to sign my name. The turtle helped me and got to a blank spot for me as we spoke again. "Eager one arent ya?" I nodded while not looking awa as I signed, "Im falling behind my friend in power and Im willing to do anything to catch up and surpass him to win." Hoshi chuckled and I finished signing, "We are gonna get along just fine you and I. And thats all there is to it just call on me when you need me with your tattoo." "Tattoo?" Hoshi stood there and blinked for a moment as thing raced through his mind, "Oh right, guess thats the thing Im gonna almost forget, let me see your non-dominant hand and Ill get to work." I simply raised an eyebrow but handed him my left arm and before I could react he bit down on my wrist, "Dude! What the FUCK?!" I tried shaking him off as I felt a rush of soothing chakra being released that numbed the pain until it was gone and he pulled himself off. the hole his fang had made was leaking a type of black ink that formed a single line pattern that shaped itself slowly into the form of a shell. "Right then, just do the seals for the summoning ninjutsu and run your blood along that tattoo, think of me and I'll come to help. If yo want to learn how to summon other members of the family just call me again, for now Im tired after that large meal so seeya." In a cloud of smoke he was gone just as he had arrived, my thoughts on the situation were that I had somehow just succeeded and become a full fledged summoner but with a pain in my stomach I remembered that I hadnt eaten since early this morning and was starving so I grabbed my rod once more and got to work catching something yet again and decided if a turtle ate it again Id eat that instead.

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